Tango Mango

The Pacific Northwest has experienced record-high rain fall this year, and it’s only June. That’s good and bad... nice for the drought-stricken areas, but I am eager to see sunshine!

Despite the soggy weather, the tomatoes are growing nicely. We’re beginning to pick a bumper crop of sugarsnap peas, blueberries are plumping out, the tomatoes are finally ten-inches tall and look healthy. What else? The lettuce and parsley need thinning, the thin onion stalks are growing, and it will be a bumper carrot crop... again.

For the first year ever, we are growing strawberries. These are the first picked from the garden. They were juicy and sweet, and I savored every bite.

Homemade baked vanilla donuts with vanilla glaze. Who wants one?

We welcomed in the New Year yesterday with homemade baked apple cider donuts. While they were still piping hot from the oven, I dunked each side in melted butter and then coated them in cinnamon-sugar. They were crisp on the outside, and warm and tender on the inside.

I justified the indulgence because of the holiday, and felt no regrets savoring two of them while standing over the sink.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Black bean and barley salad

Seriously, this is the best salad. It has the perfect combination of flavors and textures. The barley gives a bit of a chew, the celery adds crunch, and the black beans are creamy. And the flavor? Nothing can beat the tang and sweetness of a home-grown tomato, especially when you add some cumin, salt, a little vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Don’t mind the dinosaurs, they helped me make it, so they’re pictured here. Actually, if you want to see more Cooking With Dinosaurs, go to my website, or find us on Instagram @CookingWithDinosaurs.

Okay, enough is enough. I'm going to have to lay down some rules. It used to be that the dinosaurs would drop by occasionally, but now it's an everyday occurrence. Plus, today they showed up with some guy I didn't even know!

We’re swimming in tomatoes from the garden so I decided that we’d have bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for lunch. I had just started making mine and they all chimed in that they wanted to help. They did NOT help; they just ate a lot of bacon! I had plenty, so that was fine, but I did not share my sandwich.

Check out more dinosaur shenanigans on their IG page, @cookingwithdinosaurs

I had everything on hand to make flautas yesterday, so I invited over a few friends to help me in the kitchen. Unlike some times in the past, this group behaved themselves! We got the job done quickly, and the flautas turned out amazingly good.

Check out my IG account @cookingwithdinosaurs for lots of dinosaur shenanigans!

It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I started this blog nine years ago. One of my first posts was a recipe for quiche. I think I was still using a pink, pocket-size Canon Powershot. The recipe is the same, and spinach quiche is still a favorite meal around here, but so much has changed over the years. That blog post looks ancient!

Today I had a friend over for lunch and we both enjoyed this meal - between the two of us we ate half the quiche. She's taking a beginning photography class and asked me if someday I'd be willing to show her my process for taking food shots - my lenses, lighting tips, props, etc. We had the time, so I got to work. The quiche was an available subject but it wasn't serious work. I was surprised 20 minutes later to see that the casual shots turned out quite well, crumbs and all.

85mm micro Nikkor lens.

Nine year-old quiche post.

Creating a 4th of July flag cake was a tradition that was started when our kids were little. I always baked a white vanilla cake in a 13 x 9-inch pan, frosted it with Cool Whip, and decorated with raspberries and blueberries. The blueberries were the "stars" and the raspberries were the "stripes". The annual tradition also included a party every 4th. We'd set up the backyard with tables draped with colorful 1950s tablecloths, lots of hurricane candles, and coolers with ice, beer, wine, and soft drinks. Friends would come bearing their favorite potluck dishes. Amidst the laughing, talking and eating, music would play in the background. Once dusk came around, we moved chairs and blankets to the front of the house and set off fireworks on the street for hours. The workbench in the garage held the desserts and popcorn.

Somewhere along the line we decided to go camping over the 4th of July holiday, so the annual party (and, sadly, the flag cake) became memories.

This year I did a new twist on the celebratory cake for a much smaller party. I baked an almond flour cake in my Nordicware Charlotte pan. The recess was filled with Cool Whip, and loaded with blueberries. I drizzled the fruit with homemade raspberry sauce. It was sublime. (These days I prefer sweetened whipped cream to the non-dairy topping, but I wanted to keep a bit of the tradition alive.)

The Almond flour cake recipe came from the King Arthur Baking website. To ensure complete release from the pan, I skipped their step of coating the pan interior with sugar. Instead, I brushed the entire interior of the pan with melted butter, sprinkled in several tablespoons of flour, shook the flour around to coat every crevice, then turned the pan upside down and banged out any extra flour. As you can see, it did the trick! 

Using butter and sugar to coat the interior of the pan (per the original recipe) rather than flour makes this cake completely gluten-free. However, due to the intricacy of the pan design, and the fact that our diners did not have a sensitivity to gluten, I opted for the reliable butter/flour coating.

I included a picture of the cakes sans the toppings, so you can see the beautiful shape.

How did I end up with an air fryer? When it comes to cooking and baking, I typically don't take shortcuts because I love going through all of the motions. However, the allure of crispy food without the oil ultimately swayed me.

We bought a "Gourmia" brand air fryer because it got high reviews and so far, we've enjoyed it. It's not much of a time-saver, but it delivers crispy food as promised. I cut French fries from a few Russet potatoes last night, and they cooked up better than expected!  

What I bring you here are "Inside Out Dumplings" with an outstanding hoisin-based sauce. I cooked them the first night and reheated the leftovers the next day. We were practically licking our plates.

The recipe for the meatballs comes from the small Gourmia cookbook that came with the appliance, and the sauce recipe, which ranks the highest star power, comes from gimmesomeoven.com. I can hardly wait to make them again!

Inside Out Dumplings (Asian Meatballs)

Ingredients:

Directions:

Preheat air fryer to 400-degrees F.

Mix all ingredients together and form into 1 1/2-inch balls. Spray lightly with cooking oil and place in crisper tray. Cook 10 to 12 minutes or until cooked through. Don't crowd basket. (I had plenty of room to cook all of these at once, but if your air fryer is small, it might require cooking in batches.)

For baking in a conventional oven, I checked other recipes and it looks like you'd preheat your oven to 375-degrees. Spray meatballs with cooking spray, place on parchment-lined baking sheet and pop them in the oven. Check after 20 minutes to gauge doneness, and adjust cooking time as needed.

Sesame Sauce Ingredients:

Directions:

Whisk all ingredients together. Pour or brush over cooked meatballs, or dip meatballs individually.

We recently returned from camping at Cape Disappointment, near Long Beach, Washington. One morning we rode our bikes on the beach at a very low tide and found hundreds of small sand dollars scattered about on the sand. I was so intrigued I stopped and arranged some of them into an 'S'. Dried sand dollars are white, but most of these still looked like they were perhaps living, so I was gentle, and left the arrangement for the upcoming tide to wash them back out to sea. I love their subtle colors.

Fernhill Wetlands is a gem of a spot for bird watching, and nature watching in general. From our house it’s a 30 minute drive. If you’re a serious bird watcher, the best times to go are dusk and dawn. However, it’s still pretty during the middle of the day. We were the only visitors there a few days ago. 

There’s a young swallow peeking out of the birdhouse. His eyes followed us as we slowly walked by.

We grew fifty tomato plants from seed this year. Eighteen are in the ground, nine are in reserve (not sure why), and we gave 23 away yesterday to happy passersby. I would like to think my signs helped with the quick dispersal, but the enthusiastic response was probably due to the fact that our garden is spectacular, and no one questioned the quality of the plants. Also, free tomato plants at this time of year is a good thing! They were all snapped up in a few hours.

If you're a gardener here in the Pacific Northwest, it's finally time to plant! We spent some time over the past few days transplanting vegetables we grew from seed into our multiple raised beds. Every year at this time I get out our reusable plant markers and scrub off the previous year's letters. In addition to keeping things straight, I think these little lettered tags add a classy-touch to the garden.

Wool Roll Bread is the most beautiful bread I've ever made. That's a powerful statement, seeing as I've been baking for decades and tend to go for the challenging recipes! It's also possibly the most delicious bread I've ever eaten. A scant amount of chopped, dried cranberries are rolled into the dough - I was a bit skeptical about adding them, but they're the perfect complement.

My “photography studio” is the garage (perfect lighting) and the bread was still warm from the oven when I started shooting. After I was satisfied that I had what I needed, I tore into this beautiful loaf. The middle picture? That delicious piece went directly into my mouth.

Check Apron recipes on YouTube to see their video and the recipe. It's 10 minutes you'll be glad you spent.

Homemade hamburger buns! Still warm from the oven, a few of these were split and topped with butter. Tonight they’ll be part of crispy chicken sandwiches.

Signs of Spring

Not just for charlottes, I use my beautiful charlotte pan to bake single layer cakes and, as you can see here, cornbread. The edges bake up buttery and crisp. Leftover cornbread heats up beautifully in a conventional oven. I like to smear a little butter on a hot piece of cornbread - honey and jam are nice, too! My husband loves peanut butter on cornbread for breakfast. I served it with my favorite chili a few days ago.

I used my tried and true recipe for Perfect Cornbread. I posted it here years ago, but it’s still my favorite. 

I have so many ideas for this pan. Wedges look like hearts, something to ponder come Valentine’s Day. Perhaps a chocolate cake drizzled with ganache and decorated with raspberries? Come strawberry season, I’ll bake a shortcake in the pan and mound macerated strawberries and whipped cream in the recess. I see a cinnamon cake with sweeted, whipped cream cheese and topped with a caramel apple filling in the future. 

This pan is my new favorite kitchen toy!