Carrot Cake for Paul and for Easter

Here in Richmond, we had our first Easter Feast and an egg hunt.

For dinner, we had Asparagus to welcome springtime, Kale and Sweet Potatoes for the winter that's now over, and a Lemon and Sage Roast Chicken, seasoned with plenty of good company.
And women in belted dresses. We've known our special guests, M and J, for 13 years, and it turns out that, even after living apart since 2006, E and M have very similar habits of dressing.



Carrot Cake for Paul, adapted by Kate Ramos from Chow.com

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup well-shaken low-fat buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 pounds carrots, grated on the large holes of a box grater about 6 cups
1 cup raisins, toasted and finely chopped
Cream Cheese Frosting

1. Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange the rack in the middle. Coat two 8-inch cake pans with butter and flour, and tap out any excess flour. Set aside.
2. Grate 2 lbs of carrots (that's about 17 carrots worth at our house)
2. Combine flour, baking powder, cardamom, cinnamon, baking soda, ginger, and salt in a large bowl, and whisk to aerate and break up any lumps. Set aside.
3. Combine eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla in a large bowl, and whisk until eggs are broken up and mixture is thoroughly combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold in flour mixture until just combined. Fold in carrots and walnuts until evenly mixed.
4. Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50 to 60 minutes.
5. Remove cakes from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool, about 15 minutes. Run a knife around the perimeter of each, and turn cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.
6. Frost as you please. Enjoy!



Walking off the feast on our first really hot day. It was about 90.

Pasta!

A while back I decided to try to make pasta from scratch, so I looked up some things online, apron-ed up, and gave it a shot.

Tea towel and twine turned into an improvised apron.

Online I found a recipe saying that one large egg and around 3/4 cup flour and a dash of salt make enough pasta for one person.

Flour! I think 3/4 cup or so...

Egg!

Mix! A lot. Also, I think I might have
sprinkled in some extra flour.

Knead! A lot. Until it the dough becomes really elastic.
Also, make sure you put down flour before you do.

Roll out the dough as thin as possible.
Then fold it in half and do it again.
This is what the internet said to do.

The internet also said adding finely chopped basil or rosemary
before the folding and re-rolling makes for tasty pasta.

ALSO: Any dough you're not working with,
or noodles you're waiting to cook,
should be kept on/under a moist towel,
otherwise they dry out REALLY FAST.

Cook in boiling water for a few minutes, and voila!

Boutiful Baskets & Asparagus Soup

They have a buying coop here called Bountiful Baskets where you pay $15 and you get a random assortment of fruits and veggies that fills up ~1 laundry basket. I decided to do it this week because we've been spending a ton of money on fruits and veggies (which is a good thing!). You place the order on Tuesday and then you pick up on Saturday. The place we pickup is about 3 miles from here and it's at 7AM. When you get there, they have rows of laundry baskets and you pick one laundry basket and load up all of the fruits and veggies. You don't get to pick what assortment you get and you can't trade between baskets. So if you see a basket that has a particularly fine set of bananas but icky looking strawberries you can't move the bananas to a basket that has lovely strawberries. You can have the strawberries or the bananas or you can pick a different basket. This is more of a problem if you do this in the winter because the quality isn't quite as good. This week, all the baskets looked good.
For $15 we got:
5 oranges
7 bananas
3 apples
3 tomatoes
2 mangos
a full seedless watermelon
a carton of strawberries
a bag of green beans
a head of romaine
2 bell peppers
2 zucchini
3 bunches of asparagus
I also ordered a mexican pack which had grey squash and assorted chili peppers and green onions and garlic and yellow onions and cilantro.


Now, when I ordered this on Tuesday, we were out of lettuce in the house and we had some clementines and a unripened cantaloupe. Then Thursday, Patrick's group had a picnic at work and we "won" the extra fruit bowl and a couple zucchini and yellow squash to bring home so we are currently up to our ears in produce.

The problem that we sometimes have is that I don't know what to do with some of the items. I'm not a huge fan of asparagus and I certainly won't eat 3 bunches before they go bad so I had to figure out something to do with them. I remembered that there is a maggi mix of asparagus soup that we occasionally had in Germany so I looked up a couple of recipes online for cream of asparagus soup and combined them to use only ingredients we had already.

Ingredient list:
3 bunches of asparagus (around 2.5 pounds)
2.5 cans of chicken broth
2.5 tbsp butter
1 large onion
5 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp flour
1 container of nonfat plain yogurt (I had greek yogurt so I used that)
some pepper (to taste)
~1 tsp salt (to taste)

I started out by asking Elizabeth to help me wash the asparagus. Alex helped. They both got very wet and had a wonderful time. Alex had to have his own chair so he could see what was going on.


Snap the asparagus into 1-2 inch pieces and simmer in chicken broth until tender. Move to a bowl and reserve some of the chicken broth that simmered the asparagus. Blend in batches until smooth.

In the pan used to simmer the asparagus, melt the butter and saute the onions and garlic until glassy. Then add the flour and saute for a couple minutes. Add in the reserved chicken broth slowly and cook for a while. Then put this in the blender and blend it up. Put the blended asparagus and onion mixture back in the pan and stir until warm again. Stir in the yogurt. To keep it from clumping too badly, I put the yogurt in a bowl and slowly thinned it out with soup until it would mix in smoothly. I think I put the salt and pepper in at the end.
One recipe suggested adding some fresh grated parmesan cheese at the end so I used some for garnish but it was too much and I would try something different for garnish next time.
I thought the soup was quite tasty and a good way to use the asparagus that lightens the flavor a bit. The rest of my family were not such big fans so next time, I will eat it all myself.

Any ideas for what to do with zucchini and squash?

Lady who lunches

Elizabeth goes to preschool at Mrs. Rita's house 2 day/week and she has to bring her lunch. I try to make her lunch somewhat cute or fun so she'll eat enough so as not to melt from hunger later in the day. I generally try to pack her something fairly healthy that she will happily eat.
This lunch is a peanut butter and honey sandwich cut in the shape of a mama and baby elephant, some melon, a wholewheat banana bread muffin and some cheese-its. She also gets a thermos of milk to go along with it. I've been using the disposable/reusable tupperwares so that if one gets lost it's not a big deal but we can reuse them to save on the landfills. The melon and cheese its are in muffin tin liners.


This is the cutter that I have for sandwiches. It came in a 4 pack so we also have one that makes a doggie in a house, one that makes two fishes and one that makes a butterfly. If we used normal squarish sandwich bread, this would be perfect for cutting. With the wide whole wheat bread that we use, there is an edge on one side that usually gets eaten at breakfast.


This is another lunch which is quite a bit bigger... I must have been hungry that morning when I was packing. She has peanut butter and jelly, a cheese stick, another muffin, some broccoli, some fruit cocktail and two pink pocky sticks.

And here is the lady who lunches: