Our well appreciated thornless blackberry bush is producing ripe fruit now. This is it’s 2nd year since we stole it from an alley way where it was forgotten and buried under weeds behind our crappy rental house.

This time last year (the first year it fruited) Miss Everly enjoyed gobbling up every single ripe berry she could get her hands on. She loves her raw fruits!

This year, after picking several unripe ones against our advice she’s not chomping at the bit to eat freshly picked ones. Big surprise huh?

She does still love the responsibility of finding and plucking off the ripe ones, even if she’s not going to eat them. She is really taking an interest in deciphering which are ready and which are not, this also applies to other garden goodies like the grapes, squash and tomatoes.

Last week when we came in with an entire bucket of fresh blackberries I knew it was time to find a recipe for them, rather than letting them spoil in the fridge.

In light of our recent heatwave I was thinking some homemade sorbet really sounded good so I did some hunting and found a recipe that looked great and also worked great for us and it is even works without an ice cream maker if you don’t have one. It was actually easier without one, and we have one.

Ingredients:

1 cup of water
1 1/4 cup white sugar
1 pound fresh blackberries
2 tablespoons lemon juice

The recipe calls for “simple syrup” or basically a sugar and water mixture of 1 cup water and 1 1/4 cups of white sugar. Then you take about 1 pound of berries and puree them up good, combine them with the sugar syrup and remove the seeds by straining them well. Then you add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to the syrup and berry mixture, taste test and freeze.

The Joy of Baking says you can add more sugar or water to the mixture before freezing to obtain the preferred taste and sweetness if you find the above measurements leave your sorbet too sweet or too tart. I thought ours was just right though.

We froze our mixture in a plastic yogurt container and would check on it each day to give it a quick stir and to keep it mixed well as it froze. It does take about a day to freeze and isn’t a super hard freeze (at least for us) but we like our sorbet soft and keep it near the opening of the freezer door and not in the coldest part of the freezer.

Oh, I must confess I didn’t have the heart to toss out all the perfectly good blackberry seeds that we strained off so… I am drying them now and they can be planted I guess according to the internet. Not like blackberry bushes need to be sprouted from seed but I hate to waste anything.

Now that we have a second round of berries harvested I’ll make more sorbet I think. It really is the perfect yummy and healthy treat for a heatwave, summer day.

P.S. Like the well placed bucket in the photo of her picking berries? She loves running around naked these days. Ha, ha!

We enjoyed this recipe last week after a long chicken pot pie hiatus. For some reason it fell out of recipe rotation but I resurrected it and am so glad I did!

This recipe can either be done with a whole chicken or with cut chicken portions depending on what you have on hand an prefer. We typically do ours with a whole chicken that was previously roasted and eaten off of (an almost chicken carcass if you will), when we have one on hand.

For added convenience and less cooking prep time you can get boneless chicken breasts or any kind of boneless chicken to cut up. You can also substitute convenience ingredients (like frozen corn & peas, etc) instead of having to cut up and cook fresh ones. I’ve added a Knorr Homestyle Stock Variation for those of you lacking the chicken carcass and the time to cook up your own stock and chicken. Enjoy!

Talina’s Home Chicken Pot Pie

This will feed a family of 4. We make one for just the 2.5 of us and have half left over after 2nds. Very filling with all the comforts of home cooking. Yum!

Pot Pie Ingredients/ Preparation

• 1 lb chicken chunks (or the meat you’ve plucked from the bones of your cooked down chicken carcass)
• 2-3 large carrots, chopped & steamed (or frozen and unsteamed)
• 2-3 large celery stalks, chopped
• 1-1 1/2 cups of peas, steamed (or canned peas work, unsteamed)
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1 3/4 cups chicken broth
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup chopped onion

When using a chicken carcass:

To heat chicken and make stock: Throw the carcass in a large stock pot and fill with water (enough to almost completely submerge the whole chicken). Cover the stock pot, heat on low for about 3-7 hours. Heating time is very forgiving, the longer I cook mine for the easier the meat falls off the bones ans the better my resulting stock. The idea is 1st: to recook the meat and 2nd: to make a chicken stock for the recipe.

When using Knorr Homestyle Stock instead of making your own stock: Cooking time can be adjusted to an hour. Turn heat up to high, cover and boiling water for about 30-40 min so the chicken reaches safe handling temperature.

When using boneless chicken portions and Knorr Homestyle Stock:

Mix 2 tsp Knorr Homestyle Stock with 1 3/4 cups of boiling water to make stock for pot pie. Use remaining concentrate and enough water to submerge chicken portions, poach until chicken is fully cooked.

Pie Crust Recipe

Makes one pie crust and pie top for a 8-9 in diameter pie plate or casserole dish.

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt softened, not melted
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/4 cup lard or shortening
• 1/3 cup water

Mix the flour and the salt in a large bowl. Add the butter or margarine and lard; mix with hands until crumb like texture is achieved. Mix in the water. If your dough looks to sticky and isn’t balling up in the mixer add in one tablespoon of flour at a time until it balls up in the mixer and looked like dough again. Then you pat it into a ball, and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for at least two hours.

The pot pie instructions:

Once your chicken and vegetables are prepared and your pie crust is chilling, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)

In a saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Add flour, salt and pepper to saucepan and cook until dissolved and and lump free. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.

Place the chicken & vegetable mixture in bottom pie crust. Pour hot liquid mixture over. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Tomorrow is N’s big 30 birthday. In years past I’ve made red velvet cake, orange crush cake, regular chocolate cake, cupcakes and so on. I ask him weeks before what he wants baked. It’s sort of a fun challenge for me and it gives him a chance to get exactly what HE wants for once. Ha, ha.

The plan was to make up some chocolate eclairs for N’s birthday treat. He has asked for these instead of a cake this year. Except instead of using the typical pastry cream I am filling the eclairs with Bavarian cream. The pastry dough recipe comes from the Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook, it is called Pate a Choux.

The Bavarian cream recipe comes from the All Recipes website. The only ingredient difference between pastry cream and Bavarian cream is the gelatin and whipping cream. We like the consistency and taste of Bavarian cream better than other pastry creams, it is not a fluffy, full of air and sweet.

Everly was pretty interested in the baking process. She ate lunch and dinner facing my workspace in the kitchen. She watched me mix stuff, line cookie sheets, pipe dough and she even got to help me “smooth” the tops of the eclairs down before baking. Though she was really interested in grabbing the raw eclair dough and mashing it in her fingers.

Everly and I also dropped some gooey cinnamon rolls off for the neighbor. We I ate many cinnamon rolls, Everly just watched me. It is like a bakery here these days. Yummy and one of my favorite things to do… Someday I’ll open myself a bakery or coffee/ baked treats shop. I bet she’ll want to tag along!

In between Everly’s naps and feedings I have begun the day long process that is from scratch cinnamon roll baking. I’ve been craving them for weeks and also want to give some away as a thank you to our neighbors. N might be having a work luncheon or something this week, so he can take a few pans of them to work also. Remember, the recipe I use (from: The Pioneer Woman Cooks) makes like 7 dozen rolls! <- That is way too many for one family to consume!

Last week we experimented with another possible first birthday cake recipe for Everly. N discovered and made this one up. Here it is:

Molasses Spice Cake with Lemon Frosting
from Mother Earth News Oct/ Nov 2009 edition

The reason we decided to try this one is because it has no white sugar and it’s made with applesauce (which we have an abundance of thanks to our apple picking and canning).

You’ll need:

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cardamom (we substituted with allspice)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup blackstrap molasses (ours didn’t indicate it was “blackstrap”)
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp vinegar
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease yourself a 9 inch cake pan. We used our 9 inch round springform pan. Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda and spices (all the dry ingredients) and put aside.

Next, whisk together the molasses, honey, vinegar, applesauce and milk (all the liquid ingredients). Then slowly fold in the premixed, dry ingredients until completely combined.

Pour entire mixture into your greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Our cake wasn’t fully cooked in 30 minutes.

Allow to cool before frosting it.

To make the frosting you’ll need:
1/4 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Cream the butter then add the powdered sugar a bit at a time alternating with the lemon juice. Beat until creamy and spreadable, you can add more lemon juice to thin it if you find it is too thick to spread. Then frost your cooled cake and enjoy!

This cake, unlike the last one we tried out, tastes very good. Not to dry or flavorless. I’ll probably experiment with a cream cheese frosting or a whipped cream frosting since I am not crazy about the lemon flavor and the huge amounts of sugar in the powdered sugar.

As for it being a baby’s first birthday cake it’s a very good option for those who have not had egg added to their diet yet. The only concern is the honey in the recipe. That is something each parent needs to weigh and decide about on their own. For us it is not a huge concern. For others it might be.

The other major baking endeavor I am undertaking is some puff pastries filled with bavarian cream for N’s birthday. Tomorrow I’ll share those recipes with ya!
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Twittermoms wants to know about our favorite “Drinks of the Season”. When I think of the holiday season and drinks only two come to mind, here they are:

Hot Toddy
This is a drink recipe perfect for my mother and mother in law. You see my mom loves brandy and my MIL loves tea and a hot toddy combines both brandy and tea to make a warm, festive drink. You’ll need:

1 tbsp honey
3/4 glass tea (fruit flavored tea is good)
2 shots brandy (fruit flavored brandy is my choice)
1 slice lemon

To whip up the drink simply brew tea and fill a tall glass 3/4 full. Mix in honey and brandy shots. Then garnish with a lemon slice and enjoy! Super easy to make and will be sure to warm your bones in no time.

No holiday season is complete without Eggnog in our house! Starting at thanksgiving I get cravings for it. I usually like mine nonalcoholic but on a cold winters day some spiked eggnog can totally warm your bones!

Normally I’ll just buy the nonalcoholic stuff from the grocery store but I am also a sucker for making stuff from scratch. Here is a recipe I came across to make Eggnog from scratch if you are feeling up to it:

Eggnog Recipe I found via thissource.

* 4 egg yolks
* 1/3 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
* 1 pint whole milk
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 3 ounces bourbon
* 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
* 4 egg whites*

First, beat the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Gradually add the 1/3 cup sugar and continue to beat until it is completely dissolved. Add the milk, cream, bourbon and nutmeg and stir to combine.

In a separate bowl take the egg whites and beat till soft peaks form. Gradually add the 1 tablespoon of sugar and continue to beat until stiff peaks form.

Whisk the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. Chill and serve.

Cook’s Note: For cooked eggnog, follow procedure below.

Beat the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Gradually add the 1/3 cup sugar and continue to beat until it is completely dissolved. Set aside.

In a medium saucepan, over high heat, combine the milk, heavy cream and nutmeg and bring just to a boil, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and gradually temper the hot mixture into the egg yolk and sugar mixture. Then return everything to the pot and cook until the mixture reaches 160 degrees F. Remove from the heat, stir in the bourbon, pour into a medium mixing bowl, and set in the refrigerator to chill.

In a separate medium mixing bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Gradually add the 1 tablespoon of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Whisk the egg whites into the chilled egg yolk mixture.

Fore more drinks of the season check out these posts:

Lenox & TwitterMoms Drinks of the SeasonMore Drinks of the Season Recipes

If you are reading N’s blog you probably already know about the veggi garden in our backyard. It’s a good little garden with lots of yummy stuff.

We are stoked to have a much longer growing season here, we can grow more fun stuff now. We have things like corn, zucchini, tomato, peppers, basil, lettuce, parsley, cucumber, melon, beans, peas, egg plant and collard greens going out there right now.

This last weekend we had quite a few zucchini that were harvested and some bushy collard green plants so I went looking for some recipes. Since transplanting to the Midwest I’ve discovered I like southern style collard greens but we’ve been failing at cooking them. Turns out it is all in the stock!

I found this recipe for Tasty Collard Greens that calls for simmering in chicken stock for an hour as opposed to sauteing them. Who knew the chicken stock simmer would make such a huge difference? It turned out amazing.

N also had a hankering for Stuffed Zucchini which was also very tasty! We used some leftover homemade spaghetti sauce that N’s dad made while they were visiting us right after Everly’s birth. It was so good over the zucchini.

Now we are looking for ideas and recipes for all the fresh cucumbers we’ve got. I don’t want to make a million jars of pickles, we’ll make a few but I would also like to make some other things with them. Any ideas?

Yeah, so thanks to Witchypoo‘s talks of birthday cake and wine I was having my own cake craving yesterday. She recommended I search for the 5 min cake in a mug recipe for some instant chocolate goodness and I found it here.

Calls for tablespoons of sugar, flour (specifically cake flour), cocoa powder, milk, oil and an egg. Seems simple enough but then you microwave it. Sort of strange if you ask me but what the heck?

So I combine my all purpose flour (didn’t have cake flour, is there a difference?) , sugar, cocoa and the egg.

Then I added the milk and oil and mixed the heck out of it as directed.

Popped the mug in to the microwave and stood back. Our microwave makes this strange sound when you nuke stuff, like it’s got a radiation malfunction or something. I never stand near it because of the sound. I am paranoid. LOL. Plus if the cake exploded I didn’t want hot nuked batter all over me.

When 3 min were up I took out my creation and inspected it, looks questionable. It has solidified though, I guess it could be good. Looks strange though, see…

Once it cooled, it came out of the mug and on to a plate. It had all these air bubbles and was a strange consistency from the looks of it. Still to soon to know if it is good though, the darn thing is piping hot!

I slathered some frosting on it, I tasted it and cut it in half for N and I to have after dinner. Upon first taste It wasn’t bad. When I cut it in half though it was pretty brick like.

I think it came out pretty dense and not as fluffy as I would have liked (you know like normal cakes). I bet it was the flour, had I used this flour substitution guide (or the flour they called for in the recipe) I would have been better off.

I had a few bites and was done, N ate his whole half. See, he always eats my bad food because he doesn’t want to make me feel bad. LOL.

It was a fun thing to test out but it did not cure my preggo cake craving. I guess I am a cake snob or something. Today I’ll make brownies to try satisfying that chocolate urge of mine since I seem to be bursting with energy.

I used that energy burst to get my bags packed and am just about ready to leave for The Farm this weekend. I am going to an Evansville BirthNetwork Meeting on Thursday to meet with some fellow mama’s, get some support for my upcoming delivery and to meet the local La Leche League leader.

Only base we haven’t covered is finding a pediatrician in the area for when we are home from The Farm and ready to think about vaccinations (oy). Oh and Gabby is finally out of heat and done with the pissing (I think), woot. We’ve gotta get her fixed after Tater arrives, her and Boner!

I got some DOLE canned fruit and notification of a contest DOLE is running right now, the DOLE Make me a Chef Essay Contest. It runs from March 16 through May 8 and all you have to do is write a 200 word or less essay on “How DOLE Canned Fruit is part of your pantry.”

Win the chance to cook alongside acclaimed chef, Ben Ford. Ben has created four signature recipes with DOLE Canned Fruit and wants to share his culinary tips with you and three of your friends at his latest hot restaurant in Los Angeles. Enter your short essay and you could win a beautiful weekend in Los Angeles in June cooking and sharing a feast with Ben Ford!

Now, normally we aren’t canned fruit kind of people but we thought we would give it a try since there were so many creative recipe ideas on the site.

I decided to try out one of Ben Ford’s signature recipes with the canned DOLE tropical fruit I got this week since I am trying to eat better these days.

Lately I have been loving smoothies and frozen fruit blends. They are better for you than a candy bar and they are also a sweet treat right? I tried Ben Ford’s Easy Aloha Smoothie, I wasn’t feeling like having to chop up fruits and do lots of prep work. Do you know how much of a pain it is to cut up a pineapple?

What? I am a lazy pregnant lady who is going to be 7 months pregnant as of this Thursday! Wait, I am 7 months pregnant already? WOW. I guess I’ve just slept right through the whole pregnancy huh? Dang…

Anyway, back to my lazy smoothie making. It is called the “Easy Aloha Smoothie” because all you need is a can of mixed fruit, some yogurt and ice. The can of mixed fruit has a nice variety of different fruits to enjoy and you don’t have to peel, cut or slice anything! It doesn’t get easier than that and it was yummy too!

The most important factor in choosing my favorite recipe was ease and quickness. No pregnant lady wants to be standing in the kitchen forever! So, now I want to know which is your favorite of Ben Ford’s recipes? All you need to do is visit this site and click on the recipe link.

Also, if you do decide to enter the essay contest (which you should) please also post your essay in the comment field for us so we can cheer you on!

I made a turkey pot pie from scratch yesterday and was pretty pleased with the pie crust recipe so I wanted to share it here on the blog.

I searched high and low for a good from scratch pot pie recipe and kept coming across the call for “crescent rolls” as the “pie crust”. To me from scratch is not buying premade crap and throwing it together guys. I mean what are people going to do if the store runs out of crescent rolls for any extended amount of time?

Anyway, I finally found a recipe I thought sounded good and boy was I right, it was great! I did modify it a bit because it was way to sticky and wet when made as directed. If you are interested here is the recipe.

Pie Crust Recipe

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/4 cup lard
• 1/3 cup water

Mix the flour and the salt in a large bowl. Add the butter or margarine and lard; mix with hands until crumb like texture is achieved. Mix in the water. Here, I came to the consensus that the dough was way to wet so I fixed it by adding in one tablespoon at a time of flour until it balled up in the mixer and looked like dough again. Then you pat it into a ball, and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for at least two hours.

Yesterday while the pie was a cooking we busted out the old school Nintendo that I got as a birthday present a few years back. I know it is ancient but I love it some much, common you know you do too! Oh, but I still do suck at it…

Other than Nintendo and pie crusts we are also worried about our first ice storm! Word is we are supposed to get a pretty bad one this whole week and we could be without power for a few days…Now what are you supposed to do to prepare for an ice storm? I have no freaking clue!

Earlier in the week N wanted to make up a batch of ladyfingers. The goal was to make homemade Tiramisu, one of his favorite desserts but you need ladyfingers to make it. We searched high and low for ladyfingers in the stores last weekend, nobody sells them.

Being the baker that I am I suggest that we just make them, “they can’t be THAT hard” I said. So N gave them a whirl and ran in to some major egg white consistency issues. The whole beat until soft peaks form part was just not happening for him so he added more sugar, then more flour and also a touch of baking soda…

Well the mixture did not seem to look like what was described and we knew it was super messed up but just for fun we saw it through. Instead of piping lady fingers he just spread the mixture on to a baking sheet and popped it in to see how it would turn out.

The consensus was that the concoction didn’t taste like ladyfingers, though the spongy texture was close… Recipe failed, okay we knew that.

After looking over his recipe (from an old antique cook book) I was amazed at how vague and nondescript the directions were. Plus there wasn’t a real “stabilizer” ingredient in the recipe so how would the eggs do what they were supposed to?

After doing some research I offered to make his lady fingers for him on Friday. He promised not to be butt hurt about it and said it would help so I did it using this recipe and I think they turned out good (N will have to be the true judge to this though).

Here is what I learned:

1. Egg temperature is important! In the recipe N used and also in this one and this one there is no mention of egg temperature unlike the recipe I used. Apparently egg temperature is important and using eggs straight from the refrigerator is not helpful in achieving the desired consistency. I think this was one of the reasons why his egg whites never got stiff.
2. Egg temperature can be achieved quickly. Just soak your eggs in some warm water for several minutes and they’ll warm up. You don’t have to leave them on the counter to come to temperature all day, yay and duh.
3. Warm eggs are harder to separate. When I make lady fingers again I’ll be separating the yolk from the whites before allowing them to get to room temperature. Separating them warm is way harder and messier!
4. Don’t over mix when it says fold in. The foamy egg whites are fluffy and full of air. When you combine them with the yolk/ flour mixture it says fold in for a reason. Keeping the airy texture is important to keeping the ladyfingers spongy. Don’t over mix it.
5. When thorough detailed instructions are provided it is best to follow them exactly. I know duh right? Seriously though, just because you are combining ingredients doesn’t mean you can use your mixer etc. I (and many others) have the tendency to get ahead with recipes and overlook key bits of information. With lady fingers this is not good.

Here is how the process unfolded in my kitchen in photos: