Canning.

One of the benefits of owning a home, well owning our home, is the fruit trees in our backyard and our huge supply of tomatoes!  This year, we had to figure out what to do with it all.  I made a ton of pasta sauce and we made applesauce, but after eating those items for a week or so, we decided it was high time we got a bit more creative.

So we decided, or maybe I should say Peter decided, to make homemade apple jam, and that he did!  What you see below is our second batch of jam.  We planted ourselves on our couch one Sunday afternoon and peeled and diced apples.  We then threw those diced bits into a pot with sugar, cinnamon, a little bit of lemon juice, and a bit of pectin and boiled it on the stove, and before we knew it we had apple jam!  Fun huh?  And super easy, just slightly time consuming, but I suppose that's expected right?

















And what's a girl that loves Mexican food to do with so many tomatoes?  Well make salsa of course!  We boiled the tomatoes in hot water for a bit and then submerged them in ice cold water to get the skins off - it worked like a charm!  And we learned a new trick.  While sitting in those same planted positions on the couch, we diced up peppers, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, and then cooked all those ingredients with the tomatoes in a pan on the stove for a bit, then placed it in the fridge to let it chill.  And we canned it the next day!

And there you have it...and now we have apple jam, apple butter, and salsa in our cupboard.

Shepherd's Pie.

Yum...doesn't that look delicious??  Well it was...and my stomach is growling as I look at that photo.   I don't know about you all, but I am a sucker for Shepherd's Pie - maybe that's because I'm married to an Irishman?  Who knows!  But what I do know is that I love it.

We add all sorts of things to ours and we don't really follow a recipe.  I am a normally a major recipe follower, but Peter is adamantly against them when it comes to Shepherd's pie.

So most recipes call for ground beef, however, we have been substituting ground beef for turkey meat these days.  And yes, it does taste a little different, but I think it's better for you, or so I'm told!  And as you can see - we cut up carrots, onions, green beans and corn and added them to the mix.   You can really put anything in there - and just cook it all up and add whatever spices you want.

And then when all is said and done you place the ingredients in a baking dish and cover them with mashed potatoes and cheese!  All that sounds delicious right?  Well, Peter and I decided that we wanted to change things up a bit and cut back a bit on our potato intake.  So what is that white stuff on top you ask??  I mean it sure looks a lot like potatoes right??

I am sure you are all just dying to know!  Have you guessed yet?  It's pureed cauliflower!  I told Peter weeks ago that some people use cauliflower as a mashed potato substitute and he couldn't believe it.  So I set out to prove it to him, and found this Shepherd's Pie recipe, from Mark's Daily Apple.  And it was good people!  I couldn't even believe it!

So for all those shepherd's pie lovers out there...I would definitely recommend that you give cauliflower a try.  You might miss your potatoes just a little bit, but hey at least you tried it right??

xoxo,

Malia

Carrot Cake ...in a jar!

I was perusing Pinterest for dessert recipes, which I rarely do to be honest, but I figured it would be a great place to start.  So I typed in cake recipes, and I ran across all these pictures of cakes in mason jars!

via 

Isn't that just the cutest?  So I figured I would try it out for myself, but I wasn't going to be baking anything quite this colorful considering the birthday girl's favorite cake is carrot.  


I already had the recipe, and the jars, and figured I had nothing to lose, right?  I mean I only had to make four!  And the girls wouldn't care if they weren't PERFECT - so what better people to try them out on!


So the ingredients.


2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp each of cinnamon, baking soda, and salt
4 eggs

1 1/4 cups vegetable oil 

1 tsp vanilla

4 cups grated carrots (use your food processor for the grating if you have one)

Directions.

1. Preheat oven to 325
2. Mix above ingredients together
3. Grease sides and bottoms of 9 x 13 glass dish (or mason jars).  Fill mason jars 1/2 full
4. And bake for 45-50 minutes or 30 minutes if in mason jars

1/2 way full!

Baked product!

I split the batter between the mason jars and a mini cake!  And made the frosting at a friend's house considering my hand mixer broke.


Frosting ingredients.


1/2 box powdered sugar
1/2 cube butter (leave out in room temperature to get it soft before hand) 
3 oz cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla


After mixing together add a splash of milk for smooth consistency.

And here is the finished product  - with frosting and a scoop of ice cream with candles of course!  ENJOY!

xoxo,

Malia

Kitchen Chaos.

Gosh - I had such a good Saturday!  Take a look at the chaos in my kitchen.  For someone who is a neat freak, I can honestly say, I loved every single moment of this kitchen chaos.

Every single inch of counter space was covered by something.  I have banana bread on the left - broccoli soup in the pot, the new Fast and the Furious move on my laptop and chicken cooking in the crockpot!

And then on this side I was making another loaf of banana bread - this one with pecans and cinnamon.

And then I started on our soup for the week - Cream of Broccoli Soup.  It was super easy!  I have yet to eat it, but Peter has had about 4 servings already in the past few days!  So I suppose that's a good sign? My advice to you - don't put too much soup in the blender because it sprays EVERYWHERE and I mean EVERYWHERE or maybe just wait till it cools off a bit?!  I even had broccoli bits in my banana bread batter, but I got most of it out, and I think I had a few bits in my hair!

And onto something sweet!  I love banana bread and we have a TON of frozen bananas.

So cheers for a very successful Saturday - should have us sorted for the week!  

Crockpot.

I LOVE crockpots, especially this time of year!  I love all types of soups and I especially love that I can throw a bunch of things in the pot in the morning and have something delicious come dinner time.  They are so easy!  

And if you don't have one - then let this post speak to your soul because our crockpot was truly one of our favorite and most used wedding gifts.  Hence, the deep disappointment when I discovered our beloved crockpot was leaking.  And after a bit of investigation, we sadly discovered that our pot had a small blemish, which wouldn't have been a big deal if it's sole purpose wasn't to preserve liquid so food could stew all day long!

This was about a month ago, maybe less?  But it sure did seem like an entire month!  And in the meantime, I just made soupy things in an actual pot on the stove - how original right?  It wasn't that big of a deal, but I knew that I would be purchasing a new one soon enough.  So when I saw this steal of a deal at Fred Meyer last week - I knew I had to drop one of those bad boys in my cart.  

The crockpot was originally $39.99, on sale for $29.99 and then I had a coupon for 20% off that and another one that was 10% off that.  So when I got to the checkout the pot was a little over $21, and guess what?  As the cashier handed me my receipt, she kindly informed me that there was a $10 rebate for the crockpot, and of course I already sent that in!  So when all was said and done - my crockpot cost me $11.  Can you believe it?  I must admit, I was pretty pleased with myself, hence an entire post about it right?