recipe: white iced tea with raspberry

 Lately I've been craving iced tea, but I was getting bored of just plain ol iced black tea. I must have a dozen different kinds of tea in the cupboard, so it was time to experiment. This is what I came up with, and it was delicious!

I steeped 4 Lipton Asian White tea bags in 8 cups of hot water for 4 minutes.
While that was steeping, I made a simple syrup by boiling 1/2 cup a sugar in a 1/2 cup water until it was combined.
Then removed the tea bags and added my syrup until I got it how I liked it. Added a bunch of frozen raspberries and when those thawed, it made it nice and tart. Very good stuff.

I packed this stuff outside on our picnic in the yard and it was wonderful.

Speaking of tea, I went to David's Tea finally and I fell in love. I came back with 6 different teas and a mug...I'll share more on that later though :)

apple cinnamon oatmeal

Remember eating instant oatmeal? The stuff from the little packets with the dried bits of fruit in them? Yep, I loved the stuff. Over time though, I realized that its probably better to cook the real stuff. The stuff that takes 8-10 minutes.

I've always been an oatmeal lover. My momma told me that as a baby I'd eat huge bowls of it. Well, I just made my oatmeal a little better than the boring brown sugar stuff.

I found a bag of apples that were almost dead and decided to make my own apple cinnamon oatmeal.

You'll need:

oatmeal cooked and ready to go- I love rogers porridge oats

1 apple peeled and sliced
1-2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of salt

Saute the apples in butter, then add the sugar, cinnamon and salt. I put my ooey gooey topping on my oatmeal and it made my day.

smoothies!

(Sadie is modeling a peach pear banana yogurt smoothie)

Sadie and I still have issues regarding food. I want her to eat it, and she wants to eat little bits of it and then throw the rest on the floor. Our other food issues are that her favorite foods always change. She will love strawberries for a week, and then won't touch them for a month. I try and vary it up with different fruits and veggies (don't get me started on eating meats), but she will stick with a favorite for a week or 2, and then hate it for a month.

(These are just some of the freezer baggies of fruit I have for her)

The one thing she hasn't given up on yet are smoothies. So when her favorite fruit of the week is pears for example, or if I try a new fruit that she "hates" I chop it up, or puree it, and freeze it. To get more dairy into this kid, I've also taken to freezing the full fat greek yogurt (as seen in the first baggie) to mix in with her smoothie. My freezer door is full of leftover fruit in baggies that she has rejected.

My favorite fruit combo is peach, banana, strawberry with yogurt. Sadie doesn't care about the combo, which is so nice. I love tossing in leftover fruit in the magic bullet for her. Magic bullet is the best for smoothies by the way, but not for anything else. Mine has lasted me 4 years.

I'll probably try blending some spinach into a smoothie for Sadie. I've been a little hesitant to do it, but its a super good veggie, and she doesn't care for leafy things. I wonder how she'll deal with a green drink...

What are your favorite combos for smoothies? 

Have you tried veggies or spinach in a smoothie? How does it taste? 

next time, I'll move the plate further away from the edge...

Now I know why some of my muffins have little bites out of them.

its a baking type of day

Its the perfect day today. Not too hot, but cool enough that having the oven on wont kill us all with heat. I probably almost set off the fire alarm today too. A couple days ago, I put in a cheapo frozen pizza, only to discover later that it was cracked in half, and the cheese ooozed all over the bottom of my oven, stinking up the kitchen, and burning cheese to the bottom. I may have forgotten to clean it. whoops...

I turned on the oven, and as I was mixing my ingredients,  I noticed smoke coming up from inside through my elements. Needless to say, muffin baking went on hold as we scraped burnt cheese out of the oven. 

I may have messed up on the recipe a tad, and thats probably the reason they look more like frankin muffins, instead of pretty ones. I used this recipe from the Joy of Baking website, only I forgot to melt the margerine and add it in the mix. I just tossed in a square of margerine that was kinda too soft and melty. Oh well. They still taste great. I also cut down on the sugar so Sadie can eat them. She's big into muffins.

---Oh, I should also mention something from the baby update that I should have addressed. Its not that I'm super impatient for this little guy to come out, no. Its just that I hate huge big needles, hospitals, and thinking about being awake for any type of surgery, no matter now minor. So its not that I want this little guy out faster, its that I'd rather either wait on taking out the stitch, or see if we can get both surgeries (c-section and stitch removal) done at once.If not, I'll live. I'll be praying for a lot of courage to get through it all though. Hopefully, we can get the stitch out at the office--dreading that part, but  its better than a hospital stay.

Easy summer salad

Even though its been a rather cool summer out here, I am back home now and am in need of easy to make meals. I've made a list of things that we can have. Today has been all about prepping all kinds of food so that I can just put it together easy peesy. It is getting hotter outside and our apartment turns more into a green house than a apartment, so I'm avoiding things made in the oven.

Today I cooked a big bag of bowtie pasta early in the morning and then packed away half for pasta dinner, for tomorrow, and half for a big pasta salad.

I put in cucumbers, my pretty cherry tomatoes from the farmer, peppers,sundried tomatoes, and feta. I used up the rest of a sundried tomato and oregano dressing that was in the fridge, andthen, done! I tend to like roasted red pepper or greek dressings too, but this one tasted just as good.

Its pretty close to a greek salad, but I was just not interested in crying over onions this morning, and so I skipped my least favorite veggie. I did miss the black olives. I live for olives.

fresh from the farm

Look what I got today! Fresh, pretty tomatoes. We took a country drive out to the middle of nowhere, where my momma knows of a guy who sells his produce for cheap. Now only out in the country do they have these little stands. It was an unmanned stand that has plastic bags hanging full of farm fresh produce. You have a sign that tells you the prices of the day, and then a place to drop in your money. Today there were tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers today. I bought these lovelies and some cucumbers to take home. I have plans on making them into a pretty tomato salad, or greek salad. The green and red ones were nice and sweet, very tomatoey tasting.

Monday I will have another doctors appointment, and I shall update you all on how baby is doing. From how my ultrasound went, everything is still holding, and that is very very good.

Chicken Salad Sandwich

I had to think of easy things to make while at home in vancouver, and chicken salad popped into my head. Now this isnt your ordinary chicken salad, it has red grapes in it. Yes, that's right, red grapes. 

Now you may be thinking, Miranda, fruit?!?! In your sandwich? Yesssss... precious....yesssss

I put in chicken, lots of red grapes (thats just my taste), then celery, helmans mayo (not miracle whip, its gross that way) and then salt and pepper.Love my pepper.

The red grapes add sweetness that you need to make the salad less bland and the celery gives it a crunch. I've also had it with little canned mandarin oranges, and almonds, but I was out of almonds at home.

I made a big batch of this stuff and its been lunch for me for a few days. Not sick of it yet.

Food Drama

For the past month or more, we've been battling Sadie. Every meal time, she will eat maybe 5 bites of food and then spit the rest out of her mouth. We've given her the favorites (yogurt, watermelon, beans, apple sauce, and banana) and its the same thing. Its hard especially cause she then doesnt eat enough during the day and wakes up twice a night to drink a bottle. Her tiny tummy gets too hungry.

Yesterday after a 3 hour nap, she was starving, and did the 5 bite thing and spit it out. Mom gave up and dumped a spoon of spaghetti (another recent favorite) on her tray. The famished baby gobbled down that spaghetti by herself proving that she seems ready for her own spoon and perhaps will start eating more. We can only hope. I think the next experiment is to see if cutting down on snacks is better for her at meal times. I'm thinking it will help a bunch.

Its not a pretty sight...just not pretty at all

Any tricks to getting your kiddos to eat more at meal times?

lunchtime +my favorite sandwich

 I miss spending the afternoons alone with my girl, so today we had lunch by ourselves.It was lovely. She ate yogurt and fruit, and then cooked mixed veggies. I, on the other hand, ate my curent favorite sandwich:

sundried tomato cream cheese, avacado, tomato, and cheddar cheese on a toasted bagel.

It was delightful.

Sadie didn't appreciate my sandwich as much as I did. She stole a piece of cheese and figured it wasn't for her.

currently eating:

Rice, black beans, broccoli, and peas with soy sauce. Very filling, and very tasty.

I've been thinking a lot lately about things. Food being one of them. Thinking about how I can make healthier food, and food that we will like. I'm going to try meal planning to see how it goes. Firstly, I should clean my fridge. Its way gross. So gross, that I'm going to wear rubber gloves. Ya. Seriously Miranda, how did you let it get that bad?


I don't know if I'll share a before and after picture of my fridge, cause, well, you'd be horrified. Maybe...I'll think about it.

Rainy Day + Roasted Red Pepper Soup

I was browsing my favourite blogs yesterday and found a recipe for something I've always wanted to try. I've always always ALWAYS wanted to make roasted red pepper soup. This one has sweet potato in it, but thats cool cause its good for me.

Found on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog, I followed the recipe and it was amazing. I made it spicy by adding a few chili flakes to it. You can totally make it vegan too, just substitute veggie stock and minus the sour cream on top. I had mine with chicken stock cause that was what was sitting in the fridge.

While the soup was simmering, I was reading some more and saw that Bleubird Vintage made cornbread. I've never made cornbread, but it sounded awesome in my brain, so off I went to find a recipe for that as well. I probably should have made it in our skillet, but I decided I wanted mini loafs of cornbread instead. I broke in my new mini loaf pan from Aria, and the cornbreads turned out awesome. I think I will try eating them with a little syrup or honey and butter.

Its raining today. I walked Tony to the bus and then Sadie and I were headed to the store. Well, I went to cash a check and I forgot my debit card. We got home wet and without anything accomplished. Total bummer. So I sent her for a nap and put in some laundry. I think I'm gonna stay inside until Tony gets back. Oh, and another bummer....when we got home, Sadie lost one of her pretty trumpette socks, a purple one. :( sad sad times, I love those socks. I know socks go missing often, but it was sad cause it was such a cute one. Why couldn't it have been one of the old fuzzy ones? BAH!

---Update, Tony found the sock right at the bus stop. YAY!

Testing out Christmas treats

I've been meaning to test out this dish for a while now. I love my brie just straight up with crackers, but baked...well that would ruin a perfectly beautiful brie, wouldn't it? 

Thankfully superstore had cheap brie to test this out on. I would rather ruin a cheap brie in the name of a food experiment. I drizzled rosemary garlic olive oil over it, baked it until it was puffed up and then we gobbled up the goodness with fancy crackers and cranberries.

This cheap brie was a success and it will be a Christmas day treat for our family.

She approves

A whole mini ice cube of squash was downed with some rice cereal mixed in. It may have taken a while though. She mulled over her food, eating it slowly. She's always taken her time. The girl likes her veggies.

baby food [squash]

I had some free time on my hands and a squash that needed to be used. I thought this ice cube tray was fitting for my little one (I did have to use a real ice cube tray for the rest of it, but she gets pretty food too).

They are ready for her now. I am just waiting for her to wake up to taste it.

todays happenings

Its been another day of peaceful reading while someone had an extra long nap. I enjoy reading time so much. I am on the third book of this series. These books keep me on the edge of my seat, and Tony constantly asks "whats wrong" when I gasp, or say "NOOO!" Don't worry though, I don't do this in public. I've only cried because of a book once on the bus. It was while reading "My Sisters Keeper". Oh man. I cant read that one again for a while. Don't go and think you can watch the movie for that one either, its different than the book at the most crucial part, so just read it. 

So the first lovely picture was lunch. It was my favorite lunch while the toaster oven worked. Baguette, pesto, sun dried tomatoes and mozzarella. The twist this time is that I used the fresh mozzarella. Oh man, that stuff is good.  Nice and gooey and perfect with my tomatoes.

These were the many faces I saw this evening. She had pink cheeks and would gnaw on her lips. She's ok for now, and its early to bed for her :(

Off for more reading. Its been so nice without tv.

4 Stories: Food

One: Borscht

My Grandma would make this for us when we came over for lunch. It also came with homemade buns, REAL butter and maybe cheese. I didn't care for this soup as much, it had "things" in it. Cabbage, big stewed tomatoes and was not at all like vegetable soup from a can. When I moved away from home, I started craving foods that I would eat at home. I appreciated those foods, especially homemade soups. They are one of my ultimate comforty foods. This weekend we had company over and I made it for them. Kinda wanted to share the foods that I grew up with that are a little different than the norm. I filled my 2 biggest pots full of soup and in the end, we finished the biggest one. That's good though, cause that means awesome leftovers for me this week.


Two: Favorite

Its hard to pinpoint a favorite food, but if I had to it would be mashed potatoes and gravy. I know they are kind of 2 foods, but they are the best. When I was younger, I would eat leftover mashed potatoes and gravy for almost every meal if I could. Usually I would run out of gravy before the mashed potatoes though. That was sad times.

Three: Breakfast

I have never ever EVER been a typical breakfast girl. When I was young, I hated toast. I seemed to remember that we had it a lot and eventually I got to make my own breakfast. Unlike Tony who eats cereal or typical breakfast foods, I went straight for the leftovers. Cold pizza was the best breakfast. I don't even heat it up. In high school I would eat ice cream, or cold meatloaf. Never cereal. The only breakfast food I will eat for breakfast now is probably oatmeal. If I cook Tony breakfast like eggs, I will have some, but otherwise, its whatever is handy in my fridge.

Four: Birthdays

So the tradition is, on your birthday you can ask mom for what you want her to cook you for dinner. For me, this is a pretty awesome deal. Unlike my summer siblings who have to choose foods that are not prepared in an oven, I get free range kinda on what I can have. This is why I love March birthdays. One time my momma asked if I wanted turkey dinner for a birthday dinner. WHAT???? Make my favourite meal not on a holiday???? OH HECK YES! Chicken cordon bleu? SURE! So you summer babies may have awesome weather on your birthdays, but I get the awesome food.

They're done baking!

Unlike this baby who is still baking...these cinnamon buns are done. They took a long time to make, but they were worth it.

I added more icing to my personal one. I think I made the filling a bit too sweet in the first batch, but thats ok, it was my first time making it myself and the recipe was pretty vague on the measurements for the filling. Recipe is here. I halved it again cause we should not eat 4 trays of these beauties.

I made the drippy icing with milk, icing sugar, vanilla and coffee cause I didn't have maple flavouring. I also didn't have baking soda (so weird), but I had baking powder. Maybe thats why they didn't get as big as they could have.

pastecakes

The first time I try to make pancakes from scratch and this is what happens. The batter looks like paste. I used a recipe that got really good reviews and said they were fluffy and good. I am not so keen on fluffy, I like my pancakes to be a little flatter, but I was willing to try it out.

Tony laughed at the batter, he also said it looked like paste. There was a lot of baking powder in it and someone mentioned that they sifted their flour twice. I was not going for fluffy, so I figured wisking the flour would be better than sifting it. They were pretty puffy. I added a lot more water and milk till mine were flatter. Tony ate the puffy ones.

I am sure for all those who want extremely fluffy pancakes will like it. I will remember to add more water to it, and try it again maybe.

Peanut butter thief!

Totally caught red handed. He was "going to use it on celery" but since I was there watching, he felt the need to do this.

Oh so wrong.

This is the picture of lies, he didn't use all that peanut butter for his celery...and had to eat the big left over glob on his spoon. He didn't mind. I think hes feeling a bit better, we were laughing a lot more yesterday about silly things, like this.