Cantaloupe Muffins

Did you know it was possible to make muffins with cantaloupes? Well, I didn't until we came home from our community garden patch with yet another batch of fruit that was really sweet but a wee bit on the soft side.

Our son was determined to find a recipe to make use of the fruit other then turning them into smoothies which has been my strategy lately.

Little Willow was at first very dubious about the recipe. She turned her back and would hear none of it.

I hope you get to try this recipe if you should run into a mushy but still edible melon...

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup oats
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch allspice or nutmeg
• 1 cup cantaloup puree

butter or oil for greasing the muffin pan


Preheat oven to 400 degree Fahrenheit
Mix together all the dry ingredients: flour, oats, brown sugar etc.... making sure you break up all the brown sugar clumps. I didn't do this. So there were some holes in my muffins because the brown sugar melted and left strange holes behind - like in Swiss cheese...

Scoop out the flesh of a cantaloupe and turn into soft pulp/ puree.
Add cantaloupe pulp to dry ingredients and mix together well.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Here is Willow enjoying a delicious vegan cantaloupe muffin. Her comment was that the muffins are not as fluffy as regular old muffins and definitely more chewy. But overall the flavor reminded her of a super tasty oatmeal cookie. And that's not a bad thing to have first thing in the morning. I am sure it will give Willow and the rest of the family lots of energy for the rest of the day...

Pink Goodness

Since I shared the picture of this lovely pink drink yesterday I thought maybe somebody who is adventurous wants to try it. Just in case...

 here is the recipe for the Pink Cabbage Delight

1 1/2 cup water
a couple of slivers of red cabbage, less than a quarter of a head of cabbage
2 cups of frozen mixed berries (you can buy big bags at Sam's club)
1 banana
1 apple

Throw it in a highpower blender and blend until smooth.

Even my son had to it admit that this one wasn't too bad despite the fact that it had a veggie in it...

I know these photos have nothing to do with the smoothie. But they are sweet and lovable and good for the soul!

How to make German Sauerbraten

Sauer macht lustig - Sour makes you happy

It's a German saying that eating sour foods makes one happy. Not sure where the notion comes from. It's a fact the Germans are often unhappy and need a lot of cheering up, considering the grey weather this time of year....Of course, everyone in the US knows about Sauerkraut. My children hate it. I have tried and tried. They are not being good little Germans. But maybe that's partly because the stuff they sell in the stores in the US is nothing like German Sauerkraut. It's way too sour! Some day, if I have the time, I'll get to the bottom of it. Some day I will try and make my own Sauerkraut.

Then there is Sauerbraten. Have you ever had a German Sour Roast? I am glad to report that this is a dish my children very much appreciate. The announcement of a Sauerbraten will bring smiles and shouts of joy. Figures, since it takes about a week to make it...We cooked up a really nice roast this weekend. Making Sauerbraten takes a bit of planning ahead. First I had to remember to take the meat out of the freezer. It took about 2-3 days to thaw it out. Next I had to make a marinade for soaking it. Unlike my husband who claims that Germans bury the meat in the yard for 3 weeks to rot it and cook it afterwards, this is NOT TRUE!

This is how it's done:

you will need

• a nice piece of beef, a roast about 1-3 pounds (we like to get a big one, the leftovers are yummy!)
• 2 medium sized onions
• 1 large carrot
• 1 celery stalk
• 5 peppercorns
• bay leaf
• 5 dried juniper berries (optional)
• raisins
• 4-5 tablespoons flour
• red wine vinegar
• ginger cookies (optional)

Chop an onion, peel a carrot and dice it, and cut a stalk of celery . Throw the vegetables in a saucepan together with 250ml of red wine vinegar, 500 ml of water, add bay leaf, and some peppercorns. If you can find them, add some juniper berries. Heat this mixture to right before boiling temperature. This is the marinade that you pour over the roast.
I like to put the meat in a big Ziploc bag and put the marinade in the bag. Then you keep the Ziploc bag in the refrigerator for 3-4 days - depending on how sour you like your roast.


Cooking the roast:

After the meat has been properly soured take it out of the bag. Don't throw out the marinade. Put it through a sieve and throw away the vegetables. You must reserve the liquid because you will need it for cooking the roast later on!

Dry the meat with a kitchen towel or clean cloth. I don't use paper towels because I find it wasteful. ( Don't be an Umweltschwein! as we say in German).
After you patted the meat dry put some oil in a pot and heat it up. Now you must sizzle the meat, brown it nicely on all sides. It's best to use a pot that is tall. I use a heavy stockpot. Otherwise you may get splattered with the hot sizzling oil. Next you add some chopped up onions. Don't worry about dicing the onion small. The meat will cook for quite a while. By the time it's done cooking the onions will have disappeared. After the meat is browned properly on all sides add 375ml of the marinade back to the pot. If the roast is not covered add more water to the pot.

Now you need patience. The roast needs to cook very slowly on a low temperature. Don't boil it! You can add more of the marinade or water as the liquid cooks away. Keep checking the roast for softness. After about an 1.5 - 2 hours it should be getting close... Add a couple of hand fulls of raisins. If you have some gingerbread cookies break them up and add them to the pot, too. I rarely do have them. So it's fine without. Once the meat is nice and tender take it out of the pot. Mix a few tablespoons for flour (3-4) with some of the liquid from the pot. Bring the liquid in the pot to a boil and add the flour mixture in to thicken the sauce. Add salt and pepper as needed.

All that is left to do is to slice up the roast and serve it on a warm platter. We serve it with Spatzle, German egg noodles made from scratch. What the heck. You might be bored while waiting for that meat to get cooked. Why not start another huge project and mess up the kitchen some more?

But I swear this is so delicious. Even if you have to wash every single pot and pan in the house afterwards and spend the whole day cooking it is so worth it!

New Rage: Kale Salad

Kale salad seems to be the new rage. Or is it just me who has seen recipes pop up all over the place? I went to Wholefoods the other day and saw this strange rather healthy looking dark green salad. I thought about buying it for about one second. You know I am on a bit of a diet since I put on 10 pounds while traveling in Germany. Naturally, that salad had a price tag that we couldn't afford. We have a friend who refers to Wholefoods Market as "Whole Paycheck. Well right now my doll store is in the dumps - it's more like I have NO paycheck. So purchasing this rather expensive salad on a whim was out of question.

I thought, hey, why not try make some Kale Salad ourselves? I had seen some recipes in the newspaper. We just happened to have quite a bit of Kale growing in our new raised beds that we built over Spring break.

 Kale is actually very easy to grow. It's sort of like a weed. The only problem is that the kids don't want to eat it. I have put it in soups with sausage before or cooked it down and added some bacon to it. Not exactly slimming. But it seemed to be the only way to make that stuff palatable. Or so I thought.

I just couldn't imagine how one could eat such rough chewy leaves without cooking them. But  you can. And they are quite good! I hope you try out this recipe. You'll be amazed!


4 cups shredded raw kale leaves (all the thick stems removed, I left some medium sized ones on)
3/4 cup grated carrots
1 avocado, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup diced onion, preferably a sweet onion
2-3 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds

The dressing:
2 Tablespoons tahini
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
3 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice and some zest
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2-3 pinches cayenne pepper
salt and pepper

I made a bit more dressing since it made the salad a bit softer and broke down the Kale better.

It's also best to make this salad a day ahead and massage it a bit with your hands as you mix it. It's best if you let it sit in the fridge over night.

We ate it up so fast I never even took a photo of the finished salad...

German Meatballs

As  you are reading this I am traveling around Germany. I thought I'd  leave a couple of recipes for you. In case you miss me. So have fun cooking and enjoy some of the foods I'll be eating while in the Vaterland.

Growing up these German meatballs were one of my favorite meals. In German they are called

Königsberger Klopse. They are not very hard to make and quite the crowdpleaser.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons of butter
• flour
• 3 cups of broth
• 500 grams of ground meat (mix of pork and beef is best)
• 1 egg
• medium sized onion chopped finely
• breadcrumbs
• capers
• lemon zest and juice
• a couple of splashes worcestershire sauce
• splash of dry white wine such a riesling
• pepper and salt to taste

Put the ground meat in a mixing bowl and add the egg, breadcrumbs, diced onions, worcesterauce, pepper, salt. Mix together with your hands careful not to squeeze too much. Shape into meatball of about 2 inches in diameter.

Melt butter in a saucepan. Add the flour and brown lightly. Add the broth and make a rue. Put in the capers, lemon zest, and worcestershire sauce. Once the sause has thickened (after 10 minutes of cooking it on medium low temperature) add the meatballs to the sauce. Cook them slowly careful not to boil them for they might fall apart if the sauce is too bubbly...

Season to taste using pepper, salt, lemon juice, and a splash of white wine.

Serve with rice, and a vegetable or salad on the side.

Edible Christmas Tree Decorations - Christmas Bretzels

I am having a hard time going back to "normal" after the events in Connecticut last week. Discussions on Facebook are still going hot and heavy. But one has to keep moving and stop thinking of all the ugliness in this world or one might go insane...



One of the Earliest depictions of a Bretzel from the 12th Century

It's not good for the children to see us so sad and preoccupied with negative thoughts. Since the wave of orders in my shop appears to have subsided, I started on some Christmas cookies. Late - as always.

I had not thought about Bretzels in a long time. You know German folks like to hang edible Christmas decorations on their Christmas trees. I 'll never forget that first Christmas when we took our little fellow back to Germany. He was just a toddler and would crawl up to my sister's Christmas tree pick an apple from the tree and take a bite from it. We all laughed finding the apples with tiny bitemarks among the presents...Only the ones that were high up were safe.

I let me my daughter pick a recipe from my German cookbook yesterday. It was for Weihnachtsbretzels. They will look so pretty tied onto the tree with bright red ribbons. I will have to make an extra batch to give to friends and neighbors.

from Wikipedia:

pretzel

(known as Brezel in German, sometimes also Brezn or Breze) is a type of baked food made from dough in soft and hard varieties and savory or sweet flavors in a unique knot-like shape, originating in Europe. The pretzel shape is a distinctive symmetrical looped form, with the ends of a long strip of dough intertwine brought together and then twisted back onto itself in a certain way ("a pretzel loop"). Pretzels in stick form may also be called pretzels in the English-speaking context. For seasoning and decoration various glazes, salt crystals, sugar and various seeds or nuts can be used. The size varies from large enough for one to be a sufficient serving, to much smaller....

There are numerous accounts on the origin of the looped pretzels, as well as the origin of the name; most agree that they have Christian backgrounds and were invented by monks. According to The History of Science and Technology, by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, in 610 AD "...an Italian monk invents pretzels as a reward to children who learn their prayers. He calls the strips of baked dough, folded to resemble arms crossing the chest, 'pretiola' ("little rewards")".

 

I also thought of them in terms of little hugging arms. Maybe you could bake some and give them away. Show a little love to someone who may not expect it. They are not that hard to make. The recipe is fairly easy and does not require too many ingredients.

 

cream together using a handmixer

 

• 100g butter
• 200g sugar
• packet of vanilla sugar or some liquid vanilla extract

to this mixture add

• one whole egg plus another eggwhite (reserve the yolk of the second egg for eggwash)

sift together

• 500 g flour
•  2 teaspoons of bakingpowder 
•  pinch of salt

 

add 2/3 of the dry ingredients to the wet ones with mixer, then kneed in the rest of the flour by hand. Since we live in very dry climate I used about 50g less flour.

 

If the dough is very soft, refrigerate it for a little while. Our house is so cold, brrrrr,  I didn't have to.

Cut off chunks of dough and roll it into pencil-thick little ropes. Cut them into 20cm long pieces and shape them into Bretzels. 

 Put them on a greased cookies sheet and apply eggwash with a brush. The eggwash is made with the reserved eggyolk of the second egg and mixed beaten with 2 tablespoons of milk.

 

Bake at 375 for 10 -15 minutes.

 

 

This recipe makes about 40 bretzels. They don't taste very sweet and are like a hard little cracker.

 

 

 

Filling for Apple Sauce Pie

Since to many people asked me for the recipe on Facebook. Here is the recipe my husband uses for the filling of the Apple Sauce Pie:

1 cup apple sauce made from tart apples
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder
2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 9inch pie shell

Sorry he is not giving up his secret pie crust recipe....

Stir all the ingredients together.
Bake at 350 degree preheated oven for about 45 minutes or until nice crispy sugar crystals appear on top.

Yummy!

Never Say Never

Never say never they say. Have you ever been in the situation that you cooked a meal so perfectly that you thought to yourself: Wow, this is so delicious, how did I do this? Next question: will I ever be able to make this again? Well, my husband and I like to cook together. We have this one recipe that we had struggled with for years. We really liked all the ingredients in the dish. But for some reason the meal was never as delicious as it sounded. Until one day when we managed to make it just right. The meat was perfectly browned. The curry powder used was fresh and of good quality. The amount of lemon juice added was just right. After we reached such perfection we sadly decided to never cook it again. There was just no way we would reach such culinary success again.

But the other day we were working on the menu for the week. We just ran out of ideas. So the perfect spinach-lamb-curry popped up. We had not made this dish in many years. In fact, we had not made it for so long the kids had no idea what we were talking about.

So we decided to cook it together as a family. In German we have a saying: Viele Koeche verderben den Brei. (In think in Enlish it’s many cooks spoil the pot.). I don’t like that saying much because I think that working together as a team when it comes to cooking is actually really great. It changes cooking from being a lonesome boring chore to being a fun family activity.

If you are not opposed to eating lamb meat and like to try a new dish you can find the recipe on the NaturalKids Team blog today.

Was it as good as that one time we made it? Nope. But practice makes perfect, right!

Cookies at the Last Minute...

Finally...I closed my Etsyshop, and I am slowly getting caught up with family duties. I baked Christstollen three days ago, and yesterday we made some Christmas cookies. Despite the hurry and being totally stressed out at the countdown to Christmas, our baked goods turned out fabulous.
My favorite recipe of all is actually a Swiss Christmas cookie called "Baseler Leckerli" (Lecker means yummy. Little yummy cookies in translation). Sorry if this recipe comes too late for your Christmas preparations. Maybe you can use it next year. But frankly if I had not gotten to make them with the kids this week I would have done it after Christmas. They are too good to be skipped for a year. For me they are the next best thing to the Lebkuchen/ Gingerbread I miss from Germany...

Ingredients:

wet ingredients:
1 cup  honey
3/4 cup  brown sugar
1/4 cup  butter
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 nutmeg, freshly grate is best
1 egg beaten

dry ingredients:

3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon  salt
1/4 teaspoon  soda

other:
1/4 cup of finely chopped candied lemon peel
1/4 cup of finely chopped candied orange peel
2 tablespoons of Kirschwasser or orange juice

3/4 cups finely ground filberts or hazelnuts

Melt butter in a saucepan and add honey, brown sugar, and the spices to it. Heat this mix and stir it until the sugar has dissolved and all is well mixed together. Beat the egg. Add it to the ingredients in the pot. Be careful that the mixture is not too hot or your egg will get cooked! The mixture in the pot should has to be cooled down before the egg is added! Pour it in a medium sized bowl.

Sift the flower and add the salt and soda to it.

Chop the  candied orange and lemon peel and soak in the Kirschwasser or Orange juice for a few minutes.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in the bowl by the tablespoon stirring it until all is incorporated. It's going to be a heavy sticky dough. Next stir in the candied fruit. Last add the ground hazelnuts. Place cookie dough in the refrigerator for at least an hour. I like to rest it overnight...

Roll out the cookie dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 of an inch of thickness. We like to use small cookie cutters. We usually get about 200-250 cookies from this recipe. You bake them on a greased cookie sheet for 6-7 minutes at 400 degree Fahrenheit. You know they are done when the edges turn lightly brown. It's best to work with 3 cookies sheets and have them ready and rolling.

I guess the biggest hassle for me each year is the hazelnuts. In Germany hazel- or filbert nuts are sold shelled in a package like you would buy any other nut. In the US I have to buy whole nuts in the shell each year. Good thing is I have my personal little Nutcrackers...The kids crack the nuts for me, and I grind them in the food processor. It's quite a mess and takes a bit of time. I dread the process each year. But once the cookies fill the house with their awesome smell, I know it was so worth it.

Cooking up a Storm...

When it gets cold outside I like to cook and bake. Living in a drafty old house it's the only way to survive the cold winter. While Hubby and kids go off to work or school  I must stay home in the cold cave. Once the fire in the wood stove dies I flee to the kitchen and turn on the burners plus stove. Shh. Don't tell them!
So I cooked up a storm yesterday.

1. I baked a butternut squash and transformed it into the most delightful soup for dinner
2. I made a "gedeckter Apfelkuchen". It's the closest thing Germans have compared to an apple pie.

Ingredients for Butternut Squash Soup:

1 big butternut squash
1/2 cup of dried black beans
1 liter of chicken broth
red bell pepper chopped
corn
garlic, minced
chorizo sausages or other hot sausage links
pepper and salt to taste


Cut your Butternut Squash in half. Scoop out the little pocket with the seeds. Put the two cut sides down in a baking pan with about 1/4 inch of water in it. Bake in the stove at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour or until soft when stabbed with a fork.

Take another pot and throw in some black beans with water. Boil for about two hours until soft. Ah, it' s already getting warmer in the house!

Next prepare the dough for the apfelkuchen.

Ingredients for Apfelkuchen: (adapted from Backen macht Freude)

350 g flour
100 g sugar
2 eggs
4 teaspoons of baking powder
milk (recipe called for 4 Tablespoons but I added quite a bit more because the air was very dry)
150 g butter
1 packet of vanilla sugar

2 cups of applesauce, mine was homemade, I added raisins to it.

Throw all the ingredients (except for ONE of the eggs and the apple sauce) in a bowl and kneed them together. Wrap your dough ball in Saran wrap and put in refrigerator. It can rest while squash is baking. Ah, perfect timing. Now you can go and do something else. Maybe chop some wood or shovel the driveway...

Once you get back in the house the squash is ready to go. Who said they were cold? A lovely wave of heat hits me as I enter the kitchen. Beans are getting soft and it's time to deal with the squash. Pull it from the oven and scoop the meat out and reserve.

Time to get back to the cake! Get your dough from the fridge and cut it in half. Take the first half and roll it out flat to fit in a baking pan/sheet that's about 30x40 cm. Hmm, since I don't have anything that size I just took whatever came close... See picture.
Spread your applesauce mix on top of the layer of dough in the pan. Take the second half of the dough and roll it out flat. Same size as the first piece. Now come the tricky part: Moving the second sheet of dough and putting it on top of the applesauce. No different from making an apple pie really. You have to fold it up and then unfold it. Right? It's just a bit bigger...

Hopefully your oven is still nice and hot from baking that squash. Temperature needs to be about 375 Fahrenheit. So great, you can turn it up a bit more. =)
Make an egg wash by mixing one egg yolk and a tablespoon of milk. The German cookbook calls for sliced almonds on top. I didn't have any so just the egg wash will do. Brush it on. Stab the cake a few times with a fork to create some holes for steam to escape. Put it in your oven and bake for 25-30 minutes - until top is golden brown.

Back to the soup. Add chicken broth to your squash chunks and puree. Add the clove of minced garlic. Add the cooked black beans. Throw in some yellow corn if you have it. Add some chopped bell pepper. Add little pieces of your cooked hot sausage links. I don't add them to the pot since my daughter doesn't like spicy food. So you can just have the sausage in a little bowl to the side. Vegetarians can leave it out too.

You'd think there would be easier ways to keep the house warm. But not as delicious. Dinner is ready to go. Time to make some dolls...

Apfeltaschen - Apple Pockets

I often wonder whether my time spent at the University of Berlin getting a Master's Degree in North American Studies wasn't a huge waste of time. Wow, I can't believe I said that. I worked so long and hard for that degree I still have nightmares every now and then over the finals...

Reading novels and studying American history may have enlightened me about what I was getting myself into when I moved to the US, yet in no way did it prepare me for the food crisis I would encounter once I started living here. I still  get really depressed when I wonder the food aisles of the typical American grocery store.

Photo by Jes Anthonis

Bread. I miss those hardy German loaves to no end. I miss the multitude of rolls and buns one can choose from at a German bakery in the early morning hours. Donuts and Bear Claws? Ridiculous! If you have ever visited Germany you know what I am talking about...

I am convinced that an apprenticeship at a German bakery most likely would have prepared me better for life in the US. At least food wise. In order to survive, I had to teach myself how to make some of the baked goods that I love so much. I never knew how some of my  childhood favorites were prepared until desperation drove me to search for recipes in imported cookbooks and on the Internet.

One of my favorite childhood sweets are Apfeltaschen. Yum! So simple and a yet so good. My kids agree. What kid doesn't love apples?

If you are a German expatriate or just prefer a less sweet treat in the morning enjoy this German recipe!

Apfeltasche/ Apple Pocket

For the filling

Fresh homemade applesauce is best! But you can also use chopped sauteed apples with raisins. You need about one to two cups for the filling.

If you are wondering why the applesauce in my pictures is intensely red: I made it from an old variety of crab apples (you know from before they started messing with the genes to make big ornamental flowering kind of trees). I cannot tell you the location of this tree. It's probably the last one of it's kind in the US. I would have to kill you if I did. LOL

For the dough:
400 grams of all purpose flour
1 package of dry yeast or fresh if you have it
50 grams of sugar
pinch of salt
1 package of vanilla sugar
50 grams of melted butter
200 ml of warm milk
1 egg

Mix all the ingredients together and knead them until you get a smooth dough. Let the dough rest until it has risen or visibly increased in size. Then punch it down and knead it again.
Roll out the dough into a flat sheet. It should be a little less than a quarter inch thickness. Then take a little bowl with a diameter of about 5-6 inches. Use bowl as pattern to cut circles from the dough sheet. You should get about 8 circles. Crack and egg and separate the egg white from the egg yolk.

Put a heaping spoonful of applesauce in the center of each circle. Smear the edges around of your circle with egg white. Then fold over and make little half moon pouches. Pinch the edges firmly together or apple sauce will leak out!

"Looks a lot like an empanada", my husband commented. "You probably stole that recipe from my grandma!" HaHa. Not funny!

Set your apple baggies on a greased baking sheet. Parchment paper works well too.
Cover them up with a towel and let them rise in a warm place once more. Rub the top of each bun with some egg yolk. Once they look bigger bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until the tops turn brown. Takes about 15-20 minutes.

What's in a Waldorf Salad?

Ever heard of Waldorf Salad? Since many people on my Etsy team, the NaturalKids team, make Waldorf style toys I thought it would be fun to look up the recipe and make it. The original Waldorf Salad was invented by a chef of Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. It has lots of things in it that kids love. It's pretty much a fruit salad. Just leave out the nuts if you have people in the family who have nut allergies.

"According to the American Century Cookbook, the first Waldorf Salad was created in New York City in 1893, by Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf Astoria. The original recipe consisted only of diced red-skinned apples, celery, and mayonnaise. Chopped walnuts were added later to this now American classic."

Some people prefer their Waldorf salad made with yogurt, instead of mayo. I am definitely a great fan of the yogurt version. It's lighter and healthier!

Ingredients:


1 1/2 tart crisp apples (red and green mixed makes the salad look pretty)

2 stalks celery

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup fresh red grapes cut into halves

3-4 Tablespoons Greek fat free yogurt

1 Tablespoon of lemon juice

pepper and salt to taste

fresh lettuce or greens such as Romaine or Bib Lettuce

How to make it?
Chop Walnuts lightly and toast them in a pan. Whisk yogurt and lemon juice together. Add a tad of sugar. Core apples making sure to remove all the seeds. Cut apples into small bite sized pieces. Wash celery stalks and slice thinly; add walnuts and grapes. Serve on a bed of lettuce in a pretty bowl.

YIELDS: 5 to 6 servings

Monster Zucchini

It always happens. This sneaky squash hiding in your garden growing in its hiding spot into a giant monster that your kid wants to try out as a baseball bat. Stop! Don't do that! Mom needs it for making dinner. Or rather 3 dinners plus desert...

Here is one delicious recipe you can use it for. I call it Zucchini Pesto Soup  (recipe has been adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks called The Book of Soups by Lorna Rhodes)

Ingredients:
1/3 of that large 3 pound out of control monster zucchini =)
1/2 onion
1/4 cup of olive oil plus a little bit more
1/2 cup of rissotto rice
5 cups of chicken stock
salt and pepper
two handfulls of basil leaves
pine nuts
1 garlic clove
more salt
grated parmesan cheese

Dice the Zucchini and onions very finely. Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large soup pot. Stir in the zucchini and onion and cook until they are soft. Add the rice and coat it with the olive oil. Pour in the hot chicken broth and bring everything to a boil.
Make pesto while the soup is simmering in the pot.
Wash and clean basil. Put basil leaves, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, and a healthy dash of salt into an electric blender. If you feel ambitious you can do this with a mortar and pestle...Add about 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese.

Add 1-2 Tablespoons of the pesto to soup.

You can serve the soup with crispy slices baguette that has the rest of the pesto spread on it or serve with bruschetta.

Our son who normally considers zucchini his mortal enemy will eat two bowls of this soup when I make it. Not bad for a scary green monster zucchini!

Eat your Peek-a- Boo Beets!

Our community garden patch has been amazing this year. We have enjoyed many fresh vegetables this year. Some of them the kids are not too happy with. Cauliflower was a bust. But the kids love beets. As you can see in these playful pictures...

The best way to eat beets - in my opinion - is baked. Just cut the tops and roots off and scrub the beets clean with a brush. Take a fork and pierce them a couple of times. Then wrap your beets in a layer of aluminum foil. Bake in the oven at 400 degrees until soft. Depending on the size...If they are big it can take 90 minutes.

Then break the foil open and enjoy your beets with sourcream and some chives sprinkled on. Heavenly!

But don't throw out those tops! They are quite delicious. You can cut the stems off and sautee them in olive oil and garlic. Then add the cut up cleaned wet leaves. Once the leaves are all wilted this makes a lovely side! I love to splash a bit of lime juice on top of mine...

Piece of Cake: German Cherry Crumb Cake - Kirsch-Streuselkuchen

Here is a secret: My husband is a 3-time Weld County Pie Champion blue ribbon winner. I am not! I don't do pies. It's not a German thing. In fact, when we first started dating, we always argued about the usage of the word cake and pie. I'd call his pie a cake, and he 'd be very offended. "It's not a cake! This is a P-I-E! A cake is something different," he woud yell in frustration. Problem is we don't have the word pie in German. A baked sweet something is just a Kuchen/ cake.

Year after year the judge ladies at the fair would ask upon turning in the pie: Did he really make that pie?" They could not believe that a guy could make better pies than the old blue haired ladies...

Well I am not a champion pie maker. And I have never won any of the baked goods competitions at the Weld County Fair. It's just too intimidating with a husband like mine...But here is a really great recipe for an amazing German style cake!

You can make it with sour cherries or any other kind of tart fruit ( apples, red currents, any berries really, or apricots)



Ingredients for the batter:

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 3 eggs
• 125 grams sugar
• vanilla (powder or liquid version)
• 200 grams flour
• 2 tsp. baking powderpinch of salt

for the topping

1.5 cups sour pitted cherries or other sour fruit cut into bitesized pieces



for the crumbs:

• a little over half a stick of COLD unsalted butter
• 75 grams sugar
• 150 grams flour

1.cream the butter with sugar, add the three eggs incorporating one egg at a time mixing it for about a minute, add vanilla flavoring

2. mix flour, baking powder, and salt together.

3. add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients one tablespoon at a time.

4. butter a springform (springform is the kind of pan that's round and the rim pops off after the cake is baked)

5. spread the batter in the springform evenly

6. put the cherries or other fruit on top and spread it evenly


 Make crumbs:
1.cut the cold butter into a small bowl
2.add the flour and sugar to it
3.gently work the flour and sugar with your fingers into the butter

Remember: you are not trying to make dough here! Just a lumpy mixture to spread over your cake!

Bake for about one hour at 375 Fahrenheit in preheated oven. Check with a toothpick for doneness...

This cake is really a piece of cake to make! I have been doing it since I was a young child in Germany. So don't be afraid to try it, and let me know how your's turned out.

Summer is for Salads!

Now that the heat is here, I find the best thing to make for dinner is salad. I love salads because you can make a big bowl and eat it over a couple of days. If company appears at the doorstep - just throw in more vegetables to stretch the salad.

Here is the recipe for one of our family's favorite Salads: Mediterranean Rice Salad
I adapted this recipe from a Sunset recipe.

Ingredients:
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup of long-grain rice
1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice or more
1/3 cup of olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp of fresh oregano or more if you like
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
2 cups of fresh chopped spinach leaves
1 bell pepper, yellow orange or red diced
1 small cucumber, peeled, seeds removed, chopped finely
1/2 cup of chopped Kalamata olives
1 cup of crumbled feta cheese

1. Bring 2 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Add 1/2 tsp of salt to it. Add rice. Turn heat down to low. Put lid on and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove pot from burner and let the rice sit. I wrap the pot in a thick towel.

2. Whisk lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, herbs, pepper, and remaining salt. The original recipe called for 1.5 tsp of salt. Since we are trying to cut down on salt I use only 1/2 tsp or less. The feta cheese and olives usually have enough extra salt...

3. Fluff the rice with a fork. Add the rice to the dressing and mix it together gently. Add spinach, to the still warm rice and toss them together. The warm rice will wilt the spinach slightly. After the rice-spinach mix has completely cooled down add the remaining ingredients and toss again. 

If you like hot food you can throw in some hot red pepper flakes. Since our youngest doesn't like hot food, the rest of the family adds some pepper flakes individually to their salad servings.

This salad is great for parties and potlucks! You can serve it immediately after finishing it, when it's still a bit warm, or serve it cold from the refrigerator.

German Red Cabbage recipe

In German we say: Essen und Trinken haelt Leib und Seele together. In translation: Eating and drinking keeps the body and soul together. When I miss Germany I like to cook foods that remind me of home...

Maybe you are looking for a hardy side dish to impress your friends with? Searching for your long lost German roots? Or maybe you simply need a veggie to take to a family potluck?


I got just the thing for you: German Red Cabbage.

In order to make it you need:

medium sized head of red cabbage
4 Tsp butter
half of a large onion or small onion sliced
2 small apples, on the tart side, washed, cored, skin left on, chopped roughly
3 Tsp vinegar (I use cider or red wine vinegar)
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves or 4 whole cloves
1/2 cup chicken broth
red wine
pepper and salt to taste

1. Melt butter in a large pot and add chopped onion and apple pieces. Let them soften for a a few minutes over low to medium heat.

2. Add shredded cabbage with a bit of water. Put the lid on and wilt the cabbage, turning it a few times.

3. Add spices, vinegar, broth, sugar, and simmer cabbage until it becomes soft, about 20-30 minutes

4. add some raisins and a few splashes of red wine. The red wine helps the cabbage to maintain a nice red color... Simmer slowly for another 15 minutes.

This recipe makes a large serving that will feed 8-10 people. Germans serve it for festive occasions with poultry such as goose or a Sunday roast. But it makes a great side to any meat dish. Red cabbage tastes best if made a day ahead. You can also cook it in the morning and reheat it for dinner to make it perfect! It can be frozen in a container and used another day when you don't have time to cook...

Hope you try it and let me know how the family liked it!

Best Cake Recipe ever: Rotweinkuchen

Are you a fan of dark chocolate? Love the taste of red wine? I love both but have found that, as I am getting older, I am prone to bad headaches having red wine. The only way I can consume it these days, is in cooked or baked form. Luckily I have a recipe combining these two wonderful flavors into one amazing dessert.

When asked what birthday cake to make for friends or a family member,  they will always shout: Rotweinkuchen (transl. Red Wine Cake)!

This recipe was given to me by a friend in college many years ago. So thank you, Nanette! I will always fondly remember those afternoons hanging out together in your Berlin kitchen and baking this delicious cake.

Ingredients:

250 g butter
250 g sugar
4 eggs
1 packet Vanilla sugar, or if you can't find it in grocery store some vanilla flavoring
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking cocoa
125 g dark chocolate chips chopped into smaller pieces
1 scant cup of red wine

1.cut up butter in small pieces and cream it together with the sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl

2. using a hand mixer incorporate the eggs one egg at a time, blending for about a minute per egg

3. mix together the remaining dry ingredients: flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon

4. incorporate dry ingredients into the egg butter mix adding a little at a time
5. add chopped chocolate chips
6. mix in the cup of red wine

Bake in well greased Bundt pan or loaf pan in preheated oven  at 375 Fahrenheit or 180. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

No reason to polish off the rest of the red wine after a dinner party! Tell the guests to come back the next day for cake! =)

Fougasse - Easy to make French Bread

Being a German Immigrant I often get this question: What do you miss most about Germany? Over the years the answer has remained the same. Besides family, of course, the thing I miss most about Germany is bread. After living in the US for over 15 years, I still have a hard time finding decent bread in the grocery store. The first couple of years I was so depressed about the choices here that I tried to bake my own. But living at high altitude, I found it very difficult to bake good bread. I gave up on sourdough breads completely, when one day I managed to produce a loaf that was so hard, it resembled a brick, and my husband suggested we try burn it in the fire place...

But never mind my failures. I found one great recipe that works even at high elevations. It is really fun and easy to make. I make it to go along with soups. The whole family loves the flavor, and the kids have been intrigued with the bread's leaf-shape since they were little and started to reach for the breadbasket.
I found the recipe in a cooking magazine many years ago. It's been so long I can't even recall where it came from. But it's a French style bread called Fougasse.
Here is what you need to make it:
4 cups of flour (I use 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 3 cups of regular flour)
1.5 cups of lukewarm water
tsp of yeast
1-2 tsp of sea salt ( I use 1 tsp since I try to cut down on sodium)
2 Tsp of Herbs de Provence
2 Tsp of extra Virgin Olive Oil plus some more
corn meal

How to make it:
Put the flour, herbs de Provence, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle the yeast on top of the lukewarm water in the measuring cup. Let it sit for about 10 minutes. Then add the water with yeast to the flour, add the tablespoons of olive oil and knead everything together. If you have a KitchenAid mixer, you can just stand by and watch as the dough hook does all the work for you. If not, roll up your sleeves and with some elbow grease you can do it. It's not so bad! Once the you have a nice big ball of sticky dough, put a little olive oil into the bowl and coat the outside of your dough ball with it. Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place.
After the dough has risen for about an hour split it into two equal parts. Roll out each into a flat roundish disk shape. Use a Pizza wheel and cut slits in the shape of the veins on a leave into your bread. Pull the dough slightly apart to make the holes bigger where you cut it.
Place each loaf on a cookie sheet that you have sprinkled with corn meal. This will keep your bread from sticking to the sheet plus give it a nice crispy bottom crust!
Cover both breads with kitchen towels and let them rise in a warm place. While they are rising, arrange the racks in your oven so that you can bake two loaves at the same time in it! Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Rub some olive oil on the loaves of bread right before you put them into the oven! Put loaves in and set the timer for 9 minutes. After 9 minutes switch the two cookie sheets around. The bread that was baking on the top needs to go to the bottom and vice versa. After switching them around continue baking for another 9 minutes or until crust gets golden brown.
Can you smell the beautiful aroma of the Herbs de Provence yet? Yummy! It's so good! And you get two loaves at once. We eat loaf with our soup. The other I used for fixing school lunch sandwiches.

Christstollen Part II

Are your READY? First you may want to ask yourself: Do I really have time for this project, in the midst of the Christmas insanity, in the middle of writing & mailing out cards, buying & wrapping gifts, taking your kids to Christmas concerts and Nutcracker performances? Are you sure about this?

Well, if your answer is "Yes", you should start shopping for these items now! Might take you a while to scout for the ingredients:

For >>the<< recipe you need:

• 1 kg flour


• 450 g butter


• 1/2 liter warm milk


• 200 g sugar


• 100 g of fresh yeast (ca. 5 tsp of dry yeast)


• 10 g salt


• spices: 1 tsp each of ginger powder, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg


• pinch of ground cloves


• zest of one lemon


• 100 ml rum (whenever I am not looking my husband adds more to the bowl...)


• 500 g raisins


• 150 g corinths (small kind of raisins, I found them at Sprouts)


• 200 g almond flour


• 150 g candied lemon peel


• 150 g candied orange peel


• logs of marzipan, if you are feeling rich buy 2-3 (You know they keep that stuff hidden in the baking section at the grocery store, I swear. Usually I find it behind a display of some sort on the bottom of some shelves...Make sure you squeeze the package to ensure its freshness. If the paste inside the cardboard and wrapper are rock hard and won't give, don't purchase! Grab the next package and repeat till you find one that is squeezable. Sorry, but I came home many a time with old marzipan. I guess not too many people buy that stuff)



• 100 g butter


• powdered sugar


• Vanilla sugar ( impossible to find in this nation - find a long lost relative in Germany and have them mail it to you!)

Step 1 Put raisins, corinths, chopped candied citrus fruit peel, almond flour, rum, lemon zest in a bowl and soak over night or for a longer time in the refrigerator. Monitor husband and bottle of rum closely!

Step 2 Make the pre-dough. put flour in a bowl and make a little well. In the well put a few tablespoons of lukewarm milk mixed with the yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Stir taking small amounts of the flour from the side of your well. Cover with a dusting of flour, put a towel over the bowl, and let it rest in a warm non-drafty place ( are you kiddin' me? there is no non-drafty place when you live in an old house ) for 45 minutes. During that time you can work on those last Christmas cards for the uncle and aunt in Germany you forgot...

Step 3 Go back to your dough and see if any rising action took place. If not, write more cards or wrap another gift. Maybe you could mail that last package to a customer. By now the lines at the post office might be too long.But you got time! If the dough has risen, once you return from your errant, add the rest of the warm milk, spices, butter, sugar, and mix all of in with the flour. You know the real German Hausfrau has big arms from doing this. It's hard labor to move these mountains of stuff and kneed them together. Luckily I own a kitchen aid. My scrawny arms could never manage this. So hopefully you have one of those miracle tools, too! Once everything is nicely mixed together into a sticky ball of dough, let it sit and rise for another hour. During that time you could run out and buy another gift for your husband. If he is deserving...

Step 4 Hopefully you have removed the soaking fruits from the refrigerator - so the warm yeasty dough doesn't suffer too much of a shock from the cold fruit mixture! Your bowl is probably too full already. But you can take out batches of the dough and kneed in the fruit mixture by hand. I like to do it that way because you get a feel for how sticky the dough is. Maybe you want to add some more flour...

Step 5 Make loaves. Split the dough into parts, depending on how many loaves you want to make. I usually make one larger loaf and two small ones. But you can do whatever you want. Roll out the first batch of dough flat. Take the marzipan log out of its package, sprinkle some powdered sugar on your workspace and roll out the marzipan as flat as you can. Move the marzipan over on top of your rolled out yeasty dough pieces and roll the two layers together. Sort of like making a jelly roll. Shape the roll into a nice loaf and place onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Start working on the next loaf. You can bake more than one loaf on a cookie sheet! Put towel over the finished loaves and set them in warm place to rise again! Is it Christmas yet? =)

Step 6 I promise you are almost there...Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit while the loaves are rising once again. Bake them until they are cooked all the way through. Now this is the tricky part. In case you thought the rest was hard... Maybe it's living at high altitude that messes me up each year. Sometime I end up with loaves that are way too dry. Other times they are still sticky despite the fact that I stuck in a knitting needle and tested them. It's really kind of hit or miss. I have baked them for 35 -45 minutes. But I am hoping some day mine will turn out as perfect as my mother's. Sigh!

Step 7 It's the last one I promise, honestly! As soon as the loaves come out of the oven brush the hot loaves with melted butter and sprinkle with vanilla and powdered sugar. Does it look like baby Jesus in his swaddling cloths? Good job! Once they have cooled down wrap the precious loaves tightly, put a bow on them, and give them to a person who has been good to you all year. Or feed them to the family right then! They are probably tired of waiting around for you since you spent most of the day in the kitchen...

So sorry for another long post. But I warned you, right!

If you really should endeavor to make some Stollen, please, let me know how they turned out! I'd love to hear about your experiences!