Mediterranean Supper

How do you decide what to make for dinner?

I am often inspired by the odds and ends in my refrigerator that need to get used up.  I made some chicken chili recently and had some left over white beans.  I wanted to make a white bean soup, but not the kind with ham in it.  

The Joy of Cooking came to my aid with its suggestion of "Mediterranean White Bean Soup." No ham here! It was an easy, simple recipe.  Simmer the beans, a lot of garlic, some rosemary and some water.  Close to serving time, add chopped tomatoes, parsley, olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  The soup wasn't interesting enough to photograph, sorry.

With my Mediterranean theme established I immediately knew I wanted to make focaccia.  If you are unfamiliar with focaccia, I beg you to remedy that problem.  Focaccia is a delicious Italian bread with delicious toppings, usually garlic and herbs. You can see in the photo below that focaccia is wide instead of tall.

Gently pressing my fingertips into the risen dough - the best part of the process!

Then it was topped with chopped garlic, parsley, rosemary and salt.  Aromatic and so delicious!  The focaccia got hearty praise from my husband, who ate roughly half a loaf on his own.

At the eleventh hour I decided to also add in a lettuce salad.  I figured if I was in the Mediterranean, dinner would start with a salad, right?  The salad was topped with tomatoes, red pepper, sliced Kalamata olives, Cojita cheese (a Mexican cheese very similar to Feta) and two hard-boiled eggs.  Fresh, fairly healthy, homemade and of course, delicious!

Recently Made - August

Here are some other things I've made recently that didn't get their own posts:

Sweet potato, black bean, corn and cheese quesadillas.

Pizza with Italian turkey sausage, red peppers and onions.  Homemade crust made by yours truly.  Had the oven on really hot and over-baked it a bit.  Also, should have left the crust a bit thicker.

Stir-fried Japanese eggplant and tofu with garlic-black bean sauce.

Tomato salad with fresh, homegrown tomatoes, plus onions, garlic, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and some herbs.  Would have been even better with some fresh basil and mozzarella!

Not a great picture, but it was a delicious Sundae!  I talked myself out of going through the drive-through and came home to make this delicious concoction.  Vanilla ice cream, Hershey's chocolate syrup, and a dollop of homemade strawberry jam. Never did like that cherry on top business.

Banana bread.  There were some lumps of brown sugar that I didn't see, including a big one on the corner of the right loaf.  The sugar got super caramelized.  Not pretty, but actually tasted great! I had 12 brown bananas in my freezer, now only 6 left!  Woo-hoo!

Spinach pie...it was meant to be spinach quiche but I was being lazy and didn't measure my liquid ingredients.  It did taste really good though!


 I hope that got your mouth watering and maybe gave you some ideas.  If you'd like to see the recipe, leave a comment.

Snack S'mores

The days are getting shorter and just a little cooler.  Autumn is on its way...and if you love chocolate and the fall season, you must love s'mores. Crunchy, gooey, sweet, melt-y, chocolate-y goodness. 

I use dark chocolate to make this treat a little more decadent.  I give the graham crackers and chocolate a few seconds in the microwave to help the chocolate soften up.

Using a meat marshmallow fork, I toast the marshmallows over my stove's gas flame.  By the way, for this reason alone, I will always have a gas stove.

 Just look at those beautifully toasted marshmallows! 

And then, of course, I eat it.  This time I enjoyed a black cup of coffee alongside to cut the sweetness.  And with that, I was ready for anything my toddler could think of!..well, almost anything!

Beautiful Blue Bucket

Ah, my beautiful blue mop bucket!   I know it's slightly off topic, but I want to tell you about my adoration of my beautiful blue mop bucket.

First of all, my bucket has wheels and a handle.  How awesome is that?

It fits in my sink for when I'm filling it up.  It even has lines to tell you how much water it has inside.

But the most beautiful thing is the story about how I got it.  A couple weeks ago, we embarked on a round of home improvement projects.  One of them was tiling the backsplash behind the stove. My husband needed a container for the morter.  He asked me to find one of the old 5 gallon buckets from previous projects, but there was a problem: they were all quite dirty.  Finally he said, "Don't we have a white one that came from Ace Hardware a long time ago?"  I said, "Yes, but it's my mopping bucket."   He assured me he would buy me a new mop bucket and the deal was sealed.

Soon afterwards, I was at the home improvement store and was picking out a new mop (my old one had broken) when I remembered my husband's promise.  Believe it or not, the new mop would only fit in this one bucket!  The fanciest bucket in the store!  With wheels!  And a handle!  And lines!

Yup, I bought that bucket, and I used it for the first time recently, and you know what? It was great : )

Looking towards Fall

This week I was very honored to get to bring a meal to a new friend.  She has a new baby girl at home, as well as three dear little boys and I'm sure, a hungry husband!

I started by making beef, barley and vegetable soup.  I had a rump roast in the freezer which I cooked with some beef broth and an onion in the slow cooker.  When the meat was falling off the bone, I let it all cool.  I took the fat and gristle off, and cut the meat into bite size pieces.  In the mean time, I cooked the barley - I used plain barley so it took about an hour to cook.  When the barley was done I combined the broth, meat chunks, half a can of tomato paste, and a 16 ounce package of mixed frozen vegetables.  Once it had simmered a bit I adjusted the seasoning.

I also made a loaf of oatmeal-whole wheat-honey bread.  It was a new,  no-knead recipe.  I wasn't thrilled with the results - it was more dense and dry than I expected.  But I did tweak the recipe, so perhaps that's to be expected. 

For dessert, I made pumpkin-spice bars with caramel frosting.  I seriously debated making maple frosting but let me tell you - caramel was a really good choice.  Those bars were absolutely delicious.  It was a good thing they all got given away or put away - I could have eaten all 48 without blinking.

 

Before I went, I happened to be rummaging through some boxes in my sewing room and found this little wool soaker.  It's made from a wool sweater I found at a thrift store.  I made it for my son but it didn't fit him.  I compared to a small cover I had handy and it was just the right size.  

As I was getting everything together, I was reflecting on the food choices and realized that my whole menu seemed very fall-themed.  We've had a few "cooler" (aka, in the upper 80s) days and it's made me think wistfully of crisp fall days.  I know they'll be here soon!

Crocheted Dishcloth

Here's a first for me: I've never made a dishcloth before!  I was chatting with my sister a couple weeks ago and she said she was making a dishcloth.  I remembered that I had bought cotton yarn for that purpose but never got around to making the dishcloth.

I decided to double crochet, and I also made a ribbed texture by only crocheting in the back half of each stitch.  If I were to do it again I think I would choose a tighter stitch, perhaps a single crochet or a half-double crochet.

The finished cloth is roughly 10 inches square.  Hopefully it's very good for scrubbing!

Bread, Two Ways

The other day I was making honey whole wheat bread with a recipe that yielded two loaves.  I was inspired to turn one loaf into cinnamon raisin swirl bread. 

After the first rise, I rolled out the dough and generously brushed it with butter.  Next I added a layer of cinnamon mixed with brown sugar. Finally I added raisins, rolled it up, and pinched all the seams shut. 

 Here are both loaves ready for the second rise.  Cinnamon raisin is on the left and plain on the right.

Here's the loaf of plain bread, which we ate with a delicious corn chowder made by my husband, and a fresh tomato salad made by me.

And here's that beautifully swirled cinnamon raisin bread.  We actually turned some of it into French toast - absolutely delicious.  This morning I toasted some and ate it with butter.  Yum.  I think it's time for a late night snack....

Lentil Dal

Do you like Indian food?  If so, you may have tried lentil dal.  Lentil dal is a fragrant stew made of lentils and spices.  Some wonderful attributes of lentil dal are: it is healthy, inexpensive to make, and freezes well.  If you enjoy Indian food, lentil dal is one of the best and easiest dishes to make at home.

What beautiful colors! Lentils, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, ginger, garlic, and carrots.  There are also some spices (cumin, coriander, cardamom, curry powder, turmeric, salt, and pepper) which aren't shown above.  There's no need to add oil or other fat.  This is a beautiful, high protein, low-fat, vegetarian dish. 

With lentil dal, the most time consuming part is the preparation.  Getting everything chopped up takes a little while.  But the good news is that after that, you don't have to do much!

Here is the dal when it's just getting started.

About 40 minutes later, and look at the difference. See how nice and thick it is? You can also puree some or all of it to get a thicker consistency.

We usually eat ours with rice, but if you are feeling ambitious, you could make naan (Indian flatbread).  Yum!  I used 4 cups of uncooked lentils, and it fed 7 adults and one toddler, plus about 9 cups of leftovers. 

Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Yesterday I took advantage of some extra time and made cookies.  It's been a while since I made cookies! 

 

It was difficult to decide what kind to make.  Obviously, it had to involve chocolate.  We had some peanut butter chips, and the two are always a winning combination.  I used the recipe on the back of the package, which is also available online here.

One of my favorite cookie shortcuts is to use a small ice cream scoop to get fairly uniformly sized cookies.

Here's the first batch to come out of the oven.  They were a bit under-baked.  As you can see, I had to sample them to assess whether they were fully cooked....

This photo shows all the cookies cooling . The second batch got baked a little longer and got just a bit darker.  They were still chewy, not over-baked - just perfect! We sampled them through the day, but hopefully most of them will still be around when our friends come over tonight. 

 Stay tuned for upcoming posts about lentil dal, and a crochetd dishcloth.

Welcome to Made by Martha

Hi, everyone!

Welcome to Made by Martha.  My name really is Martha and I love to make things.  Sometimes I even stress myself out working on my craftiness.  But usually I really enjoy being creative.

Making things is a family tradition.  Above is my sister (left), myself (center) and my mom (right).  My mom worked a full time job when we were growing up, yet she almost always made dinner and packed us lunches for school.  She also made Halloween costumes and helped with sewing projects.  I'm so thankful that she made the time to do all that, and especially that she passed on her knowledge.  My sister continues on in this tradition as well.

Sometimes I make things for fun, but mostly I make things to bless my family.  In the photo above you see my son investigating his homemade cupcakes on his first birthday.  Almost every day I make dinner from scratch.  I love to bake too.  I also enjoy crocheting, sewing, and other crafts, so hopefully some of those projects will appear here (if I ever finish anything!).

I hope you'll come along for the ride as I take on this new challenge to share my home-made goodies of all kinds.  Thanks for joining me!