PACC Butterfly Effect Hummus

Heather's Butterfly Effect Hummus is the recipe I started out with and made a few changes to make some really superior hummus.  Last week I made a different recipe of hummus and Dear One enjoyed it. He has not had a chance at this yet  but I hope he will like it since I REALLY like it!

PACC Butterfly Effect Hummus

2 cans chick peas, drained retaining aquafaba

4 large garlic cloves

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

3 Tablespoons tahini

1 teaspoon pink salt

3/4 cup aquafaba -though I started out
with 1/2 cup liquid

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

Put them all in the Cuisinart food processor and processed until nice and light and fluffy. No, I did not press the garlic, just threw the cloves in whole.  So good.

It is just barely possible that four giant cloves of garlic is a little over the top, but I won't know for sure until I eat more the second day.  Still, I do like garlic and it keeps the vampires away they say...

Here is the Butterfly Effect Hummus on WasaKrisps with sauerkraut on top.  It is really good. I will eat more like this!  I offered some to Dear One but he declined.  Sauerkraut is not on his list of To Eat foods.  Sadly, because it has some pluses for the gut biome, I hear, though other smart people say it has too much salt to be good for you.  I take that with a grain of salt...

Health Update

 This morning early I walked into the TV room/Dear One's office.  He glanced up from his computer and said, "You look bad."  I thanked him and told him I FELT bad!  I have been doing the chemo cream treatment on my other cheek.  I have been doing it for ten days of the prescribed fourteen days but I JUST CANNOT GO ON with the treatment.

When I got my act together enough, I went to the doctor's office so see if I could just sneak in, have him look at the cheek, write out the prescription for the healing ointment and then get out of there.  Well!! That was not going to happen though he did have an appointment about 2 hours later.  Which I showed up for!

This year he was kind enough not to laugh when he saw the damage to my skin that chemo cream had made.  He did tell me I should be happy because "it worked".  He also told me that I am an over-achiever and when we do this again in two or three years (NEVER is about as soon as I would be willing to do it.  At least right now...) instead of treating for 14 days we will do 5-7 days.

When I woke up two days ago and found there were yellow patches on my skin in multiple places I immediately thought that the skin had been worn off down to the fat. I still am of that mind.  Very nasty stuff.  It would have been a good idea to wear a hat with a wide brim all these years even if it did make me feel and look silly...!

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the chemo cream treatment but I thought it looked beautiful.  Especially since that was the extent of ice we ourselves had.  This was on our back deck.

To finish up the story of the nasty treatment,  as soon as I returned home from the appointment and the pharmacy you may be certain that I immediately took the antibiotic pills and applied the antibiotic ointment for the first time.  I will be RIGID about taking those!  The doctor said I should be feeling better soon.  That is something I would like to count on.  I need to be able to sleep again...

Munchie Monday: Plant-based Garlic Alfredo Success

 This morning first thing I watched Dr. John McDougall on Chef AJ Live.  It was a two hour program but it was excellent. It was great to watch especially if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes. It would be good to watch if you have cardiovascular disease as well.  Probably any chronic illness could benefit from his treatment.

As a result of watching this, I am even more committed to keeping the added fats our of our food even if all the smart people in the world say that plant fats are really important for you. There is enough fat in food without adding more.  Even though I  do LOVE butter and even more, I love the olive oil with seasonings in it for dipping bread into. I can re-think after I have lost one hundred pounds. Or more.  Maybe re-think.  We will see.

So Dear One was hoping for a "less-interesting meal" for supper tonight.  Normally I would have suggested that the food we had already eaten was enough for today but since I love him, and since he printed out the menu I wrote out many MANY years ago when we were not plant-based eaters, I looked at it. And saw a possible meal.

Tonight's supper on the menu was supposed to be Fettuccini Alfredo.  Well, you know what that means: look for a plant-based Alfredo sauce alternative to the real dairy-and-fat thing.  As it happens I had already found one and had smartly put it in Notes on my devices. It was easily findable!!  So, I went to Food Lion and purchased the ingredients we did not have at the top of the cupboard/easily to be found for this recipe.  (I also took along about five other recipes to acquire those ingredients!  $37.58 later I headed for home!)

Plant  Garlic-y Alfredo Sauce (the way I made it)

1 large sweet onion, diced
1 cup homemade hot-off-the-Instant Pot vegetable broth, or more if needed for texture
 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/2 cup roasted cashews--you should really use raw cashews but...
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan pour 1 cup vegetable broth, the diced onion, and chopped garlic.  Cover and cook for 8 minutes or until the onions are very soft.  Remove the lid a couple of times to stir and make sure there is enough liquid to keep the vegetables from burning.

While they are cooking, put the salt, pepper, cashews, and nutritional yeast in a bowl and get out the lemon juice.  Set these items by your blender. A high-speed blender is your friend for this but a regular blender will work, especially if you soak the cashews for 3 hours or more in water to cover.  When ready to put the cashew in the blender, drain the soaking water and discard it.

Once the onions and garlic are cooked, dump them into the blender with all the other ingredients.  Do not forget the lemon juice!

While all this has been going on, cook your pasta.  We used some "SuperGreens" Pasta.  It was green so you could almost believe the advertising!  Cook the pasta to your preferred texture.  We cooked it 7 minutes.

Drain pasta and return to pot.  Pour the sauce you have blended one minute, or until smooth and creamy, then scrape the sauce into the pasta.  Stir gently until well combined.

Dear One's first words were, "It is sweet."  I told him I had used sweet onions. I hope this means he might be willing to try some other sweet onion dishes I want to make.

Well, I am writing this near 7:00 on Saturday night. I am just about shot.  I have been busy today but not so that I should be this tired.  I think it must be the result of the chemo cream treatment.  I am SO GLAD that I should be done with this round of treatment come Thursday!  Do not think I will do it again...

Shut In Because of Weather!

Big surprise!  There really can be nasty icy weather here in South Carolina.  It was very low grade problematically but still, not reasonable to go out.  

After making air fried Russet potatoes dice for Dear One and Asian sweet potatoes diced for me along with salad and broccoli (for me!), I went upstairs to avoid the refrigerator and cupboards that were in danger of calling out to me.  Not that there is anything spectacular hiding away, but if I looked....well you just never know.

So I went up stairs and began watching a YouTube.  Dear One followed me up and watched the whole thing with me.  It was very interesting and makes me want to be more rigid in following this advise.

After watching the video I looked at some of our recent food.  Not disappointed!

One thing Jeff Novick said was to start a meal with salad and soup.  Well, our meal WAS salad and bean soup.  Yay!  We did the right thing for our bodies.  I hope you find this lecture useful. He is pretty fun to listen to.  Dear One watched the WHOLE THING and started in on another video!  Surprising.

Onward to more calorie density progress.

Sew a Microwave Potato Bag: Easy!

 Years and years ago I was at a craft fair and bought a potato bag.  We used it a few times and then it fell out of favor, or it was lost, or some other thing.

Last week I saw a few videos on making potato bags so today I made one!

We had two fat quarters of 100% cotton fabric which I cut down to be 11 or maybe 12 by 22 or whatever the length was.

Other necessities: 100% cotton thread and 100% cotton batting.  We had Wrap and Zap or some such name 100% cotton batting.

You need three pieces: two of fabric and one of batting.

Lay down the batting then lay wrong side to the batting and right sides together of the fabric.  Stitch around leaving a SUBSTANTIAL opening.  (The people who said leave a 2-inch opening did not go all the way through with the project OR they have tiny little fingers!!!)

Turn the piece right side out, pulling out the corners so they are nice and sharp.  Don't use sewing scissors to punch them out unless you are risk-taker...you are likely to punch right through the corner and then need to re-stitch after turning wrong side out again.  Not so fun.

Now top stitch all around at about 1/4", being sure to close up the opening you made for turning.

This was the first and probably only potato bag unless I get a heavier-duty sewing machine.  Four thicknesses of fabric folded over making eight layers plus three layers of batting were a bit much for the machine I was using...

Fold the bottom up about 7 inches.  Fold the top down over the bottom flap, maybe 3 inches.  Whatever the measurement, be sure it is at least an inch over the "inner/bottom flap".  This would be a good time to pin the two sides together.

Stitch the two side edges together (NOT the ones with the folded edges) using 1/4" seams.

Your bag is done.

Scrub your potatoes and place up to four potatoes in the bag and microwave 6-8 minutes or until they are soft when you give them a squeeze while they are still in the bag in the microwave.

Works like a charm.

Munchie Monday: Three Ingredient Flat Bread!

 Today I saw a video that showed how to make a "quick and easy" flat bread.  I was thinking burrito in a big way and since we had the ingredients, plus some leftover refried beans in the refrigerator, I decided to make this flat bread.

Well...this did not turn out the way I was expecting!

The person in the video used whole wheat flour but said you could use any kind of flour you have on hand, including almond flour.  Since I did not have any whole wheat flour ground up and we DID have two bags of almond flour for some reason, I used almond flour in place of the whole wheat flour. I do not recommend it.

The recipe I made was:

1 cup almond flour
1 cup warm cooked and mashed sweet potato
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix all together.  It will  be somewhat sticky.

When I started mixing the dough I put the cast iron skillet over a medium flame to heat.  Using extra almond flour on the counter I rolled out the flat bread then plopped it into the hot skillet.  The girl on the video said to cook two minutes then flip and cook two more minutes.

This is the first two flat breads! It looked burned but did not taste burned.

This is not what I was thinking we were going to get!  I did eat a few of the crumbs and they tasted really good, so I tried again.

This time I got out our cast iron tortilla press:

To be successful making tortillas in this press you need to split open a gallon-sized Ziplock bag to line the press.  Put in a ball of the dough between the Ziplock "sheets", close the lid, and give it a press.  Take out the flat bread/tortilla and slap it on the griddle.

This did not work the first time because the dough ball was too small.  The tortilla was so thin I could not get it off the plastic so back to the drawing board.  The second time I ALSO put flour on the bottom of the plastic.  That worked better but the final flat bread I put more almond flour on the plastic then even  MORE almond flour on top of the dough ball before pressing. This worked out better.

This is how the "burrito" turned out!  More like a burrito plate!  AND we needed a fork to eat it because the flat bread was so tender.  It tasted great!  To me.  Dear One said he would prefer not to have so many "interesting" meals, just plain old store-bought tortillas.  Now, this is disappointing, but since I love him, I will honor his request. To some extent, at least!

 This does not mean I will stop trying. I will just make regular flour tortillas which I make and cannot keep ahead of his eating of the hot off the griddle tortillas!  I can make the interesting ones for myself and let him try them if he chooses...

Food Friday-Broccoli Quiche

 Last month we had quiche for Christmas lunch.  They were the prettiest quiches I ever made!  I have to show off a little since I NEVER get a chance to do that!  It also tasted really good!

To make this quiche I followed the following recipe, more or less!

BROCCOLI CHEESE QUICHE

Pastry for single pie crust 
1 cup finely chopped broccoli 

1 cup finely diced onion
1 cup grated cheddar cheese 
4 eggs 
1 1/2 cups cream 
½ teaspoon salt 
Dash of pepper 
Dash of nutmeg 

In a very hot skillet dry sauté the onion and broccoli then put broccoli/onion mixture and cheese in pastry-lined pan. Beat together eggs, cream, and spices in bowl. Pour the custard mixture over cheese and broccoli. Place in preheated over at 375 degrees 35-40 minutes or until top is golden brown and. knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Yield: 6 servings.

In this case I divided the mixture between two pie shells then poured  the egg/cream mixture over the tops.  This cooked for almost an hour.

So good!

Music Stand for Knitting

 Today I was doing some two-color knitting and realized again how handy it was that I had purchased a metal music stand to assist with the project!  I am so happy the thought came to me a couple of years ago.

Sitting with a pattern on my lap, trying to keep everything needed to knit a pattern, whether cables or multiple colors, turned out to be more hassle than I enjoyed. I had done it for years but finally began thinking of a better way.  So tired of things falling to the floor and having to try to reconstruct where I had been in the knitting. Enter the metal music stand!

 

This is the set up.  It is perfect for doing this work. I have the stand set up on my right where I can just glance up from my knitting to see what the next stitches are.

This metal music stand is so great to use with knitting that I talked Dear One into getting me a second one for downstairs where I also knit!  (I have a project downstairs that I started many years ago.  Since I became accustomed to reading charts for patterns, the "word charts" no longer work for me very well. Actually, I have to keep looking up ALL THE TIME and that cuts down on how many stitches I get done in a given amount of time.  I have to convert that pattern to a chart, which will happen, I think.  I hope, anyway!)

You will notice on the music stand I have the wire "clamp" which holds one side of the pattern page and some blue clamps on the left side of the paper, thus holding it securely in place.  This is very handy when I get up to go around the stand to move my swivel rocking chair away from the wall (again!  it seems to walk back to the wall every other day!!) and knock over the music stand.  The page stays in place.

You will also see that I have a small magnetic strip that I use under the pattern row.  So great a help!  

Anyway, I love this stand!  The lip on the bottom holds the knitting needle cases so I can put the needles back in the case when I am done the project. I like to keep the needles in their original cases so I can easily store them and easily know what needles I have.  You can see the edges of two Chiaogoo needle cases at the bottom right of the photo.  

Also often I put stitch markers on the metal clamping arm so I can just pull them off to use. Nifty!

It seems to me that these music stands were only about $20 apiece, in case you want to go and do likewise...

Blueberry-Patch-To-Be!

 Yesterday I got up fairly early, put on my snake-and-ant-protection boots and went out to the garden patch where we have had zucchini (unsuccessfully), heirloom tomatoes (unsuccessfully), and several other things (unsuccessfully) planted the past two years.  It is time to move on.

We decided that we would like to try blueberries since we love them. They are easy to pick. They are easy to store in the freezer. They are SO easy to eat!  We are now set on learning if they are easy to plant and grow.  As it happens our Christmas dinner guests have a lot of knowledge of growing blueberries.  One of them (Santa!) had brought us many buckets of two-year-old animal dung to start the ball rolling to organic-matter-ify this wretched orange clay soil.

A few days after the buckets arrived, I spread them on the garden. Some days after that I went out with the garden fork to turn over the soil. Did. Not. Work. So I went back into the house until yesterday when I took the long-handled round-pointed shovel and my stroller.  My pink gloves protected my hands so I could confidently pick up some of the organic matter/weeds I had laid on the garden as "mulch" at the end of the year. Our HOA will not allow compost piles so mulch was the way to go...  Many of the woody parts of the plants were still lying on the top of the ground so I moved them to the bushes toward the pond (which the alligators MAY have vacated!!! To my great joy and comfort.)

Here is the dug up plot. It does not look spectacular but I did manage to get the whole thing dug up.  It is about 3 feet by 18 feet. We hope to plant at least 3 blueberry plants there.

Now I am researching blueberry culture in South Carolina Midlands.  Or as close as I can find on YouTube.  I Googled Clemson Extension Service and Blueberries and got a gentleman in North Carolina teaching a blueberry pruning/growing class.  Pretty interesting. It looks like we need pine bark mulch to dig into the ground for aeration. We also need spaghnum peat moss from Canada to get the PH down to 4.5.  AND also we probably need to raise up the bed even more. We shall see how we do!

Any suggestions from locals who are successful with blueberries are welcome!

Quick Project!

Today Dear One was vacuuming.  He does this every week.  Or more often, depending on how many messes I make...!  He is so good to do that.

Today he was vacuuming and was between the kitchen and dining room when the cord got caught on the vegetable rack.  He asked if I could put some tape on it.

Apparently often when he vacuums in that area the cord gets caught. I said I would get the duct tape.  He objected to duct tape for some reason and suggested the Gorilla tape.  He also told me where he thought I could find it.

It was just where he told me so I took the baskets off the rack, made the "repair", put the baskets back on, and bonus!  I put the new Russet potatoes in the bottom basket!

You see that the front curlicue now is "filled in" with Gorilla tape. You can also see that there is a bit of onion paper still on the floor from when I took the baskets off...someone needs to pick that up.  Someone did!  This time it was not Dear One...

 

Winter Knitting Group/Class!

 In winter I really want to knit.  There is something comforting about sitting in a nice chair and peacefully knitting on some project or other. Especially if the chair is a rocking chair.   Because of this I offered to facilitate a knitting class at our local church in the Relief Society Room.  We will meet for 1 hour each Friday morning.  One hour is about all I can take when trying to learn something new.  It may be similar for others.

The "class" will be following along in Jacqueline Fee's The Sweater Workshop.  We will make the sampler. It is a really interesting piece of knitting where we learn many different skills needed to knit a sweater.

This is the sampler I knit in preparation.  The one I knit years ago has long since disappeared.  You can see that some of the things we will learn are:

Garter Stitch

Stockinette stitch

Multiple ribbings

Sweatshirt pocket

Belt

Stripes

Two-color knitting

Bind offs.

And other techniques

It was fun to make. I hope the sisters have fun learning and preparing to knit a sweater.  Knitting in the round is psychologically very satisfying as there are no seams at all.  None to speak of, anyway!

Flower and Leaf Drying Progress

 The title is a misnomer really, because this was not so much progress as I needed The Principles of Knitting by June Hiatt to weight something else on my desk.  Well, a paper project where I am making some booklets that have covers being glued.

So, when I was thinking of something to use as a "paper weight" I thought of The Principles of Knitting which has more than 700 pages.  A fabulous book but so far I have mostly used it for drying flowers and now, weighting glued covers!

In the summer when the hydrangeas were out I was given a few blooms and another friend gave me some Coleus leaves.  

After I put them between cotton makeup sponge circles I inserted a dozen or so between pages in the PoK.  Now, months later, I have pulled them out.

The sponges did leave a little residue on the plant parts but that will be easily removed.

The new ones from pressing are the leaves and white blooms on the top of the pile. You can see the residue but it is not a problem.

Air Fryer Carrot Fries!

 Yes, carrot fries.  My sister sent me a group on Facebook called Easy Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes which I immediately joined.  (Eventually I will need to stop joining groups or I would spend all my time there but that is not the direction I am going. I am trying to get away from media....). The recipe they have for these carrot fries has some aspects I am just not going to do but this is what I did:

Cut up a cup or so of carrots into fry-like shape.  I did not have full length carrots, just "baby-like" carrots which were just big carrots ground down to baby size.  That was no problem. I just cut them in half lengthwise and if they were very large, I cut them in quarters.

At this point I put them in a bowl of water while I put the seasoning together. 

The seasoning I used was:

Granulated onion--1/4 teaspoon
Granulated garlic--1/4 teaspoon
Ground black pepper--1/4 teaspoon
Pink salt--1/2 teaspoon
Italian Herb Seasoning Grinder (Sam's Club brand)--1 teaspoon

 These seasonings I put in a small bowl and mixed well.  At this point I drained the carrots from the water then sprinkled on the flavoring and tossed well. 

Here they are with their coating of seasoning.  The recipe called for a good amount of oil.  (We are not adding oil to anything currently.  I will let you know how that turns out in a month or two or three...!). I thought I would try just tossing the wet carrots in the herbs. It worked just fine.  They were actually pretty nice even raw.

 I placed them on the rack in the Ninja Foodie Air Fryer we have (It has a nice big rack) and turned on the air fryer to 400 degrees F for 10 minutes.  At 5 minutes I shook them up a bit then put them back in to cook the rest of the 10 minutes.  I tasted one and decided to let them go another 5 minutes.

The verdict:  these are pretty darn good!  Dear One's verdict: they are not cooked.  He was thinking they would be soft all the way through like potato fries.   Because of that I will try again but par-cook the carrots and see how they go.  Will let you know another day!  BUT I will say that the bowl that was placed next to Dear One did go down pretty fast so I guess they were not THAT bad!

DIY Earring Experiment!

 For ages I have wanted to make some earrings.  I made some in the past but the ear wires were very hard on my ears.  Plus I did not wear earrings that often so that was a problem.

Well, that has changed!

Our daughter makes beautiful earrings.  She made some stainless steel ear wires for me and sent them to me ages ago. I finally made the time (during one of my nighttime crafting sessions...!) to make a pair.

These are the earrings I made.  

After making one pair I have a good mind to make some more!  I just hope not to spend much money on earring findings.  In keeping with that, if someone would like the same beads I used, I would be happy to exchange beads with you.  I wanted some red earrings.  Now I have them.  Now I am thinking about blue earrings...!  And other colors.