Pie Time

On Saturday I was at Costco and in a hurry.

Never a good combination!

Anyway, when I got home and put all of my groceries away, I found that the 2lbs of strawberries I picked up were a little more ripe than overripe.

Enter - 

My most recent Food Network Magazine and it's strawberry recipes.

Strawberry Crumble Pie

First the crust.

I substituted cold butter for the vegetable shortening.

 The crust recipe was nice and generous, so I didn't have the usual struggle of trying to stretch just a little bit more out of the pastry dough.

Then the crumble topping.

All together.

And baked!

The biggest struggle was waiting the prescribed 4 hours for it to cool completely.

But it paid off, because the strawberry juice didn't run all over the place.

I had an eager first taste tester.

And then after he was in bed, we warmed it up again with vanilla ice cream.

It's a good thing too, 

because I needed a little pick me up after my littlest monkey decided to pull my 

KitchenAid mixer down and break my beautiful glass mixing bowl.

But that's everyday life. 

It's not all tasty pies. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, we didn't quite make a feast out of Canadian Thanksgiving this year, but we were thankful!

What we did do was spend some time together (got to love nap time!) to make a few pies from scratch crust to caramel sauce. These baking (or cooking) dates are some of my favourites!

The Pioneer Woman's Scrumptious Apple Pie is our favourite fruit pie recipe. Pumpkin is a Thanksgiving must-have and we filled the buttery crusts with some pretty yummy ingredients. The apple pie was topped with chopped streusel, chopped pecans, and this decadent caramel sauce. Thanks  Pioneer Woman!

It was fun to have a couple of friends over in the evening to help us enjoy these sweet treats.

And as a result of our pie making date, I've not had to make myself breakfast for the last two days. 

My reasoning is simple:

Vegetable - pumpkin

Dairy - half & half, butter

Protein - eggs

Carbs - flour crust

Breakfast of Champions.

Enough Said.

While Thanksgiving is a great time to enjoy my family and eat some delicious food, there's a much greater reason to celebrate. 

God's greatest gift to us is Jesus Christ. 

Without Him we are hopeless.

In Him we find joy unspeakable.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Family & Friends!

We're In Business!

We're in business!  

Well, the chickens are in business. 

After almost five months of feeding these little ladies, I finally collected 2 eggs this afternoon.

Braden's car headed off to her final resting place.

Unfortunately, the John Deere Implement Store was closed when we stopped by, but that didn't stop us from a quick 'drive' on the gator out front. :)

 We tried a new Asian Butter Lettuce Steak Wrap for dinner tonight. The bright colours on our dinner table tonight made me so happy!  Bring on the grilled tri-tip...

After all of that health food, we needed to fulfill one last category of the food pyramid. Plus, I've been wanting to try out The Pioneer Woman's chocolate sheet cake for a while now.  Just in case you couldn't tell, it's delish!

There's enough to share. 

Who's coming?

Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart - Recipe Included...

This weekend I had the opportunity to get creative in the kitchen again!  On Saturday we had dinner with friends and I had to got to bring desert! If you know me very well at all, you will know that I felt like a kid in a candy store.

My first plan was tiramisu. The Pioneer Woman has a pretty straight forward looking recipe for this, but my plans were dashed when I went to Safeway with an ingredient list, and realized that our little town doesn't carry mascarpone cheese - the assistant manager didn't even know what it was. :/

Ryder accompanied me to pick up our Bountiful Basket and swing by Safeway on Friday night. It's incredible how freeing just managing one child is after having two from just a few months. Plus, it doesn't hurt that the Safeway bakery just so happens to give free cookies to children - best marketing move ever!

Then on Friday night, one of those new sponsored advertisements that Facebook has started including on my newsfeed showed a quick video of how to make Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart.

SOLD

It looked simple enough. Besides heavy whipping cream for the ganache, I had everything on hand already. The only tricky aspect was that it required 9 hours to make - with chilling each different layer.

First I made the chocolate crust. I think if I were to do it again though, I'd change it up and add more crushed nuts for texture. The recipe ends up tasting more like a chocolate pie crust.

This was my first time making caramel from scratch - also known as sugar, water, butter, and cream. Well, first and second. The first time I tried making the caramel, I got nervous and didn't let it simmer long enough. The result was a very creamy looking soup that didn't have any distant caramel flavour. The second time I cranked the heat and just let it work its own magic. Yum - no more store bought caramel sauce for me!

I added the caramel sauce to the cooled crust and let it chill for about 4 hours. By the time I pulled it out to add the ganache, the caramel was nice and hard.

I cheated on the chocolate ganache. The actual recipe called for bittersweet chocolate whipped with warm cream, but I didn't have just plain chocolate. What I did have was my favourite brand of chocolate EVER. Have you heard of Theo? It's based out of Seattle. I should warn you, it's ridiculously good. If you're ever in Seattle, call ahead and schedule a tour of their factory. It's well worth the $7 - and you'll sample all the chocolate a soul could want.

Anyhow, I just ended up using 2 bars of Sea Salt 70% Dark Chocolate with the cream - so I skipped the coarse salt garnish. It was salty enough. 

Sorry, the lighting here isn't awesome. Nevertheless, it turned out. I'll warn you that it's very rich. I think most of it can be blamed on the extremely dark chocolate I used. A milker substitute would take care of that. But, with a nice steaming cup of black coffee, I'd say it turned out just about perfect.

Oh, and here are the boys all matchy-matchy heading out for our dinner party in their pjs. Those were fun shower gifts!

Here's my latest Baby Lynden picture. He sure does love his sock monkey pjs from Mimi & Pop. What a joy this little guy is. <3

And did anyone else notice that GAP is trying to market culottes?  

Sorry, but some things are better left dead. :P

What To Do When Hubby Works 12 Hours on a Saturday?

We've been blessed to be able to spend most weekends together of late, but today was an exception. After making his breakfast smoothie and kissing Braden goodbye, I determined to make myself a Saturday-worthy breakfast anyway. 

Enter Belgian Waffles.

Since I was already going to have dishes to clean and had 4 extra egg whites (after making homemade chocolate pudding last night) I decided to go ahead and make a double recipe in order to freeze the extras for the busy days to come.  There's nothing quite like a toasted waffle with peanut butter and creamed honey all gooey and oozing into the squares - YUM! 

My toppings of choice were a handful of granola and sprinkling of fresh organic blueberries (thanks to yesterday's new Bountiful Basket!)

I ended up with over 12 full waffles all ziploc-ed, frozen, and ready to pull out at a moment's notice. Not bad considering 8am hadn't even rolled around yet.

After breakfast Ryder and I made a quick trip to Walmart to pick up a few lightbulbs and a few other 'necessities' - have you seen/smelled the new Burt's Bees soy candles? I saw them for the first time today and immediately fell in love with the Papaya Guava scent. It's warming in my kitchen now.  Mmmm....

I also picked up a fairly large galvanized pail (Made in the USA) with a lid for only $12 and came home with projecting on my mind. A quick look through my stockpile of fabric and a not so quick browse through Pinterest later, I whipped up a few pail liners with my sewing machine. Voila! I now have a diaper pail that seals - with washable liners. 

I had just one more item on my to-do list for the day and that was to turn some alien vegetables into baby food. Once again, my Bountiful Basket contained an unidentifiable vegetable (it looked like a cross between a cauliflower and the ugly succulents that rapidly reproduced in our WA flower beds). Thanks to a friend, who also picks up Bountiful Basket produce, I learned that it's actually called romanesco broccoli. Call me a wimp, but I wasn't about to eat this terrifying looking plant. Thankfully, the Vitamix can turn any substance into a silky puree, and so that's what I did with these and a bunch of carrots. Lucky Little Dipper has a treat in store for him!

And here are a few fun photos from earlier in the week. We've been enjoying the sunshine and on Friday had a great picnic lunch play date at the park with friends. 

Making Valentines!

Such an exciting morning was had at the Apperson house today! I used the upcoming holiday as an excuse to buy Ryder his first set of finger paints - lets just say a lot more than fingers got painted! ;)

Here's my little artist about to get started...

And elbow-deep in his work...

Not many of the Valentines actually look like hearts, but I'm sure our special recipients won't mind one bit.

 

Silly boy!

After completing his artwork, we had a new friend from church come over and help make our Valentines cookies. Well, as it turned out, the friend actually made most of the cookies while I cared for a sad boy (4 more teeth on the move) but now we have beautiful and tasty linzer and sugar cookies to enjoy and share.

What are you doing to celebrate Valentines Day?