Award Winners

Now that I'm done with having full loads of classes, I've had more time to do fun things! Gardening, canning and crafts have been on my agenda. So this year I decided to enter some things in our local fair, The Gold Country Fair in Auburn, CA. It turned out to be a very successful decision! I ended up winning second place in every category I entered- so exciting!

Needle Felted Mushroom

Homegrown "Siamese Pumpkin"

 

Spiced Plum Butter (with Cardamon, Ginger, Cloves)

Photos by Sailors Ravine Studio

Summer Sweets

The summer heat brings such big and juicy blackberries! The only trouble is dodging the thorns that come with em'...

Easter Treats

Special Easter order of 70% Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies and Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars- so tasty!

California's Right to Know Initiative for Labeling Genetically Modified Foods

Please sign the Ballot Initiative before by April 22. We have the right to know!

Delicious Vegan Tofu Salad

Easy. Healthy. Yummy. What's not to like?

One 14oz container of Organic Firm Tofu, drained and pressed dry
1 celery stalk
5 small-medium radishes
1 handful spinach
2 whole green onions
1/4 tsp salt and pepper
1/2 cup Veganaise- guilt free!
a dash of hot sauce

After pressing the tofu, cut it into a small/medium dice and put it into a medium size bowl. Chop the celery, radish and green onion into small pieces, add to tofu. Cut the spinach into small strips, add to tofu mixture. Add salt, pepper, Veganise and hot sauce. Mix with a spatula until the veggies and tofu are coated- it's okay if the tofu breaks down a bit while mixing. Adjust salt/pepper/hot sauce to taste. Delicious on whole grain bread or as a dip.

Custom Cake for Kate

I did a custom birthday cake for a special girl this week! Yellow cake filled with my homemade blackberry jam frosted with vanilla buttercream. The reviews from the birthday girl were great- it was happily devoured by a group of teenage girls!

Carrot Cupcakes with Mandarin Cream Cheese Frosting

Hello Spring!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Onions

Instead of throwing away the ends of you onions, recycle them! You can either plant it in your garden right away or put it in a bowl of water and watch the roots grow.

Voila, here are mine! The first two are leeks, then two green onions and the one in the very back is a red onion. Pretty cool, huh?!

bread baking

Lately, I've been determined to eat really good bread. You might be thinking, duh, aren't we all? Yes, we all should be eating good bread but most likely your not. Have you checked whats in your all natural loaf recently? Things like Monoglycerides- huh?, Datem- what's that?, Calcium Propionate- hmm? None of my recipes call for that stuff so that's way I've been baking my own bread. I will admit, it's totally time consuming and you definitely got to plan around it. But oh my gosh, is it delicious and worth it! If you don't have time to do it yourself, please try to avoid breads with too many ingredients and ingredients you cant say. 

Here are a few of the beauties I've been baking! All of the recipes use yeast, flour (white or whole wheat), sugar or honey, butter or oil, water and/or milk, salt and maybe eggs- those I can trust! Aren't they pretty?!

40/60 Bread- Whole Wheat and White Flour Rolls...

 ..and Loaf

Honey Cornmeal

Winter Oatmeal

Challah