Romance in The Food Box

It was a Monday night. Alexandre arrived and instantly you could feel the romance in the air. He approached the Fat Chance Farmstead stand and locked eyes with Josh and Josh said "we have some flowers for your food box this week" and Alexandre melted! Ok, not really but there was some romance in our food box this week :D

This week we got some repeats from last week (which is darn awesome because that stuff is golden - strawberries? mmmmmmm) and some new stuff! Alexandre had to go pick it up himself this week so I didn't get a chance to visit but he picked us up some oven roasted pizza which they'll be doing every other week now which is awesome for Monday night dinners ;) I'd show you a picture but when there was two bites of the pizza left we said "oh man, we should have taken a picture!" At which point Alexandre took a picture but it doesn't look much so I'll spare you.... 

Now for what we got this week, it seems like more than last week so we better start mowing down instantly!

We got flowers, a loaf of spelt bread, a kohlrabi, spinach, kale, garlic stems, shallots, did I mention the pretty flowers?, strawberries and aragula. 

Now last week they recommended a salad dressing for us so we basically had green onion and aragula salad (creative I know!) with the following dressing. It was DELICIOUS!

1/4 c Balsamic Vinaigrette

3 T Olive Oil

1 T Maple Syrup

Yummy :D 

Are you getting hungry yet? What do you do with a kohlrabi? 

Getting Our 2014 Garden Started

Last year my boyfriend and I dug out a 4' x 4' patch in the yard near the deck and he framed it with some boards. We grew seedlings in our kitchen and got all ready for it and planted the seedlings but were underwhelmed with the results. So this year we were a little apprehensive about getting our garden started after the lack of product last year.

I decided last night to get it going for two reasons: I like having a garden, weeding is good for my stress levels, and the neighbours and the fat chance farmstead gave us some seedlings and I needed to get them planted before I somehow killed them.

This is what I started with:

Yup there's a garden in there....

So I pulled up all the weeds and tossed them in the yard for the lawn tractor to eat:

From there I got out my hand cultivator I picked up at Rona yesterday and got to cultivating. That's thirsty work I tell ya! Then I made little mounds for my seedlings around the time it started to pour rain, I wanted to get them in for this rainfall too so they got a good start. And this is my garden as it stands now, cross your fingers we get lots of produce! 

Garden map:

Cherry Tomatoes    Peach Tomatoes   Neighbour Tomatoes   Neighbour Tomatoes

Tomatoes and possibly carrots?   Ground Cherries   Fooled You Peppers   Fooled You Peppers

What's in your garden this year? Did you get an earlier start than me? 

My Boyfriends Crepe Birthday Cake for 29 years!!

It's coming up on my boyfriends 29th birthday so annually he organizes a birthday camping trip with his friends and I organize our families to come over for some cake! I got all my duds in order early on this one, I made the facebook event a month ago so no one would have an excuse to miss it :) Something I noticed a couple days ago was that I made it for 5 pm. Although not inherently bad for a Friday evening I get off work at 4:30 and home is a half hours drive which means no prep time. I'll have to start earlier so I can leave earlier, oh well!

But this year we looked at cakes and he decided (slash was told, whatever) that he wanted me to make a crepe cake! So I looked at some recipes online and settled on a layered cake. This is the plan: three layer consisting of crepes, healthy nutella (experiment of almond butter, cocoa and honey) and coconut whipped cream.

I started with the crepes. I found a recipe online and started substituting a few things and before I knew it I wasn't really following the recipe anymore... oops! So here's the ingredients before I decided to try a healthy nutella:

For the crepes I started by adding the following to a bowl and whisking it with my immersion blenders whisk attachment:

1 c unbleached flour

2 T honey

2 eggs

1/2 c milk

1/2 t vanilla

Double yoke :o

Whisked till it was bubbly!

Then I slowly added another 1 c milk (I used 2%) while I whisked and then 1 t melted butter.

From here I prepared my cooking accoutrements:

Crepe pan (thanks mom!), spatula (later switched to a smaller one because this one didn't fit into the pan under the edge of the crepe) and a plate to receive cooked crepes!

I used about a third of a cup of batter each time, no oil since it's no stick ( oil just makes it difficult to spread the batter!!) and set the temp slightly lower than what you use for pancakes. Normal is 5/10 on the dial for me so 4 is perfect for spreading the batter before it starts to cook too thick.

Once your crepe starts looking brown on the edges like this one it's time to flip. Less than 2 minutes later I took the crepe off heat. I ended with a lovely stack of crepes:

From there I started on the "nutella". 

I used the following ingredients all mixed together:

2 c almond butter 

3 T cocoa

2.5 T honey

It turned out pretty good, just a little dry tasting and it looked sort of like chocolate icing:

So then I started on the whipped cream. It took some trial and error on the coconut milk but essentially I needed to find coconut milk with only two ingredients and no preservatives or emulsifiers and then leave it in the fridge 24 hours. One can seemed to separate more than the other but oh well!

I got my blender out and blended and blended and blended and when I tasted it it didn't taste so awesome so I added some vanilla powder. In case your not familiar with vanilla powder this stuff is awesome, it's made from ground vanilla beans according to the google but I think this stuff also had some sweetener in it:

This made the initial taste sweet and vanilla-y but the after taste was still that strong over powering coconut that just leaves your taste buds in shock. So we decided it would ruin the cake and the only other alternative I had on hand was knock off cool whip (this is the night before the party and I have to work all day the next day). 

Needless to say the "nutella" was too thick and the crepes kept tearing and the dessert whip melted so my cake turned into a souped sandwich in an aweful hurry and at that point I had to admit my boyfriend had good reason to suggest I pick up a box of cake mix for a back up. I forgot to take a picture of the whole cake with the sparkler # 29 on top but here's a picture of what was left. It was a hit:

Saturday morning though I woke up and used that "nutella" warmed up a bit with some defrosted frozen fruit and some cool whip and made myself a bangin' breakfast! Add a cuppa with some Bailey's and I was cruisin :) Not a complete loss!

Have you ever gotten really excited and into a recipe only for it not to work the way you intended? 

Our First Food Box!!

June 16th marked the first pick up day for our food box from Fat Chance Farmstead!! If you missed my previous post or I didn't explain it there we paid 600$ up front and then for 18 weeks starting on June 16th we pick up a box of fresh produce and a loaf of spelt bread. The fist one is special though for many reasons. The first is we got maple syrup, yay!! I love maple syrup. The second is we got some plants to put in our own garden. Now that might be a project I tackle tonight and I'll show you pictures, but it's essentially a 4' x 4' weed patch right now...

So here's our first crop share box:

So in this box we got the following:

Shallots

Arugula

Some more green shit....

Strawberries

Lemon Balm

Oregano 

Seedlings: Cherry Tomatoes and Tomatoes described as fuzzy like peaches, and Ground Cherries

Maple Syrup

Spelt Bread

Looks yummy eh? 

Have you received your first bunch of a crop share yet for this year? Is it enough considering it will increase as the year 

Annual Commuter Challenge 2014!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen! That time of year has come round again for the annual commuter challenge :) This is a one week dash to reduce your carbon footprint, you don't need to be perfect you just need to work on improving your impact on the planet this week.

Typically I carpool with my boyfriend to work but this week I'm going to try riding my bike a few times. I did my first ride this morning and I'd like to share with you that this felt like death. Ok, not really but it didn't feel good and to top off my hour long ride (16.5 km) with sunburned shoulders (from my 4k run yesterday) I arrived at work to what I was looking forward to as a delightfully warm shower... no hot water. D:

This is how I felt:

But fear not, my boyfriend brought me Tim Hortons coffee and a "Hungry Man" microwave dinner for lunch and I am certain that by 4:30 today I'll be ready to ride home and look something like this:

That's right, a million bucks :D 

So how will you participate in the commuter challenge this week? 

Blueberry cheesecake stuffed strawberries with chocolate drizzle

It's getting on strawberry season here in South Eastern Ontario and strawberries are going on sale in every grocery store! So I figured why not give this delicious recipe a facelift? The recipe I based this on is here! But I decided to change it up a bit plus I always have leftover cheesecake because I don't cut out as much of the strawberry, that part is yummy too :) So here are my ingredients: 

Vanilla, confectioners sugar, cream cheese, strawberries and graham crumbs. 

I used 76% chocolate chips for the drizzle because that's what I had in the cupboard but as my boyfriend says, "milk chocolate is the best, you should use that next time," so I guess it's up to your personal preference. You could even use white chocolate but my personal taste is dark :) Oh no, where's the jam? Trust me, I used jam, mommy made blueberry jam!

So I started out by mixing the entire package of cream cheese with 1 teaspoon of vanilla with the beaters. Then I added 1 Tablespoon of blueberry jam. You can put more or less jam depending on how flavourful your jam is. Mine was pretty flavourful and not super sweet. If your jam is also sweet make sure you add the confectioners sugar a bit at a time and taste it so you don't over sweeten it! 

Once this mixture is ready to rock spoon it into a regular lunch bag:

You can do this now or later but you'll need to cut off the corner so you can pipe it. Before cutting the tip I recommend working the cream cheese because mine was still pretty cold and I busted a leak out the side that needed taping because I had to squeeze so hard :S Ooops! 

Next you're going to want to prepare your strawberries. Hold the knife at about a 45 degree angle and slice around the stem:

You'll notice as you cut that there's a bit of a hollow in the center of the strawberry, this is where your cheesecake will go:

Once the strawberries are ready pour some graham crumbs into a bowl for dipping after you've piped in the cheesecake:

Grab your lunch bag and fill those strawberries! Now they don't need to look all that pretty because you're just going to mash them into the graham crumbs which should flatten the tops nicely.

I always have leftovers so I just tape up the cut corner and toss it in the freezer. The filling is always handy to have on hand in case you need to whip up something to bring to a social event last minute!

Once you have all your strawberries filled and dipped you're ready to start the chocolate. 

There's about a quarter cup of chocolate here, not that I measured or skimped in any way, this is chocolate we're talking about here. Feel free to use more, worst case you have more to lick out of the bowl after you're done drizzling.  

I heated mine in the microwave, a double boiler or a metal mixing bowl over a pot with an inch of water would have worked perfectly as well. If you do it in the mic make sure you heat at intervals of 20 to 30 seconds, the sugar heats pretty quickly and the edges will burn while the center is still unheated if you let it go too long. After each interval mix it up, here's how mine looked after the first interval:

After the chocolate is melted take your spoon and drizzle it over your perfection!

And then of course devour it :) 

What other variations would you like? Would you like a healthier version? Keep an eye out because that's my next plan :D 

Ingredients in the raw:

1 pkg cream cheese

1 T blueberry jam

1 t vanilla

1/4 c confectioners sugar

1 pint strawberries

1/4 c dark chocolate

Flooring Part 3!

DISCLAIMER: I am not a contractor, we just are handy people that like to do things ourselves. Always verify your instructions and info with a secondary source.

In case you missed it you should check out flooring part 2 so you can see our demolition :) In that post we ripped up the ugly vinyl tiles and the plywood they were glued to then screwed the underlay to the studs because the nails were just making life too squeaky!

So the new floors. Despite my awesome pinterest find we will not be doing the 1$/sqft flooring, instead it will be the free$/sqft thanks to the kindness of my father-out-law.

Everything we need to do some flooring, a compressor, hardwood, building paper, and beer. Shotgun, not needed. 

Here are the most of the tools we used (minus the mitre saw):

 Prybar to remove old crap, chisels to take up the trim a bit, hammer in multiple places, air powered nail & staple gun and drill

Table saw for ripping and cutting in

But first we cleaned up and took all the old flooring and other random garbage we had to the dump in my lovely little truck!

And of course the boyfriend said we won't have the minimum weight load but my leaf springs said otherwise..

In case you're not sure what you're looking at here these are my rear leaf springs, the straight metal bar at the bottom is typically curved upwards so as to absorb shock in the box through the wheels. It's flat. This is not good. 

But it's all gone now along with some other reno garbage that'd been kicking around the basement forever. So now we vacuum the hallway and lay some flooring paper:

Flooring paper with and without a great dane passing. Make sure if you have any seams that you overlap the paper by about 4 in because this acts as your vapour barrier, also staple every 8~10 in along the edges. I also put staples throughout the centre to keep it secure from slipping/moving around. 

Then my boyfriend got to try his new table saw, YAY! And the flooring begins :) Sadly the jumbo compressor we bought has a leak so we used the little compressor for the nailer/staplers. I guess instructions would be handy eh?

In the hallway we want the boards to be 1/2 in off the walls ideally to allow for expansion and contraction as the house heats and cools. Since the hall is a little narrower there's less movement so you can sometimes get away with a smaller gap. If you don't have a nice gap on each side you'll need to rip the boards so that you have even width boards on each side and a gap. Engineered hardwood doesn't need as big a gap on top of it being a hall so we had less, probably closer to 1/4 in. So for the first row you make a line with your chalk string parallel to whatever you're lining up with. The first row is nailed down through the top at the edges and stapled on the tongue.

From there you don't need to rip any boards, just chop them to length and using the stapler (not a hand powered staple gun, these won't have enough power to drive the staple in far enough so that it doesn't interfere with the tongue and groove) and staple in the nook of the tongue:

This is the closest I could line up the staple to be in the nook of the tongue. Make sure you keep the staples at least a few inches from the ends and put no less than 2 staples per board and this one is again somewhere around 8 in but you don't need to get super anal about it, you don't want them so close the tongue starts to split off. 

Once the boyfriend finished with the door ways it was video game time so I proceeded to lay the straight rows right up till the stapler hit the wall:

From here we first used the drill to pre-drill finishing nail holes in the nook of the tongue but the last two rows were too close to the wall for the drill in the nook and we drilled through the top of the board and nailed finishing nails. Those will be filled/hidden later :) 

And voila! Finished hall flooring:

Next weekend we may pick up some trim, we need enough for the entire house, luckily the bathroom is already the same as what we're buying, yay! I'm also going to see about building new intake covers because the ones we have are rough to say the least, they appear to be original to this 1950s bungalow. We also bought some wood with routered edges on two adjacent sides that will serve as floor transition covers for the bathroom and kitchen because as you can see it looks gross:

Have you ever laid hard wood? What colour do you like?

Obligatory cute bum pic: