soccer, slides and supper

T and I arrived home on Friday and discovered a large box in our front hallway. At first I thought it was a huge truck (scraper or quarry truck) for D but no. It was my KitchenAid stand mixer!

So exciting! Thanks to my lovely D for letting me buy this with his work anniversary gift card. Although I did pay extra for the pasta attachment which is also on its way.

Saturday was a busy day. After breakfast

a few games of leaping lizard and soccer Star Wars, some grocery shopping, we headed off to soccer. T ran around with his friends and scored a goal and got to be the wolf in on round of "what time is it Mr. Wolf"? After soccer, D dropped me off at a local school to meet up with friend of T's and his mum and play games at the Spring Fair. The boys went down the huge bouncy slide many times, on a tea cup spinney ride once and through a bouncy obstacle course a few times and then down the slide many more times. Then the boys had ice cream and covered themselves in blue bubblegum and chocolate respectively. Then it was time to go and wait for D to pick us up, so the boys dug in the dirt with a truck until D arrived. Home.

Dinner was pasta with swiss chard and sausage, adapted from a recipe I love for creamed spinach.

I chopped the swiss chard

 and let it drain while I prepared the sauce. I sauted 1 diced shallot, 3 mild italian sausages, casings removed and diced, and 1 tsp minced garlic. When the shallot was soft, I added 2 cups of sliced mushrooms, 3 tbsp butter and cooked until the sausage and mushrooms were brown. Then I added 1 3/4 cups milk (I used 1%) and 3 tbsp flour and stirred well until the flour was well blended. Cook for 5 minutes until thick and bubbly. Meanwhile cook your pasta, I used penne. Once the sauce is thick, turn down the heat, grate in some nutmeg and add the drained swiss chard. Stir to mix

 and let cook for another couple of minutes to warm up the chard. Add the pasta and serve with grated parmesan cheese.

Yum!

boy oh boy

Last week T asked D – “how do you make people?” D was caught off guard and consequently can’t remember what he said. He did at some point talk about babies being in their mummies tummies (we have a picture of me in T’s baby album entitled “waiting for Figlet” with a massive bump which T always comments on “is that me in your tummy before I was born?”). D thought kids didn’t start asking this until they were about 8. Hmm – maybe he needs to reread the parent book. Even I knew that it was coming any day….

Later in the week we were talking about planets (that’s what they are doing now in preschool). I asked T, “what is your favorite planet?”

T: “Mars.”
Why?
T: “Because it’s bumpy.”
Who knew?

The other day we went to visit Auntie Kerry’s “farm” (the place where she rides) and saw the horses, a bunny and a duck. Later T was explaining what he learned about horse poo (he saw the big pile of horse manure) – they roll it out and make it into fish and crab meat. Really? (D says it is no wonder he won’t eat fish and crab!)

And there has been much more submarine construction, of the lego variety. One night I heard T and D talking about submarines and next thing I know we have a whole submarine station in our bedroom with many submarines large and small including bathroom submarines (which if like me you don’t know what they do – bring bathrooms to houses). It is parked next to the shark submarine which has a special shark stun probe. Not to be confused with the shark looking submarine which is easy to spot as it has a window.

Then there is the message he left his Uncle Mike on the weekend. It went (according to Mike) like this: (shouted) Hello, Hello, hello … (D in background, “you have to leave a message”), then there was a long pause, then a whispered “this is T”. Mike phoned back to see what T had wanted to tell him and it goes as follows:
– can T see the Big Rocket before it leaves
– can Uncle Mike come over for a play date
– T had scored a goal on his soccer team

Yes, now T has soccer on Saturdays. He is part of a pre-school soccer “class” where they run around with soccer balls for 30 minutes and play a “game” for about 10 minutes. Lots of fun! There is much excitement when anyone scores a goal, half the time they score on their own nets but nobody minds. The teacher/coach is trying to explain the rules to them but mostly it’s all about the running and kicking (and playing what time is it Mr. Wolf?).

T also moved up to Killer Whales in swimming last week. He really had fun in his last Dolphin lesson. As an end of lesson treat they got to go down the Big Red Slide, several times. Killer Whales is a bit more serious swimming than Dolphins and T is worn out by then end of the 30 minutes. But he still loves it. Even though he struggles with the float board exercises. He makes me so proud. Except when he doesn’t listen to his teacher and then I’m embarrassed. All within 30 seconds.

4 year olds can be very sweet. Occasionally T comes up and gives me a drawing or a flower and says “I made this/found this for you, Mummy”. Aw – just melts my heart. Yesterday his little friend C gave me a flower too. So sweet. And they still are very huggy. At least the ones I know are. It could be a cure for the world – Hug a 4 year old! (Lots!)

so i was a bit out of control

Sometimes I get crazy ideas in my head. So yesterday, I decided I would try three recipes. Corn custard, which I've made before mainly because I wanted to use up 3 of 4 egg yolks I had left over from a tortilla the other night. To that I also decided to add zuccini pancakes and blue cheese scallion biscuits, because I'd read the recipes during the week and wanted to try them. And on a whim, during the cooking process and because I'd just read about a similar recipe in Bon Appetit, I turned some rhubarb sitting in the fridge into a strawberry rhubarb crumble. I hadn't thought it through - mainly the issue was the dueling cheeses - smoked gouda in the custard, feta in the pancakes and obviously blue cheese in the biscuits.

The custard was creamy and cheesy and filling.

 And it tastes just as good with frozen corn as it did last summer with fresh kernels. I added a touch of cayenne this time around and will make that a permanent addition.

The pancakes worked well, unlike another recipe for zuccini pancakes I tried last year, which resulted in a zuccini frittata hashy mess. But I am getting better about wringing water out of zuccini

 (wring really well using tea towels!). These were relatively easy to make and quite good.

They will be added to our repetoire this summer when I'm hoping to be awash in zuccini from the garden although I might add some chili or cayenne to add a bit of bite.

Or bump up the fresh mint.

The biscuits were easy to make, and I felt quite virtuous mixing the butter into the dough with my fingers.

The dough yields big biscuits. Baking, they filled the house with a lovely cheesy aroma. Baked, they looked beautiful, just like a biscuit should look.

D loved them. I was a bit overwhelmed by the blue cheese. We decided that they would be a wonderful appetizer with wine (instead of wine and cheese - wine and biscuits) or a lovely summer lunch served with a peppery, slightly bitter salad (arugula) with balsamic vinagrette.

Ultimately, we didn't have room for the crumble but we managed it for dessert tonight. The strawberries melted into the rhubarb and disappeared - it would be better with local strawberries but that is a few weeks away still.

pesto chicken with leeks and mushrooms

After my ambitious cooking day yesterday I went back to my casserole roots and came up with this recipe. It was somewhat inspired by a Martha Steward Living article about changing old favorites to slim down recipes but ultimately I'm not sure I achieved that. But I did put some of our favorite things in the dish so was fairly certain it would work out.

pesto chicken with leeks and mushrooms

5-6 medium red potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced into rounds
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 medium leeks, white and green only, sliced into half moons

2 c. sliced mushrooms (sometimes it helps to have help in the kitchen - here is my mushroom slicer)

1 tsp minced garlic

2 tsp olive oil
salt, pepper
1 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 tsp dry mustard
2 chicken breasts, thinly sliced
1/2 c. pesto (I used sun dried tomato and arugula pesto with walnuts)
1 c. chicken stock
1/2 c plain yogurt
1/4 tsp cayenne
parmesan shavings

Boil the potatoes

in salted water until fork tender. Drain and layer the bottom of a greased 8x10 casserole dish with the cooked potato rounds, filling in the holes.

Into a saute pan, add the oil and heat to medium hot. Add the onion and mushrooms and cook ~ 5 minutes. Add the leeks and cook another 2-3 minutes.

Add the garlic, mustards and cook a few more minutes. Move the vegetables to the side of the pan and add the chicken. When the chicken is brown on all sides, mix in the vegetables and add the pesto, stock and yogurt. Stir well to mix. Season with salt, pepper and cayenne to taste.

Pour the chicken mixture over the potatoes, evenly.

Sprinkle the parmesan shavings over the top.

Bake at 350 deg F for about 30 minutes or until bubbly. Serves 4-6.

polenta crush

So now that I've learned to make polenta myself, from cornmeal, I'm probably going to make it a lot for a while. I made some again the other night although it was thicker this time around. I added some sundried tomato pesto to it at the end which made it delicious!

I served it with a cheesy ham and mushroom sauce.

happy earth day

Happy Earth Day! And my blog is 1 today. Thanks for reading, if you are out there!

good friday pizza

I'm going to share a pizza dough recipe that is perfect for Friday nights. It is quick and easy - really the only person I know who could not make this is my mum. We used to have it on Saturday nights growing up and it was the one thing my dad made better than mum. I even watched her try and make the dough one time and it didn't work - the strangest thing. Anyway - here is the recipe for the dough.

2 c flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3/4 c milk

1/3 c vegetable oil

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl until they form a dough. Divide in two and roll each half into the shape you want your pizza - it will make 2 - 12" pizzas.

Top with your favorite toppings and bake for 25 minutes at 325 deg F.

Here I topped the pizza with tomato sauce, torn spinach leaves, sliced mushrooms, sliced red pepper, sliced onion, crumbled feta and grated parmesan - for Good Friday. Here is the baked and half eaten pizza.

I have several favorite versions of this - one is to top the dough with a good amount of pesto followed by onion, spinach, mushrooms, ham or bacon and feta/parmesan. Another current favorite is to top the dough with grated mozarella, carmelized onion, torn pieces of prociuto (sp) and lots of grated parmesan. Other combinations include roasted red potato slices with rosemary, feta, olives, onion and parmesan or barbequed chicken, bechamel, onion, mushrooms and spinach....you get the idea. Experiment in your kitchen. Eat and enjoy!