Parfaits

In another desperate attempt to get both kidlets to eat their breakfast before lunch time we debuted the parfait. Yummy. And with the cherry on top it looks like a treat not a chore to eat. It has homemade granola, Balkan yogurt, homemade marmalade, fresh Okanagan peaches and an enormous cherry on top. Eden was fooled for a while and to my great surprise actually ate the granola. Unprecedented grain consumption on her part.
Arlo really likes granola and yogurt but she was so distracted by the peaches and cherries that she dug them out and left most of the rest behind. The next morning they didn't want anything to do with a parfait. These kids are hard-core pancake lovers. I know this will sound like blasphemy to some but I can't think of a worse breakfast than pancakes. Yeuch. The extra work of making them in the morning means I like them even less.
This is the girls making their parfait protest faces.
"We will not stand for this treatment any longer!," shouts Eden.
"We will not get out of bed for less than 10,000 pancakes a day," demands Arlo.

I know parfait is cruel and unusual punishment for such delightful kidlets but that's how I roll. I am just a half step removed from being Miss Hannigan.

Veggie Juice

Doesn't it look delicious?!?!? It was beet, celery, purple cabbage, spinach, carrot, cucumber, garlic, tomato and ginger. And it was ok but a bit too cabbage-y methinks. Next time less cabbage and more spinach, maybe less garlic too. It was hard to see the juice come out of the juicer after adding one clove of garlic so I didn't know if I'd be able to taste it or not. So I chucked in one more clove and it was a bit potent.

So how did this happen at all you wonder? Well Dark cloud recommended a book by Michael Pollan called 'The Omnivores Dilemma'. I read it and it was good, a bit gloomy but worthwhile. Then I ordered all the rest of his books from my library. I am reading 'In Defence of Food: an eaters manifesto' now, and while it is not a great read, I think it has some interesting ideas. Like how western eaters tend to miss out on eating nearly enough veggies, in particular the leafy green ones. And he goes on to tell us what we are missing and how we are short changing ourselves by eating too many seed/grain based foods. Ok, ok, like your mom always said, eat your veggies. I figured if I was truly so deficient in the greens I needed to kick start the reintroduction with a big glass of goodness rather than trying to eat my weight in salad.

Boss Hog (normally an irritatingly functional eater) thought this was vile. And poor Arlo who comes running if she suspects anyone is trying to drink juice without sharing with her...let's just say she was significantly disgusted.
It wasn't very delicious but I think there is potential to make it 1000's of times more palatable without forgoing all the goodness. Cheers to greens!

You guessed it, raspberries

One more fruit to love from the Okanagan. We are blessed to be in such an abundantly productive agricultural area of the world. These raspberries came from Boss Hog's mom and step dad's farm where they have an ENORMOUS organic raspberry patch. So enormous in fact, that both the kids were too tired of picking raspberries and putting them in their mouths, that they started stealing berries out of the buckets BH and I were picking into. The cheek.

Strange as it may seem we did not make any raspberry jam. Eden and Arlo love eating frozen raspberries so much that we froze all of the 30ish pounds to be devoured through the winter as is or in the occasional batch of muffins.

So it seems I didn't make anything in this post at all. The berries were grown with love though, and I think it gives them a homemade taste.

Sour Cherries

In a mad fit of canning the other day I decided to try to can some sour cherries. I am not such a fan of adding cherries to things but I think it is the fault of the cruddy ones littering my grocery store shelves. I had a craving for cherries in the dead of winter when I was pregnant with Arlo and bought a can from the store. They were horrible. HORRIBLE. Then I got a jar from a specialty store and wow. I am a changed woman. I no longer hate cherries but have now become a slave to canning my own to guarantee yummy-ness. I think I may only love sour cherries though. And to my surprise, I discovered a sour cherry tree in my yard. I don't think it has ever produced until this year (we've lived here for four summers) and the cherries are about thirty feet in the air. I'm not sure I'm willing to risk life and limb and spend a sweaty day in the kitchen for really good cherries. Ask me again in the dead of winter.

Strawberries are here!

We took the kids down to Boss Hog's mom and step-dad's organic farm the other weekend (probably close to three weeks ago, truthfully) to pick strawberries and we came home with close to thirty pounds of delicious organic berries. I hadn't expected so many and even with the new enormous fridge had to go into immediate jam production. Fourteen pounds of strawberries into jam in one afternoon made for a very sticky kitchen and two very sticky little girls.

Down on the farm, Arlo was right in the berry patch stuffing everything into her mouth that she could reach. Eden however saw that she didn't have to venture into the patch to get berries. All she needed to do was to stand near Grandpa and ask repeatedly "Grandpa, do you see anything big and red?" and sure thing Grandpa would pick the best berry, pull the stem off and put it right in her mouth without her ever having to set foot in the wet (it finally rained) berry patch.

As far as the jam was concerned, I used a new method of cooking the jam to 220 degrees F, rather than using the cold plate testing method which I find tests my patience to no end. I also started looking for jam recipes that don't require extra pectin because the need to jam sometimes comes on unexpectedly with the arrival of a friend's surplus fruit (here in the Okanagan it happens pretty regularly throughout the summer). The strawberry jam worked well but when I used the 220 method for the black currant jam it was a bit stiff. Not that anyone around here minds, they eat jam like the world is coming to an end. Any jammers out there I'd love to hear your tips.

Home made Pasta!!

Oooh baby, it's time to carb-load! We are having this again. Thanks to my auntie and uncle for the flour mill they got us when we got married. Thanks to my in-laws for growing organic spelt for us to grind into flour. Thanks to our egg man, John, and his perky lady hens for laying such nice eggs. Thanks to the girls for getting flour everywhere and enthusiastically cranking out the spelt-ghetti.
Eden thought she died and went to heaven. She HATES tomato sauce and was filled with joy when I presented a bowl of fresh pasta tossed with butter and freshly grated pecorino cheese. She even requested a sprinkling of parsley (she's so sophisticated).