Crepes

I just finished eating the last crepe, sorry. I was going to take a picture - I even plated it all pretty with chocolate sauce drizzled and strawberries around the side. But it was too scrumptious - I ate it before I found the camera.

The recipe I used was pretty basic:

1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
3 eggs
2 cups milk
2 tbs melted butter

All whisked together thoroughly. Pour 1-2 tbs worth of batter in a slightly oiled pan (depending on how big it is), tilting the pan around to spread the batter thinly around the pan. Flip to brown both sides.

Fill with whatever the heck you want - we had strawberries, cream, and poor man's nutella (melted chocolate and peanut butter)

Now I haven't made crepes since French class in college, so I tried to remember how to do it properly, read a couple of recipes online, and here are the tricks I learned this morning.

*Keep the pan on medium heat - make sure it's not too hot.
*Either use liberal amounts of pan spray, or have a good nonstick surface (our little pan was a little rough in the middle, so several crepes were a bit messed up)
*Use a spoon to ease up the edges and loosen the crepe so you can flip it (spatulas were too big)
*Wait until the batter looks like it's pretty much cooked all the way through before flipping to the other side.
*If you're going to do the nifty one-handed flip - make sure you work the crepe to the edge of the pan before flipping - otherwise it'll just fold in on itself and your husband will laugh.

-Thyme

First crop of the year

Please don't be jealous, oh ye who live in northern climes where there is still snow on the ground. We harvested our first vegetables from our garden this week. Radishes! Full disclosure - if it were up to me, we wouldn't have planted radishes since I'm not a big fan (another case of not really eating them when I was a kid and not having ever developed a taste for them). But we said "why not?" and today they were ready to be picked. (Whether they liked it or not - apparently there's some big slabs of concrete under our lawn/garden where there used to be a driveway, so the radishes only had so much room to grow down in before they hit rock.)



So here's what I did with them:


Radish and carrot salad:

Slice up some carrots, radishes, cucumber, and some of the radish greens (I also meant to put in some corn and red onion, but forgot). Toss it all together, coat with creamy dressing of your choice. Serve this spring-y deliciousness with whatever you want (we did Italian chicken and rosemary rice - recipes below).

Dressing (measurements approximate):
1/3 c. mayo
1/3 c. plain yogurt
1/4 c. sour cream
1/3 c. olive oil
3 tbs lemon juice
2 tsp sugar
1/4 c. parmesan cheese
pepper

Whisk together all ingredients. Add more of whatever you want to taste.

Italian chicken:

Chicken breasts
Italian dressing

Marinate chicken in dressing for 15-20 minutes, cook in pan on stove with marinade for another 15-20 or until done.

Rosemary rice:

Cook rice with rosemary and a dash of kosher salt.

-Thyme

Pumpkin Pear Carrot Bread

I am a huge fan of quick breads. I think they're a great way to use up certain types of fruits and veggies that are going bad, they're generally pretty healthy, and yet they're just a touch sweet and, well, they're bread. So today we had half a can of pureed pumpkin, 3/4 of a pear that my son wasn't going to finish, and some carrots that are getting past their prime. And since we were off to a birthday party with no present, we wanted to have some kind of offering.

So, keeping in mind that all of these measurements are estimates (I don't think I actually measured anything), here goes:

8 oz canned pumpkin
3/4 c. grated carrots
1/2 c. grated pear (apple would work great too)
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt (vanilla works good, too)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg
walnuts

Stir it all together, put in two bread pans, bake at 350F for 50 minutes or so. Eat plain or with butter. You could also toss in craisins or raisins if you want.

-Thyme

Easy Peasy Chocolate Peanut Butter Treat

This is one of my favorites. Tastes just as good as a hard-to-make candy (with less sugar, I might add) or a store-bought one. But you don't have to leave home to get it. I could post pictures, but the time to take and post them would more than double the time for this "dish".


The Recipe:

1 big ol' spoonful of peanut butter

1 big ol' spoonful of chocolate chips or m&m's (I like dark chocolate myself)

Mix in bowl and eat off spoon. Or skip the bowl and just plant the chocolate right on the peanut buttery spoon.

Rosemary

Early Easter Dinner

Mint's parents are in town so we decided to have an Easter dinner this week instead of next week.

Grilled Pork Loin


Marinated in Mint's Mystery Marinade (I think this time he used grape juice, white vinegar, rosemary, basil, crushed garlic, kosher salt, black pepper, soy sauce) and then grilled to perfection on our little grill outside. It tasted way better than it looked. That's what was left after we ate our fill.

Fruit Salad


Chopped strawberries, apples, and tangelo segments with some plain yogurt and a little bit of vanilla extract.

Challah

From smittenkitchen (that's flax seeds on it)

Creamy Lemon Squares


From The Pioneer Woman. I didn't have a lemon, though. So I used orange zest, and about half lemon and half orange juice.


-Thyme

Mmmm...asparagus

Okay, so I'd never really eaten asparagus before last year when we got it in our CSA, and it still took a couple of times for me to start appreciating it. But when I saw it for sale this last week, I decided to go ahead and get some 'cause I remember it being pretty good. I decided to use it in this recipe instead of the green beans, and I left out the ham and yummy! I just lightly sauteed the asparagus and then removed it from the pan before I made up the sauce, returning it to the pan at the end. So if you want to try asparagus but don't know a good recipe - might I suggest that one?

-Thyme

Graham Cookies

I picked up a fun little cookbook at a yard sale called, "Make Your Own Groceries". It was published in the late 1970's, but so far almost everything in there is still quite relevant: homemade cleaners, freezer meals, instant oatmeal, and so on. Anyway, I decided to try a recipe for graham crackers to see if we couldn't save a few bucks and have fun while we're at it. The result wasn't really a cracker. Maybe it would have been closer to a cracker if I'd rolled them thinner and cooked them longer. I'm not sure. But the end result that I got from my oven was a wonderful, soft, not-too-sweet, whole wheat cookie. Call it graham if whole wheat makes you think of saw dust. Either way, they're great. You can roll them out and use cookie cutters just like sugar cookies. You could frost them, do whatever you like. I prefer them plain. I just wouldn't call them whole wheat sugar cookies, that might garner suspicion in the less adventurous.

Graham Crackers (cookies)
1 cup graham flour (a type of whole wheat flour you can find at a health foods store or some place with a good assortment of baking products. If you don't have it, just substitute with whole wheat flour like I did.)
1 cup whole wheat flour
8 tbsp (1/2 cup) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup honey
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 to 3 tbsp warm water

Sift flours into a mixing bowl; thoroughly cut in half the butter before cutting in the rest. Mix in sugar and baking powder; stir in honey, followed by the egg and mix well. Gradually add teaspoons of the water, tossing and mixing well before adding more; stop adding water when the dough is moist enough - but not sticky - to form a ball. Knead on a well-floured surface for 1 minute or until the dough holds together enough to be rolled. Roll to a thickness midway between 1/8 and 1/4 inch then cut into 3-inch squares (I used cookie cutters instead once I decided they were going to be cookies and not crackers). Space the squares slightly apart on an ungreased cookie sheet; prick tops with a fork. Bake at 350°F for about 15 minutes.

Side Note: If you have a food processor, this recipe is super easy. Just do everything in there. Food processors are excellent sifters, pastry cutters, and mixers. A few pulses and you're cherry. I did knead outside of the processor, although I probably didn't have to.

Rosemary