Summer discoveries: Brownies, Knitted shapes, and Frozen herbs

Top discoveries this summer:

1. Coconut Flour Brownies:

A handy tip for using or substituting coconut flour:

•   use 1 egg to every 1/4 cup of coconut flour  required. 

The recipe that I used to try it out was pinned on pintrest and can be found here, although I altered it a bit as you can see below and it was still amazing. Yet a tip about this recipe is that I found it was quite dry and crumbly so be forewarned. Perhaps coconut oil and an egg per 1/4 cup of dry ingredients would have been better. I will try it again, as it was so delicious that even the crumbs were inhaled.   

Coconut Flour Brownies.

    makes one 8x8 or 9x9 pan

    1/2 cup  butter (coconut oil)

    3/4 cup  brown sugar

    2 eggs

    1/2 tsp  vanilla extract

    1/3 heaping cup  cocoa powder

    1/4 cup  organic coconut flour

    1/2 tsp  baking powder

    1/2 tsp  baking soda

    1/4 cup  dark chocolate chunks

To make your brownies:

  1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  2.  In a medium bowl, use a mixer to cream butter with sugar, until light and fluffy.

  3.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

  4.  Add vanilla extract.

  5.  In another bowl, sift cocoa powder and coconut flour to remove lumps.

  6.  Stir flour mixture into wet mixture and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

  7.  Pour into a greased/oiled 8x8 or 9x9 pan, depending on how thick you want your brownies. Sprinkle with chopped nuts if desired.

  8.  Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until center is slightly set and springy, and the sides are pulling away from the pan.

  9.  Cool and enjoy!

2. Knitting a Hexagon Blanket:

After seeing it on pinterest and then being frustrated by only finding crochet patterns my search has ended and I have found that brilliant knitting pattern! So now I can begin a new project for my favourite old yarns to get used up by! Here is the pattern copied from Knitty, Vintage, and Rosy.

One Hexagon requires about 12 yards of wool

Cast on 79 stitches.

Row 1. And every odd row, Purl.

Row 2. K2T, K 10, *Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, K10. Repeat *four times. Slip 1, K1, PSSO.

Row 3. Purl

Row 4. K2T, K8, *Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, K8. Repeat *four times. Slip 1, K1, PSSO.

Row 5. Purl

Row 6. K2T, K6, *Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, K6. Repeat *four times. Slip 1, K1, PSSO.

Row 7. Purl

Row 8. K2T, K4, *Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, K4. Repeat *four times. Slip 1, K1, PSSO.

Row 9. Purl

Row 10. K2T, K2, *Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, K2. Repeat *four times. Slip 1, K1, PSSO.

Row 11. Purl

Row 12. K2T, *Slip 1, K2T, PSSO. Repeat *four times. Slip 1, K1, PSSO.

Row 13. Purl

Row 14. Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, Slip 1, K2T, PSSO, K1.

Break wool. Leave a twelve inch tail. Run end through remaining 3 stitches. Draw close and seam two edges together. Leave end for joining next hexagon.

The only problem is my pentagons are hexagons and I didn't notice the difference till i attempted to pull them together...I think I misunderstood a knitting term and instead of PSSO I may have passed one over, knitted the next and then passed the one back over the one I just knitted.....SOO I have a lovely Pentagon pattern now :) 

3. How to Freeze herbs for the winter 

1. Pluck all the bigger leaves and leave the smaller ones to grow

2. With your pile of bigger leaves and a knife, dice them into smaller bits

3. Melt butter 1/4 cup or so

4. In a ziploc bag dump in the chopped herbs and add melted butter 

5. lay flat in the freezer 

After a day or two you'll have fresh frozen herbs, freezing them will lock in the flavours. When you'd like to use them simply break of a chunk and add to the frying pan :)

~ElysiaB 

P.S. Pictures will be added soon 

Rotisserie Chicken Soup

I got up today very bummed out over my recent visit to the hospital where they poked, prodded,  pushed, took blood test, did invasive physical tests (without buying me dinner first), and then ended with sending my body for tests. So after being on IV med's and finally having the infection since christmas finally-FINALLY gone. BUT still no relief of pain and no explanation of pain, I woke up today and was frustrated, I even felt a sense of forlornness towards my body and myself. Thus, when I looked in the fridge and saw that there sat a lonely rotisserie chicken that no one wanted, with a couple chunks taken out, I decided today is the day I make soup.

How to make chicken soup from scratch:

Taking out old cook books passed down to me, I carefully flipped through pages and found that it's simpler than I thought so get ready for this:

1)You take your chicken, deboned or not...and put it in a pot of boiling water. I just took my whole chicken and drowned it in enough water to cover it.

2)Add spices of your choice. I added 4 cloves of garlic chopped, a bay leaf, dash of sage, dash of dill seed, some greek spices, and parsley.

3) Leave it to simmer for 3-4 hours or if you want it fast you could use this recipe. It is suggested that you add veggies to the soup in the last 1 hours of simmering.

And so I wait and ponder what I will do with a pot of chicken soup as I don't know that we can eat all of it I may have under estimated how much the chicken could feed. It's like alone the chicken will feed a family yet in soup it tenderizes and separates into double the amount it was before.

~ElysiaB

Pumpkin Bread recipe

So after midterms in my exhaustion I summoned the energy to bake as baking is oh so comforting. My Dr. has called and on Dec. 20th I will go in for a very necessary surgery that to be frank scares me. I have been slice and diced before and now I'm short a gallbladder, which is so not cool. The recovery time for this one is 6 weeks as it's quite invasive. So as my nerves jitter I wanted something productive and comforting to do and so I  put two n two together and arrived on the conclusion that:

I like pumpkin bread 

and it is fall 

which equals it is time to eat pumpkin bread :) 

The leaves change as I sort through recipes and my pumpkin stares at me, making me feel guilty for not giving it a greater purpose. But in my searching I have come across a that looks wonderful, upon further research into it I have found the original recipe from which it came. Looking over comments of others who have tried it out I tweaked it a tad here and tweaked it another bit there and so finally below is my altered recipe for delicious pumpkin bread as best I could make. Although being me, I really like to do everything the hard way...just kidding I LOVE learning how to do things from scratch so I scoured the internet and stumbled upon this recipe for making pumpkin bread from scratch. So I followed instructions:

Part One: Make pumpkin puree from my pumpkin

1.) I cut my pumpkin up into 4 quarters

2.) I gutted the gross gooop out of my pumping

3.) I put the quarters on to baking sheets, preheated the oven for 350 and let it cook for an hour.  

4.)When it comes out scrap off the flesh, which is now musshy and slips off in places where it's bubbled. 

5.) take the chunks of soft mushy pumpkin and put it into a bowl, and start mushing it with a potato masher or fork, then use a hand held mixer to mush the rest up into puree and there you have it pumpkin puree. 

Part Two: Make pumpkin bread

Since I had soooo much pumpkin I came to a cross roads of problem number 1: half of my pumpkin.... = 6 1/2 cups blue bowl ...recipe calls for 2 cups pumpkin..sooo I doubled the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups butter

6 cups sugar

8 eggs

6 2/3 cups flour

4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder 

3 tsp salt

4 tsp cinnamon

4 tsp nutmeg

5 tbsp ginger (worth it!)

2 tsp cloves 

1 1/3 cups water

4 cups pumpkin

Directions:

1. Cream together margarine, sugar, and eggs.

2. Combine all dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture alternately with water and pumpkin.

3. Beat well.

4. Pour into well greased loaf pans or muffin pans 

5. Bake at 350 degrees for 60+ minute for muffins, (for loaves maybe more) or until toothpick comes out clean.

This recipe was wonderful, however my suggestion is that it is baked a bit longer for a oaf as they turned out a tad doughy inside.  

Greek style beef souvlaki in the Slow Cooker

I hate being confined to a bed, I look around and see so many things I want to be getting too. It's like the story of the tortoise and the hare the moral being that slow and steady wins the race. But, feeling slow like the tortoise in the story, I can't agree the tortoise as I feel too slow as things pile up that I need to get to. But I also don't disagree with him because I have yet to see the end of this race, I do hope he is right tho... Through my own curiosity I was looking back to the story's origin, upon which I found an interesting biblical connection that interpreters of this story link to Ecclesiastes 9:11 which does sound very similar and is worth a read. Any who, Speaking of being slow, I've had a craving for greek food since we drove past a greek restaurant on our way into the fireworks this past weekend. I suppose it could be because as we drove past it occurred to me that I haven't had greek food in a long time, and I love greek food thus, I've just spent two hours attempting to create my own beef souvlaki. I scoured the internet looking for a greek beef souvlaki dish, but one that could be done in the slow cooker as I haven't been able to stay on my feet lately. I scoured and scoured to no avail, and so I took a bit from this recipe and that a bit from another recipe, and then looked up long lists of substitutions as I never have the right ingredients, or spices. Plus, I find it a little redundant finding a quick easy recipe only to have to go to the store to buy groceries for it, which takes up your quick easy time and turns into a wow-that-took-way-too-long recipe. And so, this is what I came up with:

Greek style beef souvlaki in the Slow Cooker
1/2 c. lemon juice
2/3 c. chicken broth (both recipes called for white or red wine but this is a great substitute)
1/4c. water
1/4c. olive oil
2 garlic cloves minced
baby potatoes diced
1 onion diced
3 celery stalks chopped
stewing beef chopped (smaller bits to go further for lunch tomorrow :) )
Added a dash of basil, sage, and spaghetti spice
let cook on high for 3 hours and wha-la, my husband comes home and says "That smells amazing!" and that's what it's all about :) He's happy and my tummy's happy and I sat while it cooked so I'm not in more pain from cooking and can actually relax and eat without nasty pains taunting me. Okay, that's a lie nasty pains taunted me..but not from the cooking scenario, thus it's a no-pain-payment meal success!
The trick these days is to just do little thing at a time, and take a break and then do a bit more.

~ElysiaB


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