Blogs to Fancy: Kinfolk Video

One of my favorite independent magazines is Kinfolk, a Guide for Small Gatherings. You can buy it at you local Anthropologie or at their online shop! They recently posted this beautiful video on their website on making bread, it's not too long and inspired me to make some bread of my own!

Food: Breakfast Panini from Sprouted Kitchen

It was my birthday a few weeks ago and my absolute favorite gift was the Sprouted Kitchen cookbook that I received! It’s full of tasty whole food recipes. Every recipe is one that I haven’t heard of before and usually includes some weird combinations that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise. (Every attempt has been a success!) The Breakfast Panini, that I tried today was actually off of the authors website, I really recommend that you check it out!

BREAKFAST PANINI // Makes 2
If you don’t have a panini press or grill pan, you can use a saucepan and wrap something heavy in foil, to use as a weight to press down on the sandwich.
4 Slices Whole Grain Bread
½ Cup Fresh Spinach Leaves
2 Scallions, Chopped
3 Eggs, 2 Egg Whites
2 tbsp. Milk
½ tsp. Garlic Salt
Cooking Spray

Spread:
1/2 Cup Goat Cheese
1 tbsp. Grainy/Dijon Mustard*
3 tbsp. Basil, Chopped (any green herb of choice will work)
1 tsp. Milk
1 tsp. Lemon Pepper

Directions

1. Heat a nonstick skillet to medium heat. Combine eggs and egg whites in a bowl, add milk and garlic salt and whisk them until well combined and frothy. Spray the pan.
2. Add the scallions to the eggs and pour them into the pan. Let them cook about 2 minutes with the lid on, lift up on the edges with a spatula and let the liquid egg drain beneath, cook another minute. You are trying to make a rectangle of this egg mix, like an omelette.
3. When it begins to set, fold over both edges towards the middle and flip it over, cover the eggs and turn off the heat.
4. In the meantime, add the spread ingredients to a bowl and combine with a fork.
5. Toast your bread slices on the panini or grill pan for a minute for a very slight toast. Evenly spread a generous tbsp. on each slice of bread. Divide the spinach leaves on two slices. Cut the egg rectangle in half so you have two squares, and put one half on the spinach leaves. Press the other slice of bread on top of the sandwich goodies.
6. Heat your panini press/ grill pan, rub a lil olive oil on the outside of the bread and sprinkle with salt, put in the panini and warm through for about 6 to 8 minutes. If you are using a grill pan, flip the panini half way through.

*Dijon has more of a ‘mustard’ flavor while the ‘whole grain’ is more delicate. Hugh prefers the delicate, I think it would have been better with Dijon, but that’s you’re call.

Food: Five Spice Gingersnaps

Here's a recipe for the cookies that I made last year for Christmas! They're tons of fun to make and taste good as well!

yield: Makes about 3 dozen cookies

active time: 1 hr

total time: 10 hr

Ingredients 

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup Lyle's Golden Syrup
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 large egg

• Special equipment: parchment paper; a 2 1/2-inch round cookie cutter; a piping tip with a 1/4-inch plain round opening (if making cookies into ornaments); pastry bags or several small heavy-duty sealable plastic bags (optional)

• Garnish: decorative icing (optional).

Dicrections

Make dough:
Whisk together flour, five-spice powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.

Pulse ginger with 1/4 cup sugar in a food processor until finely ground.

Add syrup, butter, egg, and remaining 3/4 cup sugar to processor and blend until mixture is thick and creamy, about 3 minutes. Add flour mixture and pulse just until a dough forms. Form dough into a disk and chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, at least 8 hours to allow flavors to develop.

Bake and ice cookies:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 325°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Quarter dough. Keeping remaining 3 pieces wrapped in plastic wrap and chilled, roll out 1 piece of dough on a lightly floured sheet of wax paper with a lightly floured rolling pin to 3/4 inch thick. (If dough becomes too soft to roll out, chill on wax paper until firm.) Cut out rounds with cutter and transfer to 1 lined baking sheet, arranging cookies about 2 inches apart.

Bake cookies until slightly puffed and a shade darker, 10 to 12 minutes. Cool 5 minutes on sheet. If desired, make holes with piping tip near edges to hang cookies, then transfer cookies (still on parchment) to a rack to cool completely. (Cookies will flatten slightly as they cool.)

While first batch is baking, roll out and cut another batch, arranging cookies on second lined sheet. Bake in same manner, then gather scraps and chill until dough is firm enough to reroll, 15 to 20 minutes. Make more cookies with scraps (reroll scraps only once) and remaining pieces of dough, cooling sheets and lining them with fresh parchment before using.

If using icing and coloring it, transfer small batches of icing to small bowls, 1 for each color, and tint with food coloring. Spoon each color of icing into a separate pastry bag, pressing out excess air. Twist bag firmly just above icing, then decoratively pipe icing onto cookies. Let icing dry completely (about 1 hour, depending on humidity) before serving or storing cookies.

Cooks' notes:•Cookies are best when dough is chilled 8 hours to allow flavors to develop, but if you're in a hurry, dough can be chilled just 2 hours. Dough can be chilled up to 3 days.
•Using a pastry bag fitted with a piping tip results in cleaner lines of icing, but you can use small sealable plastic bags. Spoon each color of icing into a separate sealable bag, pressing out excess air, and snip an 3/4-inch opening in 1 bottom corner of each bag.
•Cookies keep, layered between sheets of parchment if iced, in an airtight container at room temperature 5 days.

Recipe courtesy Epicurious.com

Food: Pistachio Pesto

Photographs and recipe courtesy of SPROUTED KITCHEN.

Food: Banana Bread

Now normally I wouldn't post two recipes in a row, but I just couldn't resist. This morning I stepped into my kitchen, cross at myself again for letting the bananas go brown. I decided that instead of tossing them in my compost I should make banana bread. I've made it many times before but decided to go online and experiment with other peoples recipes. Upon searching, I found tons of different ways to make and create with banana bread. Here are some cool ideas that I hadn't thought of. Click on each picture to see details! The original recipe is a great after school snack for kids too!

Grilled Banana Bread with Maple Bacon Butter Recipe

Roasted Banana Bread with Cream Cheese Swirl

Grilled Banana Bread Ice Cream Sandwiches 

The Classic Banana Bread Recipe

Food: Black Pepper Tofu

Here's a great recipe that I've been making this summer, it's great if you're looking for ways to use those veggies you have lying in your fridge. It's a tad spicy and I have made a few changes, take a look below! If you really like this recipe here's a link to the book!

Food: Greek Burger

It's September again and apart from back to school, this time of year means only one thing to my family: The Greek Store in Kenilworth is open again! After a month long (painstakingly long for it's customers) vacation The Greek Store opens it's doors again! I thought that we would celebrate with a totally greek dinner this past weekend. I found this great recipe off Epicurious.com, my go to recipe book. It's simple, fresh and very greek. Try it out for yourself!

Here's what you need:

1/3 cup chopped fresh mint

2 teaspoons paprika

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 1/3 pounds ground lamb

4 hamburger buns or small ciabatta rolls

1 1/2 cups baby spinach leaves

1 1/3 cups crumbled feta cheese

4 1/4-inch-thick red onion slices

1 1/2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

Here's what you need to do:

Mix first 4 ingredients and 1 1/2 tablespoons oil in medium bowl; mix in lamb. Shape into four 3/4-inch-thick patties. Cook patties in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat 4 minutes per side for medium.

Meanwhile, preheat broiler. Broil buns until golden, about 2 minutes. Top each bun bottom with burger. Toss spinach, feta, onion, vinegar, and 11/2 tablespoons oil in bowl. Place salad atop burgers. Cover with bun tops, pressing firmly to compact.

Food: Baked Fontina

This summer I vowed to explore all those cookbooks that have been collecting dust on my shelf. It's an addiction of mine that I completely admit to. No matter how many months (err years...) go by without me trying one of them out, it inevitably grows larger each year. So this season I put a stop to such nonsense and have been doing quite well! This weekend I tried a recipe for Baked Fontina from the Barefoot Contessa's How Easy Is That? cookbook. I've had this book for two years now and am only just now finding out just how easy her recipes really are. This took all of about seven minutes to mince, slice and cube the four main ingredients, take a look at my results below!

I was lucky enough to have all the herbs required in my garden, saving me a few bucks!

After cubing the cheese put it in an oven safe dish (I used an iron skillet) and sprinkle the cheese with the herb garlic mix.

And a few minutes later it was done! This is a great recipe to use if hosting a party, little effort on your part and because of how rich it is, it goes a long way!

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds Italian Fontina Val d’Aosta cheese, rind removed and 1-inch-diced

1/4 cup good olive oil

6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves

1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary leaves

1 teaspoon kosher salt (I used half and was thankful!)

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 crusty French baguette

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Directions

1. Preheat the broiler and position the oven rack 5 inches from the heat.

2. Distribute the cubes of Fontina evenly in a 12-inch cast-iron pan. Drizzle on the olive oil. Combine the garlic, thyme, and rosemary and sprinkle it over the cheese and olive oil. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper and place the pan under the broiler for 6 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling and starts to brown.

3. Serve the baked Fontina family-style right out of the oven in the cast-iron pan with crusty chunks of bread for everyone to dip.

Lifestyle: Happy Memorial Day!

Hello everyone, hope you had a lovely Memorial weekend. The sky gods were extra kind to us, giving Mountainside glorious weather all three days! We didn't waste it at my house this weekend, taking advantage, we drove over to Dreyer's Farms and bought up a bunch of plants and grasses to fill our garden for the season! Take a look below!

This has to be some of my favorite ground covering in the backyard, it's actually a weed but I love the vibrant hues of green and yellow! 

After a day of hard work in the garden we had a great spread of produce we purchased at the Farmer's Market! We also had some fingerling potatoes left over from our family BBQ yesterday, so today we used a simple  herb seasoning of rosemary, oregano and thyme freshly picked from the garden! 

For the main course we had lamb chops seasoned with garlic cloves, rosemary and salt & pepper and olive oil!

These pigs in the blanket from Trader Joe's are great, they even have a parmesan crust which is extra yummy! 

As I said in one of my previous posts music is a very important part of our everyday life, here is a link to some of the songs we were listening to this weekend, hope you groove out to some (if not all) of these tunes!

Lifestyle: Sunday Dinner!

 It's so lovely to finally have nice weather where we can be outside all day! This weekend was the first of the farmers market season (it actually started last week but I was unaware!) On the menu tonight was homemade Ceasar Salad (with locally grown romaine lettuce!), steamed asparagus, steamed broccoli, avocado salad, turkey burgers with an Indian Onion Chutney (courtesy of Star of India in Kenilworth) and munster cheese, lobster tails and to finish off the meal we had Rhubarb Pie with fresh whipped cream and home grown strawberries! It was one of our better family meals to say the least!

If you're wondering what exactly an Avocado Salad is, its basically what you put in guacamole, but instead of mashing all the ingredients together you slice up the avacado and sprinkle the spices, tomatoes, onions and lemon juice on top! Yumm!

The pup had a good evening too, finishing off some of the strawberries for us!

Like food, music is also a big part of our life, so wether we're working out in the yard or cooking up a storm in the kitchen, we have some of our favorite tunes playing! Click here to visit Bamboo & Fern's new YouTube page where we will be sharing our family favs and playlists! Here is a link to the playlist we were listening to today! Or check out one of the videos below! 

Food: Sweet Potato, Green Bean and Smoked Paprika Salad

I was on my favorite blog, Design*Sponge, today looking for some great DIY inspiration and I found this recipe that looked yummy and thought I'd share it with you folks!

The photos that go along with this post are all the convincing I need to try this out!

Ingredients

• extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into thick wedges about 5 cm long
• 2 potatoes, cut into thick wedges about 5 cm long
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• large handful of green beans, topped and tailed, cut in half on the diagonal
• 3 ripe tomatoes, cut into wedges
• handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• sour cream or natural yoghurt to serve (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Heat around 3 tablespoons of oil in an ovenproof frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion, sweet potato and potato and pan-fry for 5–10 minutes, tossing occasionally, until lightly coloured.

2. Stir in the garlic, paprika, 1 teaspoon of salt and generous black pepper, coating well. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast until the vegetables are tender (around 15 minutes).

3. Meanwhile, bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Add the beans and simmer for a few minutes, then drain.

4. Put the hot beans into a large bowl along with the tomato and parsley. Add the hot roasted vegetables, lemon juice and another good splash of oil and toss to combine. Add extra salt and pepper to taste. Serve with dollops of sour cream or natural yoghurt if desired.

Food: Valentine's Day Treats!

Here are an assortment of sweet treats from my absolute favorite food blog, Everyday Occasions. I have made a lot of the recipes from it and they all turned out splendidly! I don't have anything in particular that I make when it comes to Valentine's Day, what about you guys? Anything special that you're planning?
Click on each photo to take you to the recipe!

Food: Canapes

Here are some great recipes from Everyday Occasions. It really is becoming my most referenced blog isn't it? Anyways, these canapes looked so tasty I just had to reblog them to you folks! I hope you enjoy!

Roasted Beef & Horseradish Cream Canapes

25 canapes

2 baguettes, sliced into 1/2 inch toasts
1 packages of cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons of horseradish
1 tablespoon of dijon mustard
salt & pepper
1 pound of Roast Beef, sliced
flat leaf parsley

Mix together cream cheese, horseradish, dijon, salt & pepper.  Spread the mixture onto each slice of bread.  Top with a thin slice of beef and sprinkling of parsley, salt & pepper. 

Roasted Red Pepper & Blue Cheese Canapes

24 canapes

2 baguettes, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
1 large jar of roasted red peppers, sliced
8 ounces of blue cheese, crumbled
pepper
parsley

On a baking sheet, spread out the slices of bread.  Pile the peppers and blue cheese on each piece.  Put them in the oven under the low broiler for 2-3 minutes just until the blue cheese melts.  Sprinkle with parsley and fresh black pepper.