My Favorite Tea

02/01/2011

If you know me well you know that I’m a tea drinker. I have been since I was young, thanks to my mama. I prefer black teas and for the past 10 years or so, my favorite tea has been Republic of Tea Mango Ceylon. I have never gotten sick of it. The problem, though, is that it’s not sold many places. Since I ran out recently I’ve been trying other teas. I saw this Mango Black Tea at Trader Joe’s the other day. It looks like it might be a perfect replacement and it was cheap!

It’s good but it’s a lot more tangy/fruity than my favorite. Oh well. It was worth a try. I suppose I should just start ordering it online.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

I made cookies.

12/23/2010

I had plans to walk you step by step through my favorite cookie recipe—Peanut Butter Blossoms—and a new recipe from my neighbor that I tried for the first time—Peanut Brittle—but a) I don’t have time, b) I’m too lazy to dig the recipes back out of the recipe box, and c) you are done making Christmas cookies and treats by now, anyway, right?

I’m eating both right now and they are delicious! That’s all you really need to know, really.

Speaking of our recipe box, a friend gave us this one as a wedding gift. Susan, I think of you every time I’m digging for a recipe!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Modern Gingerbread House

12/21/2010

I wish I could take credit for this but alas, I cannot. I saw it on a blog last year and saved it in my inspiration files. (The blog is now private so there is no point in citing it.)  Maybe it will inspire someone else out there, too!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Busyness

11/30/2010

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. (Has anyone even noticed? I’m sure you’ve all been busy too.) My amazing husband has been home a little over a week and I haven’t figured out where to reinsert blogging into my schedule. I’m still soaking up all the evening and weekend time I can with him. We had a great Thanksgiving. Jason smoked a 13 lb. turkey (it took 8 hours!) and we enjoyed all kind of deliciousness and fun times with his parents, my parents and a sweet family of 6 from our church (including a precious 2.5 week old baby girl that I had the privilege of holding for a wonderfully long time.) We put up our Christmas decorations, tore out some walls, chainsawed up some bushes, polished the cloffice (it’s almost done) and caught up with friends and family. It’s been a good week.

How was your Thanksgiving?

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Basil Cubes: Saving Fresh Basil

11/04/2010

I love adding fresh sweet basil to my Italian food but sadly, basil is one of the few herbs that doesn’t survive through the winter in our garden. It often drops enough seeds that it will come back in the spring. If not, we buy a plant and I can’t wait until it’s mature enough to pluck off some leaves to chop up and sprinkle on my pasta. Two years ago a fellow basil lover shared a little secret with me: basil can be frozen with extra virgin olive oil to make basil cubes! I’ve never tried drying basil, but freezing it is great way to preserve fresh basil and save it for cooking through the winter.

Before the first frost warning, I start by cutting back most of the basil plant. I left one branch with flowers and seeds on the plant.

Then I chop it up pretty fine. I used the food processor / blender for the second batch and it worked a lot better. If the leaf pieces are too big they wont stick together enough to freeze with the e.v.o.o.

Mix the chopped basil with extra virgin olive oil. (Again, chopped finer than this is better.)

Spoon the mixture into an ice cube tray, packing it pretty tightly.

After the cubes are frozen—I waited until the next day—they’re ready to be popped out of the ice cube tray. I used a knife to loosen the edges of the basil cubes from the tray and flipped them on to a piece of wax paper. The olive oil melts pretty quickly so work fast.

I store my basil cubes in a couple of layers of zip lock bags and stick them back in the freezer.

To use the basil cubes, I toss them in with pasta sauce as it’s cooking or heating. It would probably work to put one in with hot, cooked pasta too. It doesn’t take much for the e.v.o.o. to melt. Not as good as freshly picked basil but it’ll get me through the winter!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Good-Looking (and Yummy) Ice Cream Cake

10/25/2010

Jason’s birthday was back on September 16th and I decided to give him a mini surprise by making homemade ice cream cake and taking it to our small group to celebrate. (Small group = Jason, me and three other families from our church that get together once every 2 weeks to hang out, encourage each other, pray for each other, etc.) I’ve made homemade ice cream cake a few times before but it always turned out kind of … ugly. I mean, you can’t go wrong with the taste but it has never looked anything like the $15-25 store-bought kind.

This year I was googling recipes that use ice cream sandwiches because they make the ice cream step a lot easier. I found this Oreo & Fudge Ice Cream Cake recipe from Kraft that uses just five ingredients: ice cream sandwiches, oreos, cool whip, fudge, and jello pudding mix. It was pretty simple and it turned out really pretty!

Once the cool whip on the outside started to thaw it started to get pretty messy but the slices turned out pretty good looking. Most importantly, everyone thought it was D-to-the-licious and the birthday boy was very appreciative.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

10/22/2010

Have you ever tried Grilled Hobo Fruit Packs of Awesomeness from Today’s Letters? What the what what? First of all, if you’ve never checked out the blog Today’s Letters – go there now. Sweetest blog I’ve ever seen. Everyday Emily writes love letters: two to her husband and a few other to important people and silly loves in her life. Emily and Tim have the most playful and sweet relationships I’ve every witnessed through blogland. Oh, and she responded to my tweet about subbing gingerman cookies for ginger snaps in Fruit Packs of Awesomeness so we’re totally twitter friends now. 🙂 If you want to know what the heck I’m talking about go to the link and MAKE some. You won’t regret it!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Man Gifts: Greenhouse & Smoker

09/28/2010

I’m having [another] crazy busy week between work & freelance. Blah, blah, blah, everyone is busy… I know! I’m sorry for the lame excuse for light blogging. Here are a couple of quick photos of some new things around the ol’ mid-century modern ranch.

My parents and I bought Jason a greenhouse a couple weeks ago. He was quite surprised to see it out on the back patio when we woke up on his birthday. It’s out in the yard now ready to over-winter some of Jason’s tender tropicals.

This was like a birthday present from God for Jason. He’s been wanting a smoker for years but they’re pretty expensive ($150-250 for a big one like this) and no one ever seems to sell used ones on craigslist. We were riding our bikes home from a coffee shop run a few days after J’s bday and guess what our neighbors were selling at their yard sale? For $20! It needs cleaned up/fixed up but Jason can’t wait to use it… rack of ribs, smoked salmon, jerky …

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

09/08/2010

Lately Jason and I have been buying whole chickens from the grocery store. They’re pretty inexpensive and we end up getting several meals out of one. We cook the whole thing in the crockpot with seasonings and fresh herbs sprinkled on top. After 6-8 hours the cooked chicken is tender and tasty and there is a bit of broth left in the bottom of the pot. After we’ve had 1 or 2 meals with chicken, I like to use the broth and the small bits of leftover chicken to make soup.

For Chicken Noodle Soup you need:

carrots (2) chopped
celery (3 stalks) chopped
broth/boullion
chicken (cooked & chopped up)
noodles
salt, pepper, bay leaf and/or other seasoning to taste

First I like to peel the carrots.

Then I prep the celery for chopping. I decided to cook the leafy parts of the stalks for flavor but left them whole so I could fish them out later.

Chop the carrots and celery up into small chunks.

Cut the chicken into bit-size pieces.

I added a bay leaf, 5-6 balls of all spice, a boullion cube and some water.

Then I added the carrots, celery, chicken, and about 1 cup of noodles. I recommend using bigger noodles than this. These fine egg noodles get so soft and don’t really hold their own in this soup.

Cook for a couple of hours and then fish out the bay leaf, all spice and leafy celery parts.

Done! I made this soup on the same day as the tomato basil soup so I decided to freeze all of it. In other words, I forgot to take a picture of the finished soup in a nice bowl.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

09/03/2010

The first fruits from our key lime (Mexican lime) tree! They’re so little and cute.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

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