Sister's Choice Quilts

Light Summer Meals

As I have mentioned, it has been dreadfully hot where I live. Consequently, we have been eating a lot lighter lately. This week I tried out a dish for Chicken in Lettuce Wraps, which was delicious. It is a copycat recipe of the amazing dish served at PF Changs. It is made with ground chicken and takes around 20 minutes to put together, which is also ideal in hot weather.

I used a pound of ground chicken, and my husband and I each had a serving like the one pictured above. There was tons of the chicken mixture leftover which was great for lunch the next day. You can wrap the mixture in butter lettuce leaves as we did, or try wrapping it in a flour tortilla. Not as low-calorie, but I bet it would be delicious. Serve with a side of pineapple or melon and it is a perfect meal.

So, let me tell you about the author of the recipe. She is an adorable girl named Chungah Rhee, born in Queens into a traditional Korean household. While in college studying to be an epidemiologist she started a terrific blog site called Damn Delicious. She has also written a cookbook by that name, which is excellent. Everything I have made from it has been great. She also posts a lot on Instagram. Her style is fast and easy, although she makes use of her slow cooker for some great simple recipes as well. She puts out new recipes on Instagram and her website frequently and I love following her. She also has two adorable Corgis named Butters and Cartman, and she shares pics of them often. Clearly, she has dropped the plan to be an epidemiologist with the start of her current successful business ventures.

How about you? Do you eat differently in the summer? What are your favorite things to eat in the heat?

 

One Quilt Block

This one quilt block is the only one I have managed to make this week. But here it is. The block is Butter Churn from Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage book. It is the 12-inch block from Week Six of Lori's Red Sampler Sew Along. I didn't have her exact fabrics but came as close as I could with what I had on hand. It's kind of a busy little thing. The idea was to mix tones of red. That fabric with the hangers on it is about as cute as it gets.

I am enjoying the sew along a lot, but have fallen far behind. I've decided not to worry about it one bit.

We had Eva over for a sleepover on Tuesday night and we made shish kebabs. You can't see it very well in the picture but she is holding up a skewer of peppers that she had just assembled. She is pretending to take a bite. She is wearing her fox nightshirt and the veggies kind of blend in. (We had just gotten home from the pool and she changed into her sleep shirt from her wet swimsuit).

And here is my husband seasoning the meat. He is doing very well after his recent health issues, thank goodness. We had a very nice family time with our granddaughter that night. The kebabs were delicious and so easy. 

When we make shish kebab, we always put all the same item on a skewer, we never mix them up. In photos, they show a slice of onion, a tomato, a mushroom, a pepper, the meat, etc all on one skewer and it looks so pretty. We have found that the different items all take different lengths of time to cook, so our skewers are all meat, all onion, all peppers, etc. How do you do it?

Hope you are having a great week!

Mushroom Leek Tart

Hope you all had a lovely weekend. Mine started last Thursday and lasted through Sunday. It was my birthday yesterday and I seemed to have started the celebration early. My daughter and her husband came over yesterday for a barbeque and I rounded out the meal with a mushroom leek tart. It was so easy and good I have to share how it's made. Here is the link to the recipe that inspired my version.

The original recipe calls for asparagus with the leeks, but I am not a fan, so I substituted mushrooms. This is the third time I have made this recipe and I am getting my technique down better. This time I cut the recipe in half and it was great. I have actually posted on making this tart before. Here is a link to my first effort if you would like to read that. I share more photos of the process in that post.

Here's what I did in a nutshell. I used one refrigerated pie crust, topped it with 1 cup of shredded fontina cheese. I topped the cheese with one leek and 5 or 6 mushrooms I had sauteed in 2 T. butter. I put a few dabs of ricotta cheese on top of the veggies (you could use soft mozzarella too I think). I sprinkled some thyme on top, just a little. Lastly I crimped the pie dough up and all around the filling as you would for a rustic tart. Brush the crust with egg wash. I baked it on a hot pizza stone at 450 for 18 minutes.

Refer to the recipe for detailed instructions for a tart that is double the size of mine. You could use any veggies you like and use a different cheese if you prefer. Make sure your filling isn't too "wet".  The first two times I made this my bottom crust was a bit soggy, but that hot pizza stone solved that issue.

Eva is off camping this week, so I plan to get in some sewing and reading. Summer seems to be in full swing all of a sudden!

Freezer Meals

With all I have going on at the moment, I have been trying to think of something, anything, that would make things a bit easier. Ten years ago, when my daughter Sara was pregnant with Eva, we got together a couple of times and made freezer meals. The idea was, she would stock up her freezer with dinners so life would be simpler once her newborn had arrived. Great idea. That could work for me now, right?

Back then, I bought a book called Dream Dinners which features make ahead and freeze meals. It is still in print, but I bet you could find a used copy and save even more money. The women who wrote the book actually started up a franchise business where people could go assemble meals and take them home to freeze. I recall seeing the shops but never went in. I think it was kind of expensive. I like the idea of picking out a few recipes, doing a marathon shopping trip, and going home and assembling the meals myself. 

So that is what I did yesterday. 

I made Spaghetti and Meatballs, Beef Enchiladas, and Baked Ziti Casserole. My husband and I don't eat that much since it is just the two of us, so I bought fairly small containers for freezing. They are foil pans that come in a stack of five. They measure 6" x 8" and are about 2" deep. Each recipe I made served 6 people, and I managed to divide each recipe into three pans. Each pan would provide two very generous servings.

I will say, it did take about three and a half hours to cook and assemble everything. But I now have 9 freezer meals to use on busy days or to take with me when I stay with my father on the weekends.

I'd like to take this a step further though. I have been reading about making freezer meals that you place into freezer bags and then put directly into your Instant Pot or slow cooker. How about that for a great idea? Plus, most of these types of meals do not require cooking first. You just combine the raw ingredients in the bag and freeze. Have any of you made these types of meals? Can you recommend a cookbook that has recipes that go from freezer to Instant Pot or slow cooker? Please share if you have any suggestions!

Red Pineapple Blocks, Apple Crostata, and Quiche

I could have sworn I posted Tuesday.  But when I got up in the morning to read my comments from you all, there weren't any.  What? Well, I hadn't posted anything for anyone to comment on.  I am losing it I tell you.  Our governor has issued another strict stay at home order for our area, and we are not supposed to mingle with anyone outside our household or go anywhere unnecessary.  There goes Christmas. My mind has been everywhere but focused on what it needs to be!

I have been working on my last five red pineapple blocks, and they are so gorgeous.  I have two more rounds to put on these last blocks and then I am going to sew those puppies together. What a great quilt this will be for next Christmas!

After, what, forty-some blocks I am getting pretty good at using the Possibilities Pineapple Ruler. Do you see how I drew diagonal lines on that center block? That is the key to keeping things from going wonky on you. You line up the center lines on the diagonal lines of the center block and make sure the diagonal and horizontal lines on the rest of the ruler line up. You just want to keep everything super straight. It is a challenge, but if you do your best, the blocks will turn out quite well.

ADDED LATER: A reader asked where she could purchase this ruler, and after an extensive online search, I am unable to find it. I am imagining that the company "Possibilities" must have gone out of business. Linda Milligan and Nancy Smith (who created the ruler) also wrote a book or too with "Possibilities" in the title.  Some of those you can still get, but since they feature the Possibilities rulers, they might not be so useful. Maybe eBay would be a source to find a used Pineapple Rule.

For our baking project this week, Eva and I made a Rustic Apple Crostata. It was an Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) recipe and was delicious!  Her crust was a teensy bit hard to work with. I should have used my tried and true recipe for the crust, but I was honoring her recipe by following it to the letter. The crust was awfully flakey and kind of fell apart, but what the heck.  We served it with a spoon and called it lunch.

Since her recipe made two crusts, I saved the second one to make a quiche for dinner. 

And that turned out pretty well too.  The secret to quiche (and pumpkin pie) is that you need to partially bake the crust before you fill it.  No more soggy bottomed pies if you bake the crust for a bit before filling it.

Hope your week is going well!

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving friends. I hope you are all feeling as thankful and blessed as I am. Even though we may not be together this year, I am so grateful for my wonderful family.

Butternut Squash Soup

I am trying to replicate my son in law's recipe for Butternut Squash Soup. Which is the most delicious soup on the planet. Of course, he doesn't have a recipe. Basically, he told me to roast a halved butternut squash in the oven at 400 until it is soft. First, brush it liberally with butter and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Saute one chopped onion, one chopped apple, and some garlic in a Dutch oven. Add some broth to deglaze the pan. Add the cooked squash that you have scooped out of the skin. Salt, pepper. Add the rest of a carton of broth. Cook a half hour or so. Add a cup of half and half. Use an immersion blender and puree until smooth.  Then, add the secret ingredient.

Any sort of maple syrup will do, it just has to be the real thing. None of that Mrs. Butterworths or Log Cabin stuff. I don't even have an amount to tell you. I probably put in a couple of tablespoons. It gives the soup the most amazing flavor. You sure wouldn't know you were eating a vegetable, and that's fine with me.

Isn't that a fun photo above? You can see my husband laying out all his precious Christopher Radko glass ornaments on towels. He likes to look at them all before he decides where to put them on the tree. He gets so much enjoyment out of those decorations.

It is pretty domestic and cozy around my house these days. Hope the days leading up to Thanksgiving are good for you too.

Sewcialites Block 7, Mold, and Meatloaf

Every Friday the Fatquarter Shop introduces a new block of the week in their Sewcialites Sew Along. Kimberly Jolly, the force behind FQS has a YouTube tutorial/video every Friday morning.  I enjoy watching them because she often mentions items the shop carries, projects that are coming up, new fabric lines to look forward to etc.  It is very chatty and fun and lasts over an hour, which is nice to have going on while you are sewing.

The tutorials are very in-depth and are particularly helpful to new sewers, as she shares a ton of great tips. If you can't watch on Friday mornings, don't worry, the videos are on YouTube forever for you to watch when convenient.

I am amassing a nice little pile of blocks for this sew-along.  

Eva and I are having an exciting week of school. She loves science and we are up to our eyeballs in an experiment on mold. Yes indeedy.  This is going to take a couple of weeks to see through, but we will learn how long it takes for several food items to get moldy under various conditions. Woo hoo, bet you can't wait to hear more about that.

In other news, I picked up a couple of new cookbooks called America's Most Wanted Recipes, and have been having fun with them. The premise of the books are that the recipes are the most requested ones from well known restaurant chains. PF Changs, Olive Garden, Benihana's, and tons more. We made Mrs. Field's Pumpkin Spice cookies and Boston Market's Meatloaf. The meatloaf was sensational and made delicious sandwiches the next day.  The meatloaf recipe was in the book on the left.

Hope your week is going well!

 

Jelly Roll Blocks, Chicken Chili, an Audio Book, and Good TV

My Take It Easy jelly roll blocks are coming along. They are pretty mindless to make.  All the strips are cut out and I just have to sit there and sew three together. I love listening to audiobooks while I do sewing that doesn't call for much concentration. My current book is quite gothic in style and totally creepy.  Just right for October! It is called The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James. 

The story is set in Cornwall on an estate called Winterbourne Hall. There is a dual timeline of the present day and 1947. The set up is a cliche, but I got past it. The modern-day character inherits the house from an aunt she didn't know she had. Of course, she did. That happens all the time, right? At any rate, the atmosphere is deliciously spooky, complete with heavy fog, impenetrable sea mists, and sinister children. There is something malevolent afoot, and I am going to find out what it is.

The weather is getting more fall-like every day. Cooler temperatures, changing color on trees and shrubs, and earlier sunsets.  I have a white chicken chili* in the crockpot and plans to watch my favorite Australian soap opera on tv tonight.  That would be A Place to Call Home.  If you haven't watched it, you better start! There are 6 wonderful seasons and if you tune in, you will completely understand why it was the most beloved tv drama series ever in the land Down Under. So good. Don't miss it.

*Changes I made to the chili recipe: I used the meat from a rotisserie chicken, added a can of Rotel diced tomatoes, and garnished it with Fritos).

 

 

 

Cheesy Leek Galette

There has not been much recipe sharing around here, so I thought I'd show you something I made recently. I thoroughly enjoyed making this Cheesy Leek Galette. It is a Pioneer Woman recipe called Cheesy Asparagus Tart.  I don't eat asparagus, so I made some necessary changes to the recipe. It seems pretty forgiving, so I think you could switch things up quite a bit.

So here's what I did.

I sauteed some leeks, chopped mushrooms and half a yellow pepper in butter until soft. You could use any veggies you like, but I think the leeks are important.

I overlapped two refrigerated pie crust rounds in a large shallow sided baking pan. I topped the crusts with Havarti cheese.  The recipe calls for Fontina, but my store didn't have it. You can always substitute ladies, it isn't written in stone that you must follow the ingredients exactly.

Cover the grated cheese with the sauteed veggie mixture.

Dollop about a cup of ricotta cheese over the veggie mixture.

Pull the pie crust up and around the cheese/veggie mixture, overlapping in the style of a rustic galette. Brush the pie crust generously with a beaten egg.

Bake as the recipe directs and there you have it. And it was absolutely delicious.  I will be making this many more times.