Birthday Cake

As I mentioned here, this month I wanted to do another practice run on Lane's birthday cake. My first practice run taught me that margarine here is nasty in frosting, that I'd need to make two cakes, that brown frosting is hard to make, and that I can't find my frosting tips.

Enter practice run #2. I used butter instead of margarine. I baked two cakes. I crumb coated.


Yellow cake on the bottom, chocolate on the top 2 layers. Crumb coat layer of frosting.

This time the frosting was much better. The layers looked about right. The cake ended up crooked a bit, so I'll need to fix that for next time, and I'll probably make all chocolate, as the yellow cake wasn't all that. I need to find my frosting tips, as the Pampered Chef's frosting thing-a-ma-jig is just not all it's cracked up to be, in my humble opinion. But it worked for now.


It will have a number "1" on top, and some edible ladybugs that my mom is making and mailing me.

I'm still not really all that pleased with the cake. I guess I'm comparing it to one of my mom's cakes. But I suppose that all things considered (lack of ingredients and so on...I can't get the stuff for candy clay or to make fondant) it'll have to do.

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Mmm...Frozen Food Cubes

Not only am I one of these moms, I'm also one of those moms.

Those homemade-baby-food-making moms.

After this experience with Turkish rice cereal, I decided to be done with buying pre-made baby food. I mean really, how hard could it be to make some baby food?

Turns out, it's not that hard at all! We got the book Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron before leaving the States, so I decided to consult it and figure out just how to make my own baby food. It's a great book; it gives a breakdown of how to make your own baby cereals, at which age babies can have certain foods, how to cook them, and a whole lot of other stuff. I haven't even had time to look at a lot of the book, but what I have looked at, I like!

So, for the last three months I have been a baby food making machine! Well, not really, but I have made everything that Lane has eaten, with the exception of some baby cookies that I bought one day while we were out, and some baby toast that she likes smeared with cream cheese.

Now that Lane is able to eat a lot of the same foods that we eat, I make less puréed baby food than I used to. I used to make zucchini, green beans, pumpkin, apples, pears, potatoes, and a lot of other things. Now I pretty much stick to apples (she eats them every morning for breakfast, either on top of pancakes or mixed with oatmeal), pumpkin, and zucchini. I like to have pumpkin and zucchini in the freezer for those occasions where we are eating something that Lane can't have yet.

You may think that making your own baby food is difficult or extremely time consuming. But...it's not! Here's how I do it:

First, chop up whatever you're making: zucchini, green beans, fruit, etc.


Apples, ready to be chopped.


All chopped up!

Next, if you're doing a veggie, steam (you retain more nutrients this way, but some things, like carrots, take forever to soften if you steam them) or boil it until it's very soft. If you're doing a fruit, I personally never cooked any of them for Lane...I just made sure they were puréed until pretty smooth.

When your veggie is done cooking, purée it in either a food processor or a blender, or use an immersion blender. In my experience, the regular blender works best for things like peas or green beans that have skins which don't get very soft even when cooked to death. Add some water (use the water you cooked the veggies with to add nutrients lost in the water) and purée until smooth. The immersion blender works best for things like zucchini or pumpkin, which get pretty soft when cooked and probably don't need added water. And the food processor works best for things like apples or pears, which have a high water content already but would not purée well in a blender.


Just toss your fruit in and pulse until puréed!

After your fruit or veggie is sufficiently puréed, spoon it into ice cube trays.


Puréed apples.


Three apples (two large and one small) got Lane 11 "portions"(two cubes) of apples.

Put your fruit or veggie in the freezer and freeze until solid. Run water on the bottom of the trays to loosen the cubes up. Crack them and put them in freezer bags and store for up to two months.


A picture from when we had a large variety of frozen food cubes.

So, there you go! It's really not been that difficult, and not that time consuming, either. It takes me an average of about 30 minutes (not including cooking time) per food, including the washing, chopping, puréeing, putting into the ice cube trays, and so on. As long as you do a large quantity, you could spend just 30 minutes to an hour per week and get between four and eight different foods for a month.

There are a few things I really like about making my own baby food:

1) I know exactly what's in it. I know that I washed the vegetables, that the potatoes weren't squishy and covered in eyes (that is what you call the black spots where sprouts grow, right?), and that the produce actually tasted good when I froze it.

2) It's nice to have a portion size of one cube, because then I can either mix three or four different things together (like sneaking in a small avocado cube, since Lane doesn't really like avocado) or I can just give her one kind of food. I don't have to keep up with lots of different baby food jars sitting around my refrigerator, and I don't have to worry about Lane getting a balanced diet, since I can mix-and-match as I see fit.

3) It's cheaper! I don't know how much jars of baby food cost in the US, but here they're about $.50 each, at least. I'm not for sure on the math, but I'm pretty sure that three apples, which equals 11 servings of apples, is cheaper than $5, which is about what it would cost to buy it pre-made.

4) This stage really only lasts for 4-5 months. Making homemade rice or oatmeal cereal is a piece of cake and not time-consuming in the slightest. Making purées is a bit more of a commitment. However, since babies don't start eating anything besides cereal until six months of age and then by 9-10 months of age they can gum a plum or a cooked carrot or potato, you really only need to purée food for them for a few months. Looking at it as a short-term commitment makes it seem more doable!

I'd like to encourage all of my pregnant or new-mom friends to try out making your own baby food when the time comes. When Shannon and I have another baby one day we'll see if I still think that making my own baby food is worth it (since I know I'll be keeping up with two kids and not just one!), but for now...it's totally worth it!

Ode to the Pumpkin

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love autumn. It's my favorite season. I think its roots are in the fact that I'm from Alaska, where fall lasts all of about 2-3 weeks, and there is really only one kind of deciduous tree (birch), so all the leaves on trees in Alaska turn pretty much the exact same color. It's pretty, really it is.


Fall in Alaska: a photo I took when we hiked Skyline last September.

But.

When I experienced my first real fall at the age of 17 and a freshman in college, autumn officially became my favorite season. The University of Idaho has a gorgeous campus. There are probably a hundred different kinds of trees on the campus: maple, oak, birch, willow, and so on. It was so different than any autumn I'd ever experienced before. For the first time in my life I understood the purpose of leaf bags and I was amazed at the creativity of God when he designed so many gorgeous, vibrant colors of tree leaves.


U of I's "Hello Walk", leading up to the Administration building. photo credit

Anyways. All that to say I love fall. And if you'll remember from this post, when I think of fall, I think of pumpkin.

Oh, how I love the pumpkin.

Soon after arriving in Poland on All Saints' Day of 2002, everyone was deciding what they'd bring to our group Thanksgiving feast. I volunteered to bring pumpkin pies with little thought to the fact that I'd only ever made a pumpkin pie by using a can of Libby's, and I hadn't brought any with me. Fortunately I'm pretty smart (or so I like to think). I was able to find a pumpkin with little trouble. And I was able to turn that beauty of a jack-o-lantern into purée. Here's how:

Let's assume that you begin with something that looks like this:


A large slice o' pumpkin.

You'll want to do this to it:


Clean that sucker out! Save the seeds for roasting, if you like: they're full of vitamins! (I eat them, even though I don't like them, because I know they're good for me.)

Turn that baby upside down onto a baking sheet or broiler pan covered in foil (it makes clean-up a lot easier).



Now cover that bad boy in foil (unless you had a whole pumpkin and just cut it in half: then you don't need the foil, just put the cut side down on the foil).


The foil traps the heat and the moisture inside, effectively baking the pumpkin.

Put it in the oven and bake at 350° or 400° for a couple of hours, or until the pumpkin starts to do this:


The flesh of the pumpkin is falling away from the skin. If you're baking pumpkin halves and can't see if it's doing this, prick the flesh with a fork. It should be very soft.

Let the pumpkin cool for a bit, maybe an hour. Then scrape all of the orange flesh out.


Mmm, pumpkin carcass.

It's done! Put all your pumpkin purée in a bowl and refrigerate! You can freeze it in portions the perfect size for your recipes. A can of Libby's is almost two cups and is the amount called for in most pumpkin pie recipes. A cup is just the right amount for these delicious cookies. And if you want to freeze some in ice cube trays, you could use them to make homemade pumpkin spice coffee creamer.


The final result.

I am so glad that I learned how to do this almost eight years ago. It has freed me from feeling like I need to have those 14-ounce cans of pumpkin in my pantry in order to enjoy the holiday season. While in the U.S. I gladly use canned pumpkin because let's face it, it's a lot less work! But this is really, really simple to do, as long as you can find a pumpkin! If your purée turns out a little stringy, use it in bread or muffins, because the strings dissolve and you can't tell at all (some people can tell when you use stringy purée in pies...I am not one of them). And then bake the pumpkin longer the next time.

Tomorrow I'm going to try out that recipe for homemade coffee creamer. And later this week I'm going to buy some more pumpkin to roast so that I can make some pumpkin bread...

Oh, how I love the pumpkin...

It might not compare to my love for the pumpkin, but what do you think about my new blog layout? Spiffy, huh?

In the Kitchen

My day was spent mostly in the kitchen, partly thanks to my trip to the Sunday Bazaar. I just found too many things that I needed thought looked good and couldn't leave without.


2 kilos of zucchini for baby food, stir-fry, zucchini bread, pasta primavera, and minestrone soup.


200 grams of walnuts for granola bars, oatmeal, and zucchini bread.


1/2 kilo of spinach for minestrone soup. And something else...to be determined.


3 kilos of pumpkin for baby food, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, and maybe an attempt at homemade pumpkin-spice coffee creamer.


1/2 kilo of green beans for minestrone soup, stir-fry, and pasta primavera.


1/2 kilo of plums.


A kilo of onions. For everything.


A kilo of mandarins. (Yup, mandarins. I thought they were limes too at first glance).


A kilo of potatoes for minestrone soup, baked potatoes, and mashed potatoes.


A kilo of grapes.


200 grams of cranberries for granola bars, oatmeal, and snacking.


A kilo of carrots for minestrone soup, stir-fry, pasta primavera, and maybe a first-time attempt at carrot soup.


1/2 kilo of pole beans for baby food.


A kilo of apples for muffins and applesauce.


1/2 kilo of broccoli for stir-fry, pasta primavera, and maybe with baked potatoes or fettuccine alfredo.


200 grams of almonds for snacking on.

Not a bad haul for $30, huh?

How to Bake a Chocolate Cake

Tomorrow we're having company for lunch. So today I needed to make dessert for tomorrow. I thought that a loaf of pumpkin bread from the freezer would be nice (because let's face it, it's more like cake than bread), and that to ensure we got dessert dessert, I'd make this:


Chocolate cake. From scratch.

As I began to pull out the ingredients it occurred to me how different baking is here than in the U.S. For starters, some of my ingredients for the cake look like this:


Ayran, baking soda, powdered sugar, cocoa, and margarine.

You can't find buttermilk here, so I use ayran, a salty yogurt drink that Turks like to just drink. It's totally nasty, but seems to work just fine for baking. Baking soda comes in little packets or a huge bag, so I store it in an old pasta sauce jar. No familiar yellow box for me! Powdered sugar comes in a 250-gram (about 8 ounces, or 1/2 pound) package. Cocoa comes in a 100-gram package (about 3.5 ounces, or 1/4 pound). And butter or margarine also comes in a 250-gram package, with markings on the package dividing it into 50-gram segments. You can't just cut the stick at the 1/2-cup mark, because there isn't such a thing!

Flour, sugar, salt, and eggs are basically the same here, although eggs do come in packages of ten, not 12, and might still have chicken poo on them. Sugar is finer than in the States, and it must be a different kind of sugar, maybe beet sugar? It makes our semi-sweet tea syrupy if we don't drink it within three days.

Anyways, there are a few things that we just can't find here. I came prepared for at least one of them:


Can you see how much I've used in just 2 1/2 months? Good thing I had someone bring me another bottle...maybe I'll make it through the holidays!

My years in Poland prepared me for the fact that you cannot find vanilla extract in Europe, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find it here either, so I brought a bottle. I was right: only vanilla sugar is available, and I never did figure out how to get my recipes to taste right using that stuff. So, vanilla extract it is.

Then there's this:


Yes, I brought it from the U.S. I brought my food processor too.

I felt kind of silly for bringing my Kitchen Aid mixer all the way across the world. It weighs 25 pounds and cost about $100 to check in an extra bag (if you figure the whole 50-pound bag cost $200 and it was 1/2 of the weight). BUT. I felt justified when one day we were out and saw a Kitchen Aid for sale, checked the price, and it was a little over $800. Eight hundred dollars!!!! I actually use my Kitchen Aid mixer and food processor regularly, so I'm glad I brought them, especially after seeing how much they cost here.

Finally, when it comes to actually baking the cake, I deal with this:


Celsius!

While 150° Celsius is not quite 350°Fahrenheit, I've found that in this particular oven, things tend to burn if I set the oven at 175°. The dial on the left determines where the heat comes from. With some things I have to turn the bottom on first, then turn it off and turn the top on, and then finally turn them both on to finish it off. It's complicated! Fortunately this is extremely nice compared to the oven I had in Poland, which I had to light with a match or lighter every time. Plus, it had no temperature gauge, so I learned to cook based on the size of the flame!

So, there you go: how to make a chocolate cake if you live in a different country! You never knew it involved so many differences, did you?

What's For Dinner?

Thursdays are pazar days.

The pazar is the bazaar. And every Thursday it happens right up the street, about a 10-15 minute walk straight up this ginormous hill. But I figure that the hill is good exercise. The produce is better than at the store. And I get to practice my Turkish. So I usually go.

Yesterday was an exceptional day. I got all sorts of goodies! I always buy zucchini, grapes, and bananas. Yesterday I bought pumpkin to roast for Lane (and to freeze for pies and bread!). But among the best finds: broccoli (it's been difficult to find lately) and green beans (they've been a bit on the spendy side but were a good deal yesterday).

So, today when I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, this popped into my mind:


Pasta Primavera

This is one of the few things that I make so often that I no longer need the recipe. I know exactly what I like in it. I know what I need for it and what I can do without. I know how to up the portions of one vegetable if I don't have another.

It's one of our favorites.

Today I just happened to have all four vegetables that I like to put in it. I had just the right amount of fresh Parmesan left. I never add the wine anymore, so it didn't matter that I didn't have any. I had small bits of two different pastas that I wanted to use up. Lane, once again, entertained herself with a piece of toast and a carrot, and I tossed in a fresh green bean for kicks. I cooked. Shannon studied. Lane played. And dinner. was. delicious.

If you like pasta, I'd recommend giving this dish a try. Don't skimp on the Parmesan: use the fresh stuff...you won't regret it. You can sub out any veggies for any other ones: if you don't like broccoli, leave it out and add more squash. Actually, add some yellow squash for me anyways...we can't get that over here. If you like cauliflower, add some. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure exactly which veggies my recipe says to use. You can also add chicken if you want (although it's fantastic without it). Just cut or slice the chicken into bite-sized pieces and cook it in the olive oil first.

So, there you go. One of my favorite dishes. It's easy (and only time-consuming because of chopping veggies and shredding cheese). It's healthy. And it's yummy. The next time you're trying to figure out what to do for dinner...make this. And let me know what you think.