Call's Culinary Coaching Classes

Semlor buns! I can't keep up with all the goodies for Mardi Gras so I space them out during Lent. (I fast from things other than butter and milk!) Semlor is a Shrove Tuesday treat from Sweden. They are cardamom buns with an almond paste filling and a whipped cream filling. They are messy but delicious!

And for someone like me who HATES almond flavoring, these are great because you don't use flavoring in the paste, it's just a sweet, gently almond-y flavor. Although if you love it, you could totally add it.

Here's a recipe I've used, I made an adjustment with meringue powder instead of the egg whites, since I already had some on hand for when we make Día de los Mu***os skulls.

https://www.christinascucina.com/semlor-traditional-swedish-fat-tuesday-buns-semla/

Back from the dead! (At least on FB)

I have spent the past year and a half making a family history cookbook. I have gone through family recipes, and poured over family journals and interviews to find foods that featured in our family. Like this one.

My great, great grandpa grew up in the south and wrote about how him and his mother would tap their maple trees and make syrup. So I ordered maple sap water and made our own syrup! It was really easy, just let it boil for hours but then keep an eye on it, especially towards the end to keep it from burning. I kept it pretty light because I didn't want it to burn. And while it is very easy, just know the ratio is 40:1! That means 40 cups of maple sap becomes 1 cup of syrup. So my 180 fl oz ended up approximately 1/4 a cup of syrup. Not much but it was pretty tasty! I'd recommend getting your own maple sap if you can!

Well nothing like celebrating my return from the dead with Dìa de los Mu***os! It's been a really rough time with this pregnancy but I am grateful for my (somewhat) increased energy. To celebrate, today we had my mom's Grilled Chicken Tortilla Soup and I made this for dessert. So easy and yummy! It's a great recipe for both fall and Dìa de los Mu***os. I used butternut squash since that's what we had in hand. You could substitute brown sugar for the piloncillo. (a cone of unrefined cane sugar used in Hispanic cooking, found in Latin markets or WinCo!) I had one cone and just added roughly the same amount of brown sugar. Towards the end of cooking, my squash was most definitely done but the sauce was still thin so I took out the pieces of squash and boiled down the sauce to thicken. Serve with vanilla ice cream if you have it handy!
Link here:

Calabaza en tacha o dulce de calabaza. Receta Hay recetas que nos llenan de infinidad de recuerdos, recetas que nos acompañan toda la vida, que aprendimos en nuestro hogar de la infancia y que por gusto y tradición, seguimos preparando para los nuestros. Una de esas recetas que a mi me llena el alma con probarla, es la de calabaza en tacha o ...

Well I'm not dead, at least I think!! Just pregnant. And SICK. So while I am able to cook maybe once a week, I am finding my cooking style is having to pivot for the time being. There will be a time I make lots of food from scratch but now is not the time. And even though there are many days when the last thing I even wanna think about is food, my family apparently still needs to eat. (Rude) So since my energy level hovers around zero and my stomach is often not able to handle the most gentle of foods (I miss you salsa and Thai chili sauce 😭) I have made peace with my inner Martha (Stewart or Biblical, take your pick) and am working on "good enough." Which entails more frozen foods, premade items, and yes, still fresh veggies because of ALL the times to be sick it HAD to be when garden tomatoes and fresh corn are coming on!! As much as I LOVE to cook and take pride in making things from scratch (even though they don't always turn out) there are plenty of times in life when "good enough" is well...good enough!!

In the meantime, while I am laid out flat on my bed for the better part of the day, I still have a weird thing while I don't even wanna think about eating, I still am drawn to cooking and food so I have been reading up on techniques and food science. And while I am late to the game on this one, I'm finding I adore Serious Eats. Go check them out if you haven't! They have GREAT info, and they fall into the food science/America's Test Kitchen range of explaining things very well and using food science, not just giving recipes with no info on the WHYS. I especially like the ingredient guides where they do a deeper dive on individual ingredients.

Serious Eats: The Destination for Delicious Serious Eats is the destination for delicious food, with definitive recipes, trailblazing science, and essential guides to eating and knowing all about the best food, wherever you are.

Ever have the panic of not knowing what to make for dinner? We have SO MANY OPTIONS available to us: Pinterest, Google, cookbooks, blogs/websites, recipe cards...how do you narrow it down?? When you have too many choices, you can suffer from "choice paralysis" where too much choice is literally stressful. (Think how kids can get with too many toys)

So what to do? Limit your choices by creating catagories. I have found this works AMAZING for me and any time I get freaked out trying to determine what to have for dinner this week I thankfully remember this! (You'd think I'd be used to it by now and not freak out but here we are!) Pick your catagories according to yours and your family's tastes but here's mine: - Vegetarian meal
- Breakfast
- Fish
- Leftovers
- Seasonal ingredients
- Family requests
- Something quick and fast
- Out to Eat

I am flexible with catagories, sometimes they overlap. Like this week the Vegetarian meal is also using the Seasonal ingredients lovage and asparagus I got at the farmer's market. The Fish catagory is paired with the Leftovers using the rice we had. I ALWAYS put in a day of Leftovers, not only does that help for food waste reduction but also gives me a night off.

I also am flexible with the days. In all honesty we'll probably have the lasagna on Wednesday. I don't always care what day we have the meals, I allow for flexibility in the week.
So that's it! Not earth-shattering I know but it sure helps to keep me from stressing out too much! I can usually find recipes or ideas pretty quickly within my catagories and it helps take a bit of the stress out of meal planning!

As we work to stretch our groceries and reduce waste here’s a few good ideas!

How to Use Ingredients You Might Normally Toss Turn those scraps into ingredients. Here’s what to do with everything from cheese rinds and cilantro stems to meat trimmings and pickle juice.

Not a perfect bunny (his nose ran a little!) but my 6 year old thought it looked JUST like his best friend Bernie. The resemblance is uncanny 😂 Hoppy Easter everyone! (Recipe for homemade bacon coming soon! 🤤)

It's been a bit chilly here and with plenty of time on our hands (and bananas!),we made Banana Hot Chocolate! It was sooo worth it! Most of the time I'm a little on the fence about from scratch hot chocolate but this one was everybody's favorite!

Recipe here: https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/curious-george-banana-hot-chocolate/

Another way my hippie(ish) ways are paying off during social distancing/quarantine? I wasn't stressing picking up napkins or paper towels. Now credit belongs in part to my husband, who for YEARS watched my....oh...let's be conservative and say...10 a day paper towel habit and asked very nicely (for years) to for me to switch to rags. After purchasing some white bar towels, I also made the switch to fabric napkins.

Now, there are some cute patterns out there but in this household we eat things like spaghetti sauce and BBQ sauce and blueberry jam which would ruin those adorable patterns instantly. I have found DARK colors are best.

Another purchasing tip: when you find a size/color/fabric that works for you, purchase enough to get you through from laundering to laundering. And a tip on laundering: I found that putting them into the dryer meant they would come out all massively wrinkled and there is NO WAY that I am ironing napkins! They looked so horrible that I was going to give up and go back to paper nakins when I stumbled upon the solution (let me feel smart here) HANG DRY! They dry in a few hours and they dry without wrinkles! Even the linen ones! (I know there are plenty of you shaking your head right now but let me have this! 😆) Plus there's an earth-friendly, engery-saving bonus thrown in for not using the dryer!

Well thanks to my (somewhat hippie ways) going vegetarian on at least one weekly meal for the past year I have discovered all kinds of ways to use black beans and lentils! And they are downright tasty! And healthy! So while it seems the inital rush of crazed shopping might be over and the restocking in stores has begun, if you are looking at your stash and thinking: "What the heck am I going to do with lentils and beans??" Or you have never tried cooking with them, please let me share some of my FAVORITE recipes with you! Seriously, some are so good my family even ASKS for them! 😆

Here's the first and one of the best: Lentil Mushroom Bolognese Sauce 🍝

https://withfoodandlove.com/tagliatelle-with-lentil-mushroom-bolognese-sauce/

If it seems too much for you, basically all it is is spaghetti with lentils instead of meat in the sauce. Frankly I put mine in while the sauce reduces (I'm using red lentils here) and after 15-20 the sauce is thicker and the lentils are done! See, easy and TOTALLY doable!

Meatless Bolognese Sauce with Mushrooms + Lentils A hearty lentil bolognese sauce that's full of flavor. A vegan Bolognese sauce that is paired with gluten-free tagliatelle.

Some wonderful ideas to help each other! Like the Mr. Rogers quote goes: "look for the helpers." And like I told my son yesterday, sometimes we need to BE the helpers people are looking for.

How to Be a Good Neighbor During an Unpredictable Time Do you have neighbors or friends who are self-quarantining after returning from a trip abroad? So do I. Here's how I'm planning to help.