Bonus Post! Blockette's Orange Sauce

Blockette has been begging me to share her super secret Orange sauce recipe. 
It's the best thing, in her opinion, since sliced bread.
OK Here goes:

First you put Ketchup in a bowl, then you put mustard in the bowl.  You mix it with a spoon.  Then you test it with a hot dog.  If you like it, then eat it all up.  The End.


This has been Orange Sauce by Blockette.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Orangey Whole Wheat Flax Waffles

MMMMM. Waffles. How can you not love them? Most of the time I just cheat and whip up a big batch from a box mix. Sometimes it's nice to switch things up a bit and try a "fancy" from scratch version. I have a list of waffle recipes I'd like to try. I showed the list to Blockette and let her choose. She picked Healthier Whole Wheat Waffles from goodLife{eats}.Apperently, the recipe on goodLife{eats}is one that she made over. The original recipe had a whole cup of sugar, plus the sugar content from 2 cups of apple juice. This revised recipe has 1/3 c brown sugar and the juice from one orange. Loads less sugar, which is a great thing for me, especially now that it is hotter and I have to be careful about my sugar intake.

When I make new waffles for the first time I taste test them plain, without butter or syrup. My first impression was that they were sweet. Not overly sweet, but a good sweet, the kind that I thought didn't need any syrup though. This may be because I used a sweet mineola orange. If I thought the reduced sugar version was sweet, I can only imagine what the original waffles must taste like!

One word of warning, this batter is very thick. I have one of those round waffle makers, not the kind that has 2 or 4 squares. If you have a small waffle iron like this, 1/3 c of batter will be enough for one waffle, but you will need to spread it out quickly over the entire surface of the iron with a spatula.

I'm going to have to make these waffles again in the not too distant future. One, because they were so tasty, and two because Blockette and I ate these for dinner two nights when Mrblocko wasn't home.  Mrblocko was none too happy he didn't get a single taste!


Healthier Whole Wheat Waffles from Good Life Eats
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter, melted
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons cold milled flax
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup milk
3 eggs, separated
juice of one orange
zest of half an orange

Preheat waffle iron. Sift brown sugar, flour, flax, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together in a bowl. Add egg yolks and milk to dry ingredients and beat together thoroughly. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. Stir 1/2 of the egg whites into the waffle batter, and then fold in the remaining egg whites and stir (do not beat) until mixed. Add butter, orange juice and zest, and mix until smooth. Grease the waffle iron, if necessary. Pour scant 1/3 c of batter on the heated waffle mold. Makes about 10-16 waffles, depending on the size of your waffle iron.

The Turducken of Cookies

Oh no I just cannot leave well enough alone. A while ago I wrote about Brownie Covered Oreos, a recipe I saw on Picky Palate. Well, Jenny at Picky Palate also wrote about brownie stuffed cookies. I thought about that for 2 seconds and said, why not stuff a Brownie covered Oreo into a chocolate chip cookie. I give you the turducken of cookies!
These cookies were yummy, but the Brownie got sort of lost in the baking process. I didn't think they tasted too much different from the plain Oreo stuffed Chocolate chip cookies. I think next time I will just make the Ultimate chocolate chip cookie n' Oreo Fudge brownie Bar from Kevin and Amanda. The recipe seems easier with only one bake time. Also, the layers of cookie and brownie look pronounced, which I assume would result in more of an equal brownie and cookie flavor combination.

'11 Happy Dance #11 Finally...The Fish Bag

I got this pattern for a Big Mouth Fish Bag by Katie Lane Quilts, exactly 12 million years ago.  OK, so it was more like 5 years ago, but it feels like 12 million years.  I think originally I had intended it to be a book bag of some sort.  Little did I know that Blockette would turn out to be a voracious reader.  A mac truck would be more suitable for her book transportation needs.

This little fishy does make a perfect overnight bag.  We took it with us this weekend when we did Relay for Life.  It fit all her "stuff" perfectly.  This bag is also great because, unlike her school backpack, it is too small to be able to hold more than she can carry on her back comfortably.

The pattern for this bag was very intimidating.  There were plenty of times where I took the pattern out, looked at it and just scratched my head in confusion.  Over the past 5 years I've made several stuffed animals and that helped me understand what I needed to do in order to stitch up this bag.  Really, this bag is just like a stuffed animal without the stuffing.  There were still a few of those "huh?" moments, but after reading the directions and playing with the cut pattern pieces, I was able to figure it out.

Blockette helped me pick out what fabrics she wanted in her bag. The stipulation was that she had to pick from the fabrics I already had.  At first she wanted an all pink bag, but I didn't have enough contrasting pink fabrics.  I told her that if the fabrics looked too much alike, the scales weren't going to show up.  I put all the pink fabrics she liked next to each other and told her to look at them from across the room.  She reluctantly agreed the pink fabrics wouldn't be good for the bag.

I suggested a rainbow fish bag and she thought that was almost as good as a pink one.  She was a little upset that the green is out of color order, but I told her I just didn't have enough purple fabric to make the tail.  Personally, I think the green on the tail and side fin makes a better contrast than purple would.  Then again, what do I know about these things.  I'm just the mom. 

The pattern includes directions for a shoelace closure, but I didn't think that would be a very comfortable way for Blockette to carry the bag. So, I made the drawstring into back pack straps.  I remember having a bag that had a closure like that in Jr High, so I replicated it from my memory of that bag.  Jr high was a long time ago, so I'm not entirely certain that I made it exactly the same way the bag I had was constructed.  I can get so particular sometimes that I had to tell myself it didn't matter, and that the bag was fine, maybe even better, the way it is.

I also thought it would be fun for the bag to have some pockets in it. I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to make the pockets. Then I found an old pair of Mrblocko's jeans with the holes in the knees. Mrblocko won't wear hole-y jeans or cut offs, so when this happens they become free game for my crafting purposes.  Why make a pocket when you've got one already made for you?!

Originally, I was going to rip out the seam and remove the pocket from the butt of the jeans.  Then, I realized that the grommets at the corners of the pockets would make this impossible.  Plus, that was a lot of work, ripping out a double seam.  Then I thought, why not cut around the pocket and sew that to the inside of the bag?  It's easier AND it creates two pockets instead of one.  The larger pocket isn't the neatest looking thing, but it's on the inside of the bag so big whoop.

I'm so happy to finally have completed this project.  Blockette loves it, and I feel like I accomplished something big by finishing it.  There are several mistakes, but even I have to look really hard to find them, so I'm not going to beat myself up over it.  Now I just have to figure out what project I'm going to start next!

Crockpot Coconut Beef

We don't eat a lot of beef in this house. When we do, 99% of the time it is ground beef. Oh sure, once in a blue moon I will break down and humor Mrblocko and let him have a nice steak. So I'm sure that you can imagine his surprise when I told him I was making A Year of Slow Cooking's coconut beef in the crockpot. I mean it wasn't even his birthday, and we were having beef? Granted it was stew beef, but still...BEEF! This is what the stuff looks like when you first plop all the ingredients into the crock pot. Ew right?

Then, the cumin colors the coconut milk a nice orangy color. OK, it's not so nice looking, but it tastes good and that's the point. I liked mine served over a bed of rice with some sweetened shredded coconut on top. YUM!
This recipe was almost a HUGE disaster though. I misread the recipe and I almost put in 1-2 tsp of red pepper flakes instead of chili powder. Luckily, I caught my mistake right before I put the spices in the crockpot. If I had added the red pepper flakes instead of the chili powder, Blockette and I would have looked Homer Simpson at the chili cook off! Mrblocko would have been fine though. He added loads of red pepper flakes to his portion.

This recipe makes a lot. So much so that we got sick of eating the leftovers. I froze about 4 cups of the meat and sauce. Four cups! Keep in mind, this was after eating it for at least 3 meals! After several months of just pushing it around and not wanting to use up the leftovers I had a rather brilliant idea. Why not make a sort of shepherd's pie out of those leftovers? I added corn, carrots, peas and green beans to the meat mix, topped it with mashed potatoes (which I also had a ton of in the freezer) and a bit of cheddar cheese. This made enough for 2 round casserole dishes. Each dish fed the three of us for 2 meals.

I actually preferred the leftovers in shepherd's pie form to the original main dish. Not only did I like the flavor combinations of the meat, potatoes and veggies, but it was a one dish meal. If I don't have to prepare any side dishes that always makes me a happy camper.

Crockpot coconut Beef from a Year of Slow Cooking
1-2 lbs stew meat
1 yellow onion, cut in chunks
1 can coconut milk
1 juice from one lime
2 T of butter (optional. I used it, but don't think it needs it next time)
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 1/2 T chili paste (or 1-2 tsp red chili flakes)
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated

I used a 6qt Smart-Pot for this dish. Anything 4qt and up will work. If using, put butter into crockpot, and turn it on to begin to melt. Add meat, lime juice, and coconut milk. Follow with the onion and garlic. Add the brown sugar and all the spices. Grate the ginger. Toss meat a bit in the liquid and spices to coat. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours, or on low for 8. The coconut milk will be yellow from the curry, and will separate a bit. A quick stir will turn it all creamy again. Serve over white or brown rice.

Moroccan Tuna Casserole

Summer is salad weather in our house. Well, it is also grilling weather. It's actually, Mrsblocko doesn't want to use the oven and heat up the house weather, but they are all essentially the same thing. So when I came across Moroccan pasta salad over at Food.com I thought it might be something interesting to try.

As I was assembling the recipe, I found that it needed to be tweaked quite a bit. The original recipe says to use an 8 oz can of corn and 2-3 Tablespoons of olives. I used an entire 15 oz can of corn and one of those short stumpy cans of sliced black olives. This made the salad seem much more substantial.As you can tell from the photo above, I used regular corkscrew noodles instead of the tri-colored. I had oodles of noodles in my pantry and couldn't justify buying another box just to be fancy. I also served this salad over a bed of lettuce. Mrblocko and I agreed that this made the salad seem more like a complete meal. I served it with some fruit on the side and viola, a one dish meal.

Finally, I used tuna in vegetable oil, not olive oil. This was my error at the grocery store. I simply grabbed the wrong can off the shelf. I didn't think it made any difference. I did drain off some of the oil in the can. There just seemed like a lot in there and while dressing on a salad is nice, oily salad is not. I also did not add any extra olive oil. If I was trying to eliminate oil, why would I add more oil?

The salad was simple to prepare and everything, but it didn't knock my socks off. The tuna wasn't overly fishy tasting, but it was lacking something. Maybe it needed more spices? I don't know. Everyone ate the salad without complaint, but we were all glad when the leftovers were gone.

Moroccan Pasta Salad with Tuna from Food.com
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2-1 teaspoon cumin
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
8 ounces tri-colored rotini pasta, cooked
1 (3 ounce) can tuna in olive oil, flaked apart
1 (8 ounce) can corn, drained
2 -3 tablespoons sliced black olives

Mix olive oil, mayo, and spices together in a small bowl. Mix other ingredients in a large bowl. Then stir mayo mix in with pasta. Serve cold.

Thankful Thursday 24.11

1. No rain for the parade.
2. No sun/heatstroke from the parade.
3.watching Harry Potter movies with Blockette.
4. I didn't scream when the spider landed on my shoulder while I was brushing my teeth last night.
5. Blockette had fun at her best friend's party.
6. Blockette wasn't too scared to climb the rock wall like the rest of the kids.
7. Blockette went right back to sleep after the tornado warning expired.
8. I kept a level head when the sirens went off.
9. I had watch and warning confused.
10. There was no actual tornado close to our house.