Rainbow Beans

http://houseonthefreeway.blogspot.com/

Why?

Every time I see this little container I ask myself "why?" a lot.

Why did someone think that it was necessary to create a special little container to hold lime wedges?

Why did they discriminate against lemons?

Why does it have a handle?

Why did they choose to make it narrower at the bottom, causing it to topple over easily?

Why, why, why did we think that this was something that we could not live without?

Chai Rice Pudding!!!

Since I am on the VegHead theme today, here is the bestest recipe ever for rice pudding. I must give credit where credit is due, this comes from Vegetarian Times magazine.

3 1/2 cups soymilk or low fat milk - divided
4 chai tea bags
1 cup short or medium grain white rice
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 med sized apple peeled and diced
1/4 cup raisins
Sprinkle with cinnamon to garnish

- Bring 2 cups of water and 1 cup of milk to a boil in a large saucepan. Remove from heat and add teabags. Steep for 5 min, remove teabags and squeeze out liquid.
- Stir rice, sugar and salt into tea mixture. Bring to a boil over medium heat, reduce heat, cover, simmer for 10 min.
- Add remaining milk and simmer uncovered for 20 more min or until rice is soft. Add apples and raisins, remove from heat, cover and let sit for 10 min.
- Serve warm or cold. Sprinkle with cinnamon if you like.

Sooooo yummy!!!! I want to try it next time with brown rice in the slow cooker,if I think of it I'll add an update.
-

Snow Day

Day four of the Texas deep freeze. We added 6 inches of snow to the ice we already had. Another snow day for the family.









My poor Rosemary.








What ever shall we do??

Reading.... with tea.



And some scratch Sweet rolls.








Worked on another knitting project. Gloves for Hubby. (more to come)

A nice fire in the fireplace. Some good music to listen to. Worked on my classwork. A lovely quiet day was had by all.

But, I'm ready for it to warm up.

We love us some scones...

We do love scones at our house. All four of us. Well, five if you count the dog, who has been known to snarf up a scone or two when you are not looking.

I am in search of the perfect scone recipe. I have tried several and i have found one in particular that I like for many reasons, but ease of use is number one.

I always have the ingredients on hand, nothing weird like buttermilk or self rising flour needed. And they are a drop recipe, you don't need to roll them out and cut them, making them very low maintenance.

I have them down to a science and can whip up a batch in about 10 min, not counting baking time and they have become a weekend staple. I think our favorite is sour cherry, but any dried fruit will work, raisins, cranberries, blueberries etc. etc. I'm gonna try to pull the recipe out of my head:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cold butter (unsalted)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

cup-ish of dried fruit

3/4 cup milk

1 egg

Mix dry ingreds together, except fruit

Cut in the butter until crumbly

Lightly beat egg together with milk and then add to dry ingreds

Mix it together until it looks mixed, then add fruit

Mix together some more and then drop blobs onto cookie sheet, should make an even dozen

Bake at 350 for 25-30 min.

Make a cup of tea and enjoy.

My little kitchen helper. :-)

Book #3

Hmmm, it's May and I'm on book three of fifty, I think I should have aimed much lower. I'll be lucky if I finish ten at this rate.

So, Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. I have a few things to say about this book.

Everyone should, by this point in time, have at least heard of the movie Julie and Julia. Cute movie about this cute twenty something gal that idolizes Julia Child and cooks her way through MtheAofFC. All the while blogging about it. Cute movie, cute girl, did I say that already??

Well, the book.... Julie Powell is neither cute nor sweet, but rather foul mouthed, self centered and bat shit crazy!! That being said, the book is really pretty funny, more about blogging than cooking. She is a good writer, witty and dry and uses cool terms like culinary plutonium and bleaders (blog readers).

This is the first time that I will ever recommend that you should see the movie prior to reading the book, if you were planning to do both. If I had read the book first I never would have watched the movie, making the assumption that the character in the movie would be as awful as the heroine in the book.

But liked the book, I laughed at it, even though Julie seems like she would be an awful, whiny, narcissistic, bully (at least to her husband, anyway), she has some redeeming likable qualities, too.

Whatever, just read it with caution...not cute or whimsical as you might think based on the book jacket. Expect an f-bomb-palooza.

BTW, I did get MtheAofFC Vol.1 and 2 for Mother's Day, look out....

Chai Tea

Since I am on a beverage kick, I must talk about another favorite hot beverage of mine. Chai tea. Not the Chai Tea Latte type from Barstucks, although I won't turn it down if offered, but the real deal, preferably from an Indian restaurant or made by some one's Grandmother. (should I ever be so lucky)

I do make my own, which I don't think is too shabby, if I do say so myself. I would rather it be served to me, but as my Beloved does tell me on occasion..."people in hell want ice water".

Anyway, I digress. On to the recipe, such that it is. I don't remember where I found it, I think either in Martha Stewart or Rachael Ray, some time ago.

Black loose tea

Fresh ginger

Cardamon pods

Hot water

Milk

Sugar or honey to sweeten

Peel and chop about a tablespoon of fresh ginger and crush about 6 cardamon pods. Throw them in a pot with about 2 cups of water. Boil water on the stove, add milk once the water boils. I do a 50/50 ratio. Throw in 2 or 3 teaspoons of loose tea. (I get my loose tea from an Indian import grocery store.) Turn off the heat and let steep. Don't forget to turn off the burner or it will boil over and make a huge nasty mess. I let it steep for about five minutes and then fill up the cups running the tea through a fine mesh strainer. Add sugar or honey to sweeten and there you go. Chai tea. It is not so sweet as the store bought variety and less "milky". I think has really nice flavor. It doesn't taste as good as Chaat Express, but close, without driving to Plano.

It's a good thing. Ha!!

Coffee Geek

I have to say the Aeropress makes the best coffee I've ever had!! I shout it to the world!! Find yourself an Aeropress if you are a serious coffee aficionado.

It's an unusual looking gadget. It looks nothing like what we expected. It is sort of like French press only different. They run around $40. I know you can get them online, and at high end cooking stores. A good friend of ours works at one of those type places and picked it up for us. The only supplies you need are little tiny round filters that sit in the bottom of the tube. I think the filters are about $5 for a package of 350. (That's alot of cups of coffee) Some are included with the gadget to start you off, of course.

I like to use whole bean coffee and a burr grinder. Our 2 favorite coffees are both from Whole Foods. The organic house blend, which is a mix of light and dark beans and the Extra Dark French Roast, which is extra dark French roasted. I grind the beans to a 3/4 espresso grind. This has been a trial and error experience. Also, notably, every time you switch up coffee beans/brands, it takes a couple of tries to get the right ratio of coffee to hot water. (I never said this wasn't somewhat labor intensive.)

You make one cup at a time and it now takes me about 4 min per cup, not counting boiling the water in the kettle.



You grind your coffee, I put 2 scoops (the kit includes the scoop) of coffee in the cylinder and this is subject to your own taste and experimentation, add the boiling water, stir the mixture whilst counting to 10 Mississippi, and then squish the mixture down with the plunger. The idea being that you are compressing the hot water through the grounds using the air pressure from the plunger. This gives you all the flavor without the bitterness of strong coffee. It is seriously great coffee. It's labor intensive; I feel the need to mention this twice. No flipping a pre-programmable switch and having coffee ready when you stumble out of bed in the morning.



I put milk with sugar in the microwave to heat while I'm plunging the coffee and then viola...




A cup o' heaven.....ahhhhhhhhhhh!