I wrote a menu

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Julia Monroe in All Sparkled Up, allsparkledup, calligraphy, cooking, encouragement, food, Free Idea, nature, photography, recipe

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allsparkledup, food, idea, menu

It’s for a restaurant in my imagination. Outside, surrounded by trees and mountains and seas. The rush of wind and fall of water.
Whole Earth.
Five Courses – Water, Field, Tree, Rain and Root.

A menu for Whole Earth, a restaurant in my imagination.

What limits your dreams? What stops you? What if you never quit? In addition to a dozen other professions out of my reach, such as surgeon, lawyer, scientist, glass blower, architect and machine engineer.. I would love to be a chef. Here is a menu for my non-existent restaurant, Whole Earth, with some of the courses. Don’t ever let anyone stop your imagination. You never know how far it will reach.

Sweet & Sparkling Specialty Sugars for tea and coffee and sprinkling

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by Julia Monroe in All Sparkled Up, allsparkledup, baking, cooking, crafts, DIY, food, recipe, sparkling, tea time, tutorial, Uncategorized

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allsparkledup, crafts, DIY, food

So happy she loved the gift I made for her! Specialty Sugars for her tea and coffee and sprinkling on toast, cereal or anything else that needs a little sweet sparkle.

Delicious and beautiful flavored sugars in jars.

I bought the decorative knobs and glass jars at Hobby Lobby. It was easy drilling a hole in the corks, using a hack saw to shorten the knob bolt and gluing them together with a few beads.

~ Lavender Sugar ~
I ground up culinary lavender with a mortar and pestle, then put the lavender and sugar in a food processor. The lavender sugar was then layered with crystal sugar in the jar.

2-specialty-sugars-spice-sugar-and-lavender-sugar

~ Lemon Orange Sugar ~
Lemon and Orange zest were placed in a food processor with sugar and ground medium fine. I’ve been making this mixture for years for use in cheesecake because it makes a very fine textured cheesecake. To fill the jar, I spooned in a layer of Lemon Orange Sugar then used tongs to place white sugar cubes against the side of the jar. Then I spooned in more sugar and repeated the layers. Next time I’ll add more orange zest for a darker orange colored sugar.

~ Vanilla Bean Sugar ~
I scraped the seeds from two vanilla beans and ground the seeds with sugar in a food processor. I used one half of each vanilla bean, split lengthwise, to place in the jar. I spooned in about 1″ of Vanilla Sugar in the bottom of the jar. Then I used tongs and a wood skewer to position each vanilla bean against the side of the jar before adding the rest of the Vanilla Sugar.

~ Pumpkin Spice Sugar ~
This recipe is something one of my sons and I made up, based on the spice ratio I use in my Pumpkin Pies. We keep this sugar blend on hand to make Pumpkin Spice Lattes, which everyone knows don’t have any pumpkin in them anyway. haha. Still, the flavor is very close to my pumpkin pies, sans pumpkin. To fill this jar, I used a small spoon and a tiny funnel I made from two straws. I can’t explain how I did the design but if you look up “sand art in a bottle” on youtube, you’ll get the idea. The white layer is Vanilla Bean Sugar. The dark brown “spots” in the white layer are pieces of cinnamon stick. I wanted to position the cinnamon stick pieces to look like hearts but the white sugar kept filling in the spaces so it didn’t work out.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” it is said. So true. I couldn’t access my precut wood pieces or run a saw so I ended up using the only wood on hand, a 30 year old piece of Sassafrass root from my parents property. It’s been in my tea collection for decades and still has a beautiful scent. I used a small craft saw to cut thin slices of the wood to make the tags. I wrote on them with permanent marker. Now I wonder if I had wood-burned the words in… could the slice of sassafrass be steeped in boiling water to flavor tea? What fun that would be! I’ll have to try it out.

For each of the flavored sugars, I used one cup of granulated sugar plus the flavoring agent. That was plenty to fill the jar, with a little left over.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas! We sure had a jolly time.

Croque Monsieur

12 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Julia Monroe in baking, food, recipe

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food, recipe, sandwich

It’s the most luscious Ham & Cheese sandwich ever! Definitely our favorite. The guys loved them for lunch.
Don’t these ingredients look yummy?

Ingredients for Croque Monsieur. Sliced homemade bread, sliced ham, gruyere cheese, Herbs de Provence, mustard bechemel.

Ingredients for Croque Monsieur. Sliced homemade bread, sliced ham, gruyere cheese, Herbs de Provence, mustard béchemel.

I followed Bon Appetit’s recipe for Croque Monsieur. So delicious!
I baked a loaf of bread the day before but the guys cut into it so I had to make the Croque Monsieur slices a little thinner. The mustard béchemel turned out perfect. The only mustard I had on hand had horseradish in it but that was great with the ham and gruyere. The herbs were from Penzey’s, Herb de Provence.
Four slices of bread were spread with the prepared béchemel.

Note: Tear two round ham slices in half to fit a square piece of bread.

Half of the cheese sprinkled over the ham.

The remaining four slices of bread had more mustard béchemel spread on and placed on the sandwiches.

The remaining four slices of bread were spread with more mustard béchemel and placed on the sandwiches.

The remaining cheese was scattered on top of the sandwiches.

Herbes de Provence sprinkled over tops of the sandwiches.

Baked for about 18 minutes at 425 F.

Croque Monsieur

The smell coming from the oven was sooo good… The cheese! The toasty bread! The herbes!

Oh I wish you could taste this Croque Monsieur hot from the oven!

The middle was all melty and soft and the bottom crusts with dripping cheese had a great crunch. Oh so delicous!
Please comment if you’ve ever had a Croque Monsieur sandwich. Did you like it? This will be our go-to sandwich when we have tomato or bean soup this winter.

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In Lieu of Luke’s Diner – Sugar Crusted Orange Ginger Muffins

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Julia Monroe in All Sparkled Up, allsparkledup, baking, family, food, recipe, tea time

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baking, food, Gilmore Girls, Luke's Diner, muffins, recipe

The plan was to get a free cup of hot coffee from “Luke’s Diner” in town. Commemorating the 16th anniversary of Gilmore Girls, and to celebrate the upcoming debut of a Gilmore Girls mini series, Netflix sponsored pop-up “Luke’s Diner” in coffee shops all over the country. Oh my goodness, I love that show!

I had every intention of going and really looked forward to it. In fact, I even walked toward the line and snapped a picture. What a special event in town!

“Luke’s Diner” pop-up at one of the local coffee shops

But then I started to miss my own “Rory” so much that I had to leave. If I had stayed, I feared I would have started to cry and end up blubbering something like “Will you please be my daughter? I miss my daughter! Anyone in this line, can I please be your Lorelai because my daughter lives halfway to China and I’m missing her so much and we watched Gilmore Girls together when she was going to college and HOW can I possibly get a cup of coffee that we would have shared but can’t because she’s halfway to China??” If I had stayed, I totally would have done that. 0_0

So I left without coffee, immediately went home and did a Sookie thing – I whipped up some Sugar Crusted Orange Ginger Muffins and cried the entire time. I sure did.

Sugar Crusted Orange Ginger Muffin

I made up this recipe years ago, just because I needed a batter that fit in the big, new muffin tins. I still use my favorite batter-scooping spoon, even though the handle is broken.

Scooping the muffin batter with the broken spoon, just because it’s the perfect size and shape for scooping.

Sugar Crusted Orange Ginger Muffins

Sift together in a large bowl:
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cardamom

Mix together in another bowl:
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup oil
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp grated orange rind

Mix together in another bowl:
3/4 cup raisins (I like golden best but any raisin will do)
3/4 cup candied ginger cut up into little pieces (I never buy the precut ginger because it has too much sugar sprinkled on it. All that extra sugar changes the texture of the recipe. It’s better to buy candied, sliced ginger and cut it up yourself with scissors.)

Dump the egg mixture into the flour mixture and quickly stir with a whisk or wooden spoon about 5 or 6 strokes. Mixture will be lumpy and NOT mixed together.

Dump in the raisins and ginger.

Stir quickly and thoroughly but briefly using a wood spoon or whisk. Mixture will be lumpy. Make sure you scrape the dry ingredients off the bottom of the bowl while mixing. If the batter gets rubbery and stretchy, you mixed it too long and the muffins might be tough. Anyway, drop spoonfuls of batter into greased, large muffin tins.

Sprinkle tops with coarse sugar crystals.

BAKE at 400F for 20-25 minutes.

Makes 12 large muffins.

Spicy bits of crystalized ginger and raisins stud this ginger & cardamom muffin.

After I had two cups of good strong coffee and a muffin, I felt better. But since I miss my daughter so much, I’m declaring it Official Wallowing Day. Truly. At least once a year I just need a good wallow.

I miss you and love you, Heather. <3
And Texas just seems like half-way to China. ;)

Figs and Barquettes part 1

03 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by Julia Monroe in baking, food, nature

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figs, food, goat cheese, harvest

It started with the figs last week. I’ve heard fresh figs are very hard to find in the market and very expensive. Now that we have two fig trees, I can see why. Ripe figs are quite perishable, being in perfect form for just a day after picking. They can be kept in the fridge a week but do get softer. Like bananas, figs can be eaten when super ripe but they turn winey.

Every year I tend to give away our little fig harvest.

The entire first harvest of figs.

I love sharing and I’m just in the right place at the right time and there are people to give figs to. But this year, there was no one. So to do the figs justice, I determined to celebrate each and every glorious one. Such richness, oh my. Figs are liquid gold, honey that grows on a tree, a king’s dessert!

The fig trees nearly died two years ago from the cold winter. I’m so thankful we have figs again on one of the trees.

We rarely get a second harvest of figs, which usually freezes before it has time to ripen.

We were out of town so I missed the peak ripeness of some of them and several had already dropped. I picked all the ripe figs from the tree.

Look at this basket of amazingness! I wish they weren’t so perishable.

Ripe figs in a basket.

Like honeycomb dripping with honey, the plump figs ooze with sweetness.

A month ago I found a new favorite goat cheese, Julianna from Capriole.

Julianna Goat Cheese from Capriole

My entire breakfast that day centered around the first ripe fig with Julianna cheese. (posted on Instagram)

Ripe fig with goat cheese, plum, omelet, biscuit and honey

But still, there truly is nothing finer than just one perfect fig.

Figs, 2015

If you only have one fig, enjoy it slowly, plain, with nothing else at all.

One Perfect Fig

But if you have more figs, then it’s fun to go further. Which started my search for the perfect compliment, a flaky barquette to cradle a fig and other flavors.

…to be continued…

Woven Tortillas

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by Julia Monroe in cooking, food, Mexican, recipe, tutorial

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cooking, food, Mexican, recipe, tutorial, woven tortillas

I don’t know what gave me the idea but I was eating a tortilla one day a couple weeks ago and thought it would be great to make a weaving of colored tortilla strips.

It took a week or so to hunt down colored tortillas. We found the green Spinach Wrap tortillas at Whole Foods and the spicy Habanero Lime tortillas at Trader Joes.

The first Woven Tortilla was made of strips of white and orange tortillas. I cut them with kitchen shears.

Strips of white Mission flour tortilla and orange Habanero Lime tortilla.

The Habanero Lime tortillas were a little smaller than the white Mission tortillas. I ended up using the center section of two Habanero tortillas to get enough strips that were long enough.

It was almost as easy as weaving paper strips, but tortillas are more fragile. None broke but I treated them gently.

Spicy Habanero Lime tortillas are woven together with a white flour tortilla.

Brushing the woven tortilla mat with olive oil helped the pieces stick together.

The woven tortilla mat is brushed with olive oil.

They still weren’t very stable though so I had to slide the woven piece into the skillet using a big spatula. Once one side was browned on medium heat, I placed another hot skillet over top and flipped it over. That was tricky! The tortilla mat still folded in half and it was a bit of work straightening out the strips.

The woven tortilla mat is lightly toasted on both sides over medium heat in a skillet.

Once they were lightly browned, the tortillas were more crisp and held together better. I slid the finished tortilla mat out of the skillet and onto the plate.

Woven Tortillas

Topped with black beans in a taco meat nest, scoops of guacamole and sour cream and a sprinkling of white cheddar, the Woven Tortillas looked and tasted wonderful!

Woven Tortillas, served with taco meat, black beans, guacamole, sour cream and cheddar cheese. Use knife and fork to eat.

I tried another method of weaving that stayed together easily. Instead of cutting the white tortilla into strips, I cut slits in it with a knife, then wove strips of colored tortilla through the slits.

Strips of Habanero tortilla are woven through slits in a white flour tortilla.

This time, I brushed olive oil on the white flour tortilla before weaving so the oil would help hold the pieces together. That worked great.

Woven Tortillas

Treating the tortillas gently so the one-piece white tortilla didn’t split at the ends, I carefully wove orange Habanero and green Spinach tortilla strips through the slits.

Green and orange tortilla strips are woven through the slits in a white flour tortilla.

Woven Tortillas are so fun and festive! Tasty too!

These take time so I recommend weaving them ahead of time, wrapping air tight and keeping the woven tortillas in the fridge. Brown them on medium heat right before serving.

Woven Tortillas – great way to add color and flavor to a Tex-Mex meal.

Lunch was festive and delicious!

It’s a BFN Day! Yay!

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Julia Monroe in All Sparkled Up, baking, Baking for Neighbors, BFN, community, food

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baking, Baking for Neighbors, BFN, bread, community, food, Sourdough Grain Bread

You can read more about Baking for Neighbors Day on this post. Today was BFN for the 4th neighbor and I sure enjoyed it!

It has been a long time since I baked for neighbors. I got a bit derailed when we got an anonymous note in the mailbox over a year ago. An anonymous neighbor put a pretty blue envelope in our mailbox. Inside was a cute card with dogs on the front. And inside the card was written “Keep your #$%&* dog out of our yard. We’re tired of it dragging your recycled beer bottles into our yard too. You’ll be glad to know that we’re moving because of you. #*#%@ “… etc.

If that neighbor knew us, they would have known that we’ve never owned a dog. They would know that we don’t drink and we do our own recycling so there are no bins of bottles. If our neighbor knew us, they would have known that I broke my back and was doing a great job of recovering. And they would have known how much I love to bake.

So instead of being discouraged and scared of meeting that anonymous neighbor that hates us, I decided to keep going with Baking for Neighbors. Today I handed the fourth neighbor a loaf of steaming hot, fresh from the oven, Sourdough Grain Bread.

Sourdough Grain Bread

When I handed her the foil-wrapped bundle, she was surprised and delighted. That made me so happy! I guess she’s not the neighbor who put that note in our mailbox.

All wrapped in napkins and foil, tied with string – a big loaf of Sourdough Grain Bread fresh from the oven for neighbor 4.

I’m all encouraged now to keep going with BFN Day! Four neighbors down, 67 to go. ::big smile::

The last egg

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Julia Monroe in All Sparkled Up, art, Easter, food

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art, Easter, Easter eggs, food, refrigerator art

Every year I save one colored Easter egg in the back of the egg bin in the fridge. All winter long it’s a nice reminder that spring is on the way.

Soon this egg will be replaced with a new one. Its fun seeing art in the refrigerator! I’m planning on hanging a little painting on one of those pristine white walls.

Meringue Breakfast Buns again

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Julia Monroe in baking, food, recipe

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baking, breakfast, brunch, eggs, food, meringue, Meringue Breakfast Buns, recipe

While it was freezing outside, this was going on in my oven this morning.

Savory Meringue Breakfast Buns in the oven

I posted about this before and you can find the recipe on my blog here.
They were soooo delicious. Oh the crunch! Oh the creamy! Something magical happens when you bake cheese on top of meringue. Please try it!

Meringue Breakfast Buns, served with banana drizzled with Tomato Marmalade.

Super Bowl Soup with Chip Dip Dumplings

13 Friday Feb 2015

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chip dip, food, hot wings, leftovers, recipe, Super Bowl, tutorial

Well now, this post is a bit late! Ha ha! But the recipe is applicable to any party leftovers of hot wings, a veggie tray and chip dip. Hey, you don’t even need a party. The night we had this, the soup WAS the party!

What do you do after the Super Bowl game with all those delicious leftovers? I had some spicy Hot Chicken Wings, a veggie tray and chip dip. They were the perfect leftovers to make spicy Super Bowl Soup with Chip Dip Dumplings!

This recipe doesn’t need many measurements. Just use what you have and it will be delicious.

Start the soup broth by putting hot chicken wings in a couple quarts of water with a handful of herbs. I used Bouquet Garni.

Place hot chicken wings and a handful of fresh or dried herbs in a couple quarts of water in a pot.

Simmer a bit.

In the meantime, in a little oil and butter in a skillet, saute the veggie tray vegetables. I had pepper strips, carrots and broccoli and added more carrots.

When the veggies have browned a bit on the edges, add a little water to deglaze.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the chicken wings from the broth and let them cool on a plate.
Stir the veggies and liquid into the pot of broth. Simmer on low.

I added a bit of thyme and fresh rosemary along with the sauteed veggies.

While the soup is simmering, make the Chip Dip Dumplings. Whisk together 3 cups flour, 5 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl. Cut 1/4 cup unsalted butter and 1/4 cup shortening into the dry ingredients until crumbly.

Measure about 3/4 cup chip dip. I had a little less so I added another spoonful of sour cream. Then I added milk to make about 1 1/4 cup of sour cream liquid. Beat one egg in a bowl.

Stir the sour cream mixture and egg into the flour mixture. Mix with a fork until everything sticks together.

The dumpling mixture will be sticky and lumpy.

Taste the soup and add more seasoning if desired. We added more Frank’s Red Hot sauce and Cholula Hot Sauce. I also transferred the soup into a bigger pot to make room for the dumplings to puff up. Add more water if necessary. The dumplings absorb quite a bit of liquid while cooking so it’s ok if there seems to be too much liquid.

Use a fork to drop blobs of dumpling dough on top of the simmering broth. The recipe makes a lot of dumplings, plenty for 8 or more servings. The dumplings will be crowded but that’s ok. Cover with a lid, turn down heat to low and time 15 minutes. While the dumplings are cooking, debone the chicken wings.