greek pasta salad

One of my kiddos favorite meals is greek pasta salad with BBQ chicken breast.  It is a wonderful meal for this time of year because we have fresh tomatoes, cucumber, onions, green peppers and basil.  I made speggeti two nights ago and cooked about 2 cups of extra maccaroni noodles. I tossed them in 1/4 cup of greek with feta salad dressing from Kraft and put it in the fridge.  This morning I added the fresh veggies I meantioned above.  Also crumbled feta.  So delisious.  Tonight I BBQ chicken breast and Voila! Supper was ready. It is a great meal to eat outside or take cold on a picnic.  I just wished I had some corn on the cob too...mmmmmmm

http://www.cookingwithcandra.com/blog/2010/12/06/mediterranean-greek-pasta-salad/
Here is a link to a similar recipe.  I just use Tomatoes instead of olives so my kids will like it. Then it is also ingredients I have on hand and from the garden.

chicken soup

So here is a funny story.... I made this draft blog in june and I never posted it.  BECAUSE this soup was gross.  In theory it should have been good, but it wasn't.  So the lesson here is - no body is perfect, AND don't be afraid to make mistakes.  I'm going to try this again another time.  If at first you don't succeed....  Stay tuned for my cream of roasted garlic and potato soup recipe.  It is a no fail.


June 6th
I have been talking to a few friends about having meals planned for the days when they come home late and need to eat right away to keep their families on scheduale.  I use my crockpot at least one day a week.  Last night I was home so I baked a chicken in a roasting pan in the oven with potatoes and big carrot chunks.  I find that meal has very little prep and is the least amount of work for a really filling meal that everyone in my family will eat.  I know that tonight I won't be home to make supper til after 5pm so for an easy meal that everyone can eat on the run I made a chicken soup.  I took left over meat off the bones of the chicken and the leftover veggies out of the roasting pan.  I set them aside.  Then I filled the roasting pan with water (with the chicken bones in it) and boiled it for 1 hour.  i added 1tsp of italian spices and 1 tbsp of parsley flakes and some pepper.
While that was boiling I chopped the chicken and veggies.  I diced 2 stalks of celery and 1/4 of a sweet onion. This could all be dumped in a tupperware with the chicken stock and froze.  This makes a great meal to pull out and dump in the crockpot for a supper before you leave for work.  You can make this while you clean up from supper that night and have a meal ready for another day.  This supports my 2 meals in one plan.
I put my food in my crockpot and set the strainer over the top of it.  i slowly poured the roasting pan through the strainer.  I dumped the bones from the roasting pan (now strainer) back into the roasting pan and threw it out.  i added 1/3 cup of uncooked basmati rice into the crockpot.  That is today's chicken soup.  we will see how it turns out.  what we don't eat today I am going to freeze for a quick lunch another day.  What a great idea for lunch at work.

another hot week

Today is going to be a hot one.  Gary got air conditioner in each of the girls bedrooms.  It is a bit of a redneck/duct tape affair and has run into the carpet many times.  He set up a "system" now that will collect the water but the airconditioners shut off when they are full.  They get full after about 3 hours which I feel does not really solve the problem at all but since I don't want to deal with it I keep my mouth shut.
Tonight we are having left overs. Yesterday I put a cheaper cut roast in the crock pot, I think it was called a Blade roast.  I had thawed it in the fridge over night.  I put in in at 9am. I added  dried onion flakes, 1 can of mushroom soup and 1/2 cup of water. I let it cook for 8 hours on low. About 1pm (after my nap) I added small new potatoes that I quartered.  The liquid in the crock pot was suppose to cook into a gravy but I had to pour it into a pot and add cornstarch to thicken.  The meal was great.  I cooked carrots, green beans and beets from my parents garden. Everyone ate lots and we finished the day with a bath in the kids wading pool and a chocolate popsicle.  Tonight is leftovers and hopefully the air-conditioners will last the night.

Salsa

Tomato Season is starting.  I have pepper and tomato plants ready to make a couple batches of this recipe.  We love to use it as a fresh tasty treat all winter.  This is the salsa recipe I got from my mom.   It is turns out sometimes sweet but has never has been too hot for me.  Always tasty in chili, soups, eggs and dips or by itself.  Also nice as a gift.  good luck.

8 halpeno peppers or 4 banana pepper  (omit and increase green peppers for no spice if you wanted)
7  cups peeled chopped tomatoes
2 cups of chopped onion
4 large garlic cloves
1 large green pepper (chopped)
1/4 cup of pasley chopped (dried is fine)
2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
3/4 cup of white vinegar
2 cans of tomato paste (5 1/2 oz)
1/4 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt

Simmer for 30 mins
Seal in hot jars
makes 6 - 500ml jars
also freezes well.

Summer Meals

The summer is unbelieveablely busy.  I'm so surprised by the fact tomorrow is Aug 1st.  I have been planning to sit down and record my amazing discoveries in the kitchen so often but another swim invite or playdate takes me away.  Even getting up early there is so many little things to do.  As I sit here and write this I can see the sun coming up in the backyard and I would love to get the coffee on and enjoy the view from my back deck.
However, I want to tell you about my brilliant summer meals.  A couple weekends ago Gary, the girls and I headed to the cottage for the day.  I got up early and made mini muffins in my new mini muffin pan.  The muffins were pumpkin cranberry (pumpkin frozen from my cow field organic pumpkins:).  They turned out great. While I had the oven on I whipped up a quiche. It was so good. I thought to myself why do we not make more quiches?  They are good hot or cold and you could easily take it to a potluck. You can throw whatever ingredients you have in it, but unfortunately no one else in my family likes it - so i guess that is why they are not often seen.  The week before we had unrelenting heat.  Gary had seen on the weather network that it was coming so on the Tuesday before it got to bad I cooked a big ham dinner.  We had scalloped potatoes and veggies in a cheese sauce and a big salad.  Gary and My dad were doing hay so they needed to eat big meals but I was just trying not to melt so I didn't want to cook.  We ate microwaved ham dinner for 2 nights and ham sandwiches for lunch.  It was awesome, everyone was happy.  Then Friday I cooked a whole chicken on the BBQ.  We had potato salad and cold veggies with that.  Saturday we had leftovers and Sunday morning I cooked the quiche with left over ham in it and we had our big breakfsat cooked at the cottage on the BBQ of egger sandwiches.  For supper I had quiche and Gary wanted a big meal so I BBQ some porkchops and new potatoes I had gotten from the market. Since no one wanted quiche the kids ate that too.
Today is sunday again and this week I didn't cook to much that was exciting.  We were invited out a couple nights and we had our usual speghetti night and fish and chips night.  The girls and I even had sandwiches one night when Gary was at the fair.  I taught my niece Kloe how to make chili and we sent it in the crockpot for the gang working with the cows at the fair.  I also showed her how to make bread in the bread maker.  She entered it in the fair and got 2nd.
OH ya another recipe I tried while the days were so hot was a chicken and dumplings.  It turned out great.  Gary even liked it and I didn't have to turn on the oven.

Chicken and Dumplings in the Crock pot
3 very large chicken breast
1/2 a large onion
1 stalk of celery
6 fresh mushrooms
1 cup of frozen carrots, cauliflower and broccoli mix
1 can of chicken broth
tea bisquit receipe
Put chicken breast in the crock pot with enough water to cover them(about 2 cups) . Cook for 1 1/2 hours or 2.  Remove chicken, set aside and leave water in crock pot.  saute onions, mushrooms and celery til onions are starting to get clear. Throw chopped up frozen vegetables and sauteed veggies into crock pot. Add 1/2 tsp of pepper. Chop up cooked chicken and put back in crock pot. Add 1 can of chicken broth. Bring back to a boil on high and turn down low for 1 hour.
Mix up tea bisquit reciepe and drop from tea spoon about eight clumps in to crock pot. put lid on and let cook for 20 mins.  I tried gently turning them over and leaving it on low again til we ate it.  It would be ready to eat in another 20 mins but I left it for 2 hours and it was still good.  The broth thickened up and it was like a stew, very tasty.

Tea Bisquits 

(this receipe was from a friend to make chicken pot pie but it worked for this too.)
2/3 cup of all purpose flour
1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
1 tbsp of baking powder
1/4 tsp of salt
 2 1/2 tbsp of olive oil or canola oil
1/2 cup of skim milk
Enough of the water from chicken in crock pot to make it wet and sticky
Combine dry ingredients. Stir in oil, milk and chicken water. Mix well and drop from teaspoon into crock pot.

Seriously - try it. eat it for a couple nights, it goes a long way.

Another day with casseroles

With the summer coming I like to have crockpot meals ready,  Nothing is worst than having to turn on the oven in the heat. Also there is so many fun things to do outside that you don't want to be tied down to the kichen.  I bake lots of cookies and muffins and freeze them in small ziplock bags so there is just enough snack for one day.  That way we can grab and go and it keeps other things cool in the snack bag.  With all the rain this week it is a good time to bake and plan ahead for warmer days.
 I started stocking my freezer yesterday.  I pulled out a package of venision sausage (not that great to BBQ), 1 lb of ground beef, and 1 package of good BBQing sausages.  In the afternoon, (after I had a nap and the kids were still asleep) I fried up the ground beef and baked the venision sausages in the oven with some cookies to have for dessert later.  The cookies were from store bought cookie dough so I really didn't work hard but I got all the credit.
My plan was to have BBQ sausages for supper with salad.  I cooked Venison sausages to make a sausage stew and sausage chili.  With the ground beef I made 2 lazagnas.  This morning I took the leftover sausage from our BBQ and made a variation on the Minestrone Soup.  I haven't tried it yet but it smells good.
The nice thing about how I did this cooking marathon is that it was all cold and from cans. It had similar ingredients, for example I used 3/4 can of kidney beans in the chili and the rest in the minestrone soup this morning.
Ingredients:
2 cans of diced tomatoes
4 cans of spegetti sauce
1 can of kidney beans
1 can of baked beans
1 box of oven lazagna noodles
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 cups of frozen broccoli, carrots and cauliflower mix
salsa
celery
1 big block of mozzarella cheese
chili powder
1 container of chicken stock

  While the kids played, I assembled my meals in tupperwares like ice cream tubs and stacked them in the freezer.  I mixed 2 cans of speghetti sauce in a big bowl with 1 can of water, 1/2 can of diced tomatoes, all the cooked ground beef,  1 cup of frozen veggies diced and 1/3 cup of salsa. I grated all the cheese and layered two casserole dishes 8x11 with sauce, then noodles, then cheese, then sauce. cover and freeze.
For the venision sausage I chop up and split into two tupperware containers.  One gets 500ml of kidney beans, 1 can of speghetti sauce, 1 cup of salsa, 1 tbsp of chili powder, the other 1/2 of the diced tomatoes, 1 chopped clove of garlic, 1 small onion chopped up, 1/2 cup of chopped frozen veggies.  - this will go in the freezer.  Then I will take it out the night before and dump it in the crockpot in the morning.  Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 5 or 6.

Italian sausage stew.  This recipe does have veggies to saute, same as minestrone recipe.  Cook twice as much split it for the minestrone soup in the next receipe.
Saute 1 small onion diced, celery, frozen veggies. I cook this with 2 tbsp of italian dressing (not necessary, just if you have it).   In the other tupperware container I have the sausage and I add - 1 can of baked beans, 1/2 can of diced tomtoes, 2 cups of chicken broth. 1/3 cup of salsa  - this will go in the freezer. then I will take it out the night before and dump it inthe crockpot in the morning. Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 5 or 6.  I add egg noodles 20 minutes before finished cooking then eat with some cheese on top.  The taste is a little different from all the speghetti sauce casseroles but I find it a nice change.


This morning I made minestrone soup with the BBQ sausage from the night before, I had the veggies sauteed in the fridge from the italian stew.  I also had the remaining kidney beans from my 750 ml can. I used the rest of the box of chicken stock and the rest of the diced tomatoes.

So there is 6 meals - very good use of your time and money.  good luck.

Summer Harvest

I love the "Bounty of the Land" and I get this from doing a little gardening.  I do not enjoy doing a lot of gardening.  My lovely farmhouse yard is feeling more and more like my oasis as I look around at the spring plants growing. Every year I have added things that I love that will grow on there own with very little tending to. I have added easy perennials this year (peonies, mini iris and regular iris, tulips, daffodils, bleeding hearts and clematis around the seedums) and I already see my rhubarb coming on.  Pumpkins grow on their own in the field beside our house where the cows graze.  This fall I promise myself  I am going to start the long process of getting wild asparagus to grow in behind the garage in between the crab-apple tree and rhubarb.  We will again plant tomatoes in our 4 foot garden which I will weed occasionally.  This alone provides salsa and delicious pies all winter.  Plus the squash, cucumber, peppers, carrots and potatoes I get each year from my parents and my husband's parents.  I always feel so blessed to know how to provide for ourselves and also share with our community our "bounty".  Too bad I am not brave enough to eat dandelion leaves or experiment with the mushrooms that come up in our yard each year.

my daughter Emily getting her first taste of rhubarb.

my happy helper gardener Ashley

Donny and the perennials

Rhubarb Cream Pie
1 pie crust
fill with chopped rhubarb

in a bowl:
1 1/2 cup of sugar
3 tbsp of flour
1/2 tsp of nutmeg
1 tbsp of butter
2 eggs
Beat together and pour into shell over rhubarb.
Bake at 400 for 15 mins, then turn down to 350 til done.  i forget how long.