Breakfast Pizza!

Farmgirl created a “new” recipe a few mornings ago that she wanted to show you…

Here it is!  Breakfast Pizza!

First, she got a waffle and spread peanut butter on it.  (Papa the farmer makes great gluten free waffles!  I keep telling him he needs to write a cookbook!)  Over the peanut butter she put Peach Sauce.  Peach sauce is just my simple way of preserving peaches from our trees… I blend them up, pour the puree in mason jars and voila!  Peach Sauce.  On top of that she sliced bananas and strawberries, then she drizzled a little applesauce over the whole thing (like the cheese on a vegetable pizza)…

She was so pleased with her creation that she asked me to take pictures and share them online! 

Now let’s take a closer look at her handiwork: 

Garlic Spaghetti

 

When I first got married my mother in-law brought our niece for a visit.  This little niece is so super-duper cool that I was pretty much willing to bend over backwards and do anything she wanted.  (Bad aunt!  Spoiling the 7 year old!)  Every night I would ask her what she wanted for dinner and make whatever her little royal highness requested.  (This was obviously in the days before I had children!)  One night she asked for spaghetti.  Easy-peasy, right?  So I cooked the noodles, poured the canned spaghetti sauce over it and served it.  And my sweet little niece looked…. disappointed.  “That’s not spaghetti” she duly informed me. 

Um… It’s not?  Let’s see… Noddles… sauce…  Looks like spaghetti to me.  So she and her grandma taught me how to make “real” spaghetti… And let me tell you… It’s pretty good!

First, you boil the noodles according to package instructions.  Please don’t use plain white noodles… It will taste good, but it will hurt my feelings.  My favorite pasta is quinoa pasta, which is gluten free.  If you must use plain white noodles, would you please mix it half-and-half with multigrain noodles, just to make me happy?  Thank you! 

So, after you drain the noodles, saute some chopped garlic in the bottom of your noodle pot.  Pour the noodles back in and add a little olive oil.  Then add about a teaspoon of salt and a handful of fresh, chopped parsley.  Lastly, add 1/4 – 1/2 cup of Nutritional Yeast Flakes.  Then tell me if this isn’t one of the most delicious noodles dishes you’ve ever had!

Red Clover Drink

I mentioned in an earlier post that we've had a lot of red clover this year.  One of my readers suggested making juice out of it.  We know – from trying the Red Clover Rice the other day - that the flowers are sweet, and my reader said that the chlorophyll in the leaves is excellent and not to be wasted.  So we tried it.  We picked some red clover and washed it, then put the clover in a blender with water:



We added some honey and some lemon juice and blended it all up.  Then we strained all the pulp out of it:



With the right combination of honey and lemon it turned out pretty well… and it was very pretty with the red flowers in it as a garnish!

How to Make Sushi - vegan sushi, that is!

Ever wondered how to make sushi?  Well, here's an easy way!

First I take a sheet of dried seaweed and fold it in half.  Then I bend it backwards and fold it in half again, along the same fold.  This creasing and re-creasing will break it in half.

Then I take a scoop of warm rice and place it on the seaweed.  Seasoned rice is delicious!  In this example I have used leftover red clover rice that was featured in a blog post earlier this week.

 

Then I just slowly begin to roll... The heat from the rice will help the seaweed to stick to itself.  If I wanted to get really fance I could put avacado and vegetables inside like raw carrots, onions, cucumber cut julienne-style....  But in this case, I was hungry and just wanted to eat so nothing fancy here.  Sorry about that!

And before you know it, you're done! 

 

The only problem at our house with making these is that the Little Farmhands really, really love them!  I can't seem to make them fast enough!  In fact, the first "rule" that I had to lay down with they were babies was, "No eating seaweed between meals!!!"  That's probably not typical and I can't guarantee that your children will like seaweed and "sushi rolls" as much as mine do, but at least they can have fun making them!

Clover Rice

Over the past couple of weeks I have been reflecting on our farm's first year.  Life has gotten in the way this week and I won't be continuing the series of articles I have planned.  Don't worry, I'll come back to it (because I still have some fantastic giveaways in store!).  But for now I want to change gears and share some great recipes with you over the next few weeks.  Ok, some of the posts aren't about great recipes... but they're still good posts! 

Last winter we (ok, not me – it was Papa the Farmer) planted crimson clover in the vegetable beds as a cover crop.  So right now we have an abundance of these beautiful red flowers!  I know just enough about herbs to know that I have something really special here, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. 

So I did what any modern, self-respecting Farmlady would do.  I posted the question on Facebook!  And here are some ideas I came up with:



Red Clover Rice:
I was a little bit unsure about this, but It turned out really good!  It was a bit sweet and it would make an interesting breakfast dish.  First I put a pot of brown rice on the stove to boil.  (I used 6 cups of uncooked rice and 18 cups of water).  In the meantime I went down to the garden and picked red clover blossoms.  (Note to self:  Good thing I had a visitor here to turn down the stove!  It took longer in the garden than I expected and I could have had a big mess!)

When the rice was almost ready I added 1 1/2 cups of olive oil.  I think I probably should have added half that amount… or maybe even just a third or a quarter of that amount.  Anyway, I also added 3 tsp of salt.  Then I just poured the flowers in the pot:

and stirred…

The flowers got soft and sort of broke apart, but it gave the rice a lovely, slightly sweet flavor.  We ate the rice as a side dish the first day…



The second day we rolled it up into sheets of seaweed  and made “sushi.”

In a few days I’ll be posting instructions on how to make your own sushi, so be sure to check back!

Olive Oil & Garlic Salad Dressing

 

 

Now that I have a blog, the most common compliment I receive about my cooking is, “Mmm… This tastes good.  You should put the recipe up on your blog.”  Sometimes Papa the Farmer and I deem a recipe to be blog-worthy and sometimes we decide it’s ok, but not blog-worthy.  We only want to share our best with you!  This salad dressing is definitely blog-worthy!

 

My mother in law gave me the recipe several years ago, and wouldn’t you know it, she didn’t put any measurements in the recipe.  So I don’t really measure either… I just play with the ingredients until it tastes right.  But, since you don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, I’m putting approximate measurements in parenthesis after each ingredient.  Feel free to play around with the amounts.

olive oil (2 cups)

Nutritional Yeast (1/3 cup)

Fresh Parsley (large handful)

Fresh Garlic (an entire head… not just one clove… an entire head.  Just trust me on this!)

Salt (1 1/2 tsp)

Lemon Juice (1/2 cup)

 

Mix it all together in the blender till well blended!

Delicious on salads, but don’t stop there!  Pour it on bread for garlic bread, sandwiches for some extra flavor, rice, vegetables, pasta…