The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Blauwschokker Update!

Remember the other day when I showed you the pretty pink blossoms on our Blue Podded Blauschokker pea plants?

Well I’ve had a couple more surprises since then.

Herbivores of the African Plains – Julia’s Cake 2011

Originally Julia said she wanted a giraffe cake. 

Because I’d done elephants before.

And Beluga whales last year.

The plan was to have a bunch of fondant giraffes all over a grassy cake.

But then, as is her womanly right, Julia changed her mind.

The Blue Podded Blauwschokkers are Blooming!

The what??

The Blue Podded Blauwschokkers!

I have to slow myself down and sound out that last word, so don’t feel bad if you do, too….

Got Any Okra Recipes?

The one and only time I ever cooked okra for my family (it was frozen, chopped okra…I think I tried to fry it.  It didn’t go all that well.), Alex tried it, because he is good about trying new things, and after chewing it for a moment, he burst into tears.

This is the one and only time a food has ever made him shed tears of anguish.  We didn’t force him to finish it.  It’s been several years now, and he has agreed to try okra again. 

Thai-ish Scrambled Egg Breakfast Pizza

I’m not even finished eating this.  But it’s so yummy I had to share.

It’s basically a breakfast of leftovers, which is one of my favorite ways to do breakfast.

I don’t really have a recipe, per se.  Just what I did with what I had.

Interested?  Hungry?  Follow me….

“Mom! It’s Like We Have a Farm!”

Except…well…we won’t be able to milk these….

Dr. Egon Spengler is My Favorite

“I collect spores, molds and fungus.”

Love that line.

In that picture?  Our sink-side compost container.  It’s the holding pen for coffee grounds and onion skins and root ends of broccoli rabe and egg shells and squeezed lime rinds, cooked rice that was stuck to the bottom of the pot and didn’t make it into the bowl.  That sort of thing.  We also pour in water from when we’ve rinsed off salad greens or cleaned dried chicken poop off of eggs before cracking them.

It’s kind of a treasure chest.

Not My Favorite Vegetable

 

But I’m still very excited about it….

Can’t Even Think of a Post Title

*Warning:  This post may roam from topic to topic with no regard for wrapping one up before drifting to the next.  Do not expect closure or conclusions.  Or logic.  Or dessert.

Ooh, look!  A bunny!

First Strawberry!

That picture was taken on Thursday – the 19th.  I didn’t pick it then because the underside was still white.  But still – a red strawberry!  May 19th!

Another Year Already?

About 5:30 this morning I heard a bedroom door open…then silence…and then a pair of small, bare feet scurried down the stairs. 

I was still in bed.  Bill was trying to be asleep for a few more minutes before getting up and ready for work.

I heard the bare feet traipse through the main floor, and then down more stairs to the basement.  A few moments later, those same bare feet hurried up both flights of stairs and headed toward our bedroom door.

The doorknob turned and a little girl crept into the room.

“Mama?  There aren’t any presents!”

Too Long to Post and Too Little Time

Sorry about the silence on here recently (well, today and yesterday, although since I’m writing right now, I guess I’m not being silent…) but I’ve got a lot of stuff going on this week and not enough time to post as I’d like to.

Tomorrow should be better…

Green Spaghetti – The Way Mom Used to Make it

When I first started blogging, a whole bunch of years ago, one of the first recipes I sort of posted was for a dish we made for dinner – pasta with a bunch of chopped green herbs.  I titled the post Green Spaghetti, but really, it wasn’t THE green spaghetti I had as a kid.

This is.

Back in the Cheese of Things

Oh, earthy goats’ milk, how I love thee!

I started a batch of chèvre last night.

Finally.

Here’s how it looked this morning when it was time to drain the whey off and hang the curds…

Not Exactly a Nimbus 2000

But it gets me where I need to go.  ;)

Bill “surprised” me with this the other day.

And no, not for Mother’s Day.

Oatmeal Corn Muffins

Next time I make these I need to make a double batch.  Or a triple.

My kids (especially Alex) plowed through most of them the first day and I barely managed to pack a couple away for school lunches.

Perpetual Motion

This is as close to holding still as he’ll get sometimes.

Part of Mother’s Day

That’s Julia, stirring pancake batter for breakfast.

Revisiting Kefir

Last summer a friend of mine gave me some of her kefir grains and explained how to kefir milk. 

Great idea, but for me, the timing was off.  We were in the middle of the great Painting The House project, which consumed the majority of last summer and left little time for anything else.  I didn’t make as much cheese as I’d wanted to, or as many jams and the like.  Just no time.  The house took over.

And the kefir…well…much as I hate to admit it, I totally ignored it after the first one or two batches and eventually (lightning’s gonna strike as I type this) threw it out.  (Sorry Rosa’s Foster Mom!)

But the awareness of it lingered.

And a few weeks ago, I decided to try it again.

Earning Their Keep

They’re weeding.  Alex is weeding the asparagus bed and Julia’s weeding around the garlic.

Yeah, we don’t believe in all that namby-pamby feeding the children because we brought them into the world and we’re responsible for them garbage.

They’re out of kindergarten, they’re out of diapers.

They’re old enough to get out there and work.

Salad Omelet

I had a little bit of salad left from last night.  Some chopped asparagus, some greens, a couple of slices of radish.

I almost tossed them in the compost last night, but then I thought they’d make a nice omelet in the morning.

So here’s what I did.

Abundance

My Mother Isn’t Perfect

No, there’s no “but she’s perfect to me” follow up to that statement.  It says what I want it to say.  Hallmark might disagree.

My mother isn’t perfect.

For a long time, I thought she was.  Or, rather, I thought I was supposed to be. 

Testy Snakes

Spammed comments are annoying, because I have to go and delete them and then ban the IP address, which takes time…it’s kind of like weeding the garden, only less meditative.  And it doesn’t smell as good.

But sometimes I just have to laugh.

FFwD – Tourteau de Chèvre

Hm.

It doesn’t look like I think it’s supposed to look.

For French Fridays with Dorie this week we were to make a Tourteau de chèvre. 

Now, despite what you might think, that doesn’t mean Cake of Goat.  I don’t think anyone’s invented that one.  Maybe a Pie of Goat – you know, like a chicken pot pie, or a shepherd’s pie – exists somewhere…but not Cake of Goat.

No, the cake is made with, among other things, goat cheese.  Pretty interesting, huh?

And a bit more appetizing than a cake made of goat.

Making a Healthy Snack

You’ve met my daughter.

She asked for an egg sandwich the other morning, and while the egg was frying, she grabbed her camera and took a picture.

I’m thinking of starting a separate blog just for her, an offshoot of this one, maybe “Barefoot Kitchen Pixie” or something like that.

Anyway.

That same day (Julia was home from school, recovering from strep throat), later, after the egg sandwich, she was hungry.

A clear sign she was feeling a lot better….

Lactic Cheese

Yum.

I was a little concerned (maybe that’s too strong a word) when I smelled the curd for this one.  It smelled like yogurt, and I was worried that it would have a yogurty texture even after draining.

But, happily, I was wrong.

And there I go, getting ahead of myself again…

Guess What I’m Making…

It’s been a while, but I’m making some cheese!  It’s a very simple soft cheese called Lactic Cheese.  I know – doesn’t sound very interesting, does it?  But it smells good – kind of yogurty – and tonight it should be drained enough for me to taste it.

Coloring

Please bear with me while I mess around with the look of this blog.  Colors, layout, content…I’m in a spring cleaning mood.  Again.  Or still.

It’s sort of like my hair.  My hair is mostly all long (and straight), but periodically I’ll start asking my sister “should I have bangs again?” and after rolling her eyes ALL the way back in her head several times and trying to ignore me, she might, if I’m annoying enough, cut me some bangs.

And then I’ll love the look; I’ll think I look youthful and cute or something like that, when, in fact, I probably don’t look any such thing, ever.  And then my bangs will start to grow out, and the minute I can see a single hair of them dipping into my field of vision, I start to get headaches on a regular basis (it’s my eyes – they keep adjusting the focus from bangs to book to bangs to computer screen to bangs to tv to bangs to child’s face, and so on.  Drives me KUH-RAY-ZEE.)  And so I’ll grow them out.  Which, as anyone who’s ever grown hair out before, is a torturous process filled with doubt and second-guessing and angst and barrettes and hair clips and head bands and sometimes even HATS!  I know.  It’s ugly.  I shudder just typing this.

I’m in a bangs-growing-out phase at the moment.  They’re about half an inch past my nose, which is good because if I am standing up straight and there’s no wind blowing, I can push the bangs behind my ears and they’ll stay there.  Of course, standing still and avoiding air movement is rather limiting, so I either put up with them flailing across my face or I pin them back with a few well-placed hair clips, or I wear a baseball cap.  (Boston.  Of course.  It’s the only kind of hat I like to wear.  And I don’t really like hats.) 

And none of this really has a lot to do with the look of my blog, except that I’m in that annoying, undecided, should-I-get-bangs-cut-on-my-blog? mental state, and so I’m playing around with the colors and layout and whatever else I can mess with, happy in the knowledge that no matter what I do, I can always change it back a lot faster than it takes to grow my bangs out.

And I won’t need hair clips or a hat.

Back tomorrow with a food post. 

I know.  It’s about time.

All She’s Askin’

Early this morning – before 4 – I awoke to the sound of Julia crying.  Sobbing.  Had to be a bad dream.  So I got out of bed and flipped the hall light on and went into her bedroom.

She was huddled under her thick pink comforter, still crying and crying and crying.  I rubbed her back and told her it was okay, I was there…but she kept crying.  I thought maybe she was still half asleep. 

Her back felt really warm, and, figuring it was partly due to the winter pajamas and the thick comforter AND all the crying, I told her we should take her jammies off.  At that point she became quite lucid and said “Mama, I have to go pee.”  She scurried to the bathroom, and I figured maybe that was part of the problem.

But no.