it's that time again... rainbow sprinkled rice-crispie treats (with a little bit of dry box cake mix thrown in!) for the bake sale at adella's school tomorrow night.
tomorrow is also talent show night, and adella will be performing some hula-hoop magic. can't wait!
i don't usually post recipes here, and lately i've been pretty slack on finding and preparing new dishes. time is short, you know, so most often i just stick to the basics and old standbys. but i wanted to share this one with you, and also wanted to put this recipe someplace where i couldn't lose it or forget about it. so this isn't exactly a recipe -- it's really just a new salad idea that for some reason i am ridiculously excited about. it's my new favorite thing to eat. here's how you make it (or here's how I make it):
when you're ready to eat it, just toss the romaine with the beany mixture and eat it up! in the photos, you'll see i added some extras: avacado, tomaotes, and leftover grilled zucchini and chicken. the extras are optional, of course. i think the salad is great by itself. i should also add that it's a twist on an Everyday Foods recipe that i found a while back. but i added the orange marmalade and i think that's the real secret ingredient anyway, so i'm calling it (mostly) mine.
*food pictures are hard, aren't they? does anyone really want to see what i'm eating?
i'll let you decide...
has somehow slipped completely away from me. i downloaded the pictures from my camera today, and was shocked to see over a week's worth of un-blog-recorded photos! tsk, tsk...
so here's a little photo recap for ya:
:: a dinner picnic at the playground ::
:: strawberry freezer jam! ::
with some help from my little kitchen fairies, we made some scrumptious strawberry jam. (as a side note, i realized that this season, i've spent over $50 on strawberries at various 'pyo' farms and farmers' markets --- and they've been worth every penny. nothing quite like a perfect sweet bucket of strawberries. i think i froze enough to make another batch of freezer jam, since we seem to have somehow eaten almost all 5 jars already!)
:: bookends ::
:: prince-ss, and movie star ::
:: the nature center ::
we took advantage of stig having the day off, and the four of us getting some quality family hang-out time together, and headed out of town (a wee bit) to go strawberry picking!
the weather was beautiful, the strawberry fields were full of red ripe strawberries, and we filled our basket in no time.
later we wandered around the fields a little, noticing the colorful rows of flowers, and the honeybees buzzing around their hives...
and then headed home, to do a little more quality hanging-out and making (what else?)...
strawberry shortcake!
yum. yum. double yum!
i forsee another basket of strawberries before this picking season is over...
(and - you didn't think i could resist the title of this post, did you? no way. no self-respecting blogger with a strawberry-themed post could get away with not referencing the almighty beatles!)
adella has had a thing, for a while now, about wanting to make lemonade. and when i saw this little mini-juicer at a thrift sale for 75 cents, i had to have it. she was really excited when i brought it home, and today we got a chance to try it out.
we used a super-basic recipe: 4 lemons, 4 cups water, 1/2 cup sugar. and it came out perfect!
an easy, simple, and fun afternoon activity - with delicious results! good thing we got a large bag of lemons - this recipe was gone in no time.
this monday is our annual cookie exchange party. today i started making some of my cookies, honey-walnut coins, from Martha (hhmm... can't find the recipe online right now) they looks good, don't they? they are. not too sweet, but rich, buttery, and nutty.
this year we've got 12 people participating, which means i've got 13 dozen cookies to make and package up over the next few days. the best part is - i'll be coming home with 13 dozen assorted cookies monday night! yuuu-um!! of course, many of them will go to neighbors, friends, and family. but i have to be honest and say that most will be eaten by us, most likely within a pretty short time frame. ...'tis the season!
and other indoor activities, because it may look sunny and nice, but the wind will blow you away outside today. i'm really getting grumpy about this weather - i'm ready for spring! i promise hope this will be the last time i complain about it.
we made some morning glory muffins today - chock full of apples, carrots, raisins, walnuts, coconut, and other yummy goodness.
adella just loves to cook, and has started declaring herself, "a good little cooker," anyone know where i can get a small chef's hat? she's been asking where her big white hat is...
mmm... 
...mmm!
and, in knitting news (which there hasn't been much of lately) i have a couple of projects on the needles. chances are, they'll be on the needles for a while, so i'll go ahead and show you what i've got:
this one will be a little hoodie sweater for adella - the dark green is going to be used for the sleeves and maybe the border on the little pocket.
and this one is a neck warmer/cowl for me. there is another picture in the book where the model is wearing it more scrunched down - not like the one you see here. i think i'll be wearing it scrunchy around my neck, unless i need to be incognito. both of these are from the Knit 2 Together book that i got for Christmas. i'm counting on slow progress with these - and hoping this crazy weather changes - otherwise, we may be wearing them in the summer! (oops - there i go again, complaining about the weather... i just can't help it.)
okay, so i ripped off borowed that title from another blog post i read somewhere about this bread.
the bread, this no-knead bread, has been talked about a lot lately in blog-land circles, and i've been curious to try it out. when i first saw it, i thought it seemed like no big deal - i mean, i've got a bread machine - i never really have to knead it anyway. but there's been so much talk about it that i just had to try it.
so yesterday i finally did and WOW. it's really good bread. really really good. and really simple. flour, water, salt, and a bit of yeast - that's it. the hard part is that i takes about 20-24 hours, so you have to time it out just right. but look.
8:00 p.m. wednesday :: i mixed it all up. it looks scraggly and gross now. cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit for 12-18 hours ::
*****
1:00 p.m. tuesday :: plop it out onto the counter and let it sit for 15 minutes. it still seems like a big sticky gross mess.
*****
1:15 p.m. :: roll it into a ball on a cotton towel, cover it with another towel, and let it rise. mine did not even resemble a ball - i was sure this recipe was going to flop - it was still a blob, now covered in flour.
*****
4:00 p.m. :: put the risen dough ball (mine didn't look risen at all) into a preheated casserole dish, into the oven, covered for 30 minutes, then uncover and let it brown.
4:40 p.m. :: see it - the beautiful bread i have made! not only did the recipe work out, it was wonderful, yummy, really good bread!
folks, this bread is GOOD. so good that it's probably going be a dangerous thing for me, while i'm trying not to gain a crazy amount of pregnancy weight. adella and i ate half of this loaf in about 15 minutes. there will be more of this coming out of the oven for sure.
there are probably some variations on this recipe floating around out there (if you run across a good one, let me know) but this is the recipe i used:
No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey,
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
Skip to next paragraph 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.
