Rosemary Fig Preserves

We're blessed that the house we're in came with a fig tree. The problem is only two of us eat fresh figs and not a lot at that. I decided to use them up this year. Some are chopped in the freezer to make bread later and some I made these preserves with. The thing about these preserves is that they have converted two fig "haters" sure they still don't like them off the tree but they do like them prepared this way.

Jeaow For Sour Fruits

This is one of my favorite snacks. It's sweet, spicy, and salty, the mangoes and fruits are tart. My mouth waters everytime I think about it. It makes me crave baby mangoes and sour fruits. My cousins when I used to visit them loved this. Julie used to make this sauce for us and we would go pick fruits like crab apples and other fruits around the neighborhood to snack on. So much fun.

Bunches of Berries in Bars

One of the fantastic things about our move is that I found a great wholesale fruit and vegetable source. I admit, typing that out it sounds lame. I'm okay with that though because this awesome place will have avocados by the case, 48 for $37.50, blueberries in 9 ounce packages 12 for $7-10, 12 ounce packages of raspberries 14 for $14, 10 artichokes for $8,  organic packs of produce that end up being $1 a pound. It's amazing and awesome. That's how these bars came about. We love fresh berries and were eating them by the handful. The kids were taking 14 ounce packs of raspberries for lunch.  I purchased 28 packs. Yes 28. In the end I had 3 packs that needed to be used up. We ate a bunch. I still have blueberries in my fridge that I can freeze for later also.

Coconut Sticky Rice With Mango (Pandan and Butterfly Pea Flower)

Coconut Sticky Rice with Mango, Khao Niew Mak Houng is something I've blogged before. Twice actually.
Here in 2008.
Here in 2013 with Forbidden Rice.

Chirashi Bowl

Nothing fancy here as far as ingredients. But it was a yummy Whole30 compliant lunch. Down to the 100% natural wasabi and Coconut amnios instead of soy sauce. Which I will say neither are as good as what I'm used to, which is bright green not real wasabi and soy sauce. 

Coconut Pandan Sponge Cake

If you ask me what my favorite cake is my answer would probably be this Coconut Pandan Sponge cake, Chinese bakery vanilla sponge cake, Chocolate cake... I like other cakes a whole lot, like Hummingbird cake, and Whole Wheat Carrot cake. I think this Coconut Pandan is top 2, top three at the least.  I got this recipe from a sweet girl on Instagram. I changed the flavors to what we like. It's so yum.

Coconut Pandan Crepes

Coconut Pandan crepes

 Coconut Pandan Crepes, these lovely fragrant crepes. You can fill them with anything you like. Keep them tropical themed with coconut, mango, papaya, and other flavors from South East Asia. I used strawberries and bananas in the pictures. I'm on a pandan flavor kick. It's a bit floral, aromatic, fragrant. It's lovely, especially with coconut. I made a cake with it for Christmas so good, I've made that cake again just a couple weeks ago. I'll try to get that recipe up before next year (wink). It looks like this.

 Pandan or screwpine leaves, also known as pandan goes well with coconut many desserts are paired with these flavors. In Lao,  and also in Thai the leaves are called Bai teoy. They look almost like a tall grass. Fresh leaves are hard to find, but can be ordered. Sometimes you can find them frozen but it's not as flavorful. I have not personally tried the dried leaves yet. I opt for the ever easy gel flavoring. You can also buy a canned extract. If you use the canned, the remaining portion can be frozen in an ice cube tray since it isn't shelf stable. For these crepes I use pandan extract/gel. The extracts do have coloring in them. They are thicker like a paste, the bottles of essence I hear have less flavor. So I stick with the extract. You can find them both at Asian markets. You can also find many pandan flavored desserts in Asian markets.

Cranberry Orange Sweet Rolls

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you are having a blessed New Year. We had a wonderfully low key Christmas. We stayed home and played games and cooked. Just our immediate family. After Christmas we did have family visit through the New Year. There wasn't any snow and it's been unusually warm on and off here. It's been in the seventies and it's February. Too crazy. Have you all gotten much snow? I'm hoping we'll get at least one good storm.

Look at this ooey gooey filling.

How To Cut A Pomegranate

 How to cut a pomegranate in three easy steps and avoid wasting any of the precious seeds. So simple, and easy.

Kitchen Sink Chunk Cookies

The weather is getting cooler around here, it's a rainy morning so I'm sitting down to update. With a cup of tea at my side and cookies... you know, so I can taste the to make sure they are still yummy. To post, because I don't want to post cookies that aren't still yummy. I better have two just to make sure :). I let my kids have one after breakfast, two days in a row now. I'm cool like that.
How is the weather where you are? I'm so ready for fall. My parents are planning a visit. I can't wait. They will get to see the leaves change color, come to a couple soccer games. It'll just be nice having them here. Maybe I should makes some of this cookie dough to keep in the freezer. Because cookies.
I like this Kitchen Sink Chunk Cookie recipe because it doesn't require me to think ahead and soften butter. I think most of the Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes and cookie recipes that I like use melted butter. I will say I like cookies that are chewy, so I prefer using bread flour. You can swap out AP flour in equal amounts if you prefer, or if that's what you happen to have on hand. Adding oats would also be easy to do, swap out some of the flour for rolled oats, or use some as your mix-ins. This recipe is easily tweaked. See the notes below for variations.

I used dried tart cherries and chocolate bars for this batch, because I didn't have any chocolate chips in the house! Yikes.

Apple Cider Steel Cut Oats

Apple Cider Steel Cut Oats

It's just the right weather for hot breakfast isn't it? I like to send the kids off with a hot bowl in their tummies before school. Although I like oats for a snack or even lunch too. But that's me and the fact that I don't always sit down until about lunch time after I get the kids off to school.

2016 Let Them Eat Cake- Cherry Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

These cute little cupcakes are some of my favorite. The vanilla and cherry are so good together, and well, these are just cute. Pixie requested cherry cake for her birthday, so I came up with these. The pipettes were too long, but I guess that just meant more cherry juice. I have found shorter ones but these were fun.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Cranberry season is upon us! I don't know what it is about cranberries. I only make a handful of things with them but I really like them. I don't now if it's the tart berry flavor, that they are good in both savory and sweet applications, or that the color just screams "HOLIDAY SEASON APPROACHING" Whatever the case I smile when I see them, and I always grab an extra bag of cranberries for the freezer for the rest of the year for that bright flavor they give.

I also love seeing them on a tree at Christmas, it's so pretty. They aren't the easiest to string but I think it's worth it, here's our tree from last year. Very simple.

A Bee, and a Mango Lassi

I have a bee story for you that is directly related to this post, more on that below. But first things first. Mango Lassi, perfectly refreshing. Not sickly sweet, and easy to make. The method below is just a method, adjust flavors to your taste. The lassi I'm writing about is a sweet, not salty lassi.

Mango Lassi with Tapioca pearls.

Freezer Tip: All Things Citrus

How to freeze all things citrus.

Welcome to another Freezer Tip post. Some of these posts may be obvious and/or common knowledge. But as some of you may know, I started this blog for my children. So they that could reference it when they move out and if they ever wanted a recipe for a dish they liked. So these little tips may be useful, someday.

Steel Cut Tropical Oats

Talk about "Throwback  Thursday", today I had a bowl of oats that was much like what I used to make for my toddlers and babies. Except of course, at the time theirs looked like this:

Strawberry Banana Pancakes

Remember these great Banana Greek Yogurt Pancakes? The pancakes above are the exact same batter with some strawberries thrown in. I think along with blueberries you'd have a great Fourth of July

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb pie a la mode.

Oh warm weather, here you come with your beautiful bounty of fruits and vegetables. What's that I see? Rhubarb? Hello lovely, why is it that your season is so short? Tart, tangy burst of flavor. So yummy.  Mixed with berries and surrounded by buttery pastry. Strawberries and rhubarb and one of those combinations that sing summer to me.

(Blue)Berry Sweet Rolls

Hello everyone! I haven't blogged in awhile. We've just been busy with life and spending much needed time with family. God has been so good and so faithful to us during this season of our lives. In mid April my dear cousin went home to be with the Lord. While we have been so comforted knowing that we will see her again we miss her dearly and know that her young children and husband miss her even more so. Please keep them in your prayers if you think of us! There's so much I could write about and tell you, but I'll save that for another post. For now I'll hold the memories and moments that God has carried us through close to my heart.

I think I mentioned on Facebook that  I have a fajita salad recipe/post coming up soon. I'll have that up probably next week. Until then, you must try these Blueberry Sweet Rolls. I have the blue in parenthesis because you can you any berry you like!

Blueberry Sweet Roll.

Apple Snack

 It's funny, I thought I blogged this year's ago, but I can't find it, just references to it. It's like it's elusive. LOL.  I've never blogged it because it's so simple but it's one of our favorite ways to eat apples. The simple ingredients. Apples, an orange, and half a lime. That's it. But it's so good.