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Recipe Redux - Sesame Mango Salad

This is one of my favorite salads to take to potlucks.  It is based on this recipe but they make it so hard to get to I tweaked it a bit and put it here for easier reference.  2 tablespoons sesame seeds 1 box mini bowtie pasta 3 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 tablespoon sesame oil 3 tablespoons rice vinegar 3 tablespoons lime juice 3 tablespoons honey 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 4 green onions, thinly sliced 2 carrots, grated 3  mangoes, peeled and diced 1.  In a large pot, boil the noodles until tender but firm to the bite, 8 to 9 minutes. Drain and rinse under running cold water and drain again. Toss with 1 tablespoon of the oil. 3. In a large bowl, combine the remaining vegetable oil with the sesame oil, vinegar, lime juice, honey, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, if using. Whisk to mix well. Add the noodles, green onions, carrots, mango, and cilantro a
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Happy Half Birthday

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Guess who is 6 months old! Little Bit is awesome.  She is cooing up a storm telling us all her stories.  Her smile lights up our existence and her giggles are the best music. She discovered her hands awhile ago but now she is using them to discover the world.  She loves to ring the wind chimes and feel the leaves of Froggy's lemon tree.  She is working really hard on rolling over.  She has stumbled into it a couple of times but can't do it reliably. She weighs 15.5lb and is 23.5" long which places her in the 40% percentile for weight though she is not yet on the chart for heght yet.  Pediatrician says that is normal.  She is meeting all the milestones for her adjusted age.  She has her first visit with the physical therapist this week and her first visit with the developmental pediatrician later this month. She got to experience her first snow fall.  She did not like the blizzard but was much less dubious about the snow itself when we went out later.  Sledding though
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Food Adventure - Multigrain Bread Edition

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Bread is an important part of our lives and I am always experimenting with new ideas.  I was very inspired by this recipe and created my own multigrain mix.  It took a long time for me to work up the courage to try it.  I was afraid of grinding the grains. But it was easier than I thought.  My grinder didn't work at all but the blender handled it with ease.  And the best part is that the bread turned out AMAZING which is a good thing because I have tons of the multigrain mix left.  I winged it and created my own mix using what I had an what I could find easily at the local market. I used purchased rice flour purchased semolina purchased cracked buckwheat oats ground at home corn flour ground barley flaxseed unground - next time I will grind this as well   I prepped the dough the day before I intended to bake it and let it rise gently in the fridge.  On baking day I took the dough out and let it rest on the counter for an hour then tried to shape it.  It was much to
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Enjoying Shakespeare

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Froggy has been enjoying Shakespeare since a much younger age than I thought possible before I had children thanks to the suggestions and guidance of our curriculum .  We started our Shakespeare experience with the Nesbit and Lamb retellings.  With these rich retellings in her experience, Froggy was able to attend and truly enjoy the live performances of our local Shakespeare theater company. And this year, our Shakespearean adventure has entered a new chapter.  We are reading Othello in all its original glory with the help of No Fear Shakespeare .  The side by side approach allows us to enjoy the rich beautiful language while still understanding the story.  It is a major jump from the retellings and therefore we are taking much longer working our way through the play than in previous years but it is worth it.  I was concerned that the complicated language, the switching back and forth, or the lengthy speeches would be a deterrent.  It hasn't.  I suspect in large part thanks t
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Food Finds

Since we came back from Kansas, we have been having some fun experimenting with new recipes. Not  all of the experiments have been good but here are a couple that are major keepers The first surprise win was our new favorite pasta sauce.   Froggy really likes pasta with red sauce but didn't really eat the sauce much.  When I offered her this new sauce, she chowed down on it and licked up the sauce.  She now eats the same amount of noodles with at least half again as much sauce and has no idea she is getting any veggies.  It is a double win for the Ima. The second win is a breakfast burrito recipe I have fallen in love with these.  I could eat them every single day.  Froggy asked to try mine and gave it a double thumbs up,  With her eating them as well, I may need to start making a double batch. I started with this recipe and then tweaked it to suit our family Breakfast Burrito   Ingredients: 8 eggs 1 med onion - diced 1 bag frozen corn black beans (an amount to b
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Trial 2

Flavor Question: Can I make the peach flavor stronger by simmering the peaches on the stove? Texture Question: How can we make the edges less brown and still keep it cooked inside? Flavor Hypothesis - If I simmer the peaches on the stove, the peach flavor will get concentrated because we simmer off the water. Texture Hypothesis -If I bake the bread for one hour at 325 instead of 350, the inside will be done and the edges will not be crispy yet Experiment  Summary -We simmered the frozen peaches on the stove top between medium and medium-high until they thawed.  We then pureed them and the heat down to low.  We had the peaches on the heat for approximately half an hour. The flavor is definitely more intense. The peaches were hot so we had to be careful not to cook our eggs when we poured the peaches in. We mixed the dry goods into the rest for 40 seconds this time. We then separated the batter into two loaf pans evenly by weighing each pan as we added the batter.  We baked the
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Trial 1

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Flavor Question: Can I make the flavor more even by pureeing the peaches and evening out the fruit (putting in more cherries and less peaches)? Texture Question: How can we make the edges less brown and still keep it cooked inside? Flavor Hypothesis -  If I Puree the peaches and divide the fruit in half I will make a more even flavor in the bread. Texture Hypothesis - If I bake it at the same temperature for only 50 min the insides will be done and the edges will not be burned yet Experiment  Summary - When making the bread this time, we used 1 cup of sweet cherries instead of1/2 cup of  tart cherries.  The peaches were pureed and measured 1 cup. I forgot to put in the nutmeg with the other spices, but luckily I remembered just before we mixed so we were able to fix it.  We mixed for for 35 seconds this time. We wrote down the empty bowl bowl weight wrong and accidentally put too much in one loaf pan.  The loaves were baked for 50 minutes at the same temperature (350 degrees)
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