This was my second attempt to soothe myself with some
chocolate. And I LOVE these!!!! In fact, as I type this, Logan is
upstairs screaming himself silly in his crib and I am dying to go get
one. Chocolate makes anything more manageable. And chocolate peanut butter...!!! However, my footsteps will make him scream even harder, so I will
have to content myself with blogging them instead. I used soy butter
in this instead of peanut butter, since I'm not eating nuts. But I
can't wait to try it with peanut butter post-breastfeeding, since it's
already so delicious with soy butter!!
This recipe
comes from Taste of Home's Prize-Winning Recipes. Which is the same
little cookbook where my grandmother got her recipe for the delicious raspberry truffle brownies I've previously posted. Which were equally delicious.
I doubled the glaze, thinking
that 1 oz. of chocolate didn't seem to be much to spread over the entire
pan of brownies. And the two ounces just barely covered the pan, so
I'd definitely recommend doubling the glaze. Or maybe even tripling it,
as it was still tough to smooth over the entire surface when doubled.
2 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate
1/2 C butter
2 eggs
1 C sugar
1/2 C all-purpose flour
Filling:
1 1/2 C confectioners' sugar
1/2 C creamy peanut butter (I used soy butter)
1/4 C butter, softened
2 to 3 tbsp. half-and-half cream or milk (I used 3.25% milk)
Glaze:
1 square (1 oz.) semisweet baking chocolate
1 tbsp. butter
1.
In a small saucepan, melt chocolate and butter over low heat; set
aside. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar until light and
pale-coloured.
2.
Add flour and melted chocolate; stir well. Pour into greased 9-inch
square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for 25 minutes or
until a toothpick inserted near the centre comes out clean. Cool.
3.
For filling, beat confectioners' sugar, peanut butter and butter in a
mixing bowl. Stir in cream or milk until mixture reaches desired
spreading consistency. Spread over cooled brownies; cover and chill
until firm.
4.
For glaze, melt chocolate and butter in a saucepan, stirring until
smooth. Drizzle over the filling. Chill before cutting. Store in
refrigerator.
Makes about 5 dozen.
Difficulty level: moderate
I'm going to keep this short and sweet, as it's been a busy week.
Just wanted to share my favourite moments of the week, however:
- Logan incessantly telling me "careful", "fall" as I change his bum. Clearly, if he would not throw a temper tantrum 50% of the time while he's on his change table, he would be at no risk of falling. I'm also clearly not the one who has to be careful, despite his constant reminders to me. Maybe I should remind him of the time he wiggled his way right off of his change table and into emerg.
- Logan repeatedly screaming "want some" as I came out of the Tim Horton's drive through. Apparently, the small handful of occasions I have gotten him a plain timbit while I pick myself up a tea has etched a solid memory into that young little brain of his. Even though the last time he got one was over 2 months ago. Sadly for him, this was a tea only occasion.
- Logan blinking in fear and covering his face in an attempt to protect himself from the water as we went through the car wash tonight.
Guess Chloé's gotta get older before I have some favourites for her. Though I did really appreciate her sleeping through the night last night and staying adorable quiet during my kinesitherapy session this week :)
I made these brownies couple of weeks back in an attempt to satisfy my temper-tantrum induced chocolate cravings. Sadly, I overcooked the brownies, so they were not quite as delicious as I believe they otherwise would have been. This recipe comes from 365 Great Cookies and Brownies.
As a quick aside, I am also super excited to have found this cookbook here while I was searching for a link for the above cookbook. And doubly excited to see that they have it at my local library. Soooooooooo getting that out of the library the minute we get home from Vancouver. Need to get back onto the whole homemade yogurt kick again.
Ok, back to the brownies...
1 stick (1/2 C) butter
3 squares unsweetened chocolate
1 C sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 C flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3 squares semisweet chocolate (I used dark chocolate)
1/4 C heavy cream (I used homogenized milk)
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit. Grease an 8-inch square pan and a 6-inch round in centre of a cookie sheet.
2. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and unsweetened chocolate over low
heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat, turn into a medium
bowl, and set aside 10 minutes to cool slightly.
3. With an electric mixer on medium speed, beat sugar, eggs and vanilla
into cooled chocolate mixture. Mix together flour, baking powder, and
salt and fold in to make a thick batter. Remove 1/4 C batter; spread
onto greased round on cookie sheet. Turn remaining batter into prepared
pan, leveling surface.
4.
Place both brownie pans in oven. Bake brownie round 5 to 6 minutes,or
until crisp. Bake pan of brownies 12 to 15 minutes, or until a
toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Slide brownie round onto a
wire rack and let cool completely. Set square brownie in pan on a rack
to cool.
5.
Meanwhile, chop semisweet chocolate. In a small saucepan, heat
chocolate and cream over low heat, stirring until smooth. Or combine
chocolate and cream in a glass measuring cup and microwave on High 1 to 1
1/2 minutes, or until chocolate is melted; stir until smooth. Pour
over baked brownie in square pan.
6.
Break brownie round from cookie sheet into pieces. Place pieces in a
plastic bag and roll to make crumbs. Sprinkle brownie crumbs over
frosted brownie in pan. Cut into 16 squares and let cool completely.
Store in an air-tight container or wrap well and refrigerate.
It's been a grilled cheese sandwich and (no) cream of vegetable soup (defrosted from my freezer) for dinner kinda week. And so far, I've eaten at Subway for lunch every day. I suspect I may find myself there again tomorrow.
My plans to slowly get ready for our upcoming trip to Vancouver were derailed this week when Jérôme came down with the man flu. You know the kind? One of the most prominent symptoms is a complete inability to do ANYTHING AT ALL. I mean, AT ALL. It's particularly contagious amongst males. Women have been known to catch a similar bug, but for whatever reason, the symptoms affect the two sexes differently. For instance, when I had it last week and two weeks before that, I somehow managed to still breastfeed Chloé and get supper on the table. But they've never had to be in labour before (or really, even be pregnant for 9 months), so maybe just haven't completed the requisite training????
This has been coupled with both kids suddenly waking frequently at night. And I also have a a week full of appointments, so I am out of the house almost all day every day. And am trying to get a Shutterfly album compiled for the daycare board that I volunteer for, which is due tomorrow. Thankfully, we don't leave on vacation until next Monday, so I should have a couple of days once Jérôme is eventually healthy again to get things in order before we leave.
But ouf, I'm exhausted!! So it's been a grilled cheese sandwich kinda week. Yes, despite my obsession with cooking, we do also have those kinds of weeks.
This, in part, explains some of my recent "mommy brain" incidents, including:
- driving right past the street Logan's daycare provider lives on, c with Logan in the car, and not even realizing it for a full 5 minutes;
- putting Chloé in a cloth diaper and her pyjamas at about 4pm yesterday afternoon and completely forgetting to ever change her diaper after that. She woke up in a pool of pee up to her neck (as did I, since we co-sleep!);
- accepting a friend's offer to try some new blueberry tea and realizing only after I had poured the water into the mug that I had already also put an English breakfast tea bag into the mug;
- turning on the wrong burner in the kitchen and only realizing it as the peanuts in the (thankfully metal) container started to blacken and fill the house with smoke - and I'd almost gone down for a nap while simmering my soup... thank goodness!!
Jérôme thinks I'm losing my mind, but I swear it's just lack of sleep. And you've just gotta chuckle at all the brainless things you do, despite having a Masters degree and having previously been able to paint your toenails while making a soup and studying for a midterm... I recently heard on tv that going 17 hours straight without sleep is equivalent to having a blood alcohol level of 0.05. No wonder sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture!! But I'm exaggerating... it hasn't (thankfully!!) been quite that bad.
On that note, I'm off to have a relaxing bath and hop into bed early. Sorry, folks. No recipe tonight ;)
This recipe also comes from the wonderful Oh She Glows blog.
I particularly love that if your squash is already cooked, this
literally only takes minutes to whip together. So it's perfect for
those nights when you realize you've forgotten to pull a pre-made
homemade meal out of the freezer.
Jérôme
and I both quite liked this. Logan, on the other hand, turned his nose
up at it instantaneously. The minute I put it down in front of him, he
passed it right back to me, saying "all done". And then "fini", just
in case I hadn't fully gotten it when he said it to me in English. I
got it kid. I'm bilingual too. In fact, we're the ones teaching you to
be bilingual. I just thought that if I ignored you, you might actually
try to put some of this in your mouth.
Now
here's the thing. I have recently become increasingly aware of the crap that
Logan is fed day in and day out at daycare. Like how they've told me
that he refuses to eat whole-wheat bread there, so they just give him
white. Which just knocked my socks off because I do not ever, ever,
ever buy white bread and he eats whole-wheat just fine at home. In
fact, he eats dense whole-grain breads, with added flax, sunflower
seeds, etc. etc. at home. But little monkey has figured out how to get
himself some white bread when I'm not around.
And
I've been told over the past two weeks how well he now eating, all of a
sudden: "He ate a whole hot dog!", "he ate two chicken fingers and
some fries!!", "he loves his chocolate muffins!!!", "he ate some meat pie!!!!".
The only comment I was even slightly satisfied with was "he ate his
chicken and rice stir fry and even ate his broccoli". Now that one deserves an exclamation mark!
My
personal favourite was the time that I picked him up, his face covered in
sugar, as he was snacking on Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And his daycare provider went on to
tell me how healthy it was, given that it was whole-grain (insert
expletive here). What just turned 21 month old needs hot dogs, chicken fingers,
fries, chocolate muffins and Cinnamon Toast Crunch????
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not against him ever having any treats. We gave him birthday cake on his first birthday. And I occasionally give him pudding (sometimes this avocado pudding),
or some baby cookies. And on the odd occasion, maybe even a little
taste of something sweet we're having. But I don't feel that it needs
to be a part of his everyday (or even, every week) experience. No
wonder he turns his nose up when I give him this lentil and squash stew
or South American black bean soup for dinner. What kid would eat that when he can shove himself full of Cinnamon Toast Crunch mid-afternoon???
Grrr....
that's just my little rant. Although this definitely does bother me, I
am choosing to just let it be for now. We'll continue to offer him
mostly healthy options and I hope that he will eventually learn to eat
(and even like!) them. And really, at some point, I'll be the one
making both his lunches and dinners, so he'll have the option of eating
or starving himself to death. Which I guess means he'll eventually eat
some of this healthier stuff...
That being said,
when I served this as leftovers (picking all of the spinach out of his,
just in case), he did take two bites of it before declaring he was
"fini". One step at a time...
1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 sweet onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp. good quality curry powder (or more to taste)
1 carton broth (4 C) (I used low-sodium)
1 C red lentils
3 C cooked butternut squash
1 C greens of choice
fresh grated ginger, to taste (optional)
kosher salt and black pepper to taste
This
recipe calls for the squash to already be cooked. I cooked mine in a
veggie steamer. Simple as can be. Just cut it in half, scooped out the
seeds, and threw it in the veggie steamer until cooked (maybe 20-30
minutes??). Then I let it cool and scooped out the flesh. You've just
gotta remember to put some water in the veggie steamer, which seems to
be a bit of a challenge for me these days.
What to do if you don't have a veggie steamer? Well, you should get one. It's the easiest way to
prepare healthy veggie side-dishes with essentially no effort. But if
you don't want to get one, check out this link here on how to cook butternut squash in the oven. You can get going on the rest of the recipe while your squash cooks.
My sister also suggested I use much more than the suggested 1 C of spinach, as she found that wasn't enough. So I just dumped in all of the spinach I had left in my fridge. And it didn't seem like too much (well, perhaps in Logan's opinion in was too much!!).
1. In a large pot, add olive oil, chopped onion and minced garlic. Sauté for about 5 minutes over low-medium heat.
2.
Stir in curry powder and cook another couple minutes. Add broth and
lentils and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes.
3.
Stir in cooked butternut squash and greens of choice. Cook over medium
heat for 5-8 minutes. Season with salt, pepper, and add some freshly
grated ginger to taste.
We served this with quinoa, to increase the protein content of the recipe.
So here goes my first 'faves' post. And I'm starting
with breakfast faves because this is undoubtedly by 'fave' meal of the
day. I am drooling over this post, having, yet again, eaten a bowl of
Vector for breakfast this morning.
Excepting a couple of these
recipes, most are weekend faves, as they're more time intensive than any
normal human would have time to make during the week.
I haven't included any muffins
here, even though many of them are healthy enough to be eaten for
breakfast. There are just so many of them that I'll do a favourite
muffins post one day. So here goes...
baked brie, potatoes, ham and eggs:
this was my very first post and I didn't even take any pictures...
darn... though I have the goal of progressively adding missing pictures
and updating some of the uglier pictures. But that's slow-going, as
many of my recipes (even the ones I love) barely get made once a year.
Pitfall of having so many of them. I still highly recommend making this,
despite not being able to see a picture of it, as it is delicious.
Perfect for big group brunch gatherings.
finnish apple pancake:
steel cut oatmeal:
fiber-full bran pancakes:
ricotta strawberry breakfast cakes:
banana cinnamon waffles:
toast with apple cider cinnamon jelly:
green monster smoothie:
healthy(er) homemade breakfast sandwiches:
I was going through my stats awhile back, compiling the top hits of 2011.
It's the first time that I've really looked at how many hits each post
has gotten. And I realized that a lot of my very first posts don't have
many hits. Clearly, since no one was reading my blog back then ;) But
those early posts contain a lot of my tried and true favourites. So I
felt that it would be a good idea to do a quick review of some of those
posts so that they aren't completely forgotten.
Also,
I realize that it is hard to search through my blog by category, as you
have to scroll through entire posts instead of being able to get a list
of just the names of recipes. One of my goals right now is to create a
more user-friendly blog, where it is easier to search by category.
It's slow-going, as we barely have time to get anything done these days,
never mind getting a new website going. But my goal is to have it done
before the end of my mat leave.
In the meantime, I've decided to occasionally start sending posts summarizing my different favourites. So stay tuned :)
Before I get going on today's post, I just wanted to give a little shout out to my sister Ash, who has started her own sewing blog. For any of you who are beginner sewers, or wanna-be-sewers, you can check her blog out here.
Now back to my blog ;)
A friend of mine said to me the other day that he likes that I "tell it like it is" about what it's like to be a parent. In thinking about this later on, I came to the realization that, although I certainly don't shy away from talking about the challenges of parenting, I probably still do sugar-coat it a bit, depending on who I am talking to. It's difficult to admit just how hard it is to be a parent. Some days I feel like the only thing I have accomplished is having changed a million bums and taken many deep breaths to prevent myself from losing it.
Let's face it. Parenting is tough. Even on a good day, parenting is tough. And on a bad day, when you've gotten no sleep...???? Let's just not go there.
Do I enjoy every single minute of being a parent? No!!! (If you have yet to read it, Glennon Melton wrote a wonderful article about this subject, which I highly recommend).
Do I regret my decision to have kids? Not in the slightest. I wouldn't turn back time for the world.
I've decided to start including some of my favourite moments from the week here on my blog. I figure that this will help keep me centred on just how much I love being a mom, despite the craziness that this entails. And it will perhaps also serve as a wonderful record of memorable moments with my kids. Since I am terrible at filling out baby books...
Now, these are not all things that I should necessarily be proud of, but are definitely the things that have made me chuckle and kept me sane over the last little while. So... (drum roll) my favourite moments of this past week include:
- Logan pushing at Jérôme repetitively until Jérôme finally got up off of the couch where they had been sitting together. Logan then turned and looked at Jérôme with a big grin and said "see ya!".
- Logan muttering "ah fuck" repetitively as he tried to get a piece that didn't fit, into a container. Though I tried to convince myself that he was saying "ah stuck" (or maybe even "ah truck???"), I'm not 100% sure that this is true. I apparently may say this word a little too often???? Kate, I promise that I am working my hardest to eliminate this from his ever-growing vocabulary before we come stay with you guys ;)
- Logan ***finally*** turning to me in a moment of frustration and saying "help mommy" instead of screaming his brains out as he usually does. Do not ask this speech therapist mom how long she targeted this before Logan actually began to use it. It might lead potential clients to reconsider ever coming to see me.
- finding 3 month old Chloé with a pretzel hanging out of her mouth.
And on a random, but somewhat related tangent, check out this video of Charlie here. Related because it's another reminder of the great joy of being a parent. This is one of my all-time favourite youtube videos and, coincidentally, just popped up on the side of my screen as I was typing this. I laugh so hard I cry every time I see this video. In fact, when my kids are driving me bonkers, I should probably just come down to my computer and watch this repetitively.
Speaking of kids driving you bonkers... I've been having major chocolate cravings these days. In fact, I think that they are temper-tantrum induced cravings. So I'll be posting a few chocolicious recipes over the next little while.
This absolutely delicious hot chocolate comes from the November/December 2011 issue of Parents Canada magazine. We made it this past weekend. And it was delicious. And pretty quick and easy to
make. A real treat. It should probably be called heaven in a mug.
Maybe it would have been if I had put whipped cream on top??
Now
what initially attracted me to this recipe was clearly the option to
make a peanut butter hot chocolate. But that'll have to wait until I
can eat peanut butter again. But it was pretty darned good as is.
My
initial instinct was to leave out the sugar and then just add some in
if I didn't find it sweet enough after the fact. But I then realized
that the sugar may not dissolve properly if not added and heated, as the
first step of the directions recommends. So I just went ahead and put
it in. And I'm pretty sure that it would have been too bitter if I had
omitted it, as neither Jérôme nor myself found it too sweet. In fact,
it was just perfect.
1/4 C sugar
1/4 C cocoa
1/4 C water
3 C 2% or whole milk (I used Logan's 3.25% milk for a treat)
4-6 oz. (120 -180 g) semi or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used good quality 70% dark chocolate)
1.
In a medium saucepan, whisk together the sugar and cocoa until no lumps
remain. Whisk in the water and milk and set over medium heat; whisk
occasionally until the sugar is dissolved.
2.
Increase the heat to medium-high and bring the mixture to a simmer.
Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the chocolate. If you have
one, blend in the pot with a hand-held immersion blender, until smooth
and frothy (otherwise, mix together with a whisk). Serve immediately;
rewarm if needed.
Serves 4.
Variation:
for peanut butter hot chocolate, reduce the chopped chocolate by half
and then add 1/4 C smooth peanut butter along with it; let stand and
then whisk or blend until smooth.
Difficulty level: easy
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