Day 30
Carrot fries and beet chips
Sorry for my silence over the weekend. I took the pictures, but I forgot to upload them to the site (ooops!). Make sure to check out the photos for Saturday and Sunday too.
Day 29
Fresh beet juice. Isn’t the color amazing?
Day 28
Swiss Chard
Hubby and I decided to do a juice fast last week. It actually included raw and cooked fruits and vegetables in addition to the freshly-made juice, so a more accurate description would be a fruit and vegetable fast. Swiss chard is delicious in juice along with apples and carrots. Mmmmm.
Day 27
I got this recipe for Date Raisin Apricot Cookies from The Flour Bag blog. You can find it here. Thanks Melodie!
Day 26
Stop by tomorrow for the final product shot and the recipe!
Day 25
Cookie ingredients
Day 24
smashed potatoes
Day 13
Yes, it’s another photo of chicken parts. Sorry, I just find images like this so interesting.
Day 12
More squash.
Day 11
I found this Nut-stuffed Delicata Squash recipe on Shutterbean and decided to give it a try. You can find the recipe here.
Verdict: It’s delicious! If you don’t like squash (like my hubby) try using the stuffing part of the recipe to stuff red or green peppers. I’m not a mushroom fan myself, but I’m sure it would be delicious as a stuffing for portabellas too. The possibilities are endless.
Day 10
Lunch
Day 7
Although I didn’t make the cookies pictured here, I have made Lebkuchen, a traditional German cookie, in the past. My aunt and uncle live in Germany and several years ago, I asked my Aunt Doris for a recipe so I could make this delicious gingery treat myself. She sent me a recipe for “Pfefferkuchen” (aka “Lebkuchen”), as well as some spice packets. I had to put on my math hat to convert everything from grams to cups, tsp, etc. Also, some of the terminology is different (they call baking soda “potash”) and the preparations vary a bit too. I’ve tried to convert it to a slightly more “American” version of the recipe, although you’ll notice some steps are still a bit different, like dissolving the baking soda in water (typically you would just add it to the flour). I’ve cut the recipe in half because the original makes A LOT of cookies.
Pfefferkuchen
4 1/2 cups flour
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup grated almonds
1 stick butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup water
1 package Pfefferkuchengewurz (spice packets)*
*I assume no one has a package of Pfefferkuchengewurz lying around, so here’s the break down of spices:
1/2 tsp grated orange zest
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground anise seed
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
Heat the sugar and syrup in a saucepan over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Add the butter. Once the butter has melted, remove from heat and allow to cool for about 20 minutes. Stir in orange zest, lemon zest, cinnamon, clove, anise, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom and vanilla extract. Dissolve baking soda in water and stir into the sugar/corn syrup mixture.
Sift together the flour with the baking powder into a large bowl. Add the grated almonds. Stir in the sugar/corn syrup mixture and egg and mix until smooth to make the dough.
Knead the dough well for 15 minutes. NOTE: If you don’t want to hand knead the dough you can use a mixer with a bread dough attachment if you have one. DO NOT try to mix this with the standard paddle attachment. I almost burnt out my super powerful Kitchen Aid mixer trying to do it that way!
Wrap dough in wax paper and store in fridge for one hour so dough can rest.
Roll out dough on floured surface until it’s about 1/4 inch thick and put on baking sheet lined with parchment.
Bake at 320 degrees for 10 minutes.
Cut into pieces while still warm.
Alternately, you could roll the dough into 1-inch balls and press flat slightly. Then bake as above (possibly for only 8 minutes).
If you make these cookies, let me know. I’d love to hear about it!
Day 6
Time to order more Pocket Coffee.
Day 5
A very dear friend of mine (she was my art teacher in junior high and high school) used to take photos of road kill and then create drawings from the photos later in her studio. This is my interpretation of that concept. It’s the remnants of the chicken dinner I made the other day. Sometimes, what we think of as ugly or disgusting actually turns out to be visually stunning in the end. It just depends on how you look at it. Thanks for teaching me that, Elaine.
Day 3
morning tea.
Let’s be honest
In the interest of full disclosure (I’m an honest girl), I want to state upfront that, after some thought, I’ve decided I’m not going to get hung up on whether or not the photos I post each day were actually taken that day. For example, in January the theme is food. Sooo…if I whip up a killer dinner like pan seared haddock with acorn squash risotto and asparagus in brown butter, I may take more than one blog-worthy photo of such a fancy meal. And I may, therefore, be forced to use some of those extra photos on more than one day in January. I’m just sayin’. The point of this blog, after all, is for me to improve my skills, not get hung up on legalistic rules. So I’m freeing myself to just photograph and use those photos I deem best on the blog. That’s not to say you won’t also see some rad shots of cereal.
