Salmon Puff Muffins

Red Running

by burnishings on flickr

Having given up dairy since about October, I have now decided to try eliminating obvious sources of gluten from my diet, to see if that further helps with Kate's rash and eczemic skin. As a result, my lunch options are even further curtailed, sigh. Looking through the pantry this afternoon, I saw some salmon, and I was just not interested in salmon salad without the sandwich (we get fabulous whole grain bread from True Grain in Cowichan Bay, which mills their own flour, but alas, no more for me or Kate for a while). So off to the internet to see what else I could come up with (what on earth did we do before the internet? oh, yes, books... well, I still use those too!), and ran across this post which mentioned a sort of fishloaf muffin with salmon. Hmmm, I could do that! So here's my effort from today:

Salmon Puff Muffins

2 large eggs, separated

2 cans salmon (8 oz tin, or 213 g if you're in Canada)

1/4 cup cornmeal

1 tablespoon dried dill weed (or if you've got fresh, go for it)

1/2 teaspoon curry powder (I make my own, so I reckoned, what the heck!)

Preheat oven to 350F. Whip the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form. Beat the egg yolks, then mix in the salmon, cornmeal and seasonings. Use a blender or food processor to mash the salmon mix up into a fairly fine consistency. Gently fold the egg whites into the salmon mix, then dollop into prepared muffin tins (I use the silicone muffin tray and I managed 10 muffins out of this recipe). Bake for about 20-30 minutes or until muffins have risen a bit and are golden brown, starting to crack & separate from the sides, and a tester inserted comes away clean.

I thought this recipe would also be delightful with some smoked salmon added in, or instead use crab meat (although why waste perfectly good crab meat this way?). Season to your taste, and it's very nice served with a little (wheat free!) soy sauce. I bet it would be super good with spicy red pepper jelly too.

As everyone in the household, including Kate, loved these (and I was hard-pressed to save a few for tomorrow's lunch), I guess I'll be buying the full salmon share off the Michelle Rose's community supported fishery, and getting busy canning salmon this year!

Smoked Pork Hock Soup

Soueee!

by burnishings on Flickr.

We discovered a wonderful source for local smoked pork products at the Duncan Farmers' Market in the Square a couple of weeks ago: Ravenstone Farm. We'd been making a delicious pork & beans recipe in the slow cooker, but I wanted something different. I cobbled together a couple of recipes from Art of the Slow Cooker by Andrew Schloss, my "go to" manual for slow cooking and pretty much 80% of our dinners lately! I used a roasted vegetable soup with what I'd been doing for the pork & beans recipe, and got something like this:

Smoked Pork Hock Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 carrots, peeled & chopped into 1" rounds

1 sweet potato (the orange fleshed one!), peeled & chopped into 1" pieces

1 small squash (I've used butternut and Marina di Chioggia), peeled & chopped into 1" pieces

3-4 celery ribs, chopped into 1" pieces

1 large onion, chopped into 1" pieces

4 whole garlic cloves

4 cups total liquid - I used about 2 cups red tomato salsa and 2 cups chicken broth, both home-made

1 medium (about 2 to 3 pounds, depending on the size of your slow cooker - ours is a Crock Pot VersaWare, I think 6 quart) smoked ham hock

1 to 2 cups cooked (or canned) chick peas, drained

1/2 tsp cracked white or green peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick

1 bay leaf

Preheat oven to 425F. Toss the vegetables and garlic in the olive oil and spread over a rimmed baking pan. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes or until softened and slightly browned at edges. Place ham hock in the slow cooker. Scrape vegetables into slow cooker. You can use some of the broth to wash off the pan into the slow cooker if there are bits stuck, but I've not found that necessary. Pour the chick peas into the slow cooker. Add the salsa and broth and stir the ingredients together a little to distribute. Add the peppercorns, cinnamon stick and bay leaf and cover the slow cooker and cook on low for about 10 hours, or high for at least 5 hours, or until the ham is falling off the bone and the vegetables are tender.

This is a very versatile recipe: use whatever root vegetables you've got on hand that you feel like including. It's wonderful with parnsip, turnip (rutabaga), etc. Just enjoy! And like most soups & stews, it's even better the next night. And if you happen to do the baked beans recipe (which I'll have to post at some point) as well, it's fabulous mixed in with this.

Addition Part 3 - Raising the Roof

We're now pretty much past the weather-critical work, so we'll see how it progresses, but we're so excited that we've got to this point. Len has worked very hard constructing the pieces and figuring out how he'd manage to put it all together. It was a bit of a nail-bitter when the crane engaged the roof, but when the tension caught and everything lifted all beautifully in one go, it was perfect!

Addition Part 2 - Raising the Walls

Addition Part 1 - Construction & Deconstruction

We've had some delays with the construction of the addition to the house, but the bits are finally constructed and installed, yay!! So here's a quick review of the process for your viewing pleasure, broken into three posts.

Baby Led Weaning - an update

OK, we are totally hooked!! All of us are thoroughly enjoying this baby led weaning thing. Kate is having fun, we're amazed at what she'll try and what she actually manages to consume, and mealtimes are just so joyful. I know that Dave & Mom were both quite skeptical, Mom especially worried about the choking hazard possibilities, and while that's not completely eliminated (hey, we eat & breathe out of the same hole, choking is a risk for everyone), Kate seems to be developing the skills needed to successfully maneuver her food around safely. As long as we provide her with safe shapes and textures within reason, she's been pretty good at managing her food very well. She does gag now and then (much more at the beginning) as she would hit her gag point and try to move the food around, but she's definitely figuring things out very well.

I have been grappling with the dilemma of choosing between the order of foods I'm supposed to be introducing Kate to and following the concept of letting Kate try different things. We're balancing it somewhat, and I'm not being a very strict adherent to the order, although I am keeping her away from cow's milk products until she's at least a year (as she's demonstrated a reaction to milk proteins), and probably will wait until she's at least a year before introducing legumes & wheat due to intolerance demonstrated in our family. Other than that, we're having a great time exploring new foods together.

Baby Led Weaning

We are hugely enjoying parenthood. Yes, we're exhausted, yes it's an enormous challenge physically, mentally and psychologically, yes it is overwhelming. And it's fantastic. It is so much fun watching Kate develop and to see the changes as she gets more and more control over her actions. We didn't have any experience with babies, and I figured that babies were just lumps until they were a few months old; so I was sure surprised to find that Kate had a definite personality right from day one, and it's only got stronger.

What we've just started recently is introducing Kate to solids, and we're doing it through the "baby led weaning" methodology (thanks to Mila's Daydreams for the inspiration, otherwise I would never have known about it). So instead of spoon feeding her mush, then graduating up to solid solids, we're giving her pieces of whole food with appropriate shapes and "handles", and the argument is if she can support herself sitting comfortably, has sufficient development to pick up the food and bring it to her mouth, and be given the opportunity to work out how to move the food around her mouth on her own, she'll be able to feed herself when she's ready. Obviously, we have to provide her with healthy choices, and to not give her physically dangerous shapes or textures, but otherwise, if she's given the opportunity to figure it out on her own, with plenty of time, then she'll manage ok on her own. I really liked the idea, so here we are trying it.

Kate has been sitting up quite well for some time, but I didn't want to introduce her to solids until she was at least 6 months. Instead, we've been sitting her up at the table with us when we eat, and we gave her a baby spoon (plastic & silicone) to play with on her tray along with some other toys. She worked on getting it to her mouth, and figuring out how not to gag herself with it. Then we progressed to raw carrot sticks that she could do the same process; once she got something with flavour to suck on, the spoon was history. I was going to keep up with the raw carrot sticks for a bit longer, but yesterday we got some sweet potato fries on the ferry, and she was all eyes, so we thought "what the heck". We found one long enough for her and let her grab it and straight to mouth and suck suck suck, and grumpy pants when we didn't want to give her any more (they were a bit too salty so I didn't want to overdue it; besides, it was just an experiment).

Hmmm. OK. So last night, her Grandma prepared her some separate roasted veggies (with the appropriate dimensions and no added salt), and I cut a stick off for her from my steak, and she was hugely happy. She noshed on the squash right away, then tried the French fingerling potato (white shot with pink), then really sucked away at the steak, and finally tried the purple potato. We were fascinated at what she wanted to pick first and the fact that she ignored the purple coloured food until last, but once she tasted it and realized it was the same as the potato she'd been enjoying, she really got into it. This morning was some apple, banana and mango slices. She tried them all, but banana was the first and primo choice. The mango produced some consternation and a decision that she wasn't really that interested in the mouth feel or taste but loved the hand-squishiness of it! The apple was a bit of a challenge to get a handle on but she did enjoy sucking on it.

A whole new dimension has been opened up, for her and for us! What fun (and what a mess!).