avocado tree to-be

We have been soaking these avocado pits for months. We almost gave up! After two months they started growing roots. And two months after that, we finally have sprouts. It's so fun for my kids to see the leaves after they've been waiting so long. 

homemade butterfingers

Recipes for turning candy corn into homemade Butterfingers have been around for years. After staring at a jar of candy corn for two weeks, I finally tried transforming them from something I would never eat (I have never liked candy corn), into something that I would probably eat.

Imagine my surprise after I made them and had the urge to eat them all in one sitting.

There are a million recipes out there; I used this one from Tasty Kitchen, because it suckered me in with “3 Ingredients” in the title. I'm lazy, but I can handle three ingredients.

Ingredient number one: candy corn. Now, I told you I don't like this stuff. Honestly, I avoid it like Frankenstein's monster avoids fire. Candy corn, bad! Corn syrup, bad! Yellow #5, bad! Watching it melt was a little nauseating. But I sucked it up and kept on because I really wanted to see if the end result tasted like Butterfingers.

Once the candy corn was melted, I mixed in peanut butter. I spread that disgusting mixture that looked like puke into a parchment lined pan and let it cool and harden in the fridge. After an hour, I pulled it out, cut it into mini bars, and covered each one with chocolate.

Ok, you got me. I “covered” two with chocolate, for pictures. I'm lazy and I didn't want to waste two cups of chocolate chips on something that might not taste good, so I skimped and only half covered the rest.

Silly, silly me. They're delicious! They taste very close to Butterfingers and even have that crispy crunch if you eat them right out of the freezer. I thought keeping them in the freezer would help limit the amount I ate, but no such luck. I do have my husband to keep me accountable, though. He comes home from work and asks how many I ate, so he can be sure to eat the same amount. Gotta be fairsies, you know. We did not, however, tell the children about these new treats. They have buckets full of trick or treat candy and certainly don't need any more.

If you've still got candy corn sitting on your counter, you should definitely try them. They were easy and pretty quick to make. The chocolate dipping took a while, but I've seen some floating around online that were just covered on the top and bottom like layered bars. I would totally do that next time.

If I make them again, that is. I still look at that impossibly orange filling when I'm eating one and remind myself that I'm eating little bits of candy corn. I'm pretty amazed that those yucky little things can be turned into something I actually like.

orange chai

We're not big tea drinkers. We love the idea of tea, but rarely get around to actually drinking it. As a result, we have a few boxes of old tea bags in the pantry collecting dust. (The boxes, not the bags.) I have since discovered that I prefer loose tea, and I thought about chucking the old boxes of tea bags, but I have a hard time wasting food of any sort. 

So when the weather was warm here (we're in a cold and rainy spell, but the heat is coming back tomorrow), I started brewing up big batches using the tea bags and sticking it in the refrigerator for summer afternoon iced tea. I'm on our fifth batch now, and I'm having more fun that I imagined. (And probably more fun than one should have simply brewing old tea bags.) I'm even combining teas that don't belong together, like green tea and Lady Grey. Scandalous!

Today I had some leftover orange zest (because I made this gingery rhubarb crisp) and a quick internet search led me to believe it would be good with chai tea. I have a whole box of chai! Of course, I made a batch right then. Can you tell I'm relishing all this free time that comes with summer break?

I just had my first glass. The orange scent with the chai spices is quite lovely. I did strain out the orange bits, and I held myself back from squeezing that whole orange into the brew because Chef Google suggested it would curdle milk. I don't always add milk to my tea, but on the off chance that I do, I certainly don't want it to curdle. Nothing that comes out of my kitchen could be worse than curdled milk.

I figure I'll run through my old dusty tea bags in the next two weeks. Anything crazy I should try before I'm finished?

58/366 topped ramen

Hubs and I perused a semi-nearby Asian grocery store (Uwajimaya in Beaverton, Oregon; there are a few in Washington, too) over the weekend and found these pink noodles. They're colored with plum extract. Even though Sweetpea is too old and too cool for pink these days (sigh), we still think of her when we see the rosy color anywhere. She was obsessed with pink for five of her seven years, after all.

Aren't they fun? They look like long thin sticks of bubble gum up close. (They're not flavored, though, just regular noodles.)

I knew what to do with them right away. One of our favorite dinners is basic noodle soup and an array of toppings. We first did this when Sweetpea wanted to try those little packages of ramen. She wanted it plain, but I told her noodles, water and flavored salt do not make a meal! So I chopped up some veggies and meat (sometimes hard boiled egg) and let everyone choose some healthy toppings for their soup.

Tonight's dinner was pink noodles, cooked and then added to simmering chicken broth + minced onion + a pinch of salt. On the table were bowls of sautéed kale, sautéed mushrooms, tomato, leftover barbecued chicken, carrot shavings and asparagus. Hubs complained that his bowl was too small. Sweetpea had her noodle soup plain, and a bowl of veggies and chicken on the side. I didn't hear from Little Mister until his bowl was empty—he was too busy eating.

Oh, and the best part about this dinner? Slurping noodles is most definitely allowed! :)

cake balls

I almost titled this post “cake ballz.” I wanted to, but this isn't really that kind of blog. I think I'm just in a punchy kind of mood because I'm exhausted, just finished a large cup of coffee, and think I may be developing strep throat. Oh, the joys of Christmastime.

Some of you may remember my first attempt at cake balls. It didn't go well. I twenty-questioned my cake-ball-wizard friend for tips this time, and they did go better. I think the first time I didn't have enough frosting. These babies need to be pretty darn wet to hold the ball shape well.

I used scraps from the wedding cake for the cake balls, and leftover frosting, and added peppermint extract because chocolate peppermint cake balls are my favorite. But as I was starting my second batch, I discovered I didn't have enough peppermint extract, so I rummaged through the internet and the house to find a solution. Creme de Menthe would have been perfect, but we didn't have any. This shall be remedied as soon as possible. I ended up pulverizing candy canes (from last year, mind you) in the food processor and adding the dust to the frosting. It worked great for flavoring, but left the cake balls a weird peachy-pink color and made them ultra wet as the candy cane powder melted. Why do candy canes melt when crushed?

One tip from my friend was to use almond bark instead of actual chocolate or candy melts for dipping. She says it tastes better than candy melts, and melts better than chocolate. The Queen of Cake Pops, Bakerella Angie, has more tips in her cake ball tutorial. You should check there if you want to make them yourself.

I set the kids up for assembly-line sprinkling. Waxed paper on the table and a row of easily accessible sprinkles. I dipped the balls in the hot almond bark, then placed them immediately in front of the children. The almond bark cools quickly on the cold cake balls (they dip more easily if really cold), so you can't monkey around. You have to make a sprinkle plan, little people! As soon as they were done sprinkling one, I would bark at encourage them to prepare for their next cake ball, so they'd have enough time before the almond bark hardened. We made it into a speedy game, reminiscent of the old I Love Lucy candy factory episode, without the eating. It was fun.

I gave away some and packed most of them away for Christmas Eve/Day, but kept the rejects out for us. You know, the lumpy ones, the ones toward the end that had crumbs in the almond bark, the ones that didn't get all the way covered and had little cake hernias. There were several in this condition.

And now, I'm a little tired of peppermint cake balls. I'll have to make two flavors next year.

Are you baking this week?

What's on your baking list this year?

pear tart with fig butter

On a recent trip to Trader Joe's, the employees were giving out samples of their Fig Butter. (Essentially fig jam.) Everyone was raving about it, and I happened to be craving Fig Newtons at the time, so I grabbed a jar of fig butter.

But when I brought it home, it just sat in the fridge. It doesn't really go with peanut butter, and I'm not usually one to have just toast with jam. I did, though, have just toast with fig butter and, in fact, toast with peanut butter and fig butter. Hubs and I had some with a cheese plate after the kids were in bed one night. (Cheese, wine and a movie—it's our little version of a date at home.)

Did you know that fig jam goes well with cheese? You can often find it in the “fancy cheese” section of most grocery stores.

So I had half a jar left. What to do. . . what to do. . . I envisioned a rustic tart, with crust folded over the edges. 

Just fig? 

Hmm. . . no.  

Pear. 

Perfect.

One crust, in a shallow pan or pie plate.
Spread some fig jam on it.
Slice a few pears. Arrange them neatly. (Or not.)
Heat the rest of the jam and drizzle it on top of the pears.
Sprinkle on some cinnamon and sugar for good measure.
Fold over the crust and bake.

(There were one-crust-pie baking directions on my crust box. I don't make pie crust. Probably 375°ish for 30 minutes or so? Until the crust is golden brown.)

Best served warm and topped with vanilla ice cream, of course.

Oh, it was delicious.

So easy, and so pretty, this could be my new fail-proof entertaining dessert.

flattery.

Hubs grilled up a lovely steak for dinner the other night. I had him throw on some bread, so I could make the panzanella (tomato and bread salad) I saw on Framed Cooks. Then I grabbed a zucchini that had gone a few days too long in the garden, sliced it up, brushed on some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and sent that to my grill man, as well.

While he was grilling away, I mixed up some bloody marys from home grown tomatoes. I used this recipe, and I'm sure it's probably very good, but I am just not a bloody mary fan. Granted, this was my first, so if any of you have any winning recipes, I'll give the drink another shot. It sure was pretty, though.

As we were dishing up dinner, I suggested we chop up some Oregonzola cheese we had in the fridge to put on top of the steaks. Hubs was over-the-top impressed with this meal we threw together. He even took to Facebook that night and professed his love for me and my culinary composition.

Food is definitely one of the quickest ways to a man's heart.

Flattery might be the quickest way to mine. ♥

turkey meatballs

We were at the beach one day last week and one of the kids showed me a big ball of sand and called it a meatball. I immediately had a craving for meatballs and haven't been able to get it out of my head since. So I pulled out some ground turkey and went searching for my meatball recipe. 

The problem with having a recipe binder like mine, stuffed with magazine pages and recipes written on scrap paper, is that it's really hard to find specific recipes. For the life of me, I could not find that meatball recipe. Off to the internet I went and, as luck would have it, came back with a better one.

It's here: Turkey Meatballs on food.com

Lots of good flavor makers in there. Garlic, onion, oregano. I used fresh oregano and dried basil (instead of parsley, as the recipe suggested) because that's what I had on hand. And I used ground oats (rolled oats thrown in the food processor) instead of bread crumbs, just because that's what I always do. Feels healthier.

I was amazed that the turkey held together with just one egg, but it really did.

As suggested in the comments on the recipe, I baked mine at 350° for 30 minutes instead of pan frying them. Worked beautifully. I ended up with 35 1-1.5 inch meatballs, and they fit just perfectly in a 9x13 dish.

I had picked up some fresh, local green beans earlier in the day, so I made those to go along with the meatballs. For fun, I tossed in some garlic scapes/bulbils that I neglected to cut the first time around. I harvested my little garlic patch yesterday. It was pitiful. I tried it in a new location this year, but it failed big time. All my bulbs were teeny tiny.

We made meatball subs with the fresh meatballs and they were awesome. I forgot to buy mozzarella for them, which was fine by me, but Hubs and the kids wanted cheese, so I “stringed” some string cheese and popped the whole sandwich under the broiler. That's the verb my kids use for what they do to their string cheese. It cracks me up.

We used the leftover meatballs for spaghetti and that was a big hit, too. A few of the commenters on the recipe page suggested using the same recipe for turkey burgers. We'll have to try that next time. Yum. This recipe is a keeper.

asparagus, salami and olive pizza

This was definitely one of those open the fridge and see what we can scrounge for dinner kind of dinners. But it looks like I planned it, eh? As it was in the oven, I came across another pizza recipe that used shaved asparagus, so that made me feel less weird. Uncertainty loves company.

It was tasty. Even the kids liked it. 

What's your weirdest pizza combination?

the man can cook

My dear husband works hard. His stellar work ethic is one of the reasons I can stay home with my kids, volunteer in their schools and write this blog. Words cannot express how thankful I am for the opportunities he has given me. Because he works so hard every day, I have taken on the daily task of making dinner. Most days, I am happy to do this. I like to cook.

But Hubs likes to cook, too. So once in a while, he'll take over dinner duty. Most days, I am happy to hand over the spatula.

Like when he makes Chinese food. Yum.

And last week, when he made corned beef hash with the St. Patrick's Day leftovers.

And last month, when he made French onion soup. Oh, how we love onion soup.

We even cooked the leftovers with mushrooms and piled it on toast. Like upside-down onion soup. Super yummy.

Are you the one with dinner duty in your family? 

Or are you the one who takes over for a few special meals?

(Bonus points if you spot the photo of me in this post. Hee hee.)

crayon hearts: a photo tutorial

 original directions: queen martha

found via: sutton grace

 my thumb and forefinger were red and bruised for days.