Weekending @ 226

What are you lovelies up to this weekend?  I'm gearing up for a low key game night with some friends at my house tonight.  I'm really trying to initiate some adult outings and get togethers lately.  As parents (and busy adults) I think we make excuses because we're too tired or too busy (or one of 1,000 other excuses), but I think it's so restorative to spend time with other adults.  Do you guys have trouble making time for your social lives?

Saturday will be all about crafting some adorable Valentine's decorations and cards for classmates.  Reed wants to make necklaces for her friends and Beckett wants to buy his friends chopsticks.  Such fun ideas!  I'm accepting tag lines for the chopsticks Valentines.  I haven't been able to come up with anything besides, "you pick me up, Valentine!," which is clearly the lamest thing ever.  I feel my sister will have about 1/2 dozen brilliant ideas as soon as she reads this...no pressure, Jess.

Here's a roundup of some other great candy-free Valentines.

Have you guys heard of this app?  You can send postcards to all your peeps right from your phone.  Perfect for Valentine's Day!

Jason showed me this this morning.  Have you heard of Jeb Corliss?  He can fly.  Wow.

I'm in between books right now.  Any recommendations?  Maybe I should use this website.  So cool.

Have you all seen this documentary?  Nauseating.  What about this one?  Inspiring and a little tear-jerking.

My blogger friend made these with some leftover denim pant legs.  So cute, right?

I'll take 17 3, please.  (P.S. Can someone bring this to game night, pretty please?)

Are you ready for this sort of thing?  My body is not, but the rest of me is all in.

I think I'm making pinto bean nachos for tonight's game night.  Nachos, gahhhhh.

I really want to start making my own cleaning products.  Any ideas on where to start?

I also want to make my own fruit leathers.  Maybe next week's project!

I posted this ages ago.  But, it really is such a great chocolate cake.  Channel your inner French Grandmother and bake it for Valentine's Day!

Have a great one, people!

one of the last pictures of the boy with shaggy hair :(

fake smile, everyone has one!

Dinner @ 226 - Quick Pickled Red Onions (Part 1)

I have a silly (and slightly annoying) personality trait that compels me to walk away from every meal, brainstorming ways it could have been better.  Fortunately, I don't blab on and on about these improvements for the sake of my family who would surely make me live in the garage with some crumpled up newspapers for blankets if I did so.  After all, a good meal can be ruined by the chef's narrative.

But, in my head they're constantly there.  More heat.  More texture.  Overcooked.  Under seasoned.  Too much tang.  Not enough herbs.  Needs to be fresher.  I want more crunch.  And every so often, I just walk away not being able to precisely pinpoint the shortcomings.  It just wasn't right.  It wasn't enough.

So was the way with my burritos for the last three years.  They're good and I kept making them better.  Everyone eats them and really likes them.  But, a good burrito can take you to a different place, like say the porch of a beach shack in La Jolla, looking out onto the Pacific.  That's what I wanted out of my burritos and I wasn't getting it.  I understand that this is a bit compulsive or obsessive, or both.  But, if I don't set the standards high then what will I work on for the next few decades.  Just leave well enough alone and keep serving the same tired burritos?  Nah.  Not a chance.

Well, it happened last night.  The perfect burrito happened.  It was a fresher, less indulgent version of one I tasted ate every last morsel of in San Francisco last year.  Taqueria CanCun was on Market Street in the Mission District and walking in made me anxious.  I wanted to hide my giant camera and the sign on my head that read "Total Tourist.  From the Midwest.  Where Are The Tractors?  Does Not Know Anything."  The people were ordering in hip lingo that I didn't understand and there was an obvious ritual to seating yourselves but we couldn't catch on to that either.  I muttered something like, "vegetarian burrito, whichever way is most popular and delicious...ummm, por favor." Wet?  Dry?  I don't know, I'm from Ohio.  I guess it didn't matter because the place served up some serious burrito business.  

Little Baskets of Sunshine

Offerings.

1003 Market St.

The burrito was was so great, but only because it had all my favorite elements in and on it.  It broke some burrito rules and made new ones.  It's like they looked at a perfectly great burrito and kept adding elements that would make it greater and greater until there was no place left to go.  The Anxiety Inducing Taqueria CanCun Burrito would be my muse.  And a short six months later, I created my perfect burrito.  It's not the same as the classic Mission Burrito, but it is my lover everything I've ever dreamed of in a rolled up tortilla.

Quick Pickled Red Onions - makes enough for six burritos.  Generally, the burritos in San Fran don't have pickled onions on them.  But, I think every good burrito should.

I fear that if I give you the whole burrito recipe in one post, you will be put off by how many steps there are.  If I told you it was a 30 minute meal, I would be lying and it's most certainly not light on the dishes either.  Remember what I said about "all my favorite elements," that means there's Cilantro Spiced Rice, Cumin Scented Pinto Beans, Enchilada Sauce, Grilled Peppers and Corn, and Pickled Onions.  Not to mention tortillas and toppings.  But, do you think Julia Child whipped up her famous Boeuf Bourguignon in 30 minutes?  Most good food takes time, except this, of course.  You can make many of the elements ahead of time and then assemble and bake for the finale.  We shall start with the pickled onions, which you can use in many applications.  On sub sandwiches, salads, pizzas, or mixed in with any other roasted vegetable, like cauliflower for example.  The rest of the burrito recipe will be coming next week, as to not overwhelm.

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
2 peppercorns
2 cups water
1/2 a large red onion, thinly sliced

Whisk all ingredients, except the onion, together in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Bring to a gentle boil.  Add onion and let simmer or 3-4 minutes.  Strain and pick out peppercorns.  These onions will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Snack @ 226 - Grain Free Crackers

Life without a good camera is leaving me totally uninspired.  I look at the pictures on my phone and know the food that I made had all the qualities of a bloggable meal, but with the weird shadows and the awful reflections on my iPhone, I don't like what I see.  So, it makes me hesitant to blog about it.

Luckily, I am friends with some pretty inspiring people (thanks, Kimber).  So, I can't sad-sack for too long.  One of them posted pictures of a few homemade snacks she had made and I promptly requested the recipes.   She promptly inboxed me (thanks again, Kimber).

None of us are wheat free or suffer from wheat allergies of any kind.  Actually, none of us have any allergies at all.  We're freaking lucky in that regard.  But, I just feel like (unless it's in treat form like coconut cake or whoopie pies) flour is an empty ingredient.  (If you're interested in knowing more, this is a great read about the developments in the wheat industry in the last 60 years and the rise of Celiacs and gluten sensitivities.) And, if I can replace it with something more substantial and still end up with tasty results, I'm so in.

We tried to roll out the scraps and use a cookie cutter with decent results.

Well, that happened with these crackers.  They're fairly mind-blowing.  I made them with the babes after school and they were out of the oven by 4:00 p.m.  That means it took us a total of 30 minutes to make 60 crackers.  I can't wait to try them with hummus but they'd also be good with a slice of cheddar.  We ate nearly half the bag plain so we didn't get to, ahem, experiment much.  So much for being uninspired.  As for the photos, they still are.  Please accept my apology.






































Awesome Grain Free Crackers - adapted from this recipe

1 1/2 cup unsalted sunflower seed or pepitas or some mixture thereof (I used half and half)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon salt free seasoning mix (I used Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute)
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 cup sesame seeds
about 1/4 cup water

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Whiz the sunflower seeds (and/or pepitas, if you're using), sea salt, seasoning, and garlic in the food processor until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.  Add the sesame seeds and pulse a few times to mix.  Now, lightly drizzle in the water while the machine is running until a dough ball forms.  I used exactly 1/4 cup.

Roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper, until the crackers are 1/8 of an inch thick.  You can always opt for a thicker cracker and leave them at 1/4 inch, but I really liked mine crispy.  Once they're rolled out, remove the top sheet of parchment and slide them onto a cookie sheet.  Take a sharp knife and slice the crackers into the size of Wheat Thins, approximately.  You can leave the misshapen edges and have some irregular crackers or you can remove the scraps and roll them out and repeat the process again.

Poke each cracker twice with a fork and then bake them for 12-15 minutes.  Keep an eye on them because the time will depend on how thin you rolled them out.  Remove from the oven and let them cool in the pan.  Break apart the crackers along the scored lines and munch away.

What We're Reading @ 226

Reading is one of my favorite things.  We don't only read to our children before bed, but throughout the day.  Especially on rainy, cold days.  Sometimes they just wander over to the book corner when its quiet and other times we pop popcorn, make tea and bring a big stack of books down to a blanket on the floor.  You know, like a reading picnic.

I'll find any excuse to escape to my room to read and I really want to pass that on to my kids.  A good book is the cheapest and most fulfilling adventure.  And, in my mind, you can never be bored if you love to read.  Like, ever...so long as you have a library card.

Kids books can have me mesmerized for hours.  They make up the majority of the gifts that I get for other kids (and my kids) and Amazon.com can have me reading summaries and reviews for way too long, deciding what our next book will be.  So, in case you're in a reading rut, I'm going to regularly put a few recommendations here to help out.  Please feel free to leave your own recommendations in the comments.

This is a hilarious book by Oliver Jeffers, whom I love.  And whose most famous/popular book is probably I Want My Hat Back, which is a pretty great one.   This Moose Belongs to Me is all about a little boy named Wilfred who finds a moose, and therefore thinks the moose belongs to him.  He teaches him rules and they go everywhere together, until the moose gets lost/wanders off.  The boy and the moose have to reach a compromise.  And while hilarious, it's a great lesson about healthy relationships, ownership and the compromises we make to get there.

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch is one of my all-time favorite classics.  It sort of comes as a surprise because his other book is so terrifying (and yet so popular, how?) that I had to remove it from our shelves.  But this one couldn't be more different.  It's about a sassy young princess whose prince gets kidnapped by a fierce dragon.  She embarks on a voyage to rescue the prince and by the time she's there, she is a ragged and dirty mess, having outsmarted the dragon.  The prince is critical of her appearance and unsupportive of her heroic arrival.  Essentially, she says...peace out, I don't need you.  I love the not so subtle moral.

Happy Reading!

Dinner @ 226 - Lettuce Wraps

This weekend I found things to celebrate:  refinancing our house to save over $300 per month, a new baby arriving shortly amongst our group of friends, the tastiest lettuce wraps outside of China, the best coconut cake I have ever eaten or made, sleeping in until 9am on Sunday, two friend-get-togethers in one weekend (thank you, Super Bowl), and the conclusion of Project Hoosier Cabinet.  All mighty good things.

The garland turned out a wee bit more country than I'm into, but it served its purpose.  And, it was too late to change it.

I also, unfortunately, found things to lament:  a giant crack in the bowl of my food processor rendering it out of commission, the screen on my Canon repeatedly displaying ERR 99 leaving it without the ability to take a photo, and the sudden and unexpected last gasp from my 1991 Volvo.  Three things, gone.  Or at least in a dire state of disrepair.  I am equally dependent on each of these modern appliances and I'm not looking forward to braving the dreary world without them.  But, onward I must go.

The finished Hoosier Cabinet.  The iPhone doesn't do it justice, it is the most amazing color of mustard and I am so in love with it, I find myself ogling.  Oh, and that middle platter was filled with Banana Whoopie Pies with Peanut Butter Filling.  They flew! 

Baby Face Game, pretty funny.

 For now, let us focus on the mighty good things, because they really were terrific.  The baby shower went so well, even though these iPhone pictures are all that remain (Read above:  ERR 99.)  I found out just how many people fit comfortably in an 1800 square foot house.  The answer is: fewer than the number of people that were here.  Crowded-ness aside, it was a great time.  We set up a game for guests to make a composite of the mom's and dad's faces on a baby silhouette, attempting to predict his appearance.  Or, more accurately, attempting to be stupid.  It was pretty hilarious and I recommend it for a couples shower where you don't want overly girly/sentimental games.

My lettuce wrap, the morning after.  I added a fried egg to help cure my hangover because I thought it would be tasty.  It was.

I made gobs of Asian inspired food like vegetable summer rolls with peanut sauce, crab and mango salad in wonton cups and lettuce wraps.  Though the lettuce wraps weren't as Mingle Friendly as I'd hoped, they are super stinking good.  We make them a lot for dinner and it's fun for the kids to build them and pile on the toppings.

Hopefully you found a lot to celebrate this weekend.  And, your camera/car/favorite kitchen appliance didn't peter out leaving you with a feeling of emptiness.  Make these lettuce wraps for dinner tonight and you'll have one more thing to celebrate.

Tofu and/or Beef Lettuce Wraps - You can make the "meat" of this dish with whatever you like.  Most of the time I use tofu and mushrooms for ours.  But, in the past I've used lean ground beef or chicken, lentils or a mixture thereof.  Serves 4.

For the sauce:
1 teaspoon Sriracha or bottled chili garlic sauce
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce, low sodium
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 garlic cloves, finely minced

For the filling:
1 teaspoon grapeseed oil (or other flavorless oil)
3 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
6 green onions, sliced, green parts set aside for topping
2 bell peppers chopped, one set aside for topping*
1 pound of "meat" ie: cooked lentils, tofu (drained and cut into small cubes), lean ground meat, or diced mushrooms
1 8 ounce can of water chestnuts, chopped

For assembly:
1 head of Bibb lettuce, carefully washed and trimmed
chopped red pepper
sliced green onion, green part
lightly salted peanuts
slices of lime
fresh cilantro or basil (optional, but a definite plus)

Whisk the sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Heat the oil over medium and add the ginger, onion whites and pepper (and any other vegetable you're adding, see not below).  Do not burn the ginger, just let it get fragrant and soft, about 3 minutes.

Add the "meat" and cook it through.  You know, either brown the meat, or warm the lentils or tofu through.  Add the reserved sauce and the water chestnuts.  Let everything mingle in the hot pan for about 5 minutes, stirring every few minutes to make sure nothing is sticking.

Put all your toppings in separate bowls like it's taco night.  Fill the lettuce leaves with the saucy-meat mixture and then top with your favorites.  In my case, it's a little of everything.

And obvi, put a fried egg on the leftovers.  I really hope you love this.

*sometimes I throw a bunch of finely chopped or shredded vegetables in, depending on what I have or how much chopping I'm in the mood for.  Carrots, celery, snap peas and mushrooms have all been known to work (and go undetected by the vegetable-wary crowd).

Breakfast @ 226 - Bulgar Wheat with Lemon Zest

When it comes to diet, moderation is the key, they say.  You know what I say?  People with no will-power don't have access to the concept of moderation.  I imagine most of us know what the word means, and maybe even use it in reference to our half-ass workout routine, but can we practice it in our everyday diets?  Ummm, no.  I eat what I like and I guess I have to be thankful that I've trained my tastebuds to like more healthful foods.  But, when I eat those foods, or any foods, I eat alot of them.

Just a moment ago my spoon inadvertently dipped into the peanut butter jar seven times.  Then, my spoon got bored, and dipped itself in the Nutella jar, twice.  It was only then that I noticed that I was even eating.  It is, for this very reason, that I surround myself with good, whole foods.  I cannot stock my pantry full of packaged snacks and my freezer full of creamy treats because I will eat them all, in one day sitting.  

It is in this context only that I agree, abstinence is the only 100% protection philosophy.  While it is rare that I crave bad food, I would eat it if it were around.  I can't "just say no" or even say, "just a little."  That sort of discipline is not a character trait that I was given, or have been able to develop over the last 30 years.  I only know, "yes" and "more."  This morning, at work, a lovely, lovely woman (who has never baked an average tasting baked good in her life) brought in Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies.  "Great," I thought, "I'll try one."  Seven cookies later, I left the break room.  Did I need them?  Was I hungry?  It was 7 a.m. and I had already eaten breakfast.

It is for the aforementioned flaws that I make things like this Bulgar for breakfast.  Please don't think me a nutritionally virtuous angel because I am not.  I just try to put some serious distance between me and the cookie jar.

Bulgar Wheat with Lemon Zest - from this book.  We love oatmeal, just as much as the other All-American family of four, especially this one.  But, when you're looking for something brighter and chewier and all-around more interesting, give this a try.  I was not expecting to be as completely delighted as I was the first time I made it.  My kids love it.  Serves 4

1 cup coconut milk (I've also used almond milk)

about 1 1/2 cups water

1 cup medium bulgar (I use quick cooking)

pinch of salt

zest of one lemon*

1 tablespoon or so of local honey

1/3 cup slivered almonds, toasted

In a medium saucepan, bring the coconut milk and 3/4 cup of water to a boil and stir in the bulgar.  Bring back to a boil then turn down the heat to maintain a simmer, until the bulgar is creamy, 5-20 minutes (depending on what type of bulgar you use).  Add water if the mixture becomes dry before the bulgar cooks all the way through.  Remove from heat and stir in the lemon zest and honey.  

Serve in individual bowls and top with toasted almonds.  Sometimes, I add more almond milk at the end, it just depends on how soupy you like your breakfast grains.

*Do not be tempted to squeeze the lemon juice in also.  It curdles the milk, I know.

{Rule Number Three}

3.  Cartooned pajama pants are never okay.  Not on your college campus, not in the airport and never at the grocery store.  Dress yourselves, please.

See Rule Number 1 & 2