Lime x2

 

A few weeks ago I discovered I had about a million limes and (as you can see from the above picture) some of them needed used up FAST! so after a little googling I came up with two recipes that would use up almost all of the limes;  lime and coconut sugar cookies and  mint limeade. They were both
taste treats.
 
 Let's start with the cookies!

  

I started by toasting some coconut. The recipe says to do it in the oven but. . .I am a rule breaker and used a skillet on low heat.

  

Whisk the dry ingredients.

  

Zest one lime and juice a couple.

 

Beat an egg, zest, lime juice and vanilla into the already creamed butter and sugar.

 

 Gradually mix in dry ingredients and toasted coconut.

 

Keep mixing. 

 

Everything is mixed. 

  

Roll rounded teaspoonfuls of dough in sugar (I used raw for an extra crunch).

 

 Ready for the oven.

  

Look at how delicious! Here is the recipe:  

CHEWY LIME AND COCONUT SUGAR COOKIES

 Yield: 3 dozen cookies

Cook Time: 8-10 minutes

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest of one large lime
3 tbsp lime juice
½ cup toasted coconut
1/2 cup sugar for rolling cookies

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or Silpats.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3. Using a mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and very fluffy. This will take a couple of minutes.
4. Beat in the egg, vanilla extract, lime juice and lime zest. Mix until well combined.
5. Gradually add in the dry ingredients and toasted coconut. Mix until combined, don't over mix.
6. Roll rounded teaspoonfuls of cookie dough into balls. Put sugar in a small bowl and roll cookie dough balls in the sugar. Place on lined cookie sheets about 1 1/2 inches apart.
7. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. The cookies will start to crack a little bit.
8. Let stand on cookie sheet two minutes. Move cookies to a cooling rack.
*Note-to toast the coconut-place coconut on lined baking sheet. Bake for 5-8 minutes at 350 degrees. Tossing a couple of times. Remove from oven when coconut is light brown.*

Recipe is from two peas & their pod

Now it's limeade time.

  

 Boil sugar, water and lime zest.

 

Juice a gillion limes. 

  

This is what the juice from a gillion limes looks likes (it's one cup).

 

 Add some fresh mint to the pitcher.

  

Strain the zest out of the sugar water mixture, add lime juice, and at least two cups of water to the pitcher. I added quite a bit more water probably two more cups, I like juice that is a tiny bit watery and not so sweet.

 

Drink up!
The recipe:

LIMEADE WITH A TOUCH OF MINT

Ingredients:

Grated zest of one lime (about 1 Tbsp)
1 cup lime juice (from about 4-6 Persian limes)
 3/4 cup to 1 cup granulated sugar
3 cups water
Several sprigs of fresh mint

Method:
 
1 In a small saucepan bring to a boil the sugar, one cup of water, and the lime zest. Once the sugar is dissolved (which it should be by the time the water boils), remove from heat and let cool for for a few minutes. The amount of sugar is a guideline, it depends on how sweet you like your limeade and how tart your particular limes are. 2 Place a strainer over a bowl, or wide-mouthed serving container, and pour the sugar syrup through it, straining out the lime zest. Add the lime juice and 2 cups of water. Taste for sour/sweet balance. If too sweet, add a little more lime juice. Add several sprigs of fresh mint. Chill, or serve immediately over ice.

Recipe is from Simply Recipes  

Do you all have any go to recipes for using up too much of something? or do you like to experiment.  I 3/4 of a head of purple cabbage in the fridge that I need to do something with. . .I don't think cookies will be the answer this time.

Coconut Banana Bread!

Last Saturday I woke up extremely early and thought I would throw some muffins in the oven while I cleaned the house. . .thus I would end up with a delicious breakfast treat to cap off the house cleaning.
It is getting to be the time of year where it seems we end up with an over-ripe banana at the end of each bunch. So, luckily, I had three over-ripe bananas saved up in the fridge dying to become my favorite bread/muffins (okay actually this recipe is just somewhere in the top 5).
Some of you may have noticed that I am a bit obsessed with Mark Bittman well the obsession continues because this bread if from his How to Cook Everything cookbook and it has become my default banana bread. . .I would have never thought to put coconut in banana bread but I am glad Bittman did and if you have some bananas and coconut lying around you should give this recipe a try too.

Whisking dry ingredients

Creaming butter and sugar

Eggs and banana

Add wet to dry

How cute are these. . .Ikea a few years ago

Ready for baking.

Delicious!!!

Mark Bittman’s Banana Bread
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Ingredients
8 tablespoons butter, plus some for greasing the pan (I always use unsalted)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 sugar
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas, mashed with a fork until smooth
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (I didn't use)
1/2 grated dried unsweetened coconut (I didn't have quite enough unsweetened so I mixed in about a tablespoon of sweetened coconut)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan. (I used a muffin tin)

Mix together the dry ingredients. Cream the butter and beat in the eggs and bananas (out of habit I usually cream the butter and sugar together and have never had a problem). Stir this mixture into the dry ingredients; do not mix more than necessary. Gently stir in the vanilla, nuts, and coconut (I typically mix the coconut in with the dry ingredients first).
Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 45 to 60 (about 35 for muffins) minutes, until nicely browned. A toothpick inserted in the center of the bread will come out fairly clean, but banana bread is excessively moist compared to other breads. Do not overcook. cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing from the pan. To store, wrap in waxed paper (I freeze them and they reheat in the microwave wonderfully).

Kitchen Garden

It has been an extremely mild winter, here in OK, to the point that people still have patches of green grass BUT (as always) I am ready for spring and longer days and outside projects. I don't think I am made to handle the winter I usually feel tired and a little sad by this point in the year, luckily spring is near. As a way to usher in nicer weather (hopefully) and bring something living and fresh into the house I decided to try out a couple of kitchen gardening ideas I had been hearing about. 1: growing green onions from the bulbs of store bought onions. 2: growing my own sprouts in a mason jar.

Kitchen Garden-Attempt #1: GREEN ONIONS. While looking at random things on line I came across this post, explaining that one could take the green onions they had purchased at the store, use the green part, place the bulbs in water and regrow. I thought this seemed too good to be true but I had some onions in the fridge that needed used ASAP so I gave it a whirl. . . look at how great it turned out! In a little over a week I had beautiful green onions just waiting to be stir-fried or put in who knows what.

Freshly trimmed

A little bit of new growth

Even more growth

Beautiful!!!!!

Kitchen Garden-Attempt #2: SPROUTS! A few weeks ago Jerod and I had brunch with some friends who happened to mention they had recieved a sprouter as a gift and were going to start growing their own sprouts. I had never heard of doing this or that you could buy a contraption to help you so I did a little research and discovered that you can also grow sprouts in a mason jar. I figured I would try this method and see if I was even interested in being a sprout farmer (I based my growing method on the instructions provided here and here). It ended up being super easy. All you do is take a 1/4 cup of whatever you are growing (I used lentils), add atleast 2 inches of water over the seed/bean/whatever, cover the top of the jar with cheese cloth secure it, and let the seed/bean/whatever soak in a dark place for 12 hours. The next day you rinse the seed/bean/whatever, get as much water out as you can and place the container back in the dark spot to drain, you will do this step 2 to 3 times a day. Once your sprouts have begun growing and get to around a 1/4 to 1/2" place the container in the window for a day or two to greens things up and get the sprouts a little bigger, remove from the jar and place in an air tight container in the fridge. I have been eating sprout, cucumber and turkey sandwiches nonstop! This little project took about a week from soaking to eating. The time and care might be slightly different for other sprouts. I am dying to try Mung Bean so we will see what happends with those.

Soaking!

Rinsing

Draining. . . in my jar cabinet

Ready for the window.

All greened up and ready to eat.

The best lunch ever!

I hope all of you are making it through the winter or finding ways of coping.

Falafel Factory

Last Saturday morning Jerod and I got to talking about our plans for the day and came to the conclusion we would have a stay-at-home date that night (i.e. cooking and a movie). It was a cold, gloomy day perfect for being in the the kitchen so I decided to tackle one of my cooking fears and make falafel! Jerod and I both LOVE falafel sandwiches but I have only attempted to make it once, about 6 years ago, with little success. This time was not without problem but better, I think I have figured out the issues and will be able to perfect it in the future.

. . . And if one is having falafel one needs pita too so not only did I have a falafel factory I had a pita factory (thanks to the Hobgood Five for titling these kitchen endeavors) we now have pita in the freezer for at least a month, no more boring sandwiches on regular bread for us. Below are some details about the falafel process:

There really aren't too many ingredients in the falafel-Chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, and a few spices.

oh, I merged recipes from here and here to create the falafel recipe.

Food processing . . .

. . .more food processing.

Shaped into balls and ready for cooking.

The oil heating up. I do not often deep fry things and was quite nervous about this step. As it turns out I had every reason to be, but we'll get to that.

As you can see I am no longer deep frying and have transferred everything to a skillet, at least it's a little healthier for us now. Here is what happened: I put the first 5 falafel in the oil to fry and they completely disintegrated, as in were gone, no longer existed! After a little cussing I figured out that my mixture was too wet, mixed a bit of flour in and cooked them in the skillet. Everything went much more smoothly after that.

Here is our little feast ready to be turned into sandwiches. To complete the sandwiches we have hummus, cucumber, tomato, and yogurt sauce (recipes for hummus and yogurt sauce are from here and here).

The pita looking puffy and happy! (I used the recipe from here, which is where I cook most of my bread from)

Oven baked fries looking crispy and delicious! (this recipe I just kind of make up: potates, oil, salt, pepper...bake at 425 degrees until crispy, flip once)

Dinner in all of it's tasty goodness. We had the perfect night and watched one of the best movies Jerod and I had seen in a long time, Drive. If you haven't watched it you should, unless you are my Mom then DO NOT!!!!!! This movie is not for you. We followed this up with some chocolate and peanut butter chip, oatmeal cookies which I didn't get a picture of but were great all the same. I really love weekends. I hope all of you did something fun too.