Do you like spicy food? Do you ever dream of having iced cold spicy lemonade on a hot summer day?
We have these fantasies too and have found it quite easy to make come true!
Add hot pepper flakes to a pitcher of lemonade, let it sit for a few hours, then strain through a sieve. Depending on how much hot pepper flakes you’ve added, you’ll have a nice ice cold spicy drink to chill your summers with.
Spiking our drinks with hot pepper flakes will be our new habit this summer!
We love you capsaicin (this is the substance in peppers that make things nice and spicy).
So good you won’t buy frozen ones from the health food market again!
Vegetarian Curry Tofu Egg Scramble
We love breakfasts that tastes more like a full meal and if it takes less than 15 minutes to make, we like it even more! For this curry tofu egg scramble, we find that it’s even easier to make than scrambled eggs, just because it doesn’t stick to the pan as much.
The basic premise of tofu egg scrambles is to crumble up half a box of tofu with your hands in a bowl and then mix with one beaten egg. For tofu scrambles, it is best to use ‘firm’ tofu so it hold up well when scrambling.
The last step is seasoning!
Season your tofu egg mixture with curry powder, chopped garlic, sea salt, and some pepper. Also add any chopped toppings you’d like – in our recipe we used trumpet mushrooms and french radish.
1. Mix everything up in the bowl with a spoon, but don’t over mix so the tofu maintains some texture.
2. Finally, heat a pan with some butter and scramble for about 7 minutes, or till it’s just about done.
3. Enjoy with toast, or for a nice spice kick, add Tabasco sauce!
Enjoy!
Have you made tofu egg scrambles before, and if so, what are your favorite toppings?
I love crafting and one of the things I’ve always wanted to try was needle felting.
It’s not something I’ve ever seen anyone do, so I got really excited over coming across this excellent simple tutorial from the Honestly WTF blog. Not only does this show you how to needle-felt, but you can wear your work of art too!
Just looking at this makes us feel all warm and fuzzy!
Below are previews are some steps involved with making this. The full set of instructions can be found on the Honestly WTF blog
A picture of our fig tree, during this early spring bloom. The green bud you see will morph into a soft juicy plump fig in a few months. It has a pink seedy flesh, some say it’s like an inside out strawberry!
And a poem ensues below because that’s what happens when you can’t stop thinking about it!
Your nourish us every summer
With two generous harvests
Enough to overflow fruit baskets
or Make 50 jars of jam
Like squirrels saving
precious commodities for wintertime
For what we’ve taken from you
We must replenish and feed you well
You lavish us
With your sweet delicacies
And give us a Fair exchange
Of our efforts
You show us that
relationships
knowledge
understanding
are built not just with people
But with the bounties of Nature
As artisanal confectioners ourselves, we’re a bit hard to please when it comes to all the delicious pictures of sweets we see online and in catalogs, but this one from the Sweet Sarah Etsy Shop hits all the right marks in terms of quality of ingredients, creativity, and presentation.
What you are seeing below is a Chocolate ‘Salami’ – it’s made with real chocolate ganache (which means fresh cream, not hydrogenated palm oil like Lindt chocolate truffles), and bits of almond biscotti. It’s cleverly shaped like a Salami so you can cut and put the remaining in the fridge.
Earlier this week, we attended a live taping of Martha Stewart’s Etsy episode in their New York City studios. Yes – one fantastic WHOLE hour of Etsy, on national cable tv (Hallmark Channel) – Etsy finally gets the national spotlight it deserves.
The whole experience was quite an adventure, and it felt so exciting and surreal to enter and see Martha’s picture perfect television studio! I couldn’t believe I was even there even as I walked in.
The first section of the studio is Martha's TV Kitchen. To the left of it, there is a kitchen where a large staff chops and prepares all the food to be used in the shows, this is how they make it look so easy for the camera 🙂
Closeup of Martha’s kitchen – homey and picture perfect!
This is how it’s like to be in the studio audience. It was very bright in there, with many lights and diffusers shining from above us! You can also see the faux NYC skyline in the background.
We weren’t allowed to take any pictures during the taping, but we did once it was over. Here’s Martha answering questions from the studio audience.
Martha is quite the pro in front of the camera, the whole taping was flawlessly executed, minus the one minor incident where a button popped out of her shirt and she had to re-do a few sentences.
Here we are taking pictures in the Crafts section of Martha’s studio. This is the room you see her in on the craft segments of her show. So pretty – now I can say I’ve been to crafting heaven!
The Etsy episode on Martha airs April 26, 2012 on the Hallmark Channel – plus we were told that she will be blogging about it too sometimes next week!
Here I am enjoying fresh spring strawberries dipped in Creme Fraiche, which I learned about from food blogging.
Strawberries with Creme Fraiche
Remember this?
Cool Whip Ad
There are so many delicious traditional foods that have been forgotten about because the food industry is very good at appropriating what has always been around for their ads of chemically processed food.
One fine example is Cool Whip. Cool Whip regularly advertised their product with pictures of succulent strawberries dipped in fresh cream, appropriating the image of fresh whipped cream, or creme fraiche on strawberries to their artificial version of the real thing. For quite some time, I thought it was easier to use cool whip instead of whipped cream, but then again, I didn’t know anything about creme fraiche at the time, which wasn’t advertised if at all.
In keeping up with the times of new social media, Cool Whip is now using mommy bloggers to use Cool Whip in their recipes.
Cool whip is made with corn syrup whipped with hydrogenated oils, Creme Fraiche is made by adding probiotic cultures to heavy cream. We love the one we got from Cowgirl Creamery but any creme fraiche will work perfectly.
What traditional versions of foods have you recently discovered?
We’ve done a lot of things with almonds, like making almond nougats for our etsy shop, making almond tuille cookies, but not almond milk. We used raw almonds for this recipe of almond milk
Disclaimer, almond is a tree fruit, do NOT make if you are allergic to tree fruits
We first soaked our almonds overnight, it is amazing how the little sprouts start to form just after 5 hours of soaking. Once soaked, you can easily tear off the skin too- a very zen experience!
We then removed the water and blended the almond with water. We used 3 cups of water for every cup of almond, plus we added honey for some added sweetness. Next we strain the almond milk through a nut bag to removed sediments- as you can see below.
almond pulp
Here’s me, relishing my creamy cup of almond milk, with some cinnamon sprinkles on top! Remember, these don’t have preservatives so refrigerate and finish within 3 days.
Deliciously Mind Blowing Fresh Almond Milk - with Cinnamon
Tweed is a fabric that we see all the time on suits, dress pants, but little did I know until recently that it was invented in Scotland. Tweed currently produced in this same area of Scotland is by law known as “Harris Tweed”. It is spun from virgin wool, giving it a nice smooth texture, unlike a lot of contemporary tweed fabrics that feel itchy and rough to the touch.
Handmade Harris Tweed Handbag
It’s not always easy to find in the local department store but there are some very creative pieces of everything ranging from pillows to bags made by artisans on Etsy, and I never thought I could find a Tweed handbag!
Nut milks are filling up the health food aisles, but they are just not as good as fresh cream cups of nut milks you make at home. I’m a huge huge fan of FRESH nut milks, just because they are so easy to make, and unlike soymilk – no cooking required 🙂 Store brought nut milk are filled with too many additives/preservatives and tastes nothing like its original self- making nut milks yourself is healthier, tastier, and you’ll notice how much thicker and filling they are than watered down supermarket ones.
I don’t have a camcorder yet to film my nut milk making escapades, but I’ve found one from Daniel Delaney’s website that perfectly entertaining, and informative!
My favorite type of nut milk to make is chocolate hazelnut cashew milk, but I’ve just placed an order for almonds fresh from the farm today, so I’ll be making almond milk this week.
Super Simple Steps for making nut milk:
1. Order fresh nuts, Oh Nuts.com has a wide and fresh selection that never fails to disappoint.
2. soak the nuts in water for over 5 hours till they soften, then blend in a high speed blender with 3 cups of water for every cup of nut.
3. Along with water, add flavorings into your blender. Instead of refined sugar, I usually use honey, cocoa powder, cocoa nibs (these are whole cocoa beans crushed to small pieces), fresh peeled apples, pears, etc.
4. Then you strain the milk through a nut milk bag – which you can get easily online.
5. ALWAYS refrigerate your fresh nut milks because they can go bad otherwise, and remember to finish them within 3 days, as they stay freshest within that time frame.
I’ve found that cashews hazelnuts and macadamia nuts all work very well, has anyone else tried making your own nut milks?
summerinthemorning 