I Almost Have No Words

Remember when I made all that wine? That delicious, delicious wine? I almost don't have the heart to type this - but I had to dump out most of it.

Learn from my mistake: If you ever decide to make homemade wine, have lots of empty bottles at the ready. As soon as the wine is done fermenting, it needs to be bottled and corked, or it will turn nasty. And need to be dumped down the drain.

Red, Red Wine

We have tons of grapes growing on the fence in our backyard. I couldn't even tell you what kind they are - they're small (pea-sized) and have huge pits in them. If you eat them too early, they are incredibly sour, like chokecherries. But if you catch them at the right time, they are actually quite sweet and tasty. And it's hard to tell when that sweet spot is, because they look the same shade of purple whether they're all chokecherry-pucker-inducing or sweet and yummy.

I've never had much use for them before, but this year, I decided I was going to take a trip into the unexplored (by me) world of wine-making. I found this recipe online and used it as my base recipe. I still had tons and tons of raspberries left, so I threw a bunch of those into the mix, too.
The only other thing I did different from the recipe was that I went to our local brew & grow shop, and bought actual wine yeast (as opposed to regular old bread yeast), and threw it into the mix instead of floating it on the bread, as the recipe suggested.

It's been fermenting for about a month, and I've started bottling it. I only had two empty bottles to start with, so let's just say I've been having to drink a lot of wine lately so I can use the empties for my homemade stuff. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. And as an added bonus, you know all that stress I've been under lately from solo parenting? After putting the kids to bed and having a couple of glasses of wine, I'm all, "What kids?"

I actually tasted some of my homemade stuff, and it's quite delicious, if I do say so myself! And I couldn't believe how easy it was.

Fun Dinner Idea

Here's a fun recipe to get your older toddler or preschooler involved with making dinner.

Fun Taco Pies

Ingredients:

Your favorite taco meat recipe
Diced tomatoes
Shredded cheese
Two 9-inch pie crusts
Fun-shaped cookie cutters (the bigger, the better - small shapes are harder to fill)
2-3 eggs and food coloring, if you want to "color" the pies

Roll out the pie crust, and have your child cut out shapes with the cookie cutters (you'll need at least two of each shape for each pie). On one of the shapes, spread a tablespoon of taco meat, a tablespoon of diced tomatoes, and a tablespoon of shredded cheese. Top with the other shape, and seal the edges the best that you can.

This step is optional, but fun if you're not totally opposed to food coloring (I try to use it sparingly, and don't always do this step). Separate the eggs, and put the yolks in separate bowls - one for each color. Mix a couple of drops of food coloring with each yolk, and have your little one paint it on the pies with a basting brush.

Bake at 375° F for 10-12 minutes, or until golden. Serve with your favorite taco toppings - sour cream, guacamole, salsa, etc. Yummy!

Raspberries!

Of all of the new raspberry recipes I've been trying recently, these two are my favorite.

Recipe #1: Raspberry Cinnamon Muffins (from http://www.razzledazzlerecipes.com)
2 cups flour
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1-1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup raspberries
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Line 18 muffin forms with paper liners, or spray cups with non-stick cooking spray. In bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside. In another bowl, combine buttermilk and vanilla. Set aside. In mixer cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, blending well.
Add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk/vanilla mixture in 2 additions Scrape bowl between additions and mix only until just combined. By hand, fold in raspberries (and nuts if using) being careful so the fruit stays whole as much as possible. Fill each muffin cup 2/3 full. Bake until tops spring back when lightly pressed; 18 to 20 minutes. If tops stick to muffin tins when removing, loosen with a sharp knife.

My notes: I don't enjoy nuts in baked goods, so I substituted a handful of chocolate chips instead. Chocolate + raspberries = yum! Also, I recently discovered powdered buttermilk - what an awesome thing! It keeps in the fridge indefinitely, so no more waste. I used to buy a carton of buttermilk for a recipe, and not have any use for the rest of it, so it would end up going down the drain a few weeks later when it spoiled. (If you don't already know about powdered buttermilk, it's on the shelf in the baking aisle of the grocery store.)

Recipe #2: Crepes with Cheese Filling and Raspberry Sauce (from http://recipes.epicurean.com)

Crepes:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons butter

Filling:
1 pound Ricotta cheese
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Raspberry Sauce:
1 pint raspberries
1 teaspoon water
1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest

The crepes can be made the night before, filled, covered, and refrigerated until morning.

Crepes: Sift together flour and salt in a medium size bowl. Whisk in eggs, egg yolk, and one tablespoon milk to form a smooth, paste-like batter. Add the rest of the milk and vanilla and mix well. There should be no lumps. Melt butter in a nonstick skillet and stir into batter leaving behind a film of butter in the pan. Allow batter to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Heat skillet over medium-low heat. Stir batter and ladle about 1/4 cup into pan. Thinly coat bottom and edges of pan with batter. Cook until crepe turns golden-brown, lacy, and begins to pull away from pan, approximately 2 minutes. Turn and cook other side 30 to 40 seconds. Slide from pan and continue cooking other crepes. Stack crepes on a plate.

Filling: Combine all filling ingredients in a bowl and blend well. Place a tablespoon of filling in the center of each crepe. Turn in opposite ends and roll up the crepes. Cover and refrigerate. In the morning, fry the crepes in three tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat until golden.

Raspberry Sauce: Place half the raspberries in a saucepan with water and sugar. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves and sauce is thick. Add the remaining raspberries and orange zest. Heat through at the lowest temperature setting. Top filled crepes with raspberry sauce and garnish with sour cream and fresh raspberries. Serves 8.

Tiramisu

Looking for a fabulous dessert recipe? Go ahead, click that link. I'll wait.

OK, now I'm going to warn you. DO NOT make that recipe, unless you will have a houseful of people over to help you eat it. That tiramisu is single-handedly destroying my efforts at dieting. Also? YUM.

Ah...sweet silence. Natalie is down for a nap, and the boys are at the park. Life is good. =)

First, some random pictures.

Getting her daily dose of Vitamin D.

Sadly, I had just picked up 5 minutes before taking this picture.

I'm not sure why I bother.

Mom...cut it out.

Blurry picture of the kids bundled up for a bike ride.

Standing tall

It had been going on two weeks since Natalie's last blowout. Now she's had three in the past two days. Making up for lost time, I guess. Last night, I was trying to get her to sleep and she wasn't having any part of it. Normally, she's a very easy baby to get to sleep, so I knew something was up, but it took me awhile to figure it out. Every time she wiggled and squirmed, I smelled coffee, and I kept sniffing her hair to try to figure out where the smell was coming from (no, I don't know why I thought her hair was the logical answer, but that's how my mind works). Finally, after about half an hour, I got the brilliant idea to sniff a little lower, and yup - major blowout. No wonder the poor girl didn't want to go to sleep. And why her poo smelled like coffee is still a mystery. Much like the chicken noodle soup mystery.

She's been fighting a little diaper rash, so I decided to leave her undiapered while I made a quick dash across the hall for a clean onesie and sleeper. Big mistake. I came back in the room to find her happily bouncing on the bed in a puddle of her own pee. All I could do is laugh. The sheets needed to be changed anyway.

And the last random story took place over the weekend. I found a recipe online for the cinnamon & cream cheese sauces that IHOP uses for their Cinn-A-Stacks (very yummy, by the way). The recipe calls for brown sugar, and when Sammy saw the clear canister of brown sugar on the counter, he said, "You playing with dirt, Mommy?" I thought it was funny, so I played along for awhile, but then I realized that probably wasn't such a great idea. He liked the "dirt sauce" a lot - what do you think the odds are he's going to make his own "dirt sauce" outside later this week? Oops.