Getting Ready for Solids

Li'l C will be 6 months any day now, and while i'm not in a hurry to have him grow up on me, i look forward to him eating solids. He's going to be breastfed for a while but i love the idea of making him foods and meals each day, and involving him in all that we do. I know it'll be a lot of work, but with great books like this one i'm sure we'll do fine! I also have one that's called Raising Vegetarian Children so we have all things covered on that front, but finding vegetarian baby/toddler books is hard.

My mom is going to Mexico soon, so i've made a request for oilcloth to put under our table, and C's chair as i've heard it will be messy! I also hope to get a fun enamelware tea set and/or dishes for him to use and play with. I used to have my own cabinet that i played in while my mom cooked when i was a wee one. We'll have to start baby proofing soon too - but i'll make sure to have a special place for C to play in and 'cook' with mommy and daddy.

The squash is from our garden and it'll be his first food. My mom has also put aside her squash and i've made apple sauce with local, organic apples recently. We're starting with veggies and then moving towards grains like quinoa, millet, and oats, along with fruit. It's overwhelming to think about all the stuff that goes into baby food but it's good nightly reading for now.

What sort of first foods did you give your wee ones, and if have any other advice of books and/or simple gadgets for making and serving food, i'd love to hear from you!

Halloween Gross-Out Party Food

As tomorrow marks Halloween (and incidently my favourite holiday, though i assume i share that with you each year), i thought it would be fun to share the menu of a recent party i hosted on the weekend. Yes, it was a costumed Halloween party complete with a selection of the horror film classsics, but we also wanted to do something more fun. As my group of friends and i love to cook, and we're discovering we're getting so good and creative with cooking, i thought it would be fun to host a gross food potluck. As a child, i loved the scary displays houses had for trick or treating, and especially the food-related activities like spaghetti-sauced brains, grape eyes, and jello shaped hearts. Morbid, i know, but oh so fun! So, to make this adult-friendly and a bit more challenging, i opened up the contest to be both gross looking AND yummy tasting. Of course, nothing helps the medicine go down better than our Bloody Mary Punch - a nice and spicy concoction.

Here's what we came up with:Scrambled Brains Cupcakes (vegan pumpkin chocolate chip recipe from VCTOTW).Bloody Lady Fingers (baked tofu sticks with radishes as garnish, and simple pasta sauce)
And the prize of grossest food goes to: poo dip (black bean dip). Below are Puss-filled Pimples, Eyeball Cupcakes and the aforementioned dip:
Bloodied Chocolate Cake (syringes are full of a raspberry sauce)
Wormy BrowniesPhyllo Ghosts (vegan version had roasted curry veggies, and the non-vegan had feta in it with veggies.) In the background are Squirrel Brains (pumpkin gnocchi) - is it bad to have enjoyed these animal/meat-inspired dishes?

74 More Cupcakes to Go

As promised, i wanted to share with you my menu for the New Year's Eve dinner we hosted. I wanted something i could prepare early, since i was also busy dressing up in my costume, and i wanted to use my new Le Creuset dish that i got from my parents. I decided on lasagne.Yes, the dish is round, so i'm sure you're wondering, round lasagne? Well, why not! It is like a pie after all! So, lasagne seemed like a good fit. And thus, an Italian-inspired dinner was formed!

On the menu was:

* tomato and basil bruschetta
* mixed greens, strawberries and pine nut salad with fresh basil vinegrette
* Vegan lasagne - recipe to follow
* Tiramisu cupcakes for dessert (from the 75 Vegan Cupcake book) - review to follow
Vegan Lasagne

12 lasagne noodles, cooked as directed on box
1 package veggie 'ground meat'
2 onions, diced
3 cups vegan mozzarella
450 g spinach
1 cup fresh basil, cut
2 cups mushrooms, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small can tomato paste
1 26 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp basil
salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook noodles as directed, cool in cold water and set aside.
2. Add 1 tbsp olive oil to frying pan, over medium-high heat and saute 1 onion to lightly brown. Add veggie ground and cook thoroughly. It may already be seasoned, but add salt and pepper as needed. You may want to add other spices as well, but that's up to you.3. To make tomato sauce from scratch, saute the other onion, add the garlic after a minute or so. Add the herbs and saute until all are incorporated. Add the tomato paste slowly, turning the heat down to medium-low. Stir to incorporate, adding the rest of the paste and tomatoes until all are used. If needed, pour some water in to make it the consistency you like. Add salt and pepper to taste. To save on time, you can also use store-bought or ready-made sauce, needing about 3 cups.
4. At this point, you can start assembling the lasagne, in order to save on the plates and pans used. To assemble, pour 1/3 cup of sauce on bottom of pan. You can use a 13 x 9 pan, or anything large enough to fit the lasagne noodles in. Next, lay 4 noodles across, overlaying them slightly. Then add veggie ground mixture, with a couple of spoonfuls of sauce, and the follow with 4 more noodles.
5. Using the same fry pan as the meat, saute the mushrooms in 1 tbsp of olive oil until they start to cook. Add spinach and cook until the spinach is cooked well. Add the basil and cook for 1 more minute.
6. Continue assembling the lasagne by laying this spinach mixture on top of the 4 noodles. Add 1 1/2 cup of cheese on top, and then lay with 4 more noodles.7. Top with rest of sauce and then follow with rest of cheese. Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes, then take off foil and bake for 10 more.

Serves 6 easily and 4 with leftovers

Tiramisu CupcakesI made my first cupcakes from this fabulous book (oh, i'm so glad i got it, thanks again Laural!). Since i made lasagne, i thought it was only fitting to make an Italian dessert. I also wanted to make these because it was my mom's birthday and she makes the Best Tiramisu. That i can't eat. So i wanted to make a substitute that was just as good.
These were so fun to make. I made a basic white cupcake but the best part was the creative way to decorate them. I had to scoop out holes to fill with a coffee/rum liquor. Just like the real deal. Then, instead of making cream cheese icing like the recipe calls for, i made a basic 'buttercream' icing because i wanted this to be as close to my mom's tiramisu as possible. So, i added a heaping spoonful of icing into the crevice i cut out, added the cut-out as a hat, and loaded more icing on to it. Then, i topped it with chocolate and cinnamon shavings and a chocolate-covered espresso bean. Yum.

I'm still licking the icing.