Parent Teacher Conference Supper

The past few days have been busy in the kitchen. G signed us up to serve a meal to the teachers at the school connected to our church for Parent Teacher Conference night, and we decided to use the opportunity to make a triple recipe of our favorite meal-train meal so we could provide a meal for a few other church families (new babies and a death in the family). 

It worked pretty slick. 

I had made another roaster of applesauce last week, so we had plenty of that on hand for all three groups. 

The night before we served, I mixed up a double batch of gingersnaps to bake the day of. They were very easy to scoop with a muffin scoop being chilled from the fridge. 

The day of serving, I made a double batch of my go-to fresh bread recipe. I used the oven with the light on to get it to rise in a timely manner, and it turned out the best it has in a long time, possibly ever! 

G came home early from work to make the goulash soup. He was disappointed in the flavor. Instead of fresh garlic, we used up some minced garlic I had frozen longer ago and I think that made all the difference. Oh well. The people we're serving it to haven't had it before, so they'd never know the difference. 

One of the teachers is dairy free, which wasn't an issue for most of the items (cheese in the soup can be served on the side). But I forgot about dessert until the last minute. G wanted to buy a bar of chocolate for her, but I was stubborn and said if the rest of the meal was from scratch, then her dessert should be too. And it would take time to buy a dairy free chocolate bar, probably more time than it would take to whip up a dessert. 

A Google search for "quick, one serving dairy free dessert" brings up a gigantic list of mug cakes- cakes you mix in a mug and microwave for a few minutes. A recipe for vegan pudding caught my eye: one avocado, 3T cocoa powder, 3T maple/agave syrup, 2T alternative milk, splash of vanilla. Blend together. Done. Well, that sounds easy enough. And I had just made that frosting out of avocados and cocoa powder, so I had a feeling it would turn out. 

G made it in the magic bullet blender, which is good for small quantities, but I thought there wouldn't be enough moisture to get it to blend smoothly. I was right. It did an okay job, but you could see green chunks of avocado amongst the chocolate. Not very appealing. So I used my immersion blender to fix it. And it did the job. I licked the spatula and thought it tasted lovely. 

The teachers appreciated the meal. They said the bread was the best, the soup was filling, and the kombucha wasn't as bad as they thought it would be. 😂 

Garden Update

There was a freeze warning the other night (maybe two weeks ago?) so we picked everything that could be picked in the garden and brought it into the garage/house. 

We encountered a few surprises! 

Like this watermelon among the thistles: 

Is it ripe? I haven't cut into it yet to tell...

G found two yuzu fruits ready for harvest from the container plants. 

I found a few squash I hadn't expected after our battle with the squash bugs and mildew. 

There were a few pumpkins, much to Jaron's delight! 

All three of these are from our garden:

Jaron placed the bottom two in the arrangement. Since then, some critter (chicken possibly?) has nibbled on the white pumpkin. 

Here's what else we hauled out of the garden. 

Some of it I can use, but a lot is going to the goats. They don't seem to mind. 

We had a ton of teeny green tomatoes. Worth saving? Probably not, but I did anyway. 🤪 Also a handful of teeny bell peppers. 

By the time I got around to processing the leafy greens, most of them had dried out. Problem or preservation hack? 😂 I think I'll let them continue to dry out or freeze dry them to make a powder for soups and such. 

Last of the Goat Milk

We haven't milked Sybil for days and I've been slowly chipping away at our milk supply. I finally used the last of it in this recipe: sausage tortellini soup from the Cozy Cook blog. 

Although in classic Emily form, I adapted the recipe to what I had on hand. 

Instead of sausage, I used leftover roast beef (and I added it at the end just to warm up, instead of cooking it in the beginning). 

I also used beef broth instead of chicken, since I had that leftover from the roast. And I used goat milk instead of cream obviously. 

The tortellini we had was dry as opposed to refrigerated or frozen as the recipe calls for it, which made me pause a moment before adding it to the soup. I almost cooked it separately so the noodles wouldn't balloon up in the leftovers. But by that point I had added a couple extra cups of water to the soup to account for the extra moisture the dry noodles would absorb, and I didn't want the soup to be watery. In the end, I cooked the noodles in the soup as the recipe says. 

We had a lot of frozen kale in the freezer, so I probably put double the amount in the soup. It had smelled so delicious prior to adding the kale! After the kale, that was all I could smell. 

But the taste was still good even with all my adjustments. Sometime I'd like to make this recipe for real. 🤪 

It looked and smelled good enough to G that he broke his fast to eat some for supper! 

I forgot to take a picture of the fresh soup, but here's what it looked like leftover. More like a stew than a soup. The noodles didn't soak up as much as I thought they would. 

 

Rearranging

Just over a month before baby's due date, so we're doing a little rearranging to make things smoother after baby comes. 

First thing was rearranging our bedroom so Jaron is on G's side. We added a floor lamp and switched out bedside tables so there was room for Jaron's books. 

He had a great time running around the house with a tape measure measuring everything ("twenty inches!"). And then he had an even better time moving his books over to the new shelf. Lots of squeals of excitement. 

His old bedtime bookshelf is now home to his favorite tall books that don't fit on the other shelf. And he wanted Mr. Owl and the Octopus to sleep there too. 

While the guys did the heavy lifting, I gathered supplies I might need for birth. 

My pre-baby to-do list is getting shorter! 

Long-term Veggie Storage

Note to self- store apples in a drawer in the fridge so their off-gassing doesn't ripen the other produce in the fridge... 

The garage fridge had been packed with cabbage, so packed the bottom drawers had to be taken out to make room for it all. 

I thought it was perfect there was just enough room in the door shelves for the apples. But then we noticed the cabbage outer leaves turning a weird gray and drying out. 

I'm sure they're fine underneath those leaves, but that got me wondering why that happened. The loose apples were the only thing I could think of as a cause. 

And the Internet backed me up. 

So I shuffled the cabbages around and added the bins back to the fridge. 

Making sauerkraut is at the top of my list this week!!!

Birthday Boy Turns Two

Poor Jaron. He turns two today and his parents are still restricting sugar, even on his birthday. 🤪

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for a cake for him this year, but flipping through my recipe book I found my notes/recipes from last year. These two recipes jumped out at me: 

Seems easy enough. We had the ingredients on hand, including the sweet potatoes. 

The batter turned a lovely green color. 

I was going to make a small cake for Jaron and a different dessert for everyone else, but G thought others might enjoy trying Jaron's cake, so I made two 9" cakes. 

Very moist and solid. The flavor was pretty bland, although the lemon came through lightly. I had debated adding a little maple syrup to the batter and decided against it. Should've put some in. 

The frosting was easier to taste as you go, and I did end up adding a splash of maple syrup to the mix. It's also possible my ratios were off because of the size of the sweet potato I used. And I added more dates because I had them and I wanted the frosting sweeter. So did it even turn out like it was supposed to? I think so. 

The texture was smooth and creamy like typical frosting. 

And it had a pleasantly sweet taste. You'd never guess the base was sweet potato and avocado. 

We went down to my parents' farm to celebrate Jaron's birthday Thursday night since it's easier for the three of us to travel. We served goulash soup, homemade bread, applesauce, and roasted carrots. Jaron was too full from supper to want any cake. 

So we served everyone else and he got some on his actual birthday. 

My family loves sugar, so I knew it wasn't going to be a huge hit (hence the backup dessert- brownies). I was pleased with how many people wanted to try it! Not many actually finished their serving though. 🙃 

I thought it was okay. The cake would make a great muffin. 😉 As I suspected, the cake would've benefited from some honey or maple syrup. The frosting was good. G thought it would've been great with whipped cream on top. 

What did Jaron think when he finally got a piece? 

He ate a couple bites, seemed to like it, but then he handed what was left back to me and asked for applesauce. 😂 In the cake's defense, it is really good applesauce!

 

Goat Cheese Lasagna

Not sure why lasagna came to mind as a supper idea, but it did. My only memory of making lasagna is from my childhood making it with my mom. Mostly her complaining about how much work it was and the noodles sticking together. 

I looked up a recipe that uses uncooked noodles so I could skip that step. 😜 This recipe was easy to put together and fairly quick. 

My mom used cottage cheese in her lasagna. I used my goat cottage cheese which is kind of like a ricotta, so it worked with the recipe. 

I also threw in more noodles. Three noodles across didn't seem like enough. Four were too many for my pan, so I broke them up to fit. 

It was a little difficult to spread the cheese layer, but I figured it didn't have to be perfect since it would all blend together anyway. 

And since I added more noodles, I topped the pan with additional marinara sauce... I had used a store bought jar for the main recipe (a few oz less than the recipe called for) and supplemented with a pint of homemade sauce. I haven't enjoyed eating the sauce on its own, so this was the perfect way to use it. 

And the lasagna turned out perfect.