Day 78 - Strawberry Fruit Leather

Recipe from MOM Magazine

You probably thought we forgot about you, but no. Mmm-mmm. No.

I'd never forget about any of you!

I was sick this last week and stayed home from school for 3 days. Our family was really busy. My mom had to finish her book. She's a writer and has a due date. My brothers had band. My dad works.

We cooked, but didn't blog.

But today I am blogging. While we were at the doctor last week, my mom saw a recipe in MOM Magazine to make Strawberry Fruit Leather. It looked good so she copied the recipe into her phone and then later, after we had strawberries, we made it.

All I had to do was puree the strawberries. Of course you wash them and cut off the stems. Jared did this with me.

You just puree them in the blender. This means to blend them like a smoothie. Then you add 1 tablespoon of honey. You can actually add a little more honey, or some sugar. We didn't and our fruit leather is very tart. Or you can find sweeter strawberries.

So then you put parchment paper on a baking sheet with sides. You pour the strawberries on the paper and spread it really thin.

You bake it for 2-3 hours at 250 degrees, then let it sit overnight.

We cut it into strips and rolled it up.

I think you could do this with other fruit, too, like raspberries, and stuff. It is cool!!!

1 THUMB UP because ours was really tart.

Day 75 - Pumpkin Muffins

Recipe from my mom's recipe box

We're celebrating today! It's day 75!!!

We had a Book Fiesta to go to at my school tonight so we just got home now at 8:00. I wanted to make something for my class at school. I thought it would be a fun thing to do and since tomorrow is October 1st, my mom said I could make pumpkin muffins for them. I hope they like them! I think they will.

I wanted to do a different recipe than the pumpkin bread Jared made, so I did a pumpkin recipe my mom had in her recipe box. There isn't as much sugar in it as the other one.

Gluten Free Pantry Flour

By the way, I've been a vegetarian for 3 days now. I will inform you how it's going. I am doing awesome right now. I saw a dead fox on the road and it kind of grossed me out, plus I'm against hunting so I'm trying it. Plus because they give the animals antibiotics so they don't work on us. I want to be healthy.

I'll let you know how the muffins are tomorrow!

Good night.

~ Sophie

Pumpkin Muffins

1 1/2 cup flour or gluten free flour mix like Gluten Free Pantry

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 nutmeg, cinnamon, baking power (each)

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/3 cup water

2 eggs

Combine dry ingredients, then add oil, eggs and pumpkin. Slowly add water until blended. Pour into greased muffin pans or muffin cups.

Cook for 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes

Day 74 - Stewed Fruit and Crumble

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and Jamie Online

Hi, hi, everyone. It's 9:15 and my mom just got home from a book signing. I cooked at, like, 4:00 this afternoon, but now it's past my bedtime, so we're writing a quick post.

Today I made stewed fruit and Crumble. I used plums and a pear which we got from the food co-op yesterday. I'd never made stewed fruit before, but I have made a little crumble before.

This was a very easy recipe. It took about 30 minutes. A little bit more if you do the crumble. It's sort of like an apple sauce, almost, except we used the pear and plums. It was chunky. Stewing fruit is not as easy as it looks. You have to cut all the fruit, which is weird because you really notice the texture of the fruit.

It was juicy. You just cook it with a little water and sugar.

I used sugar in the raw, which my dad uses for his coffee.

When it's done, the fruit is very hot.

You add the crumble topping and then bake it. The crumble topping is just flour, sugar, butter, and oats (we used GF Bisquick).

The crumble topping

I had to get the skin out!

I only had a taste because it's not our dessert night. Yesterday was dessert night. Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday are dessert nights. I think we're a healthy family because we don't eat dessert all the time and we don't go to fast food places.

1 1/2 THUMBS UP

I would have liked it a little less chunky. But it was good.

Day 71 - Broccoli with Asian Dressing

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Hi Everyone! This is me, Sophie, of course. Let me tell you what I made today. I made broccoli with Asian Dressing.

BTW, I didn't like it at all.

But, today I learned how to grate ginger and garlic, which is very hard. The garlic is in one clove and it's really small, so you have to use the palm of your hand. The ginger was the same. It worked, but it would have been easier to use the garlic press.

First, I cut up the broccoli, but we used broccolini from our food co-op.

It was just like baby broccoli. You get boiled water, and put the cut up broccoli in a colander, and steam it.

While that's steaming, you make the sauce. When the broccoli is done, the sauce is also done, so it all works out.

Sesame oil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and a lime, plus the ginger and garlic. That's it. Then you whisk it all together. You can also add chili to the sauce if you want, but we didn't since most of my family doesn't like chili.

Something I've learned from Jamie Oliver's recipes is that you don't have to always have all the stuff, but it still tastes good. We used a lemon instead of a lime today. You can do substitutes.

Like I said, I didn't like this one, but my brother, AJ, gave it 1 3/4 THUMBS UP and his girl friend, Claire, gave it 2 THUMBS UP.

Day 67 - Chicken Pasta Bake

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

My brother named Jared has a tooth ache pain from being hit in mouth by our brother Caleb's head. He says he's about to die. So I cooked have cooked the past 3 nights.

I was not in the mood to cook because I had to do my homework, I had just run for running club, I had to work on a power point about Oprah Winfrey and decisions she's made for school, and my brother Sam's piano students were here. So my mom was looking up recipes while I was doing some gymnastics. I was trying to do the splits and handstands, and I was putting my leg behind my head, which I can do. She found this recipe called a Chicken Pasta Bake.

I thought, hmmm, are we going to have regular chicken or red chicken? Red chicken is what we call chicken we get from a Mexican market. It's got paprika and garlic on it. So my mom answered that it would be the red chicken. I said I didn't know how that would work, but she said it would be okay.

I have to convert the measurements.

So now, this is how we made it. You need garlic. Caleb used our new garlic thingamabobber. He liked that. He did that part for me.

I did the rest. He can't really chop at all.

This was easy to make. The pasta you just boil regularly. We used quinoa.

You cook the chicken in a pan until it's brown. Then you add the garlic. Then add 2 cups of white wine and cook that for a while.

Then you add cream, only we used 1/2 cream and 1/2 nonfat milk. You also add chopped basil and shredded parmesan cheese.

I used fresh basil from our front yard.

This all gets mixed with the cooked pasta. You put it in a pan and sprinkle with some parmesan and then put in the oven until the top is brown.

I had never thought of baking pasta like this. I thought it was good. My little brother Caleb, on the other hand, did not like it. He says, "It's below 0 thumbs up for me, Caleb, mwahahaha."

AJ liked it and went back for seconds. Mama liked it. I liked it. And Sam's piano student and her mom liked it.

They said 2 Thumbs Up

Mom says we'll do this again. The only thing we didn't have was mushrooms. Mom says it would be good to add some asparagus, too.

2 THUMBS UP!

Day 67- Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Online Forum

Today you probably already know that i made spaghetti squash !!!!!!! i love this stuff !

Well a lot of people probably like it to, so you might like it to, but that is up to you.

This is how you make it. You need three garlic cloves, spaghetti squash, olive oil

thyme, ham, and pepper.

This was maybe the 3rd or 4th time we've had spaghetti squash. The recipe says to cook the squash in the oven, but we didn't have time to do it that way. The way my mom learned is to clean out he seeds, drizzle olive oil or butter (we used olive oil), cover with plastic wrap, and cook in the microwave for 10 minutes. In the recipe, you are supposed to use the oven and it take 35 minutes.

First I had to clean out the seeds. It was hard.

After it's cooked, I scraped all the actual squash part out of the shell. This is really hard to do when it's hot because you can't pick it up. I pressed too hard at one part and the shell broke and that's not something you want to happen at all.

When the squash is scraped out, it looks like spaghetti. It's yellow and in strips. Spaghetti is a grain, so it's almost the same, except the texture is different, but that's basically all.

My brother Sam described it as sort of crunchy and you can taste the grains, sort of. He is not a a fan of spaghetti squash.

You mix the squash with the shredded parmesan, garlic, cooked ham, pepper, and thyme.

Then put it back into the shells, and bake it for about 15 minutes. This makes the cheese melt and it all gets gooey and delicious. It would also be good if you didn't bake it again. I just think it wouldn't be so melty.

Oh! Today I used this garlic dealy-mbob from Pampered Chef. You take it and put the garlic cloves in it, you roll it around, and it takes the garlic wrapper off. It was super easy and cool.

I give this 1 1/2 THUMBS UP because it was kind of a lot of flavors colliding for moi. Maybe there was too much parmesan. Not sure. But my papa, on the other hand, said, "I love this! It's so yummy!" He liked it best of all the times we've made spaghetti squash.

Day 66 - Baked Apples

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Hello! Wassup?

Today Jared and I made baked apples. I've never had baked apples in my life and so was my chance. We wanted to do something different. When it got out of the oven, it looked like apple sauce on an apple.

There's lemon and orange zest in the apples, too.  When you're zesting, you don't actually go to the orange or lemon fruit.  You grate the skin that you don't eat.  It's kind of weird that the skin has so much flavor, but it does.

The skill I learned today is to not core an apple with a glass bowl next to you. If your brother gives you a corer with part of the apple still in it and tells you to get it out, never get it out with a knife. Because if you accidentally slip, you can tip over the glass bowl and it will fall on the floor right where your cat is laying. Plus you could cut yourself, but I was using a butter knife, not a sharp knife, and the bowl broke but the cat was like, zzzzppppp, out of the kitchen.

One Jared noticed is that we never have all of the ingredients for any recipe. Jamie Oliver must have a ginormous pantry and cabinets to have every ingredient. We did not have all the ingredients today. We didn't have cloves or almonds or mixed spices. So we used ground cloves, pecans, oats, and we figured the mixed spices were cinnamon, ginger, and maybe nutmeg.

You stuff the cored apple with the filling.

Jared did his the way he wanted and I did mine the way I wanted, so we each got our own apples. I put butter, raisins, brown sugar, pecans, the spices, and a little oats in mine. Jared didn't put the raisins or pecans in his.

They bake, which is something that surprised me.

What I discovered is that baked apples are yummy. They taste like apple sauce on an apple with little toppings on it. Jared thinks it's a little sweet or tart or something. I think it's good, but I didn't like the skin.

Baked apples are something I will definitely do again.

2 THUMBS UP

Day 65 - Cucumber Yogurt

Recipe from Jamie's Food Revolution

Hello! I was at a birthday party yesterday and so I didn't get to make anything. My little brother, Caleb did, so that was good for him. Thanks, Cabe!!

I missed cooking for the last two days. I think cooking is a way to let your feelings out. If you like to cook, it's something you want to do everyday. I think my brother feels that way, also. I think my Grammy and Mama think so, too, sometimes.

What it does for me is that I get involved with the cooking and I don't think about what happened about earlier at school, say, or if a girl pinches me. FYI, someone did and I was super angry at that one person. I was crying. I was upset. I wanted to go back and tell her, "You know what? You are a mean, rude girl."

Instead of yelling at that girl, I made Cucumber Yogurt sauce, which is also called Tzaziki. It's one of my favorite sauces and I was super happy to see that Jamie Oliver has a recipe for it in his Food Revolution cookbook.

The things you need in it are cucumber, plain yogurt, lemon juice, and we added garlic. Now, my grandpa emailed me and suggested I tell more about skills I'm using. I think that's a good idea because if kids are reading this (we actually got an email from a kid!), they could learn some of what I've learned. And Jared, too.

First I cut the cucumber in half

Today I used my chopping skills, but I did a thing called mincing. Mincing is very, very finely chopping.

I got to use the sharp knives today. When I was chopping the cucumber, I curled my fingers so that way I didn't chop off my finger.

That would not be a wonderful thing.

Oh! I also learned that garlic can be very, very strong. It made the sauce a little bit spicy, but I like it that way. I used a garlic press which is very cool.

Cucumber yogurt is so yummy in my tummy. We had it with grilled chicken and brown rice and green beans. It was a super healthy, yummy meal!

A Bazillion, or 2, THUMBS UP