We have moved

In an attempt to streamline my blogging  I have condensed all my blogs into one. You can now read eat local news in the food section at modernorganicmama.com. See ya there!

Civil Eats

In my blog surfing, I was on Mark Bittman’s blog and read about swine flu and CAFOs, I stumbled across an interesting new site, Civil Eats. It’s a great blog site with lots of catagories covering all aspects of well, civil eating. Categories include, grow your own, in the kitchen, food policy and more. Check it out.

Great Pancake Tip

I wanted to share a great pancake tip that I recently learned. When you make pancaked using a basic recipe put the yolks in the general mix and whip the egg whites separately until soft peeks form. Then fold them in before frying for extra fluffy pancakes. if you want to add berries or fruit drop the fruit in before you flip the cakes. Keeps the  ingredients from settling on the bottom.

I always make mine silver dollar size that way I can freeze the leftovers (not that we ever have any). When you want one just pop it in the toaster.

Bryn makes Deviled Eggs

Bryn was also the little chef for Easter. Deviled Eggs are a great thing for kids to make. Basic slicing, mixing and piping are all skills a nine year old can handle. Boy he looks grown up.

Kick Arse Chicken and Leek Pie

We had a Kick Arse Chicken And Leek Pie tonight. It was a Jamie Oliver recipe from his new magazine.

Ingredients:
A couple stripes smoked bacon
1/2 a bunch of thyme leaves only
olive oil
a chunk of butter
3 medium leeks  washed and white end finely sliced
a couple cups cooked chicken
2 TBSP flour
2 pints chicken broth
2 TBSP creme fraiche
packet of puff pastry
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Chop the bacon and add it to a large pan on medium heat along with a chug of olive oil, the butter and the thyme. fry for about 3 minutes. Add the leeks and and fry for another 3 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and cook for about 30 minutes stirring every 10 minutes or so. Stir in the chicken add the flour and toss to coat. Add the creme fraiche and broth and bring to a boil. Let it thicken a  little and pour into a strainer catching all the gravy in a pan for later.

Coat the counter with a bit of flour and roll out the pastry.  Put the pastry into the bottom of the pan. You can use a pie pan. I used a 8 x8 inch baking dish. spoon in the leek mixture. put the top on and trim. Use the trimmings to decorate your pie. Beat the egg and add a little salt. brush over the top. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the pastry is goden brown.

Serve with peas and gravy. To die for. My kids loved this!!!

Thanks a bunch Jamie!

Tea Party – Part Two

We made little quiches in this great miniature muffin pan. Really simple.

Ingredient:

Crusts
6oz package cream cheese soft.
1 C butter
2 C Flour
Filling
about 5 oz broccoli diced (small) and steamed)
1/2 small onion diced and caramelized
1/4 favorite cheese finely shredded
3 eggs
1/2 C half & half
1 tsp salt

Combine cream cheese, butter and flour in mixing bowl. Blend well. Chill dough.

Shape into 24 (1-inch) balls. Place in ungreased tiny muffin pans. Press dough against bottom and sides. Drain broccoli.

Into each cup, spoon about 1 teaspoon broccoli and top with some cheese.

In a small bowl, mix cream, eggs, salt . Spoon about 1 teaspoon of egg mixture into each cup. Sprinkle extra cheese on top. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Yield: 24 quiches.

I also made Dill Cream Cheese Cucumber Tea Sandwiches.

I took two loaves of plain white bread. I mixed about 4 to 6 TBSP pf chopped fresh dill with one 6 oz package softened cream cheese. I used about two skinned cucumbers sliced thin. (Yes some of these items weren’t local but I appreciate the convenience of California veggies.) Then I just assembly lined it. Layed out the bread, spread the cream cheese mixture on then layered the cucumbers on. Added the top and cut off the crust. Each sandwich was cut into four square. Made at least 24 sandwiches.

I failed to get a picture of the cake balls but they are easy. Just head on over to The Pioneer Woman and Bakerella. These are great blogs! The links are Halloween related but you can imagine the possibilities. Be warned this could be a time sucking link.

I also made individual cakes for all the kids. I justed use a jumbo sized muffin tin and turned them over and covered then with the fondant. I used gel frosting to docorate and whala. BK wore her princess dress all day. She definately played Bell of the Ball very well.

BK Tea Party Birthday

We have spent the past weekend and a day or two before preparing for BK Birthday bash. I have to say it was fun but I am glad it is done. 12 kids in the house is a lot!

BK requested a Tea Party for her birthday. Here’ is the menu: baby quiches, Tea Sandwiches, Veggie Platter, and Meatballs as the first course. It was followed by two kinds of cake balls and individual cakes for the youg guest. Of course we also had beverages including tea. the finger foods were great fun for the kids and it made for easy clean-up.

So stay tuned for more to come. If your wondering about those cake balls I will point you in the right direction.

Marshmallow Fondant Birthday Cake

Today was my daughters birthday. I made here this great cake with fondant decorations on it.

Fondant is pretty easy to make with marshmallows and powdered sugar.

You need one pound bag of marshmallows. Minis or regular is fine. You also need some butter and a bag of powdered sugar.

If you plan on makeing colored fondant you will also need food coloring.

First make your cake. I chose chocolate. You then need to put a light coat of butter cream frosting on your cake.

Butter cream is pretty easy to make. For a small batch you need one stick butter (1/2 C), 1/4 C milk, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 4 C powder sugar. Mix all ingredients until creamy.

The cake will be easier to frost if you chill it first.  After the cake is chilled frost it with a smooth layer of butter cream. This is what your fondant will stick to. Chill the cake again. You will be able to even the frosting out after it is chilled if you need to.

To make the fondant spread butter on your work surface and pour about half the bag of powdered sugar on it. Pour the marshmallows into a microwave safe bowl that has been greased with butter. Heat the marshmallows until completely melted. Make sure to stop the microwave every 30 seconds or so and stir them. They will be completely melted and puffy when done.

Pour the melted marshmallows onto the powdered sugar and knead the powdered sugar in. Keep adding powdered sugar until you have a nice dough. You will need to cover you hands with sugar as well in order to avoid the dough sticking. When you are finished refrigerate the fondant overnight or until firm.

When you are ready to use your fondant warm it up in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute to warm it up. To add colors just add food coloring and knead it in. (Make sure you grease the table and/or coat it with powder sugar to prevent sticking.)

The measure your cake diameter and height to figure out how big you need to roll out the fondant. I roll mine an inch biger to make sure I have enough. Lightly brush water onto the cake before covering it with fondant. Transfer the fondant to the cake and gently work the sides down stretching it slightly to avoid creases in the sides.

After that you free to play with the decorations. The fondant is like clay or Fimo and can be molded into just about anything. There are lots of videos out there on making and decorating with fondant just search the web. Most of all be creative. Don’t be afraid to fail and you can do just about anything with a cake.

More No-Knead Bread Follies

OK so I decided to give the no-knead bread another chance this time I tried a slightly different recipe that didn’t involve a  covered container.

This recipe was basically the same except instead of using a contain to keep moisture in I used water in the oven. The basic recipe can be found at Gardens by the Lake and is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

I like the idea of just making a big batch for the refrigerator and tear chunks off during the week as you need them. My first try resulted in a very flat loaf so I decided to use this cake pan with the bottom popped out to contain the shape.

Of course you have to bring the dough to room temperature. But this is pretty easily accomplished by setting it on top of the stove while you preheat.

When you first put the bread in at 450 F you also add two cups of water to a broiler pan on the bottom shelf. I cooked it at this temperature for 30 minutes and then lowered the temp to 350 F for another hour. I could seem to get the bread up to an internal temperature of 210 F. I only achieve 200 F but this resulted in a moist loaf that was still  great. At least not sticky enough to stick to the knife.

I while this is a great way to make quick bread and results in a great crust. I have decided that I prefer the old fashion method for the resulting bread quality. I am going to try some more of the recipes over at A Year in Bread.

I’ll keep you posted.

Food Porn, Momofuku

So now you know. I would love to eat something from Momofuku! The simple pleasures of good food. Check the other great info and videos over ant eatmedaily.com

Cinnamon Scones

My family loves to have Scones on the weekends. Usually I make Chocolate Chip but I was out today. So I decided to make Cinnamon Scones instead. They are pretty easy and out shine anything you might get at Starbucks.

Ingredients

2 Cups Flour (I use white)
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 TBS butter
4 TBS heavy cream (you can use milk)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 C plus a tablespoon sugar
1/2 tsp Cinnamon

Pre heat the oven to 450 F (prejeat baking stone too if you have one). Combine 1TSP sugar, flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl. Cut in 4 TBS butter until crumbly. Mix cream, eggs and vanilla in a bowl. Mix the dry and wet ingredients to combine.

In another bowl combine the 1/4 sugar and cinnamon. Add 4 Tbs butter and cut/mash together so that you have small chunks of cinnamon coated butter. Fold this into the dough. Do not over work as you want chunks of butter in your dough. Form the dough into a ball and cut in half. Take each half and cut into forths. You should end up with eight scones.

Place the scones on a baking stone or cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool slightly and serve.

Italian Meringues

OK, So what do you do with an abundance of egg whites? How many egg white omelets can you eat? Make Meringues.

Since we have been making so much Gelato we have an abundance of egg whites so I decided to make meringues. I figured we would staywith the theme and make Italian meringues. The Italians like to make there meringues with a sugar syrup instead of just simple sugar and I have to agree. They are marvelous!

I use a basic recipe from Tyler Florence on the Food Network to get started. I then added some raspberry preserves and sprinkled cocao powder on the tops of half of them. They are awesome. I am sure that I will be creating many more of these in the future.

Now I need to get a pastry bag. Oh and a tip I picked up that I will try next time is if you are using a electric blender use the medium setting instead of the high. This make the egg whites stiffer with out getting big air holes in them. Takes a little longer but worth the effort.

Yummy and low cal too!

Baking Sandwich Bread

I am at it again. This time I decided to try some sandwich bread as my kids are bottomless PB&J fans. I have been spending $3-$4 on a loaf from the store and thought this might help pinch some pennies. I got the recipe from A Year in Bread, Susan’s Farmhouse White. I am still endding up with bread that is a little too moist in the middle. I already increased the cooking time by about 15 minutes but I might cook it still a little longer.

Maybe I need to check the oven temperature to see if my oven is a little cold. This was the same problem I had with the no-knead bread. All in all the bread itself was wonderful and when I get this one down I think I will give the Honey Bran Whole Wheat a try.

More Great Blog Links

I found a great new blogger. She has three different blogs and I found her in my quest to bake a good loaf of bread. I love to read about other peoples kitchen gardens. For me personally gardening and cooking are intertwined. Of course gardening in Santa Fe like baking can take a little bit of creativity and knowledge of the desert and high altitude.  But like backing gardening lets you try, try and try again. So I hope you enjoy the links.

A Year in Bread

Farm Girl Fare

In My Kitchen Garden

Local Quesadillas

This is my kids favorite quick meal. These were made with elk sausage, green chile cheese, salsa and tortillas. Definitely a easy southwest meal.

Using Left Overs

Here’s a nice leftovers meal. Cold noodles, feta cheese, walnuts and some leftover garlic sauteed kale.

Happy Valentines Day

My kids love to make cookies. Who doesn’t? I personally like to eat them. So here are the beautiful ccokies my kids made (of course I helped a little bit.) Happy Valentine’s Day.

Roasted Cauliflower Noodle Pancake Dinner

One of my families favorite dishes is roasted cauliflower on a noodle pancake. I found this beautiful cauliflower at the local coop. I got two heads one orange and one purple.

The recipe is a blend of different recipes that I have found.

Ingredients:

One or two heads cauliflower (depending on size)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup copped onion or scallions
salt
1 package noodles (I like rice noodles or angel hair)
two eggs
1/3 cup feta cheese
handful of chopped basil
Juice of one medium lemon

Preheat the oven to 450. Chop the cauliflower into small pieces and put in bowl. Pour 1/2 cup olive oil into a liquid measuring cup add juice of lemon and a pinch of salt. Mix well and add to cauliflower, toss. Spread the cauliflower onto a cookie sheet and roast in the oven until browned and a little crispy about 25 to 30 minutes.

While the cauliflower is roasting boil noodles in salted water. Mix two eggs, the basil, onion and the cheese in a bowl. When noodles are al dente strain and rinse to cool. Add noodles to the egg mixture. Heat a skillet on medium heat. Coat the pan with oil (preferably a high heat oil). Drop a handful of the noodles into the pan and fry until brown and crispy then flip and cook the other side.

Serve the Cauliflower heaped on the noodle pancake! My kids love this.My 2 year old even asked for seconds when I used the purple cauliflower.

I served mine with a side of steamed beats.

Mary Jane’s Farm

More Mary Jane Videos

I have been reading and follwing Mary Jane since my first was born. She is very inspirational. She sells some great mixes and I have a lot of here recipes. I make my own baking mix to use with her recipes. You can buy hers and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her products. If you can’t afford to order hers you can try making mine.

Basic Baking Mix ( substitute for Mary Jane’s Budget Baking Mix)

9 1/2 cups flour (white, wheat or mix, I do half and half)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder (non-aluminum)
1 tsp sea salt

Chill over Powder

Agar-agar ( buy at the health food store)

If you want Mary Jane’s recipes you can get here book or a back issue of MaryJanesFarmMagazine, 8th Issue, Farm Kitchen.

I have it and it has a load of great recipes. Or she has a few books out as well as a regular 6 issue a year magazine. Enjoy

Friday Night Pizza

One of our family traditions is Friday night movie and pizza night. I make homemade pizza and we all watch a movie together. This is green chili, cheese, onion and pine nut pizza. I also made one with Italian lamb sausage on it. The pizza dough is a recipe from breadtopia.com. I definitely need to get some new yeast as this one was a little doughy like the bread.

No-knead Bread Second Try

OK, My first attempt was a disaster. I do not have a La Coche or a dutch oven but I have baking stone. So I tried to use the stone and a cover but my cover wasn’t big enough so you can imagine.

This time I decided to use a covered corning ware and it seemed to work pretty well. My bread has great bubbles inside but is still wet. So I think I might need to let it cook longer and the 450 F temp. I think my yeast is not instant. It is just the regular kind so someone told me I might want to increase it a little.  I will let you know when I perfect my technique.

No-knead bread

No-knead bread, originally uploaded by fuzuoko.

OK, So after some internet research I decided on a bread baking method that I think will work for us. The only thing is that it requires a few equipment purchases, specifically a covered La Cloche and maybe a proofing basket. The La Cloche is a covered clay baking pot. I found a great site with videos and such on it called breadtopia.com

I am a mom to three home schooled children. We are very busy and simplified methods  that are also economical usually work best for us. If it cost a lot or takes a lot of time we are less likely to continue to do it. No-Knead bread seams like a good fit. Hands on time is minimal waiting time is more. So that works for us. We are generally around the house we may not however be in the kitch. I will let you know any high altitude adjustments I make.

In the process I also stumbled across another blog  called Touch the Earth that I added to the blog role. It looks like a very interesting blog about a family in Maryland.

Baking Bread

I found a great recipe for homemade bread over at SoCal Pastry Chef.

It was pretty easy but I have never had great luck with my bread. I did have honey on had so I used some sugar and I didn’t have bread flour so I added a little bit of gluten. The bread did taste good but was heavy and a little too moist.

Next time I am going to use the honey and maybe adjust the flour and knead it a little more. I think part of the problem might also be my house is pretty cold and it takes longer to rise. I will try again and experiment a little. Anybody out there have tips for high altitute bread baking? Let me know.

Eggs Are Amazing!

We have started eating eggs for breakfast everyday. It’s great. They are easy to make and the protien really helps keep my kids full until lunch.

My favorite is poached and I use this great poacher. It’s quick and easy. Getting the eggs to the right softness is easy.

Just make sure when you are in a rush you remember to put water in the pan or you will end up with a fried egg instead. Not to mention you might ruin the pan. Lesson learned.

Pork, Beef, Green Chili Stuffed Raviolis

I like to use wheat flour in pasta. This recipes is one cup wheat and one cup white. The local co-op carries local wheat and white flour. With the flour I put about a 1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt and mix

Whisk two eggs and two teaspoons olive oil together. Then while mixing with the paddle I add the egg mixture to the flour. After mixing it will look crumbly.

Take it out of the mixer and knead it til it comes together in a ball. I live in the desert so I had to add a couple tablespoons water to get it to form.

I used about a pound of pork and a half pound of beef. I had some left over so you could probably double your dough if you wanted to make it all at once. I found some local green chile goat cheese on sale so I added that, about a quarter cup of chopped pine nuts and a tablespoon of Cumin. Smoosh it up real good!

Roll out the dough.

Stuff the ravioli.

Pinch the edges. You can uses a little water if the layers are too dry to stick together.

Drop them into rolling boiling water with plenty of salt. I cooked them about three minutes to make sure the meat was thoroughly cooked. Take one out and test it to make sure that time works for yours too.

I served mine with some local pasta sauce that I found called Michelangelo Fresh Basil Pasta Sauce (very yummy) and topped it off with a little local shredded mozzarella cheese

They pasted the kid test with flying colors!

Next time I will make a double batch of dough and use up the meat all at once. Then I will put then on a cookie sheet and freeze them. When they are frozen they should store well in a ziplock in the freezer for a quick meal on a night you can’t cook. All in all it took me about an hour to make and was well worth it.

Local Spagetti Sauce

This is my local Santa Fe style spaghetti sauce. Basically I sauteed some onion and garlic in some olive oil, chopped up tome tomatoes and added a little honey and balsamic vinegar. Then I simmered it until it was thick added the corn and pine nuts and salt to taste. Sometimes I like this with black beans too. If you like meatballs you could make those too. Of course no meatballs is lower calories.

I always use cast iron pans as it added a little iron to my diet and I don’t have to worry about off gases or chemicals leaching from a scratched pan.

Picked up a few things from the coop today: bread from Chocolate Maven, eggs from Rancho Capilla, local pomegranates and some goat cheese from Colorado that was marked down.

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Make Your Own Butter

Homemade Butter, originally uploaded by SFHandyman.

We have a local dairy hear in New Mexico called Rasband Dairy. They have milk and cream but no butter. So again I am searching for an easy way to make my own.

I am not interested in buying equipment or anything new so I was hoping to find a way to make it with my Kitchen Aid. I found a great little tutorial on Bay Area Bites (I love the internet).

Homemade Mayonnaise

Homemade Mayonnaise, originally uploaded by kemih.

I don’t know about you but I don’t have a local source of Mayonnaise so I decided to try to make some. I do have a source for local eggs (year round) but I have not yet found a local source for veggie oil. I did however find a machine you can buy to press your own oil, but it is very expensive. So I have figured that I either need to go without oil or buy the most environmentally oil I can find.

Anyway here is a great site that shows you how to make your own mayo with eggs and oil. I am hopping that I can use my kitchen aid for this but will let you know if I end up whisking it by hand.

Cooking From Scratch

Macaroni and Chees, originally uploaded by David Recordon.

Mac and cheese is a lunch time staple in my house, definately one of my kids favorites!
OK, I have to admit it has been awhile since I made Mac and Cheese from scratch. So of course I just threw some milk, butter and cheese in the pan and poof it’s mac and cheese. NOT. Just like all cooking there is a little bit of a trick to making good cheese sauce. It’s not quite as easy as using powdered cheese from a box. As I learned with a little web research its best to mix equal parts butter and flour/starch together (melt the butter first) and then add milk to make a basic white sauce. After that take the pan off the stove and add the SHREDDED cheese. Let the heat from the mix melt the cheese. If the cheese is over heated it gets stringy (which was my problem). Tadah! creamy mac and cheese.
Of course mine didn’t turn out like the picture but I am sure it will next time.