No words today, just a few pictures of our walk in a winter forest….
Hope everyone has a happy week.
Monthly Archives: January 2014
Mell’s Wheat Germ Muffins
I really like these muffins, but we haven’t had them in quite awhile. The recipe is from my cousin, not sure of the original source, but we have had the recipe for many years. I ate a lot of these in the days after Evie was born, it was one of my sources of sustenance. I kind of needed a break after that, but I thought of them the other day and voila.
In a bowl mix together the following dry ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/8 tsp baking soda
3 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
In another bowl mix together the following wet ingredients:
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and let sit for 1-2 minutes.
This is what it looks like after sitting, sort of foamy
Fill greased muffin tins, or use liners, 3/4 full. Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes until done.
*Note: You can add in 1/2 cup of berries if you would like to make them into berry muffins.
I was given a large bag of frozen blueberries by my neighbour, who received a large amount from a friend who is a farmer and picked them fresh and then froze them. I did a split batch here, filled half the cups with non-berry batter and then added a couple of handfuls of berries to the rest of the batter and finished filling the cups.
These didn’t last long!
Evie’s Favorite Tofu Broccoli Stir Fry
I hope I haven’t lost you on the mention of tofu. If a five year old is asking for tofu stir fry for supper it must be good! It reallllly is good and the tofu is chewy sort of reminiscent of chicken and it absorbs the flavours of the sauce that is added. The recipe is from one of Evie’s favourite restaurants and she asks for me to make it. It is a vegetarian restaurant that we visit whenever we get a chance, but we do have a copy of their recipe book to make some of our favourite dishes at home. I have only actually made two recipes from the book.
This is one of them.
1 block of firm or extra firm tofu ( I use extra firm if I can find it), cut into small dice size cubes
fry in oil, about 1/3 of a cup, I always try to use a little less. *note: make sure the oil is hot and sizzles when you touch a piece of tofu to it before you add the tofu.
fry turning until it is golden and has a crispy edge.
not done yet, a little more like this
while the tofu is frying I make the sauce and set it aside.
Now for the sauce, mix together in a small bowl:
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup tamari soy sauce, sometimes I use kikkoman
2tsp freshly grated ginger
4 cloves minced garlic
Once the tofu is fried, add 1 cup of carrots thinly sliced, cook for about two minutes
add 4-5 cups of broccoli, florets, and some of the stem thinly sliced. Add sauce to pan and cook for 5 to 7 minutes turning to coat everything in the sauce. Broccoli should be turned bright green but still firm.
While this is cooking make the glaze.
Mix 1 Tbsp arrowroot powder with 1/4 cup water until dissolved.
Add this to the pan and stir until thick which will only take a few seconds.
Recipe source: The Green Door Restaurant – Vegetarian Cookbook. Adapted slightly by me.
You can purchase a copy of the cookbook here it seems to be much cheaper than amazon, a third of the price!
HAPPY NEW YEAR to you & Happy Blogiversary to us!
2013 is over, it seemed to go by really fast, but wasn’t a bad year. I hope 2014 is a great year and thank you to all the people who have followed our first year. It was last year on January 2nd that I logged into WordPress for the first time. It is our Blogiversary, and I will get to post something today!
Here are a few random pictures of some of our adventures that we didn’t blog about.
We surprised Evie with a Thanksgiving weekend trip to Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Canada. She loves it there.
Spent a little time with Umi the Fairmont Tremblant Ambassador, a lovely black Labrador.
Chillin
We had cranberry pecan caramel truffle turkeys for thanksgiving dessert, cute and yummy
This was her favourite meal the last time we were there, and she talked about it for an entire year.
Maple Taffy
oh my the candy, chocolate and caramel apples, ready for halloween
Having chocolate croissants every morning while in Mt. Tremblant, it is our Tremblant tradition.
We made granola-y oat bars that turned into another recipe with ice cream. I have to fine tune it and will try to do that some post soon.
We made fiddleheads, but I got carried away and forgot to take the final pictures
Got a new friend, Lily, who gets man-handled regularly
Had an awesome high tea at the Royal York hotel in Toronto during March break.
We went to see Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Over the Rainbow” starring Danielle Wade as Dorothy. Evie was a huge fan of the show (loved Danielle) and was in complete awe for almost 3 hours and didn’t want it to be over!
Ready for her own show
Learned to make origami green bin liners, was supposed to be our earth day post, didn’t happen, maybe this year!
Doubles as a hat in a pinch.
Evie also recently earned an orange belt in karate, I haven’t uploaded those pictures yet. I can’t believe that we just bought sparring equipment!
I hope you all stay tuned in and have a wonderful safe happy and healthy 2014.
Love, Lori and Evie
cookswithevie 