Pancakes

You probably didn't know this, but I'm famous in my house for my delicious pancakes.

I'm like a pancake Master Chef.

Here's how I do it:

I mix all the dry ingredients together.

And then I add the wet ingredients to the dry.

*Gasp*

Just mix it until it's all incorporated.

None of that mix the dry and wet separately, then add them together nonsense.

I cook them in a non-stick skillet, dry.

And here's an important detail: use med-low heat.

If anything, it's better that the skillet be too cool than too hot.

Black pancakes on the outside with gooey insides= n'est pas bien.

Wait until bubbles appear and flip!

The second side cooks for significantly less time than the first.

Et voila!

Delicious pancakes!

My girls eat these dry, no butter or syrup.

This will last us three days, if I'm lucky.

Pancakes

2 cups flour

1/4 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1/4 cup oil or melted butter

2 cups milk

1-2 teaspoons vanilla

*I almost always use oil. I can't be bothered with melting butter and the resulting greasy dish.

*I use whatever milk I have on hand. Now that Ruby is almost 2, we just have non-fat, but my favorite is to use 1 cup of non fat and 1 cup of whole milk. I've made it with soy milk (terrible) and almond milk (better), but the mixture of the non-fat and whole just seems to be the best.

*If I have vanilla in the house I'll use it, but they're still pretty good without it.

*After I make a batch, I let them cool, then pile them into a ziplock bag and stick them in the freezer. When the girls want some, I microwave them for about 30 sec. per pancake.

Quilts and Cherries

Today I went to a baby shower for a new friend.

She's having a baby girl probably sometime in the next week or so.

I made this quilt for little Ali.

Out of all the quilts I've made so far, this is probably my favorite.

It's girly, but in an understated way.

For my friend's sake, I hope lots of napping happens on this quilt!

And, remember the sour cherries I picked?

Well, I made these delicious cherry hand pies.

I'm not gonna lie, pitting the cherries was kind of grueling.

But having a huge bag of these beauties in my freezer makes it all worth it.

I baked them all and then promptly put them in the freezer.

I think I should have made them, put them in the freezer, and then baked them when I wanted to eat one.

Oh well.

It's a perfect bite of summer.

Menu for 3/11-3/16

First things first.

Ruby is doing puzzles! One day Aleks said, "did you know Ruby can do the animal puzzle?" Sure enough, here she is:

Not only is she a puzzle whiz, but this kid can throw a darn good tantrum. I only captured a mild one here:

Now onto our week's menu:

Sunday

Roasted chicken with chimichurri and roasted broccoli

Monday

Chicken teriyaki with broccoli

Tuesday

I'm not going to be home for dinner, so Aleks is sous vide-ing some steak and putting it on a salad with poached eggs. 

Which I think is gross. 

The poached egg part. 

Wednesday

Chicken tikka masala with rice

Thursday

Rigatoni with turkey sausage and kale

Friday

Our version of Chipotle's burrito bowl.

Chicken, beans, grilled vegetables, chesse, lettuce, and salsa.

Yum.

Have a great week!

This week's menu and other things

1. It's amazing how once my shoulder was back where it belongs, there's almost no pain! Today is the 4th day since it was dislocated and I'm out of the sling and have full mobility. Yesterday the muscles were a bit tender from the trauma, but I'd say I'm back to 90%.

2. Some notes from last week's menu: The chicken slow cooker thing was a disaster. The chicken was dry, kinda gross tasting, and apparently I still don't know how to cook rice.

Homemade marshmallows, yes. Rice, no.

I suppose it's all about priorities.

The flank steak tacos were great tasting, but I couldn't stomach the texture of the steak for some reason.

The wanton soup was the best. Those pot stickers froze beautifully and I didn't even have to defrost them before adding them to hot chicken stock.

3. Maia and I did an experiment the other day. We were comparing and contrasting her animals. Seeing which ones were smaller and bigger, etc. and then drawing about it in her journal. It was very scientific of us.

4. Our week is a bit calmer, thankfully. Here is our menu:

Monday

Asian beef salad

Tuesday

Beef Pho

Wednesday

Chicken sausages and roasted potatoes

Thursday

Chopped Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Friday

General Tso's Chicken

I'm hesitant to say anything, but it appears spring has arrived in Wichita.

It's been gorgeous.

We hope you have a great week!

Menu planing for the last week of Feb.

This week is WSU's festival of contemporary music and most of the events are taking place Wednesday and Thursday night. I'm sitting in on music theater auditions Monday and Tuesday night. 

It's a nutty week and we needed to plan recipes that are quick and easy.

Monday

Flatbread with cranberry sauce, sautéed onions, and goat cheese.

What's the difference between flatbread and pizza anyway? I read something somewhere that said that pizza has yeast and flatbread doesn't... anyway, it's pretty yummy.

Tuesday

Bun cha

This is a Thai dish that our friends Keri and Andy introduced us to. It's so good, a bit complicated, but totally worth it. And perfect with a cold beer.

Wednesday

Flank steak tacos with cowboy beans

Aleks puts the meat in our sous vide a few days before and then finishes it off in the skillet.

Do you know what a sous vide is?

The French translation is "under vacuum."

Basically you vacuum seal the food you want to cook, fill the machine up with water, set the temperature, and then let your food cook in the water bath.

It's kind of like a slow cooker.

When we first got it, I thought we'd use it for a week and then put it in the garage. Well, I was wrong, we use it all the time.

Totally worth it.

Thursday

Indonesian peanut chicken in the slow cooker with rice

I've never made this before, so we'll see how it turns out.

Friday

Won ton soup.

I made potstickers last week and froze the extras.

This week they're going into soup.

We hope you all have a fabulous week!

Menu for the week

Each Sunday, Aleks and I plan our menu for the week and go grocery shopping. We've found that it saves us a lot of money and is worth the extra time it takes.

I have to admit that often there are times that we get stuck in a rut and waste a ton of time starting at a blank sheet of paper before we are able to come up with dinner ideas.

There are other blogs that post menu planning, and I've found them somewhat helpful, but I think that there can never be too many ideas.

So, I thought I'd share our week's meals with you and who knows, maybe this will help with your dinner ideas.

Monday

Leek and potato soup- Alice Waters

Homemade bread from this book:

Tuesday

Homemade pizza with sausage, caramelized onions, and mozzarella cheese. No tomato sauce, just a drizzle of olive oil. (I'll put peas on my slices).

Wednesday

Wheatberry and arugula salad from:

Thursday

Roasted turkey breast with cranberry sauce and broccoli.

Friday

Crazy day= take out

Let me know if you have any favorite recipes to share, I'd love to try them out!

Pretzel Rolls!

I made these delicious treats on Saturday.

I got the recipe here.

I'm not gonna lie, they took a little bit of effort to make.

But, they were so good.

And they taste just like pretzels!

Here they are before going into their water bath.

And after the water bath.

Fresh out of the oven!

Peanut Butter Cups (Cakes) in a Jar

Happy Weekend! 

Can you believe it?! I'm going to post about baking. 

A first for this blog, I believe.

After being inspired by this lady and seeing the buzz all over the internet, I've decided to jump on the band wagon and make cakes in a jar!

We're having some friends over for the 4th and I thought what's more patriotic than peanut butter cups?

Ok, maybe it's not that patriotic, but it's definitely a flavor combination Americans love.

I'll just show you the general process, but you can get the detailed recipe here.

Of course, I had to make a recipe that calls for equipment that I didn't already have. At this point, I'm trying to only buy food, so that I won't have more things to pack, but I just couldn't resist this one time... 

I bought Kerr half pint jars. I liked the smaller portion this size provides and the straight sides made it very easy to layer the ingredients.

Before the fun could begin, the jars needed to be washed!

I used Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake mix. I hardly ever use a cake mix, but since I'm trying to get rid of as many pantry items as possible, I thought I'd make things easy. 

I did however, use organic eggs...

The recipe calls for 8 oz of peanut butter. Surprisingly, I haven't packed up our food scale yet. In fact, I'm still surprised that we even own one. Aleks bought it this year when he started baking bread. It's turning out to be a very useful purchase.

My peanut butter and sugar never really came together and looked like a bowl of small pebbles, instead of one large peanut buttery ball. I don't know if I needed more PB or what, but I made do. When I formed the mixture into balls, I just had to be careful not to squeeze too hard or else it would crumble.

1. Spoon batter into the bottom of the jars

2. Drop a ball of the PB mixture into the center of each jar

3. Spoon enough batter in each jar to cover the PB ball

Maia helped by dropping each ball into the cake batter. It was going really well until she started taking the balls out of the batter.

Here they are just out of the oven.

Add chocolate to the hot cakes.

Cover jars with the lids and swirl to coat tops with the melted chocolate. I don't know how well the swirling worked. I'll be able to see once they've been opened.

The thing I love about this, is that they can then be put into the refrigerator for up to a week! It's the perfect do-ahead dessert.