Tomato Caprese Pie

Of all the fresh produce that drip from the market stands this time of year, I think tomatoes are the ones I love best...  

I adore the smell of the tomato vine when you walk through the stalls at the farmers' market. Like a summer rain storm, I can smell the tomatoes long before I see them.

When I was a kid, my brother and I loved to scour our mother's garden, looking for green-horned tomato worms.  We'd hunt through the tomato plants first thing in the morning while it was still cool and the plump caterpillars were inching their way through the green tomatoes.  Thinking we were saving them from certain doom, we'd collect them in old glass pickle jars, adding sand and sticks and fuzzy tomato leaves for them to munch on.  You see, after the breakfast dishes were washed, my mother would put on her sun hat and go out to the garden, and if she found a green-horned tomato worm feasting on her plants, she'd certainly smash it.  Heroically, we'd pull the worms from the vines, and place them safely in their new homes.  In protest the worms would spit-up on us, a sticky green mess that smelled of tomato vine.  By lunchtime we'd smell like tomatoes from head to toe.

Okay, not a very appetizing memory, I have to admit.  But the point is that just the smell of tomatoes on the vine brings me right back to these moments as a child in the garden.

Tomatoes are everywhere these days, and I can't help but buy them every chance I get.  The kids eat them like apples, juice running down their chins, and I've been known to add them to just about anything.  Someone once said: Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is adding it to your fruit salad.  Well, I haven't yet added them to a fruit salad (it's coming), but I did make a pie with them last weekend.  This Caprese pie is everything we love about Caprese salad, baked into a tender crust.  Finished with a sweet drizzle of balsamic sauce, I can almost imagine I'm back in that garden.  The tomatoes are ripe, and there's not a sticky, green worm to be found.

Caramel Bean Truffles with Fleur De Sel

"What's a caramel bean?" you ask.  Let me explain...

Last month I was invited by Snack Out Loud to participate in a recipe showdown with two other Colorado based food bloggers.  Snack Out Loud would provide their Crunchy Bean Snacks and I would "reinvent" a recipe using one of their five flavours.

Never one to pass up a good challenge, I said "Bring it on!"

A day later a huge box landed on my doorstep.  Inside were several boxes of Snack Out Loud's Crunchy Bean Snacks.  The kids wanted to dig right in, but I needed to do a little research.  So we lined the five different flavours up on the dining room table and I started reading down the list of virtues on each package.

Gluten Free
Non-GMO
Vegan
All Natural
Packed with fiber and protein (7g per package!)
Made using 100% wind power (cool!)
Produced in my home-state of Colorado (local!)
and (most important to me!) Nut-Free

I was getting excited already, but I still hadn't tasted them.  So we ditched our typical afternoon snack (bread and fruit) and dove into the boxes on the table.

I went for Ranch first.  The beans were light, airy and crunchy and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were slightly spicy!  This isn't your run of the mill potato chip ranch flavour!  It had a kick to it!  I closed my eyes and recipes flooded my mind.  These would be perfect sprinkled over a salad . . . like croutons . . . but perhaps that was a little too simple.

Next I grabbed a bag of Jalapeno Cheddar.  Whoa!  My tongue was on fire!  Immediately I thought of breading a chicken cutlet with these, serving it along side a spicy mango black bean salad with a cool margarita to wash it all down.  I got out a notebook and began jotting down recipe ideas.

Eve, meanwhile, was very happily munching away on a package of Tomato Basil bean snacks.  I took a few and thought of pesto.   Could I replace the pine nuts in traditional pesto with these?  A nut-free pesto served over pasta!  I wrote it down in my notebook.

Connor grabbed a bag of Smokey Chipotle BBQ.  A few seconds later he was panting and fanning his mouth with his hand!  These were a little sweet and a lot spicy!  I finished off his bag and got him a big glass of milk.  They reminded me of a sweet, smokey chili.  Something we'd eat on the camping trips of my childhood.  The kind of chili you sop up with hearty cornbread muffins . . . I scribbled "bake into cornbread" in my notebook.

Alas, it was getting late and we were all quite full (7 g of protein, remember) but there was still one flavor that no one had tried.  Lightly Salted.  I picked up a bag and popped a few in my mouth.  Crunchy.  Salty.  Mild.  Then it hit me: This was the perfect "blank canvas" on which to create a work of art.  Something unusual, out of the box.  Something decadent and sweet and unexpected.  The recipes poured in faster than I could write them all down.  In the end, when I finished the package, one word was written on the bottom on the notebook page: "Caramel."

And so, after a few days of playing in the kitchen with melted sugar, chocolate, ice cream and even a little spiced rum, the recipe was finally born.  I was inspired by the crunchy texture to create a candy that was deep, rich and salty.  I tossed the beans in a little homemade caramel and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sea salt.  They were amazing just like this - like caramel corn (I even sprinkled a few on my ice cream that evening).  I was tempted to eat the whole batch but held out.  I had bigger plans for these crunchy little caramel beans.  I made an easy chocolate ganache which I formed into little balls around the caramel beans.  I put the remaining beans in a plastic bag, handed Connor a meat mallet and let him go to town.  When the beans were crushed,  we rolled the truffles in them, pressing all that caramel-y, salty goodness into the sides of the candy.  Et voilà!  A nut-free caramel bean truffle was born - crunchy on the outside; rich and smooth on the inside.

And now you know what a caramel bean is.

Check out the recipe on SnackOutLoud.com and visit their facebook page to see what my competitors came up with.  Then vote for your favourite!  You can vote once a day and be entered to win a carton of your favorite Snack Out Loud flavor.
 CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

Bishop Castle, Rumors of Ghosts & a Picnic in the Woods

It's like something out of a dream... or a nightmare, depending on how you look at it...

Driving down an obscure road, winding like a snake in the grass through the Colorado mountains, its towers rise above the trees, capped by gold mosque-style minarets that catch the sun.  Like a Gothic castle out of Game of Thrones, it's nestled among the pines and aspen trees on the mountain side.  An empty moat stretches out in front, and a gatehouse and drawbridge stand open to greet visitors. 

Since mid-February, the kids have been hinting that they want to go back to Bishop Castle.  Finally here, they run under the iron gate and across the bridge, paying no attention to the silver-headed dragon that emerges over the castle walls.  This dragon (with the help of a hot air balloon burner and two redirected chimneys) actually breathes fire!

Hiking up the eroded mountainside, the castle walls loom before us like a sleeping stone giant, at once both threatening and enticing.  Legend has it that a ghost wanders these halls at night, slipping through the rock walls and keeping watch from the towers high above.  A vapor in the form of a small child with the voice of a man, he disappears like a wisp of smoke into the cool mountain air.  He draws us in.  Beckoning in the softest whisper, "Come in.  If you dare."  Or perhaps that's just the wind, moaning through the open windows.

But where rumors of ghosts are concerned, it's always a good idea to start at the beginning.  So let me take you back 45 years, when a man by the name of J. Bishop began collecting the pink granite rock, carving out a hillside, and building the foundation of a cabin.  As the cabin grew, passers-by began asking if he was building a castle.  He soon decided that's exactly what he'd do.   By hand, stone by stone, without a single blueprint or plan, the castle began to come to life.

Welcome Summer

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

-from Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Breezy sundresses, hanging lifeless in my closet for far too long.  Lazy weekends at the pond.  Sun hats, bare feet, pedicures.  Farm stands and fresh herbs from the garden.  Popsicle stains on t-shirts and sticky little faces.  The open window above my bed, the breeze that smells of Russian olives and stirs the curtain while I sleep.  Chilled Pinot Grigio on the patio as the sun sets and a garden of stars blossom one by one.  Fresh, easy meals, laced with laughter and garnished with smiles.  Food that's just as good cold, served straight from the refrigerator. 

It finally feels like summer has arrived in Colorado.  We're soaking in every drop and falling back into the summer routine.  Which means our largest meal is lunch, served outside on the patio in the shade of a huge elm tree.  The same tree that lost two branches in February under the weight of winter snow.  I worried that we wouldn't have the shade we used to, but the other branches compensate and it's just as comfortable there as always.  It doesn't matter that the tree drops leaves into our wine and sticks into our food.  We love it anyway.

In the evening, when the sun is low, the kids ride their bikes to the park.  I tag behind, watching them weave and wobble down the bumpy sidewalk, enjoying the sun on my back and the breeze in my hair.

 
We can't get enough cool soups, pasta salads and fresh garnishes these days.  Today's lunch was no different.  A vichyssoise which I made last night.  This leek and potato soup gets better with age!  I served it cold, along with a cool stelline pasta salad.  I'm in love this little star shaped pasta!  So festive and fun for summer parties or the Fourth of July!  The pièce de résistance was a garlic marinated lamb steak with a basil-mint gremolata.  The kids picked the herbs from the garden this morning as I was putting the steaks in the marinade.  I cooked the steaks on the grill for just a few minutes when we were ready to eat.  It couldn't be simpler than that.  Food that's ready when I am.  The perfect summer lunch!

Not Your Grandmother's Beanie Weenies

Beanie Weenies.  Not the most glamourous of meals by any stretch of the imagination.  It's one of those kitchy old dishes that grandmother's always loved to serve to their grandchildren.  Or at least mine did.  Often - when we spent the night and felt oddly grown-up sleeping in the dusty room which we knew was haunted, under the covers in the creaky old iron bed - there were beanie weenies for dinner.  Am I the only one with memories like this?

I don't know why I was craving them last week.  I haven't had them in ages.  Except that I was going through an old box of black and white photos and came across a portrait of my very young grandmother.  The same portrait that hung in that room, just above that old bed.

Being the foodie that she was, I'm pretty sure my grandmother's beanie weenies never saw the inside of a can, but hard as I try, I haven't been able to recreate her recipe.  I just can't get it right.  So I came up with my own.  With souped-up ingredients like caramelized onion, spicy jalapeno, smokey molasses, pepper bacon, and uncured beef hotdogs.  It's something that the foodie in me can appreciate just as much as my children appreciate the sticky, sweet and smokey flavor.  It's like a sophisticated cross between Boston baked beans and beanie weenies.  Here's my pimped-out version.  These are definitely not your grandmother's beanie weenies.

Orange Vanilla Cake

Several years ago we lived on the gulf coast of Florida.  I remember hunkering down in the living room while Hurricane Katrina raged outside.  Despite the evacuation order issued for our neighbourhood, I was pregnant with Connor and couldn't bear to leave home.  How the wind ripped the branches from the trees, the shingles from our roof, and the shutters from our windows (later found bobbing in the neighbour's pond)!  The sound of the rain as it battered our house, the wind hurling things at us from every direction!  Smash! - on the back of the house!  Crash! - on the roof!  Wham! - on the shuttered front window!  Yet, amid the chaos and confusion the air tingled with the strange energy of life at its most real and raw. 

Is it wrong to compare the end of the school year to a hurricane?  Probably, but that's how I've been feeling lately.  The flood of activity, the tingling, electric sense of change that hovers in the air.  When you have a food allergic child and all the school parties seem to revolve around food, it can feel as if you're being hit from every direction.  A cupcake party one day, a popsicle party the next, summer birthday celebrations, field day.  And then, late last week, there was a very special poetry tea.  The kids had worked so hard throughout the year.  Memorizing classics from Robert Lewis Stevenson, Aileen Fisher, Eloise Greenfield, HW Longfellow.  This year Connor had a solo speaking part, and I didn't dare miss it!

Knowing full well that a poetry tea means food, my mind was elsewhere as I rushed out the door without a safe treat for Eve.  It hit me like a tidal wave as we walked into the classroom.  I saw the look of longing in her eyes when she spied the long table in the back of the room.  Decorated with a colourful table cloth, over flowing with trays of cookies, chocolates, and ice cream bars.  There in the middle was a huge cake decorated with the class picture.  And she knew that nothing was safe for her to eat.  Or perhaps what I saw reflected in her eyes was the sudden, overwhelming feelings of shortcoming and failure on my part.  How did I not think ahead and bring something safe for her?

Pancakes for Dinner

The air is soft and light, like a cashmere sweater, just warm enough to be comfortable.  The birds are singing, the garden is turning green and weeds are popping up like - well, weeds.  And our world is awash in purple.

Warm spring days like these stir up the fondest memories of when I was a girl.  My grandmother would fill her house with fresh cut flowers from the garden.  She couldn't get enough.  A kaleidoscope of flowers in every room, eclectically arranged in old jam jars and chipped tea cups.  Lilacs, irises, tulips, cherry blossoms, and wild flowers which I'd gathered from the hills behind her house.  On May Day she would help me weave them into a crown to pin in my hair.  Throughout the summer months the sweetest, most intoxicating aroma would waft through her rooms, carried on the gentle breeze which rustled her embroidered curtains.  When she died and the house was sold, I transplanted some of her lilac bushes into my own garden.  These days, her lilacs grace my kitchen table.

On warm spring days like these, I throw open the windows and doors, and let the dog come and go as she pleases. You have no idea how happy this makes her.  She bounds in and out, relishing the new-found sense of freedom.  Finally she settles in the sunbeam that stretches through the open door and across the kitchen floor, only to pounce back out if a squirrel or bird ventures too close.  I love the sense of openness in the house, too.  The sun is brighter, the air is fresher and smells of rain and, like my grandmother's house, my rooms are dressed in royal shades of purple - irises, lilacs, lavender, and chive blossoms, all in bloom right now.

A Place to Rest

I'm taking a break from food today to write about something that's been heavy on my heart recently.  Something that's deeply personal and intensely private, but something with which I believe all allergy moms struggle.  The endless questions, fears, self-doubt, and monsters-in-the-closet that come along with raising a child with severe food allergies.  And the search for a place to rest.  Check out the full post on Freedible.

Red Wine & Balsamic Pot Roast with Polenta

There are times when writing this blog that I find myself at a loss for words.  I don't have a fabulous story to go along with my recipes.  I can't even come up with a fancy quote to go under the picture, and I'm just too exhausted to Google one.  Times when my thoughts are as scattered as the golden flecks of polenta that spilled from my trembling hands onto the black stove top last night.  If I could just manage to process them, refine them, maybe even add a little butter and salt, I'd have something amazing to say.  But I just can't fit the pieces together.  There are times, in fact, when all I have is a recipe.  Simple as that.  A recipe that's so deceptively easy, yet so luscious, rich and luxurious, that it would be a crime not to share it with you.

This is that recipe.  The meal I made last night. Or rather, it made itself in the crock pot and was waiting for me to stumble through the door, weary and drained.  Can you ever have too many crock pot recipes?  Or, for that matter, too many pot roast recipes?  I say, no.  However far too often crock pot roasts all begin to taste the same.  Have you noticed that?  So when I bought yet another roast, I knew I wanted something different.  Something rich and spicy and slightly sweet.  I began combining flavors as I pushed the cart up and down the supermarket aisles - tangy balsamic, woodsy rosemary, zesty red pepper, voluptuous honey...

This roast is fork-tender with a velvety, meaty sauce.  And if there's ever a perfect sponge for absorbing a sauce of this caliber it has to be polenta.   Polenta was made for meat sauce.  Of course, last night I used instant polenta, which took all of 3 minutes to prepare.  Because, as brain-dead as I was, that's about all I could handle.   So there you have it.  Me being honest with you at 11:30 at night, while my eyelids fight to close, and I'm hitting spell-check one last time.

This is a recipe for days when your thoughts are farthest from the kitchen, because we all have them...

Crossing Paths

 Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's a wild and wooded area not far from our house.  A series of paths loop and crisscross like shoelaces through the trees.  The kids love to run ahead, looking for smaller paths that intersect with the main ones.  They know these narrow paths are sure to lead to something amazing.  Isn't that always the case?  Some of the best opportunities are found only when you leave the smooth, straight path and venture deep into the forest. 

The path I was on runs parallel to another larger path, however the two rarely connect.  Occasionally, through the tree branches (still bare from winter) and the dense undergrowth (just beginning to turn green), I would see a jogger or a mother pushing a stroller.  Perhaps they saw me too, headed the same direction, on a different path, though we never met.  Our paths never crossed.  If I were to get to the larger path I must step off my well worn trail and navigate one of those rocky footpaths through brambles and wild bushes.  This is exactly what I did, without even knowing it, when I boarded a plane to Las Vegas last November to speak at the Food Allergy Bloggers Conference.

Apple Trees and Asparagus

The apple tree is beginning to bloom and that means I'm craving asparagus.

When I was a child, my favourite story began like this: Once upon a time there was a little house way out in the country . . . There's a reason why The Little House has always fascinated me.  You see, as a girl my aunt and uncle owned an apple orchard way out in the country and I thought this story was about them.

We used to visit every Sunday when the weather was warm.  If you've ever read this story you can envision exactly how the place looked.  The house was up on a hill and out back stretched row upon row of trees fanning out from the house like the tail of a peacock.  In the springtime the trees were covered in pearly white blossoms and the orchard buzzed with a million bees.  When the weather got warmer we'd watch as the tiny green apples swelled and turned as rosy as our cheeks in the summer sun.  In the fall, when the leaves began to change and a cool breeze rustled the heavy branches, the kids would each be handed a paper sack into which we'd gather the fruit that had fallen to the ground.  The best apples were sold at the fruit stand down the road, but the ones on the ground were ours for the keeping, as long as we could wrestle them away from the wasps.  My grandmother would carefully select the apples that were salvageable and cook them down into apple jelly, and jam, and butter, and sauce to eat all winter long.

Along the back fence meandered a tiny stream.  An irrigation ditch, really, but to a city girl like me it was a wonderland, full of adventure and magic.  Bullfrogs hid in the tall, cool grass and garter snakes basked in the sunshine by the water.  Iridescent dragonflies swooped in and out of the cattails as I walked along the edge.  Here and there were placed rickety old boards to act as makeshift bridges.  A parent's nightmare; a kid's dream come true!  They would wobble, creak and crack as my brother and I raced across those boards into patches of white dandelion fluff on the other side.  More than a few times the bridges would tip us into the muddy water below.  I used to daydream under those apple trees, and I promised myself that someday I would live in the country.

But here's the best part.  The part that's not in the story book.  Along with the tall grass, the dandelions, the bullfrogs and snakes grew the most tender, sweetest, most delectable wild asparagus!  In spring, when the trees were in full bloom, the entire family would comb through the grass looking for the thick green spears.  You had to really search, like finding a needle in a haystack, they were well hidden.  But when we found one we'd cut it at the base and stash it in our bag.  We spent hours searching the orchard floor.  "I found one!"  my mother would yell from a few rows away.  "Here are three!" exclaimed my brother near the water where the grass was moist. . .  Like a treasure hunt, we'd filled up bags and bags of wild asparagus to eat throughout the week, and every Sunday there was more to be found.

A Million Flowers, Sugar Glass, and an Improvised Cake

"There are a million flowers in here!" Eve exclaimed when she woke up Saturday morning.  Her sleepy eyes began to sparkle as she took in the sea of flowers that covered the kitchen table.  She was right, maybe not a million, but that morning the table was buried in flowers.  Why?  Because in just a few short hours 8 five-year-olds would head through our door to celebrate Eve's birthday.

Last month, when asked what type of party she wanted, she looked up at me with those big brown eyes and said, in her most persuasive voice, "A Frozen party, of course....with lots of pink roses."  I know you're saying "Not another Frozen party!" because if you have children between the ages of 3 and 16 you've probably had enough of talking snowmen and that song you just can't get out of your head.  And you most certainly know that the store shelves are bare when it comes to Frozen merchandise, whether it's birthday decorations, books, or toys.  So I won't bore you with yet another Frozen birthday party post, because there are about 8,000 of them out there.  (I know, I Googled it.)

No, this post is about a party that didn't exactly happen the way I planned, and it turned out better than I could have ever imagined.  You see, when your daughter gazes up at you with a wisp of bangs in her chocolate eyes, and says "Please, Mommy, can I have a Frozen party?  Pretty please??"  Well, at least you try.  I scrolled through Pinterest and began envisioning a grand, three-tiered cake decorated like Elsa's ice castle and adorned with the Frozen characters.  I think I was more excited about that cake than Eve was.  I ordered the over-priced Frozen play set that is so popular right now (this one) at the beginning of March and congratulated myself for actually planning ahead for once.  Then I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  With the day of the party closing in and the cake decorations glaringly absent, I began to panic.