A Little Bit of Me – Mom, Cook, Gardener, Locavore, Homemaker, Geek, Entrepeneur

If I tried to design an event that would make my 4 year old ecstatically happy I could not have done better then the Boise Cupcake Collective! This morning we attended their fundraiser for the Treasure Valley Institute for Children’s Arts. For $5 each plus any donation we wanted to make we enjoyed:

• Our choice of 3 cupcakes each
• Balloon animals
• Old fashioned lemon-aid stand
• Dancing to cool kids music (The type a parent finds themselves bobbing too instead of cringing )
• Magic Tricks
• Beautiful displays of edible art

This was the type of event that could be enjoyed by parents and kids alike. To sum up the kid friendliness of the event half the time the DJ had a very cute 2 year old in his arms. I was especially grateful to the cupcake makers who listed their ingredients so I could safely consume some.

For those who were unable to attend here’s a virtual cupcake tour. Please excuse any camera shake. These were all taken while wearing an electronic happy 11m old and supervising a very cupcake happy 4 year old.

Pirate Pig Cupcakes

Frog Cupcakes

Cupcakes as a Tropical Island

Bikini Cupcakes

Bird Cupcakes

Ice Cream or Cupcakes?

Cupcake Bouquet

Garden Cupcake

Jewled Cupcakes

Chocolate Sprinkled Cupcakes

Lemon Cupcakes

Chocolate zucchini Cupcakes

Chocolate Huckleberry Cupcakes

Lime Boat Cupcakes

Swirl Cupcakes

Pirate Chest Cupcakes

Assorted Cupcakes

Green Cupcakes

Bird on Cupcake

Artistic Cupcakes

Gluten Free Cupcakes

Toy Cupcakes

Poka Dot Cupcakes

Apricot Cream Cupcakes

Flower Garden Cupcakes

Flower Garden Cupcake

If you enjoyed this virtual tour and live in the Treasure Valley please consider stopping buy http://www.trica.org/ and making a paypal donation. (If you are out of the area feel free to donate too or find a good children’s art group near you.)

Thank you to everyone who created such a fun and wonderful event for parents and kids alike.

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This month was my very first Daring Cooks Challenge! It was something I always wanted to make but was a little unsure how, Chinese Dumplings. The girls and I both had a lot of fun making them. A big thank you to Jen from Use Real Butter for doing an excellent job hosting and providing direction. Anyone interested in trying should check out her original post on chinese dumplings.

We went with a non-traditional filling mainly because those are the ingredients I had around at the time. (If you have ever tried a “quick” trip to the grocery store with a 3.5 year old and 9 month old I’m betting you will understand.) The filling was lamb and apple sausage with sauteed cabbage, onions and caraway seeds. Next time I’m going to use less cabbage and add some chopped tart apple to the sautee since the flavor was a little flat.

First we made the filling. C had a lot of fun chopping a piece of cabbage with her little butter knife.

Sauteed Cabbage, Onions and Caraway

Next we made and rolled out the dough. This part was a little time consuming but very fun. C has her own rolling pin but spent more time eating her dough then rolling. You will notice my wrappers are not exactly perfect circles. Luckily that doesn’t effect the final product.

Not Quite a Circle Dumpling Wrapper

The next step was to fill and crimp the dumplings. I was very happy with my pleats!

Dumpling with Pleats!

Since little R is still too young to handle dumplings we made her a special baby version of the filling sauteed and ground up. It was a big hit with her.

Baby Food Dumpling

Finally for the adults and big kids we pan fried them. I also tried a deap fried version but my favorite was definitely the pan frying. The deap fried was good but a pain to clean up after.

Pan Fried Dumplings

Over all this was a wonderful challenge! We had a lot of fun and I will be definitely making more dumplings in the future. (Next time I’m even going to plan ahead enough to make a traditional version.)

On a side note the leftover filling makes an excelent breakfast hash if sauteed in olive oil until lightly browned. To see more great dumplings check out the main daring cooks post.

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I made my first submission to Real Food Wednesday this week. It’s an old article that’s once again timely. I also made an ingredient update since our youngest is allergic to one of the old ingredients. Please check out All Purpose Farmers Market Dip and all the other posts on Real Food Wednesday.

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My oldest daughter has a very unique talent. She has a built in GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) detector. More precisely she is allergic to corn. Since corn is one of the top 5 GM crops keeping her safe naturally keeps us away from a lot of GM food and products. What’s scary is the weird and unexpected places that have corn.

7 Unexpected GMO Products

1. Iodized Salt – Iodine doesn’t like to stick to salt crystals so it needs a little “glue” in the form of corn starch. And the manufacturer doesn’t even have to list it on the label. Isn’t that nice for them.
2. Fresh Fruit & Vegetables - Have you heard that most fruit and vegetables aren’t GMO? They might not be when they come off the tree but many are by the time they get to the store. Apples, cucumbers and many others are coated with a layer of wax or oil mostly derived from cheap GM corn.
3. Canned Goods – Nice, cheap citric acid no longer just comes from citrus. Take a look at your canned tomatoes, fruit juice, etc. If they aren’t organic and they say citric acid or absorbic acid you may be looking at code for GM corn.
4. Natural Cleaning Products - Have you switched to cleaning your house with white vinegar or any of the other environmentally friendly cleaning products that are not listed as organic? Guess what? GM corn.
5. Gas – Take a good look at the gas pump the next time you fill up. If it’s like near me you will see a label that says at least 10% ethanol. This is one of my big pet peaves. We take petroleum and turn it into pesticides and fertilizers. Then it is poured all over GM corn to force high yields. Then the corn is turned into gas and gets a nice environmentally friendly badge stamped on it. (I would LOVE a good analysis of how much petruleum is used to create ethanol.)
6. Medicine – Read the inactive ingredients the next time you need medicine. Do you see any of these 100+ corn derivatives? If you want an alternative you can get your medicine specially made at a compounding pharmacy. My daughter’s bottle of tylenol cost ~$35.
7. Baking Powder – Once again check the ingredients. Most baking powder has corn starch. Specialty stores may have baking powder with potato starch or wheat starch. (Or you can make your own using baking soda and cream of tartar.)

If you are curious about even more products that may have GMO corn check out this post on avoiding corn from my Find Safe Food blog. It will give you the nitty gritty of the hoops you would need to go through to totally flush GM corn out of your life. And trust me… even then as we see about once a month there will still be oops. It is everywhere!

For more information on GMO’s check out this weeks NO GMO blog carnival.

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I promise that todays lesson will involve actual cooking. So far we’ve covered very basic kitchen tools and the five senses in the kitchen. Today we’re going to go from the frying pan to the fire, in a good way.

When life goes crazy and I still have to get a meal for my family that is both nutritious and delicious I revert to the most basic form of cooking I know, salt and pepper cooking. Before McDonalds, before Martha Stewart this is the type of cooking people used for “fast food” and “every day food”. You don’t need a fancy recipe or a lot of time, just some good food combined with salt, pepper, oil and fire.

The Best Ingredients

The first step is to get the best ingredients you can. The simpler your cooking the more each individual ingredient’s flavor will stand out on its own. Spices and sauces can cover up problems. If you take them away you need to make sure what is left is as good as it can be. Now, while you can spend a small fortune on good ingredients you don’t have to. The best thing to do here is look for what’s currently growing in your area. The closer it is to you the fresher it will be when you get it and the riper it will have been when picked. There is a world of difference between a tomato shipped from Mexico to my supermarket and one I bought at the farm stand in August. There is also a world of difference in price since I didn’t have to pay to have it shipped across an entire country. If (like while I’m writing this) you don’t have much (or any) local produce then go for the best you can. Look, feel and even ask to taste the quality. Check the labels and aim for stuff from a few states a way instead of a few continents away. I use the winter months as the time to fill my craving for tropical fruits, citrus and other items that are never in season where I am.

Salt and Pepper

The next step is simple seasoning. There was a time when I used to get so upset with my cookbooks when they said “salt and pepper to taste”. “How in the world am I supposed to know what to taste is? I didn’t write the recipe!” What might seem obvious to some people was not at all obvious to me. To taste means quite literally add a little, taste it, repeat until it tastes right.

Now here is the really hard part. For a while you have to except that you are going to get this wrong. Yes, I said wrong. I don’t care how smart you are if you are new to cooking to taste there will be a learning curve. The problem is food is changed by cooking so what tastes right before cooking may not be right after. Just ask my husband about the many batches of super salty greens we had for dinner. (Greens cook down a lot so you have to under salt for the final dish to taste right.) The good news is by doing it wrong you are also doing something right. You are building a subconscious taste library in your brain. After enough batches of over salt greens, followed by under salty greens you will have figured out that if your pan is 2/3 full of greens and you sprinkle a certain number of pinches of salt and grind so much pepper it just works. The key is to accept you have to do a LOT of practice to get to that point. Taste before cooking and seasoning, taste after each step, repeat.

Well, what about raw meat? How do I pretaste that? Well in this case you have two choices. The first is to just wing it. Make a wild guess and see how it works. Except that there will be some mistakes. I’d aim at under salting at first… it’s always easier to add at the table instead of subtract. You will probably have less willing victims , um I mean tasters, if you set out a salt shaker instead of a bowl of water to rinse the food in. The alternative is slower but can help you figure it out faster. Season very lightly and cook a small portion to taste. Repeat until you think you’ve got it right. This is good for when you have some extra time to experiment. Include your family if you can. Kids are usually more patient if they feel they are an important part of the process.

Next time we’ll continue this lesson with How to Cook: Salt, Pepper, Oil, Fire: Part 2

Are you new to this series? Check out How to Cook: Cooking Lessons from the Ground Up for a complete list of lessons.

Image: sweet potato by rosewx12 on flickr

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