Ivy Arts

Grilled Marinated Spicy Shrimp

This is the most addictive recipe. We grilled a pound of shrimp the other night. My husband and I finished it off between us. So, so yummy. You just can’t stop. Maybe it’s the hot sauce. (My only substitution is a squirt of ketchup in place of the tomato paste. Who can bother fussing with a tablespoon of the stuff, or less because I halved the recipe.)

Flat Iron Steak and Spinach Salad

Even substituting the major ingredient (I couldn’t find flat iron a.k.a. top blade steak) I have to heartily recommend this dish. I got a really nice rib-eye instead and the beef combined with the amazing spinach and sautéed veggie salad is just delicious. I’d make the salad again on it’s own any time.

I really should have a picture of these dishes but I’m not usually thinking blog photos at dinner time. We’ve just passed the four (and five) o’clock fussies and I just want dinner on the table so bath and bed can happen at a decent hour. I’ll try to remember next time.

About a month ago when we moved here, these were little fuzzy buds that looked like pussy willows. In another month or two, it will be peach cobbler. Yum.

Our blueberries are getting set to ripen. I never knew that the dark blue-purple of the berries starts out as a bright magenta. Pretty.

I bought a can of almond paste at Christmas time but I never got a chance to make the cookies I had planned. I made these tasty treats the other day. I followed a few of the reviewers suggestions to decrease the butter and use the entire can of almond paste (what’s a few more tablespoons?). They have an almost shortbread quality, especially at the bottom and the outside pieces and a rich, buttery almond chewy cookie texture on top.

I’m a big fan of the online recipe sites that have user reviews. My cookbooks are pretty dusty at this point. It’s nice to know in advance if your sauce might need thickening or the cook time should be shorter. I use Allrecipes for my everyday dishes. Since I like to cook from scratch when possible, my criticism of this site is that I wish I could sort out dishes that use processed ingredients. I’m pretty sure that if I wanted to dump a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup on some chicken breasts, I don’t need a recipe. When I need something fancier for a dinner party or holiday dish, I use Epicurious. These recipes come mostly from Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines.

As much as I utilize the reviews (I rarely make a dish without at least 4 stars), I never review them myself. Mostly everything has been said before. My favorite are the reviewers who are critical of a dish when they have substituted nearly every important ingredient. My feeling is that you should pretty much keep your two cents to yourself in this case. I read a particularly entertaining one where someone did not have prosciutto so they substituted prostitutes. Bad spelling or just a really bad cook?

A delicious snack. Mmmm. Muffins. Lately, I have been favoring recipes with chocolate chips (like this one) because I tell myself that the boys will be more likely to eat them. But the truth is that I like them too. Sshhh, don’t tell.

I’ve tried a new oat bread a few times now, Oat Bran Bread from Allrecipes.com. First time was exactly according to the recipe, except of course, I don’t have a bread machine, just my trusty Kitchen-Aid mixer and I doubled it to make two loaves. It was just as described – a light, high-volume bread.

But I was again struck by the white flour guilt so I changed it up a bit the next time. This time I substituted whole wheat flour for half of the white and added some oatmeal. It became dense, still a nice loaf. On the third try, I wanted to return to the light, high-volume but a little healthier. A quarter cup of oat bran per loaf doesn’t seem like it tips the healthy scales. So I increased the oat bran to 3/4 cup for two loaves and added 1 cup of oatmeal to the water to soften it while I proofed the yeast. The result is just what I wanted, more oatmeal flavor and texture but light. I made my favorite sandwich with it yesterday - a tuna melt. Yum.

Lots of Easter preparation on Saturday. A morning jaunt to the farm where we picked up our Vermont maple sugar smoked ham for Easter dinner. The boys had a great time chasing chickens. This picture looks like the small boy is being chased but make no mistake, he was the dominant chaser. Poor chickens.

The afternoon was egg coloring time. My husband boiled the goose eggs for 10-15 minutes. We’ll know in a couple of days if that’s how long it takes to hard boil a goose egg.

The small boy kept trying to sip the egg coloring from the spoons. All that vinegar… blech. I had to restrain my perfectionist artistic tendencies and just let the boys color as they wanted to. Here are their beautiful eggs.

Lots of baking for me. These rolls were made in addition to the Oatmeal Sourdough rolls so that there was a vegan option at the table.

And last but not least… Easter sugar cookies. I wasn’t on top of my game and didn’t find Easter shaped cookie cutters so we just grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and went with the no-frills round cookie. As suggested by some reviewers, I added a bit more vanilla and some lemon zest as well as using half granulated and half powdered sugar. They’re really, really good. (Even better than Alton Brown’s. Sshhhh, pretend I didn’t say that. Sorry Alton, I still love you.) The boys did the decorating on these too.

Happy Easter!

I picked up a few goose eggs from the pre-school/farm that the big boy goes to. They should be fun to decorate. Anyone know how long it takes to hard boil a goose egg?

(This gorgeous bowl was made by Melynn Allen of Breathing Easy.)

No, it’s not my wedding anniversary, that was here. It’s not my blog-iversary, that’s not until July.

My sourdough starter is a year old! I take this as a point of personal triumph. (It’s good that little things make me happy). After all, I’ve heard the horror stories of the black sludge that overcomes many starters. It’s certainly lasted a lot longer than my original attempt when I lived in the motherland of sourdough – the SF Bay area.

We’ve enjoyed the standby sourdough loaf for sandwiches, soup bowls and spinach dip bowls (yum); the whole wheat sourdough, and the sourdough oatmeal bread. I actually bought the giant 25 lb. bag of King Arthur flour on my last Costco run. I guess that means I’m into the bread baking for the long haul.

Jen from Sew and Sox tagged me as one of her favorite blogs. I’ve done been tagged once already but the questions are a little different so I’ll do it for Jen.

The rules are:
1. When tagged, place the name of the person and URL on your blog
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 7 things about yourself
4. Name 7 of your favorite blogs
5. Send an e-mail letting those bloggers know they have been tagged

(I have to skip this part, I’m not sure I can come up with 7 bloggers who haven’t been tagged already. There are lots of blogs out there that I read and admire, and if you’re reading this and want to play then say I tagged you.)

Helen, who tagged Jackie, who tagged Jen had a nice format that I will follow:

1. Living arrangements
Just like Jen, we’re moving too. My in-laws are renovating a house for themselves and we’re buying theirs. The house has been in my husband’s family for generations. It’s a Colonial built in the 1740’s. There is a fireplace in each of the eight rooms. I have this odd picture of the back hall through to the eating kitchen with my two boys playing at Grammy’s house.

2. Schooling
I graduated with a BS in Journalism but I’ve never been a journalist. I thought it was the practical person’s English degree. I discovered graphics while copyediting at the school newspaper and never looked back.

3. Favorite food/drink
If it’s only one, then no question I’d have to say chocolate. The darker the better.

4. Morning or evening person?
I’ve been forced to act like a morning person by my two early-rising children. On a very good day, they sleep until 6am. I feel like I’ve passed the true test of a mother’s love by not sending them to toddler boarding school by now.

5. Since when have you been quilting?
I started about six years ago. I wandered into the local quilt shop to buy some buttons and thread and fell in love with the colors and designs of the fabric. Even though I’m fairly impatient and somewhat sloppy, I thought I’d give quilting a try. I love it. If I can do it, anyone can.

6. Pets
We have two cats - Rowena and Lucy. We’ll probably add a dog to the mix when we move and have more space. Then someday I want some alpacas.

7. Vacation
We’ve been to Ireland every other year for the past several years. My mother-in-law is from County Clare and my husband’s family still have a house there. It’s a great vacation though with the dollar tanking and the fact that we’re moving, we decided not to go this year.