Vacation comes, school is out
Summer ends, year in, year out.-Neil Young
I can’t believe the summer went by so fast. This summer marks Malaya’s first theatre production. My baby girl is all grown up and onstage! Here is a video (a little over 13 minutes) of their summer camp production of “How Does Your Garden Groove?” by Michael and Jill Gallina. She played Pea # 2. And the sweetest pea in the garden, she is.
What do you do with two 6-year-olds on a misty Sunday afternoon?
Make pretzels! It’s so easy making pretzel dough on the breadmaker. And after seeing me make spider-shaped pretzels, the girls, still wearing their fairy wings, took over with their own creations: bacteria… uhrm… dots of some sort.
Still yummy! 😀
More pretzel shapes:
music notes and G-clef
skeleton bones
Our local farmers market is back! The Coastside Farmers Market at Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, California is the best source of locally grown produce from May through November. Today was the first farmers market day of the year.
It was great to see my favorite vendors again. There’s the Indian food stall, the only seller who accepts credit card payments. He also offered to give me cash back today, because everyone else at the farmers market takes cash only. Santiago has the sweetest fruit! He charms me with his rhymes and adds free fruit to my bag after what I selected has been weighed and paid for. Manang and Manong are organic farmers from Fresno who gives my daughter fruit in exchange for a Filipino song.
I was also glad to see something new: springtime fresh local honey from nearby Montara, and the coveted honeycomb (my husband’s favorite!) from San Mateo. Honey grown locally is the answer to springtime pollen allergy. Honey from far away just does not have the same elements as what we are surrounded with, and therefore cannot do its job of providing our immune system with the key to dealing with the pollen in our environment.
Sometimes we have eggs at the farmers market, but sometimes we don’t. Today we had some farm fresh eggs from free range chickens fed only organic feed and rainwater in Half Moon Bay.
I mentioned to the farmer lady that my daughter’s kindergarten class kept eggs in an incubator and they recently hatched! The farmer lady gave my daughter a lesson about chickens and eggs: Did you know that you can tell what color eggs a chicken will lay by looking at the color of its ears? Fascinating, isn’t it?
There are so many reasons to buy our food from the Farmers Market. We support locally grown food that has a smaller carbon footprint than those grown and transported from far away. We support our local farmers and put the money straight into their hands instead of funneling it through large faceless corporations. We support family farms and organic farmers. We get to talk to the people who grow our food, and learn firsthand from them about where our food comes from.
Most of all, when we sit at the dinner table with our families, bless the food we are about to eat and bless the hands that made them, we can visualize the very people we are blessing before we enjoy the food they grew for us.
I found this gluten-free recipe for Almond Pancakes from Mark’s Daily Apple, and it’s been a family favorite ever since:
Ingredients:
1 cup almond meal
3 large eggs
1/8 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp ground cinnamonMix it all together until a batter forms. Pour the batter onto a buttered or greased skillet. Cook over medium heat until both sides are golden brown. Drizzle raw honey or just eat it plain. For kicks, add some blueberries or bananas to the batter.
One word of caution on this recipe: I would suggest keeping the size of these almond pancakes on the small side. Larger pancakes have a tough time sticking together.
We use organic maple syrup to sweeten our pancakes. When I’m on the last batch of pancakes, I heat some maple syrup till it bubbles and serve it warm. Not only does it taste wonderful warm, it also kills any mycotoxins that may be in dormant in the syrup.
This is a much heartier pancake than the basic flour-based one. If you look at the ingredients it is mostly protein and no carbs at all. The recipe above yielded enough for two adults and one 6-year old child, and we felt plenty full. Now we’re ready to go out hiking today!
My friend Issa made amazing Valentine’s Day cake pops that inspired me to make my own version, using the Carrot Cake recipe for my breadmaker. Here’s how I did it:
First, I followed my breadmaker’s recipe book instructions on how to make Carrot Cake. You might remember the disaster the first time I made this. Somehow getting the cake out of the breadmaker pan was tricky. Now I know what to do with my cake should it crumble getting out of the pan.
While letting the cake cool, make the frosting. Beat together until smooth and creamy:
3 oz cream cheese
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
After the cake is completely cooled off, crumble it as fine as you can.
Add the frosting to the crumbled cake.
Then mix together with a spatula.
When thoroghly mixed into a paste, roll the cake into balls and refrigerate for an hour or overnight. If you’re in a hurry, freeze for 15 minutes. But really, in the future I would refrigerate overnight for best results.
Make another batch of frosting, this time:
5 oz cream cheese
5 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
Push lollipop sticks into the flat side of the cake balls (the part of the ball resting on the plate/baking sheet will be flat after sitting there for a while). Dip into the frosting fully and decorate.
Here’s a more thorough step-by-step tutorial on how to make cake pops, which also includes a video that shows how to dip the balls into frosting and decorate with sprinkles.
And then of course, anyone who makes cake pops should be inspired by the mother of all cake pops, Bakerella. She wrote the book aptly titled, “Cake Pops.”
Have fun!
Last year we made a gingerbread house from a Wonka box kit and we had a great time doing it. This year, we got a little bit more ambitious and attempted building our gingerbread house from scratch.
We got the Gingerbread recipe and instructions for building a gingerbread house from Family Fun magazine.
We started off wrong when we picked a box that was too big for the recipe. We had to make another half-batch of dough so our house would have a roof! But since we would up with more dough than we needed, we were able to make trees and a bunny.
I’m not very good at geometry, so I made mistakes measuring the walls and it took us all day to get the house standing. We had to keep trimming the walls until we had just the right measurement that would support the roof. I kept thinking about those $15 gingerbread house kits that have perfectly measured parts. Those sure would have saved me time and money!
We finally got to decorate our gingerbread house after dinner. It was a lot of work, but in the end it was worth it. We all learned the virtue of perseverance and teamwork, and felt a swell of pride in our chests after it was all finally done.
From my family to yours, we wish you a love-filled holiday season and a new year full of sweet blessings!
Bored with the usual Gingerbread Man design? Check out these unique Gingerbread designs:
Gingerbread Skeleton
Girly Gingerbread
Gingerbread Sock Monkey
Gingerbread Ninja
Gingerbread in Pink
Gingerbread Puff
Inspired?
Recipe for Gingerbread Cookies
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
3/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup water
Directions:
Happy Holidays!
Pair up these Skeleton Cupcakes with Bone Pretzels for a Halloween afternoon treat!
Start with an easy cupcake recipe. Spread homemade chocolate frosting then top with marshmallow skull and white frosting body. A little bit of that homemade chocolate frosting on a chopstick can be used to draw a face on the marshmallow skull.
Pretzels get the Halloween treatment when shaped into bones. Start out with this breadmaker pretzel recipe. Roll out long strips, take each end of the strip and slice into two. Roll the two slices until your pretzel dough looks like a bone.
Happy Halloween!!!
My Breadman breadmaker came with a recipe book for various breads, doughs, butters, cakes and other desserts. It’s very handy and I love experimenting with the recipes.
The family favorite is homebaked Pretzels. I love making unique shapes for my pretzels. Here’s one that sings…
My husband photographed my process one day, so here are step-by-step photos of me making my homemade Pretzels.
Put ingredients in the breadmaker pan in the following order:
1. 1 1/4 cup water
2. egg yolk, room temperature (reserve egg white for glaze)
3. 1 tbsp oil
4. 2 tbsp sugar
5. 1 tsp salt
6. 1/8 tsp pepper
7. 3 1/2 cups bread flour
8. 1 tbsp active dry yeast
Put the bread pan in the breadmaker and set to Dough Program.
After the breadmaker is done, get the dough out. On a lightly floured surface, cut dough into pieces.
Roll each piece of dough into thin rope.
Shape the rope-shaped dough into pretzels. Place pretzels on a greased baking sheet 1 1/2 inches apart.
Whisk egg white and 1 tbsp water. Brush pretzels with glaze.
Sprinkle with kosher salt on top.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes or until done.
Ingredients
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 15-oz can pumpkin
2 cups heavy cream, chilled
1 tsp vanilla extract
Follow manufacturer’s instructions on how to prepare your ice cream maker
1. Heat whole milk in a medium saucepan until it bubbles around the edges.
2. Whisk sugar and pumpkin puree into the heated milk.
3. Transfer to a medium bowl and let it cool completely.
4. Stir in heavy cream and vanilla.
5. Chill for at least 30 minutes
6. Churn the mixture in an ice cream maker for at least 30 minutes or until thickened into a soft-serve consistency.
7. Freeze for at least 2 hours if a firmer consistency is desired.