The Art of the Catch-Up Post!

Hello! I thought I said I was going to be better about blogging... what happened?! Things have been chugging along as the NEW usual for a few weeks now, so let's catch up!

The first thing I'm super excited about makes me sound like a super nerd, but hey... if the shoe fits! Martin has fixed the hole in our living room ceiling! HOORAY! Last May, we met my parents at Mackinaw Island for a great overnight trip, then trekked back to our side of the UP for a little visit. While here, my father and Martin cut open the ceiling to discover what why we were having leaking issues.

Cutting open the ceiling!

Low and behold, there was a HUGE piece of metal pipe sitting in the buckling section of the ceiling! Who know how much longer that would have held?! Dad and Martin discussed how to fix the hole... then it stayed there.... for a year!

The offending pipe!

Well I came home from work one day to Martin hard at work in the garage, and before the end of the day the ceiling (which I often complained about) was fixed! Happy day! Thanks Martin! It may be a bit odd looking, but I don't really care! No more ugly ceiling hole! Now, if we can fix the couch situation, this room will be just about done! Yay!

FINALLY! Hole be gone! 

What else? About a month ago I got accepted to Michigan Tech to start a Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (TESOL) program. I literally got the acceptance in the mail on Friday, registered for my first class Saturday, and started on Monday! I'm back to school ya'll! I am a very different student now than I was a decade ago (while I was in college), and I'm probably driving my classmates crazy! I have been able to keep an A through the mid-term Exam we just had (90.5% on that exam!), so I'm going to give it all I got to maintain until the end! I'm shooting for the 4.0 this time!

I'm also super pumped up because I was accepted to participate in a "Fit for Life" Zumba program that one of the local instructors started this summer! Her daughter is fighting leukemia, and the two are related (I can't say how...yet!) in an awesome way. I've committed to attending at least three Zumba classes a week, but I'm aiming for five! Most weeks I end up right in the middle at four! Working on my fitness AND a good cause! Holla!

Martin's car finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago. It would cost $800 to fix, and now that we are both based at Michigan Tech, we are trying to become a one car family. Hopefully this will help us save money (insurance, gas), and won't drive us TOO crazy. Martin has been a trouper working around my earlier-than-he-goes-to-work schedule AND sticking around while I go to Zumba. He's the best! We'll see how we do this summer and re-evaluate in the fall!

Earlier this week I had a bit of a "milestone" birthday. That's right everyone, I have graduated from my 20's and I'm now the big 3-0! When I was asked how it felt to be thirty, the only thing I could think of was "same as 29!" I haven't really had a problem with starting a new decade. In fact, I have HIGH HOPES for the 30s! I hope to work towards lasting fitness and health, start a family, support Martin as he finishes his PhD and we figure out the next step, get TESOL certified, and (fingers crossed) start/finish a Library Science Masters Degree program! I should totally come back and read these hopes every year and see how I'm doing!

Photo from doedeereblogazine.com

Now, to reward you for reading all the way through this update blog, a Menu Planning Monday.. on Friday! This is the first week in a bit of a "reboot" project that Martin and I are doing. One of the benefits of having insurance is being able to get to a doctor for a wellness checkup. Sadly, I did not really pass that wellness check with flying colors! I'm still working things out with my doctor, and will know more next week, but I'm being proactive! We are cutting back on meat and trying to up our plant based protein. We are trying to cut back on gluten and up our ancient grains. The results? SCRUMPTIOUS! Hooray!

Strawberry Quinoa Salad = Amazing! We loved it so much that I ended up making a second batch later in the week! Our notes: we used "Sweet & Spicy" Pecans from Trader Joe's rather than toasting our own pecans. Also, after crisping the prosciutto, it was rather bacon-like. Might as well save yourself some bucks and just crisp up some bacon instead! The second batch I didn't have feta, so we used the gorgonzola we had left over from last week, and it was equally wonderful (if a bit more fatty)!

Chicken Marsala Casserole has become one of our go to meals! We use orzo pasta in lieu of rice, but now that we are trying to cut back on gluten, we may have to try it with rice. Don't skip the fresh parsley - it adds something! We've made this with skim milk, 2%, and half and half.... all are good! It gets richer (duh) with fat content! 

Crockpot Chicken and Quinoa Enchilada Soup Mmmmm... the flavors are very reminiscent of one of our favorites, White Chicken Chili, but it is broth based and doesn't have a block of cream cheese in it! We added some jalapeno dip and mexican blend cheese on top and it was super duper! I don't have a link for the Tamale Bake, it was the first recipe I ever made from my "Trader Joe" cookbook from my bestie LB! Let me just say... polenta, black beans, zucchini, soy-chorizo, and cheese work in perfect harmony!  

I'll have to let you know how the wheat berry salad is next week! I really AM planning on exploring the "Homemade Pantry" book too! Life kind of threw me for a loop when I started taking classes three weeks after staring my new job, going to three or four (or five) Zumba classes after work, fitting in doctor appointments, and oh yeah, spending time with my husband, cooking... etc! We are working out the kinks of having a set schedule and now only having one car too. I guess we never REALLy stop juggling, huh?

MPM: A Little Blast From the Past

I think since I went home recently, I've been craving some tastes from my childhood, and perhaps a bit further back than that! There is something a bit Retro Rad (thanks Food Network Star for introducing me to THAT catch phrase!) about our menu plan for this week, and I am pretty excited about making and devouring them!

Meal #1: Stuffed Green Peppers! I guess that it really is true that your tastebuds change as you get older/grow up. I have always been a fan of the stuffing of these peppers, but I have never been a fan of the green pepper shell. I still don't love the taste off green peppers (especially raw), however when I had these a few months ago, I didn't even mind eating the shell! Hooray for sneaky veggies!

But of course there will be melty cheese on ours! :)

Meal #2: Grown Up Grilled Cheeses & Tomato Soup! We are trying out some savory fancy pants toasted cheese sandwiches this time! Jalapeno Popper & French Onion Sammies to be exact! And of course, our dear friend "Amy" is providing the soup! Yummy! 

Spicy? We'll see!

Soup IN a sandwich... sort of!

Meal #3: Crock Pot Chicken Chili! You remember this one don't you? I raved and raved and raved about it, and I've had a taste for it ever since of course! Mmmm I can't wait to have some of this soon! 

So easy and tasty! 

Meal #4: Martha Stewart's Warm Lentil Salad! Gotta get back on track with our co-op bulk items. We have a great red lentil dish, so now I need to find a go-to green lentil dish! These flavors sound wonderful, and I'm looking forward to tasting it! 

Chevre! My fav!

We are also playing with the idea of cooking out on or around the 4th, but haven't finalized the menu at all. PLUS we might just be getting a brat or hot dog at the park while we watch fireworks! 

Oh boy guys, I'm being a derelict ambassador for the UP lately! Last weekend we missed Calumet's Pasty Fest because I was working, working, working, and this weekend we are missing Chassel's big Strawberry Fest! I can't believe it! No pictures of the parades, the yummy yooper treats, or even the Strawberry Queen! I hope you will forgive me - I'll try to make it up to you with a report on some of our favorite places to visit in the Keweenaw! 

Til then, 

Yooper Love from me to you!

Adventures in Canning!

I'm really excited to share our recent culinary adventure - canning! I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would never have even CONSIDERED canning even a year ago! City living is amazing, and man I miss the Logan Square farmer's market more than I can express in words, but I wasn't looking to buy fruits and veggies to store for the winter! In retrospect, I had more organic produce available to me then than I do now, so I probably should have been, huh?! Oh well! I'm a convert NOW, and that counts for something, right?! RIGHT!

So how did this all start anyway? With a virtual book wish list on my Pinterest account of course! I spread the word about the wish list through the best networking tool ever- my mother! :) For my birthday I got three of the books I'd been coveting, and all our experiments came from the absolutely stunning "Food in Jars." (Thanks sister Erin!)

Check out her AWESOME website too: Food in Jars!

My mother's birthday is just six days after mine, and after I got this book I knew IMMEDIATELY that I wanted to try some recipes out and create her gift from our experiments! I poured over the book for over a week trying to figure out what I wanted to try, and ended up marking far more recipes than I could realistically make... but that's okay because it means that I will have more to try out later! 

The first recipe we tried was inspired by our back yard! Hey, remember when we waxed poetic about our rhubarb? Well add this recipe to the MUST MAKE for you rhubarb lovers (and non-lovers!) because it's amazing! Behold, the glory that IS Strawberry-Orange Rhubarb Jam! Holy Moly! The fantastic taste of strawberry and rhubarb with an awesome tart note from orange juice and zest! The flavors are so bright and fantastic - a serious summer in a jar winner! 

OKAY! Now that I've over sold it - here we go! 

My amazing sous-chef Martin chopped his heart out for me! 

Strawberry-Orange Rhubarb Jam

From "Food in Jars" by Marisa McClellan

(Makes 5 Pint Jars - Though we used some half pints for gift giving!)

6 cups chopped rhubarb (about 2.5 pounds)

4 cups chopped strawberries (about 2 pints) 

zest and juice of 2 oranges

5 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 (3 oz) packets liquid pectin

Prepare a boiling water bath and the pint jars, place the lids in a small saucepan and simmer over very low heat. (If this is the first time you are canning, make sure you read up on this process! Also make sure you have all the tools you will want or need!) 

Combine the rhubarb, strawberries, orange zest, juice, sugar, and cinnamon in a large nonreactive pot and stir to incorporate. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer and cook fruit over medium-high heat for 15-20 minutes or until the rhubarb breaks down and the jam has a glossy shine. 

Add the pectin and increase the heat to high, letting the jam boil for five minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and ladle the jam into the prepared jars. Wipe the rims, apply the lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. 

Testing the jam, filling the jars, and processing! 

Okay... seriously? I can't even tell you how worried I was that I was going to do something seriously wrong and that we wouldn't hear the POP! of the tops that we wanted to hear! BUT, soon after removing the jars from the water bath, we heard the awesome ping, ping, pings we were listening for! Hooray! 

I was looking for something fun and different to make, and I saw that there was a recipe for a Zesty Lime Curd included in "Food in Jars!" My mom and I share a lot of tea party, scone, and coffee shop memories, and I know she is a great fan of lemon curd, so I thought this sounded perfect! I have to be honest, Martin made the whole thing, start to finish, and all I did was process it! I was actually working on making the pear butter recipe we made, which we forgot to take any pictures of, but I DID get great pics of the curd! Away we go! 

Martin, hard at work!

Zesty Lime Curd

From "Food in Jars" by Marisa McClellan

(Makes 2 Half Pint Jars... ours made a BIT less than that!)

1/4 cup finely grated lime zest (about 4 limes)

1 1/4 cup granulated sugar

4 large egg yolks 

2 large eggs

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (about 6 limes)

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Prepare a boiling water bath and 2 half pint jars; meanwhile, simmer the lids and rings in a saucepan.

Combine the lime zest and sugar in a bowl, rubbing the zest into the sugar until it is fragrant and combined. Set aside. 

Set up a double boiler (or... you know... two sauce pans that you hold over heat and stir constantly... you rock Martin!) with 2 inches of simmering water over medium heat. Keeping the top half of the double boiler off the stove, add the egg yolks and whole eggs to it and whisk them together. Add the zest and sugar combo and whisk in. Finally, add the lime juice and stir until blended. 

Put the double boiler back together and drop in the cubes of butter. Switch to a silicone spatula and stir continually as the lime curd cooks. Using a candy thermometer, monitor the temperature of the curd while you stire. As is approaches 190-200 F, it should start to thicken. It typically takes 6-9 minutes for a curd to cook (it took us a lot longer because we weren't using a double boiler!). When the curd has thickened to the consistency of sour cream, it is done! Remove the top half of the double boiler and stir off the heat, it will continue to thicken a bit. 

Strain the curd through a fine-mesh sieve into a measuring cup. The straining removes both the zest and any bits of scrambled egg! Pour the curd into the prepared jars, leaving a generous 1/2 inch of headspace. Wipe the rims, apply the lids and rings, and process in the boiling water bath for 25 minutes. 

When the time is up, remove the canning pot from the heat and remove the lid. Let the jars sit in the pot for another 5 minuts, this helps to prevent the curd from reacing to the rapid temperature change and bubbling out of the jars!

My contribution to the process!

Wowza - way more complex that we expected! Martin and I were sweating bullets in our over heated kitchen, and we were NOT expecting to be standing over boiling water for as long as we did! We already have plans to make more of this.... but maybe when the weather is a little cooler since citrus is in season (um... in Florida!) in the winter! 

Want to see the gift we crafted? Here it is!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Of COURSE Martin whipped up a batch of bread to go with our spreads, what else?! All three were big hits, and GUESS WHAT?! We got to bring home my great grandmother's double boiler! I am so excited to try making more curds - oh boy!

Do you can? What are your favorite recipes? Share! :) 

Our Daily Bread

How is everyone's Memorial Day weekend going? Hopefully everyone is having nice weather, honoring our service men and women, and cooking magical food! At the McGowan Hobmeier household, half of us have been working too much (any guesses who that might be??), and the other half has been pick up the house! What a team, right?

I've been planning on introducing our bread recipe on here anyhow, and since I got a few requests from my facebook friends on one of our variations, I figured today was a great day to do that! Credit needs to go where credit is deserved here. I can distinctly remember having brunch with my friend Helen and her family when she served us some amazing sweet rolls and fresh bread. Color me impressed to find out that Helen has made both using a recipe she claimed was extremely easy and cheap! I made some half hearted claim that I would give it a try, not really thinking I would every tackle it. But when money got tight last year, and my German (read bread enthusiast) husband still wanted to eat bread, I thought it was a good time to give it a go! Thank God we did, we will NEVER buy bread again!

Artisan Bread Boule 
Make 4 One Pound Loaves or 2 Larger Loaves


3 Cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 Tablespoons salt (we use coarse sea salt)
1 1/2 Tablespoons yeast
6 1/2 Cups flour

* Cornmeal for baking

Combine the salt and yeast in the lukewarm water, and allow it to quick dissolve (a minute or two). Add all flour, and mix together. (We use a kitchen aid mixer and a dough hook and it takes just a few minutes to make a perfect dough. The first time I tried this recipe I tried to mix it by hand, and it was frustrating to say the least. If you have a mixer - USE IT!) Put dough in a container and loosely cover. Allow it to rise for two hours at room temperature, then fully cover and put in the refrigerator overnight. The dough will keep for up to two weeks in the fridge, though it doesn't last that long around here!

This is our storage container - works perfectly!

To bake: Take dough out and turn onto a lightly floured surface. Create a free form loaf (or, Helen bakes it in a loaf pan for uniform sandwich slices) and let rise for 20 minutes.  

                             

Place a pizza stone in oven (if you have one). Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Once the oven preheats, carefully remove the pizza stone and scatter cornmeal over the surface, and transfer loaf to the stone. Make several cuts to the top of the loaf, then place in the oven. Put a cup of water into a baking dish, and place that in a rack below the bread. Cook for 25-30 minutes, or until the loaf in a golden brown. 

We make two larger loaves rather than four small ones

Martin and I were at the co-op one day and Martin had an idea to take our standard bread recipe and add sunflower seeds for some crunch. I wasn't sure how I thought it would go, but encouraged him to try it out! All he did was add about a cup of sunflower seeds to the dough when it was mixed up. We really enjoyed it, and I suggested that we should reserve sunflower seeds to sprinkle on top before putting it in the oven! 

The sunflower seeds were an easy addition!

The sunflower seeds added a great crunch!

 

Delicious straight from the oven!

So that's it! This recipe is SO easy, SO tasty, and SO cost effective! I can not stress how much money we are saving by making this bread. We buy everything in bulk, so consider that 25 pounds of flour is just over $10, a big fancy bottle of sea salt is $4, a massive jug of yeast is $8, and water is free. Pennies on the dollars people! Try it and I bet you won't want to go back either! 

Using Whatcha Got. And make.

Every once in a while I am suddenly struck by how DIFFERENT my life is now compared to a year ago. Just moments ago I was chatting with a friend about how much of a struggle it is for me to get up and to work by 8AM now. Less than a year ago I was out of bed and at Curves by 6AM most mornings, and on the bus by 7:25AM or I was late! My current jobs offer me very little consistency, but one thing that has happened is that I'm now used to work second shifts. I am a counselor at a 24 hour residential community for teenagers, and the majority of my shifts are 3:30PM-12:30AM. When we switch shifts, I often end up donating 15-30 minutes (or more) to get the next worker caught up on what is going on with the students, and since I live about 15 minutes outside of Houghton, I consider it a job well done if I'm in bed and sleeping before 2. On the other hand, I work in infant/toddler and preschool classrooms that are open from 8-6. Whenever I am scheduled to be in at 8 (or the super painful 7:45!) I inwardly cringe JUST a bit. But I've become a machine, and I can work almost any shift without much trouble now, so huzzah. This week I happen to be tapped to work Tuesday through Friday at 8, and even though I am able to get to bed earlier on the days I'm not working with the teenagers, I find it's very difficult for me to fall asleep, which is a bummer.

I've found that having something to look forward to can help me get out of bed, and my new favorite breakfast is overnight oatmeal, sometimes called summer porridge. I've mentioned that Martin and I have started to make greek yogurt at home, and this recipe is the main reason we looked into making it ourselves in the first place! This is the recipe for greek yogurt that we have been using, but there are a lot of great recipes out there! I liked this one the most because I'm obsessed with my slow cooker, and also because I don't have a candy thermometer and I'm not confident that I will know what 200 degrees looks like by sight! :) 

Our first batch was a total bust in terms of thickness. We managed to make yogurt, but it was quite thin and never got thicker. We are not sure if it is because we used skim milk or if the yogurt that was used as starter cultures wasn't fresh enough, so we tried a slightly different approach the second time. I know that there are a LOT of yogurt makers out there that swear that whole milk is the way to go, but I'm not one of them! I declared that I would never use anything more than 1% milkfat, so 1% it was!

Investing in our local dairy products! 

I had a typically ridiculous yooper experience when I went to the closest grocery store to our house to get the milk and a single starter yogurt, of course! A store clerk was stocking yogurts when I came by to grab a plain greek yogurt. I scanned the rows of Fage, Okios, Greek Gods, and Chobani, and much to my dismay I did not see a SINGLE plain yogurt! How could this be?? I scanned again and also checked for vanilla, since someone specifically asked if vanilla would work in the comment section of the recipe I use. Surely there would be vanilla. No vanilla. No lemon. Not a single variety that didn't say "fruit on the bottom" or had artificial flavors or dyes in it. By now the store clerk had noticed (and probably heard) my distress, and asked if I was looking for something in particular. When I told him what I was looking for, he glanced at his cart of Yoplait Lights, and told me that they didn't have what I was looking for. Not one to accept defeat, I decided that I would make do with what I DID have, and took a peach fruit on the bottom yogurt with the plan that I would scrape the half cup of plain greek yogurt I needed off the top. That's "Yopper Genius" in action people! I grabbed a half gallon of the local dairy, Jilbert's, 1% milk and headed home to create yogurt. Upon suggestion of fellow yogurt makers, I did NOT crank the heat as I had planned, but rather increased the cooking time of the milk by an hour, so I was whisking my scraped yogurt and milk combo by 10PM. I had to work at 8 the next morning, so I started the draining process (we use paper towels rather than cheesecloth) and Martin filled our tubs with four perfect cups of greek yogurt the next day! And we all lived happily ever after. 

The first recipe I linked to, the summer porridge, really WAS the genesis of this yogurt making adventure. Not to make me sound like a crunchy, granola, yogurt making, co-op owning backwoods person, but this oatmeal is SO healthy, and SO easy, and SO satisfying, but SOOOO expensive! Every jar has a quarter cup of greek yogurt, a third of a cup of milk, and one and a half teaspoons of chia seeds in it! Not to mention the produce costs... we love this stuff, but were looking for a way to cut back on costs. A two cup tub of greek yogurt costs around $5 here, and we can now make four cups of yogurt for the cost of milk, which is less than $2. We got the chia seeds on sale at the co-op, so we stocked up and are set for a while! 

The oatmeal is positively wonderful, and stored in the cutest like half pint mason jars this side of ever. We even whipped up some oatmeal for my mom and dad when they visited a few weeks ago, and they liked it so much my mom left with half pint jars of their own to try this at home! We are particularly partial to the rasperry vanilla variety, but we really do love them all. We were blessed with a haphazard garden when we bought our house, and last year we had more raspberries than you could shake your fist at! We're just PRAYING that will happen this year! We also had the sweetest strawberries I've ever tasted, and plan on making our own recipe for summer porridge! I'll let you know what we come up with! 

YUM! Raspberry Vanilla Overnight Oatmeal!

Believe it or not, OURS are even CUTER! 

We have these squat square half pints! SQUEE!

Speaking of our garden, I've strong armed... no, forced... no, ASKED Martin to be a guest blogger on here to talk about one of the ways we are using our overabundance of rhubarb tomorrow! It will be an all things rhubarb extravaganza! I know you can hardly wait, right?

Yooper love!