Home Heart Strings - Home, House and Home, Recipes, Home Living, Homemaking, Cleaning, Decorating, Holidays
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1 Tbsp oil
1 small onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic – chopped or grated
1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 Tbsp ground coriander seed
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup half-and-half or cream
In a large soup pot, pour the oil and put over medium heat, add onions and cook until soft. Add the garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, for 1 minute, then add the other spices, and stir together. Pour in the wine, and stir, cooking for 1 minute. Add the pumpkin puree and broth, stir and cook until heated through, about 4 or 5 minutes.
To make soup smooth, remove from heat and let cool slightly, then pour into food processor. Blend until smooth, then return to pot. (Or use a stick blender if you have one.) Put soup pot on low heat and bring back up to hot, but do not boil. Remove from heat and pour in half-and-half, stir, and taste for salt and other seasonings and add more if desired. You may also add a touch of sugar if you like to bring up the sweetness level. Cover and let stand 5 minutes so flavors blend well.
Serve warm with garnishes like roasted pumpkin seeds, crispy bacon crumbles, a dollop of yogurt or sour cream, and chives or parsley.
You can easily double or triple this recipe for a larger crowd. You will need to process it in several batches in the food processor if you do. This soup is rich and meant to enjoy in small portions, not large bowls.
Fire Up the Grill for Glamorous Gourmet Fruit Salads
We’ve been trying to keep our meals light and interesting, and our grill has played center stage. Now if you’re thinking that grilling is all about heavy meals of barbecued meats, you’ll be surprised what other foods actually are perfect for the grill.
1. Setting the Stage for Grilled Fruit Salads
If you’re mixing your grilled fruit in a green salad, be sure to choose your salad green carefully. Grilling adds a deeper flavor to fruit, so something hearty like arugula, romaine, watercress, or a mix of colorful greens might be best to form the bed of the salad and to compliment.
A grilled fruit salad also does well with a light vinaigrette dressing, made from basic ingredients like olive oil, salt and pepper, and your choice of vinegar. However, you might enjoy a creamy salad dressing made with honey and yogurt. Or perhaps a mixture of brown sugar, heavy cream, and red wine vinegar sounds tasty to you. There are plenty of possibilities to compliment your grilled fruit salad.
2. Choose Fruit that Suits the Grill
Once you’ve got the stage set, then it’s a matter of choosing fruits that grill well. Apricot halves are first up, combined with toasted nuts and thin slices of bacon, this makes a delightful gourmet twist with any salad green. Try grilling pineapple and mango slices, garnish with fresh mint leaves, and mix with crunchy cold butter lettuce for a surprising salad that will really please your dinner guests or family.
Even fruits like plums, watermelon, peaches, and nectarines are good to grill for salads and it doesn’t have to be a large salad of greens, either. For instance, cut watermelon into four inch squares and grill quickly on one side, flip and grill on the other side until you see grill marks form. Then serve on a bed of arugula and top with feta cheese, and drizzle balsamic vinaigrette over. You now have a gourmet salad with just a few ingredients. Grilling the watermelon makes all the difference.
A grilled fruit salad could also be exclusively made with grilled fruit. Try grilling a whole pineapple, cut lengthwise in half, treating the pineapple as the fruit bowl. Top with small pieces of fruit such as red pears, kiwi, bananas, or cactus fruit and set the grill on high, grilling just until the pineapple chars a little. Remove from the grill and serve as is or with a dollop of Greek yogurt. Both halves of the pineapple becomes the salad itself.
3. Mixing up Main Dishes With Grilled Fruit
For a heartier main dish, try putting chunks of fruit on a kabob skewer alternating with firm pieces of fish like halibut, swordfish, or salmon, or shrimp, scallops, or even pieces of chicken. Grill until everything chars a bit, then serve over brown rice. Most people expect kabobs to have vegetables, so the grilled fruit makes a nice surprise. Of course, some vegetables compliment certain fruit, as well. Sweet onion on the kabob adds a nice flavor contrast to pineapple, for instance. Just use your creativity when you put your fruit kabobs together for the grill.
Grilled fruit can also be a garnish for beef, chicken, fish, or even ham. Cut wedges of papaya, mango, pineapple, and maybe a red pepper and sweet onion, and grill until slightly charred. Then cool and cut into small pieces and toss together with a light vinaigrette. This grilled ‘fruit salsa’ makes a perfect garnish. Make it spicy or savory if you wish by adding hot sauce, a bit of cayenne pepper, or some fresh herbs.
4. Don’t Forget Grilled Fruit Desserts
A variety of fruits can be grilled to produce a tasty topping for ice cream, pound cake, or other treats. Grilled bananas topped with ice cream and caramel sauce is a favorite that comes to mind immediately. You can even put chunks of chocolate on while the bananas grill to create another layer of flavor.
Fruit compote made on the grill is another twist on a favorite. Rather than just boil or bake fruit pieces in a pan with a liquid, put the fruit on the grill on high heat, quickly grilling until you have grill marks and the fruit is softened. Move the fruit onto a piece of heavy duty foil, top with a mixture of brown sugar, butter, and honey. Then seal the foil into pouches and continue cooking on the grill until fruit is very soft. The grilling adds a whole new flavor to your traditional compote.
If you have never considered putting fruit on your grill, this is your chance to experiment. It’s surprising how many fruits cook up so well on the open pit. Once you have your fruit grilled, you’ll find all sorts of ways to enjoy them. You may become so hooked on grilling fruit that now find it will be hard to make room for the barbecued meat!
1 cup chopped macadamia nuts, toasted lightly
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 bag (7 oz) sweet shredded coconut
1 bag (12 oz) semisweet chocolate morsels, melted
Put the macadamia nuts, sweetened condensed milk, almond extract, and sweet coconut in a large bowl and big together with a big spoon.
Form the mixture into bite-sized balls and place on cookie sheets or baking trays. Put trays in refrigerator to firm up for about 1 hour, or leave at room temperature to firm, which will take about 4 or 5 hours.
When balls have completely set, dip them into the melted chocolate and place them back on the tray to dry at room temperature.
Note – Melt the chocolate easily by placing the morsels in a heat-resistant bowl, then placing the bowl atop a pan of water that has been brought to a boil and removed from stovetop. Stir until chocolate melts, then remove bowl from hot water and continue stirring until mixture cools slightly. Now it’s ready to dip.
Ingredients:
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika powder
10.5 oz skinless chicken breast, cut into strips
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1 avocado
Juice of 1 lime
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
4 large tortillas
About 1 cup natural yogurt
Handful of fresh cilantro
Instructions:
Place chicken strips in a small bowl. Mix together the chili powder and paprika and sprinkle over the chicken strips. Toss gently.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the chicken strips together with the onion slices until the chicken is cooked through and no longer pink inside.
Meanwhile, cut the avocado into cubes and mix in the lime juice.
Divide the chicken mixture evenly between the tortillas, top with green bell pepper slices, avocado/lime, yogurt and sprinkle with cilantro. Roll up and enjoy this delicious and easy meal.
Growing herbs indoors presents unique challenges, but it is not necessarily difficult. The keys to successful herb growing indoors are light, soil and water – just like outdoor gardening! Here are some tips on how to make the best use of these elements in growing herbs indoors.
1. Containers
The first thing you will need to grow herbs indoors are containers. Some sources say terra cotta pots are best as they allow air to get into the soil; others say to avoid them because they allow the soil to dry out.
One way to solve this dilemma is to consider how much you are going to water your herbs. If you are home often and will be watering often, terra cotta containers are a good choice. If you are not able to water very often, you might choose plastic, ceramic, or glass containers. Also, herbs that prefer dry soil might do best in terra cotta.
Herbs are generally not too picky about the container material, but they do tend to prefer crowded roots. So don’t be tempted to use overly-large containers.
You can also use creative or unconventional containers. Raid your recycle bin and look for cans, plastic containers, and so forth.
All containers should have adequate drainage holes. You should also have a tray or saucer to catch the water as it drains and runs off.
2. Types of Herbs
Some types of herbs grow better indoors than others. Here are some of the ones that tend to do well inside:
Generally speaking, commercial potting soil will do well for most herbs. Don’t make the mistake of digging up outdoor soil and putting it in pots – it’s not designed to be in containers, and the drainage will not be efficient. The exception is lemongrass, which can be grown in water alone.
4. Light and Location
Ideally, place your herbs as close to an eastern window as you can – the closer to the glass, the more light the herbs will get. South-eastern and western sunlight may also work, but northern light is considered too poor for most herbs. Mints and parsley can sometimes do well on lower light.
Your herbs will need anywhere from three to six hours of sunlight a day. If you can’t manage this, consider installing grow lights. Some sources suggest putting these on timers so that your herbs will get their needed light a few hours before sunrise.
5. Water
Watering needs vary among herbs. Mediterranean herbs like thyme and oregano do not need as much water as lemon balm and chives, for example. Also, watering needs change as the season changes – for example, if you have electric indoor heat, it tends to dry out the indoor air significantly, upping the need for water. A good rule of thumb is to push your finger about an inch into the soil to see if it feels dry. Most herbs prefer soil that is moist most of the time.
Humidity is another area of moisture maintenance. It’s a good idea to keep a spray bottle of water handy to spritz your herbs several times every day in dry weather.
If you have seen cake decorating television shows then you know how time consuming decorating a cake can be. Chances are you’re not interested in creating elaborate cakes like those on television but you would like to learn something more than merely frosting a cake. Cake decorating is an art, but luckily it is one you can learn with some practice.
The main items required for cake decorating include:
* Pastry bag with plastic couplers
* Decorating tips in assorted shapes
* Offset and straight icing spatulas
* Lazy Susan or rotating cake stand
* Food coloring to tint icing
If you’ve never really decorated cakes before, you may not know what some of these items are. Here are the explanations to help you.
The pastry bag is the container used for icing. Attached to the bag is a plastic coupler which enables you to change decorating tips and use the same icing. Scoop icing into the pastry bag with a spatula but don’t overfill it. In fact, if you fill it much more than half full you could have problems.
Decorating tips come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Normally you can purchase a decorating tips kit with three to four plastic tips. However, if you’re serious about learning cake decorating you’ll want to invest in the metal tips. They can be found in different shapes including round for piping and detail outlining, leaf, drop flower, ruffle, basket weave, rose and various specialty tips.
The offset and straight spatulas are a cake decorator’s best friends. You’ll use the spatulas for preparing the icing base for the rest of the decorations to adhere to. If the base isn’t done correctly, you may find the decorations slipping off. Of course, it also helps that you have the right butter cream recipe for the icing; it has to be the correct consistency for decorating.
A lazy Susan or rotating cake stand can make or break your decorations. These items will allow you to rotate the cake without much effort, which means you can keep the correct pressure on the pastry bag. When you have the correct pressure on the pastry bag you can feel sure the decorations will look uniform.
Food coloring is an optional tool but one that many cake decorators use. When you’re making a good butter cream icing it will be a pale yellow or off-white in color. You may decide your cake needs some punch. Adding food coloring sparingly until you reach the desired shade while you’re making the icing will give you the colors of the rainbow to choose from.
Some other items you may want to purchase and have on hand include edible decorating pens. These are pens filled with food coloring and have a paintbrush type of tip. This type of tool is great if you don’t feel comfortable piping words on a cake yet. Since the pen is made from food coloring, the “ink” is completely edible.
Marzipan is a confection made of ground almonds, egg whites and sugar. It can be rolled out like to cover a cake completely or molded into various shapes. Fondant is another way to achieve a perfectly iced cake. Depending upon where you live you may be able find pre-made marzipan items and tubs of fondant in bakeries or cake decorating shops.
Maybe you’ve never thought about cake decorating. It is something you can learn either by trial and error or by taking lessons. Once you know how, you’ll be able to make beautiful cakes.
* ¼ cup butter
* ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
* 1 teaspoon almond extract
* 1 egg yolk
* 8 ounces white chocolate, broken into small pieces
* 1 cup blanched almonds, lightly toasted
Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler over low heat. Be sure to stir constantly. Remove it from the heat when it has melted. Add the sugar, egg yolk and almond extract. Beat this with an electric mixer until smooth. Pour into a shallow glass casserole, cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Shape the cooled mixture into 1-inch balls. Roll the balls in the almonds, cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours. Store the truffles in airtight containers in the refrigerator. Serve in miniature foil cups at room temperature.
To change the flavor, add different flavored liqueur or brandy. You can also add peanut butter with the chocolate and cream if Mom loves peanut butter. In fact, with homemade chocolate truffles, the possibilities are endless.
