Cooking has taken over my life!

While I get used to being gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free and egg-free, cooking and baking have taken over and bumped sewing from my life (temporarily, I hope).

That's how I ended up with these Peanut Butter-Banana mini-muffins. I started with a cook book recipe and tweaked it a bit, but the end result was yummy.

Peanut Butter-Banana Muffins

3-4 bananas

1/2 cup applesauce

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup rice milk

2 cups white rice flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a food processor, add bananas, applesauce & peanut butter and pulse until smooth.

3. Add rice milk, flour, baking powder & baking soda and pulse until combined (this actually did not work well for me in the blender, so I ended up mixing by hand in a bowl). Fold in chocolate chips.

4. Bake until golden (around 13 min. for my mini-muffins)!

Enjoy!

Besides baking, I've been planning a few sewing projects, and researching pettiskirts since I really want to make one for the daughter of a friend. We also have Brigade Encampment this weekend so some event pics should follow. Have a delicious week!

19th Century Cooking Competition

Yesterday we competed in our annual 19th Century Cooking Competition at the Fort! The rules were as follows:

1. The entry must be created from a mid-19th century primary source receipt.

2. All ingredients for the entry must be available at the Fort during the 1850s, with bonus points available for use of regional ingredients.

3. The entry must be cooked on-site (over an open flame, in a working cook stove, or in the outdoor bake oven).

4. All entries must be accompanied by a story (the taller, the better!).

There were 7 or 8 entries, including the winner, Victoria (above), in her new work dress who was victorious (sorry, couldn't resist) with her contribution of a Victorian 6-layer wedding cake, complete with bridal bouquet and calligraphied copy of the recipe. Who could compete against that?!?

Our entry was fresh-brewed root beer from an 1864 recipe from the Feeding America website. We had several challenges with the root beer, not least of which was a train derailment in the midwest, which prevented our sassafrass and wintergreen oils from arriving in time for the event! We perservered by making a reduction tea/syrup from sassafrass root instead. And while we didn't come close to winning the competition (the root beer turned out very hoppy, and quite strong, although we did get bonus points for using regional Cascade hops), we had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit for our next attempt at brewing later in the summer!

Thankfully, we had lots of help from the other Fort laborers to chop & haul wood, stoke the fires and keep the bake oven hot (getting that to an even 350 degrees is a very tricky proposition!).

The second place winner, Mr. Thornhill, showed off his culinary skills while preparing braised Kale, German-style carrot and veal, pork & beef suet sausages, all from the cook book of Mrs. Beeton.


Other entries in the competition included a beef stew, dutch-oven bacon cornbread, a snared rabbit, a Puget Sound cod & crab chowder and the best rosemary biscuits you ever ate. Mr Eckrom persuaded guests to churn some butter, which was later molded and used for the biscuit entry.

We are tired today, but happy. We did quite a bit of intepretation at our station, which we had set up with all the different roots and ingredients for guests to smell & feel - we used Yellowdock, Burdock, Spikenard, Sarsaparilla, Sassafrass, Dandelion, Cascade Hops & Spruce oil. I haven't gotten to do a lot of interpretation lately, as I am usually busy with the children at events, so that was a nice change of pace. If it wasn't for the rain, it would have been a near perfect day!

I'm looking forward to the week ahead as I'm going off the grid this week - both kids are going to a day camp, so for the first time in 6 years, I will have a bit of time to myself during the day! I'm going to read novels, drink coffee and maybe play with some pretty fabric! So on that note, dear readers, Happy Father's Day and have a great week!

An interesting few weeks!

We've had some adventures the past few weeks and blogging has been getting the short end of the stick.

My oldest was diagnosed with some significant food allergies (dairy, eggs, & wheat) awhile back, and I finally decided that I should stop pretending they would go away, give up cooking two dinners every night, and get serious about Whole Foods allergy cooking. So, I have spent a lot of the last few weeks looking into substitutes for mayo, wheat, eggs and other staples. It has been interesting to say the least, and I think Trader Joe's and I are new best friends! Fred Meyer's organic section rocks too. All of this is hilariously funny, because if you knew me growing up, you will know that I couldn't even cook canned soup back then, and now I make mayo substitutes and gluten-free pizza crusts from scratch. Just another example of how God has a sense of humor!

I'm getting us ready to head out next weekend to our Queen Victoria's Birthday Party, and while most of the sewing is done, I am attempting some open undersleeves with Belgian whitework this week. This should be interesting because I don't really have a game plan or a pattern. At least I have the lace...

Oh, and our bathroom is being remodeled too, so I'm not exactly sure where to put the sewing machine...(not that the sewing machine was in the bathroom to begin with, but all the contents of said bathroom are currently strewn across the bedroom which is where the sewing machine lives). I'm also craving this fabric badly right now, and I may not be able to resist the temptation all week. Especially since our car broke down in a big way, I'm thinking some online retail therapy might help. Don't you think :)?

Meal Planning or Making the Most of Your CSA

I haven't done a cooking post in awhile, and since Spring is theoretically around the corner and our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share has begun again, I'm in the mood to start thinking about culinary fun. I was talking with a friend the other day about how to make the most of the fresh fruits and veggies each week in the CSA, and we came to the conclusion that *TA DA* meal planning was the best solution.

I'm not the world's biggest planner, nor do I find the exercise particularly enjoyable, but I have decided that if I want to "Waste not, Want not" with our food, I HAVE to plan. Originally, I thought having a master list of dinner favorites would be the best option, but after eating squash soup for weeks, it was definitely no longer a "favorite" and I decided to come up with a new plan.

My current idea is to sort menus by Month, including what is in season and the best recipes we have found using those ingredients. Because the basis of the recipes, the veggies, will vary by season we should get a nice variety of dishes.

For example, this second week of March in the CSA we received:

Broccoli

Kale

2 bags Salad Mix

Parsnips

Carrots

Rutabaga

Onions

Potatoes

Apples

Pears

Frozen Blueberries

Wheatberries

Dozen eggs

The meal plan for this week looks something like this:

Wheatberry/Chicken Waldorf Salad - uses the wheatberries, apples, & salad mix

Turkey sandwiches and Broccoli soup - takes potatoes, broccoli & lettuce for sandwiches

Cheese Tortellini soup w/Kale - kale & onion

Turkey Burgers w/Salad - onion & salad mix

Linguine with Garlic & Tuna- frozen green beans from last summer's CSA

French Winter Soup w/Crusty Bread - takes onion, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutabaga

We try to eat meatless at least once a week (better for the environment, leaves less of a carbon footprint, and is healthier for you too!). I also plan to have a couple of healthy snacks lying around. This week I'm going to use the frozen blueberries with some plain yogurt, and the pears with some cottage cheese. The kids love these and I feel better giving them something protein-filled and healthy!

Since I am a habitual breakfast skipper, I've also gotten in the habit of making one egg dish casserole per week, hard-boiling a half-dozen eggs, and making a batch of muffins. This way, no matter what my schedule, I have no excuse not to eat!!

I'm also happy that local and sustainable eating will gain more attention since Michelle Obama has announced healthful eating as one of her platforms. The White House can be a powerful influence for change by example. After all, when Kennedy gave up wearing hats, so did the rest of the nation :).

I hope this has inspired you to think about what you can do with the seasonal produce from your gardens, CSAs and grocery stores. I'd love to hear from you if you have any tips on meal planning. It seems to be one of those Mom chores where there is always room for improvement!