Julie Surprise: Out of the Blue Salad

I will be the first to confess that I'm not naturally a very organized person, I'm the one who is usually a bit late, or who will call you last minute for a baby-sitting gig because I totally spaced something I needed a sitter for until the night before or even the morning of. Yes, I know. I am ashamed. I am getting better about it though, through huge effort and help from my list app, reminders and calender on my smart phone, I have improved slightly.

On the other hand, I can do spontaneous, and I can handle random. I will not have a break down if plans fall through or if something changes. I can handle change. In fact, I've discovered I sort of need things to change up a bit everyone once in a while because too much structure makes me crazy (i.e. grumpy, emotional, intense, high strung, etc.) My husband and I are well matched because we both enjoy making random and spontaneous decisions together.

For example, back in July, on one of the rare Sundays in which we did not have a family party or any other after church obligations, we spontaneously decided to drop in at his parents house to borrow their barbecue grill and their pool for a little family summer fun with our kids. His parents were out of town, but even if they hadn't been, they also have no problem with spontaneous drop-ins.

Anyway, once we got there, my hubby started firing up the grill and he asked me to look around the kitchen to figure out what else we could eat, like some kind of salad to have on the side with our grilled chicken.

(I guess I should clarify that this is also totally cool at my in-laws house. They have a standing policy that if the food is there you can have it. [which idea, honestly, was a little hard for me to get used to when I first got married because in my house you always had to ask about anything you wanted to eat in case Mom was saving it for something.] My mother-in-law sort of has this mentality about it; she feels like if she is generous with what she has, that there will always be enough. In fact, I think she sort of has a contract going on with God where if she shares her abundance that He promises her that her cupboards will always be full. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure there was something like that in the story my hubby told me.)

Anyway, there I was, in someone else's kitchen, with the task of figuring out what to eat for our spontaneous Sunday picnic. I looked through the fridge, but as my in-laws were out of town, there wasn't much there in way of produce. So I checked the freezer, "Hmm, frozen fruit." and the pantry, "Nothing." and the storage room, "Hmm, canned pineapple."

What I did find in the fridge was part of what got my wheels turning about the possibilities. My mother-in-law had some good sour cream. The kind that has only two ingredients (cream and enzymes) so I was thinking maybe I could use it to make some sort of fruit salad.
Pineapple is awesome with cottage cheese, so it seemed like I could perhaps make it work with the sour cream so I dumped a can of drained pineapple into a bowl and plopped about a half a cup of sour cream on top. Then I added a bit of sea salt and a packet of Truvia because they don't keep coconut sugar in their house (and I can't eat cane sugar).

Mixed that all up and tasted it. Hmm, not too shabby. At the same time I was doing this, I was making a fruit smoothie for us to drink with some of the frozen fruit in the freezer. I thought about adding a variety of fruit to the salad, but honestly, I was thinking something a little simpler sounded good so I decided to only go with frozen blueberries (about 1/2 cup again). Blueberries and pineapple just sounded delicious.

Once I started stirring those in, the color of the salad turned a lovely bluish-lavender color and I figured I was pretty much done. . .

Except . . . there just didn't seem to be much salad for everyone, and while it was good, it seemed like it needed something. A little more contrast of flavor. so I looked in the fruit bowl and found a couple of ripe bananas. I sliced one up and threw it in.

Tada! Out of the blue, we have a salad!

Needless to say, this salad was not only lovely to look at but it was delicious to eat as well. In fact, I had to go back inside halfway through our picnic and make a second batch so everyone could have as much as they wished. So, that being said, I'm going to double the recipe here at the bottom because for a good sized group you'll probably want it at least doubled.

Julie Surprise: Out of the Blue Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 cans chunk pineapple or tidbits would work well too, drained. (I added the juice to our smoothie)
• 1 cup frozen blueberries, (you could use fresh, but it might not look as blue in the end.)
• 2 large bananas sliced.
• 1 cup clean sour cream.
• 1 packet of truvia, or non-cane sweetener of your choice (honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar)
• A dash or two of fine sea salt.

Mix and enjoy!

I'm so glad that I was given the task to spontaneously whip up a salad with random ingredients.
If I hadn't had that opportunity, I never would have tasted this delicious concoction!
So while I may appear to be a very flawed person, I'm so glad I can handle being creative under pressure. Things can be pretty yummy, out of the blue.


~Julie :}

Edible Decor

Ever since I started buying a Bountiful Basket, drinking Green Smoothies, and just buying more produce in general, one thing that I've enjoyed beyond the obvious benefits of such a life style is the fact that; because my kitchen  theme has always been fruit, with fun, graphic decor in bright colors. This makes is not only logical but very enjoyable and ascetically pleasing to have fresh fruit in the kitchen because I can use it as decor. Plus, having the fruit out in plain site makes it easier to remember to eat it before it goes bad. That is, if you can bring yourself to ruin the lovely display. Lol!
Of course my husband has no problem with the latter issue so it turns out to be a good system for eating our fresh fruit regularly. 

I have a fruit bowl, but often it fills up so quickly that it becomes necessary to use other places for displaying fruit. 

My favorite is the ledge under the window in the kitchen. Here are just a few of the arrangements that have resided there until they were eaten.

Pears . . .

 Golden Delicious Apples

Asian Pears and Apples

Maybe this will inspire some of you to find fun ways to display fruit in your own kitchen, and thereby encourage your family to eat it more often.

Julie Surprise: Oven-less Cherry Pie!

Okay, so normally you would want some kind of oven for this recipe. 

 Mine was ovenless out of necessity because our oven has been broken for the past two months or so.

 Luckily for me, the weather has been such that most people wouldn't want to turn on an oven anyway, so I was able to 'bake' my crust on the dashboard of my minivan for a few hours. It might have even taken less time if I had thought of it sooner since it got to be at least 102° fahrenheit that day. As it was, I put the crust on the dashboard and rolled up all the windows at about 5pm at which point the sun was about to go behind some trees near our parking lot and then a cloud cover came over. I pulled it out after 9pm (after I'd put the girls to bed) thinking that it would simply have to wait till another hot day since the next day I'd be gone to Lagoon all day, but to my delight and relief when I pulled it out it was firm and baked through. Yay!
 The recipe I used was extremely simple. I basically used this shortbread recipe that I found on Pinterest except I didn't have any almond flour so I gleaned inspiration from the photo for this crust recipe and used ground almonds instead. It worked great!
So, since I guess I once again, sort of made my own recipe, I'll be kind enough to type it out below for those who want to try the "Julie" method. :}

 As for the cherry filling, well, that was an interesting adventure in and of itself. A tangent which needs it's own post, actually.

Basically it started out as a bowl of fresh cherries marinated with lemon juice and honey because I didn't have any sugar at the time I received the cherries. It sat in my fridge for almost three weeks. Finally, the evening before the fourth of July I decided to try making the pie despite my lack of oven. So I whipped up the crust as stated above. It was only after bringing the crust in from the van that night that I figured I'd better finish making the pie and began to consider how best to deal with the filling.
I'd added some coconut sugar to the cherries earlier that evening while working on the crust, and it was back in my fridge in a glass casserole dish with a lid. It occurred to me as I came in with the crust that while I could use the stove top (which still works) to cook the filling, it seemed a shame to dirty another dish when it was already in a lovely microwavable dish, and I didn't see any reason why the microwave wouldn't work. So that's what I ended up doing. I cooked the cherry filling in the microwave on the fresh veggies setting until it made the kitchen smell wonderful. Then I stirred in a pack and a half of pectin. Then I scooped the cherries into the crust. There was quite a bit of sauce though so I sort of strained the fruit out of the sauce so the pie wouldn't be too runny. The leftover sauce went into a jar in the fridge were it turned into a sort of cherry jelly, not unlike grape jelly actually, though perhaps a tad more tart.
Once that was done I toasted some sliced almonds with a little butter and coconut sugar on the stove top and added those to the pie as a topping.

Tada! Julie Surprise Cherry Pie!


Now, here's the recipe all written out a bit more tidily.

Almond Lemon Crust:

Ingredients: 

• 6 Tablespoons organic butter
• 2 cups freshly ground almonds (Used my little food processor for this)
• 1/3 cup granulated sweetener (I used coconut sugar)
• 1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest (Mine was actually frozen, but it worked fine)

Directions:

• Melt the butter in the microwave in the glass pie dish. Add the almond meal, sweetener, and lemon zest, stirring until fully combined.
• To make a tart or pie crust:
• No need to pre-chill, just press dough into the pie pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees (F) for 15 mins until firm and golden brown. Or, as in my case, put on the dashboard of a hot vehicle for 2-5 hours or until firm and cooked through. (I put a sheet of tinfoil underneath it, shiny side up, and another to one side to try and reflect the sun to the top of it. Don't know if it made any difference, but there you have it.)

Cherry Filling:

Ingredients: 

• 4 cups fresh, pitted cherries
• Enough honey to coat cherries well
• Juice from half a lemon
• 1/2 cup granulated sweetener (I used coconut sugar) Optional
  1 to 1 & 1/2 packs of pectin (depending on how runny filling is)

Directions:

• Stir honey and lemon with cherries and if you wish, refrigerate overnight (or up to three weeks!)
  Add extra sweetener (coconut sugar) if needed before cooking.
• Cook in the microwave on the fresh vegetable setting until filling become fragrant and looks done. Then stir in pectin and transfer to crust. Add topping and refrigerate pie overnight or until set.
  If you wish to cook the filling on the stove top add the pectin once it comes to a simmer and stir and cook until sauce begins to thicken.
  Then add to crust as stated above.

Topping:

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 cup granulated sweetener (I used coconut sugar) Optional
• 1/3 cup organic butter

Directions:

• Add almonds to a small frying pan or skillet and toast on low heat stirring occasionally until fragrant.
  Add sweetener (coconut sugar) and organic butter and stir until sugar melts and coats the almonds evenly.
  Now, you can let the almonds cool and break them up over your pie, or you can do what I did and let them drizzle out of the hot pan over the pie, using a rubber spatula to guide them until the pie is evenly coated. Either way works.

Enjoy!

~Julie :}

Ideas for My Kitchen

My kitchen has been a work in progress ever since I married 7 years ago. Granted the actual kitchen has also changed twice since then but the decor ideal that I hold has remained the same. I simply have yet to reach that ideal. Slowly over time I've collected bits and pieces and my dream is that by the time I move into an actual house that I will be able to make it all come together. In the meantime however, I see no reason to wait to try to make my current kitchen as ideal as possible. Even though I know we won't be here forever.

Anyway, I found this video today on HGTV and I want to remember the ideas, I just couldn't get it to pin on pinterest so I'm going to post it here first so I can hopefully pin it from my blog.


Okay, so that embedding code didn't work for whatever reason. Here's a link instead. I like the idea of using a temporary idea like contact paper. I wouldn't go for a stainless steele look, but I'm wondering if I'll ever be able to find some in a fun graphic or even photo real print so I could pull off something like this.

Yes, I want my kitchen to be fruit themed. I am a bit particular about the actual style however. I'm not into the whole wine label/vintage look. I want it to be more graphic, bright and stylized. Which is why I came up with my Sassy Kitchen designs. Anyway, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to find a contact paper with a design that fits my taste, but I'm going to put this here just to help me remember the idea.

What I Ate: 09-04-12

Pear Pudding

We have been abundantly blessed with lots of fruits and veggies from friends and family lately. Especially pears. I simply adore pears! Lucky for me, my mother-in-law isn't a huge fan, but her mother-in-law who happens to live next door, has a pear tree so the two huge buckets of pears that ended up in my in-law's garage ultimately ended up in my tummy, for the most part. :}

Of the last installment that we acquired from them, a few of them were really, really ripe, so I knew I'd need to use these ones immediately rather then eat them at my leisure, so I started searching around on Pinterest on Tuesday for a nice, doable pear recipe.
My first thought was pear butter, but in the end, I didn't really have everything I needed for that so I kept looking and managed to find this simple Pear Pudding recipe on Foodnetwork.com.  They didn't have a picture so after pinning the recipe I determined that if it turned out at all that I would post a picture here to add to my pin.

First time I ever made a recipe that called for a water bath. Oo la la! Fancy!

I changed the recipe a tad by substituting the sugar for raw honey. Also,1 teaspoon of cinnamon seemed like a lot. I wanted it to taste more like pear than cinnamon so I only added a dash or two. I also didn't have a lemon, but I did have a fresh lime so I substituted lime zest for lemon. I did use organic butter on the pan, though mine was salted instead of unsalted. I honestly never buy unsalted, and I've never had a problem with stuff turning out too salty. The last change I made was that I didn't have any breadcrumbs (sounded kinda gross to me anyway) so I crushed up the last of the health food store graham crackers that I'd purchased for our camping trip last weekend (for healthy-ish s'mores.)

 Anyway, it seems like it turned out okay. It never really set up to be very thick. Perhaps I should have baked it longer than recommended. It was quite golden around the edges though. It would have been nice if the recipe had mentioned whether or not I should test it with a knife or something. It said 'serve cool or chilled' so I chilled it for almost an hour thinking maybe that would help it thicken. Of course, the whole reason it was still a bit runny could have been due to the fact that I used honey instead of sugar. 
At any rate. It was deee-licious!

Sweet and kinda rich but sort of light at the same time. The taste was just so perfectly balanced, it's hard to describe. I loved the pear flavor and I do not regret cutting back on the cinnamon at all. Not that I have anything against cinnamon, and maybe if I do this again I'll try the full amount, but I just wasn't in the mood for a cinnamon dessert. I wanted a fresher, fruitier flavored dessert. And that's exactly what I got. Yay!

Julie Surprise: Golden Pumpkin Soup

Here is a recipe I invented tonight.  It's similar to one I invented a couple of years ago but since I couldn't find that recipe I had to come up with a new one.

Golden Pumpkin Soup

Main Ingredients
3 small yellow squash, chopped
1 half green bell pepper, chopped
1 half onion, chopped
1 15 ounce can of pumpkin puree
1/4 cup Real Parmesan Cheese, shredded
Approximately 4 ounces of Medium Cheddar Cheese, shredded
About a tablespoon of Honey

Seasoning Ideas 
Sea Salt
Black Pepper

(season to taste, sorry, I didn't measure, I like to just add dashes of things but I tried to put them in order of what I used more of first)

Curry Powder and/or
Cumin
Cinnamon
Turmeric
Garam Masala
Powdered Mustard
Dried celery leaves, crushed
Cayenne pepper

Optional Garnishes
Sour Cream
Sliced Apples

Directions

1.  Put the chopped squash, onions and green pepper into a pot of water enough to cover them well and set it
      to boil.
2.  Once it's boiling lower the heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes.
3.  Once soft mostly drain veggies and run through a food processor or blender until smooth, return to pot.
4.  Add pumpkin puree to veggie puree and stir over medium to low heat until smooth-ish.
5. Season according to preference then add cheeses one at a time stirring in between to help melt the cheese.
6.  Add the honey last, stir and then serve in bowls with a generous dollop of sour cream and use fresh apple slices for dipping if you wish.

Note:  I have to give my Lily the credit for the apple idea.  She was the one who asked if we could slice up apples to dip in her soup.  It was pure inspiration!
                                                                                                 

Bountiful Baskets

A New Years resolution I made this year was to eat more fresh produce.  While this goal seemed like it might be difficult given the price of fresh produce, I have a found a great solution. Bountiful Baskets.

This is a food co-op in which you can get a huge basket that is 50% fruit and 50% vegetables all for the amazing price of $16 per basket.  Another great thing about this is that they strive to get produce that is as close to locally grown as possible. This really appeals to me because, of course, I'd like to support local farmers as well as save money and have my fruit be much fresher that if it was shipped from another country.  Right now Bountiful Baskets operates in the following states:  Arizona, Washington, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Texas.  If you don't live in one of these states you might be able to find a way to get it started where you live. It's a great program and since they ask for volunteers it's a great way to feel a part of your community and teach your children about service. You can click the link above to visit the official website or like them one facebook.