Gravlax Kim Bap

GLUTEN FREE/ PESCETARIAN/DAIRY FREE/PALEO

An East meets North recipe this is one of the must haves when I make gravlax. Taking one of our favorite Korean dishes along with a favorite Swedish dish we have created a monster. J

Traditional Kim Bab has egg and radish along with the other ingredients listed below. I’ve replaced these with gravlax since it has it’s own tangy/sweet taste the egg and radish provide in the original.

Gravad Lax/Gravlax/Marinated Salmon

GLUTEN FREE/ PESCETARIAN/DAIRY FREE/PALEO

Love my Swedish background, mostly for Ikea, but also for the food. J One of my favorite dishes is gravlax, a type of marinated salmon, served raw. Thankfully Ikea had a cookbook of Swedish recipes, including gravlax.

It is not too complicated, but does require planning ahead, since it needs to marinate for at least 3 days. Thankfully we have fridges to marinate our salmon in. The original recipe used the cool of the earth to keep the fish until it was ready.

Real Hash Browns

GLUTEN FREE/VEGETARIAN/VEGAN/DAIRY FREE

Has browns are my favorite breakfast item. Whenever I have breakfast out it must be included in my dish or I’ll order it as a side. While some restaurants like to pass off chunks of fried potato as hash browns, there is nothing like grated potato hash.

Puppy “Waterproof” Car Hammock

Found this on Pinterest and have meant to make one for the longest while, with a slight twist using Babyville fabric making it waterproof…I hope. Unfortunately, I was a bit late in making it because the puppies got stuck in the car a minute too long this past weekend, thus sparking an immediate reason to take the project on.

Here's to hoping the "waterproofing" works. J

Vegan Scalloped Potatoes with Mushrooms

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/ COCONUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN

My husband loves scalloped potatoes and I haven’t made it in a while because my recipe is cheese based. For some reason I had a hankering for them yesterday and looked up some dairy free recipes. I didn’t much like my options, and remember a cauliflower ‘Alfredo’ sauce I had pinned, and decided to use it in my attempt at dairy free scalloped potatoes.

Oh, and I added sautéed mushrooms for fun. J

Framed Earring Organizer

I was feeling in a bit of a crafty mood the day I made this. Not looking to make something for my jewelry specifically, but just feeling like making something, not food, with my hands. I have a bunch of 4x4x6 frames I used for my wedding table seating. They were not terribly expensive so I had no qualms about tearing them apart for a project, even if it didn’t work. Walking around the house looking for inspiration I finally decided to try my hand at an earring organizer. There are a number of jewelry organizing ideas on Pinterest, but none did quite what I wanted so I had to pick a little from here and a little from there to come up with my final product.

Vegan Chili

VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE

Switching to vegan chili wasn’t so hard. The real key is having enough chunky ingredients to make you not even notice the lack of meat. Also mushrooms…mushrooms help to add a little meaty flavor and texture. I’ve found a few different vegan chili recipes, most of which require tofu (yuck and not that good for you) so I’ve just gone with my original meat recipe took the meat out and added some more veggies in.

Chili Powder

My husband kept raving about a chili he had at work and so I had to figure out how to top that. J I tried out a few different recipes, with different combinations of seasonings and he liked them all (usually). 

Then I had a challenge, my first chili cook off. It wasn’t official or anything, just a small fundraiser. I took the competition seriously and made four small pots of chili, each with a different set of ingredients and had my husband try out each chili. He liked them all, but the one he liked the most was the combination of all four. 

Puppy Crate Mattresses

So we have these 2 adorable shih-poo puppies. Just 20 weeks old. In the beginning of the process of owning dogs one must do quite a bit of shopping to make sure they’ve got all of the required supplies. One or two of the things you need to start out is a crate (if you are crate training) and bedding for the crate. I found a couple of cute doggy beds for cheap that we kept in their crates.

Banana "Ice Cream"

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/PALEO

My husband absolutely loved this! It has the same perfect texture of ice cream and is so easy to make. My favorite part…it makes use of over ripe bananas so I don’t have to throw them out.

The original recipe had one step that I changed. That was how to freeze the bananas. I usually purchase more bananas than I need for the sole purpose of making oodles of banana bread for bake sales. I break them up when get over ripe put them into Ziploc freezer bags until the next bake sale comes up. 

Pinterest Connoisseur (May 2013)

It’s always frustrating when a new recipe adventure goes awry. You’re all excited to find a recipe that meets your needs in a particular moment, and convinced that the ingredients will be so awesome when they come together and then BOOM! Turns our you were wrong, your exciting was unwarranted and you’re out a few dollars in expensive ingredients. Welcome to my world. J

Here are some recipes I found on Pinterest that were not all they were “Pinned” up to be. I didn’t hate the results, but I’ll probably never make them again.

Oh, and just so this is the most disappointing blog I put up one Pin that I really did enjoy.

Curry Powder

Not all curries are the same. Anyone who has grown up eating buss-up-shot, doubles, or friedbake knows this. Curry, like chili is not made up of one ingredient, but is a wonderful orchestra of spices.

I’ve notice that a lot of people buy curry sauce from the grocery store and use that as a base, but a trick my mom taught me needs to start with dried, ground up spices. Normally I would buy a bottle of curry powder at the grocery, but a couple of years ago I thought it would be interesting to try making my own curry powder. I still keep a grocery store bought bottle of curry powder for those times I may be out of key ingredients to make my own.

Pinterest Connoisseur

I am a Pinterest Connoisseur. Many of my recipes have come from Pinterest, as well as some of my recent house cleaning habits. It is funny to see posts from those who tried a Pin out that didn’t work, but it’s annoying when it happens to you. So far I haven’t been so unlucky to have a Pin turn out so bad it wasn’t usable, but there have been a few that I won’t try again, or I need to revisit the method. Here are three attempts at Pins, each with a varying degree of success.

Paleo Sangria

PALEO/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT 

Sangria is one of my favorite ways to drink wine…actually it is my favorite way to drink wine, and home made is the best way to do it.

This was one of those recipes where I searched and found about a dozen variations and just decided to make one up that pulled from them all.

The reason this is a paleo recipe is because unlike most sangrias I didn’t use cane sugar. Instead I used coconut sugar. To find out more about coconut sugar check out a previous blog on my favorite kitchen things.

Make-Up Brush Container

I don’t have as many brushes and make up supplies as most girls, but I have enough that it gets annoying to keep fishing through my makeup bag for individual brushes. I had for a long time used a set up of a square glass and coffee beans, an idea I found on Pinterest. I even had a small plant pot with rice. But these took up a lot of room on my bathroom counter, and there was no way to avoid dust getting into my brushes. Don’t’ want that on your face. Yuck!

Red Clutch

Made a fabulous little red clutch for a Christmas party a couple of years ago. It worked very well and off set my peach outfit perfectly. 

Original Pattern 

A Puzzle Blanket of Memories

My second and biggest crochet project was a striped blanket for our living room couch. The stripes look random, and there isn’t a visible pattern to it, but there is meaning to every single stripe. I used special dates in our lives to decide on the number of crochet rows for each stripe. It’s been long enough since I made the blanket that I forgot what order I put the dates, and now it’s a puzzle every time I count the rows to figure out which represents what significant date. 

Other than my unusual way of determining stripes, there were 2 other stipulations: I wanted to make a blanket big enough for 2 people; and be super warm without having to fold it in half. That meant a whole lot of yarn (I don’t even remember how many skeins), and using a double crochet stitch. It took forever to make, but turned out just as I wanted.