Baked Lemon Rice

Prep Time: 15 Minutes
Cook Time: 40 Minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 cups uncooked brown rice
1.5 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 zucchini
2 cups frozen spinach
2 cloves Garlic, Minced
1 whole Lemon, Juiced And Zested
2 cups Sour Cream
Kosher Salt to taste
Plenty Of Grated Parmesan Cheese
Extra Lemon Juice

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook rice in rice cooker.

2. In a skillet, cook zucchini in olive oil until soft.

3. Turn heat to low. Add butter. When butter is melted, add frozen spinach and minced garlic. Squeeze lemon juice into the pan. Turn off heat.

4. Add sour cream and stir mixture together. Add lemon zest and salt. Taste, then add more salt if necessary. Add rice to skillet and stir together, then pour into an oven safe dish.

5. Bake, covered, for 15 minutes. Then remove foil and bake for an additional 7 to 10 minutes. (Don’t bake too long or the rice will dry out.)

This was actually a bit too sour/tangy for me, but Ian enjoyed it. I think I might use a milder dairy element next time — maybe ricotta or cottage cheese, or use half sour cream and half something else. The lemon flavor was fantastic though!

I’m also just now realizing how few pictures I have of her where she’s smiling. She has this huge, happy smile where she can’t even keep her eyes open, but I haven’t been able to capture it.

Ingredients
1 1/8 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. For those of you without a bread machine, proof dry yeast in warm water with the sugar (about 10 minutes).
2. When foamy add oil and pour into the flour that has already been mixed with salt.
3. Knead by hand or machine until it’s smooth and elastic. You should have a moderate dough (not soft and not firm, in the middle). Don’t worry if it’s a little sticky. You can add flour when rolling out if needed.
4. Let it rise for 1.5 hours (until dough had doubled in size)
5. Cut dough into 8 equal pieces and roll into 6-7″ circles.
6. Cook on med/med-high in a frying pan on the stove like a pancake, but without any butter or oil. Takes about 1-2 minutes per side; bubbles were starting to form on the uncooked side when I flipped and were done when just starting to brown in spots.

Spicy Chickpeas and Spinach

I kind of made a mesh of these two recipes: Spicy Chickpea and Spinach Curry and Pakistani Spicy Chickpeas.

Stephanie made something similar to this a while back when I visited for dinner one evening and I really liked it. She got me some curry and cumin so I could make it myself. She assured me it was easy, but it sounded like a lot of ingredients so I didn’t end up making it until now. I should’ve listened to her!

Ingredients
2 (15 ounce) cans garbanzo beans, drained
2 (15 ounce) cans tomato paste or canned tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon curry
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon lemon pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 cups frozen spinach

Directions
1. Put all ingredients except for spinach in slow cooker. Cook on high (3-4 hours).
2. Mix in spinach about 30 minutes before serving.

Falafel

Last week, Ian and I visited Sonny and Anna twice for doggy play dates. As part of these outings, Anna cooked dinner for us. It seemed like something they did often… you know, this cooking at home thing.

I asked Anna if she cooked the same things every week or if she made weekly meal plans to have all the ingredients on hand, etc. She does a weekly meal plan with 3 or 4 recipes she wants to try out. I was so impressed that I asked her to email me her meal plans so I could try some of her recipes too! Although, now that I think about it, she should really start a food blog.

In any case, one of the recipes for this week was falafel. I had no idea it was something I could make at home! I combined her recipe with one for Falafel Burgers for tonight. We’ll see how they turn out…

Ingredients
2 cups canned chickpeas, drained
1/2 large onion, roughly chopped (about 1 cup)
2 tablespoons parsley flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1/2-1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper
4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon baking powder
4-6 tablespoons flour
Soybean or vegetable oil for frying
Tahini
Pita bread

Directions
1. Place chickpeas and the onions in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the parsley, cilantro, salt, hot pepper, garlic, and cumin. Process until blended but not pureed.

2. Sprinkle in the baking powder and 4 tablespoons of the flour, and pulse. You want to add enough bulgur or flour so that the dough forms a small ball and no longer sticks to your hands. Turn into a bowl and refrigerate, covered, for several hours.

3. Form the chickpea mixture into small patties.

4. Heat enough oil to cover the bottom of a large skillet over medium heat. Place the burgers in the hot skillet, and fry for about 5 minutes on each side, until nicely browned.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. A good value, etc.

So after snowmageddon and snowpocalypse, I decided today was the day. Inspired by my sister-in-law and my future sister-in-law, I made a chickpea curry for dinner tonight, started falafels for tomorrow night, and have containers of chickpeas for other dishes, depending on which recipes we like. I also made about 3 cups of hummus for snacking.

And with all these chickpeas, I figured I would also take a crack at making some pitas. So I found a recipe online that sounded promising and tried it out.

And as it turned out, they were pretty easy to make. So after the first few, I tried making a pocket pita:

We did have a lot of fun with her for the week though. We brought her back to the kennel yesterday before snowpocalypse struck. And I’m sure she’s having a blast playing in the snow at the ranch now anyway. :)

Going to spend lots of time with her the rest of this week and have some fun in the snow and at the dog park!

So… Ian weighed Lucy yesterday and it turns out she’s 31 pounds instead of 20, as reported on the website and her adoption papers. Our building has a limit of 25 pounds. We thought we could get away with it if she were 20 pounds and ended up 30 pounds at full size. At a year old now, she probably still has 6 months or so that she might grow.

Ian’s going to talk to our building manager today to find out if we can keep her. We figure if we’re not allowed to, it’s probably better to find out now before we get even more attached.

Sigh…

She’s super sweet, but rambunctious. And still a bit of a puppy, so there are a lot of things for her to learn. But she’s clearly very smart, so I have high hopes. She’s been barking a lot when we go on walks, but likes people and other dogs so far. She’s also been spending a lot of time sniffing around our place and licking stuff, but hasn’t eaten anything she shouldn’t, so also good. The people at the shelter said she likes kids, but I think we better train her not to jump before letting her play with the nieces.

Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!

Who knew there was even a market for this??

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies — This is on my to-read list, but I don’t think I ever told Amazon that.

2. Energy and Finite Element Methods In Structural Mechanics: SI Units — Because, seriously, why would I want to read that in English units?? ;)

3. Angry Little Girls Original Angry Little Girl Black Tote Bag — I don’t even know how they know I like this comic strip. I mean, I do. I just don’t know how they know.

Overall, not too exciting. But scrolling through a few pages of recommendations found more telling items that describe my life:

Boon Snack Ball – Snack Container — Why…?

PIG CATAPULT — “LAUNCHES PIGS UP TO 15 FEET!” Ok, I totally know why this was recommended to me, but it’s still ridiculous.

Bacon Lip Balm — So… I bought TLD a bacon cookbook for Christmas a couple years ago. And then I bought Ian some bacon mints. And now Amazon thinks I want bacon in everything I buy…

Norpro Nonstick Mini Donut Pan — Spot on, Amazon.

I got up early on Christmas to make some rolls of my own (using sis-in-law’s mom’s recipe) and way too much mac & cheese. I tried out a Cheddar-Jack this year, but I think we were were a little too apprehensive about mixing it in. We used a 1:2 mix with regular cheddar, but I think I might try 1:1 next time. I also made marble pumpkin cheesecake, which I haven’t made in a few years.

My aunt and uncle hosted this year because my parents were leaving in the afternoon for NY. It worked out really well, so I’m glad we tried something new. They just finished getting some remodeling done on their house and this was my first visit to see how everything turned out. Everything looked great! And I love how open their kitchen is now! (Ian and I are probably going to use the same contractor to fix up our condo.)

They made ribs, turkey, lo mien, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. There was also a macaroni dish, linguine, cauliflower au gratin, sweet potatoes, meatballs, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. Soooo much food!

After lunch, Ian and I headed home for a 30-minute breather. We got another pan of rolls baked and I took an 11-minute nap. Refreshing! We grabbed our other tray of mac & cheese to bake on site and the other cheesecake and we were on our way.

Ian’s parents hosted Christmas dinner for the Christmas eve crowd. Again, lots of food! Turkey, ham, green beans, cornbread stuffing, broccoli salad, mashed potatoes, and jell-o.

We hung out for most of the evening listening to Christmas music, discussing abortion insurance for the second night in a row, and playing with the dogs. I don’t get to see the in-law-in-laws very often, so it was fun catching up with them.

Saturday night, we headed out to Sterling for re-scheduled Friendmas before everyone skipped town. Fun, drinking, and discussion of argyles. Heather and I also combined powers to make a fortune teller a la elementary school!

I still need to get my act together and put together some pictures for next year’s Friendmas calendar. I’m running out of time! Though, maybe we’re just going to have a tradition of April-March calendars… ;)

TattooGirl was turning 30 and her husband threw a party for her. It was a little hindered by the snow that day, but there was still a good turnout and we had loads of fun! And after driving 45 minutes to MD, I even met one of my neighbors… Go figure.

So, not knowing how many people to expect at this party, I decided an 8″ round cake would not be sufficient (~15 servings). I knew there would be at least 13 people, but didn’t know about the maybes or people who didn’t reply. Unfortunately, I don’t have a 9″ round cake pan, so I had to go with the 10″ cake pan Anna lent me for the second tier of a wedding cake (~30 servings). Everyone likes extra cake… and I figured it would be good practice for me anyway.

Ian’s mom’s birthday was also that weekend, so I made a cake for their Gilmore night dinner. For that one, I made a 6″ cake, which I’ve been using for practice.

I decided to go with the same cake for both just to simplify things: Caramel Chocolate Cake. I attempted to make a caramel syrup, but was a little impatient, so I mostly just made a plain syrup. I was also still intimidated by the meringue buttercream frosting in the wedding cake books, and with my stand mixer out of commission, I went with my old standby simple buttercream. I used a caramel frosting for the filling and chocolate frosting for the top and decorating.

I tried out the star tip on the 10″ cake, which worked out pretty well. But the frosting I made was too liquidy to hold its shape on the side of the cake, so I had to resort to just piping lines around the side. I was going to try out a basket weave on the 6″ cake, but had trouble again because of the consistency of my frosting. So I just went with stripes.

Things to work on:
- Brushing more syrup on the layers
- Leveling layers
- Making frosting
- Piping

And the ones I’m most proud of, this year’s addition of gingerbread cookies:

After all the other cookies, no one else was interested in decorating the gingerbread cookies, so I drew on all of them. The first few were pretty boring because I didn’t know what I was doing, so I was just outlining the shapes. But after I got the hang of things, I started getting more detailed — patterns on shirts and dresses, pockets, ties, different hair styles, etc. Plus, we also made some pets for the gingerbread people, so the dogs got spots, the birds got wings, and the stegosaurus got polka dotted and striped.

Ian and I stopped by my parents’ yesterday for our weekly Saturday lunch. After lunch, we all went outside to have a snowball fight with my niece, but the snow was so perfect for packing we decided to make a snowman instead:

When the first snowball got to be Eliana’s height, we tried to convince Ian that the snowman was going to be too big. We all had to concede in the end though that he was right all along.

Eliana spent much of the building process as Supervisor and telling us, “Bigger!”

Ian finally agreed that the snowball had reached a sufficient size, but had to roll it back across the yard (and snow) so we could build on flatter ground.

Then Ian helped me maneuver the second snowball over to the first. And, fortunately, he and Yenny were strong enough to lift it onto the base.

Eliana tried to help me push the head over, but did what she saw me doing… which was push toward her.

After a little convincing, she agreed to come over to my side of the snowball. And we were able to push the head over together.

Eliana needed a boost, but she was plenty helpful getting the torso shaped and ready for the head. We all helped fill in the joints and round out some spots.

After a while, it started to get a little windy, so Eliana used the snowman to protect her from the cold.

As we were getting the head onto the snowman, Ian suggested we make it taller — a 4-ball snowman! So we decided he needed a tophat!

My mom let us use a real carrot for the nose, found us some branches for arms, my dad found us some nice pieces of mulch for the face, and even grandma came out to give us a scarf to use. And after some more shaping and sculpting, we had our very own Snowman Mao!

This took us probably a little over half an hour to build. For scale, Ian is uphill from the snowman, so with the hat, they’re just about the same height — 6′6″. The snow really was the perfect condition to roll around and make huge snowballs; the best I can remember in at least 10 years. Then we went in for traditional post-snow hot chocolate!

Special thanks to my dad for the photo-documentation!

UPDATE:

The first night, we baked a double batch of peanut butter oatmeal cookies. This may not have been the best idea, what with never having used this recipe or mixer before. Plus, Ian and my ridiculously bad volumetric estimation skillz. We started mixing around 11:30pm and finished baking close to 1am. Loads of delicious cookies, but also a little bit of a mess. ;)

Next up was a practice cake. I tried out the basic yellow cake recipe from one of the wedding cake books Anna loaned me. Very quick/easy recipe. And I got to practice torting (slicing the cake in half horizontally). The book said to use a ruler to go around the cake and mark off where you’ll cut with a toothpick. I took a chef’s knife and just sliced. For the size cake I made, that worked out ok.

Then, I got intimidated by the buttercream frosting recipe in the book and went with my old stand-by from the Joy of Cooking. Butter, powdered sugar, liquid/flavoring. Mix.

This worked out pretty well, but I added some cocoa and didn’t put enough liquid in. This made it really difficult to spread, so after I got through 2 layers, I decided to add more milk and it whipped up almost immediately! Oh yeah, and did I mention I got to use the whisk attachment for this? So cool.

Then I tried out the cake decorating kit I borrowed from my mom. Piping is way more difficult than I thought! I started over at least 4 times. And once I got halfway through and I started messing up because my hand was cramping, I just went with it. That’s why there are spots where the frosting is falling off. Oh well. It was my first try.

Lessons learned:
- Do not put all the frosting in the piping bag to start. Body heat will soften the frosting.
- Make sure the consistency of the frosting is perfect *before* you start.
- Making line-type patterns are way more difficult than repeated individual patterns. There are seams everywhere and no good place to stop and rest.

Yesterday was time to test out the hook attachment. So, Ian and I made some honey wheat bread.

I bought a huge bag of flour from CostCo this summer and have only used ~5 pounds of it, so I decided I shouldn’t buy all these different kinds of flour for these recipes. I mixed in some vital wheat gluten to make my all-purpose flour glutenier to substitute for bread flour. And I mixed up a container of cake flour mixing all-purpose with corn starch. (I also have some pancake mix pre-made, so I don’t need bisquick anymore!)

My mom shared her stash of CostCo yeast with me, so I made use of that to yeast up some dough and then let Ian punch it.

I hope he continues to find that as amusing as he did yesterday. That’ll save me a lot of work. ;)

We baked up 2 loaves, since I only have 2 loaf pans. And froze the remainder of the dough (after the first rise step) for another day. It was pretty fun to make, but a pain to clean up after. I could picture myself mixing up some dough once a month or so though. And with 3 loaves out of it, that should last us a while… or so I thought.

Got home from work today to find this:

Half a loaf was missing! Guess the recipe was a success! :)

I’ll paste in recipes soon and add in our modifications.

She came in a few weeks ahead of schedule, but everyone is healthy and doing well. She’s too tiny for all her clothes though (<5.5 lb!), so I made a couple hats for her:

Here is the candy bucket when we started the evening:

Had some trouble getting the dogs to sit still for their pictures, but got a couple blurry pictures. There was Buddy in an Elvis costume as a “Hound Dog.” And Charley was “Count Dogula.”

I didn’t get any pictures of the kids dressed up, but here are my top picks:

Best costume: ~5-year-old kid in full astronaut costume. It was probably a little unsafe because the helmet looked like it was a little too big and limited his visibility. But it was a fantastic costume.

Best costume on the cheap: Teenager wearing a clear garbage bag/poncho filled with purple balloons. He was a bunch of grapes.

Most common costume: princess.

Other notable costumes:

- Little girl in full Sponge Bob get-up, including shoes.
- Star Trek character in red uniform. Because, really, what is more scary than wearing a red uniform when you go out?
- Little kid in Yoda costume. About the same size that I would picture real life Yoda.
- Two girls dressed as nerds — suspenders, ties, and broken glasses taped together. They didn’t really seem pro-nerds, but they were good costumes.
- The numerous girls who dressed as prostitutes. I mean, I don’t know what they were actually supposed to be, but that’s what they looked like.
- Woman who looked like she was in her 50s, not with any kids or in costume… TattooGirl says she stops by every year. She might be homeless.

Oh, so TG’s sister-in-law lives with them. And she and a friend were going out to a party later in the evening. So TG’s sister-in-law’s friend came over a little early to get ready. None of the rest of us had met her before. And she was in a hippy costume with a big purse. She also showed up at the same time a mob of kids came to the door. So, I maybe dropped a handful of candy in her purse before she tried to get me to stop… And then I realized she was just a short adult… Whoops! ;)

Then there was the one kid whose parents saw us standing in the open doorway waiting for the next bunch of kids to walk up…. and called the kid back to skip this house. What? Just because a few of us were standing in the doorway with bottles of “juice” in our hands? I don’t understand.

After handing out candy for 3 hours and watching Hunt for Red October (you know, October… so it’s a Halloween movie…), we were a little punchy and running out of candy:

I bought a closet extender a while back which hangs a secondary rod from the main rod, so space in the lower half of the closet gets utilized. Unfortunately, the hangers that I had took up just enough height that my pants would touch the floor.

This seemed unnecessary though. Why are hangers so tall? There had to be a better solution!

I then spent about a week researching hangers trying to find better designs. There were loads of reviews, closet/space savers, etc. And then I found them.

Now, I’ll grant you that having hangers just for pants when my other hangers can be used for everything seems a bit silly. But I’m only going to hang pants/skirts from the lower rod. And I will always have pants.

Plus, these hangers are fantastic! They take up minimal vertical space, they’re strong/durable, don’t get tangled when jumbled together, and, best of all, allow you to remove pants from the hanger without taking the hanger off the rod. I can also hang pants up without removing the hangers from the rod!

I’ve had these almost a year now and am getting ready to buy more because I’ve maybe been swiping the ones I got for Ian from his side of the closet…