The Pacific Northwest has experienced record-high rain fall this year, and it’s only June. That’s good and bad… nice for the drought-stricken areas, but I am eager to see sunshine!
Despite the soggy weather, the tomatoes are growing nicely. We’re beginning to pick a bumper crop of sugarsnap peas, blueberries are plumping out, the tomatoes are finally ten-inches tall and look healthy. What else? The lettuce and parsley need thinning, the thin onion stalks are growing, and it will be a bumper carrot crop… again.
For the first year ever, we are growing strawberries. These are the first picked from the garden. They were juicy and sweet, and I savored every bite.
Homemade baked vanilla donuts with vanilla glaze. Who wants one?
We welcomed in the New Year yesterday with homemade baked
apple cider donuts. While they were still piping hot from the oven, I dunked
each side in melted butter and then coated them in cinnamon-sugar. They were
crisp on the outside, and warm and tender on the inside.
I justified the indulgence because of the holiday, and felt
no regrets savoring two of them while standing over the sink.
Seriously, this is the best salad. It has the perfect combination of flavors and textures. The barley gives
a bit of a chew, the celery adds crunch, and the black beans are creamy. And
the flavor? Nothing can beat the tang and sweetness of a home-grown tomato,
especially when you add some cumin, salt, a little vinegar, extra virgin olive
oil, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
Don’t mind the dinosaurs, they helped me make it, so they’re pictured here. Actually, if you want to see more Cooking With Dinosaurs, go to my website, or find us on Instagram @CookingWithDinosaurs.
Okay, enough is enough.
I’m going to have to lay down some rules. It used to be that the dinosaurs
would drop by occasionally, but now it’s an everyday occurrence. Plus, today
they showed up with some guy I didn’t even know!
We’re swimming in
tomatoes from the garden so I decided that we’d have bacon, lettuce and tomato
sandwiches for lunch. I had just started making mine and they all chimed in
that they wanted to help. They did NOT help; they just ate a lot of bacon! I
had plenty, so that was fine, but I did not share my sandwich.
I had everything on hand to make flautas yesterday, so I invited over a few friends to help me in the kitchen. Unlike some times in the past, this group behaved themselves! We got the job done quickly, and the flautas turned out amazingly good.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I started this blog nine years ago. One of my first posts was a recipe for quiche. I think I was still using a pink, pocket-size Canon Powershot. The recipe is the same, and spinach quiche is still a favorite meal around here, but so much has changed over the years. That blog post looks ancient!
Today I had a friend over for lunch and we both enjoyed this meal - between the two of us we ate half the quiche. She’s taking a beginning photography class and asked me if someday I’d be willing to show her my process for taking food shots - my lenses, lighting tips, props, etc. We had the time, so I got to work. The quiche was an available subject but it wasn’t serious work. I was surprised 20 minutes later to see that the casual shots turned out quite well, crumbs and all.
Creating a 4th of July flag cake was a tradition that was
started when our kids were little. I always baked a white vanilla cake in
a 13 x 9-inch pan, frosted it with Cool Whip, and decorated with raspberries and blueberries.
The blueberries were the “stars” and the raspberries were the “stripes”.
The annual tradition also included a party every 4th. We’d set up the backyard
with tables draped with colorful 1950s tablecloths, lots of hurricane candles, and
coolers with ice, beer, wine, and soft drinks. Friends would come bearing their
favorite potluck dishes. Amidst the laughing, talking and eating, music would
play in the background. Once dusk came around, we moved chairs and blankets to
the front of the house and set off fireworks on the street for hours. The
workbench in the garage held the desserts and popcorn.
Somewhere along the line we decided to go camping over the
4th of July holiday, so the annual party (and, sadly, the flag cake) became
memories.
This year I did a new twist on the celebratory cake for a
much smaller party. I baked an almond flour cake in my Nordicware Charlotte pan.
The recess was filled with Cool Whip, and loaded with blueberries. I drizzled
the fruit with homemade
raspberry sauce. It was sublime. (These days I prefer sweetened whipped
cream to the non-dairy topping, but I wanted to keep a bit of the tradition
alive.)
The Almond flour cake recipe came from the King
Arthur Baking website. To ensure complete release from the pan, I skipped
their step of coating the pan interior with sugar. Instead, I brushed the entire
interior of the pan with melted butter, sprinkled in several tablespoons of
flour, shook the flour around to coat every crevice, then turned the pan upside
down and banged out any extra flour. As you can see, it did the trick!
Using butter and sugar to coat the interior of the pan (per the original recipe) rather than flour makes this cake completely gluten-free. However, due to the intricacy of the pan design, and the fact that our diners did not have a sensitivity to gluten, I opted for the reliable butter/flour coating.
I included a picture of the cakes sans the toppings, so you
can see the beautiful shape.
How did I end up with an air fryer? When it comes to cooking
and baking, I typically don’t take shortcuts because I love going through all
of the motions. However, the allure of crispy food without the oil ultimately
swayed me.
We bought a “Gourmia” brand air fryer because it
got high reviews and so far, we’ve enjoyed it. It’s not much of a time-saver,
but it delivers crispy food as promised. I cut French fries from a few Russet
potatoes last night, and they cooked up better than expected!
What I bring you here are “Inside Out Dumplings” with
an outstanding hoisin-based sauce. I cooked them the first night and reheated the
leftovers the next day. We were practically licking our plates.
The recipe for the meatballs comes from the small Gourmia
cookbook that came with the appliance, and the sauce recipe, which ranks the
highest star power, comes from gimmesomeoven.com. I can hardly wait to make
them again!
Inside Out Dumplings (Asian Meatballs)
Ingredients:
1 pound ground pork or beef (I used grass-fed ground beef)
4 ounces water chestnuts, finely minced
3 tablespoons panko breadcumbs
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated or finely minced
2 cloves garlic, grated or finely minced
1 large scallion, minced
1 egg, lightly beaten
¼ teaspoon black pepper
Directions:
Preheat air fryer to 400-degrees F.
Mix all ingredients together and form into 1 ½-inch balls.
Spray lightly with cooking oil and place in crisper tray. Cook 10 to 12 minutes or
until cooked through. Don’t crowd basket. (I had plenty of room to cook all of
these at once, but if your air fryer is small, it might require cooking in
batches.)
For baking in a conventional oven, I checked other recipes and it looks
like you’d preheat your oven to 375-degrees. Spray meatballs with cooking
spray, place on parchment-lined baking sheet and pop them in the oven. Check
after 20 minutes to gauge doneness, and adjust cooking time as needed.
Sesame Sauce Ingredients:
2/3 cup hoisin sauce
¼ cup rice vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon ground ginger.
Directions:
Whisk all ingredients together. Pour or brush over cooked
meatballs, or dip meatballs individually.
We recently returned from camping at Cape Disappointment, near Long Beach, Washington. One morning we rode our bikes on the beach at a very low tide and found hundreds of small sand dollars scattered about on the sand. I was so intrigued I stopped and arranged some of them into an ’S’. Dried sand dollars are white, but most of these still looked like they were perhaps living, so I was gentle, and left the arrangement for the upcoming tide to wash them back out to sea. I love their subtle colors.
