Eggs in the Garden

On Christmas Eve morning, my mom taught my sister how to make "Eggs in the Garden" for breakfast.  Since you can use many different ingredients, it's really more of a technique than a recipe.  First, we chopped a variety of fresh vegetables that were on hand.  On this day, it included sweet red pepper, green pepper, red cabbage, spinach and onion.  In my opinion, onions are essential.

Then we chopped some ham.  Any meat, or no meat is fine.

The veggies and ham are browned in butter.  Beans are added (in this case, canned black beans).  Seasoning is added (in this case, a delicious Tuscan seasoning blend from Oil and Vinegar).  The sauteed ingredients are pushed to the outside edge of the pan, leaving an empty circle in the middle.  Crack an egg into the circle and cover the pan until the egg is cooked.  Your egg is in a garden, get it?  Slide the cooked garden and egg onto a plate and enjoy. 

We also made a Mexican version that was seasoned with taco seasoning and topped with fresh avocado, salsa and sour cream.

Merry Breakfast

We had a very merry breakfast this morning: Chocolate chip oatmeal pancakes with sliced bananas, whipped cream (actually Cool Whip leftover from Thanksgiving), and Christmas sprinkles. 

Christmas is coming!

Math Cookies

Is there a more fun way to learn about math than making cookies? Probably not in second grade. Ehren and Christian's class got to make no-bake chocolate cookies to learn about measuring.

Pretty exciting stuff when you're in second grade.

The Meal in One

Again this year, SuperTarget has a screaming pre-Thanksgiving deal on almost all the ingredients in a super easy dinner I sometimes make.  It's called the "Meal in One." 

(Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup: 59¢, Campbells's tomato soup: 52¢, Del Monte canned green beans: 49¢, Betty Crocker Instant Potatoes: 89¢)

The Meal in One is a completely stereotypical Minnesota hotdish, but ironically my sister's Montana mother-in-law taught me how to make it.  If you want to give it a try, here's how:  Brown a pound of ground beef.   Meanwhile, in another pan, prepare the instant potatoes above (or if you already have some leftover mashed potatoes in your fridge, skip this step).  Once the beef has been browned, add the contents of the cans shown above (one can of cream of anything soup, one can of tomato soup and one can of vegetables).  Stir together the ingredients and transfer to a baking dish.  Top with scoops of mashed potatoes and shredded cheese.  Bake at 350 for about 20-30 minutes or until bubbling.  That's it.  Hearty, tasty, and super easy.  Sometimes I add onions to the ground beef, and sometimes I double the vegetables.  Frozen vegetables are also fine.  It always tastes good.

Chef Ehren

Every once in awhile, Ehren gets on a creative streak in the kitchen.  If you tell him you're making a "secret" recipe, there's a good chance he'll like it {within reason}.  He's intrigued by the idea of secret recipes.  Sometimes, when he really likes one of my "secret" recipes, he tells me, "You should put that on the computer" (he means this blog).  Sometimes he dreams up his own recipes, secret or otherwise.

Tonight, I was trying to introduce the kids to Gravad Lax (cured salmon), which I picked up from Ikea.  I admit that even I have a love/hate relationship with cured salmon and herring.  Sometimes I love it, and other times, it gags me a little.  Anyway, I was pumping up the kids to try it, explaining that it's salmon, but you eat it cold.  I also told them how it's made by covering a salmon fillet with spices and sugar and pressing them into the meat to preserve it.  Believe me, explaining the process makes the food seem ten times more intriguing.  They all tried a little.  Anna liked it and asked for more.  Christian gave me the sideways thumb rating (not thumbs up, not thumbs down), which means it's just ok, but no seconds, thanks.  Ehren tried it and said, eyes lit up, "I have an idea!" 

He buzzed over the microwave and made what is commonly known as a "cheesy pizza" in our house: a corn tortilla topped with shredded cheese and heated in the microwave.  He cut the tortilla pizza into triangles with our pizza cutter and then proceeded to deftly tuck a small piece of Lax under the edge of the melted cheese on each triangle.  "Look mom, it's salmon-stuffed cheesy pizza."  Before you get too impressed, he only ate one piece of his cooking masterpiece.  This often happens with his "secret" recipes.  They don't taste quite as amazing in real life as they did in his imagination, but still, I love his enthusiasm.

Planted

Today when I realized it was sixty-five degrees out, I decided it was now or never. Time to plant my garlic and winter onions!  I'm always a little behind with fall planting, but this year I had an excuse.  Dan's been working on building new garden boxes below the main garden.   Because most of our back yard is a hill, we need to terrace to increase our tillable area.. The whole garden has been a disaster area work-in-progress since September.  

Our soil is poor and high in clay content, so before planting, Dan and I worked some dead leaves into the soil to loosen it and provide a few nutrients.  I planted one row of winter onions and one row of garlic.  This year's garden didn't produce as much garlic as I would have liked, so it was painful to raid my garlic jar for planting.  I planted the cloves as deep as I could push them with my finger, and I spaced them about 3-4 inches apart.

As for winter onions, I don't think many people know what they are.  You plant them in the fall and when they come up the next spring, you pull the green onions (scallions) and eat them while they're small (in the spring and early summer).  You leave a few plants, and after they flower, they develop heads of small bulbs.  In the fall, you harvest these bulbs (the sets) and plant them again for the next spring.  My grandpa always grew them, but somehow no one in our family saved the sets from his garden.  A few years ago, I found a seed catalog from Wisconsin that sold them.  The catalog called them "Egyptian Walking Onions".  My dad, my uncle and I have all been growing them now for a few years.  They are not quite as sweet as the ones my grandpa grew, and you can't pull them up easily (you need a small spade), but they're still enjoyable.  I wish, wish, wish we had saved sets from my grandpa's garden!

You Just Never Know

Christian is definitely a finicky eater, but I've always counted my blessings in the fact that he likes many kinds of fruits and vegetables.  Lately however, he's been rejecting anything with skin, like grapes, peppers, and unpeeled apples.  He used to love all three of these things, so I've really been at a loss as to what to put in his lunch.  I mean, how many days in a row can the kid eat PBJ, a banana, chips and yogurt for lunch?  Anything else I put in his lunch goes untouched.  My goal is to go for high protein lunches with lots of fruit and vegetables and less sugar and refined carbs.  This has been working great with Ehren and Anna, but now that Christian is on strike against every plant product with skin, I'm at a loss.  Did I also mention that he has never eaten tomatoes, carrots, celery, raisins or craisins?  The other day, I had a little talk with him: "Christian, you know your body needs fruits and vegetables.  What can I put in your lunch besides bananas?"  His answer was "How about peas?"

He wanted the bagged sugar snap peas they sell at Costco.  So Friday night after work, I stopped at Costco for peas and some other groceries.  I also brought home a hot pizza.  When I got home, I thought the kids would be so excited about the pizza, but as I unpacked the groceries from Costco, they spied the bag of sugar snap peas.  Almost all together, they yelled, "PEAS!" and lunged for them like they were a hot fudge sundae.  Somebody asked in a desperate tone, "Mom, can we have some?"  When I casually told them "sure," they all started tearing at the bag grabbing handfuls of peas. They left the pizza sitting unopened on the table and even passed up a carton of fresh raspberries. Apparently they've really been missing Costco peas for the last five months while we've been eating out of the garden.