Category Archives: Food

Feeding Our Families: the art of breakfast

I am not a morning person.  This may well be the understatement of the year.  I used to think it was because I was lazy or unmotivated.  In recent years I’ve discovered that it’s not a heinous personality flaw, that there is in fact a valid, well documented, physical cause for my issues.  While I will spare you the details, the gist of it is that my body has a great deal of trouble transitioning from a waking state to a sleeping one and vice versa.  Given the current circumstances, for the time being, that means that I am the last person out of bed in my house every single morning, which is in no way my ideal.  The children actually prefer it this way since they get some time to play, read or do as they please before we start in with school work and chores.

When it comes to parenting, there are certain areas where I’m rather old-fashioned and grandmotherly.  I’m a big believer in family dinners, early bedtimes, woolen hats, children being children in general and starting off the day with a hearty breakfast.  Accomplishing that last one can be quite tricky, considering the above.  I’ve devoted a lot of time to developing a system that works for us.  We have a set rotation of seven breakfasts that we eat every week.  This completely saves the step of having to think about what to make on any given day and that is a great relief.  The selection does shift a bit with the seasons.  As the weather warms we’ll be switching out some of the hot warming meals for lighter, fresher fair.

The kids all know they can help themselves to a piece of fruit upon waking and that breakfast will be served shortly after.  And there are always leftovers about if they need something more to tide them over.  I have three main strategies that help us all to start the day off right.

The first is the crockpot.  Why the crockpot?  When I first wake up I need some very specific things….I need to pee (I do have an entire person on my bladder), to be able to move slowly, not to be spoken to and especially not to be asked questions, not to be touched, to be surrounded by complete quiet and calm and to have prepared food appear in front of me as if by magic.  With the crockpot, two of those things at least are a possibility.  If you are an oatmeal eater, try it in the crockpot overnight; it turns out amazingly rich, thick and creamy.

My second strategy is help.  I get more help with breakfast then any other meal.  More on that below.

And third I try to keep anything that’s not taken care of by one and two as quick and easy as possible.

Sunday

Buckwheat pancakes, banana pancakes and bacon:

Sometimes we have orange juice as well.  Several years ago Iain and Elijah got inspired to make us breakfast and somehow the habit stuck.  Sunday mornings are their day.  The littles help out where they can and set the table.  Recently Galen was eager to learn how to flip pancakes and now he mans a pan as well.

We usually use whole grain buckwheat, the pancakes pictured above look a bit different then our norm because they were made using light buckwheat leftover from holiday baking.

Buckwheat Pancakes

3 C of buckwheat flour

3 C milk of your choice (we usually use the kind of coconut milk that comes in a carton)

6 eggs

1 T cream of tartar mixed with 1 T baking soda or 2 T baking powder

1 T lemon juice

2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

In a medium bowl, mix the lemon juice and vanilla into the milk and set aside.  In a large bowl mix together all of the dry ingredients.  Beat the eggs and add them to the liquids.  Thoroughly mix the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring as little as possible.  Let the batter sit for 5 minutes.  It should bubble a bit.  Fry pancakes in the cooking fat of your choice.   

I find I do much better with little to no grains or pseudo-grains, so in recent years they’ve added banana pancakes to the mix as well.  Everyone can pick and choose as they please.

Banana Pancakes

1 egg

1 banana

1 tsp. cinnamon

splash of vanilla (optional)

Obviously this is just the proportions and you can make as many batches as you please.  Blend all of the ingredients in a blender until smooth.  Cook as you would regular pancakes.  These are trickier to flip and keep together.  Smaller “silver dollar” style pancakes work best.

Monday

Breakfast sausages, yams and fermented sauerkraut:

This may sounds strange, but it’s a fabulous flavor combination.

Have you ever made yams in the crockpot before?  It’s super simple.  Just rinse the yams and put them in the crockpot still damp.  Turn it on low over night and serve perfectly cooked yams in the morning.  A very filling and hearty breakfast and all I have to do is put the sausages in to cook while I set everything out on the table.

Sometimes we treat ourselves to molasses tea with this meal.  To make molasses tea, mix a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses into a mug full of hot water.  Blackstrap molasses is rich in iron, calcium and potassium.

Tuesday

German Pancake recipe here:

Elijah has declared himself the greatest German pancake maker in the world.  Which means that he always insists on making them himself.  And who am I to argue?  Generally he gets to work when he hears me start stirring.  The others help with gathering supplies and such.  Waking up to food being made?  Quite possibly the most awesome thing in the world.  Many a time I will literally sigh with relief when I wake and realize what day it is, then I come down and kiss him on the top of the head all over until he gets sick of me.

Wednesday

Hot “Cereal” from the book Paleo Cooking from Elana’s Pantry: Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Dairy-Free Recipes.  You can check out the book for details.  It’s basically a concoction of nuts, seeds, dried coconut and cinnamon.  It’s kind of a little bit like Cream of Wheat, but not really.  That’s just the closest thing I can think of.  I freely substitute the various nuts and seeds based on what I have and more budget friendly options.  I add in vanilla and chopped fresh apples or pears, raisins or any other dried fruit I have about.  With it I set out ghee, so people can add a pat to their bowl if they like.  And honey or syrup to be drizzled on top if desired.

Thursday

Pork and Apple Bake:

Since posting about this I’ve started adding all sorts of things to it.  Pretty much whatever happened to be ripe in the garden at the time; peas, green beans, garlic scapes, green onions, chopped up radishes, parsley, spinach, kale.  We are especially fond of mixing in kale. yum.

Friday

Scalloped yams and breaded fish:

More yam-y fodder for the crockpot!  Peel and slice 5 yams, top with a couple of pats of ghee/butter/coconut oil, 1 can of coconut milk, a sprinkle of powdered kelp and lots of sage…much, much more sage then you think it will need.  Again, cook on low over night.  Sometimes in the morning I’ll turn it up to high and take the lid off to let the sauce thicken a bit, but it’s generally not needed.  Add salt and pepper to taste before serving.

I don’t always make the fish.  I can’t say that it’s the healthiest thing to grace my table, but this dish is absolutely adored by three of my four children.  It starts with some form of mild tasting fish; catfish, tilapia, flounder, anything along those lines.  Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.  Prepare a cookie sheet with a thin coat of oil.  Chop the fish into small pieces.  Dredge each piece in arrowroot powder seasoned with salt and pepper.  Lay them out in a single layer on your oiled cookie sheet and bake until brown and crispy, flipping at least once.  Some sort of green as a side dish rounds out this breakfast nicely, but I honestly don’t often get to that.

Saturday

Cashew yogurt:

Shown above topped with some honey sweetened peach jam that we put up over the summer.  I’ve made several kinds of nut milk yogurts over the years.  This one is by far the quickest and the easiest.  It also happens to be incredibly delicious.

Cashew Yogurt

cashews

water

probiotics

flavoring (optional)

This one works best in a high powered blender, a Vitamix or the like.  For a regular blender you might want to try soaking the cashews first.  Pour your cashews into the blender.  Break a probiotic capsule over top.  I use one that has around 7 billion bacteria for 9 oz. of cashews.  Add water until everything is just covered.  Blend until it’s all extremely smooth.  Add more water until desired consistency.  It will thicken overnight so make it a little runnier then you ultimately want.  I pour mine into a half gallon mason jar, drape a flour sack towel over the top and screw a lid ring on it.  This way it can breath, but nothing can really get in.  Set it out some place warm overnight.  This would be by the wood stove in our house.  I sometimes experiment with adding in sunflower seeds of shredded coconut.  But straight cashew is our favorite.

Two more breakfast ideas:

Stuffed squash:

Another great crockpot option.  The kids love this one, truth be told I think it’s only so-so.  Cut your squash in half and scoop out the seeds.  For the stuffing combine any combination of chopped apples, pears, nuts, seeds and/or dried fruit.  You can add a splash of lemon or orange juice, spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc) and/or sweetener.  Fill the squash.  Balance and stack them upright so that the stuffing doesn’t fall out. Cook on low overnight.

Simpler option: fill the cups with a pat of some buttery substance, a drizzle of syrup and a sprinkle of nutmeg. This is a lovely way to pad out a meal.

Sausage patties and steamed or braised greens:

Though not in rotation at the moment, this has been a regular favorite in the past.  The patties are seasoned ground meat.  You can use beef, but I prefer pork or poultry.  For beef or pork you can just put it directly in the pan.  With turkey or chicken you’ll need to use a bit of oil to keep it from sticking.  They can be cooked under a broiler or fried on the stove top.

A couple of flavor combinations:

chopped onions, sage and a pinch of clove

curry and cinnamon, a bit of cardamom is nice too

maple syrup, cinnamon, clove

Italian seasoning, garlic, red pepper flakes and fennel

Always include a good bit of sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.  Mix well, form into small patties and cook.  Sauteed onions are wonderful with this.

And one other totally random food related thing: add leeks to your roasted Brussel sprouts. You won’t regret it.

Expect posts this week by:

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Feeding Our Families, Food, recipes
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simple cookery: chocolate “milkshake”

Okay, so maybe not “cookery”, blendery?  This is really more of a summer time type refreshment, but the other day everyone was looking for a treat and I happened to have the ingredients for this quick, easy and satisfying little wonder, so we went for it, seasonal appropriateness be hanged!

This is completely dairy free, sugar free and all that good stuff and yet still somehow manages to remind me of the Wendy’s “frosty” of my youth.

ingredients:

frozen bananas

full fat canned coconut milk

cocoa powder

vanilla (optional)

And that’s it!  I never measure and pretty much just make it to taste, but as a general idea for five people we used around 6 bananas (I slice them up before freezing to make blending easier), 2 cans of coconut milk, a splash of vanilla and I’m really not sure how much cocoa powder!  Maybe a 1/4 cup?  If you want it sweeter, add more banana….more chocolatey? Add more cocoa.  Thinner?  More coconut milk.  Toss it all together and blend until really smooth.

Just a reminder: the next “Feeding Our Families” series starts on Monday!  There are several new bloggers joining us this month.  It should be pretty wonderful.

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Food, recipes
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winter days

The weather has been strange.  I seems like I say that a lot.  But sometimes, like this winter, it’s particularly strange and I find myself quoting Mark Twain in my head time, time and time again.  “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

It keeps freezing and melting, snowing then raining.  One week we have record lows, the next record highs.  Iain and Elijah who are usually big fans of winter have declared this one a dud and are ready to move on to spring.  It was in the low 40′s here the other day and I seriously had to argue with all four of my children to convince them that they could not go outside barefoot.  They were quite convinced that I was being terribly unreasonable.  There was talk of going out and turning the soil in one of their garden beds.  I mentioned that we were supposed to be back in the single digits next week, but they didn’t seem to find that relevant.  The garden is once again under a blanket of snow so presumably out of sight, out of mind at this point.

With all of this melting and freezing, the ice has been terrible.  I’m afraid to go outside.  My hips and ankles are so unstable to begin with that I go through phases where I fall regularly walking on the nice flat, even wood floors of my home.  Things shift just enough out of place so that my feet don’t quite end up landing exactly where 30+ years of experience tell me they should.  So far I’ve always caught myself, with bruised and battered legs and arms to prove it.  But it doesn’t seem wise to take this slapstick show out on the ice.  Instead I go out and pace on the deck several times a day.  I probably look like a caged animal, but it makes me feel better.  I can see my frosty garden, the mountains through the trees and often watch children slipping and sliding and laughing on the ice below.  The fresh air does me good.  Yesterday was the first day that the ice had subsided enough that it felt safe to venture out.  Our road was in pretty good condition, but the path through the woods is still a sheet of ice, so there I had my stopping point while children ventured ahead to explore a bit.  I can live with not going out and about much; not often visiting with others, but not being about to walk around outside does feel like a hardship.

Indoors I’ve been cooking a lot.  Mostly hearty stews and things of that sort.  A friend sent me her recipe for celery soup and I made a big double batch.  I covered chicken and broccoli with the leftovers and baked that the next day.  Served over quinoa cooked in chicken broth, that hit the spot.

Window crayons, for a while the windows in our living room had a “horses of the world” theme.

Knitting, knitting, knitting.  Oh goodness, so much knitting!  At night I plug away at Galen’s birthday sweater, during the day baby knits.  Currently some spring green over-alls, though at the moment they are what Galen refers to as “over-halfs”.  The color is a nice change of pace.  Lately I seem to be stuck on shades of blue.  There has been French blue, robin’s egg blue, baby blue with flecks of cream, medium blue-grey, ice blue, sapphire blue, and uhm, other things that I haven’t gotten pictures of yet.  And before everyone says, “oh it must be a boy!”, the baby is the only one that I haven’t made anything blue for yet.  Though I do have a little button up vest in the softest of baby blues in mind.  These things happen.  A couple of years ago I think I went an entire winter knitting only in combinations of red, grey and brown.

Someone is excited for his birthday next month.

And sewing.  There has been a lot, a lot, a lot of sewing.  Rosebud sits beside me and stitches away with yarn on swaths of burlap.

Our ice rink may have melted all over the front yard.  Twice.  But our usual indoor diversions are thriving….

“Tea Party“ the game.

Drawing time

painting

making music (face crayon decorations optional)

and all sorts of pretend play.

And books of course.  Whatever would we do without books???  I’m currently reading “The Country of the Pointed Firs” by Sarah Orne Jewett.  It’s old-fashioned and quaint and charming, often rather slow and sometimes not.  I think I’m enjoying it.

 

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Books, crafts, Food, Kids, Life, Yarn Crafts
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Feeding Our Families

Lunch one day over the weekend; roasted veggies and fried eggs.  The veggies: carrots, turnips, beets, red cabbage, green cabbage, onions, brussel sprouts, heirloom sweet thyme.  I always used to restrict the contents of my roasting pan to root veggies, but the cabbage and sprouts roast up beautifully and add a nice flavor dimension to the dish.  The turnips, cabbages and beets were the last of the veg from our garden, they held up well all this time!  Thankfully there is still lots more of that thyme.  I love that thyme.  There are huge snow covered patches of it in my garden and a small pot on my windowsill, along with many jars of dried herb in my pantry.  I think a pot of it, in tea form, might be in order on this damp and dreary day.

I made the veggies late the night before.  Steve fried me 2 eggs while they heated up, which was just what I needed and I ate them on the futon with my feet up and under blankets.  Such a long week we have had!

In this new year, I’ve been invited to join some talented bloggers on a new series called, “Feeding Our Families”, spearheaded by the lovely Renee of Heirloom Seasons.  We’ll be posting once a month, covering all sorts of related topics, with each writer bringing her own personal experience and views to the topic.  I can’t wait to see what comes out of this collaboration.  Inspiration is sure to abound.

Expect posts this week by:

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Feeding Our Families, Food, Life
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Waldorf at Home: Celebrating the Winter Solstice

Over the years I’ve really grown to appreciate the concept of celebrating the season of a festival.  A little bit here, a little bit there, over the course of maybe a week is so much more pleasant and easier to organize and orchestrate then trying to fit everything into a single, potentially stressful, day.  For a school it makes sense to have a big festive day, but slow and easy makes more sense for a family.  And so our Solstice celebration wasn’t just one big celebration, but several days of mini-celebrations.

First we spent an afternoon making edible ornaments for the birds and other woodland creatures.  We started this tradition when Iain was a babe and everyone finds much pleasure in it.  In addition to the usual garlands and such, this year we made our own suet feeder to see if we could attract some woodpeckers closer to the house.  We drilled wide holes in a piece of firewood, filled them with out own mix of suet, peanut butter and seed, stringing it up with a bit of chain.

The following day we baked our sun bread.  I take a regular bread recipe (grain less for us these days) and replace the water with strong chamomile tea.  Then we knead in chamomile flowers and orange zest.  The children shape it into a sun.  Sometimes I’ll brush the top with a bit of orange juice.  We sprinkle sunflower seeds on top, of course, and serve it with ghee and honey.

Last night we gathered with out neighbors to sing of the returning of the sun and walk the spiral.  As we sing, each person slowly walks to the center of the spiral, where their candle is lit, then they wind their way back out, placing their candle somewhere along the path as the go.

The last several days the weather has been so strange!  Spring-like with mud and wind and mist everywhere.  There is nothing but a carrot floating in a slushy puddle where an eight foot snowman stood last week.  Crazy.  The kids were so confident in their white Christmas, but there is nothing but dreary grey.  Luckily we have lots of lights and candles about to brighten and cheer us.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Food, Holidays, Homeschooling, Kids, Waldorf
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deep into advent

Dates covered in home-made chocolate with orange zest as an advent treat.  YUM.

On the agenda today: the hand-me-down dress that was deemed “just perfect” for wearing to ‘The Nutcracker’ but that as it turns out needs quite a bit of mending to make it wearable.

We’ve been filling jars with chocolate covered raisins for the neighbors, with bows finger-knitted by Galen and Mairi.

An answer to the age old question of exactly how many sets of hands it takes to knead a batch of shortbread.

We’ve had so much snow already this year.  Galen has to wear snowshoes to take the compost out.

As far as I can tell there are finger knit garlands pretty much everywhere there isn’t snow.

There is a good deal of crafting going on here.  Woodworking, painting, sewing, you name it.  I’ve made a couple dolls, several hats, one birthday sweater is complete with the second well underway.  I seem to have stalled out on my quilting project, but three sets of Christmas pajamas have been folded up and tucked into their fabric gift bags, all ready for Christmas Eve.  The fourth is all cut out and waiting for me to find a quiet moment to sit and turn it into something.

My sister arrived a couple of days ago, Galen is currently teaching her how to make apple sauce, with a second sister due in this afternoon.  All is well here, merry and bright.

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celebrations and festivals, Food, Kids, toy making, Yarn Crafts
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how to cook Thanksgiving dinner from scratch (without losing your mind)

Let me start by saying that this post was completely unplanned.  If I had planned on writing it, I would have done it a couple of weeks ago to help people prepare.  Instead what happened was that I was deep in my own preparations, when I thought back to previous years and the fact that I occasionally get this question from readers, and I thought huh, maybe I should just write a post.  So if this is coming too late to be of much help to you this year, maybe it will be of help next year.*

All photos from years gone by.

Cooking such a large meal from scratch is a major undertaking, but it needn’t be stressful.  The key to success, as with so many other things in life, is careful planning.

Plan on doing your shopping the week before Thanksgiving.
You’ll save yourself the stress of crowded stores and have everything you need on hand well in advance making it easier to do a little bit at a time.

Make a detailed menu

Before you shop you need to know what to buy.  Before you can know what to buy, you need to know what you are making!  Write out a full menu.  Don’t forget sauces and drinks.

Determine amounts

There are calculators all over the internet to help you determine how big a turkey you need and so forth.

Plan for leftovers 

You don’t want to spend all of this time making a single meal that’s going to be gone in one sitting.  After all that time in the kitchen, I know that I’m all for taking a day or two off.  In our family, the day after Thanksgiving, after the guests have left, is traditionally devoted to laying low; playing board games, sledding with leftover pie for breakfast!

Once you have your menu and amounts determined, it’s time to make your list.  Look at the recipe for each thing on your menu, one at a time, and make sure you have every ingredient you will need.

Consider bake ware and other supplies

Do you have a large enough pan to roast the size turkey you are trying to cook?  Do you own two pie pans, but plan on making four pies?  Do certain recipes require twine or cheesecloth?  Make plans to buy or borrow whatever you need.

Clean out your refrigerator

I can’t stress this one enough.  Probably best done before your big shopping trip.  Eat up all of the leftovers. If you have multiples of the same item, try to condense containers.  Organize everything to make the most of your space.  Fair warning: you will be re-organizing many times over the next several days to make everything fit.  Save some time and energy by starting off with a fair bit of open space.

Make a schedule

There are a lot of considerations here.  Some things can be made in advance, some can’t.  Only so much can fit in a single oven or refrigerator at once and different dishes need to cook at different temperatures.  It’s something of a balancing act to be sure.  Come up with a basic plan that seems to work.  Write it down.  Don’t even think about trying to keep it all in your head.  More on this below.

Make your base ingredients in advance.
What I mean by “base ingredient” is any ingredient that you need to make something else.  So if you make your own ghee, cheese, pumpkin puree, bread, broth, etc, make a nice big batch in advance so that when you go to make say, stuffing, it’s not actually making 4 or 5 things, it’s just making stuffing.

Consider your assets 

Does your oven have a warming tray?  Do you have a double oven? (if so, lucky you!)  Does your mother-in-law live right next store, making her kitchen possibly available to you as well?  Are there certain dishes you can prepare in the crockpot, freeing up oven space?

Start cooking well in advance

No one wants to spend all day Thanksgiving in the kitchen while everyone else visits and enjoys themselves.  Plan on having as much ready as possible so that you can do the bare minimum on the actual day of.

Think of easy ways to pad out the meal

If you have a lot of guests coming and you put up a lot of apple sauce this year, put a few jars out on the table.  There is no extra work for you and everyone has another dish to sample.

Enlist help

Can you do it all yourself?  Yeah, actually, you can.  There have been years that I’ve done it out of necessity.  But it’s always nicer to have an extra set of hands around and someone to chat with while you work.

Wear an apron

Just trust me on this one.

To put it all together in an example, this is the menu and schedule for our family this year.

Menu

Bacon Wrapped Turkey

Stuffing

Gravy

Steak

Twice Baked Potatoes

Cranberry Sauce

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Squash

Sparkling Cider

Sparkling Grape Juice

Apple Pie

Pumpkin Pie

And our schedule:

Friday

clean out the refrigerator

shopping

Monday

cook pumpkin (the last one from our garden)

make pumpkin puree- there are some nice instructions here.

make cranberry sauce

Tuesday

start chicken stock- to have on hand for gravy and stuffing later in the week

thaw bread

harvest (out of the snow!) and prepare brussel sprouts- I don’t cook them at this point, just chop and season them and store them in a baking pan in the fridge, all ready to slide into the oven Thursday morning.

make ghee

Wednesday

thaw steak- for the non-turkey lovers- I usually do a roast in the crockpot, but steak was requested this year making day of oven timing extra tricky, we’ll see how it goes!

brine turkey- I use this brine- I have a large stockpot that fits the size turkey we usually get.  I tie and tape the lid on tightly and store it on the porch overnight, as it’s always cold enough here at this time of year.

make stuffing- again just preparing, not cooking

first bake the twice bakeds- this is Steve’s specialty, he’s even mastered a dairy free version for us.  On this day the potatoes get baked, the filling gets made and they are stuffed, all ready to be heated through on Thanksgiving.

And Iain, who acted as secretary when we sat down to make a schedule as a family wrote:

“pie, pie, pie, pie, pie and more pie”

The kids and I usually make and decorate all of our pies on Wednesday night.

Thursday

Set out cider to chill first thing- our cider also tends to get chilled on the porch, unless there happens to be room in the fridge.

Prepare the turkey for roasting.  I use this recipe.

Cook turkey and steak, heat up everything else.

Put in the squash to cook.  If there is room in the refrigerator I’ll cut it and de-seed it the night before.  If not it’s not a big deal to do it the day of.

Make gravy right before dinner is served.

And that’s it.  As you can see there is no one day that contains an over-whelming amount of work, instead a little bit gets done and put away each day.

A very happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

*We had a surprise snowstorm, causing Steve to work from home and me to not have computer access, so now it’s really, really late!

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celebrations and festivals, Food, Holidays, Housewifery, tutorials
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cranberry

We grew cranberries for the first time this year.  Eight plants installed to grow and spread as a ground cover for our high bush blueberries.  Those are the plants on the porch, early in spring.  Now they are buried in snow.  Such pretty little things!  Their leaves turn burgundy in the cold.  We froze the ones we harvested to use, with supplementation, for our Thanksgiving cranberry sauce.  It was just a small harvest this year, but in years to come I look forward to baking cranberry bread and experimenting with adding some to batches of applesauce and many other culinary delights.  I’m thinking of adding lingonberries to that bed, as they have similar growing requirements and at their mature height they would fall right between the cranberries and blueberries.

Knitting in Cranberry, Knitpicks Wool of the Andes.  Adaptation, with cuffs knit to longie length.  And the Puerperium Cardigan by Kelly Brooker.  The cardigan, as written, is supposed to fit for the first 6 weeks or so, for babies weighing 7-9 lbs.  As half my babies so far have been bigger then that at birth and all have been 10 lbs by 2 weeks, that didn’t seem terribly practical for us!  I went with a heavier yarn and larger needles to hopefully get a “newborn” fit by our standards, I guess we’ll see!

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baby things, Food, Gardens, Yarn Crafts
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Grain-Free Pie Crust Recipe

Just in time for Thanksgiving.  I’ve posted my gluten-free pie crust recipe before.  And I’ve posted how to adapt it to make it grain free, but I know I personally find it annoying to have to switch back and forth between two pages, so I thought I should type out an official recipe so that people have ingredients and instructions all in one spot.

Grain-free Pie Crust

1 C almond flour

1 C coconut flour

1 C arrowroot powder

2 T sugar (optional, regular sugar, coconut sugar and most substitutes should be fine)

1/4 tsp. salt

Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  With a fork or pastry cutter, blend in:

1 C palm oil “shortening”

until dough forms little crumbs.  Add in:

1/2 C cold water mixed with 2 T. apple cider vinegar

If you plan on rolling the dough, let it chill in the refrigerated for around an hour.  It may need a bit of extra water kneaded in when it comes out.  If you plan on just pressing it into a pan, it can be used immediately.

The pie above was mostly made by little hands.  It’s this recipe.  Only we used honey instead of sugar.  And thinned Cashew Cream Cheese instead of sour cream.  And almond flour instead of regular flour.  And ghee instead of butter.  So I guess it’s not really that recipes at all, but only something kind of a little like it.

I also snapped a quick shot of the little shawl from yesterday’s post for people who had questions about ribbon placement.

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Food, recipes, Yarn Crafts
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pumpkin all around

First a Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream recipe for you…

1 C pumpkin puree

5 C frozen bananas

1 tsp powdered ginger

1.5 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

pinch of salt

1/8 cup of honey (optional)

Blend all ingredients in a food processor or Vita-mix and serve immediately.

Some seeds for snacking on.  We’ve been loving this Pumpkin Spice Muffin recipe lately.  They taste like spice cookies!  Such a treat.  I’ve actually saved a lot of the pumpkin from our garden by baking up multiple batches of these muffins at a time and freezing them.  One of the things that I love about them is that they use roasted pumpkin, instead of pumpkin puree which saves me the tedious and messy step of straining all the juices from our fresh pumpkins.

Poor Steve in the background here!  In case you are wondering, he’s anxiously supervising Galen carving his pumpkin.  Not always a task for the faint of heart! ~I’ve been informed that he was not, in fact, watching Galen in concern in this picture, but trying to make him laugh using “eye control”.  I stand corrected!

My precocious little girl insisted on writing everyone’s name on her pumpkin, with a bit of help; Daddy, Mommy, Iain, Elijah, Galen, Mairi and Baby.

Some among us take pumpkin carving very seriously.  Like several days worth of work on one pumpkin seriously…

I’m not sure if it’s done yet even now!

And lastly a little pumpkin for baby.  Adaptation again, in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, color: Pumpkin.  This one is a size large, I’m thinking for next autumn.

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baby things, celebrations and festivals, crafts, Food, Holidays, Kids, recipes, Yarn Crafts
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