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 :)

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.

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.

IT CAME!

I'm drooling.

My Mennonite Girls Can Cook recipe book came in the mail today!

I've read it already, but now I need to go back and slowly read it again, and scope out all the recipes that I want to have made for me, and read all the wonderful stories that are shared along with the amazing recipes.

I'll write up an update for you all later on how all our many appointments went.

finished soup and screen printing

I accomplished 2 goals today finally! I made weird veggie soup and it was pretty good. Evil to clean up though, being cheesy. I hate melted cheese dishes. Oh well, thats price I paid for making a veggie I hate into something I like. So first the screen printing cause its got the majority of the pictures:



That is my finished screen. I wanted to try something really simple to start and these little guys will make great valentines.

inked and ready to be squeegeed!

Ah first print! Not bad for my first one. So now to do cards...


After the clean up...yay redish pink rings around my tub. I really cant wait to try the photo emulsion screen printing as you can use way more detail and its just plain cooler than this way.


And now the soup. I had a baguette with garlic on it and that went really well with my soup. I think it shall be a good evening soup to take to school. In case you are wondering its recipe, I shall post it:

(from Jamie Olivers Food Revolution Book)

Ingredients:

-2 carrots
-2 celery stalks
-2 onions (I only used one cause I hate them)
-2 cloves of garlic
-8 cups cauliflower (I cup up a whole one for this)
-900 ml veggie or chicken stock
-8 oz cheese ( don't know how many cups this is, I used my trusty scale that I measure soap on to get it right, but it took up I think 2 - 3 cups ish).
-salt
-pepper
-1 tsp hot mustard (they call it english mustard...Jamie Oliver lol)
-2 tbsp olive oil

Peel cup up carrots, celery, onions and cauliflower into small pieces.
Peel slice garlic
Put broth in its own sauce pan to boil
Put all chopped veggies and garlic into a bigger pot with 2 tbsp olive oil
Let that cook for 10 min with a lid askew, stir every once and a while
Grate your cheese
Add boiling broth to your veggies and let that simmer for 10 min

Once its done, take the soup off the heat and add the cheese and mustard. I used my immersion blender to make it smooth, but a blender works too. Season with salt and pepper.

If you want to be all fancy, you can cook some back for a topping. I just used garlic bread.

Corn potato chowder soup recipe

Now I kinda did this with vague instructions from my mother, but this how I made the soup and you shall also need to tweak this a bit:

Ingredients:

3 carrots
3 celery stalks
2-3 potatoes
1 onion
1 can creamed corn (use frozen or whatever works for you) if you like corn, maybe 2 cans of corn or creamed corn
6 cups vegetable or chicken stock or water
2 cups milk
flour
1tbsp olive oil (optional)
salt and pepper
thyme

So chop all your veggies. I had my pot on med heat and then added the olive oil and veggies to cook a bit.

Then I added the veggie stock and 1 package of chicken bullion, potatoes and corn. Thyme, Salt and pepper now!
Once the potatoes were all tender, I whisked the milk and flour and then strained it while it was going into the soup to avoid the icky lumps. Depending on if your mixture is thick or not, you may want to add more flour or less. I added 1/2 of flour to the milk.

Once things get thick, I tasted it I added more salt and pepper (I like soup peppery).

Done!


In other news, today was the first day the bird bathed in the sink. He was in the bathroom with me while I was doing my hair and I noticed that he kept peering into the sink, and flying from one side of it to the other. He was too afraid to go in by himself. I helped him get down in there and turned on the water to just a dribble. He really enjoyed drinking from the stream of water and then he got all excited about getting wet. He got right under the stream and fluffed his feathers up like a big fluffy ball and wiggled around. He likes to get his chest wet, that is why he looks like hes falling in one of the pictures.






This last one is where he was wiggling around on his chest with his wings all open. He really had a good time. When he came out he landed on my shoulder and did what all animals do after getting wet, he fluffed up and got my face and neck all wet with wet bird. He stayed fluffy and has been very happy listening to the postal service with me.

food: Jamie Oliver’s Mothership Tomato Salad

What can I say? I was in a tomatoey type mood. I saw Jamie Olivers show on tomatoes and this recipe looked so good. I've never had tomato salad before and mine isn't nearly as fancy as his was, but it tastes awesome and I thought I would share it. This is the original recipe but I didnt follow it exactly.

Ingredients:

-Tomatoes (he used varying sizes colours and all that, but mine were just plain old tomotoes and one cherry tomato).
-Sea Salt
-Black Pepper
-A good pinch dried oregano (I used the flowers from my plant outside)
-Red wine or balsamic vinegar (we used balsamic vinegar)
-Extra-virgin olive oil
-1 clove garlic, peeled and grated
-1 chili seeded and chopped (I didn't use a whole one cause I didn't have a lot of tomatoes, I used more like a third of one with 4 tomatoes).

I chopped up all the tomatoes and then plopped them in a colandar with a fair amount of sea salt and then let it sit in the sink to drain for 15 minutes. (Now when the recipe said to do lots of sea salt, I was afraid, but it draws out moisture and isn't that salty in the salad.)

After that its a matter of mixing the pepper, oregano, garlic and chili with the tomatoes. The dressing is 1 part red wine or balsamic vinegar to 3 parts olive oil. I didn't use a whole lot of the dressing just a light amount cause the tomatoes tasted great without it already.

I also chopped up some fresh basil cause I love that stuff. And there you have it, tomato salad!