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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Blueberry Banana Baby Biscotti

Josephine Fite Filipiak is teething.  It's just the worst.  It started two weeks ago yesterday.  I left for work during her morning nap around 9am.  She woke up to the babysitter (technically her 5th cousin) and proceeded to bawl all morning long.  (Poor Whitney-Josephine usually loves playing with her).  I was convinced that she was starting to go through some separation anxiety and immediately read everything I could.

The next morning I waited to leave until after she had woken up from her nap, played with her a little while Whitney was here and made sure she had a "distraction" as soon as I left.  She did much better but the real culprit presented itself that night when I felt her gums.  All four of her upper front teeth were in that kind of swollen/about to poke through stage.

I immediately felt better about her being not the happy baby she usually is...and was sure that within a week or so those teeth would be through (like the first two bottom ones) and we'd be back to normal.

Well that was two weeks ago.  So far only one has completely come through.  Another you can barely see the white and the two middle front ones are still just below the surface.

And my happy baby is still a little bit more clingy, irritable and refusing to take the 1 1/2-2 hour nap I had come to love (and desperately need to get anything done).  She takes a long time to get settled to sleep and then a hard time staying asleep.  Her 5:30 am wake up time has changed to random 1am, 3 am or 4 am.  And not just a little fussy...full on awake where she throws her pacifier out of her crib and does what we call her "prison riot" by standing up and shaking the sides.

I'm tired.  She's tired.  And Thursday we leave for the gulf which means seven hours in the car.

But yesterday while we were walking around the garden she self-medicated.  She loves to grab at the herbs growing and eat them.  (Thai basil is her favorite by far).  But instead she grabbed a handful of lavender that had bloomed.  It didn't worry me and it made her pretty happy to munch away on her steal. 

About twenty minutes later she started rubbing her eyes and made all signs that she was ready to sleep.  Now.  She had only been awake for less than an hour but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity.  So I made sure she was all clean and swaddled her up.  Sure enough she was out within a few minutes.  Then it hit me:  "Oh yeah, you can use lavender for soothing/pre-bedtime purposes."

After she woke up from her nap I made her lunch and made sure to give her a tough piece of the end of the bread so she could bite/gum down on it.  I thought to myself "I really need to make her some biscotti to teeth on-she loved it last time."  

Last time her two bottom teeth were coming in I gave her some I had in the freezer as kind of a last ditch attempt to help her feel better.  It was actually some frozen homemade snickerdoodle biscotti and not necessarily the healthiest thing I could have given my baby.  But on the other hand, it was a lot better than the teething biscuit options at the store that were full of preservatives and a bunch of other stuff I can't pronounce.  (Actually I can because my dietetics major included a minor in distributive sciences which involves several chemistry courses, including nutritional biochemistry, but you get the point.)

So this is what I've come up with as a decent teething biscuit alternative.  I wanted to avoid adding a ton of sugar, butter, or extracts (just because they are alcohol based not because there is anything wrong with them).  It's something she can hold on to while cruising around and hopefully alleviate some pain-not necessarily dessert.  Plus, if it tastes just as good to her without it, then why add it?  Also, I'm not as worried about the look of these.  Sugar plays an important role in shape and texture of baked goods so if I was making these for an order I'd definitely add it.  Also, the only main potential "allergen" are the eggs and we've cleared that one. (We're fine on wheat and dairy too but for any babies that aren't these could work).

Anyway, here we go:

BANANA BLUEBERRY BABY BISCOTTI

Step 1: Combine the following dry ingredients in a food processor until oats are well milled then dump into a separate bowl:
2 cups oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt (I used Celtic grey)
1/4 cup flax seed
2 Tbsp evaporated cane juice
2 tsp Lavendar- fresh or dried flowers and/or "leaves"
2 Schezuan buttons* (Optional-see note below)
1 heaping tsp ground cinnamon


So it looks like this...


Step 2:  Combine the following "wet" ingredients into food processor and run for 5 minutes until bananas/berries are pureed completely and whipped with the eggs.
2 large pastured chicken eggs
2 very ripe organic bananas
Handful of blueberries (I just added about ten or so that I had left in a bag)



(I thought the berries might give the batter a soft purple hue but they didn't...maybe if they were frozen first-those tend to be more effective in the dye department...)

Step 3:  Now add that bowl of dry ingredients into the food processor and combine until a sticky dough forms.


Step 4:   Let dough sit about five minutes before transferring it to the pan.  This helps the oats soak up a little more of the liquid so you have more of really thick batter and less of a pancake batter. 


Step 5:  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray it with cooking spray.

Step 6:  Now you can pour out the batter/dough into a shape that looks roughly like this:  Note that the width is going to be how "long" your biscotti are once you cut them.  



Step 7:  Bake in 325 oven x 22 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.

Step 8:  Let cool.  This is a good time to hold your teething baby who has been screaming because you put her down for five minutes to make these.

Step 9:  Use a serrated knife and cut into biscotti-looking pieces.  You can cut them on a diagonal and make long beautiful pieces.  Or you can cut straight across.  Either way they will get the job done.  

Step 10:  Now it's time to give these the final toast in the oven so your baby will get that good hard texture to gum down on and ease her pain and angst away.   So lay the cookies on their side and toast in 300 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Then take the pan out and turn them over and repeat for another 20 minutes.




Step 11:  Now turn your oven off.  DO NOT REMOVE BISCOTTI FROM OVEN at this point.  Usually you wouldn't need to do this extra drying time but because this recipe turned out really moist and we didn't use much sugar, it's necessary.  So just let those cookies stay in and kind of hot air dry out.  (Much like meringue cookies).  If you make these at night then it's easy just to turn off the oven and go to bed.  (**Really you kind of have to just see as you go for this step.  I made them last night when it was really humid so that definitely affects how crispy they were going to get.  Then today when I tried to maybe bake 'em just a tad more...I set the oven to 375 instead of 275 and nearly made charcoal teething biscuits.)


Step 12:  Remove from the oven-they should be pretty cool.  Then you can go ahead and give one to your sweet baby while you put the rest of them in a ziploc bag and freeze them.  (Actually baby will probably like the frozen ones better and chances are you are making this while she/he is in bed hopefully sleeping for a stretch anyway).

My now happy baby
*Schezuan button is also known as "toothache plant."  We grew some of these this year.  They are antimicrobial and help to ease mouth pain as well as increase taste depth by kind of "buzzing" the mouth clean so I thought I'd throw them in without being sure if they would have any of the same effect after being baked.  In a couple weeks when we're back at the market we may have some of these available-or if you have a teething baby and want us to save you some, let us know! 

In conclusion, baby girl loved them.  And the second tooth finally come on through last night with one of the middle ones close behind.  I also ended up really liking the taste of these...a little too much lavender for me but they definitely seemed to do the trick in helping her get to her morning nap without much of a fuss (and sleeping for nearly 2 hours).   Also there isn't a really strong banana flavor.

 I think if you were making these for "grown-ups" you could use no (or less) lavendar, no Schezuan buttons (I don't think they did anything anyway) and add chocolate chips, vanilla and maybe even some toasted nuts.  You could also use certified GF oats and have a gluten free/dairy free/low added sugar biscotti. 

Hope you other mama's find this helpful!  Let me know if you make them and any other teething tricks that have worked for you! 

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

State of the House-June 2012

Last time I posted about our house, not much had changed since our nursery project.  Since then we've completed all of the baking orders (that we already had on our calendars before we decided to stick to selling only at the Washington Farmer's Market) and finally have been able to dedicate more time to la estancia.  Finally.

Back in January, Reid and I decided this would be the year we completely "de-cluttered."  So my ongoing project has been attacking the clutter like crazy.  It has felt amazing to haul off boxes to God's Marketplace or give away clothes that I knew I would never wear again post-baby girl and see the empty space. (Not necessarily because of "Oh I'll never fit in this again" but more because of "Okay, I am not in college anymore and no one with a degree and/or a child would look appropriate in this.")  I've also been repeating the mantra I came up with of "Less Stuff=More People" to remind myself over and over that I'd rather have more dinner guests than another dinner serving piece.  (And you know how much I love fine china...)

My second (still maybe a little ongoing) project was getting part of the basement a little better organized.  The basement is currently home to Reid's weight lifting area, everything from the Tignall kitchen, a ton of stuff from my house in Warm Springs and pretty much everything else that we're not using upstairs but won't go in the barn. It's nothing to brag about but I just started from a corner cleaning and making space to put boxes from the stuff I packed up from upstairs.  Basically, the basement is just a cleaner and a little better organized staging area for now.

The next few "real" projects we have going on involve finally painting this wood paneling in the main room:

After the first coat of Kilz


Painting the front door...




(I'm not sure why I started with the front door when the whole room has to be painted...maybe because it helped the front porch look more finish....)

And lastly, worked on some "landscaping" projects so that we'll have the outside of the house looking pretty good when Labor Day weekend rolls around. This is the side garden and the flat concrete area leads into the basement entrance.  I'm hoping in the next couple weeks I'll get the opposite side planted with some flower cover.  Then use matching pots to go under the basement windows along with some other items to create somewhat of a "cottage garden" type feel.  (It will be amazing if this comes to fruition giving Reid's lack of enthusiasm for flowers and my lack of experience gardening...)


So that's all I can report for now.  We've got a couple trips coming up and then we'll be hitting harvest time in the big garden...which means a crash course in putting up fruits and vegetables for me and less time to work inside.  Which means...

 Who wants to come help paint? 


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

My Food Photo Booth

I have not been silent about all of my photography challenges.  For starters I just do not have much technical know-how.  But there are a lot of things I don't know how to do.  Or I didn't know how to do but because of an interest I learned.  Clearly, I'm interested in learning how to better photograph food (and of course now babies doing cute things that as a parent I'm convinced every one of my friends and Southern Scratch fans on Facebook are just dying to see).  But despite both my interest and real necessity to become a more skilled amateur photog, I still haven't learned all that much. So what is holding me back?

For starters, I'd say the incredibly slooooow internet service we have out here.  The speed at which it loads pages is decent and I can read and respond to email just fine.  But anything with a ton of graphics takes forever. And that is just to download.  Uploading them (like to this blog) is a nightmare. I literally start uploading a few pictures and then go and do laundry, unload the dishwasher and maybe run to the store so that I don't waste an hour sitting there while they upload.  I am not exaggerating.  Loading six pictures the other night took nearly two hours. (And of course these pictures are not all that much to look at to begin with so it truly is not worth the wait).


And video?  It is hard enough to try to load a short video to watch (we end up letting it load, go do something else and then coming back and watching it-hoping that the service hasn't briefly cut off and stopped the download in the meantime) so I can only imagine how long it would take to try to actually upload one on a blog or on our Facebook page.  Haven't even tried it. 


The second challenge is pausing long enough while I'm cooking to get a step-by-step sequence of how to prepare an item.  When I get in the kitchen I move pretty quickly and have a lot going on at once.  Stopping to get dough off my hands to photograph a step before I go right back to working with the dough and shaping it seems like the ultimate non-efficiency in the kitchen.  But this is probably the least of my food photography challenges.  After all, I really like cooking and probably remembering to take a picture is harder than actually doing it.


The next big challenge is the lighting and reflection in our house.  In my kitchen I do most of my prep on a stainless steel table.  The light reflection never works.  So I'll try to attempt to dodge it by laying down a cloth or some other means of "staging" but that doesn't help all that much because we have crazy drop panel fluorescent lights in most of the main room (our main level is one huge room and then a hallways with  bedrooms/1bath and then one big open space with a bathroom in the basement).  But while there are huge fluorescent light panels gracing each of the room "sections" there isn't one in the kitchen.  All I have is an oven light and then one over my sink and they are at different heights.


The last challenge is the whole house itself.  Right now for instance we have about a third of the wall space taped off at the bottom to paint.  Another third is mainly the kitchen/dining area which usually has the Bumbo waiting to be wiped down, some dishes in the sink, etc.  The last third is currently where all the furniture from the walls being painted has ended up.  It also has our two desks and a Pack n' Play where we've been corralling baby girl some from trying to rip up and eat the newspaper from the painting project.  (Thankfully Kip told me the News-Reporter uses soy based ink!).


So even taking pictures of baby girl I wince because although I think she looks adorable wearing her supper, the background is screaming "Disaster! Disaster!"  You can only imagine now trying to take food shots with this background.  Strawberry pie or some decadent chocolate cake just do not have the same "wow" factor when you see linoleum that desperately needs to be replaced in the background.


SO ENOUGH WHINING about how life isn't always perfect, huh?


It was time to do something about all of this.  So the past few dietetic interns I have had spend time with me have all in some way or another contributed to helping me improve the blog. (Thanks Brooke, Julie & Allie!) These girls are all in their dietetic internship with the Augusta Area Dietetic Internship based out of University Hospital.  And they were all just fabulous.  When the last girl was here she mentioned that another intern, Allie, was really interested in photography.  So I did what every preceptor would do and told Allie that if she would spend time with me I had a great project for her and that I also needed her to give me a crash course with my camera. 


Luckily, she agreed.  Even though she already had a rotation this week and even though it involved her driving all the way to Washington for a day. (I'm pretty sure the program is supposed to work the other way around where I teach her something but every teacher would admit you learn from your students too, right?  And I did teach her how to quiet a fussy baby in a restaurant today by providing plenty of cereal and letting them chew on your car keys.)



So here is the little project we worked on today...




Get it?  It's a light tent.  For food!  Yeah!!


Allie found a ton of blogs for where to find instructions and we ended up mainly following this one here. 
She emailed me a list of supplies to pick up and then we put it together pretty quickly this morning. (I was a little daunted by the task to find all the PVC pieces but it was actually really easy-and luckily I vaguely remembered tagging along on a trip with Reid there one time when the water pipe busted so I knew where they kept the stuff).

 So here are a couple of pictures of her (with our primed paneling in the background-finally!) marking the PVC pipe...vital Registered Dietitian skills to have.



Notice the primed wood paneling in the background! Yeah!
My text to Reid this morning: "Honey where are the PVC cutters?"
And here are a couple of practice pictures of various veggies from our garden (garlic from Lazy Willow).  The tent is designed so that it can fold up flat and you can switch the backdrops just by clipping on whatever fabric/background you want.  (I wonder if there is a faux paneling one in case for old times sake?)  Then the light is filtered (?) by covering the PVC frame with a white sheet (in this case a bed sheet that had a hole in it..we cut it in half and then I hemmed the edge to give it a slightly more professional look.  Then you just clip on lights with "daylight" bulbs screwed in.  And voila-you have this mini perfect natural daylight adjustable food photo booth thing.  I thought Allie was a genius.



Lazy Willow Farm garlic, Tonda Nizza and Benning's Green Tint Scallop squash.
After we finished building the tent we went outside and Allie gave me some more hands on camera lessons.  I learned that my camera actually has a thing called "White Balance" and you can change it to fit whatever lighting you're shooting in (it even has a "fluorescent" setting!!  Score for our house!)  You can also change the thing called "ISO sensitivity" to control how much light is allowed in the photo.  I think I've figured out somewhat what the "Continuous" shooting options are on the menu and the "Color" options are pretty fun to play with (to take a picture in Black and White or Sepia, etc...I always thought you did that with the photo editing tool after you took the picture.) 


So while everything I learned today is probably the most basic you can get, I still feel 100% more confident in my ability to take semi-decent pictures of whatever I'm whipping up in the kitchen.  I also feel like I've whetted my appetite for really learning more about my camera, lighting, food staging, etc.   And since you eat with your eyes first, great pictures of vegetables may even be more important than knowing how many calories are in them.  (Since the point is for all of us to eat more of them, right?)



And the really, really great news?  Last week a woman stopped by our house to scout out where the fiber optic line is going to go! I'm not completely sure what that means but I'm pretty certain it = faster internet speed.  Thank goodness!  (Although I might get less laundry done...)

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Blueberry Muffin Scones

This is not my normal scone recipe but I was short half a container of sour cream last night when baking for the market.  (I also ran out of enough flour, which has never happened before, to make cinnamon rolls which is why we ended up with muffins...after 10pm here I'm out of luck for running to the store to get ingredients so I had to make do).  Luckily I had about half a container of Greek yogurt though.  And since we use those pretty interchangeably in our own food I figured it wouldn't hurt.

The only absolutely set in stone scone recipe I use is for our Blue Cheese Green Onion & Grit Scones and I'm not sure I'll ever, ever give that one away....unless I write a cookbook.  (I usually refer to these as "Deep South Scones" but it's not nearly as descriptive as the name I just listed so I don't think the name has stuck yet.  But if I write that cookbook...)  All others depend on whatever dried fruit, fresh fruit, nuts, spices, etc. sound good to me when I'm making them up either Friday evening or early Saturday morning.

The only bad thing about this method is that I hardly ever write down what I add in the scones.  Or I forget I even made a particular flavor.  And then someone asks me months later about it because it was their favorite and I have no idea how to re-create it.  And it is such a compliment they asked for them and I end up feeling horrible I can't remember. So I am going to try to start writing these down a little better. I'm much better at just cooking on the fly rather than documenting and writing technical recipes as I go. (Which is why at the market it's always a good idea to go ahead and try something because it may be the only opportunity you get!)

Anyway, I did write it down last night.  And I'm so glad I did because I ended up loving these scones.  I was going to call them "Blueberry Citrus Zest Almond" Scones but they ended up tasting just like a blueberry muffin but with the crunchy crust of a scone.  Heaven.

For this recipe, you can use your food processor.  Or if you don't have one, just mix it up by hand-it's good for your arms.

Blueberry Muffin Scones:

Step #1:  Add following ingredients together in bowl/food processor and pulse until almonds are chopped well.
4 Cups of flour (whole wheat, all purpose or a mix)
2 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp sea salt
3 Tbsp milled flax seed
1/4 cup whole almonds


Step #2:  Add these ingredients to dry mixture and pulse very briefly-just to distribute everything
8 oz. Greek yogurt
8 oz. sour cream
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
Sprinkle of cinnamon
Sprinkle of nutmeg
1/4 tsp pure almond extract
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup evaporated cane juice (or sugar or raw sugar)


Step #3:  Add melted butter to mixture and pulse until a dough forms.
1 cup melted butter




Step #4:  Dump out dough into a large bowl.  Sprinkle a little flour on top and add 1 1/2 cups blueberries on top of flour-give them a quick mix to coat the berries.  Then really get those berries mixed in...you kind of knead them in with the dough.


Step #5:  Divide dough in half.  Place each half on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  Shape each half into a disk about 1/2-1" thick.  Cut across circle 4 times to make 8 triangle/scones.  Repeat with other half of dough.

Step #6:  Arrange individual scones on the tray and sprinkle with raw sugar.  (*In this picture they are just on the pan with spray...only because I had run out of parchment paper (and flour).) 


Step #7:  Bake 15-18 minutes* in preheated 425 oven.  (I usually rotate them about the  8 minute mark so that they bake evenly by turning the pan and changing position on rack.).

Step #8:  Eat warm with really, really good butter and really, really good coffee.


Do Ahead Notes:  Scones are the perfect food to freeze then throw in the oven to toast for breakfast.  You can also make up the dough and cut the scones ahead of time.  Freeze them on the pan (once frozen you can put them in a bag) and then just let semi-thaw and bake when you need them. 

So if you missed these at the market this morning (we sold out by 10:30!) you can make yourself a batch of them in the meantime!  Thanks so much to everyone who came out to see us this morning!

What is your favorite scones we've made so far?  (I just might try to recreate the recipe...)