beggin' fur basil

Berger loves homemade treats. I mean, Berger loves ALL treats, but I think the fresh ones that we make at home must be really flavorful, because he freaks out for them (or maybe he can taste the love in each one...d'awwww). Puggie is a food hound in general and will eat anything you give her, but since she moved in with us, we've noticed that she loveloveLOVES the basil we're growing. You can frequently find her outside laying in the sun amongst the many pots of basil we have. That is, if she's not standing and sniffing each leaf like it's the most amazing thing she's ever smelled. I once saw her take a timid chomp at one of the leaves, but she looked around like the super guilty dog that she was and dropped her score.


I confirmed that basil is safe for dogs to eat and vowed to come up with a recipe for the pups. I took bits and pieces from a number of recipes and I think they turned out well (not that I can/would try them, but the dogs seem pretty excited about them).

Ingredients:
4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/3 cup oatmeal
2-3 tablespoons dried basil
1 1/2 cups water*
4 teaspoons vegetable oil

*You may find that you need a touch more water than this, just be careful not to make the dough too wet.

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl and blend well. Add the water and oil and kneed for several minutes, until the ingredients are well distributed and the dough is a nice firm mixture.

Roll out the dough to about 1/4" and cut into shapes with your favorite cookie cutters. Place on cookie sheets and bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes (or until edges are browned). NOTE: 30 minutes is for a medium ~3" cookie shape. I make smaller 3/4" stars for Puggie and those were ready in about 20 minutes.

tomatillo salsa

Last year my friend Diane gave us a jar of tomatillo salsa and it was phenomenal. We used it all up pretty quickly and were sad to go back to store bought stuff.

After my initial canning experience, I decided that I totally could (and should) whip up a batch of tomatillo salsa to can. In my hunt for a recipe, I stumbled upon a great blog called Farmhouse Finishing School, and I decided to use their recipe. Since I read in my Hip Girl's Guide that it can be dangerous to make substitutions until you understand the process and recipes really well, I resisted the urge to alter it too much.

Two small tweaks:
1) I ran out of tomatillos and instead of going to the store, I read online that green tomatoes could be substituted. Jose donated about 10 from the garden and I was back in business.
2) I saw a similar recipe in one of my canning magazines that included cilantro. Since herbs don't do too much to the PH (and the recipes were really very similar), I added several tablespoons.

The result is fabulous salsa. Super delicious. Very fresh. Jose and I decided to buy a pressure canner as an early anniversary gift to ourselves and it was money well spent. Although we didn't use the pressure functionality this time, the pot is large enough that I was able to give 10 half pints a water bath all at once. This may not sounds super impressive, but after doing 4 at a time with the jam, I'm pretty jazzed about it.

I will note that I doubled the FFS recipe and the result was about 90 ounces of salsa. I had made her pesto earlier in the weekend and it was a 6-7 ounce recipe, so when she said that the salsa recipe made "a ridiculously small amount" I was thinking 1-2 jars. Wrong. So much salsa. Well, so much to me, the non-hardcore canner.




Next on my list? Something with blueberries...

pizza pizza!

Since going gluten-free, I have really really really missed pizza. Really. I've tried a couple of restaurant and pre-made pizzas and they just don't add up. Now we've moved on to buying various GF crusts and testing them at home. Our first attempt was SO superior to these other pizzas, so fantastic. It can only get better from here and that makes me happy.

It started with Udi's personal-sized crusts. We topped them with:
tomato sauce we made with pan roasted zucchini*, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes*, and onions
basil pesto*
fresh mozzarella
basil leaves*
tomato slices*
feta crumbles


before...

I forgot to take an after photo until I was down to my last slice. Not the most beautiful slice, but if you could have a bite, you would taste the beauty :)

*ingredients fresh from the garden

basil bananza!

Last weekend we harvested somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 cups of basil from the garden. Also, I didn't even get to every plant. So for those of you who said/thought that I planted too much basil, you might be right...but I'll never admit it. I'll work double time to make use of it all and I'll give the rest away. No basil will be left behind.

So what did I do with it all? Well, I made 6 batches of regular pesto - I used the Farmhouse Finishing School's recipe. Love. Great recipe. Not too different from the ones I've been using, but it called for the pine nuts to be lightly toasted and that made a giant difference. While I was toasting stuff, I toasted the garlic - made it easier to peel and the flavor was really great.

But that still left A WHOLE LOT OF BASIL, so I revisited my roasted red pepper pesto and whipped up a double batch. I should note here that the recipe I provided was already a double batch and I had forgotten that (d'oh!) and my food processor almost overflowethed. Almost.

I toasted the pine nuts and garlic and kept everything else the same. Mmmmmm...we ended up using the roasted red pepper pesto as the base sauce on a pizza with a little bit of the basil pesto in a swirl on top...wow. Highly recommend. All the work that has gone into growing this basil and making the pesto is 100% worth it.

Finally, I decided to dry some basil. In addition to using it in our own food, the dogs love it. At casa de Lopez, everyone wins!

I'm a hip girl...

My super-awesome chef friend Sara (aka the Cozy Herbivore) turned me on to this book. Like every other suggestion she's ever made, the book is great! It's filled with great tips and project ideas and I'm dying to try them all. I can certainly see myself blogging my way through this book. I definitely recommend picking up a copy and also following the author on Twitter.

Not too bad, Puggie. Not too bad.

Jose and I signed Puggie up for a Canine Good Citizens (CGC) class at Teamworks dog training in Raleigh - we started the class two days after we adopted her. Ultimately, our goals were simple...we wanted her to learn her name, bond with us, and come when called. In the six weeks the class ran, we saw a huge, huge improvement with Puggie. HUGE. She never really agreed to sit-stay or down-stay, but she would stand-stay. She stand-stays very, very well. I wasn't sure if that was enough to pass the class, but lo and behold, it was :)

I get pretty emotional just thinking about how badly Puggie was treated for the first (2-5?) years of her life at the puppy mill. Now she has a loving home, great toys, nutritious food, routine vaccines and meds, and an AKC CGC certificate under her collar. Not too bad, Puggie. Not too bad.

Recommendations:
If you're interested in adopting a Pug...please consider a rescue. MAPR is our regional organization and they are frequently bursting at the seams with Pugs that need hugs (and homes). If you're not in the mid-Atlantic, contact MAPR and I'm sure they will direct you to a reputable Pug rescue organization near you.

If you're in the Raleigh area and looking for dog classes, check out Teamworks. I'm eternally grateful to our instructor at Teamworks and her tireless work with us and suggestions for helping Puggie. We took the 'Fearful Fido' class with Berger a few years back and that was top-notch as well.

rasta neckwarmer

I saw the Rasta Neckwarmer shop sample at Yarn Tree Studio last week and fell in love. I sometimes get "crazy eyes" while I'm in a yarn shop and buy buy buy and then end up not making the project, so I left the yarn and gave myself a one week cooling off period. At the end of the week I was even more enthusiastic about the project than I was initially, so I pulled the trigger.

One skein of Malabrigo Rasta yarn in Zarzamora + 3 hours of knitting and button sewing time + my friend Megan's time spent deconstructing and reconstructing the pattern = perfection. All time and money was well spent. Thanks to Katherine for letting me borrow her giant size 17 needles. Big props also to Megan for her work on the pattern! She's the Yoda of knitting and I couldn't have done this without her.

pico de gallo

Pico de gallo is a favorite, but it has to be fresh to be delicious. I never make it, but after a few instances of having pico with lackluster tomatoes recently, I decided to stop being lazy and make a batch myself.

The recipe that I threw together was super delicious and I'll continue using/tweaking it in future batches. Also, SO easy. Sure, there's 10-20 minutes of chopping involved, but it's completely worth it. Now I'm wondering if I could can some for wintertime. Canners - thoughts?

Ingredients:
5 roma tomatoes, cored, seeded, diced
1/4 to 1/2 red onion, diced
2 tspns chopped cilantro
1/2 jalepeno, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
juice of three limes
pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients and add a pinch or two of salt (to your liking).

It's hard to say how many this would serve. I guess you could say 4? We snacked on it while cooking tacos, then used it for our tacos and still had a serving left over. If I were taking it to a party, I would double or triple it.

handsome Berg

This is an oldie, but goodie of Berger. I never think he looks old until I see one of his youthful pup pics. I challenge you to present photos of a cuter brown dog. You can't, so don't try.

holy guacamole!

Over the past several years I've definitely put more of an emphasis on making things from scratch as opposed to buying them pre-made or going out for them at a restaurant. This is probably mostly due to my interest in learning new techniques and skills. In the past month though, I've really ramped up my efforts to make things fresh because that's the best way to ensure that they don't contain gluten. So yeah, extra effort and extra money, but also extra flavor. Win-win-win.


Not shockingly, I read several recipes and then finally made up my own.

Ingredients:
3 ripe avocados
1/2 red onion, diced
1-2 roma tomatoes, cored and diced
1-2 serrano peppers, minced
1-2 limes, juiced
1 clove garlic, minced
fresh salt and pepper, to taste

Juice the limes and set juice aside in a medium-sized bowl. Slice and peel the avocados into 1/2" slices and toss them in the lime juice. Once the avocados are well coated, set them aside and save the remaining lime juice.

With a fork, mash the avocados to desired texture and fold in the onions, tomatoes, peppers, and garlic. Add one or two teaspoons of the remaining lime juice (depending on your taste preferences). Season with salt and pepper.


Serve with UTZ gluten-free corn chips.

You're welcome.

i think you'll find the Death Star is quite operational

Why must all of my dogs hate bath time? Is it a curse or just a sick, twisted coincidence? It would be impossible for Berger to hate baths anymore than he does, but he fights it physically. Not Puggie. Puggie just looks as pitiful as possible and makes me feel tremendously guilty.

Jose is a big fan of post-bath towel humor and as he took these pathetic photos he made many, many Emperor Palpatine references.

roasted corn and bell pepper salsa

We went to a July 4th cookout where the theme was "summer". For my dish, I immediately thought of corn and then subsequently, my favorite non-traditional salsa - roasted corn and bell pepper.

I never write down my exact calculations and I always swear that I'll remember what I did, but I never really do. So this time, I did my best to remember it all for next time.

4-5 ears of corn (or 2 cans)
2 bell peppers, diced
1/2 red onion, minced
2 serano peppers, minced
2-3 limes, juiced
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt

Heat olive oil in pan and add corn. Cook over medium heat for 10-12 minutes, remove pan from heat and add salt to taste. Set aside to cool.

When cooled, mix the corn, bell peppers, onion and cilantro and toss with the lime juice, vinegar, and sugar. If desired, add more salt to taste. Serve immediately (and watch it disappear).

Multnomah shawlette

I got three skeins of Melody Superwash from the yarn swap my Meetup group had back February. I was pretty dead set on finding an epic project that would use all three skeins, but the Multnomah shawlette only took about 1.2. The pattern called for 10 rounds of feather and fan at the end (40 rows), but I stopped after 5 rounds. It's a little on the short side, but I like the simplistic look of it. And I plan to wear it short around my neck (and not around my shoulders) anyway, so it's perfect.

I blocked the points out a little more pronounced than what was shown in the pattern. I'm pretty sure that I broke every blocking rule in the book, but it was my most successful attempt yet!

cuddles...well, almost

It's not quite a cuddle, but we're getting closer. Puggie had access to three other beds, but she chose to curl up with Berger. It's probably because laying atop a pillow, atop the most comfortable bed in the house was her best option, but I'd like to believe it's because she wanted to be closer to Berger. No matter the reason, I heart this picture.

mojito cupcakes

I've been fired up and ready to bake gluten-free cupcakes for over a week now, and the 4th of July seemed like the perfect time to start. With 50 recipes in my new cookbook, choosing the right cupcake was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Ultimately, I chose mojito cupakes because I could use mint from our garden. Plus, the theme of our friends' July 4th celebration was "summertime" and what says summer better than a mojito?

Before I could even start the baking, I had to use 6 different gluten-free flours and starches to create the flour mix. It was really frustrating that I couldn't just pull down a bag of white or wheat flour and get to work, so my attitude was definitely poor.


The authors of the book did a great job of preparing me for the work that would go into making these cupcakes the best they can be, and I truly appreciate that. But I still found myself a little bitter about the added work, especially since this was my first GF baking experience.

I had to dip my fingers in ice water and smooth the top of each cupcake, because the batter doesn't settle the way your typical batter would.


I was complaining, complaining about the added hassle of GF baking and threatening to give up baking altogether...then I peeked in the oven at the rising cakes and I was back in.


They turned out very well and tasted great, even without the icing.


My (non-existent) decorating skills left a lot to be desired, but the taste was undeniably delicious.


I strayed a bit from the recipe when it came to the icing....the authors suggested buttercream, but I don't have a candy thermometer...so I went for a regular frosting favorite, with a twist.

2 sticks butter, room temperature
3.5 cups confectioner's sugar
zest from one lime
the juice from that lime
2 teaspoons orange mint, minced

I put all ingredients in the bowl and mixed on medium-high until it was thick enough to decorate with.

the house: a work in progress...

I love our house. I really, really do. But sometimes the projects overwhelm me. The part that most stresses me is the front yard. Well, also the backyard, but honestly, the backyard is SO bad that I don't even consider it a project. I consider it a lost cause.

We've been handling projects one at a time, and I've been taking photos the whole way, but I think I've been waiting to do an "all done" post before sharing them. Well, if I'm honest with myself - really honest - then I know the "all done" post won't happen for quite some time. Maybe a decade or so (if ever).

So here's an angle of the house from the right - Winter of 2009, just after we bought the place:


And here's that same angle in the Spring of 2011. Notice that the shutters are gone and the entire house has been painted. Jose and I did all of the painting ourselves.


Here's a front view of the house, Winter 2009, pre-paint:


And the view in Spring 2011:


From these shots you probably get the idea that the previous homeowner LOVED to plant things. The problem is that they never really maintained it, and now it's a little out of control. Also, these angles don't do justice to the height and amount of vinca and ivy that are growing a little out of control. I keep reminding myself that it's just one day at a time, one season at a time, one project at a time, but I just want to do it all. Now. In the meantime, I'm open to any and all suggestions, tips, and tricks from all of my creative and green-thumbed pals!

FIRST!

No, I don't plan to post a photo of every single thing that we grow in the garden...just most of it. You know, the stuff that really excites me, which certainly includes all of the initial picks.

Tomatoes, zucchinis, and a cubanelle pepper! By the way, that pepper seemed to pop up overnight, but it has a looong way to go before it's ready. My wish is for 2-3 more to be ready soon so I can use them for a batch of sofrito. Here's hoping the rest of the summer is this productive!