Peanut butter cookies, a table full of vegetables and stuffed squash

My favorite peanut butter cookie recipe! Dairy free and delicious. The only change I made was that I used agave nectar instead of maple syrup. They definitely go well with a glass of milk, but I have recently quit dairy (so hard to do!). I made these at around noon and they keep well for days.

Then at 4 I headed over to do some garden work for two hours in which I harvested these in return for my hard sweaty work:

There was more, but that was all that I could manage to fit in the bag I brought. I can’t figure out what kind of squash the really long and curvy one is at the bottom, but I’m sure it can be cooked like a zucchini. Anyway, I was so excited!! I haven’t harvested my own food since last summer, so it was nice to be able to do that again.

Mmmm.. just look at all those zucchinis! What am I going to do with them all? Well, I gave a few to my neighbor.. and will be shredding the very large ones to freeze for later to make zucchini muffins. One thing I would love to do is grill zucchinis, but of course, I do not own a grill. I’ll be on the lookout for someone that does though.

But tonight I couldn’t resist making stuffed squash

I cooked up a cup of israeli couscous and sauteed onions (with leftovers that didn’t fit into the squash), and added that to a mix of tomato, garlic, spices, and some of the innards of the sunburst squash.
I boiled the two squash for 5 minutes to soften them and scooped them out with a melon baller.
Cameron had added cheese to his squash (Oh… it was so hard to resist putting cheese on mine too) before I baked them at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. I served them on a bed of greens and home-sprouted mung beans.

It was my first time eating sunburst squash and israeli couscous, and it definitely won’t be my last.

Plum Muffins

Yes, you read that right. Plum muffins…. who knew I’d ever even think about making such a thing? Well it all happened like this: Cam and I were sitting down in our kitchen getting ready to eat lunch when our neighbor starts yelling Cam’s name. So he opens the back door, and she comes in and tells me there is a plum tree that must be picked! She had been walking home from getting a few groceries and noticed a beautiful plum tree in someone’s yard, so she asked permission to pick them. They said yes.

And now here I am, with 70 pitted and halved plums in my freezer, three large containers full in the fridge, and a dozen plum muffins. I am already plummed-out. I made a plum, blackberry, and blueberry smoothie (all hand-picked and organic, of course!) Then I proceeded to spend way too long looking for recipes on what the hell to do with 150+ plums.

Unfortunately, I am jarless, so I couldn’t make any jam (not today, anyway) but I found this: Plum Cupcakes. The recipe only made 7 muffins, in which the only things that I changed from the ingredient list was eliminating half the noted amount of brown sugar, with the other half agave nectar (and turned down the oven temp 25 degrees); added cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove; and omitted the citrus zest because I didn’t have any (but I did add a drop of orange essential oil, but I don’t think a drop did anything, and that’s okay). It baked for 20 minutes. Very tasty.

But because it only made 7 muffins, I made another batch. But this time I doubled the recipe since I am planning to take most of them to Portland to give to Cam and my family. This time, I was only able to use half whole wheat flour and half brown rice flour since that was my last of the whole wheat. Everything else I added was the same from above (just doubled) and this time I halved the plum halves and stuck them further down.

They’re pretty good for plum muffins. The second batch could have used more spices, but I wasn’t measuring.

Well… Again with the procrastination. I have a final exam in 12 hours… Okay, I’ll hit the “Publish” button and will immediately pick up my study-guide. I promise.

It’s berry season!

Two weekends ago my mom came down to visit from around the Seattle area. We went to an organic u-pick blueberry farm. It was also the weekend of the country fair (which I decided to skip out on this year) so I had to figure out an alternative route to get to West Eugene.

When we got there, we saw so many cars parked on the side of the road, and I was worried it was going to be really crowded. But, it wasn’t too bad, though there were a lot of little kids running around. We both carried around provided buckets and filled them up in a couple of hours.

And apparently, you’re not supposed to wash them until you are about to eat them. I didn’t know that, and I washed about half of them to store in the fridge. Then I read that tidbit online, and stored the other half in the freezer, unwashed. Cameron and I will need to go picking again, as we’re almost out!

The other afternoon I made some blueberry bran muffins. I usually make blueberry muffins with whole wheat pastry flour, but wanted to try something different this time. I didn’t like the bran muffins nearly as much as I liked the other ones that I usually make. Oh well. the batch made 15 muffins, too much for us, so I’ll be giving some to my neighbor.

It’s also blackberry season! Himalayan blackberries are an invasive species around here, and they grow like crazy here, though mostly near water. Every day for the past week, I’ve gone out to pick some around my block. Spiders have begun to spin webs in front of some really ripe blackberries, so I have to be careful. Though the other day I was at school and felt something tickle my arm, so I looked down and a spider was climbing up a single strand of web attached to my arm…

Anyway, two days ago Cameron and I took a bike ride on a path with more blackberry bushes than you can imagine. We found a good spot and picked a nice amount, some of which we would make blackberry cobbler out of. There are a lot of fruits that are still green, or not fully ripe yet, but there are still plenty that are.

I’ve also noticed that black walnuts are coming along… but I’ve heard that they are nearly impossible to break open, but are well worth the task. There are plenty of walnut trees around Eugene, so I plan on collecting some in a few months.

fresh out of the oven… you can see the steam coming off of them.

recipe from here: baby bran muffins

Homemade croutons

I know… it’s been a while. 

But as I started chopping up an old loaf french bread (that has been sitting in the pantry, rock hard, for way too long), I thought about how I haven’t posted on here in quite some time, and decided to grab my camera and tripod. 

I melted some butter and tossed the “cubes”, adding some olive oil to make sure they were fully coated. I realized I only had one garlic clove, but chopped it up anyway and added it in. I added some onion powder (garlic powder would have been nice too, as the garlic pieces didn’t really stick on very well), pepper, and either thyme or oregano (no label).

baked it for 350F until they browned a bit, 10-15 minutes.

Kale chips, eclairs, knit hats and a cat

Throughout the past week I’ve cooked, baked, knitted, and visited my mom’s house where one of my cats takes up residence.

I made these about a week ago..
a little bit of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Really make sure to lay them flat or the entire piece won’t get crispy. They truly do melt in your mouth,
but don’t let them overbake.

Friday, March 20th was both my boyfriend and my birthday. I was at my mom’s for a few days and wanted to make him something special. He loves eclairs, and I have been meaning to make him one for a while now, so I decided it was no better time than for his birthday.
The first recipe I used was horrible. I kept stirring over the heat and the dough never dried out so I had to trash it. Then I used this recipe and it worked out well. It does take quite a while to get the dough to form one ball and separate.. actually, I’m not sure if it works, because I was too tired and still had to finish knitting something, so I didn’t want until it formed one ball. Maybe I should have though.. the dough was very dense.

The recipe said it would make about 10, but it only made 4 for me, but that’s probably because I made them pretty large. I actually forgot to set a timer so I had to use one of them as a tester.

10 seconds after I took them out of the oven, they deflated. The cream I made didn’t work out, it curdled.. So I used heavy whipping cream to just make a simple whipped cream since I had no time to try the thicker cream again.
I used 2oz bittersweet chocolate, melted it with a bit of butter and spread it on.

I also knit a squirrel for Cameron, since he thinks they are the cutest animals ever. I used a penguin pattern because I couldn’t find a free squirrel pattern that I liked. But of course I altered the penguin pattern to make it more squirrel-like, using the penguin pattern as more of a guideline. I was actually up until 2 a.m. two nights working on it. I didn’t have any black round beads at my mom’s, nor did I have time to knit on hands and feet but I’ll be doing that soon.

I finished another hat this weekend with some beautiful yarn called manos del uruguay, as well as knit some ears on an ear-flap hat made from alpaca (sooo soft!).

And an extra photo of my kitty at my mom’s.

Hamantaschens

So.. I’m not really into religion, but I do like having an excuse to make something new. Since today is Purim, and yesterday I went to a Pre-Purim festival because I was invited to hang up some of my photos, I decided to go along and bake something tonight.

I tried searching for an already-tried agave hamantaschen recipe, but the only ones I found were gluten free too. And although I’m all for gluten free, I didn’t have the right flour substitutes. So I used this recipe for the dough. I only used a third of each ingredient, replaced the sugar with agave, and lowered the oven temp 25 degrees. I melted the butter in the microwave for 20 seconds, and mixed it with the agave and egg before adding the dry ingredients. I came out with 8 hamantaschens about 3.5 inches in diameter, and one baby hamantaschen about 2 inches in diameter. 

I decided to use two fillings: poppy seed and Crofter’s Super Fruit Spread (Cam’s favorite with peanut butter sandwiches).
With the poppy seed filling, I halved the recipe and used 2% milk.

I used a pint glass to cut out the circles, but ended up flattening them even more with the palm of my hand… Apparently that wasn’t even flat enough (not for my likings anyway).

I couldn’t grind up the poppy seeds very much in the mortar and pestle, but it turned out fine without grinding.

Though it was a bit runny, and could have used something to thicken it up.


I put the dough in the fridge while I was making the poppy seed filling, and then put the filling in the fridge to cool down while I did some dishes. When I took everything out, the dough was a bit dry and stiff, so I wet my fingers with water while folding the sides… but the dough kept cracking. Luckily it wasn’t too hard to seal up.

I kept them in the oven for 10 minutes, turning the baking sheet around halfway through.

They came out nicely. Kind of cakey, and they reminded Cameron of breakfast scones. I think it’s hard to make anything crispy/crunchy with agave. I had made 3 with the Super Fruit jam filling and the rest with the poppy seed filling and still had some filling left over. Cam favored the jam hamantaschens, and even put some more on.

notes for next time:
use less milk in the poppy seed filling
if using heat with the poppy seed filling, do it before making the dough so it cools down when the dough is ready
roll out dough thinner
bigger variety of fillings

Butternut squash with browned butter and thyme + banana bread

so delicious and simple. (made this yesterday)

i had half a leftover butternut squash from making a casserole dish the other day (that did not come out that well.. it called for greek plain yogurt.. way too sour. uck). i’ve had this squash since september! ah, storage vegetable indeed.

today i made banana bread. adapted from: http://www.seasaltwithfood.com/2009/02/banana-bread.html

i used 3 large bananas, 1/2c butter, a little more than 1/2c agave instead of brown sugar, lowered the temp 25 degrees, and added walnuts