Amelia's First Week

 Amelia is now 3 1/2 weeks old - my how time flies!  I figure it's time for me to play catch-up with the picture posting to the blog, so without further ado here is Amelia's first week in pictures.

 The new pass time of choice in our house is baby gazing

(thus the lack of blogging recently)

 Everybody is pretty smitten with everything Amelia does.

 The girls get especially excited when she has her eyes open 

(which isn't very often)

Everything Amelia does is equally amazing and amusing to Melanie.

 Claire is slightly less enthusiastic, but I think that's only because the shares she holds in the prime real estate of mommy's lap have been cut drastically.  She still loves her sister immensely and spends a significant amount of time "playing" with her, which really means laying next to her and staring/giggling at any movement she makes.

 While I was nursing Amelia one morning the girls decided to get dressed in the outfits I had laid out for them the night before.  Melanie can do this just fine by herself, Claire has less experience.  Well, Claire surprised us by taking her pajamas off and coming down with her favorite shoes on.

 She was pretty pleased with herself!

 A few minutes later she came back downstairs dressed to the best of her capability.  There's nothing quite like a new baby in the house to make the older siblings grow up more quickly!

 To help keep the girls amused we did a trial run of a recipe for pretzel bites and let them help roll the dough out.

Claire was rather possessive of her portion of the dough and was distressed when we started putting the dough on the cookie sheet to bake.  

As a side note, it's a good thing we did a trial run of this recipe because the pretzel bites were really gross (I think it was due to boiling the pretzels in the baking soda solution b/c all you could taste was the baking soda).  I'll just stick to the recipe we've used in the past that wasn't nasty next time we want to make pretzels.

Oh yeah, back to what Amelia did during her first week.

She slept.

And worked on her tan due to her billirubin levels being too high causing some jaundice.

And went to the doctor's office every day to have her billirubin levels checked.

And slept some more.

Claire walked all the way upstairs unassisted dressed like this, complete with playsilk on her head, loaded purse in her hand and plastic heels on her feet.  She was quite proud of her beautiful ensemble!

The girls got practice at amusing themselves without mom's help, which so far has not resulted in any real disasters.

 There was more baby gazing to be done...

... and plenty more sleeping, too.

Next up to round out Amelia's first week:

Claire's 2nd birthday

You really should make these cinnamon chip scones.  They were delicious, not to mention easy.  I used 1/2 unbleached all purpose flour and 1/2 whole wheat and they were delightful.  I also backed off on the sugar a bit and only used 3/4 cup of the cinnamon chips b/c the full cup called for seemed like it might be a bit too much, as well as rolling (ok, patting them out with my hands) them thinner and cutting them smaller than she called for. These would have been some monster scones if I had followed her dimensions.  You really should treat yourself.  You deserve it.

When you're done with these you should also try out this cinnamon bread.  I opted to make muffins for freezing for easy breakfasts.  Once again, I used half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour, less sugar and used the homemade unsweetened cinnamon applesauce we canned this fall.  The muffins turned out incredibly moist and the girls love them.  A definite winner :)

Potica

Potica (pronounced po teet sah) has been a holiday tradition in my family my entire life.  Growing up we looked forward to the package that would come at Christmas from Grandma McHugh's twin sisters back in Illinois, not because it contained toys or trinkets for us to play with, but because it meant we got our yearly treat of this tasty Slovenian nut bread.  (You can read a bit more about potica here or here).  Each year the twins would make several batches of potica and send a section of the loaves to each family at Christmas time.  We'd all have some to eat at Christmas and then each family would take their loaf home to hoard to themselves, stowing it away in the freezer often until Easter, or some other time when the weakness for the sweetness would be too much to bear and they'd have to take the loaf out and indulge.  

Great Aunt Jean and Great Aunt June getting the pans ready for the potica

Our family has no Slovenian ancestry directly in it, but my Great Aunt June's husband Joe was Slovenian, so the tradition of making the bread came from his family, and we were lucky enough to reap the benefits.  Three years ago my mom, Grandma McHugh, Melanie and myself took a trip back to Illinois to visit family and to learn the ins and outs of making this holiday tradition.  It was a great trip, especially for Grandma since she got to see family members she hadn't seen in several years. 

Great Uncle Joe tuckered out after playing with Melanie.  He was absolutely AWESOME with kids!

This past fall Uncle Joe passed away, and the following week Aunt Jean passed away.  We are all feeling the sadness of their passing this holiday season, but I hope carrying on the tradition of making potica around the holidays will serve as a bittersweet reminder of how much they meant to all of us.  They were both truly wonderful people and we are all very blessed to have had them in our lives.

This year, mom and I included my sisters in the potica making session.  I'll share some pictures of the techniques we were taught that make creating this delicate bread a bit easier.  I debated sharing the recipe, but I don't feel like it's my recipe to share, so I'm just going to stick to the techniques and leave it to you to find your own recipe.  Some things have to remain secret, right? ;)

Tie a table cloth to the table and GENEROUSLY rub flour all over it.  Seriously, use LOTS of flour.  You don't want to skimp here.

A table cloth with some sort of print to it is helpful to know when you've rolled the dough thin enough.

We have a table cloth that we've designated specifically for this purpose, and we've marked on it how far we have to roll the dough to make it long enough for it to fill the three loaf pans that one recipe will accomodate.

Plop your dough out and roll, roll, roll.  This is where the print on the table cloth comes in handy.  You should be able to see the print through the dough once you've rolled it thin enough.

Another tip we got from Aunt June and Aunt Jean was to use rolling pins made from marble.  They make it so much easier to roll the dough out to that perfectly paper thin point.  Mom and I went in search of these for our Christmas gift to ourselves that year, they were so indispensable for this task.  I also love using mine for making homemade egg noodles and sugar cookies.  It just makes rolling things out a breeze!  Be warned though, if you get one make sure it has a little base to set the rolling pin on when not in use - you DO NOT want to drop one of these puppies on the floor, and definitely not on your foot!

 Trim off the excess dough that hangs over the edges of the table/the lines you've drawn on the cloth and use it to patch any tears you may have gotten while rolling the dough.

 Plop on the filling

 and start spreading!

  We left a 1/2" section on one long end of the dough to allow for sealing the loaf once it was rolled up.  This isn't required, but can be helpful.

 Once the filling is all spread out untie the table cloth and grab the edges to start rolling the dough jellyroll style.  Having two to three people to do this is helpful to be sure you get everything rolled at the same speed and your loaf doesn't end up cattywampus.

 This is when your generous flouring of the table cloth proves of vital importance.  If you floured your table cloth appropriately, like in the top picture (from our trip to learn from "the pros") your dough will roll into a beautiful spiral with little effort on your part.   We, however,  had a few patches of tablecloth on our first batch that weren't floured enough, so the dough was sticking.  If this happens just take a knife and gently separate the dough from the table cloth and keep on rolling.

 Once your loaf is all rolled up slice it in to thirds.  We used dental floss to do this since a knife can end up tearing or flattening the loaf if it isn't sharp enough.

 Place the dough seam side down in prepared pans.  Aunt June and Aunt Jean passed along the tip of lining the ends of the pans with foil (sprayed with non-stick spray just like the rest of the pan) since the filling tends to stick to the pans pretty badly.  This makes both removing the cooked loaves and cleanup much easier.

And there you have it!  

Once your loaves have cooled you can slice them to the size you would like (we tend to make them 8 inches each since the pans are 16 inches long) and bestow them upon some very lucky people, or stash them in the freezer to keep for yourself. If you're going to freeze them I recommend wrapping them in heavy duty foil and then plastic wrap, possibly even following with a freezer bag if you want to be really crazy about it.  Aunt Jean and Aunt June always did the foil/plastic wrap method, and the potica kept very nicely in the freezer wrapped this way for several months (often until Easter, occasionally we would resist the temptation to eat it even longer, but not often).

And just for fun, here are a few pictures of Melanie from the trip back to Illinois when she was a mere six months old .  Seeing pictures of the girls when they were younger is making me really excited to meet baby #3 in the near future :)

Breadsticks

 Since I've been doing more preparing of meals ahead of time and storing them in the freezer I've had more time for making bread to go with dinner recently, which is nice.  I made this Schlotsky's bread to go with a cheesy chicken soup last night (both of which were delicious!) and last week the girls helped me make these garlic breadsticks to go with stuffed shells.  Both of these recipes took very little time from start to finish, including rising time, which is nice since I don't always think "Hmmm, fresh bread would be nice with dinner" at 2:00 in the afternoon to accommodate two separate hour long rises plus anywhere from 20-50 minutes in the oven.  Anyway, the girls really enjoyed helping make the breadsticks.  A couple of Melanie's even made it on to the tray to bake!  In the end I just let them each have a couple balls of dough to play with (it's a nice, easy dough to work with, no sticking to your hands at all).  I figured we could afford to be short a few breadsticks if it kept the girls occupied and happy.

 Rolling away at their dough.

Melanie liked to talk about how hers looked like a "wormy"

 Claire didn't really get the hang of actually rolling the dough out, but she was perfectly content pushing it back and forth through the flour on the counter.

 Ta-da!  Look at me!

 See mine too, dad?

Recipe Round-up

As you all know I enjoy baking a cooking quite a bit, so I thought I'd share some recipes I've tried out over the last few months.  I'm only posting the ones that I think are worth your consideration, so if you do end up trying any of these out I'd love to hear what you thought of the recipe.

Fruit Braids

The one on the left has cherry pie filling, the center one has this blueberry sauce in it (minus the cinnamon) with most of the sauce drained off to avoid making the braid too soggy, and the one on the right has the apricot filling the recipe called for.  

These were FABULOUS!  Just one batch made enough dough for all three braids, so we were able to share these with our families for Easter.  I was definitely most partial to the blueberry, and the cherry came in a close 2nd.  I'm not a huge apricot person myself, although the filling was good.  I'm sure it would have been a totally different pastry if the filling had been made with fresh apricots instead of the dried ones the recipe called for.

Carrot Cake

This was a very dense, healthified carrot cake recipe.  Lots of fruit, nuts and carrots in it, and only 1 1/2 cups of flour in the whole thing.  Very tasty, but if you're looking for a more "cakey" recipe, this isn't the one for you.  The frosting was good, but I felt it needed a bit more tang to it, so I added a few squirts of lemon juice, which I thought made it just right.

Cinnamon Ice Cream

Oh my word!  This stuff is delicious!  Heaven on a spoon!  Stop reading this right now and go make some!  Now!  You won't regret it (unless you eat the whole batch, in which case you might).

This is a very creamy recipe, and it definitely doesn't qualify as low-fat.  You could probably lessen the damage to your waistline by either using all half-and-half or subbing some 2% milk for some of the cream or half-and-half and still have a very tasty ice cream, I'll leave that up to you. 

Pancakes with Blackberry Sauce

I realize most people already have a "go to" pancake recipe of their own, so I won't be offended if you don't try this one (although it is very good, and works just as well with whole wheat flour as with unbleached white flour or half of each) but if you have access to fresh blackberries you really should try making the sauce.  Leave the brandy out if you'd like, but it really isn't very noticeable at all.  I originally served this sauce with ice cream and brownies, which was phenomenal, but I didn't take a picture of that since we had Matt's family over for dessert and that seemed a bit rude/tacky to take pictures of their dessert before they were allowed to eat it.  I used the leftovers on pancakes the next day and that is where this picture came from.  I've made this a few times since then, always with frozen berries we picked last season, and it always turns out wonderfully.  Truly a treat, especially with those brownies I was talking about ;)

Roasted Chickpeas

Very tasty and rather addictive, and inexpensive to make.  It's a bit tough to get them dried out to that perfect crunchy state, but oh so worth it when you do! 

Corn and Black Bean Salsa

This is a recipe from my mother-in-law, and it always goes over very well whenever I take it anywhere.  It truly tastes like summer and would be a welcome addition at any backyard food fest you may be attending this year.

1-16 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 medium tomato, chopped (I often use quartered grape tomatoes)

5 green onions, chopped

3/4 c. frozen corn (I almost double this)

2 T. cilantro, chopped

1 T. red wine vinegar (I often double this also)

3 T. olive oil

1 clove garlic, chopped or minced (I usually up this a bit)

1/2 - 1 tsp. cumin (to taste)

salt and freshly ground pepper (to taste)

Combine and let set for 1-2 hours, the longer the better.  Serve with tortilla chips (Baked Lays Scoops are particularly tasty in my opinion)

Southwest Roll-ups

I read about these on one of the couponing sites I frequent and decided to give them a try.  We were not disappointed - they were very tasty and convenient.  I did make the homemade refried beans that were suggested, and they really weren't too difficult at all, and I think they made a huge impact on the overall taste (canned refried beans kinda gross me out).  They did dry out during cooking a bit faster than I had anticipated based on what the recipe said, but with a bit of salsa on the finished product you didn't even notice.  These were really handy to have individually frozen for quick lunches or dinners.  I'd unwrap them, pop them in the microwave for about 45 seconds to take the chill off of them and then toast them in the cast iron skillet for a crunchy exterior and serve with salsa.  Quick, satisfying and filling.  I hope to try out the homemade tortilla recipe in the future, but don't hold your breath for that post or you may pass out.

Baklava from "Good Eats"

*cue the heavenly chorus*

While all of the recipes I have posted here are worthy of your attention, this one is by far the most delectable morsel I have made in recent memory.  If Matt were to tell me I had to choose only one thing to give out to friends and family at Christmas time instead of my usual baking extravaganza this would be it, hands down, no second thoughts about it.  I followed the recipe as written and it was incredible.  I even went out and bought a coffee grinder so I could grind fresh spices (as recommended by the recipe's author Alton Brown - he really is a food rock star), which made all the difference in the world.  It's like a nutty, sweet, perfectly spiced celebration in your mouth.  I also tested this against another recipe and they were like two totally different desserts, with one being obviously inferior to the other.  I had some friends in my knitting group do a blind taste test and the Good Eats baklava won, hands down.  You could probably leave the rose water out and not have a noticeably different taste, I really couldn't taste it in the finished product, so that will save you a few bucks if you don't already happen to keep rose water around as a pantry staple (although I'm sure I'm the only person here that didn't have any on hand.  I'm such a slacker ;) )  As an added bonus, I discovered phyllo dough at Target today for almost half the price of the same brand at Dillons - wooohooo!
So yes.  Baklava is good.  This baklava is stupendous!
If you'd like to see the episode this recipe is featured on you can do so here.
(I so want to be an Alton Brown groupie)

Deep Dish Pizza
Mmmmmmm...pizza.
My sister-in-law Katie went to Chicago a while back and had a deep dish pizza sent home, which the family enjoyed for her birthday.  It got me thinking about making our own, so we decided to have a homemade pizza party at my in-laws a while back.  We used the crust from this recipe (scroll down for the crust recipe - be sure to get the semolina flour - it's what gives the crust that awesome crispiness) and made three different kinds of pizza - a beefy pepperoni pizza, a chicken/tomato/basil pesto pizza and a veggie pizza.  They were all DELICIOUS!

For the beefy pepperoni pizza we used the sauce mix ingredients listed here (as a side note I did make the puffy pizza in the crock pot that the sauce originally went with, and while it was tasty and the girls ate it, if you're really wanting pizza this isn't going to curb your craving.  Good for an easy weeknight meal though.) mixed with a little under a pound of browned ground beef and topped with mozzarella, turkey pepperoni and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Yuuuummmmy!
For the chicken/tomato/basil pesto pizza I just cooked a couple chicken breasts on the stove, shredded them into descent sized chunks and added some jarred pesto my mother-in-law had on hand (from Sam's) and topped it with mozzarella, sliced grape tomatoes and freshly grated Parmesan cheese.  Sooooo good!  I'm getting hungry thinking about it!
For the veggie pizza (not pictured) we used the same tomato sauce ingredients linked above and added mushrooms, peppers and onions along with the same cheeses mentioned above.  While I did not try this particular pizza (big surprise!) everyone else seemed to really like it.  Matt said he enjoyed how fresh it tasted with the veggies in it.
I plan to play around with this a bit to figure out a good way to freeze these pizzas.  The dough recipe (which I think is what made the whole thing so incredible) makes enough for two deep dish pizzas, so unless we're having company that's way too much for us.  I tried assembling a pizza, baking it for half the time and freezing it, then just taking the pizza straight from the freezer and baking it for an additional 25 minutes, but it was still a bit doughy in the center when the crust was perfect on the edges.  I'll probably try totally defrosting the pizza next time, which will take more forethought but probably taste better in the end.
Oh, and be sure to make your pizza in a cast iron skillet - it makes all the difference in the world!

Fortune Cookies
When my family gets together for dinner at my parents house we like to make stuff that's easier to do with more than one set of hands.  Bierocks and egg rolls are two of our regulars, and this past week we decided on egg rolls.  This gave me an excuse to try my hand at making fortune cookies.  Let me tell you, those little buggers are hot when you form then into that little crescent moon shape!  Holy cow!  This particular recipe was OK, but the cookies were very done on the outside edges while the center was still a bit sticky when the timer would go off.  This resulted in the fortunes Matt wrote sticking to the inside of the cookies (and Claire eating part of a fortune).  So while this is a novel item to make, it most definitely won't go on my regular rotation.

I hope some of these recipes have inspired you to try some new stuff at your house.
Bon appetit!