Homemade Chocolate

Hi all:

I have been having trouble posting new posts lately, so I am glad to be back blogging, thanks to my genius son - the technology wizard. I have lots to catch you up on, so here goes my most recent foray into the culinary arts.

Homemade chocolate. Need I say more? It's fast, easy, healthy and so yummy.  Here are the delectable morsels I made today, using my new silicone chocolate/candy moulds.

 

You only need 3 ingredients; 1/4 c. cocoa powder,  1/4 c. Melted coconut oil,  2 T. maple syrup. Melt the coconut oil in the microwave - about 30-45 seconds.  Stir in the cocoa powder until thoroughly combined. Stir in the maple syrup. Pour into chocolate moulds and refrigerate for approx. 2-3 hours, until set. You can also just pour it all into a glass pie plate or glass dish and scrape chocolate curls out with a spoon. I did this before I bought my candy moulds.  I saw this recipe on the Marilyn Dennis show. A naturopathic doctor (a guest on the show) stated that the reason we crave sweets is that we lack magnesium. Eating this healthy chocolate will help curb your cravings for sweets, as cocoa powder contains magnesium. It may also help you lose weight as you will crave less sugar overall. Worth a try, don't you think? This chocolate tastes wonderful.

  

This time, I toasted some pecans in a pan and added them with orange flavoured locally sourced cranberries. Divine!!

 

Here, I used an empty Lindt chocolate box leftover from Valentine's Day. They look professional, don't they?

Enjoy!

Rosie

Divine Lamb Chops

Hi all:

I wanted to make something outside my regular repertoire and decided to try lamb chops.  I have made them before, years ago, but I thought it was time to revisit these delectable morsels.  We all love Greek food in our house, so I decided to make them Greek style.

They are easy to throw together and taste wonderful. With a few simple ingredients, you too can make a dinner fit for a $50 price tag.

Here are the steps:

Rosie's Divine Lamb Chops

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1 package (about 8) small Australian lamb loin chops

Freshly cracked pepper

Freshly grated coarse sea salt (I used Mediterranean Sea Salt) 

2 large cloves garlic - crushed

Freshly squeezed juice from 1/2 lemon

Chopped fresh rosemary

Olive oil

Place the lamb chops in a deep glass dish and sprinkle the lamb chops on 1 side with the pepper, coarse salt, crushed garlic, chopped rosemary and olive oil. Squeeze the juice from about 1/4 to 1/2 of a fresh lemon onto the chops and let them sit to marinate for about 1 hour before cooking.

Sear the chops on both sides, in a heavy skillet. Sear until both sides are carmelized and then place them in an oven proof dish to finish in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 min. Lamb can get tough, so do not over cook these.

I also made my Greek style potatoes with the chops.  Simply wash about 6 medium potatoes (I used red potatoes) and cut into wedges.  Place on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with Johnny's Seasoning salt, drizzle olive oil on them and bake in the oven at 425 degrees for about 45 min. - 60 min.  These are a hit every time I make them.

Done and ........

Done.  Oh, and I made steamed cauliflower with this meal as well. Love it.

Parakalo!!!

Rosie

Easy Piano Arrangement of "If" by David Gates (arranged by Rose Gindl)

Hi all:

The other day, my husband and I were taking a long drive (4 and 1/2 hours) and he very considerately made a playlist of hits from the 1970's, to while away the time in the car. We found ourselves singing away to most of those songs. Somehow, I seem to remember a lot of the lyrics from decades ago. I personally love 1970's music. I will admit here, that I was in high school in the 1970's, so music from that era has an especially fond place in my heart. Ok, I have now officially dated myself with this confession. You can now probably guess how old I am but I won't ever admit it!!

I have digressed:

One of my all time favourite songs from the 1970's is "If" by David Gates (Bread). I have always loved the hauntingly beautiful chord progressions in that song and when I got home from our drive,  I tried to find an easy piano arrangement that I could play : to no avail. Web searches turned up nothing - or maybe I wasn't patient enough to look through all the websites. Anyways, me being me, I thought "I can write an easy piano arrangement for myself" and so I did.

It took me many hours to play around with the chord voicings (David Gates may not agree with my attempt) but I finally have a version that I think, sounds pretty nice.

I am sending it into the universe for everyone to try and I must insist on 2 things:

1). That I am always cited by name (Rose Gindl) as the arranger of this particular piano arrangement

and

2) That a more accomplished piano player than I, video themselves playing this piece and post it on YouTube (citing me as the arranger of course and citing my blog site: everythingisalwaysrosie.blogspot.com) so that I can hear how it should really sound. (without all my flubs, mistakes and poor technique). I hope David Gates is Ok with this experiment.

Below is my arrangement. I play ALL the left hand chords as indicated in the first 4 bars: broken, then held to the end of each bar. I also wrote a very easy Right Hand melody, which I embellish with alot of syncopation. The notes are just guidelines. In the final bar where the right hand has the fermata on F, the left hand plays individual notes as written, which carry on to the final line of the staff paper and end in a 4 octave F Major arpeggio. (I just wanted to fit everything on 1 piece of paper).

I am really hoping someone will video themselves playing this piece. Piano is not my first instrument, so my bumbling attempts at playing it, cause my family to run for the hills. I hope this arrangement sounds as good as I hoped it would.

Enjoy.

Rosie

Easy Homemade Tomato Soup

'Hi all:

Happy Thanksgiving to us here in Canada!  Ordinarily, I would be celebrating with my family with a turkey and all the fixin's, but alas, I came down with a very nasty cold a few days ago so I had to send my family off to celebrate without me.  They are enjoying a full turkey feast, while I am sitting home alone, waiting for the leftovers to come home.  I couldn't risk spreading this cold to my family members; I couldn't let the new baby in the family catch this, nor my brother in law, who has had severe breathing issues since last year. Instead, I am hunkered down with a box of Kleenex and decided to make myself some healthy, healing soup.  It always helps me feel better.

I had some leftover sun ripened field tomatoes and wanted to make myself some homemade tomato soup.  Now, I have made this before with my own cherry tomatoes, but this time, I used large, red, ripe, field tomatoes. Anytime I have seen recipes for homemade tomato soup, it seems so tedious and uses too many complicated steps ; ie. Blanch the tomatoes, skin the tomatoes, put the tomatoes through a sieve!!! Bah!!! Too much work.  I like hearty soups that are chunkier than canned and I have no aversion to tomato skins and seeds. What is the issue with those? Why does it seem these are verboten when it comes to tomato soup?  Well it doesn't have to be that way, with the recipe that I just created today (and it is probably healthier with the skins and seeds left intact).

Here is the simple recipe.

Rosie's Homemade Tomato Soup

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5-6 large field ripened tomatoes

2 c. Chicken stock

2 large carrots - peeled and cut into chunks

1/16 large sweet Walla Walla onion - finely diced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp. sugar

1 small sprig fresh rosemary

2-3 pinches of garlic powder

1 c. Hot water

1 package chicken bouillon 

Splash (about 1/4 c.) of heavy cream

** Note: you need the sugar, carrots and sweet Walla Walla onion to counteract the tangy tomatoes

Wash and dice the tomatoes into pieces.

    Look at how beautiful and red these are. So flavourful! Now those are tomatoes!!

Add the tomatoes to a large stock pot and crush with a potato masher.

I used this much Rosemary from my garden. Add the rosemary, chicken stock (I used Campbell's), salt, pepper, garlic powder, carrots, onion and sugar to the tomatoes and stir. Bring to a boil, then turn to low and simmer for about 1 to 1 1 /2 hours, until carrots are cooked.  At this point, the liquid had reduced down so I added 1 package of chicken bouillon to 1 c. of hot water and added that to the soup. 

When carrots are cooked, use an immersion blender to blend the soup to a smooth consistency.  Add a splash of heavy (whipping) cream and blend again. Serve with a few croutons sprinkled on top.

I love the texture of this soup and actually love the seeds in it. You cannot even notice that the skins were left on the tomatoes.  It all works! Enjoy!!

This was my lonely Thanksgiving dinner!!

Rosie

Plum Butter (Powidl)

Hi all:

My friend Margaret, the one I spend vast amounts of time discussing recipes with, also wanted to make plum butter this summer.  She is Polish, so plum butter factors in largely with her culture.  We Austrians also love our plums and I remember many a recipe that my mom made growing up, that used "Powidl" (a very thick plum jam. Pronounced Poe-Veedal).

It would appear, that I am trying to emulate my friend Margaret.  She made preserved, chopped garlic for the freezer, I made preserved, chopped garlic for the freezer.  She stated she wanted to make plum butter, I decided I had to make plum butter. You get the picture........ I have to say though, she certainly does have some very good ideas!

Well, this summer I brought home about 2 pounds of freshly picked purple plums and they were starting to go soft, so I thought I better jump on the "Margaret band wagon" and make my own Powidl.

This is what I did:

Powidl (plum butter)

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2 pounds purple plums - washed, take out pit and cut into small pieces

Approx. 1/2 c. - 3/4 c. White sugar 

Small amount of water (about 1 T. Perhaps. Not much more)

(This made 2 small jars of plum butter)

I googled plum butter on the Internet and saw that some people made theirs in a slow cooker.  Brilliant I thought!!  Just throw everything in, and cook on low overnight.  Well, I accidentally added too much water so the overnight cooking turned into overnight plus another 8 hours, and it still wasn't reduced.  I then put the mixture into a saucepan and simmered it on a slow boil for about 1 hour, stirring constantly, until it reduced down to a thick paste. I then put the plum butter into washed jars with lids and refrigerated them. Use them fairly soon after opening. I am not sure how long these will last since they are not processed in boiling water, but since I was giving 1 jar away, I knew I could get through the other jar fairly quickly.

Moral of the story: don't add too much water. A lot of water will come out of the plums as they cook. Also, I think I would just make this in a saucepan next time, where you can control the temperature and increase it as needed.  Just keep stirring, so it doesn't burn.

If you were making a large quantity and storing it for a long time, I would definitely sterilize the jars as well and process them in a boiling bath. You can never be too safe.

Try this plum butter and see how you like it.  It is not too sweet and is a nice change from the everyday.

Happy plumming!

Rosie

Best Healthy Smoothie Ever!

Hi all:

I must confess.... I am addicted to Kale smoothies.  I started making these a couple of months ago and now I can't stop drinking them.  I actually crave them now and have a mini panic attack when I am out of one of the ingredients. Every day, I mentally juggle how much of each ingredient I have left in my kitchen and I plan out when I need to go back to the grocery store, so I don't run out. Yes, it is that bad.

How did I get hooked, you might ask?  Well, let's rewind a few months.  My husband, the uber athlete who runs marathons and thinks nothing of going for gruelling 12 km hikes on a whim, came home one day with a smoothie from one of our juice joints here in Canada; Jugo Juice.  It seems one of his running buddies told him about their Mighty Kale smoothies so he bought one and brought it home.  I had to try it.  One sip and I was hooked. It was delicious!

Now, for my husband to even THINK about consuming anything remotely close to a green vegetable, is a miracle.  You might think he is very health conscious, given that he runs long distances; you would be very wrong.  The closest he gets to eating vegetables, is eating  potato chips with his meal. ( In his mind, they are potatoes, after all.) Yes, he really is that bad and it was so unlike him to come home with one of these healthy concoctions.

Well, I have never enjoyed a smoothie so much as that.  I went back to Jugo Juice several times, but it became expensive to feed this kale smoothie habit so I started making them at home.  They are much cheaper and just as flavourful. You only need 6 simple ingredients and a good blender.

Here is my recipe:

Kale Smoothie

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6-8 ounces (about 1 cup) of pure unsweetened apple juice (not from concentrate)

2 ounces (about 1/4 cup) of pure unsweetened orange juice (not from concentrate)

1 handful of clean, washed spinach - stems and all

1 handful of clean, washed kale - stems and all

1 handful of frozen pineapple

1 handful of frozen mango

In a blender, add the apple juice, orange juice and the spinach.  Mix on the purée setting until the spinach is broken down. (Puree the spinach first and then add the kale. This will help your blender from clogging up with too much vegetable matter all at once) Add the kale (it works best to tear up the kale into smaller pieces) and blend on purée until well blended.  Add the frozen pineapple and use the Crush Ice button until smooth.  Add the frozen kale and use the Crush Ice button until smooth and all is incorporated.  That's it!

Here's the apple juice.

Here, I have added the orange juice.

I use spinach that is pre-washed. I wash it again anyways. You never know......

Add the spinach, stems and all.

Spinach is blended.

Add the kale, stems and all.

This is about how much pineapple I use; about 1 large handful. I just reach into the bag and grab some.  No fussy measuring for me.  Blend on the Crush Ice setting, to make it smooth and break up the ice chunks.

Next, add the mango. Use about the same amount of mango as pineapple. Just reach in and grab some. I tend to like more pineapple flavour than mango in mine, but you can decide.  Blend on the Crush Ice setting again, until smooth. Et voila!

I have to say, I am loving my Kitchenaid blender. I bought it on sale a few months ago. I struggled for many years with a cheaper blender that never blended well, so this is a real treat to use.  Too bad it doesn't match my lavender Kitchenaid mixer. I have to say, I love Kitchenaid appliances! You can always count on them!!

Cheers!  I have to say though, after I drink one of these, I  get really thirsty, so I often have a glass of cold water after I drink one.  It must be the spinach.  I think it dries out your mouth??? Not sure.

Enjoy and let me know if these become addicting to you too.  Who woulda thunk that drinking kale could be so delicious??  And think of all those nutrients!

Bye for now,

Rosie