King Cake - Yum!!

Today we made a yummy, yummy King Cake. In case you haven't experienced a King Cake before, it is a sort of cinnamon roll ring usually with green, purple and yellow icing. Where we are from, they are a staple from the Feast of the Tiphany all the way to Mardi Gras day. They are not sold here, so we decided to make our own. We used this brioche recipe for the bread maker to make the dough. Once the dough was finished, I took it out of the machine, rolled it out into a rectangle and added the filling. I wanted a caramel sauce inside, so we used 1/4 cup of softened butter, 1 cup of brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon. We mixed it together and spread it over the rectangle of dough then started rolling it up along one long side. When it was all rolled up, we sealed (or at least I thought we did, but that's another post) the ends and the seam and put it seam side down and connected the edges. We baked it for 30 minutes at 350.

Then, as if there was not already enough sugar, we mixed some powdered sugar with a little milk and vanilla and made a thin icing to drizzle over it. Yummy!

Menu Plan Monday 2-8-10

We are getting settled in our new place - it feels more like home every day. Shopping for groceries two weeks at a time is working out wonderfully for us - we are spending less time shopping because we don't go to the store every time we are missing ingredients, plus we are spending less because we don't go to the store every time we are missing ingredients. Instead, we are using what we have either to substitute ingredients or to substitute a different meal and it is working really well.

This week, breakfasts will include:

Baked oatmeal,
French toast (from the freezer)
Yogurt (homemade Greek style with maple syrup and pecans)
Berry smoothies

Lunches

sandwiches (including some of our "micro greens" we have growing inside the house)
leftovers
Salad with feta, kalamata olives ,etc

Snacks

homemade bread and honey butter
homemade king cake (Mardi Gras is next week)
homemade yogurt with add-in's
smoothies
homemade crockpot granola with milk or yogurt
cookies (probably some sort of sugar cookie that we can make into hearts and decorate for valentines day and also some sort of breakfast cookie)
carrots and cucumbers with ranch dip
Chips and salsa
pecan/ fig pinwheel cookies
apples
pears
cheese cubes


Supper:

Pizza - will do individuals that everyone can top as they like - with a green salad

BBQ Chicken Sliders with broccoli slaw

Baked tilapia, steamed broccoli and homemade bread (all three with lots of butter :) )

lasagna from the freezer with caramelized mixed veggies and bread of some kind

white bean chicken chili

We will probably do breakfast for dinner one night since we have a lot of eggs - either scrambled eggs, hash browns and ham or a ham, hashbrown and egg fritata.

Go check out everyone's menu plans at OrgJunkie.com

Busy Weekend and Dogs

We had guests over this weekend and had such a great time. Our guests were one of my best friends and her family, which are some of my kids best friends. It was such fun. We enjoyed their company for several days and after they left, we were slow in getting back to reality, so, as of yet, I have not posted our menu plan, though we do have one this week. Hubby was off yesterday, so the menu did not get posted then and it won't get posted today either because we have a very busy day with homeschooling friends. Maybe tomorrow :)

Yesterday, instead of posting the week's menu, we went out to shop - for furniture and for a dog. We found some furniture we like, but need to measure to make sure it will fit and we need to think on it to make sure it will end up being what we really need and not just what we want.

On the other hand, the dog search was much more successful. We visited a private animal shelter with definite ideas of what we wanted, but at least somewhat open minded. We wanted a young dog, preferably a German Shepherd or a Shepherd mix. We found a few that met that description, but ended up falling in love with some lab mix puppies. Two, lab mix puppies, in fact. Sisters. We (me) could not bear the thought of separating them (lame, right, lol), so we applied for both of them. This shelter is extremely particular about their adoptive families and how the dogs will be kept, so I am not sure they will agree with our plans to keep the dogs outside some of the time. In other words, we may not get them. But we are hopeful. We should know something by the end of the week.

Garden Update January 29, 2010

Look how pretty! The previous owner planted lots of bulbs all over the "yard" and things are starting to come up. These daffodils bloomed just yesterday. Aren't they pretty :)



Last week, I posted about the "no longer so cute" little woodland creatures who are eating my container garden that we brought with us when we moved. At first, I joked with my husband that I hoped it was a deer because with all of the onion tops and parsley it had eaten, my sausage would already be seasoned. We discovered though, that it is probably rabbits. We found a rabbit "village" - lots of rabbit holes and lots of rabbit families - just a few feet from the location of the container garden. My Dad is planning to take the boys rabbit hunting soon, but really, there is no way to keep them completely out of the garden, so I think we are going to have to try to contain the entire garden somehow to protect it.

The plan is to build 4' X 8' raised beds (hoping to have the first one finished by next weekend) with a hinged lid composed of 2 4X4 frames with hardware cloth stretched across the top and sides. The lids will fasten to the raised beds with some sort of clasp so that they cannot be opened without an opposable thumb, lol. Under each raised bed we are going to put hardware cloth to help keep out the diggers. I don't know if we will be able to completely outsmart the critters, but we will start here and add more reinforcements if necessary.

I am also planning to add lids to the container garden, as the onion tops and parsley are growing back. Hopefully we will still be able to harvest and use these at some point. And speaking of harvest - I harvested 8 carrots this week (5 orange and 3 white) and used them in a soup - well, only what the kids didn't eat right away made it into the soup. Very yummy! I hope to plant more as soon as the new beds are ready.



While my parents were here last weekend, my Dad helped me to make a compost bin, and he, Mom and our oldest son helped to fill it with leaves. I'll get a picture of it soon and post it. It is nothing special, just posts and hardware cloth, but we definitely need it for the garden and we have more than enough leaves to get one started.

I also mentioned last week that I wanted to work on getting some salad greens to grow indoors. We have many East facing and many South facing windows that get so much beautiful direct sunlight. A week ago, I planted the first small container (an old bowl) with mesclun seeds and they are up.


We will probably harvest some as micro greens and let some continue to grow to the "baby greens" stage. If they look to be growing well, I'll let one or two plants get bigger. I planted a second container yesterday - in a lettuce container from the grocery (thanks for the idea, Alea!!).


In another week, I should be able to tell if they are going to grow well. If they are, I will plant another container and then a fourth the following week, maybe with spinach.

Do you have a winter garden growing? I love to read about other people's gardens and would love to read an update of yours. Please post a link or update in the comments :)

This post is linked up to Fertilizer Friday.

Tell Me Thursday

This was Monday at our new house. I guess since the weather has been mild, they thought it was time to grow and bloom. I'm glad I got pictures because it is supposed to be below freezing again for a few days. Here is a picture from today - so pretty!



Tell Me Thursday

Updated Menu

In an earlier post, I asked for help with menu ideas as I had not had a chance to plan the menu and was hoping to avoid the store this week (we live 30 miles from the grocery).

My friend, Alea, from Premeditated Leftovers (go visit her!!) left a comment with some great ideas which we are going to incorporate into our menu. In addition, I found another bag of dried beans, this one black-eyed peas, and I decided to incorporate those into the menu as well. Here is some of what we came up with:

Snacks:
Pumpkin bread (in the oven as I type)
yogurt with pecans (from my Uncle's trees, so local) and maple syrup
Coconut macadamia nut cookies
homemade crescent rolls
homemade granola bars
some sort of scone (printed about 6 recipes - will try to update when we decide)
pear sauce muffins (local, homecanned pear sauce) - if we have any eggs left

Supper:
tortellini with red sauce and steamed veggies

Crockpot Black-eyed pea soup (made some veggie stock with odds and ends from the crisper)

chili as Alea suggested in her comments with the dried beans and diced tomatoes and some of the ground turkey

"blackened" tilapia over caramelized onions and veggie blend.

If I have any black-eyed peas left over after the soup, we'll have hoppin' john with the rest of the ground turkey, rotel tomatoes and some brown rice.

If we have sausage left over after the soup, we will also make pasta salad with it as suggested by Alea.

We will probably eat the ham for breakfast instead of incorporating it into a supper meal.

I'll try to update the blog as the week goes and let you know how the meals are going.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

5 Minutes for Mom