3greenOnions | notes from a hectic kitchen

cheesy biscuits

03-03-2012

baking, biscuit/cracker, cheese, savory, snack, vegetarian

Cheesy Biscuits

One of the (many) things I had absolutely no tolerance for in my pre-baby life was the concept of make-ahead dinners. In my mind, the idea of a meal you make well in advance of eating is/was just so boring and unimaginative and so lacking in excitement. I mean, you wake up in the morning and you know exactly what you are going to eat tonight because you already have dinner ready in the fridge (or freezer, wherever). There is no element of surprise; no opportunity to screw up some challenging 100 ingredient recipe you just decided to experiment with for today’s dinner. Plus, I always associated the notion of preparing tomorrow’s dinner today with the tired, demotivated 50something working Balkan woman/live-in slave who has totally given up on the idea of making family meals exciting and for whom dinner has become yet another item on her long list of chores. Oh how the tables turn in life…

After a couple of months of complete disorganization in the kitchen, junk food dinners and accumulating thigh and belly flab, one fine day last month I finally realized that the only way Ivica and I were ever going to have any dinner that a) is served before midnight and b) does not come out a container, I’d have to do some make-ahead prep. And when I say make-ahead prep I mean the full blown ‘cook tonight, eat tomorrow’ approach. The horror.

pecan pie

By: Elena

20-02-2012

baking, dessert, sweet, sweet pie/tart, vegetarian

Pecan Pie

Here’s a crazy fact: baby Ognen will be 1 year old in exactly two weeks. Seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that time flew by; to everyone else around us – maybe; but when you’re somewhat stuck in a babycare rut, deep down buried under piles of diapers, layers of drool and a river of tears – no, it’s more like time stands still. But it is pretty wild, to think that a year ago the world still hadn’t met this feisty character of a baby that has forever changed our lives.

Yes, I’ve been thinking of sappy things like the above lately, when I get the chance to actually think about stuff. One good thing about still nursing a baby to sleep (even though he is now almost half my height which is crazy weird if you think about it) is the rare combination of 2 much-needed states: 1) quiet and 2) the inability to tackle something from my permanently mile-long task list; be it making baby food or some long overdue work thing or something as basic as showering. It is these 15-20 minutes right before Ognen goes down (well, at least for the next few hours) that are my only window of opportunity to just…well, to just BE.

foodie mail! anyone interested?

By: Elena

18-01-2012

stories

Foodie Mail

My elementary school, through the public schooling system, ran a pen pal program. (Obviously this story belongs in the age of dinosaurs or more accurately in the early nineties of the previous century.) The way it worked was, the teacher would walk into the classroom holding an envelope and ask if anyone wanted to be the recipient of a ‘letter from an unknown friend’. The lucky student accepting the envelope would find a handwritten note from a child their own age from another city which 9 out of 10 times opened with ‘Dear unknown friend’…You were expected to reply to the letter, the idea being that a friendship based on a series of exchanged letters will ensue.

I was one of those few nerdy kids that actually got excited about the program. Accepting (and replying to) letter after letter, at some point I had about a dozen of pen pals. I should mention that as time went by I also broke through national borders and started exchanging letters with kids from other countries. (I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour trying to remember the details about how exactly these international pen friendships started but all I can recall is that it involved filling out a lot of colorful forms and some money sent to a pen pal organization or something, somewhere)…

raspberry muffins

By: Elena

16-01-2012

baking, breakfast/brunch, fruit, muffin, snack, sweet, vegetarian

Raspberry Muffins

Believe it or not, this has been the third batch of muffins I’ve baked in the last week. Last weekend it was the Crusty Onion and Cheese Muffin and this weekend it’s this berrylicious one. And somewhere in between these two I managed to squeeze another muffin baking session (in an effort to make up for all the deliciousness I had missed) and made some seriously tasty Nutella Brownie Muffins. You’ll just have to trust me when I say I baked those because I have absolutely no evidence that they ever existed in our home – that’s how fast they disappeared. There’s something about cold weather and freshly baked warm muffins; the two were just made for each other. Of course, the Nutella probably helped as well…

When this week’s recipe rolled in, I suddenly found myself wishing it was summer. Ordinarily, I’d choose winter over summer on almost every occasion. Unless you remind me of berries, which is exactly what this week’s muffin managed to do.

crusty onion and cheese muffins

By: Elena

09-01-2012

baking, breakfast/brunch, cheese, muffin, savory, snack, vegetarian

Crusty Onion and Cheese Muffins

The date of my last post is almost a month and a half in the past AND it’s in a calendar year that we’ve left behind. Happy 2012 folks! I don’t usually make a big deal about New Years but 2011 has been big for us. Let’s just say 10 kilos big. Ognen big. Parenthood big.

For those of you wondering where the heck I’ve been hiding, let me set the record straight and tell you that no, we didn’t go on some exotic trip to a nice warm place with palm trees and a constant stream of cocktails. Ha! Instead, I’ve faced the reality of being a full time working mom which basically feels like having 2 full time jobs. And the fact that Ognen still routinely wakes up at odd hours at night and ~~needs~~ demands my attention adds a third shift to these 2 jobs. Yes, yours truly does feel as if she’s working around the clock. Remember this? And before you go off thinking that I am (once again) complaining, let me just tell you: I’m not.

bread pudding muffins

By: Elena

28-11-2011

baking, breakfast/brunch, muffin, sweet, vegetarian

Bread Pudding Muffins

I swear, this post would have been so much better if I had at least a few ‘making of’ photos to show you. The whole baking session was riddled with so many mini accidents and moments that were just plain hilarious and yet I have no evidence because I didn’t have the camera with me (Ivica was out and had it with him).

I initially attempted to settle Ognen into his high-chair, at a prime spot in the kitchen from where he could observe both me baking as well as the cats having nervous breakdowns trying to remove obstacles to dive into the melted butter. But the boy wouldn’t have any of that remote baking arrangement so into the carrier he went. And because he’s not a tiny thing any longer and blocks most of my view when he’s in the carrier, the majority of my measuring and mixing was akin to what would happen if you were to attempt to make muffins blindfolded (thankfully they’re not the most demanding of baking projects).

gingerbread muffins

By: Elena

14-11-2011

baking, breakfast/brunch, muffin, snack, sweet, vegetarian

Gingerbread Muffins

This is always the time of the year when I bite off far more than I can chew. I don’t know what it is, but I get in some sort of pre-holiday twilight zone full of to-do lists, ambitious projects, major cleaning and reorganization plans, a pile of crafty DIY projects and an overwhelming urge to create homemade holiday cards. On top of all this, there’s usually a hefty backlog of recipes I am itching to try. This countdown to complete madness usually culminates in me being a total wreck sometime around New Years Eve and usually sleeping through most of the festivities. But since sleep has become a utopian concept around our home since the birth of Ognen, I wonder how much of a zombie I’ll become by January.

My latest project is organizing my pile of postcards I’ve been collecting over the years. They’re usually stashed somewhere in a box and I’ve decided to somehow put them on display around the home (added bonus: one more thing for Ogi to try to reach now that he’s becoming a bit more mobile). Ivica is not particularly happy with it (did I mention I always end up leaving a huge mess behind me when I ‘work on my crafts’?) but we’ve come to some sort of compromise.

roasted butternut squash soup

By: Elena

12-11-2011

food combining, savory, soup/stew, vegan, vegetable, vegetarian

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

I’ve always had a soft spot for the intersection of language and food. (Nerdy enough for an opening sentence??) Being fluent in 3 languages, I often find myself overanalyzing food metaphors, phrases and idioms between them. You know how in English one says “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”? In Macedonian, it’s not the apple that does the falling but rather the pear. Speaking of pears, around here, when someone is extremely tired and falls asleep instantly we say he’s fallen asleep like a pear. I guess pears fall down a lot in our region:) But wait, there’s more! Instead of comparing “apples and oranges” we typically compare “grandmas and frogs”. Weird, right? But if you think about it, these 2 nouns (which rhyme when translated) have much less in common than apples and oranges do, which is kind of the purpose of the saying.

Then there’s the locally-worshiped boza, which is what everything easy in life is likened to. If you have no idea what boza is, you could head here (our old couchsurfing blog) to read an interesting story about it. If you have very straight hair, you are usually said to have ‘leek-straight’ hair. When you’ve just beaten someone in a game of something, anything, you have officially ‘made a salad out of him’. And, probably one of my most favorite idioms ever, if you’re not particularly smart (intentional euphemism), your head is said to be a ‘green pumpkin’. Yes, a green pumpkin, you read that right.

apple buttermilk muffins with oat bran crumble

By: Elena

07-11-2011

baking, breakfast/brunch, fruit, muffin, snack, sweet, vegetarian

Apple Buttermilk Muffins with Oat Bran Crumble

Another Monday, another muffin! But wait, this is not just any Monday….this is the first Monday in a very loooong string of Mondays when I can take at least a teeny tiny break and enjoy a morning muffin even though Ognen is not napping…What, you may wonder, is going on? Well, my friends, this much-needed mommy break is courtesy of our newly hired nanny, hooray!

A week ago, this mama was biting her nails wondering how on earth would the glued-to-mom crankiest baby ever get along with a new person ~~sentenced~~ destined to take care of him for a good chunk of his waking hours (of which there are plenty). I had more than one nightmare regarding various aspects of the Ogi+nanny affair, the darkest of which involved the nanny’s inability to put him down for a nap and me having to spend my lunch break running home and putting him to sleep in the middle of the day. But, guess what, it’s been a few days of her being around and she’s managed to put him down a number of times with the help of a pacifier – a device which he’s never accepted from either me or Ivica. Granted, he still sleeps no more than 30 minutes at a time but at least he won’t go completely nap-free while I’m at work. Now, can someone teach ME how to take a break and go back to spending a few brain cells here and there on something other than baby-related thoughts? Please? Or is that asking too much?

quinoa and bulgur salad with pomegranate

By: Elena

04-11-2011

fruit, grain/rice, main dish, salad, side dish, sweet+savory, vegan, vegetarian

Quinoa and Bulgur Salad with Pomegranate

Being a new parent these days is like navigating a never-ending maze of rules, guidelines and advice. Starting from before a baby is born and (I’m guessing) all the way until you send them off to college (or wherever), the information overload on what (not) to do, how, when and why can be unbearable. Do you attempt natural birth or say ‘yes’ to every drug and painkiller imaginable? Breastfeed or bottlefeed? Vaccinate or not? Co-sleep or move baby to its own room? Hold them too much or too little? Let them cry or tend to their every whimper? Expose them to educational media or completely prohibit TV until a certain age? I swear, having access to the internet and, with it, a wide range of sources advocating this or that when it comes to parenting…well, its a mixed blessing to say the least.

And when it comes to food and introducing solids…you are guaranteed to drive yourself bananas trying to formulate a healthy strategy as to how to approach feeding your babe. Many years ago (when I was a baby), babies were started on solids early, just a few months after they were born. And they often ate pretty much everything grownups did- including foods that would make most of today’s pediatricians cringe – like eggs, cow’s milk, honey, nuts, citrus fruits and other current no-no’s. My parents used to dip my pacifier into honey (a likely allergen) so that I would take it – I’m guessing this happened at the ripe age of few weeks old. There was very little thinking involved in what to feed your child – you looked at your own plate and probably mashed up whatever was there and that became baby’s meal. Life was simple. Parents didn’t worry (or know) about potential allergies and had no idea what celiac disease is. Glu-what?