Category Archives: kitchen mischief

kitchen mischief sweets

How To Be Classy Like Me: Baking A Bundt Cake

August 2, 2012 – 10:30 am

In this installment of “How To Be Classy Like Me” we’re going to tackle baking. There are a few things you need to know before we start. Be prepared for the Queen of England to ask you to make her a cake for her next royal event. This in turn will make you so in demand that you’ll have to open a full time bakery, followed by making millions. So, if you want to make millions and meet the Queen of England then follow my directions precisely. If you don’t, I can’t guarantee you millions. If you do…I still can’t guarantee you millions but I can guarantee you the awe and admiration of all those you encounter that it might at least taste decent.

To be super classy you must start by realizing you literally have almost nothing in your kitchen to bake with. Because you have no butter, and no eggs, you consult a vegan cookbook. Everyone knows vegan baking is what classy people eat anyway.

After consulting Veganomicon you find a coconut lemon bundt cake and realize it’s the only recipe you have everything for. Except for lemons. Minor detail, you have limes. Or oranges. Or whatever.

Next heat your oven up and get your bundt pan out. If you need to grease it so it doesn’t stick, do it. If you have a non-stick one like I do, high-five.

Now look at your ingredients and directions and mix all that shit together. Why? Because it says to. Also, this is the part of baking you don’t totally suck at. You can mix. You can mix with the best of them. Why? You’re classy, of course.

Put that cake in the oven and set the timer. Do not forget to set the timer. You wouldn’t anyway, you’re awesome. Once a knife (or a fork, spoon handle, spatula, whatever) comes out clean your cake is done. Take it out of the oven. Admire it’s beauty. Now let it sit for about ten to fifteen minutes. DON’T TOUCH IT or try and flip it out.

In the mean time get your super pretty cake stand out that you’ve never used before. Or maybe you have, I don’t really know, I’m not in your kitchen. What I do now is that I had never used mine before. I got it over a year ago. That’s how often I bake cakes. At least, that’s how often I bake cakes that I don’t eat directly from the pan with a fork. Don’t worry, it’s a contemporary classy looking fork.

Once your cake cools to the specified time, put your cake stand over the pan and flip it. When it doesn’t flip out because it’s still too hot don’t wait for it to cool further. All you need to do is hit your cake pan like, fifteen times. Classy women don’t loose their cool, so hit your pan with a smile on your face. Even when your non-stick bundt pan totally messes your cake up, you remain calm and collected and do not at all swear or say things like “What the f….”. Also, classy women don’t mess up so make sure you blame your cake sticking on the brand new (year old but never used) non-stick pan, not on the fact that you didn’t let it cool enough. You need to be an accountable woman, you need to take responsibility for your actions, but this was clearly the pans fault. Blame it on the inanimate object you classy broad.

No one will ever know if you carefully pick up the broken piece of of your bundt cake, and then smash it back into the cake. Also, ignore any massive cracks you may have made when you hit the ever loving life out of your bundt pan…and it fell onto the counter instead of your cake stand. You don’t want to upstage other bakers anyway. Being the classy lady you are it’s good once in a while to prove you are also flawed—you know, or at least let other people believe you are (we know you aren’t).

When in doubt, regain that your cake is awesome by taking a photo of the part of it that isn’t cracked. Damn, you’re good.

The next, and final, step of baking an awesome cake like a classy woman is to cover up all of your mistakes with powdered sugar. Or at least try.

When that doesn’t work just cut it into pieces before you serve it. When someone picks up the piece that you smashed back into place and it breaks, compliment your guest on their strength and that you thought it looked like they had been working out.

You are good. You are really good. I’m proud of you, you classy woman. Keep on baking. Before you know it you’ll be making those millions.

Or just eating a ton of cake. Either way, you win.

xo,

Heather

Despite the fact that I do know how to drink wine like the lady I am, I was not drunk when I baked this. I wasn’t even tipsy. I didn’t even have anything to drink. I really am just that bad at baking, and I like to make fun of it. That said, the flavor of this was absolutely delicious.

Also, vegan baking is actually absolutely awesome. I really love it, even more so than normal baking most of the time. Veganomicon is a fantastic cook book to have around and this cake (yes it does exist) is unbelievable, even made with lime. I highly suggest it.

Oh, and if you want to see drunk cooking  I suggest this girl. Her YouTube channel is hands down my absolute favorite. It makes me crack up laughing every. single. time.

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Homesteading kitchen mischief Simple Living sweets

The Annual Wild Berry Harvest

July 30, 2012 – 10:30 am

As I’m writing this, I’m watching Primrose out by our old apple tree. It was here, and far overgrown, before we moved in. For no discernible reason it has full sized apples on it in July and August of every year, but they are too high for us to pick. They aren’t great quality, so once dropped on the ground the dogs run out to eat them. Any left overs are bagged up and given to the cows. It makes me laugh every year when I watch the dogs excitedly run to the tree and pick up apples. This year, Rosie has learned she can often carry more than one in her mouth. It’s a funny balance to watch her try and pick up one, only to have the other fall out of her mouth. She’s learned how to carry two, and she’s working on figuring out how to carry three.

For them, this is good food. They know how to harvest what nature gives them to supplement their diet and they enjoy every moment of it. In our house it’s the same way.  We of course have our garden, but we also try to take advantage of the wild harvests in our area from sorrel for salads, to grape leaves. Our favorite harvest though, is the annual wild berry harvest.

Each year around this time, the blackberries, black raspberries and raspberries are starting to explode all around us. We go out weekly at first, and then daily, to harvest the berries to make jam with, freeze, turn into a variety of other items or, our favorite, just eat. This year I even found a few wild blueberry plants. There are always more berries than we can even come close to harvesting, even when we go out multiple times per week.

Where we harvest isn’t something we often disclose to people. We’re certain at least a few more people around here know about it, but we’ve never witnessed anyone else out collecting. There are a few reasons I personally love this spot. For starters I’ve never seen this level of wild berries anywhere. Second, the dogs can run free and wild without worrying about vehicles. Third, I love all of the wild flowers that surround the area this time of year. This is where I picked the wild flowers in this post.

Normally this is a family activity, but with Andy on renovation duty it meant I was the sole harvester this year. Well, with the dogs. The dogs and I have an agreement to make it fair: I get the higher berries, and they get the lower ones.

Rosie is also willing to thrash through the thorny vines if it means she might get a succulent raspberry stash, often found past the blackberries.

We had been watching these berries for weeks, just waiting for the first one to turn black. On Friday night I saw the first one and came home with a palm full of berries for Andy. On Saturday I started the first harvest. It was pretty hot out in the morning when we went, and after about a 1/4 of a gallon bag the dogs started panting heavily. I hadn’t anticipated the heat, or that the water would be dried up from the spot we go, so I had to walk the dogs home but not before they managed to find some thick mud to romp through.

I hadn’t even touched 3/4 of the area we harvest from, but of the bit I did harvest the dogs often beat me to the berries first. As is typical, Rosie stays behind to keep picking at a bush while Winnie runs far ahead to find the next batch before I can get to it.

Though we had to call Saturday morning early, we still got a decent harvest. There will be plenty more harvesting days though before the season is over, which doesn’t last very long. It means I’ll be out just about every night this week picking berries, and of course eating as many black raspberries (my favorite of the bunch) as I can while I harvest.

It takes time, and it can get tedious, but they payoff is totally worth it. Harvesting wild food is incredibly satisfying and nature does all the work for you. There’s no weeding, no watering and no mulching. It’s permaculture at it’s finest, and I for one am happy to partake.

Here’s to more berries, more meals and realizing that if we just stop and look around that the good Lord provides if we’re willing to put in some sweat equity.

xo,

Heather

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kitchen mischief savories

Curried Stuffed Grape Leaves

July 10, 2012 – 10:30 am

Food to me is often more than food. It’s a memory, or a curiousness. It’s a “you’re welcome in my home”.  This is one of those recipes.

On Saturday I headed up the coast to Ellsworth to help organize my Memere and Pepere’s house so it could be sold, organize the decades of fabric my Memere had as a seamstress, and visit with family. I went to my Aunt Mary’s farmhouse, which happens to be one of the most wonderful love filled and creative places I’ve ever been, for dinner.

Dinner at my Aunt Mary’s is never dinner in anyone else’s home. We make meals from the garden to compliment other items, we laugh and talk and eat and talk and….Aunt Mary is Italian, enough said. On Saturday night she even made us homemade sorbetto and asked me, “why doesn’t everybody make things by hand? It’s so easy and tastes so much better.” I couldn’t have said it better myself as I stood there scooping sorbetto out with my finger and tasting the fresh airy and wildly frozen strawberry flavor all over my mouth.

As you walk around her house you see beautiful artwork. She or her husband made it.

You smell amazing scents. She’s baking/cooking it.

You see a beautiful hand woven basket. She wove it.

You see weeds. She teaches you which ones are edible and how to prepare them. Your mouth explodes with unknown flavors.

You see gorgeous flowers, and take photos to turn them into art on your wall. She teaches you what they are.

You feel love everywhere. It’s her.

During dinner in the screen house across the lawn, we got to talk about grapes. Andy and I want to grow grapes across our rock wall so we can add another wonderful fruit to our little acre. The talk turned to grape leaves. Stuffed, beautiful, succulent grape leaves. I remembered we had a wild grape vine in the woods right on the edge of the field. My Aunt’s husband went to their grape vine, picked one, and told me how to make these. Aunt Mary then said she normally makes the stuffing with rice, onion, raisins and “some other stuff”. Craig taught me how to roll them so they stay tight when cooking.

I was sold.

Tonight as I foraged through the hayfield my mission was grape leaves. I was going to make my version of curried grape leaves and there was no stopping me.

I have very very vivid loving wonderful memories in my Aunt Mary’s house. There isn’t a single memory that doesn’t make me radiate smiling from the inside. I wish everyone could know her because their lives would only increase ten fold, if not more. So whenever I make these now, I’ll always remember us talking about it. The laughter and love that filled the screen house and the perfect nature that are those moments in life that seem to be a split second but are in your mind forever.

Stuffed Grape Leaves

This recipe is not exact. I had plenty of filling left over, while I ended up being short by one grape leaf in my harvesting. I’ll give you approximates, but give or take for the number of people you’ll be feeding and maybe be prepared to use the filling for something else too (and it’s perfectly delicious on it’s own). Scroll below the recipe if you want to see some visuals of how to wrap the grape leaves. This is just my method I was taught, I’m not sure it’s the proper method but it worked!

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Curried Rice Stuffed Grape Leaves

Ingredients

  • One dozen large grape leaves
  • 1.5 to 2 cups of whole grain rice
  • 2 tbs. curry powder (I used Penzy's Maharaja)
  • Dash cumin
  • 1 large onion
  • 2-3 cloves garlic
  • A small handful golden (or regular) raisins
  • Lots of water
  • Vegetable or chicken stock

Instructions

  1. Cook rice according to directions
  2. Dice onion and garlic fairly small so it can fit inside the stuffing easily.
  3. Dice one to two large sweet potatoes up (enough to fit the bottom of the pan you will be cooking the stuffed leaves in) and set aside.
  4. In a large pan add olive oil and heat up, add onions and garlic and let cook until onion is fairly translucent.
  5. While onion is cooking, heat up a large pot of water until almost boiling but not quite.
  6. Snip the stem off of the grape leaf by folding it in half and cutting it off on a shallow diagonal.
  7. Place grape leaves in gently until they turn a darker green/brown. This only takes a few seconds. Remove leaf and set aside.
  8. To onion and garlic, add cooked rice, raisins, curry powder and cumin to taste.
  9. In a medium size pot or pan place the layer of sweet potatoes down.
  10. To roll the leaves, lay out the leaf flat with the tip pointing away from you. Take a small spoon and scoop some filling into it. Roll the bottom two sides up and do one half roll. Fold the sides in and keep rolling until finished.
  11. Place each roll as you finished around your pot until you get into the center. Fill the pot about 2/3 full with vegetable broth. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about 30 minutes.
  12. Eat!

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kitchen mischief savories sweets

Smoothie 101

July 5, 2012 – 7:25 pm

Between the hot summer days, the renovations and everything else going on, there are just some days you don’t feel like cooking a whole lot. There’s something about a humid 85 degree day that doesn’t exactly make you want to throw on your apron and be Betty Crocker or Julia Childs. Granted I could never be either one of these ladies anyway so I guess I’m in luck.

With all of the energy we are exerting renovating, especially Andy, it’s pretty important to make sure we keep not only hydration but vitamins up. This means smoothies. Lots and lots of smoothies.

We mostly have these for breakfasts and/or lunches on the weekends but lately I’ve been making them for dinner or as an after dinner snack. Tonight for example I cooked the boys some spaghetti, but I was so darn hot after standing around that boiling water and sauteing veggies for the sauce that I couldn’t even *think* about eating something so hot. I was pretty sure my skin would have melted right off my bones if I managed to get as hot inside as I felt outside. That’s a little dramatic, but I still wasn’t having it.

Enter the smoothie.

Unlike what you might think, you absolutely do not need to have tons of fresh fruit on hand. In fact, we often only have oranges and bananas fresh in this house. I buy the store brand frozen fruit in bags stocked in the freezer for easy access. Using frozen fruit also means no adding ice that will water down your smoothie later on. Double score. Oh, and I personally prefer to buy all of my fruits separate so I can mix and match, but if mixed bags are your thing have at it. There’s no smoothie police. I once tried to find a number for them when my brother made a beet smoothie. Unfortunately, they do not exist.

I’m going to suggest something—invest in a Vitamix. Let me add in here that this is not a paid post. My Dad bought us one of these for Christmas a few years ago and it has hands down been in the top 5 most used/valuable kitchen items I have. One of the best reasons it’s smoothie-tastic-awesometown is that you don’t have to peel any fruit you can normally eat the skin of (i.e. apples, etc.—it blends so fine, including seeds, you can’t tell. This means you get all the nutrition unlike a juicer).  I know they aren’t cheap, but they are incredibly worth it. It’s also hands down the loudest item I own in the kitchen, and I’m pretty sure you should be wearing hearing protectors when you use it (especially when you throw dried garbanzo’s in to make flour) but I don’t even care. Forget blenders, Vitamix is where it’s at.  Can I please tell you that it can make sorbet in about 15 seconds flat? Well, I’m going to. Sorbet in 15 seconds is my bag of chips. Minus the chips and plus a delicious wonderful, smooth, fruity, frozen snack. 

But this is about smoothies. So, with me now focusing on wanting sorbet, here’s a “recipe” for one of my favorite quick and easy smoothies. Though really, they are all just about my favorites. If you love V-8 put a bunch of veggies in, even beets if that’s your thing…I guess. It’s not mine, but if a smoothie has fruit in it I’m in. If you add in any kind of spinach or kale to that fruit watch out, I might just pour it over my face in slow motion Gatorade-after-a-championship-win style.

It’s an attractive mental image, I’m aware.

Best Ever Smoothie (Except probably not because there are a thousand variations which are super ridiculous tasty)

  • Some Soy/Coconut/Almond or Rice Milk
  • A banana
  • An orange
  • Frozen Strawberries
  • Frozen Pineapple

Directions: Whiz until tasty and combined. Then pour into glasses. Unless you made a small batch and you’re home alone, then maybe drink right out of the Vitamix container. I suggest a glass but hey, it’s your home. I hope. Maybe don’t do it with a friends.

Other favorite combinations include:

  • Blackberry, Strawberry, Banana, Orange and Coconut Milk
  • Kale, Spinach, Banana, Raspberries, Agave Nectar, Almond Milk
  • Strawberry, Soy Yogurt, Soy Milk
  • Spinach, Pineapple, Mango, Orange, Orange Juice, Soy Milk
  • Carrot, Spinach, Mango, Peach, Rice Milk
  • Anything you have in the freezer that might end up super tasty in a smoothie

It’s really that simple, and it feels a heck of a lot better than any of the frozen “add juice and shake” or fast food smoothies out there. Plus, did I mention you can make sorbet?

Must. Make. Sorbet. Now.

xo,

Heather

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kitchen mischief sweets

Why Yes, I Would Like A Sundae {Glass}

June 10, 2012 – 10:30 am

While I was at the office my coworker came in and said, “I’m having a parking lot sale—everythings free”.  They were going through his mother-in-laws items and of the items they decided to get rid of, he wanted to see if any of us wanted anything. He had his truck already filled, and it was at the office, so why not?

Initially I said, “I don’t need anymore junk”. Then I ate my words just as fast when I saw these adorable glasses.

They looked like they might be worth something, but he didn’t seem interested. Despite missing one glass, I snagged the other three knowing they would be put to good use around here either for ice cream or berries and whipped cream, or any other array of delightful treats I felt like using them for.

Once I got home I decided to take a chance and look them up to see if they were worth anything. You can imagine my surprise when I found out they were actually Anchor Hocking depression era glass—and replacement glasses were selling for $21.99 each.

As it turns out, the glasses I picked up because they were “cute” were actually $66.00 for three of them, and I just got them for free. I told my coworker the next day about their worth and I believe his words were, “you’ve got to be shitting me”. If he had asked for them back I would have given them back, but without a word otherwise they are indeed mine to keep. I can’t ever imagine paying that much for a sundae glass, and I likely won’t splurge on a fourth one.

So if you come over for ice cream and you get the odd glass don’t feel left out. It just means you’re the daily winner. Of uh…more ice cream—and a high five.

I guess I better figure out an ice cream or sorbet recipe, because I have some eating to do.

xo,

Heather

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