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?

milk with honey & cinnamon

We buy large glass jars of our favorite local honey. This stuff is so thick, you almost need a fork to get it out. It's fantastic. It's also extremely difficult to get out a small amount from the glass jar, so we pour it into a plastic squeezable bottle for daily use.

But there's always a thick layer of leftover honey clinging to the glass jar. Spend half a day with me and you'll realize that I do not waste food. I just can't do it. So here's what I do to get that last bit of honey out of the jar:

1. Pour in a good amount of cinnamon* and mix with whatever honey has pooled on the bottom of the jar.
2. Pour in milk.*
3. Place jar in a pot of water and heat gently until milk is warm and honey has come off the bottom portion of the jar.
4. Screw the lid on the jar, take it out of the water, dry it a little, and shake that warm milk like crazy until all the honey dissolves from the inside of the jar.
5. Distribute into mugs. Plain for the kids; with coffee for me.

*Amounts will vary with the quantity of honey. It's a trial and error kind of thing. I like lots of cinnamon and I fill one third of the jar with milk.

Perfect for a late winter board game day.

313/366 pretend it's a red cup

My first peppermint mocha of the season. Yum. As I was getting back in the car, I realized that I could order a peppermint mocha any time of year—I really don't have to wait for Red Cup season—but it just feels wrong. It feels as wrong as having pumpkin pie in the summer, or watermelon in December. I'm sure the baristas laugh at those of us that get excited for the holiday (drink) season. 

284/366 coffee + chocolate

 We ♥ our local Full Sail Brewery.
This season's new LTD 06 caught my eye today.
Can you blame me?
With a description like that, who wouldn't grab it off the shelf?

By the way, we had taco salad for dinner. I traded our usual tortilla chip “croutons” for a flour tortilla underneath. We ate the salad down until it was burrito-filling-size, then wrapped the tortilla around it. It was like having taco salad and a burrito for dinner. Genius.

We cut the roots off our tiny sunflower from yesterday.
It definitely sucked up more of the blue coloring, but it still wasn't as impressive as the celery or carnations.
Fun little experiment, though!

frozen blackberries

I froze some blackberries yesterday so I could save them for a tasty cocktail next week. When I pulled them out of the freezer, the ice crystals made me giddy. This summer weather is making me crazy! I dream of snow every day.

Fall? Winter? Can you hear me? I'm on my way!

five minute pizza dough and a voodoo brew review

When we visited Rogue Brewery on our Oregon Coast trip, Hubs wanted to buy some beer to take home. I took the kids out to the car so he could make his selections in peace. Foolish me—he came out with a 40-50lb box of beer. In that box was a pink bottle of Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale. Yes, you read that correctly.

You've heard of Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, right? And their famous bacon maple bar? I thought so.

When I found the recipe for this caramelized onion and goat cheese pizza, I had a hunch it would pair well with the unique beer. It absolutely did.

The crust for this pizza uses the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes dough. (Recipe here, called White Boule Artisan Free-Form Loaf. I substituted 40% of the white flour with whole wheat flour.) We really liked the crust, and prep was very easy, since I already had the dough in the fridge. Last week I made a loaf of crusty bread to go with some homemade minestrone, pizza crust tonight, and I'll use the rest of the dough for some yummy cinnamon swirl bread.

The caramelized onion and goat cheese combination on top of this crust was divine. The kids wouldn't touch it, but Hubs and I loved it. We'll be making this again, for sure.

But you want to know about that crazy doughnut beer, right?

 

We liked it! It was definitely different from any other beer I've tried. When I brought the glass up to my nose, I smelled sweet maple instantly. That's the first taste I got, too—sweet maple + beer—like someone stirred maple syrup into a good beer. It finished with a smoky flavor, like the smokiness of bacon without the fatty, salty taste. I'm glad it wasn't too bacon-y.

I'm not a fan of anything super sweet, so I'm not sure I'd drink this beer alone. But I'd definitely have it again paired with something savory and equally assertive, like the pizza.

What do you think? Have you seen this beer? Have you tried it? If not, would you? What would you pair it with?

Note: We bought the beer. No one provided it or asked us to buy it, no one asked us to review it, no one asked me to post about it here. I thought it was fun, inventive, interesting, and worth sharing, so I'm sharing. :)

cold brewed desperation coffee

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When the power was still out Saturday morning, I started wondering what I would do without coffee. I can make it, I thought. But I was cranky. My head hurt. I tried to think of something I could do to take the edge off, and the chocolate in a batch of zucchini brownies I made wasn't working. Darn caffeine addiction.

I thought of Pioneer Woman's cold brewed coffee, but a) I didn't have eight hours to brew it and b) I didn't have internet to look up her method. So I winged it. 

I put approximately two tablespoons of ground coffee into a glass and poured in a cup or so of cold water. I stirred like crazy and let it sit for about an hour. After the hour was up, I strained it into another glass with some cheesecloth to catch the grounds.

It made thick, dark brown sludge. Mmmm.

I like my coffee strong and dark, but even I didn't want to drink that. I added some milk to make it tolerable. Some flavored syrup, Bailey's or Kahlua would have been nice.

It was still a bit gritty, like the last cup from a French press. But beggars can't be choosers. It was just what I needed and I was a much nicer mama. Best of all, I proved I can rough it, Little House on the Prairie style.

I'm so thankful today for my steaming hot, non-gritty coffee.

Happy Monday!

2011 favorites

2011 was a great year.

I can't wait to see what 2012 brings!

  Lilacs and the beginning of Photo Friday

Water glass xylophone

  Lemon cheesecake

Photo found here.

My daughter decided to redecorate her room this year, abolishing the Princesses.

I'm embracing (and excited for!) her future and mourning the end of her babyhood.

Bittersweet, for sure.

Photo from this post.

  

Zig Zag Seuss quilt

 

LEGO organization

Photo from this post.

Peanut butter brownies

  The wedding cake

Watermelon on a stick

Cucumber smoothies

Chocolate peanut butter pretzel balls/bars

Seeing my recipe all over Pinterest was very flattering.

Roasted broccoli and walnuts with pasta

Photo found here.

More on my photography journey here.

Nostalgic (for me) first post with my dslr here.

In February, I purchased my first dslr camera, a Nikon D7000. I haven't put it down since. The camera and learning photography have dominated my 2011. I have much, much more to learn and am loving every minute of my education. Many thanks to my sister-in-law Megan Cieloha and her friend Courtney from Click It Up A Notch (and several of their friends via blogs) for their tremendous help, whether they know they gave it or not.

And many thanks to all of you for reading, commenting, and encouraging me along the way! This blog would be very lonely without you. :)

toasted marshmallow milkshake

After the baby shower, I was left with lots and lots of marshmallows from the hot cocoa bar. I asked some friends for new ideas to use up marshmallows. Genelle of Sleepless in Sandy sent me a recipe for Spike Mendelsohn's Toasted Marshmallow Milkshakes. Marshmallow milkshakes? I was intrigued.

Sweetpea got out of school early today, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the recipe.

Oh. My. Goodness.

This might just be the best milkshake I've ever had.

It's just marshmallows (toasted under the broiler), vanilla ice cream, milk, and a little sour cream (which I think is optional). I expected to find myself desiring an addition of chocolate, but it was excellent all on its own.  The recipe calls for jumbo marshmallows, which I didn't have. I used some regular-sized marshmallows and some minis, guessing at a quantity and using up my leftovers. I probably used more marshmallow than in the original recipe, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love that toasted marshmallow flavor.

And I totally let my kids do that end-of-drink straw slurping when their milkshakes were gone. I'm usually pretty strict about manners, but in this case, I was doing the same slurping. So yummy!

Just moments after I finished my milkshake, I could feel my body start buzzing from all the sugar. I seized the moment and emptied the dishwasher, raked a yard full of leaves, bagged all the leaves, prepped a new bed for garlic and planted the garlic. Yahoo! The calories practically burned themselves. :)

If you love toasted marshmallows, you should try this as soon as possible. I don't think I'm going to have any trouble using up my leftover marshmallows anymore...

autumn baby shower: cocoa favors

Are you tired of baby shower posts yet? I tell you, I had so much fun putting this party together, I want to share every little piece! After this one, we'll take a little break. I have some other things I'd like to share with you. Plus, the two other shower-related posts I'd like to do involve work that has yet to be done.

Since I was making cocoa mix for the hot cocoa bar (Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Chocolate mixed with an equal volume of powdered milk), I knew it would be easy to make a little bit more for favors. As a bonus, it would allow me to make little cellophane packages with card stock labels--something I've wanted to do for a very long time.

The cellophane bags were filled with 1/3 cup cocoa mix, folded over to the appropriate size, and stapled. The labels were printed in one piece, folded, and stapled to cover the cellophane folds. The onesie then covered the staple visible on the front side of the label, and was held in place by the clothespin. A tiny little twine bow (twine from Bella Creationz) provided the finishing touch.

Inspiration for the text was found here, and for the clothespin accessory here on Make & Takes, one of my favorite blogs. It was easy to make the favors match the invitations:

• Match the label card stock with the invitation card stock
• Use the same fonts (Desyrel and Bebas Neue)
• Cut some more cute little green onesies

Putting them together was so fun! This will definitely be my go-to favor style for future parties.

green grape juice

If you've been reading for a while, you may have seen me juice grapes before. I juice our purple grapes every year, because juice is all they're good for. 

But we also have green grapes. They grow along our back fence. The vine actually starts in the neighbor's yard, and we are lucky enough to get a few stragglers on our side. But those few stragglers produce enough green seedless grapes every summer to keep our fruit bowl consistently full.

We had so many green grapes this year, despite our cold and rainy summer, that we got tired of eating them! I felt bad watching all those grapes turn to raisins in the sun. So I filled a few large bowls and hauled out my juicer.

If you've never juiced grapes before, I really recommend it. This is not your average, store-bought grape juice. It's thick, pulpy, and full of skinless grapey goodness. If you've never juiced anything before, and feel like splurging on a new kitchen toy, this Breville is a great one. I don't think there's any fruit or vegetable it can't pulverize.

When the juice is extracted, you're left with all the un-juiceable parts—skin, seeds, etc. This doesn't matter so much for grapes, but if you're juicing carrots, you can use the leftover pulp in a carrot cake. (This would work for apples, too, but I would probably remove the stems, seeds, and skin first.)

The grape juice I made was reserved for a dinner with friends, so when I finished with the grapes, I decided to throw in a few apples. Whole. It was fantastic.

Three smallish apples made just enough juice for Little Mister and I to have with lunch. Fresh apple juice. It was unbelievably delicious!

Do you juice? What's your favorite?

cabbage and goat cheese chilaquiles

How's that for a title? Did I get your attention?

I've had the tiniest smidge of leftover enchilada sauce sitting in my fridge for a week. Seriously. Maybe 1/2 cup. What in the world can you do with 1/2 cup of enchilada sauce?

I also happened to have some leftover sauteed onions, chopped cabbage, and a giant log of goat cheese from Costco that isn't disappearing as fast as I thought.

The images of all those things swirling in my head combined to make only one thing--chilaquiles.

I've talked about chilaquiles before. The dish is fairly new to me, but I'm loving the versatility. It's a muy fabuloso fridge-cleaning meal.

• I put the enchilada sauce in a sauce pan until it was hot.
• I threw in some tortilla chips and coated them evenly with the sauce.
• While the chips were softening in the sauce, I reheated the onions and crumbled the goat cheese.
• Then I threw the chopped cabbage in the saucepan and stirred so it could soften slightly and soak up the rest of the enchilada sauce.

• Scooped the chip and cabbage mixture onto a plate.
• Topped with warm onions.
• Sprinkled with goat cheese.
• Added a dollop of plain yogurt. (I've grown to love it as a sour cream I can eat every day.)

It all looked so good as it was coming together, I mixed up a quick and dirty margarita. The meal really calls for a margarita. Thank goodness for bottled lime juice.

The result was surprisingly yummy. The goat cheese added a tang that really complimented the smoky enchilada sauce.

I know you're wondering about that cabbage. Honestly, I couldn't really differentiate between the cabbage and the onions. Both added a nice crunch and only slight flavor.

I found myself wishing for shredded chicken and cilantro. I think I'll make a big batch of non-leftover chilaquiles for dinner this weekend.

What are you cooking this weekend?