Tomato Basil Soup – Garden Fresh!

08/30/2010

I love soup and I love to make soup. Tomato Basil Soup is one of my summer time favorites, especially when I can use fresh tomatoes from the garden!

Ingredients:
tomatoes, any kind. I used about 10 beef steak
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium baking potato, finely chopped
1.25 cup broth
12 or so basil leaves. I prefer sweet basil
1 clove of garlic
heavy cream or sour cream (optional)
splash of extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Start out by pouring a splash of olive oil into a big soup pot.

Chop up the potato and onion and throw them in the pot once the oil is hot. The potato is the unsung hero in this soup – don’t leave it out; it’s essential for the right texture/thickness.

Cook the onion and potato for 10-15 minutes but don’t let it brown.

Meanwhile cut up the tomatoes. Cut the tops off and then cut the rest into quarters.

My favorite thing about this recipe – no need to remove the skin or seeds!

Dump the tomatoes in with the onion and potato in the pot.

Add 1 clove of chopped garlic.

Pour the broth over top. (I use chicken boullion cubes & water.)

Cover and let simmer for about 25 minutes.

At this point, let the soup cool a little and then carefully blend it in small batches. Or … if you have the greatest kitchen invention ever (no, not a Kitchenaid Mixer …) a Braun multi-purpose blender … use the handheld blender to blend the soup up right in the pot. Wear an oven mitt and you don’t even need to let it cool!

Pick and wash 12 or so fresh basil leaves. I started with 6 and realized that wasn’t enough for my taste.

Chop them up and set aside a few pinches for garnish. Mix the rest into the soup.

Depending on the flavor strength of your broth and the sweetness of your tomatoes, add salt and pepper to your liking.

Serve with a dallop of cream (or a drizzle of half & half if it’s all you have …) and a bit of chopped basil. A piece of toast is nice compliment.

If you make this, let me know how it goes!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

No Bake Oatmeal Cookies

08/16/2010

Some people call them No Bakes. I always called them Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies. Whatever you call them, they’re quick and easy and tasty and I’m not sure why in my adult life I have never made them. Jason had a few made by my mom a few months ago and has since requested that I make them.

Last night I finally went hunting for the recipe card over at mom’s. Here they’re called No Bake Oatmeal Cookies. I love old handwritten recipe cards, don’t you? I love how it’s all dirty and worn and has penciled-in notes for halfing the recipe.

I pulled together all the ingredients. Thankfully, I had everything on hand except oatmeal. Dang, what’s a lot of sugar. These are basically candy … Also, I had to ask a friend what oleo is. (Butter) I use salted butter so I skip the pinch of salt in the recipe.

I made these as a surprise for Jason so hopefully he’s not reading this. (Are you, babe?) They came out pretty freaking good. I hope he likes! 🙂

Here’s the recipe/directions if you want to make some of your own:

Pour 2 cups sugar, 2 tbsp cocoa, 1/2 cup milk and 1 stick of butter into a saucepan. Heat to a boil and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 4 tbsp peanut butter, 1 tsp vanilla and 3-3.5 cups of oatmeal. Drop spoonfuls onto a wax paper or foil and allow to cool. Enjoy!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

08/13/2010

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Our Vegetable Garden – May 2010

05/17/2010

A few weeks ago we had the first “harvest” from our vegetable garden: a handful of tiny, delicious strawberries. This weekend we shared our first small cherry tomato. Isn’t it cute? It was yummy.

The raised vegetable bed with 4 varieties of tomatoes, red peppers, green peppers, brussel sprouts, arugula and romaine.

Baby green pepper:

Better Boy tomato plant:

Looking forward to these in a few weeks! Thanks to our greenhouses, we should have an early crop!

The herb garden:

Raspberry bush:

Peach tree:

Yesterday we bought two blueberry bush stems on clearances at Lowes. Not expecting any harvest this year but I’m looking forward to blueberries in the future!

I forgot to snap a picture of the Key Lime tree Jason bought a few days ago. We’re also considering adding some more fruit trees this year to make a mini orchard – maybe pear and fig. I’m so excited to have all these fruits and vegetables right from our own urban backyard!!

2 Comments | Art, Art: Cooking, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

04/16/2010

Our first harvest of 2010 – a tiny little strawberry out of our vegetable garden. I love how Jason put it in our big empty fruit bowl for me to find when I came home from work.

1 Comment | Art, Art: Cooking, Art: gardening, Art: mid-century design, Art: Phone Photo Friday | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Weekend Update – part 2

04/14/2010

The Laren Brumley/Waterside show on Friday night was just the start of a wonderful weekend. We took a mini-vacation Saturday-Sunday with Laren and her husband Jeremy. First we went to IKEA Atlanta where we picked up a few things for our master bathroom renovation and met up with their friend Branton.

Exciting purchases, I know. The HULINGEN trash can (wrongly priced on the website … it’s actually $19.99) and the MOLGER mirror. From there, the five of us headed to Hiwassee State Park for a little camping adventure.

We set up our tents and cooked weinies* over the fire, baked beans and s’mores. We had a talent show featuring magic tricks by Branton (who J&L had talked up to us) and guitar by Jason (who J&L had talked up to Branton) and some singing by Laren (who we already knew was awesome).

•weinies = Louisianan for hot dogs

Sunday morning Jeremy and Laren cooked up a mean breakfast of buttermilk biscuits, scrambled eggs, fried weinies, pancakes and coffee. These two know how to CAMP!

We loafed around for a while after breakfast and then packed up and went out to explore the beautiful Hiwassee River in Cherokee National Park.

The guys — Jason, Branton and Jeremy — spent some time contemplating the meaning of their lives and the majesty of God’s creation.

Actually, they were all watching Laren and wondering which one of them was going to have to jump in and get her if she falls in. Jason was the first to say “not it.”

She didn’t fall in. Instead she found a big rock and took a nap.

We all did some more loafing around …

And searching for the pretty river rocks.

There were so many different colored rocks. I don’t know if I’ve ever really looked at river rocks like that before. Red, blue, green, orange, yellow, black, white. Gorgeous rocks! It’s amazing what you see when you take time to really stop and enjoy creation.

There’s nothing quite like a refreshing weekend getaway!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

An Unsightly Addition to Our Yard

04/12/2010

… but functional for sure. Vegetable planting time of year is a good reminder to get back on track with our backyard composting. We had been using a plastic trash can with holes drilled in it but this year we purchased this beautiful specimen. It works much better than the trash can because it has doors at the bottom so you can get the fresh rich soil out of the bottom without stirring everything up.

Backyard composting is simple. If you’re interested, download the basic instructions here.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Vegetable Garden – Planning

03/30/2010

It’s our fourth summer at this home and we’re putting the vegetable garden in it’s third location to date. This year we decided to building a raised bed for the first time, 4′ x 8′, roughly following Pioneer Woman’s instructions.

Originally I was thinking of doing a square foot garden – giving us space for 32 plants.

But Jason, my green-thumbed husband, said a square foot is not big enough for some of the things we wanted to grow – especially tomatoes. And we didn’t really need 32 different plants. Plus, we have 2 cold frames made from repurposed windows that we decided to use as greenhouses in the vegetable beds during the early spring months. There’s around 3’x3′.

Here’s the plan we came up with:

We’re starting watermelons, brussel and basil seedlings in the greenhouses for now. The cold frame on the left will be home to: strawberries, red bell peppers and green bell peppers. (We decided not to do chili peppers again this year.) The frame on the right with house: better boy tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, grape roma tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. Between the frames we’re going to try out brussel sprouts for the first time. Along the front of the left frame we’re planting romaine lettuce and along the front of the right frame, arugula.

I’m very excited! We’ve never done strawberries or brussel sprouts or romaine lettuce before. We’re trying sugar baby watermelons this year. Besides this 4’x8′ planter we also have a young peach tree and raspberry bush that we have high hopes for this year.

In case anyone is wondering …

Planted from seed:
sweet basil
sugar baby watermelon
brussel sprouts
romaine lettuce
arugula/rocket

Purchased plants:
strawberries (pictured above)
red bell peppers
green bell peppers
grape roma tomatoes
cherry tomatoes
beefsteak tomatoes
better boy tomatoes

4 Comments | Art, Art: Cooking, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Guitar-Shaped Cake

03/10/2010

A rockin’ baby party needs a rockin’ guitar cake, right? I drove home from Michaels with this guitar shaped cake pan wondering how in the world I was going to do this – bake the cake, get it out of the pan and onto a plate in one piece, and decorate it. I was afraid it would stick in the pan and be a crumbly mess. I wished I could have called Granny. She used to make all sorts of fancy cakes after taking cake decorating classes back in the 70’s.

Thankfully it came with detailed instructions to grease the pan with shortening and sprinkle with flour to make sure no shiny spots show through. It took some retouching on the tuning pegs but I eventually had it thoroughly greased and floured.

Granny used to always gently drop the cake pan onto the oven rack a few times. I’m not sure why … maybe to get rid of air pockets? I do it sometimes just because she did.

One regular cake mix completely filled the pan. I made funfetti cake.

After it cooled a few minutes, I cut off the rounded top … and ate most of it. Because why waste perfectly good cake?

The instructions said to flip the cake onto a wire rack, then, once cooled, flip it onto the serving plate. I had no interest in flipping the cake twice so it went straight onto the serving plate. It didn’t come right out. I ended up sliding a knife along the edges to make sure everything was loose and then tried again.

Success!!! Thank you Jesus! Look at that bridge and sound hole and those frets. How funny! Do you really think they’ll be visible after I frost it?

Nope. But I suppose maybe the purpose is just a template for decorating. Considering I’m an ill-equiped*, inexperienced cake decorator, I think it turned out OK. Colored sugars certainly help.

*I used a butter knife and a ziplock bag with the corner snipped off.

I used Martha Stewart’s vanilla frosting recipe. (By the way, I recently discovered the wonder of homemade frosting. Why have I been buying it out of a can all these years?!) It was very sugary sweet but thankfully the cake was not so it was a nice balance.

I’m looking forward to many more guitar cakes in the future!

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Posted by mahlbrandt

A Weekend Recap

03/02/2010

“Some weekends are so busy, I can’t wait for the week to start.” – Jason

We kicked of the weekend by having some friends over for a late dinner. Jason grilled some chicken (I love being able to grill year-round!) and I made PW’s baked lemon pasta. It was a delicious hit. Late dinner led to late night chattin it up with good friends.

•

Saturday morning I kissed Jason goodbye and headed off to a PJ breakfast baby shower. Brilliant! (Was that your idea, Jenna?) So fun to sit around with a bunch of my favorite ladies in our comfies eating waffles and quiches and watching our friend unwrap lots of adorable little girly outfits.

I spent Saturday afternoon preparing for baby shower #2. Making a bunting banner. Baking a guitar-shaped cake. Cleaning the house. Arranging the table and furniture.

Saturday I had a girls night with my sister-in-law and our good friend while our husbands were all out on the road.  It was fun to watch a chick flick – He’s Just Not That into You. I have to say, it’s kind of a depressing picture of marriage and dating these days, though. Definitely makes me appreciate my marriage!

Jason got home sometime in the middle of the night Saturday and was up and gone to set up at church before I woke up Sunday morning. I was a couple minutes late but the service was great. Something is about to explode. It’s so exciting! People are so hungry for more of God’s presence that no one wants to leave.

I did eventually scurry out so I could get back home to finished prepping for the Rockin’ Baby Party. Bake artichoke dip. Tie balloons to the mail box. Give directions over the phone. Set out chips, salsa, guacamole, hummus, crackers, pita, sushi, guitar cake, punch. The party was a hit and I hope our friends were blessed. I didn’t think to count but I’m pretty sure that’s the most people we’ve ever had in our house; definitely the most kids we’ve had running around at one time. Lucy was a great vacuum gobbling up all of the cake and crunched chips that the kiddos left behind.

Fun weekend but we were pooped! We were both asleep by 10pm on Sunday night which is extremely rare in this house. Phew!

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