Black and White Wednesday

I have had some wonderful tree frog encounters lately. There was one that was almost white with sea foam green on his back. Another was light gray with distinct patterns on his back. Well, even after trying to edit to make the color look like it really did, I thought these would work better in black and white. This is a Bird-voiced Tree Frog with sea foam green on his back. He's a tiny little thing, no bigger than an inch.

Also, this week, I got a Canon Canoscan 8800F. The scanner hasn't been working on my printer for a while, but the big selling point for me is that this thing will scan negatives, several at a time. How cool is that?
It would be a lie to say it was easy to set up on my computer, but that's Hubby's department. It's still really easy to use. I have been going through a shoe box full of pictures and negatives. Grandma left massive amounts of photos, but few of her.
I didn't take the next two photos, but I did get permission from the photographer's next of kin.


Here is my beautiful mommy on her second birthday.
Notice the icing on her fingers and the cake showing.


Here she is with my beautiful grandmother. Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest things I have ever experienced. I'm glad she left so many photos behind.
If you still have a grandmother, go hug her now.

Stop by The Long Road to China for more Black and White Wednesday.

-Susan

Black and White Wednesday

As soon as I took this picture, I knew I wanted to try it in black and white. This is the same little Fence Lizard that I have been harassing all summer. He's surprisingly patient- for a lizard.

Hop on over to The Long Road to China by clicking on the logo below.

Have a great Wednesday! Around here, Wednesday is one of the farmer's market days. I'm looking forward to some sweet potatoes or the last of the corn or maybe some apples. But, truth be told, I am most looking forward to Mrs. Brown's fried dried apple pies! They are so yummy! I love our farmer's market!

What's you local farmer's market like? Big? Small?
Do you know some of the farmers?
If you don't currently shop at a farmer's market, try it.
I doubt you'll be disappointed.

-Susan

miscellany monday

Happy Monday morning, everyone!
I'll head straight to my miscellany Monday.

(one) My baby is one year old! I can't believe that the first year has gone so quickly!
Hug your babies while they are still babies!

(two) We are very selective about television viewing for Stinkerbaby, but Batman and I are both quite happy that one of her favorite DVD's is Schoolhouse Rock. It's even nice for the grown-ups in the room! And, boy, does it bring back memories!

(three) Now for my restau-RANT: Why do most restaurants assume that you are at the restaurant to ignore the people you are dining with and that the sole purpose of being there is to watch television? I recently went to a new place in town and it was so loud conversation was difficult. There were four televisions on withing my viewing. Why?! This wasn't a sports bar. That I understand. For those of us attempting to prevent our babies from watching any television before two, it's especially tough! I won't be back to that particular restaurant, but most of the sit-down places locally have not simply a television at the bar,
but 3-5 throughout the place!
Don't these people have T.V.'s at home? I thought the purpose of restaurants was to enjoy the company of friends and family and have some good food. The food wasn't even that great.

I very much appreciated being taken out to the aforementioned food establishment, but I suppose this is just further proof that I am not mainstream!

(four) This past month, I rediscovered my love of budgeting. Before kids, we always used a budget. Since kids, that has not been as regular. And when we did budget, we didn't do it honestly, some things "didn't count." Last month, we budgeted for real. It was so nice telling all our money where to go and watching it behave! Budgeting really makes me feel wealthy, when really we are financially in about the same boat as most families with small kids and a stay-at-home mom.

(five) I have discovered the best yellow cake recipe. Ever. Seriously. How could it not be good with two sticks of butter and eight egg yolks?
David's Yellow Cake
I even made it with half whole wheat flour, and it's still light and yummy!

(six) Time for more coffee. Stock up; the price of coffee is climbing.


Have a great week, and don't forget to check out lowercase letters and link up your own random Monday thoughts!



-Susan

Coconutty Coffee Cake

I figured it was about time to blog about a recipe again. I cook all the time, but mostly, I don't use recipes. Cooking free-style is convenient except if I want to duplicate something we liked or if I want to tell someone else how I made something. I'm told that my great-grandmother was the same way. In trying to rid my husband of his donuts-for-breakfast fixation, I have been trying many different coffee cake and muffin recipes. It's difficult to find many that are totally devoid of fruits and nuts. This started out as a muffin recipe, but has been adapted to a 9x13 inch pan because I'm too lazy to mess with muffin papers. We've all enjoyed this recipe, even the picky toddler. While technically not a dessert, it's got a lot of sugar and certainly isn't health food. But it does have a goodly amount of good fat and whole grains and some eggs, so it is tremendously better that a boughten dough nut.

Coconutty Coffee Cake
2/3 cup virgin coconut oil (preferably in it's liquid state)
1 cup sugar- I use about half sucanat and half evaporated cane juice
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups fresh ground wheat flour (I usually sub 1/4 cup of the flour with coconut flour)
1 TBSP aluminum free baking powder
1 tsp unrefined sea salt
1/2 to 1 TBSP ginger powder
1 cup whole milk, preferably organic
1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping:
4 TBSP room temperature butter, preferably organic
1/2 cup sucanat or brown sugar
2- 2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
pecans and shredded coconut are optional

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Blend flour(s), baking powder, salt, and ginger in a medium sized bowl. Cream the coconut oil, sugar, and eggs. Add flour and milk to oil mixture a little at a time. Add vanilla. This will be a thick batter. Spoon out into a greased 9x13" pan. In a small cup mix the additional sucanat or brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle this over batter. Cut butter into small pieces and dot batter liberally. Add more or less butter to suit your tastes. Add shredded coconut and/or pecans. Or not, if cooking for my husband.

Bake for 30-35 minutes and try to let it cool enough before you eat it that you don't burn your tongue!

Now, a word about some of the ingredients.
I love Tropical Traditions virgin coconut oil. It's very tasty and is truly a health-promoting food. There are quite a few good unrefined (virgin) coconut oils out there, but I really do like Tropical Traditions best. To get a free copy of the book, Virgin Coconut Oil, How it has changed people's lives, and how it can change yours with your first order from Tropical Traditions, tell them I referred you. My referral code is 5967402. The book has a lot of information on uses of coconut oil as well as some of the facts about saturated fats that health magazines never mention. They have a lot of great coconut products. I especially like the oils- refined and unrefined and the coconut cream concentrate. I'm just starting to experiment with coconut flour. It smells divine!
Besides the products, the other thing I really like about Tropical Traditions is the specials they have. Every now and again they have free shipping for any sized order and free products with a small purchase. Sometimes the virgin coconut oil goes on sale buy one get one free.They will send new customers the free book I mentioned by using my referral code and I'll get free items when the new customers order. It's really a win-win situation. Their customer service is also great. I received a package that the carrier damaged. They pack stuff well and was in no way Tropical Traditions' fault. I contacted them to let them know and they gave me a substantial coupon for my next purchase! I didn't ask for that, they just took care of me for my trouble! Anyway, I am not being paid by Tropical Traditions for this, I just am not often this impressed with a company, so I thought I'd tell y'all.

I get my eggs from my friendly, neighborhood egg lady. They are ridiculously cheap ($1.50/ dozen) and have delicious, orange yolks. Miss Lucille loves "her girls" and really takes good care of them. No salmonella scare for us.

I use and love Prairie Gold wheat. You can buy it from Wheat Montana, but for my area, it's much cheaper from the local Mennonite bulk foods store. I also love my Nutrimill grain mill.

I make my own vanilla extract. It's much better tasting than store-bought, if I do say so myself. I'll tell you all about that another time. Any real vanilla extract is an improvement over the imitation vanilla that is in most foods.

I only use aluminum-free baking powder. There are probably aluminum-free varieties at the grocery store, but I get mine cheaply from the aforementioned Mennonite food store.

Mountain Rose Herbs is another company I want to tell you about. They have good quality coconut oil, too. And depending on where in the country you live, they may be a good deal cheaper than Tropical Traditions, depending on shipping. But what I like best about Mountain Rose Herbs, is the inexpensive, super-high quality spices! I'm not a fan of cinnamon, as a rule, but MRH has THE BEST organic ground cinnamon I have ever tasted! Their garlic powder is superb. The powdered cacao nibs is a really delicious substitute for good ol' Hershey's cocoa powder. My only complaint is that they are on the west coast and shipping can be brutal. I wonder if they'd like to move their base of operations to Louisville? Probably not. But they are a good place to know just the same.

Well, I'm going to go have another piece of that yummy coffee cake. I'll have mine with coconut and pecans. I may just have to make coffee to go with it. . .

If any of you try this recipe, please let me know what you think.

-Susan

All Organic Lime Pudding

I really do cook things besides desserts. Desserts are just my favorite. My most recent order from Tropical Traditions came in today. In it was something I had never tried before- Heavenly Organics sweetened condensed milk. Sweetened condensed milk is certainly not heath food, but I figure I get some points for it being organic.

It says on the label, "our heavenly cows are treated reverently and lovingly."
Pretty cool, huh?

So, I decided to make a pie. Then I remembered that I have to pre-made pie crusts in the house and I'm too lazy today to make one, so I made pudding instead.

This pudding is really yummy and could not be easier to make. You'll think I left something out in the recipe, but I didn't.

Okay, here it is:
One 14 oz. can Heavenly Organics sweetened condensed milk
between 1/3 and 1/2 cup organic lime juice- to taste

Mix and refrigerate. This is also good with lemon juice.

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

A couple of years ago, I got a Cuisinart ice cream maker as a gift. Boy, what a difference this thing makes over my salt and ice kind of ice cream maker! It's so quick and easy! If I could regularly get raw cream or pasturized, organic cream without carrageenan, I'd make ice cream much more often. Carrageenan is a seaweed-derived additive that is on my list of yucky stuff in food I avoid. According to Dr. Russell Blaylock in his book, Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life, carrageenan is used as an agent to induce intense inflammation in experimental animals. It has also been implicated as a carcinogen. I don't believe I want any of that!

Anyway, carrageenan is found in every brand of locally available organic cream. It's not in the organic half and half, but that stuff is ultra-pasturized which is something else I try to avoid.

Last week, that changed. My local farm market got in some low-temperature pasturized cream with no other ingregients! It may not be raw, but it sure is good! Produced here in Kentucky by farmers who are not certified organic, but use the same practices, it meets three of my four main food goals:
it's local
it's virtually organic
and it's delicious

It's not raw, but that's to be expected in a state that doesn't allow raw milk sales.

So, I came home with two quarts of this delicious cream last week. My intention was to make ice cream, but I was sidetracked by strawberries. Strawberries, organic evaporated cane juice, and cream is a treat no one should miss. So, that's where the first quart went. Stinkerbaby even liked it and normally she doesn't like milk or fruit.

I did manage to get ice cream made out of the second quart. This is easily the best ice cream I have ever made! In addition to the great cream, it's a new recipe. This recipe is scaled for the little Cuisinart ICE-20 Ice Cream maker.

1 1/2 cup cream
1 1/2 cup whole milk
5 raw, pastured egg yolks (for those squeamish about raw eggs, see http://www.westonaprice.org/)
3/4 cup evaporated cane juice (or sugar)
1 TBSP vanilla
1 TBSP arrowroot powder (cornstarch is an acceptable substitute)

Combine all ingredients and blend with a stick blender or mixer. Add to ice cream maker and let it go for about 35 minutes. Transfer to another container to ripen overnight. Lick the bowl and wait until tomorrow.