Try Chai with policy

I am writing my last paper for Social Policy in North America. Challenging, life changing. I wrote a little reflection here, but cut it away because I changed my mind about posting it for today.

Instead wanted to share with you a little beverage that is pulling me through my paper writing morning: Homemade Chai Tea (yeah, I know, so 2000... the fad has come and gone, but I'm right there again)Chai Tea (from better homes and gardens)
1 black tea bag
1 3-inch piece of cinnamon stick
2 cups milk
2 Tbsp raw sug or honey
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp ground ginger (i used about 1 tsp chopped fresh ginger)
1/8 tsp ground cardamom (i used 3 pods)

In a small saucepan combine tea bag, cinnamon stick and 1/2 cup water. Bring to boil. Remove from heat. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes. Remove and discard tea bag. Add and stir together all other ingrediants. Cook and stir over medium heat until mixture is heated through (do not boil).
That's the original recipe. I actually added my fresh ginger and cardamom in the beginning, and left them in till the end. I brought mine to a boil with everything and then let it simmer for a minute. I wanted lots of kick!

Corrina was doing some lovely posing for me this weekend. (Notice the hair clips Claire, and the shirt Rachel! Thanks!)
And then in came dad, and out came the tongue!
Corrina went to a really neat birthday party this weekend and had her face painted like a princess! This was her request!
Cute and disturbing all at the same time.
I have planned my vegetable and cutting garden for the summer. Photos to come.

Perfect days

Perfection is subjective, but for us, at this time in the year, I think we had just about the perfect weekend. But, there are two funny things with this: one, we didn't do anything out of the ordinary, but the time just felt perfect. Two, Dave was gone for the whole weekend. I feel so bad saying that, and it certainly was not part of the perfection of the time. It would have been better if he were here, none the less, we had a great weekend! Please don't judge me...

Corrina and I hit our children's museum on Friday morning. We decided to buy a membership pass because they are very well priced. I think we have payed it off already with the 3 or 4 times we've been. At this age Corrina just doesn't get bored with it. In fact, she get's more excited about it every time we go. Love that!

I think the most perfect thing was making it through the grocery store without any fits or run aways. Corrina is the type of gal who just loves a good chase. It's just thrilling to her, and once she gets going she is the hardest little thing to catch because she's pretty sure it's a game, right down to the very upset momma assuring her that I do not feel the same way. But, this did not happen on our last shopping trip, and I still can't believe it. After helping me bag all the produce, she walked along, holding the side of the cart for the rest of the grocery trip. I'm sure she was sick of hearing me say "Corrina, it's good that you are holding the cart while we shop! I feel happy when you hold on and stay close." (They say praise the good behaviour you want to see more than the bad you don't want. She doesn't like this change, it's just not as thrilling at the troubmle attention, which means it works!) Anyway, I am defining moments like that as making my weekend perfect!

On Saturday night we had our little friend and his family over for an impromptu birthday dinner for him, and my gosh was it delicious. I made my own ricotta cheese for a roasted vegtable lasagne. We followed this up with the most amazing carrot cake I've ever had, topped with whipped cream-cream cheese frosting. The cake recipe came from my looney spoons cook books, which if you haven't checked out (ie. read, or checked-out from the library, either one) after hearing me rant about them for at least 3 posts, than I don't know what to say to you. Maybe I'm doing a bad job at convincing you... you tell me! Anyway, lovely super, lovely cake, and here are a few recipes.

Ricotta Cheese
2L Milk (whole, 2 %, I used 1%)
1 cup heavey cream (whipping cream, 35%)
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp lemon juice
Mix together first three ingredients in sauce pot over moderate heat until this comes to a rolling boil. Stir occasionally to prevent scorching. This can take a long time if you're bringing it up to a boil slowly. Be patient, it will pay off. Once boiling, add lemon juice. Reduce heat to low, and stir for 2-5 minutes, until the mixture has curdled. Line a sieve with cheese cloth, or thin, clean, tea towel, and place over a bowl to catch the drippings/whey/butter milk. Slowly pour all contents from pot into lined sieve, and allowed to strain until all liquid has dripped through. In the sieve you have your ricotta cheese, and in the bowl you have buttermilk. Ricotta cheese lasts for 2-3 days. Not sure about the holding time for the butter milk.

(I think we are eating yogurt on our valentines pancakes, so it relates!)

Hope you get a chance to try this out. I loved the results, plus the money saved (at least here in MB, ricotta cheese is ridiculously expensive). I am still meaning to make yogurt, (or here) but keep forgetting to buy a thermometer to get the temps right. I don't have a yogurt machine to keep things at a consistent temp, but I have read some different ideas about ways to incubate the yogurt. I have one friend who rigs up her crock pot in a funny way to create her own yogurt maker machine. Might try that, or this. Yogurt making, and maybe ricotta cheese making too, seem like the easiest homemade things to do in the WORLD. If only I had a cow, I would be set! But then, it wouldn't be so easy, would it!? (I heard on the radio that someone has combined !? into it's own punctuation mark called the interrobang... what do you think? )



Dave gave me a beautiful, fragrant hyacinth earlier this week. It has fully blossomed and is such a lovely reminder that in certain places of the country many people are about to enjoy the new life of spring. We won't for a more months outside, but at least I can enjoy the colors and smells in my kitchen!

I think the weekend will end in perfect as well, when Dave returns home tonight (and I have to shove him off because I am working on my overdue homework!) At least he will be home.
Ha, gotta love life!

I'm pretty sure that Corrina believes she runs an orphanage most days. Like many little people, girls and boys alike, Corrina loves to play with other children, alive or plastic. Her favorite thing is to put them to sleep. She lines them up, pats their backs, sings songs, reads book, and then gets comfortable and sits to make sure they stay asleep. Dave got caught up in the fun this one afternoon, and like any good little baby he had a nice long nap while Corrina and I moved onto more important things like hanging pictures and making music. Who says only deaf babies sleep through loud noises!
We have made it out ice skating on the world's longest river trail only once this year. Corrina did very well on her skates, and managed to hold her own weight most of the time. She tried gliding on her own, which of course looked more like a walk-shuffle-fall, but she tried it on her own!


We have officially declared Monday to be Soup Day at our house. We have so many things going on that day, with different people coming and going at different times thus needing to eat at different times. I was tired of trying to squeeze in a super time, so we just decided on take-it-when-you-need-it soup. We have tried tons of fantastic soup recipes, mostly from this book (so I don't think I can write them out here, copy right laws and all). This just might be the best change we have made this winter. I want more soup nights! Easy to prepare, nutritious, mostly light on the budget, and comfortingly warm.
Just last night I made a Roasted sweet potatoe with ginger and orange soup. We made sour cream heart designs in the thick, flavorful puree.
I think my favorite so far has been a soup called Thai One On. It has lots of vegtables, including sweet potatoes (did you know the Canadian food guide recommends eating at least one serving of an orange vegtable and one of a dark green every day. That's hard to do some days, but not with soup!) red peppers, celery, coconut milk, cumin, cinnamon, ginger, some pureed, some left chunky. To finish it off you add shrimp! Wow, this is the most delicious (and one of the more costly) soups we've made! If you have the Eat, Shrink, and be Merry cookbook, you'll find this recipe there. If you are just dying to know how to make this, leave me a comment and I can email you the recipe.
So, if you are making soup, you most definately need to have some sort of warm bread to accompany it. Sometimes we make our own Tortilla dippers by cutting up flat bread, brushing it with a mixture of 1tbsp olive oil, 1tbsp butter mixed with garlic and herbs, and baking the pieces at 350 for 10 minutes. Amazing! Other times we just grab buns from our local organic bakery. And of course, when time allows, we mix up our own home made biscuits.
But, you see, I've always struggled with biscuits. I either don't like them because they are all white flour, have too much butter and fat, come out tasting like baking powder, are just a little too crunchy, or are perfect and soft on the outside, but soggy in the middle. Wow, it must sound like I am an awful buscuit maker! Some days I am, most days it's just the refined aspects of buscuits that gets me down. But, turning again to our faithful friends Janet and Greta, Corrina and I wiped up what will now be the go-to buscuit recipe in our home. This one I will share...with full credits to Crazy Plates cookbook.
Takin' Care of Biscuits (melt in your mouth whole wheat and cheddar biscuits)
Preheat oven to 425
Gather all children who enjoy dumping, stirring, rolling, cutting and making a mess

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
Mix this together in a large bowl
Stir in 1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese (i used parmesan because we were out of cheddar)

Using a pastry cutter, or your fingers:
cut in 3 tbsp butter of margarine

Next combine:
1 cup buttermilk (to make mix 1 tbsp lemon juice and fill remaining space in measuring cup up to the 1 cup mark with milk)
1 tsp honey


Add this to dry ingredients. Using a fork stir to form a soft dough. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface, form into a ball, and roll out to 3/4 inch. Cut into circle (or hearts!). Place onto sprayed cookie sheet. bake for 10-12 minutes or until biscuits have puffed up and are golden.
These biscuits turn out very soft and moist, almost like a freshly made bun, while at the same time retaining the ease and size of a biscuit!

A staple, but not a staple, a granola

So, I have been making a great granola recipe for about a month now and keep meaning to share it, but haven't had a moment. I don't actually have a moment right now, I am at that point in the semester where every minute counts, and every minute not used reading, or thinking, or thinking about reading is wasted.

But my eyes are ready to fall out of my head and roll around the floor, if that conveys that I am tired. My typing babbling will convey that I am tired if my really horrible description of my eyes doesn't.

Here is the fat free granola recipe I found. I was over the top excited because I hate all the oil in granola. I just won't do it. But we love granola, dave, Corrina and I, so I had to find something.

The recipe is from here, but I will type it out again, and add my thoughts. You should go to the other website because they have pictures, where as I am too tired to press the on button on the camera and take a picture of my fresh granola. I will now turn and look at it on your behalf, but that's all your getting tonight.

So, recipe:

450ml rolled oats (quick cooking, but not instant... as least quick cooking as you can find, maybe normal even.. they say quick cooking leaves a startchy taste when baked into granola, and I actualy found this to be true)

60 ml sun flower seeds (not deshelled from your mouth and than spat out)

120 ml sesame seeds

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

100 ml brown sugar (I use splenda brown sugar blend because, because I do...)

150ml of almond slivers

100 ml hazelnuts chopped (I just add more almonds)

1 tsp salt

*option: I add about 1/4-1/2 c. of wheat germ

*mix all that in a bowl! Yippy*

Now mix this in another bowl, or if you're a cheater like me just mix it all together in your glass pyrex cup

175 ml apple sauce

120 ml corn syrup (I hate that this is in here, and usualy try to take some out. Seems to work fine with a little less, maybe 100 ml instead. Any ideas for alternatives?)

4 Tbsp runny honey (I didn't have any tonight and the batch came out great, so skip this is you are cutting our excess sugar.. or keep this in and take out more corn syrup)

*mix all this into the dry, plop it on a baking sheet, nice and flat. You can even squish it a little with your spatula. Kinda fun.

Now bake it in a 350 oven, for 30-40 minutes, stirring every ten minutes. Make sure you work the edge bits into the middle, so they don't get scorched.

For me this is enough to fill only one cookie sheet, but if you fill two, or double the batch than switch the cookie sheets around with the stirring.

Watch the granola closely and when it starts to brown all over just leave it out of the oven. it may look a little wet still, but it gets very crunchy once it sits. So many lovely clusters too!

Once it's cooled, stir in about a cup of raisins, or crasins, whichever you like. Or you could do chopped dried apricots. I think I'll do that next week!

Seriously, I am never buying store bought again, or making any granola with oil in it. This stuff is amazing.

In other news, Dave is putting together a brand new bed frame we found at a thrift store. We had to do some piecing, but for the most part it looks great! I have never had a bed frame before. We've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor for a year, no box spring, no joke! The spring doesn't fit up our stairs. I can't wait to be up off the dang floor! I should go supervise now...

I am thinking about changing our blog template, but don't know where to find something neat to switch to. Any ideas?

I am uploading pictures now, so once they are on the computer i will probably remember what i was thinking of posting about.

Dave is sleeping. Corrina is sleeping. I have some time to read and research for my family counselling paper that is due one week from today. I have done very well on all my paper thus far, and have also learned a lot while writing them so i have no reason for worry about this upcoming paper. But, i do have a major reading assignment due 2 days after this fairly large paper, as well as another paper due that same day. This puts me severely behind. So while before you may have been thinking "everyone needs a little internet break, especially when the paper isn't due for a week", you are now probably thinking "Janie, get your butt in gear, you have a huge amount of reading and writing to accomplish!" Yes, i am thinking this too, but you see, i started looking at crafty blogs- this one especially is fun and has a number of great links- while i was waiting for Corrina to fall asleep. I did not want to start my reading with the thought of having to stop every few minutes to help her settle down (which, she has really been having a hard time with. Any thoughts? Is this because she is older and can stay up later, or maybe she needs her morning nap decreased so her afternoon nap, which is now at about 4pm, is taken earlier... i am out of ideas... but i know we are having trouble and restless nights.. something is wrong.. but do i have drive or time to fix it? nope) so i started looking at blogs. now i am stuck.

Oh, the pictures are ready now!
How can you resist this alluring face? I certainly can't:





I bought a little bag of coffee for a friend the other day, and i could not resist picking up a bag of coffee for my french press. With all the reading and studying going on in this house coffee has become a new part of my routine. I bought starbucks, breakfast blend. I have NEVER bought expensive coffee for at home; it is delicious! Lots of frothed milk tops the cup off. I discovered, because we had no milk one day, that skim milk powdered milk makes the best frothy foam, and I can hardly tell the difference in taste. That's my secret for you!

I have been re-learning how to play guitar (it's not like riding a bike, you can lose it! But it is rather quick to pick up again, especially when you only know 10 chords in the first place!) and Corrina thinks it is a dandy new toy for her to fiddle with. So, up on the lap she comes for some strumming fun. I like that she can feel the vibrations; i can't wait until she hears the music that goes with the movements! (note: look at how long she is! She already comes up to the top of my hip when standing!) I think I actually resemble my brother in this picture. Do you think so??

Narrative Family Therapy here i come!