Berlin's Whimsy

Chilled Cucumber & Herb Soup

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! We were quite busy around here with kids home, family visits, garden tending, and homework (for me, anyway)!

This weekend we enjoyed a very nice barbecue at my Mom's house. We were outside on the picnic table with the perfect temperature embracing us as we ate scrumptious food. Such a pretty evening.

My food contribution was this chilled soup. Cooling and fresh, it's a welcome addition to a summer meal. Since we were eating outside, I decided to serve it in little glasses-----so much easier. In fact, offering little servings of soup in shot glasses is a favorite of mine; especially as an appetizer! 

I used Borage leaves in this soup. They have a slight cucumber flavor that blends well into this soup's flavors. If you don't have Borage in your garden, just omit. Also, be sure to use a fresh-tasting feta to top this soup. My favorite is Pastures of Eden (I buy it at Trader Joes), or a local goat's milk feta.

Chilled Cucumber and Herb Soup

3 medium cucumbers, peeled and seeded

2 C. plain yogurt

1/2 C. cold water

3 T. lemon juice

1/4 C. fresh parsley

2 T. fresh dill

5 Borage leaves (optional)

1 juicy garlic clove, peeled

3 scallions, white and green part

Salt and fresh pepper to taste

For topping the soup:

Feta cheese (1/4 C. crumbled feta per serving)

1 small cucumber, diced

Method: Place all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. It becomes a wonderful green color! Taste and adjust seasoning---- you'll need to add enough salt to bring out the flavors. I like fresh ground pepper on the soup, too!

Serve chilled and topped with 1/4 C. crumbled feta and 2 T. diced cucumber.

Again, it makes a great appetizer, passed around in shot glasses on the deck... If you really want to get fancy, top each serving with a Borage flower and a sprig of dill.

Summer colors. Summer Flavors. Peanut Sauce in the frig.

It's becoming the time of year that I soak in the vibrant colors of summer. My garden is still quite young but each day brings new colors, new textures, and a few surprises.

Red was all over my kitchen this past weekend. The glorious Oregon strawberries finally came to town and I found my favorite variety, Hood. They have a sweet and fragile flavor that lets you know they won't be around for long. When I find Hoods, I must use them that very same day.

I made five batches of freezer jam and my kitchen was filled with juicy red goodness to enjoy the whole year.

My herb garden is awash in violet Borage. It threatens to take it over (even from the mint!) and I struggle to find a purpose for its celery-like flavor. A friend suggested adding the flowers and leaves to lemonade. What a wonderful combination! It tasted fresh and summery and created such a beautiful beverage with those pretty flowers peaking out from within.

Lastly, I tend to go through phases of deciding, "I will always keep this on hand!" That was the case with this mayonnaise (and I still do) and now this peanut sauce. I store it in a squeeze bottle and it makes for quick and easy meals for my kids (who are now home and hungry all the time!). Just squeeze some on noodles, rice, or even toast (with bananas)! Everyone seems to have their favorite peanut sauce recipe and I don't claim mine is the best, but it's quite yummy! Kids love it.

Keep-on-Hand Peanut Sauce

1 C. canned coconut milk, stirred

1/2 C. natural peanut butter

1 T. dark brown sugar

1 T. fish sauce

1 T. tamari soy sauce

2 T. fresh squeezed lime juice

1 T. fresh grated ginger

Method: Blend all the ingredients together in a blender (best option for smoothness) or a food processor. The sauce is thick. You'll need to warm it a bit in a bowl of warm water for serving out of the refrigerator. It keeps for a week in the refrigerator.

Note: If you have a Vita-mix or similar powered blender, you can use whole natural peanuts instead of the peanut butter and it tastes that much fresher!

Discovering.

More of my daughter's whimsical ideas.

The ease and taste of making fresh spring rolls for dinner.

Finding browned bananas on sale...

...at the market to freeze en mass for smoothies.

Discovering fancy, imported pasta on a huge markdown and making a pasta salad that tastes like spring. What interesting shapes!

Finally using The Zoku Quick Pop maker-----popsicles in 15 minutes! Impressive!

A new smoothie blend: frozen green grapes, apple juice, a whole granny smith apple, cucumber, and a bit of parsley.

Southwestern Veggie Burgers

I've been on a veggie burger kick lately. I can't get enough of them.  Sunshine Burgers are my favorite store-bought brand. I find that veggie burgers are great to have on hand in the frig or freezer for a last minute snack or to pop into my kids' lunches. They can be dressed up or down depending on what they're served with.

Today, I ate mine with homemade sour cream and salsa. They would be great with a side of corn and avocado. Or cut them into pieces and set them atop a taco salad!

This is the first of a few recipes I'll be sharing here for variations on veggie burgers. These are made from black beans and rice with some colorful veggies mixed in. Believe me, they're full of flavor! My kids love them (though my son said we should come up with a different name rather than "burger," as they don't have much in common with their namesake----different but good)!

Oh, and lastly, they're incredibly easy to make--- just throw the ingredients into a food processor and whirl away...

Southwestern Veggie Burgers

1 can Black Beans (or 1 1/2 C. cooked), rinsed

1 C. cooked brown rice, cooled

3 cloves garlic

1/2 C. sunflower seeds

2 T. pepitas

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1 small red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1/4 C. fresh spinach

3 T. chopped cilantro

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. Table Mtn All-Purpose Seasoning, or chili powder

Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Place all ingredients in food processor and pulse until the mixture becomes a chunky paste. 

Now for the messy part: Using approximately 1/4 C. of mixture, roll the paste into a ball between palms and flatten onto the baking sheet, about 1" thick. They don't spread so you can crowd them a bit.

Bake in oven for 15 minutes and carefully flip them with a thin spatula (they will try to stick a bit). Bake for 10-15 minutes more---- until they are a little firm and hold together but they are not dried out. 

Stack them between parchment papers in an air-tight container and store them in the frig or freeze them for later! To serve, warm them in the microwave or the oven.

Veggie Burgers

Dairy-full

As I'm nearing the end of my college quarter, my workload intensifies. However, I have found time to tinker in the kitchen.

A small, local Jersey farm offers fresh, raw milk as farm shares and we recently opted in. I received my first gallon this week and put it to good (and tasty) use.

On sight, I enjoyed the simplicity of the milk in its big, glass jar with the cream on top. How have we diverged so far from this basic form of milk? At first, I didn't know what to do with it!

Later, I whipped the cream on top and made butter. The butter is scrumptious and has a beautiful yellow color (no coloring needed). It reminded me of my first experiences with farm-fresh eggs and their deep yellow color.

The butter is a bit on the firm side, though, and next time I'll whip it a little more after rinsing it. I was surprised at the amount of time it took to make butter using a mixer! What a work-out our ancestors must have had making butter by hand!

Out of the butter, came buttermilk. Not the kind of buttermilk you buy in the store, as that buttermilk is cultured. This is just buttery tasting milk. I'll use it for baking or adding to a smoothie.

After that, I used the Bulgarian Yogurt Culture I ordered from The New England Cheese Supply Company and made a big batch of yogurt. It is sooooo good! It also has an enticing creamy tinge of color and is very smooth tasting. This culture can be used over and over so I'm saving a little for my next batch.

This brief experience with fresh milk makes me wish our goats were milk goats! I could really envision myself enjoying making my own healthy and tasty cheeses and dairy goods. I also intend to make sour cream and cultured buttermilk from starters from the cheese supply company.

As you might remember, I went through a period of eating a vegan diet last year. Well, I feel good about using this milk as opposed to milk that has traveled across the country to be mixed with other milk and heated and slapped into an inert state. This farm is small and the cattle graze on grass and alfalfa. It feels more wholesome.

Trying a new green edible. Fiddlehead Ferns.

I am enjoying all of your green edible comments on this post. I see I'm not alone in my love of spring green! I also realize that I have a lot more green edibles to try! Thank you for sharing.

They say it takes children 10-12 times of trying a new food before a child will accept it. (I wonder if that applies to ice cream?). And that's if a caring and persuasive person is there to encourage a child to try a food more than once.

Even adults can be reticent of trying new foods. I am fairly adventurous with food, but I must admit I was pretty leery of this one. Living along the Oregon Coast, I heard about Fiddlehead Ferns. They simultaneously scared and intrigued me. They look like something that might have spawned from one of those Alien movies. I half expect them to start wriggling out of my hand, like a green caterpillar. Nonetheless, I realized that their short season was coming to a close all too soon and if I was to try them this year, now was my chance. So I did.

Since I wasn't sure what I would think of them, I only bought a few. Locally, they were $12.99 a pound. Ouch.

I read various preparation instructions and I also read a little bit about levels of toxicity (??!). All in all, they seemed safe and I was curious about their taste. So, I boiled them for exactly four minutes, trimmed them, and sauteed them in olive oil. (I realize now that I should have trimmed some of them a bit more---they should be tight spirals). After sauteing, I sprinkled them with a little lemon juice.

 

And Pants and I tried them.

The verdict? Good. They tasted a little like asparagus, but I agree with a comment I previously read about them: they taste like spring. Another spring green edible.

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Remember to enter the Edible Green Tea Giveaway on this post.  It's your chance to win some organic powdered green tea (80 cups), a tea tin, a cute little bamboo whisk, and a little spoon. The drawing is on Friday!

Raw & Pure Ginger Ale Refreshment

Raw foods are of interest to me because of their vibrant and pure flavor, as well as their health benefits. The recipes are often hands-on and they feel new and experimental------- which appeals to me. In fact, I am rethinking and revamping a few of my recipes using raw food preparation techniques.

Which brings me to this new Ginger Ale Recipe. All last summer, we enjoyed the original Ginger Ale recipe. A recent warm spring day had me craving that summer staple but I thought I would revamp it a bit. I love the results!

Before we begin, a few notes:

**I used my high-speed blender in this recipe, but I believe a regular blender would work fine, too (let me know if you try it!).

**This is pure, unadulturated Ginger Ale, which is to say it is gingery!!! It provides spice and  the pure taste of ginger. I recommend finding plump, fresh ginger for this recipe.If the ginger in your store is wrinkly, or it looks dried-out, keep searching.

**We also tried it with a splash of Spicy Rum with high reviews.

**Once you make the "Ginger Juice" it's quite easy to whip up your own Ginger Ale when the urge arises.

**I will share some other recipes using that potent Ginger Juice!

Raw & Pure Ginger Ale Refreshment

Ingredients:

1 large Ginger Root (chopped to make approximately 1 C.)

Raw Agave Syrup, to taste

Sparkling Water

Fresh Lime

Method: Make the Ginger Juice. In a blender, place the chopped ginger root (no need to peel) and add an equal amount of water. Blend on high for approximately one minute, until the ginger is completely chopped and pureed. Allow the mixture to sit in the blender jar for 30 minutes.

Strain the ginger pulp from the juice through a fine-mesh strainer set over a medium-sized bowl. Press the pulp to remove all the juice. Refrigerate the juice until ready to use. It keeps in the refrigerator for one week.

To make a Ginger Ale (Makes one, 8 oz. glass):

In a glass, whisk together until combined---

2 T. Ginger Juice

2 T. Raw Agave Sweetener

Juice of 1 fresh lime

Add ice and sparkling mineral water. Adjust for your taste.

Cheers!

Yumm-y Avocado 'Casserole'

This was one of those last-minute, thrown together concoctions that has stayed on my meal rotation. I love it. It tastes fresh and healthy, yet substantial. From the ingredient list, it may look ho-hum, but the the tastes and textures are quite scrumptious. I hope you like it, too!

Yumm-y Avocado "Casserole"

Ingredients:

-1 to 2 avocados (peeled and thinly sliced)

-2 T. toasted sunflower seeds

-1/2 C. sprouts -or- 1 tomato, diced

-2/3 C. Yumm-y Sauce

-2 C. cooked and cooled Quinoa (I like Inca Red)

-a light vinaigrette, if desired

Method: Make Yumm-y Sauce (recipe). Cook Quinoa (1 C. water to 1 C. rinsed Quinoa) and cool. Prepare avocados.

In a shallow dish, layer all of the Quinoa. Spread with Yumm-y sauce. (I find it easier to do this with a spoon that I periodically dip in warm water to ease the spreading of the sauce). Sprinkle with sunflower seeds. Layer the avocado slices in a circular design. Sprinkle on the sprouts or tomatoes in the middle. Serve immediately or chill--- if you must wait to serve the dish, wait to add the avocados because they will brown.

My preference is sprouts on the top, but I did not have any for these photographs, so I used the optional tomatoes instead. 

I enjoy this dish unadulterated, but some people like to sprinkle it with a T. or so of a vinaigrette. Experiment and enjoy!

Fun with Coconuts. Coconut Ice Cream!

It was a coconut-y weekend this past weekend. We cracked our Easter coconuts, as well as bought a couple young coconuts.

Through trial and error, and a little research, we discovered the differences between the two kinds.  Young coconuts (called Thai coconuts, probably due to their popularity in Thai cuisine) are the less mature version of the regular coconuts you find in the supermarket.

Young coconuts are explosively filled with tasty coconut water (not to be confused with coconut "milk"). In fact, a couple of them sprayed water when I first cracked them open. We found the Thai coconut water to taste more intensely of coconut----so refreshing. The soft flesh of a Thai coconut is easily scraped out with a spoon but they do not provide as much meat as the mature ones. They are much easier to open, though! 

Thai coconuts can be found in health food stores (Whole Foods) and Asian markets. They are usually wrapped in plastic and they lack the brown husk of the typical coconut.

 

In contrast to a Thai coconut, the typical brown coconut provides more meat. They also contain water, though the amount depends on the coconut's age. Apparently, as the coconut matures, the water is replaced by the meat.

There is a lot of lore and nutritional information about coconuts and their water. The water has been used as a saline solution in emergencies and it has similar properties (electrolytes) to sports drinks and can be used as such. One claim I read asserted that coconut water is more nutritious than milk.

What did we do with all our coconuts??

Thai coconuts are easily opened using this procedure. The brown coconuts are a pain to open (figuratively and literally). There are numerous methods, but we tapped the "eyes" of the coconut with an awl and a hammer. We drained the water, and baked the whole coconuts in a 325-degree oven for 25 minutes. They cracked on their own and we pried them apart. Now for the messy part: removing the meat from the shell. We pried and pulled it apart and then used both a paring knife and a serated peeler to remove the brown skin. 

The soft meat of the young coconuts went into ice cream and we used the vast amounts of mature coconut meat for a variety of things: making coconut milk, flaked coconut, and coconut "flour." In fact, I am quite amazed at the versatility and abundance of the humble coconut!

 
  
Coconut Meat: Previously, I made coconut milk the traditional way by massaging the coconut meat in filtered water. This time, I put the whole thing in my Vita-mix and whirled it up. I let it sit for 30 minutes and then whirled it again and strained the pulp----- similar to making Almond Milk.

Coconut Flour: The strained pulp from making the coconut meat was put into my dehydrator for about 2 hours. I'll use it in the various energy bears and nuggets I make.

Flaked Coconut: The flaked coconut was made by running it through the shredding disc of my food processor. I also dehydrated it for about 3 hours.

The coconut milk went into my Vita-mix for a very yummy smoothie with a banana, almonds, dates, hemp protein and raw cocao. What a meal!

And the most yummy result of our coconut weekend (besides the water from the young coconuts): Coconut Ice Cream!

I used an online recipe as a base. I skimmed off the coconut cream from our coconut milk to make approximately 1 1/2 C. I made a simple syrup of 3/4 C. water to 1/2 C. sugar. I blended the coconut cream, the meat from the two Thai coconuts, 1/2 C. of Thai coconut water, and the simple syrup in my Vita-mix. I chilled the mixture in the refrigerator overnight and added it to my ice cream maker the next day. It is scrumptious!

All in all, it was a very fun coconut-y weekend with some flavorful results. In the future, I'll lean towards purchasing the Thai coconuts for ease of opening, taste and nutrition, and the ease of removing the coconut meat. It makes me want to grow my own palm tree!

Fondue & the Communal Meal

Into spring we go... Behind me, full of memories and glad moments, my spring break provides plenty of memories. Yep, I'm back in classes.

There are happy moments and photos to share from our family's days together. I lapped up my free time as if it would never come again. It will. And even as I write this, I know I must enjoy this slow progression of school----the ramping up of my workload as the weeks progress. I'm enjoying the slow beginning of that ramp right now.

But what did we do during spring break?

Well, first of all we had fondue.

 

Chocolate.

And cheese, too...

I went through a "fondue phase" years ago when fondue had its "comeback."  I feel another one coming on.

There are so many reasons to love fondue----especially when you're a parent of adolescents and it's a scramble to find family time. Fondue is a great way to lure everyone around the table for a fun family evening  while dipping into something yummy.

I know from experience that communal dinners provide giggles and laughs and a sense of togetherness. 

And again, fondue is yummy. So yummy in fact, that I don't know that I could completely follow a full vegan diet due to my love of fondue alone.

Besides, there is this book to dip and savor your way through. It's Dip Into Something Different from the restaurant chain,The Melting Pot. Yum.

I haven't tried any versions of Hot Pot (or Steamboat, or Shabu Shabu) yet, but I will. The idea of a progressive dinner that results in a flavorful soup/broth at the end sounds utterly enticing and soothing. If any of you have tried this style of meal, I'd love to hear about it!  

For our cheese fondue, we dipped roasted asparagus, sourdough bread cubes, marinated mushrooms, dill pickle spears, apple slices, steamed broccoli & carrots, and chicken sausage slices. For our chocolate fondue, we dipped California strawberries (alas, our Oregon Strawberries won't be ready until June)...