among the many things that i’d like to start blogging about regularly are my culinary (ha! so not) adventures in the kitchen. many of you know that i am not the cook in this family. i may be the baker but cook, i am not. but since i decided to stay home with the peanut (also known as C) i have taken up some of the slack at mealtimes. i’m learning and sometimes the lessons are hard ones. thankfully, i read several great cooking and food blogs and have many great friends and cookbooks to get me through.

the lessons must be sinking in, though, because i’ve started to come up with my very own recipes! this is one that i thought up the other day when i decided that i just DO NOT like oatmeal. i have tried. really. i just do not like oats in this form. i do need a new hot breakfast cereal, though. something filling, full of fiber, protein, and not too sweet or fatty because i’m watching my girlish figure. ahem.

quinoa and brown rice porridge

serves: 3-4

1/4 cup quinoa (i use the white/regular quinoa)

1/2 cup long grain brown rice

1 cup lite coconut milk

1 1/2 cup water

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp sugar or maple syrup (or 1 1/2 tbsp splenda blend, if you are also watching your girlish figure)

1 tbsp earth balance margarine

rinse the quinoa vigorously to shake the outer shells so that the grains open up while cooking. i usually push the grains against my strainer while rinsing. rinse the brown rice. dump all the ingredients into a rice cooker and select the “porridge” setting. cook. that’s it! garnish with dried fruit and/or nuts.

if you don’t have a rice cooker, you’ll probably want to put it all in a pan and simmer it on low, stirring occasionally for about 45 minutes. test it frequently after 30 minutes and when the brown rice is cooked and not crunchy, it’s done.

let the mixture rest for 10 minutes before serving so that some of the milkiness gets absorbed into the rice and quinoa. refrigerates well and even tastes good cold. yum!

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so the bath puff was everything that i thought it would be. basically a complete failure.

bath puff

looks cute, right? it’s already been trashed. i finished it on sunday night and tried to put it to use monday morning. soap refused to lather on it so i was glad that i hadn’t thrown away my old puff. then 8 hours later, it was still frakkin’ wet! ugh. dishcloth cotton is really only good for dishclothes. maybe this puff would have been good in some acrylic blend? i have no idea. i’m certainly not going to make another one.

to distract you from the utter failure of the puff, i bring you food and peanut.

potato dinner rolls

i saw this recipe for potato dinner rolls in the veganomicon and HAD to make them. they were so good! i’ll definitely make them again but next time i’ll wait until we have mashed potatoes on hand instead of cooking some up especially for them.

standing!

the peanut is pulling herself up on pretty much everything now. walking is not too far off in the future, methinks. i was loading the dishwasher yesterday (she loves the dishwasher and the refrigerator) and i caught her standing up using the open door as a prop. then she lifted up one of her legs and tried to crawl in! had to put a stop to that quick!

here are two videos that we’ve shot in the past two months or so. the first one is of the two of us. i pointed the camera at us but flipped out the screen so that she could see herself on camera. her reaction is priceless. the second one is of her crawling. she’s pretty good at it now!

p.s. i’m almost through the raglan section of flair so i’ll post something about it later this week, i think.

the peanut sees herself on video from gleek on Vimeo.

peanut crawling from gleek on Vimeo.

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notes from the field:

the peanut is ailing and we’re not sure what’s wrong with her. she started running a fever on thursday (a low-grade fever) and it’s still not back to normal. too bad it’s so hot out here as i’m sure it’s not making it any better. the worst part is that she was sleeping like a champ before the sick hit her, of course. now she’s back to waking several times a night and we have to swaddle her with both arms in again. two steps forward, one step back.

new facial expressions

thankfully she’s still darn cute.

what a looker!

a few more images in the gallery.

with all of the bad sleeping and extra TLC for the nut, i’m not getting much else done around here. the apartment’s a mess, i’m back at work tuesday through thursday, and every time i sit down i want to pass out. two nights ago i finished up another miter and it took a lot of concentration to make it through a row. i kept having to hard blink my eyes to keep them focused, and when i got to the end, i realized that i had two extra stitches. i can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. at least half the miters i’ve made are flubbed right at the end. i just p2tog on the wrong side to get rid of them. i have no idea where those extra stitches come from since i’ve made a concerted effort to PAY ATTENTION to my decreases.

in the absence of knitting there has been baking and general food making around here. tomatoes from the farmer’s market are looking good! my mom says that she has tomatoes up the kazoo (yeah, kazoo.. hehehe. wazoo) and KP’s are coming in on the fire escape. i’m concentrating on my sweet tooth though. the last trimester of my pregnancy amped up my sweet tooth big time and since i’ve been breast feeding and sleep deprived, it’s even bigger than before. i suspect it’ll go away when i wean the peanut but until then i try to stay away from chocolate and instead gravitate towards simpler things.

green tea and iced coffee.. great summer treats!

two weekends ago i made matcha green tea ice cream (modified this recipe at a vegan ice cream paradise) and after freezing it in our ice cream maker, i put it into plastic molds for single serve pops. yum! my mods were to add 2 tsp of matcha green tea (you should sift it in otherwise it clumps like mad, trust me) when heating the mix to dissolve the sugar and i added a generous squirt of flax oil once it was cool to keep it from freezing rock hard.

mmmmmm

then this weekend, KP got fresh blueberries and raspberries at the farmer’s market and i made a veganized version of this recipe (via the pioneer woman cooks). i subbed in vegan margarine and vanilla unsweetened almond milk. if i make this again (and i totally would! it was DEEEEELICIOUS!) i would cut back on some of the sugar. it was a bit sweet.

anyway, i’m back at work tomorrow. hope monday is going well for you!

p.s. of course, where would this entry be without some video.. this one was taken by KP. she’s on to me now, i think. she performs better for daddy. (click through from RSS feed for video! it’s so cute and i swear i’m not biased.)

tomorrow i pass on the “rockin’ girl blogger” torch!

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