Figs and Goat Cheese and Goat Cheese and Figs

Since I am on maternity leave, I'm finding that while every day is a new adventure in baby-town, there's also a fair amount of sameness to it.

• Diapers (the adventure the last little while is the switch from disposables to cloth.  I think we've finally found a style/brand that we like!)
• baby bodily fluids (seriously, how are babies able to expel this much liquid in various forms in a day?? Where do they keep it all?)
• multiple outfit changes due to the above (sometimes for both of us)
• the daily walk (ie. let's get out of the house for a bit before mommy loses her sanity)

Babies are lucky they are so gosh darned adorable sometimes.  Other times, they're so cute and sweet and ideal babies you just want to kiss their feet until they fall off.  Or maybe that's just me.

In any event, I'm really loving staying home with our little one.  Look! Here's a photo of how cute she is in her summer gear for you!

Baby sunglasses may be the greatest thing ever, both for their practicality (yay UV protection!), and for how freaking adorable they are.  I'm also trying out our new ring sling - so far, she seems to like it, but I think I need a little more practice.

Now that I'm done mommy-jacking my own blog (I hope you didn't mind!), on to today's lunch.
I've been eating a lot of peanut butter & jam sandwiches and cheese sandwiches lately.  They're quick, easy and I can usually eat them with one hand while juggling baby things with the other.

Today, I felt like trying something a little different, and I remembered a visit to Montréal I took for work once, where I had a fig, caramelized onion and goat cheese panini that was so good, I ordered a second one before I finished the first. Note: one of my coworkers also ordered a second sandwich.  They were that amaze-balls.

With a small child on hand, and an innate laziness, I wasn't about to caramelize onions for my lunch.  I did, however, have goat cheese & homemade fig jam in the fridge.

So, I took some whole wheat wraps, spread them with a generous blob of fig jam, goat cheese, sliced radish, sliced baby cucumber and romaine lettuce.

Pre-lettuce wrap.  Look at the fig jam oozing out!

Amazing!  I wish I had remembered about the fig jam sooner.  As it is, I know I have a second jar, and now I'm torn as to whether or not to use it to make some more homemade fig newton cookies, or delicious grilled cheese sandwiches.

In conclusion: sweet, delicious figs + soft, salty goat cheese = delicious combination!

Tag!

So Skwishee over at Just a Mum? has gotten involved in a game of tag and she's told me I can play along too!

She's posed 11 random questions that I have to answer:

1. Name a book that somehow changed you. How?
This is a hard question since I read a LOT of books.  Seriously, our house is practically a library.
I'm going to name 2 books from my earlier years.  Anna to the Infinite Power and Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls were both among the first science fiction/fantasy books that I read that had female protagonists who weren't simpering princesses awaiting rescue.  It showed me that the sci-fi/fantasy genres could be more than 'boy smash', and that female characters could be represented in a more rounded manner.

2. If someone were to cook you the perfect meal, what would it be?
Spaghetti, with homemade tomato sauce, vegetarian 'meatballs', a nice salad with a variety of greens and boccini, garlic fried mushrooms, beer, tea, water and a super-chocolately cake (with the inner layers having chocolate mousse instead of icing between them) for dessert.  At least, that's what it would be at the moment.  I'm notoriously fickle when it comes to food, aside from the 'no things that had faces' rule.

3. Who do you want to be when you grow up?
Me, or possibly a muppet version of me.

4. You find a wallet containing $20,000 on the ground, containing no identification. What do you do?
Hem & haw for a good 15 minutes.  Then I'd probably take it to the nearest police station and hope they say that I can have it if no one claims it. Boring and staid, right?

5. Name one completely irrational fear that you've got.
That zombies will break into my house when I'm sleeping and attack.  When I was younger, it used to be 'generic bad guys', but pop culture has morphed it into something more specific.

6. Give me three songs that you're embarrassed to admit you like.
Arms Wide Open by Creed
Barbie Girl by Aqua (what can I say? It's catchy!)
I Wish by Skee-Lo

7. What is one thing you absolutely love about yourself?
It's cliche, but I really do love being a mom (most days anyway).

8. If you could be doing ANYTHING right now, what would it be?
Finishing "A Dance with Dragons" while simultaneously having a good, solid nap AND enjoying both.

9. What's the best thing that happened to you this week?
Well, it's only Tuesday, so there hasn't been much of a week yet, but I would say tiramisu gelato was one of the highlights so far.

10. If you could perfect one skill overnight, what would it be?
My knife skills - it would lead to so much more baking and cooking!

11. Tea or coffee?
Definitely tea.  Coffee hurts my insides.

Okay, on to part two!  Eleven random facts about myself.

1. I love salt & vinegar chips. 
2. I hate toe socks and flip flops.  It really skeeves me out to have things between my toes.
3. I probably watch waaaayyyy too much of the Food network.
4. The Food Network & Discovery Channel are the main reasons I do not want to give up cable.
5. I really am not looking forward to leaving my little girl when I go back to work next winter.  I will miss her so.
6. Sometimes, I eat cream cheese with a spoon.
7. I prefer Miracle Whip to plain mayo.  That being said, I've never had homemade mayo, which may change my opinion.
8. I strongly dislike small, round, explody foods.  Ie. I hate peas, tapioca, olives and rice pudding.  For everything except the olives, it is mostly a textural thing.  With olives, it is also flavour.
9. I start a lot of knitting projects, but I often get bored, disinterested or distracted partway through, and it takes me forever to finish them.  Example: I've been working on the same sweater, for me, for 3 years now.  I'm nowhere close to finished.
10. My favourite beverage is water.
11. I'm a huge nerd and I am okay with that.  If anyone wants to give me lightsaber chopsticks for my next birthday, I won't complain. Really, anything from ThinkGeek would probably work out fine :)

Now, in theory I should be tagging some others, but I don't follow too many blogs, and most of the ones I do follow have already been tagged.

Hrm.

I know, you should go and read
Swiskee's blog over at Just a Mum? because she is lovely and smart and funny
Jen's blog at My Adorable Smalltown Life because she really is adorable, and Gary the girl cat is a fluffy love-bug
Julie's blog at Feeding the Cat because she's funny and naughty and always interesting

If anyone would like to be tagged (Marilyn at Shumpgullion maybe?), let me know and I'll make up 11 questions for you :)

Babies and Bread Machines

I'm a few days away from my daughter hitting the three month mark and I still can't shake the "I have a baby! Holy crap!" feeling.

(Photo care of the lovely Danielle)

It is all those stereotypical crazy/awesome/wonderful things and also, occasionally, really, really gross.  Really. 

You learn all sorts of new skills when you have a baby, and one of the top ones is redefining time management.  Babies have no sense of urgency.  They don't care that you have an appointment in an hour - they want what they want right now.

This means that I've come to appreciate my 'new to me' bread machine on a whole new level.  I can just throw in the ingredients, hit the start button, and 3-4 hours later, I have delicious bread!  If I can't get to the machine, it has an automatic keep warm feature, which shuts itself off after an hour.  It is freaking amazing.

So far, I've made one loaf of each of the following kinds of bread:
whole wheat
oatmeal
cinnamon
4 cheese

Totally worth it.  The cinnamon bread was fantastic toasted with butter, although if we had maple spread in the house, I'm sure it would have been great with that too.

The four cheese bread (ricotta, swiss, old cheddar and parmesan mixed right into the bread dough) is also lovely.  So far I've mostly eaten it plain with butter, but I've also turned it into fantastic garlic toast.  I'm thinking it'll make interesting sandwiches as well since it is so flavourful.

Do you enjoy making bread?  Do you use a bread machine?  Got any good bread recipes?

Tofu Fingers: A Condiment Conveyance Device

Tofu, to many people, conjures up images of hippy-dippy crap from the 60s and 70s.  I don't know why, since many people I know who get these images weren't on the planet during that time period.
It is one of those foods, in Western culture, that seems to automatically be an item of derision.  Many people don't like black licorice, but people who enjoy black licorice generally aren't the butt of jokes either.

If you've been following my blog, you've probably come to the realization that I don't eat things that have or had faces (ie. I am a vegetarian who will eat eggs & dairy).  In order to make sure I'm eating a healthy diet, and to keep my diet more varied, I do eat, and generally enjoy eating, tofu.

I also enjoy condiments.  I love condiments.  I sometimes will purposely make a food, for the express purpose of being able to eat the condiment that goes along with it (ie. I will sometimes make french fries, not because I want the fries, but because I want to have ketchup.  I'm weird, I know).
So, what is a condiment-loving fiend such as myself to do when a condiment craving hits?  Well, we make tofu fingers/sticks.

Here's what you need:
1 package of firm or extra-firm tofu
stuff to marinade it in (soy sauce, hoisin, worchestershire, various herbs & spices - or you can use a store bought marinade, or your favourite meat marinade.  Totally your call).
For the dredge: dijon mustard, mayonaise & thyme
For the final coating: bread crumbs & grated parmesan cheese

The recipe works best, I find, if you press the tofu for a little bit first, to get some of the liquid out, but you don't have to.  I often don't, because I don't feel like it at the time.

Cut the tofu into sticks. You can poke some fine holes into them with a toothpick if you want to give it extra spots to soak the marinade up, but you don't have to.

Put your tofu sticks into your marinade.  You ideally want to marinate the tofu overnight in the fridge, but it works if you let it soak for at least an hour if you're short on time.

When the tofu is almost done marinating, make your dredge & bread coating.  If you like a slightly sharper taste, use more dijon in your dredge.  We generally use a ratio of 3 or 4 parts mayo to 1 part dijon.  The bread coating should be a 1 to 1 ratio of bread crumbs to grated parmesan.

Once your tofu is done marinating, dredge and then bread it, and then bake it in the oven for about 40 minutes at 375 F.  If it looks a little soggy when it comes out, stick it back in for a few more minutes.

Then comes my favourite part.  Take your favourite dipping sauce (tonight, I couldn't decide, so I had sweet & sour sauce and BBQ sauce on my sticks).

I hope you give them a shot, since they are so easy-peasy to do, even if you are generally a meatytarian as opposed to a vegetarian.

Quick & Easy Noodle Soup

Today's food related part of the post is all about ramen/instant noodles!

In North America, they are known as a quick & cheap instant lunch/dinner - mostly enjoyed by college & university students. 
When I'm feeling lazy, or tired (which is a lot lately), I use them as a basis for a quick & easy veggie noodle soup.

Step one is to throw out the MSG laden bouillon packet that comes in the package.  That stuff is nasty.

Fill up a pot with water, and then dump in any/all of the following to form your broth base:
soy sauce
worchestershire sauce
hoisin
lemon or lime juice
prepared ginger
prepared garlic
prepared horseradish
hot sauce

Put the pot on the stove on high.  Then, depending on what veggies you have in your fridge & freezer, start chopping and adding, starting with the ones that will take the longest to cook. 
I usually start with sliced onion, frozen green beans and frozen corn.  Last time I made this, I also added carrots, broccoli, mushrooms & radishes. 
For a bit of protein, you can throw in some red lentils at the beginning, or cubed tofu (new or leftover), or crack an egg into the soup near the end (which is what I usually do). 
For the egg option, you can either beat it in a bowl first, to get more of an 'egg drop soup' effect, or crack it straight into a pot for more of a hard-poached egg.
When the water boils, add your noodles, and then turn the heat down so it doesn't boil over.  Then keep adding any veggies/egg/etc that you haven't added yet, and keep on the heat until the noodles are cooked and your veggies are heated.
Then slurp away!

On the note of the bread machine, today I made oatmeal bread.  It is delicious.  Once again, I have failed to take pictures.  Sorry.

Oh, and the baby is doing pretty awesome.  I think she's going to be tall like her daddy - she's already lengthy enough that the doctor called her a long noodle!

On the Subject of Yeast

On a visit with her new grandchild, my MIL brought their breadmaker.  They hadn't used it in more than a year, so they gave it to us!  She also brought a bag of whole grain wheat, an unopened jar of yeast and cooking oil (ie. all the leftover breadmaking ingredients they had). 

I'm very excited!  I have made bread before, but I've always had to do it the long way by hand.  Now that I have a little one, I think it'll be nice to make bread by dumping ingredients in the machine & forgetting about it for a few hours.  I've already made a loaf of whole wheat bread (which is pretty much gone except for one heel, so there's no photos).

If anyone has any good recipes that can be adapted to a bread machine, let me know!

It's Official - I'm a Parent!

February 18, 2012 was a pretty monumental day in our household - our new daughter Esmeralda Marie arrived.

My cousin-in-law, who is a pretty awesome photographer, came by about 6 days later and took some photos.  You can see a few of them on her blog.

It's all crazy and new and I'm really glad that I stocked the freezer with muffins, cookies, lasagna, chili and other meals before she decided to show up.  It's made things a lot easier.

 Speaking of chili, here's a way to use up leftover chili (since I always make too much chili, I use this a lot).

Chili Lasagna (or Chili Lasagna Casserole, depending on how you want to play this out).

Aside from a bunch of leftover chili, you'll need the following.
One package of oven-ready lasagna noodles (or the regular kind of you're up to boiling them first, but I'm lazy)
A bunch of shredded cheese - whatever kind floats your boat.  I like a lot of cheese, so I use at least half a package of the pre-shredded stuff.
Any additional veggies you want to throw in.  Since I'm vegetarian, my chili is already pretty full of vegetables and I don't usually bother adding more.
Any or all of the following to garnish: sour cream, guacamole, tortilla chips, diced green onion

If you're doing this like a proper lasagna, layer everything in your baking dish like you would for a regular lasagna, using the chili in place of tomato sauce.  If you're doing it like a casserole, break up your noodles into chunks, and mix them with the chili and cheese in your casserole dish, making sure to leave enough cheese to do a layer on top.

Bake in the oven at about 350F for about an hour (or follow the package directions for the noodles).  Make sure to remove the lid/foil and bake for an extra 15 minutes so the top layer of cheese gets all melty and awesome.

When it's done, serve it up and garnish it with your choice of toppings. 

Now I'm going to run, as I have a wee baby who'll be waking up soon expecting her next meal.  I hope you enjoy!