Kalamata Olive-Basil Pesto

One of my husband's co-worker suggested that I combined olives and basil together. What a brilliant idea. Because I love olives, I love basil, and I love pesto!

The word pesto originated from Italy and it means "to pound, or crush". So any herbs with garlic, pounded in a mortar with a pestle...are called PESTO. Simple eh?

I have lots of sweet basil growing in containers out in my back patio.

Everyday I sit next to one of them and run my fingers through them.

The aromas they release, just by touching them, are absolutely heavenly.

This is a very interesting basil. It's called "Aristotle Basil".

They have small buds but are very strong in fragrance.

I usually use them as garnishing or to flavor cheese.

For the ingredients I have:

A hand full of sweet basil

1/2 Cup of olives

4 garlic cloves (I love pesto with a kick)

A slice of lemon ~1TBS lemon juice

1/4 Cup feta cheese

1TBS olive oil

I'm using a hand blender :-) But again if you want you could use a mortar and pestle.

Make it into a smooth paste and garnish with Aristotle Basil.

This is EXTREMELY delicious! Please try it out!

Tapenade

Tapenade, doesn't it sound like a sophisticated food? But what is it? Here's Wiki's definition:

"Tapenade (pronounced tap-en-AAD) is a Provençal dish consisting of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. Its name comes from the provençal word for capers, tapenas (Occitan pronunciation: [taˈpenɔ]). It is a popular food in the south of France, where it is generally eaten as an hors d’œuvre, spread on bread. Sometimes it is also used to stuff fillets for a main course." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapenade

I normally don't measure. This is about...

1 cup pitted Kalamata olive

3 Tablespoon capers

1 garlic clove

Olive oil

Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl or large measuring cup.

Add 1-2 Tablespoon of Olive oil.

The more oil the smoother it will be, I used 2 TBS.

I used a hand blender because it's easy, but for the adventurous you could use a mortar and pestel.

Mix until smooth like this. I did not add extra salt because the olives are already salty.

Serve chilled is the best!

Tapenade on sprouted bread. Add as a side dish to your Greek salad...Yummm.

Vegetarian KimChi Rice Omelet.

Hello fellow readers, sorry that it's been awhile since I've blogged. This year we are hosting an international student from South Korea, and with her staying with us she had introduced us to some very authentic Korean dishes. Today I will show you a dish that our student loves to make and its a dish she grew up with. It is called kim chi omlete rice. It is a simple recipe and a great way to use left over rice!

Ingredients:

1 c. Potaots--diced into small pieces

1 c. Onions-- diced

1 c. Carrots-- diced

1/2 c. Kim Chi-- diced

3 c. Left over rice

Oils

Salt and Pepper to taste

You can use any vegetables for this dish, but onion is a must.

On med-Heat add a little oil to your pan and cook the carrots and potatoes first. Cook until the potatoes are soft.

Then add the onions, salt, and pepper. Cook until onion is almost translucent.

Add the rice and cook for a few more minutes. For those who do not like Kim Chi they can stop here. Below is the Rice Omelet without Kim Chi.

Lets Continue.....

Next cut up some kimchi. Preferably home made ones.

Stir fry the kim chi in with the rest of the ingredients. Ta Da! Your done with the rice part.

For the omelet topping, heat up a small frying pay with some oil.

Beat up two eggs. Two eggs for each person.

Cook the eggs until done, then slide it on top of the fried rice.

Drizzle some ketchup on top and Enjoy!

Almond Granola Cereal

Granola what is granola one who've never heard of it before may ask? Well granola consist of nuts, oats, honey, maybe rice, and maybe dried fruits. Check out the Wikipedia site if you are interested in reading the history of granola.

Our family likes granola, especially my husband who eats it for breakfast every day. To buy a pound of good granola cereal at the grocery store can be very costly. Especially if you buy organic. Today I will teach you a simple granola recipe that I've perfected for my family's taste.

I like to weigh the ingredients. Makes for a more accurate measurements.

0.5 lb Almonds ~2 cup coarsely grounded
1.5 lb Organic Rolled Oats ~4.5 cups (Do not use instant oatmeal, they'll give a bitter taste.)
1/3lb Honey ~ 1/3 cups

You can use any honey, I like our local clover honeys. You can also add more honey if you like your granola a bit sweeter. Experiment with them and have fun.

First coarsely ground the almonds. Or you can use a half pound package of Slivered almonds.

In a large cookie pan bake the rolled oats at 350 degree for 10 minutes. Stirring every few minutes so that it does not burn.

Remove the oats from the oven and put it into a large mixing bowl. Add the almonds and honey. Mix well with a wooden spoon, not with your hands. Be careful not to burn yourself.

Once they are well mixed. Put them back onto the large cookie pan and bake again at 350 degree for 10 minutes. This will make the granola crispy. Make sure to stir every few minutes to avoid burnt and large clumps of granola.

After 10 minutes of baking bring the granola out and let it cool completely. My husband does not like clumpy granola cereals, so as they cool down I'd stir them around and break up any large clumps. Then when they are completely cooled put them into an air tight container and enjoy! This makes 2 lbs of granola and it will last us about 1.5 week.


I like my granola cereal with a little milk and dried fruits. Yummmmm!

Servings: 20
Cooking time: 35 minutes.
Cost: $3.14

It's always cheaper to buy things in bulk. We have stores here in town where they sell organic grains and nuts in bulks. I'll always promote buying local especially if you have local organic farms. Next time I will show you how to make Raw granola bars, with sprouted seeds.

Nina's Pie Tops / Rhubarb pie

We had Fika at one of our friends house a few days ago and she made for us these fruit pies with wonderful cake like crust on top. I fell in love with the pie tops so she gave me her recipe. I don't know if there is a different terminology to this type of pie but I've called the dough style "pie tops" instead of pie crust. These pie tops are more fluffy, when cooked, than regular pie crust and the dough is spread over the fruits. Let me know if there's a different terminology to this style of pie. You can use any fruit as the fillings. Here is the recipe..

Nina's Pie Tops:
100 g. Butter
1 1/2 dl Sugar
2 dl Flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1 egg

Dough's cooking time is 40-45 minutes at 150 Celsius.

1. Melt the butter.
You can melt it on a pan or if you are lazy, in the microwave for about 40 sec.
2. Mix the flour and the baking powder together.

Then you beat the egg and the sugar together.
Next you add half the flour to the egg and sugar mixture. Mix well.

Then add the butter...mix. And finally add the rest of the flour.

The batter should be thick and sticky.

FILLINGS: (I'm making rhubarb for this example)

For the filling I went out and thinned my mother-in-law's rhubarb plants.

Slice up enough rhubarb to fill a 10 inch pie pan.

Add sugar to your taste I like mine to be a bit sweet so I added 1 dl of sugar.

Spread the topping mixture on top. Then bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes at 150 Celsius.

It should come out golden brown and a bit crispy on top.

It is best with some vanilla sauce. YUM!

DECILITER 1 dl= 100 ml ~ 1/2 cup
MATSKED 1 msk = 15 ml= 1 Tablespoon
TESKED 1 tsk = 5 ml = 1 teaspoon
CUP 1 cup = 240ml
1 Celsius = 33.8 Fahrenheit (150 C = 302 F)

Swedish Pancake

Have you ever taken an early morning trip to Ikea just for their breakfast? You know the inexpensive breakfast that they serve with thinly cooked Swedish pancakes and a dab of lingon berries to the side? Then one day when you got there, you where shocked by what had happened, things had changed. You suddenly don't get the free Swedish pancake anymore, now you have to pay an extra $0.99 for 2 pancakes. Well, maybe you don't remembered but I do and I remembered a few years back in the SF Bay Area how it used to be at Ikea. The good old days of Ikea breakfast is now- no more.

But not all is lost....at last I have found the perfect recipe for Swedish pancake courtesy of our good friends the Lindholms!!

So here is the secret to Swedish pancake. The ingredients are all dependant on how many eggs you use. Double the eggs double the recipe...Simple eh? For those who lives in a country that does not use metric I'll post the conversion at the end of the blog.

Swedish Pancake:
1 Eggs
Pinch salt
1 TBS Sugar
2 dl Milk
1 dl Flour (bread flours are best, if not all purpose flours will do)
Butter or Margerine for frying
Batter sitting time 25-30 min.

6 eggs...this is going to be GOOD. Combine all the ingredients together and whisk until there's no flour lumps. The batter should be very loose and not sticking to the whisk. Then let sit for 25-30 minutes before cooking.

Heat up a frying pan on Med-heat and melt some butter on it. Then pour a small amount of batter onto the pan and thinly coat the pan.

Flip the pancake over and cook for another minute. Ta-da! Done. You can serve it with a sprinkle of sugar or.....

If you've happen to be out in the forest and happened to have picked a bucket full of wild blueberries you can make blueberry Swedish pancake.

Hmmm...delicious!

DECILITER 1 dl= 100 ml ~ 1/2 cup
MATSKED 1 msk = 15 ml= 1 Tablespoon
TESKED 1 tsk = 5 ml = 1 teaspoon
CUP 1 cup = 240ml

Summer vacation in Sweden

We made it to Sweden!! Imagine traveling with 2 young boys, a husband, and an 8 month old puppy.

Our family is currently summer vacationing in Sweden and we will be here until September 6th. We are staying in the South of Sweden about 45 minutes away from Gothenburg in a small town called Alingsas.

Alingsas is a very cute (and growing) town with many coffee shops and is surrounded by many lakes. I totally enjoy relaxing here especially outside one of the city's many coffee shops during "Fika" time...around 2-3pm. Fika means to drink coffee~Wiki translation. I will post reviews of restraunts/coffee shops I go to, so that if you ever come visit this area you'll get an idea of what to expect. Also just remember that I am Frugal and will try to find the best place for the best price!

In the summer time, Sweden is very beautiful and lush with wild edibles! You know me always thinking about hunting and gathering foods. Today we went to visit our friends who lives around the next lake over. After lunch we all took a long walk into the forest to pick some wild blueberries! Yummm! And of course I kept my eyes opened for Chanterelle mushrooms....




In my next post the most common sense thing to do is post recipe for Swedish pancake!

Thai Papaya Salad

Papaya Salad is made with green papaya. Make sure that when you buy green papaya, for the purpose of making this dish, that the flesh inside is white. Most major grocery store chains do sell papayas but don't be fooled by their green colored skin papayas or the hardness of the fruits at those stores. Because the ones sold at major grocery store chains are already ripening. If you cut open a papaya and the flesh are already orange-yellow in colors, you don't want those! It can still be used but it will not taste as good. Green papayas do not have much flavors and it will take on flavors from the sauce it's soaked in. That is why when you use papayas that are already ripe or is ripening, the ripe flavors of the fruit will interfere with the sauce's flavors. So the best bet is go to an ethnic grocery store and get white fleshed green papayas.

There are many versions of this spicy Southeast Asian dish, depending on what country you go to. I mostly prefer either Thailand style-which is sweet or Laos style-which is extra spicy, sour, and pungent. Today I will show you how to make Thai style Papaya Salad.

First you'll need to prepare the young papaya by peeling it. Then washing it thoroughly, sometimes the young papayas have white sap that bleeds through the skin. Wipe dry with a paper towel. Then shred with a papaya shredder. You can find this at your local Asian Supermarket or online. They are cheap, about $3?

The ingredients:

1 Garlic clove
Thai Chili peppers--add to your spice level
2 TBS Palm sugar--1 TBS cane sugar as substitute
2 TBS Fish Sauce
2 TBS Lime juice
2 1/2 Cups shredded Papaya
3 TBS dried shrimps
2 TBS peanuts--roasted and crushed for garnishing

Also don't forget one ripe tomato (small). My tomatoes are starting to ripe, woohoo!

In a mortar crush the garlic and chili peppers. If you don't have a mortar and pestle you can use a food processor or hand chop them finely. The purpose for crushing them is to get the spicy oils and flavor out of the garlic and peppers.

Next add the fish sauce, sugar, and lime juice to the crushed peppers--mix them well.

Then into the mortar add the shredded papaya, tomato slices, and dried shrimps. Use the pestle to mix the ingredients into the papaya, this also bruises the papayas.

For those who don't have a mortar and pestle you can bruise the shredded young papaya by putting it into a bowl or cup and use a wooden spoon. The act of bruising the papaya will allow more sauce to grab hold onto each papaya strands. After you've bruised the papaya, mix in the sauce.

Before serving add the chopped roasted peanuts.

The papaya salad goes well with BBQ chicken and pork. Also fresh veggies.

Servings: 3 Adults, 2 Children
Cooking time: 15 min.
Costs: $0.80