Vegetarian Pole Beans and Corn recipe

Our garden is doing well!  Today I harvested a heaping handful of pole beans and cooked them up with onions and sweet corn.  Came out very tasty and went nicely as a side dish alongside flounder and salmon fillets and garlic bread.

















Vegetarian Pole Beans and Corn
Big handful of pole beans (ours are Kentucky Wonder)
1 ear of sweet corn, uncooked
1/2 onion, chopped
1/4 banana pepper, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp chili powder (or to taste)
pinch of sugar

Heat butter and oil in heavy pot.  Add onions and banana pepper, cook until onions are clear; stir in salt, black pepper and chili powder.
Wash and snap beans into bite-size pieces, removing strings.  Add to pot and stir constantly until beans turn bright green.  Pour enough hot water into pot to cover beans; cook on high until tender, about 20-25 minutes.
Cut kernels from corn cob and add to pot.  Sprinkle in sugar. Cook another 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add water as needed.  Taste for salt/pepper.

Rainbow Cake

This week I finally had an excuse to make a cake. I've been foaming at the mouth to try making a rainbow cake as I've seen posted so many times on the interwebs (just Google "rainbow cake" and see!). I especially enjoyed this and based mine mostly on this.
Here we go:













I've never done a 'complicated' cake so this was both exciting and worrisome. I bought 2 boxes of cake mix because I didn't know if one would be enough as I wanted to divide the cake into 6 layers. I mixed just one box first to check and it looked like enough batter for my purpose. I prepared the batter following the box instructions.
The Wilton gel colors are very vibrant, it was fun shading the cake batter. The box mix created 4 cups and I divided it into 6 portions and colored each using 6 of the 8 gel colors provided (brown and pink were the other shades in the set).













I greased three 8-inch cake pans with shortening, dusted with all-purpose flour and poured in the red, yellow and orange batter. They baked for about 18 minutes at 325F and after cooling 15 minutes they were turned out and cooled on wire racks.

The pans were washed, dried, greased, floured and filled with green, blue, and violet batter.
While they were baking, I shifted the cooling cakes to plates and put them in the fridge.

After cooling the last 3 layers, they went in the fridge, too.
I was getting ready to ice the cake and they say getting the cake cold will keep it from being as crumbly and getting the icing funked up when you start working it.... seemed to be a success, not much crumbage.


Mmmmm, icing. This icing is really good. I ended up having to run out and buy a 2nd can of it, not because I ate a bunch! but one just wasn't enough to spread between 6 layers AND cover the whole outside. I kinda knew I'd need 2 but I didn't want to risk only using one and then having a tub of icing sitting in the cabinet haunting me, calling me.
I have a horrible icing-binge memory.... don't ask. *urp*


This is the 'dirty icing' step, to get everything mostly covered with the frosting then put the cake in the fridge to let the it harden and contain the crumbs. I'm a total novice with an icing spatula but did a fair enough job. I used the trick of putting 4 strips of wax paper between the bottom cake layer and the plate so when you're done frosting you just slip them out and the plate is clean. Super cool.

After it chilled for a couple hours, I frosted the cake with the rest of the 2nd can of icing, then removed the wax paper strips. I'm so ready to cut this thing! But had to wait several more hours *omg suspense*
It doesn't look too exciting hanging out in the fridge, just a plain homemade cake. But that's part of the surprise :-)
Another part of the surprise was that the blue candles also had blue flames - yahoooooo!

Finally the moment arrived..... time to cut the cake......



Wheeeeeeeee! It's perfect! Ok it's not *perfect* perfect, but it is a perfect surprise.
And it tastes really really good, too.



Somebody reported pooping a rainbow this morning but there were no witnesses to substantiate this claim.




All this thinking about cake...... I'm off to have another slice :-D

Now that's a bean

I think it may be time to harvest these pole beans. These vines are the result of 2.5 months of growth since I planted the seeds. They're pretty impressive growing in the kitchen. And I think these pods make the ones at the market look puny. There's only 5 big ones, but the quality makes up for the lack of quantity. The ones closer to the ceiling probably don't get enough sunlight and are much smaller. And 7 flowers/tiny pods fell off and didn't mature at all.

How should we eat them?? Can't decide.....

Bread report

Last night I baked two loaves, using a simple recipe for basic white bread with honey and milk. It turned out fine but is quite heavy. In fact, "deadly weapon loaf" would not be an out-of-line moniker. Regardless, the bread is quite tasty when toasted and spread with butter and local honey (which is just divine on its own!)

After doing a little 'net research I believe multiple things may have contributed to the heaviness:
First, I probably used too much flour, even though I still used less than the recipe called for. Second, I didn't check the temp of the milk before dissolving the yeast, it was probably too warm. Third, I used my hand mixer to get things going, which probably wasn't a great idea and was *over*mixing. Fourth, I probably didn't knead long enough. Fifth, although the bread seemed to rise ok, it was pretty cool in the kitchen yesterday and I didn't really find a warm place to put it while rising.
If you have any input or suggestions, I'd love to hear them :-)

Anyway, I felt like a fine peasant chef while fussing with it and I love the crusty, rustic look of my little home baked loaves.
It will be fun to experiment further with this bread baking, maybe using different flour and buttermilk next time. I may even make a sourdough starter, although part of me shudders at the prospect of it living and breathing and lurking around my kitchen at night while I'm sleeping....

Gonna bake some bread

So my husband brought some local honey home from work and I've decided I want to bake some fresh, crusty, homemade bread to spread it on.... so I bought some yeast, fresh flour and sugar, I've got a couple loaf pans and the cooling racks.... now I'm trying to pick a recipe. Yeeesh!

Hearts All Around - Part 3

This installment of the Valentine Series was really a pleasant surprise! Look what I discovered in my bag of bay leaves while cooking last night:
The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, they say.
I'm inclined to believe it is partially true, since little makes my husband happier than a fresh home cooked meal.