lulubeans

roasted carrot soup

we are big soup eaters in this house and pretty much always have at least one form of soup in the fridge or on the stove any given time. my girls are both big lentil eaters, so we do a lot of that.  lately i have been adding roasted squash to the broth. it sweetens up the soup and generally no one knows that it's there. i love being sneaky like that.  

for awesomely easy and economical and delicious veggie broth, i learned the best trick ever from f pea's blog.  i just keep all my clean veggie stems and peels and so on frozen in freezer bags until i have 4 or 5 bags and then i make a giant pot of stock.  i love the no waste feeling, and the broth always tastes fantastic. in the past, i have bought veggies specifically for the task of producing stock; never again!  

all of this about soup, and mostly i just wanted to share the soup that i made today, from these pretty purple carrots:

 

i chopped up two onions, 6 big carrots, and a few cloves of garlic. i mixed them in just olive oil to coat, and a little bit of honey, cumin, sea salt and pepper.

 

roasted, added to veggie stock, simmered, blended some in the blender, kind of mashed the rest with a potato masher. added a little fresh grated ginger. served with yogurt on top. yum.

the last picture doesn't show very well how pretty the purple color still is.  the baby gobbled it up, and the big girl agreed that she'll try some later, so i am saying it was a success!  

have breakfast with us

last night natasha heard that i had some banana bread at betsy's house.  never one to be out ranked in sweet-per-day score card she keeps in her mental filing cabinet, the girl took initiative and started unshelving cookbooks and pulling out aprons. (i am so in love with the can-do spirit she has at 8!  it's fantastic.)   we settled on the banana bread recipe in laurel's kitchen and subbed spelt flour for the whole wheat and opted for maple syrup instead of brown sugar.  then i remembered the tub of ground chocolate chips that i had leftover from a failed babka experiment over christmas time, and we tossed those in for good measure.  the result is amazing,  kind of a banana brownie.   (we lucked out, because it was one of those wacky, free-form, can't find any measuring spoons type of baking sessions.  do you have those in your house?)  i think i altered the recipe enough to make it okay to share here. we used butter, but i think that you could easily use oil and make these vegan.

chocolate banana bread:

ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

juice of one lemon

1/3 cup butter (or oil)

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 and 1/2 cups spelt flour

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 C wheat germ

1 and 1/2 cups semi-sweet choc chips

1/4 C unsweetened cocoa

preheat oven to 375.  mash the bananas with the lemon juice.  cream the butter and maple syrup into the banana mix. 

in a separate bowl, stir (or sift, if you are less lazy than we are) the flour, salt, baking soda, and powder.  mix in the wheat germ and then add these ingredients to the banana bowl.  our chocolate chips and cocoa had been ground in the food processor.  we added these last, after we had separated a little but of the batter to make the baby a couple of mini muffins.  i would have also added some walnuts at this point too, but i live with a bunch of nut haters.

we baked in a 4" x 8" parchment lined loaf pan for 40 minutes. 

i ate this last night with homemade whipped cream (left over from sunday's b-day bash) until my belly hurt.  i had it for breakfast too, with coffee and a hard boiled egg.  greta's way into the yolks and is getting the hang of feeding herself.  in my book, having a kid who has mastered reading a cookbook index and can (more or less) bake for herself = just as cool as having another one who has figured out how to slurp crumbs off the coffee table.

we are starting to feel a little bit halloween-y around here.

how about you?

the best pancakes

i supervised pancake making yesterday, but really, natasha did all the heavy lifting .  the recipe we usually follow is some rough adaptation of a yogurt pancake recipe that i found somewhere online a few years ago.  i love it because it is so flexible, and so i thought that i would share it with you.

when i first started using it, i made our 'cakes with homemade soygurt; now i just dump whatever container of stonyfield's that we have on hand. i've made these pancakes with eggs and without, with added fruit, berries and chocolate chips.  i've made peanut butter sandwiches with them for natasha's school snacks when we've been out of bread and i've made them for dinner. i don't think we've ever been disappointed with them and natasha always thinks they are a very exciting treat.
here's the rough framework that we go by:
1 cup flour (usually whole wheat, because that's generally what we have on hand)
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/8 t salt

combine these ingredients in a large bowl.  in a separate bowl, combine:

~1/2 cup yogurt (i've used the tiny baby yogurts and the individual grown up yogurts)

1 cup sour soymilk (i'm guessing the original recipe called for buttermilk; i am just in the habit of buying soymilk and added a good squeeze of lemon or a teaspoon or so of cider vinegar to make it "sour".

egg sub equal to one egg (or, if you prefer, an egg.) a mashed banana or peach or couple of tablespoons of apple sauce or flax eggs are good here.

optional: let small child handle the shaker of cinnamon with free range over mixing bowls.  results may vary.

mix both bowls of ingredients, and make some pancakes!

a super nice sunday

    we took a family walk to here this morning.   it was very, very nice.   sunday is the one day of the week all three of us get to spend together from start to finish.   needless to say, it's by far my favorite day of the week. 

    we came home and made some alphabet vegetable soup and biscuits.   it's rare that the three of us sit down and all eat the same thing at the same time  (n and i are vegetarians, she's super super picky, and joe is a total meat + potatoes + more meat guy but also super picky in his own way)  so when we make and all enjoy the same meal,  it is a very exciting and happy occasion.

 

    lastly, just in the interest of giving you a little bit o' yarn content,  here's a picture of the wrap-around-skirt yarn,  all plied and washed and ready to party:

 

    again,  i must tell you,  it is prettier in real life.   the photo just slightly mutes the colors.   i am so happy with the kind of color variation this yarn contains.   anytime i can dump pink and green dye in the same roasting pan and not wind up with a nasty run-together situation is good by me.     the yarn is going to erin's house, as my way of thanking her for the fabulous apron she made for me.  i hope she enjoys it!   i really loved making it. 

playing house

    a super close observer of my photos may wonder if every room in my house is this reddish color (firedancer, i believe it was called).   in fact,  only one room is red,  it's just that in the 3 months we have been in this house,  said room has been a living room,  and then a dining room, and it's present incarnation,  a playroom/ studio room for natasha and me to share.    not at all a room of one's own,  but it is a place for us both to create and play.    the new play/studio space is much more cozy and warm than the previous playroom, the huge laundry space/makeshift mudroom at the back of the house.    that room will soon add woodshop for joe onto its list of functions.    i sort of feel like this house is one of those little plastic tile puzzles,  and we keep sliding the little squares around,  attempting to create something cohesive.    we decided that we aren't necessarily dining room people,  and the kitchen table is now cozily tucked into the kitchen, where we are somehow spending far more time all dining together than we did when we had a dining room.  perhaps it will come as no big surprise that everything in the house is in total disarray right now (isn't disarray such a nice word for "disgusting pig sty-esque mess"?). 
i am trying to enjoy what little moments of  pretty that i can find.  there's even some new spinning in there!

hope you are having a great thursday!  i am looking forward to knitting with friends tonight.  i'm planning to cast on some socks for me.

merry merry

    Christmas thrifting has to be just about the very best kind there is.     Maybe it's because, much unlike a lot of other things in life, really cute Christmas stuff is something that I never feel like I accumulate too much of.      Expecially since I've become a mom.      It's like my sacred maternal duty to create a cheery and magical yuletide atmosphere by hoarding other people's cast off stuff. 

    Or maybe Christmas thrifting feels so rewarding because there is so much really bad Christmas stuff out there.   Finding the rosy cheeked, hand made felt angel at the bottom of that pile of Disney ornaments and Avon perfumed candles just feels especially rewarding.

    Also, buying secondhand feels a lot less like taking part in the consumer feeding frenzy of holiday shopping in this country. 
 

    Whatever it is that makes me love Christmas thrifting so, I left my favorite second hand store today $7 lighter and totally in the Christmas spirit.     It will be fun to unpack at the new place and all the holiday stuff at the same time!

yarn or dishes

    It's funny how the dishes almost never, ever seem to win.  Mondays are a super busy day 'round these parts, but I am popping in to say hi.  I did manage to get a little something on the bobbin this morning:

 

    This one is a bit out of the ordinary for me.   A  little beyond my personal comfort zone, if you will.   The red is 100% merino, the paler bits are a lush 80% merino/20% mohair blend, and it's plyed with a coppery-silvery-sparkly thread.   The whole thing makes me nervous.    I like my yarns to feel functional, ready for action, substantial, hearty enough to get knit and last.    This whole lofty-wisps-around-thread thing  feels a little unsettling to me, even though I am sure that it is totally knitable.  I think that I may felt this one a little bit to add some fortitude.   Also, I am totally unused to plying with thread and not coiling.   Thread sure goes fast lying this way!

    We have begun to do a little bit of Halloween decoration around the house.   Have you?   We love us some Halloween in this family, yes indeed.