More food!

Yes, another recipe to share!

This one is for something I like to make as a quick snack.  It's so easy to make, and very satisfying.

Chickpea Salad with Black Olives and Feta.

Includes printable recipe.

Mmm...

Here's another recipe I wanted to share; Baked Le Pleine Lune with Mushrooms and Walnuts.  Click on the link for both a printable recipe and a printable step-by-step.

Though the recipe is Baked Le Pleine Lune with Mushroom and Walnuts, it includes suggestions for substitute cheeses if you can't find Le Pleine Lune.

Also includes suggestions for wine or beer pairings. 

DIY Charcuterie

Okay, so it's not exactly a craft, but I wanted to share some of the recipes that I've been posting on my Squidoo pages.

This one is for a "Choose Your Own" Charcuterie.  If you're not familiar with charcuterie, check it out to learn more!  I think it would make a great Father's Day treat!

Visit the link for a printable how-to.

Craft and Gift Idea links

For those who are looking for some craft ideas and how-to's for Christmas gifts or decorations, here are some of my related posts and articles.

Decorations:

Get Spicy: Here is a step-by-step of the fragrant decorations we made for our tree in 2011.

Quick and Easy Garland and Easy Crochet Garland: Two versions of a spiral crochet garland with contrasting edging.

Temari:  This is a link to a series of posts, which you will find in reverse order.  These step-by-step posts were done in 2011 using 3 inch cores, but they can be made in a variety of sizes - our Christmas tree has them in 1 1/2 inch and 2 inch cores.  They make great gifts as well as decorations.

Christmas Sachets: These step-by-step decorations go back to 2008 (posts are in reverse order).  We don't have many left, but their scent still lingers.

 Apple Cinnamon Cookie-cutter decorations:  These were our 2009 decorations.  You'll find the step-by-step to make them in Part One, then finish them in Part Two.

Eight Point Star ornaments: these yarn wrapped ornaments are fast, easy and addictive!

Plastic Canvas ornaments: A step-by-step for two different plastic canvas shapes.

Crochet Covered Christmas ornaments: A free pattern.

Christmas Light Luminaries: Step-by-step instructions to modify a string of Christmas lights, these can be used all year, by just wrapping them with seasonal garlands.

Hand Crafted Gift Ideas:

3 Hour Crochet Cowl: A free pattern for a simple cowl, with ideas for modifications.

Simple Lap Blanket: Another free crochet pattern.

Salt Jar Luminaries: A step-by-step for candle luminaries.

A Pot of Roses: These everlasting flowers will be sure to bring cheer to a loved one!

Gift Idea Product, Move and Book Reviews:

Over at Squidoo, writers have been given quest challenges to do reviews on various themes.  Here are some of mine that might inspire some gift-giving ideas.

Endhiran (Robot) Movie Review

Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Disney's Missing Princess

Star Wars Original Trilogy - Unaltered

For the Well Rounded Crocheter - Plus Size Crochet

The Philosopher's Kitchen, for the Historical Foodie

Wabash Familiy Farms Popcorn Maker

Recipes to Enjoy:

Making Chevre de Provence (you'll need to start these a week before you need them)

Tourtiere

Mulled Wine

Christmas Goose step-by-step, Part One, Part Two, Part Three

A New How-to

Here's one for the folks who wanted to know how our version of Chevre de Provence in our Easter basket turned out.  I just published a step-by-step over at Squidoo.

If you give it a try, I'd love to hear how it turned out!

Happy Easter!

I hope you all have a wonderful day celebrating Easter!

Shaving Cream Dyed Eggs

We're doing a few things new for our Easter basket this year.  One of them was inspired by an image being passed around on facebook and in Pinterest.  The kids and I thought it was worth a try, so we picked up some foam shaving cream (a harder thing to do than expected; apparently they're mostly gel creams now) and some neon food colouring.  I was going to try Cool Whip as well, but in the end decided against it, since we're already doing several other kinds of eggs, too.

So today, while my husband took our younger daughter out to see the new GI Joe movie (she loved it), my older daughter and I started on eggs.  Even how we cooked the eggs was different this year.  Instead of boiling the eggs for colouring, we baked them - another trick from Pinterest.  We put a dozen eggs into a muffin tin and roasted them at 350F for about 18 minutes.  We've done it before and it worked our rather well, and this way we could do the dragon's eggs and kraszanki on the stove top at the same time.

 Unfortunately, three of the eggs burst their shells while baking, so we were down to nine.  We also lost one of the eggs we soft boiled in preparation for the dragon's eggs.

Lunch was egg salad.

When it came time to dye the eggs, things didn't go quite as smoothly as the Pinterest instructions made them seem!

The first thing was to spread the shaving cream in a jelly roll pan.  My daughter, with gloved hands (that's a must!) tried to spread it about.

It didn't want to spread.  It kept wanting to kinda roll around and stick to her hand.  Weird.

She eventually got it done.  Then it was time to add the colour.

The neon food colouring sure came out darker than expected.  Those green spots?  Those are supposed to be yellow.

Somehow, I expected the colour to sorta spread a bit into the foam.  Not sure why.  Oh, well.  Next step!  Using toothpicks to mix in the colours.

Hmmm...  That... doesn't seem to be working out too well.  This stuff is NOT mixing into the shaving cream well at all.

Maybe it'll spread out more when the eggs are actually being rolled around in them.

Oh, dear.

The eggs did NOT want to roll in this stuff!  They just sorta slid around, so my daughter had to forcibly turn them.  They kept trying to slide away.

Well, we were warned in the instructions that this would be messy!

Then it was onto a wire rack to sit.

We went through a lot of paper towels today.

There's an egg in here.  Honest.

The colours did mix a bit more as time went on, but with only nine eggs left to colour, that didn't mean a whole heck of a lot.  Some of the eggs ended up with almost no coloured cream on them at all, no matter how my daughter forced them around on the pan.

One the eggs were done and on the rack, my daughter gleefully reverted to a five year old and played in the coloured shaving cream before cleaning up the pan.  She had a blast!

The instructions had said to leave the eggs for a few minutes for the colours to set.  A blog post I'd read by someone who tried it said that they weren't really colourfast (she'd made the mistake of rinsing the cream off with water).  We decided to let them sit longer.

I went for a nap.  My daughter worked on a painting.

Two hours or so later, this is how they turned out.

Well, it kinda worked!  The cream was first wiped off with paper towels, then they were rinsed under water, and after two hours, the colours held.  Yes, that almost white egg is how it dyed, not the result of being rinsed in water.

The method was rather fun to do, and a messy, sloppy kind of way.  I don't know that we'll ever do it again, though.  I don't know that the final result is worth the effort.  Not when we can have alternatives like these.

This is how our kraszanki turned out.  This year, along with using skins from yellow and red onions, we also added a spoonful of turmeric paste - the same paste we use to make Golden Milk.

Then, when it came time to do the second cooking of our dragon's eggs, with the tea and spices, I decided to take the leftover liquid from the kraszanki and adding it to the dragon's eggs, just to see what difference it would make.  You can find the recipe we usually use here.

On the outside, quite a lot!  The shells usually don't take on much colour at all.  However, these are made to be peeled, and it did affect the colour in the crackle effect, too. 

When it came time to peel the eggs, we didn't lose any more of them at all, and there's a reason for that!  I tried another hint I'd read about and added a teaspoon of baking soda to the water in the first cooking of the dragon's eggs.  While it worked marvelously - the shells just slid right off! - I don't recommend it for doing this type of egg.  After the first cooking, when the eggs were cool enough to handle and it was time to start cracking the shells, you could feel that the membrane was separated from the egg, right from the first crack, and it make the whole process more delicate.  This is something to save for eggs that do NOT need to have their shells cracked before they are coloured!

Then there were these guys.

We had done Pink Pickled Eggs last year and loved the look of them.  This year, we decided to try it with quail eggs!  They were much harder to peel than regular eggs and we lost about five of them.  These were in the pickling liquid for about five days.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how deep the colour has gone into the eggs compared to regular chicken eggs!

So that's what we've done with our eggs for this year.  If you want to see more photos, I've got them all in a photo set in my flickr account.

Enjoy!
   

In advance for Easter

No photos yet, but we've already started some things for our Easter basket - some new, some variations of things we tried last year.

First, we'll be doing Pink Pickled Eggs again, except this time with quail eggs!  These take 2-3 days to make, but we're starting them now.

Next is a cheese that will be new for our baskets.  I have a recipe for a type of Chevre de Provencal - goat cheese medallions preserved in olive oil, herbs and spices - that I want to try.  I'll be modifying the original recipe, since it has ingredients we don't want to use and others I just don't have.  This requires a week to make, so getting them done today is a priority.  If you want to give it a try, this is what our variation will be.

4 goat cheese medallions (a log cut into quarters)
     note: I got a larger log of goat cheese and will likely cut it into more pieces.
1 tsp peppercorns
4 garlic cloves
4 small bay leaves
4 sprigs rosemary
   thyme (I only have dry, so I plan to use about a tsp)
2/3 cup olive oil (I will be using tarragon infused olive oil)

Place medallions in a canning jar, or in individual jars.  Add herbs and spices.  Top with olive oil to cover. 

Seal and refrigerate for 1 week.

Once they're done, I plan divide them up for the several baskets we will be making this year.  I still have to figure out how to contain them, as the flavoured oil is useable for salad dressing and I want to make sure it's included.

The original recipe is Goat Cheese in Provencal Oil from Paul Gayler's The World in Bite Size; tapas, mezze, and other tasty morsels.

I hope to get some photos up in the next few days.

Dates with Goat Cheese, a snacking experiment

Tonight, we decided to experiment with a snack my older daughter and I enjoy making every now and then; goat cheese stuffed dates.  Normally, we just whip them together and have at it, but this time we decided to experiment a bit. We're pretty happy with how they turned out.  Here are the results.

Ingredients:



Plain goat cheese.  We usually buy the type that comes in logs about 6 inches long, and for the batch we made (24 dates), we used half of one.



Honey. The first time we made this, we used maple syrup, but we're out of that, so honey it was. 



Dates.  The kind with the pits still in them.

Usually, this is all we use, but this time we added...



... bacon.  The slices were cut in half, half-cooked and drained on paper towel.

Method:



The first step is to split the dates lengthwise and remove the pits, leaving the dates in one, hinged piece.



Next, mix some honey into the goat cheese, adjusting quantity to taste, but enough that the cheese becomes smooth and creamy in texture.



Stuff the split dates with spoonfuls of filling.  We did 1/3rd of the dates this way.  They can be eaten at this point.  They're quite bold tasting and very sweet, so it doesn't take much to satisfy a craving!



Another third of the dates were wrapped in the half-cooked bacon, then they and the remaining plain ones were put under a 450F broiler.  For the plain ones, they were left until the filling started to show some browning.  The wrapped ones needed a bit more time to finish browning the bacon.



The plain broiled ones were quite good; the flavours mellowed out a fair bit, and the dates had a much smoother texture.  Very nice.



The bacon wrapped ones were AWESOME!!!!  That touch of saltiness made an amazing difference! 

Will definitely be doing them this way in the future.

Yum!

Some food "crafting" for a change!

We have a guest staying with us at the moment, and today he treated us by making some Home Made Snickers Bars, based on the recipe here.



The red pieces on top are watermelon and strawberry flavoured Pop Rocks.  They have a habit of popping unexpectedly!

These are sooooo good!!!  Thanks for making these for us, Jordan!!