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Look who came to our house for my birthday!
She is such a little dumpling, I could just eat her up.
They surprised me, my husband, my kids, some of my family and even Junior's future father-in-law!
It was a very nice evening. I like low key.
I have been working hard on the "Stilla" project. Should be up and running by spring.
I CAN'T WAIT!
Stay tuned .....
It seems like all I do these days, in between teaching and massaging, is put up food.
Yesterday I blanched and froze about 3lbs. of green beans from a neighbors garden.
Today it was green tomato chutney.
I got this recipe from a fellow blogger named Andie. The blog title is "Books, Cooks, Gadgets and Gardening" I did make a few minor changes and this is the recipe I used. I love the bite in this one!
4lbs. green tomatoes
3 large firm fruit. I used apples.
3 large yellow onions
3 jalepeno peppers with seeds
1 cup golden raisins
2 cups brown sugar
3 Tbs. finely chopped fresh ginger
2 Tbs. pickling salt
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
4 cups apple cider vinegar
Core and peel fruit.
Chop all fresh ingredients into small dice.
Place vinegar, sugar, salt, ginger, spices and raisins into a large non-reactive pot. Bring to a boil.
Add all remaining ingredients and stir well.
After liquid returns to boil, continue to cook for 30 minutes.
Reduce to a simmer and cook uncovered for 2 1/2 - 3 hours, stirring occasionally. If mixture gets too thick add a little boiling water ( I didn't have to do this ).
2/3 of the way through the cooking time, remove a small amount to a dish, taste and adjust flavors as you like.
Ladle into sterilized jar and water bath process for 15 minutes.
I love harvest time!
By next summer we hope to have two or three of these platforms up in the woods. You'll be able to come, pitch your tent and hang out on the mountain!
We will have toilet facilities and an outdoor hot water shower.
Cooking will probably be communal. But I'm not sure about that yet.
Anyway, check back in with us now and then to see how it's coming and if your interested, to get pricing.
I want to sleep out there!
Do you love carrot cake? Me too.
When my garden exploded with more carrots than I can eat I decided to try something different. Carrot cake jam.
This recipe is all over the internet, and now, here it is again!
1 1/2 cups finely grated peeled carrots
1 1/2 chopped, cored, peeled pears
1 can crushed pineapple with juice
3 Tbs. lemon juice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 Tbs powdered pectin
6 cups granulated sugar
Prepare your jelly jars for canning. This recipe makes 6-8 jars.
Combine carrots, pears, pineapple and juice, lemon juice and spices.
Bring to a boil over high heat, while stirring.
Reduce heat, cover, boil gently for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat, whisk in pectin until dissolved.
Bring back to boil, add sugar all at once, return to full boil and cook, stirring constantly for one minute.
Ladle into hot jars and water process for ten minutes.
Note: If you are new to canning, please seek out proper instructions on on of the government sites that tells you all about it :o)
I go through phases, don't you?
I am happiest when I am creative. Sometimes it's food, sometimes it's decorating and sometimes it's art.
I am not that great at photography, I always cut off a head or some feet. But I try, because it's fun.
Here's a photo that I took recently that I kinda like. And a pastel I did a few years ago that I like too.
I hope you enjoy looking at them. If you don't, please don't tell me. I am very sensitive :o)
For Denise, here's the recipe for eggplant "steak" and garlic mashed cauliflower.
One medium eggplant peeled and sliced into 1/4'' slices.
Combine about 2 tablespoons tomatoe juice, 2 tbls, tamari or steak sauce, one clove minced garlic, 1/4 tsp oregano.
Poke shallow holes in eggplant, and pour the marinade over the slices.
Core and break up one head of cauliflower. Cook in salted water to cover with 2 or 3 cloves of mashed garlic until tender. Mash with potato masher adding a little milk or light cream and some butter :o)
Grill egplant on a medium temp grill, brushing with any leftover marinade.
10-15 minutes on each side. Depending on how well done you like your "steak".
Make yourself a little green salad and enjoy!
It's that time of year again. My gosh this summer just flew by!
The garden is exploding with veggies that we can't eat fast enough fresh, so, into the water bath canner they go!
Canning is easier than you think and there's info all over the net on the how to's.
The best thing to do is get some good recipes from friends & family and can away.
I find having canning parties makes it more fun.
It makes the prep, wait, and clean up go sooo much faster.
Tomatoes are the easiest for me. If I have time, I make my sauce and then water process it all finished. My own homemade sauce, ready to go. If I don't have time, I just can the plain tomatoes.
Happy canning!
Crunchy Kosher Dill Pickles:
3c. water
3c. white vinegar
2tbsp. pickling salt
3qts. firm cucumbers 3-4 inches long
3 tbsp. dill seed ( or 9 heads fresh dill)
1 tbsp. pickling spice
1 clove garlic per jar
12 peppercorns
In large kettle combine water, vinegar and salt. Bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, pack cucumbers into hot sterilized jars. Add 1tbsp. dill seed or fresh dill, 1tsp. pickling spice, 1 clove garlic, and 4 peppercorns into each jar. Cover with boiling vinegar mix, leave 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe rims. Adjust caps.
Process in boiling water bath 20 minutes.
Let cool .....
Squash, pumpkin, even day lilly flowers. All can be eaten and are sooo good stuffed!
First you very gently clean the flowers an remove the stamen, pat dry.
The filling amount can vary depending on size & number of blossoms.
For five to six blossoms, 2 cups ricotta cheese, chopped fresh basil and or flat leaf parsley. Sorry, I eye ball this. A little salt, to taste. Mix that up and set aside.
Prepare the egg, flour station. Two large eggs beaten in a vessel. Flour, enough for the blossoms, lightly seasoned with salt & pepper.
Heat enough oil in pan for frying. Choose an oil that you like. I actually use olive oil. I know they say not to fry in it but, I don't bring up the oil too hot, especially with flowers, hello, delicate !
To stuff the flowers, have a pastry bag or a plastic bag ready. Plastic bag: snip off one corner.
Turn the sides of the bag down a bit and fill with mixture, squeeze it down until it just starts to come out.
Gently coax the blossom tops to open a bit and fill, being careful not to overfill.
Dip in egg, then in flour, fry until light golden brown.
I know, a lot of work, but they are good and only once a year!
Enjoy!
She's here! Beautiful Elena Anne Fattibene arrived on August the 1st at 7:02PM.
Weighing in at 6lbs. 1oz. don't wrap her I'll eat her here :o)
Mom & Dad did a great job and everyone is home now.
You will most likely soon get sick of me drooling over her and posting every picture I can. Too bad!
So, you know there has to be a back story to asparagus pizza, right? Well, I hadn't thought about dinner ahead of time and it was Monday night, so I wasn't feeling very festive. Everything we had was frozen, and I was in the mood for vegetarian anyway. My tummy being what it has lately, I knew I couldn't handle rice and beans. So I started looking around in the fridge and there was the pizza dough that Andy had brought home a few days before. It was still good! Now for some mozzarella. There was none. Crap, now what? Think, think, think. OK, there was a little goat gouda left, a smidge of cream cheese, and some shaved parmesan. Great, now for some pizza worthy veggies! Let's see, I had carrots, kale, red cabbage potatoes and onions. Bleh. What's in the freezer? Rhubarb, cauliflower, edemame, peas, and asparagus! Bingo, asparagus wins. I don't know about you all, but I need a little acidity with all that cheese, so I found me a box of crushed tomatoes. Yes, I said box. I prefer things in glass or those boxes that the Italian tomatoes come in. I'm a little worried about all the stuff about the toxins from cans leaching into my tomatoes. Anyway, I made a quick little marninara with the tomatoes, some olive oil, garlic & herbs (basil, oregano) cooked it for about two minutes then put the pizza together. First, I got the dough all round and put it onto parchment paper while heating the oven (with the pizza pan in it) to 500. Then I smushed the smidge of cream cheese over the dough. Then I poured my instant sauce over that. Next came the goat gouda which I had sliced as thinly as possible. By this time the asparagus had defrosted enough to chop in to bite sized pieces and I spread them around. I topped it with the shaved parm and into the oven she went! 25 minutes or so later, Andy and I were devouring this deliciousness! You should come join us one of these days :o)
So, here's how it happened. We had been trying to figure out what to call the place since before we moved here. I figured the mountain would "tell" us what we should call it.
Well, it didn't. I tried things in German, in Norwegian, in English, nothing seemed to fit. One of the things that Andrew and I have always said to each other was how quiet, how peaceful it is up here. But I was stuck on what it was we were doing up here. Teaching Yoga and Meditation, Massage, Cooking/Canning, Organic Gardening, Painting, Blah blah blah.
So anyway, last Saturday night, (5/19/12) we were sitting on the front porch in our rocking chairs, listening to the birds singing, the cows down valley mooing, the occasional whinny from one of the horses on the nearby farm and enjoying the warm breezes, when , for the eight millionth time, we looked at each other and said: " God I love it here, it's so peaceful". And, "we have to come up with a good name for our Mountain!" That's when Andrew sat up a little straighter and said "you know, my grandfather in northern Norway had a cabin that he called "Stille" I got pretty excited because it sounded the same as the German word "stille" which means "silent, calm, peaceful" So we looked it up in both dictionarys and not only did it have the same meaning, it had the same spelling!
From now on we will refer to the mountain as "Stille".
3 Large eggs, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
3 Tbsp olive oil
1-1/3 cups water (room temp)
1 cup lentil flour
1 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup GF oat flour
1/4 cup GF oats
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup corn starch
2 tsp xanthan gum
3 Tbsp packed brown sugar
1-1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup non fat dry milk powder
2-1/4 active dry yeast
Combine wet ingredients plus 1 Tbsp brown sugar; pour into bread machine.
Sprinkle dry yeast over wet ingredients.
Measure dry ingredients and mix well to blend. Add to bread machine.
Set to normal/white cycle and start machine.
After mixing action has begun, help unmixed ingredients into the dough with a rubber spatula, keeping to the top and sides to prevent interference with the paddle.
Do not skip this part!
This is a dense bread that slices easily and is best sliced very thin.
Don't get too excited, we don't have Bees yet! But it is part of the plan. We think Bees are so important to the ecology and we get to have honey.
No matter what angle you look at it from, life on the mountain is good. You can get a massage out on the deck when the weather is good, indoors when it's not. We believe in taking good care of ourselves.
It has been a long time from the first little tiny vision of how we wanted to live our lives on the mountain. We cleared the land, built the house, started the apartment and put in the organic gardens. I healed from my surgery, took back my Yoga practice and even started teaching again! It's almost time to share more of our dream with the world. Eventually, Andrew will build me my studio and the mountain yoga studio and retreat center will be complete (sort of ) :o) There will always be more to do, more to learn, more to experience! In the meantime, we're livin' the dream!
