Food

Chevre-Stuffed Crimini Mushrooms with Walnuts and Caramelized Onions

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

I needed a gluten- and dairy-free item for a snacky potluck, and had a bag of crimini mushrooms in the fridge – given that stuffed mushrooms are one of my favourite hors d’oeuvres, and you can stuff them with such a wide variety of ingredients, I spent the day dreaming of the tastiest gluten- and dairy-free combinations I could dream up. Originally, I was going to make these vegan, but when I found out there was no issue (for this particular person) with goats cheese, I decided to include that. If I were making them fully vegan, I would just remove the goats cheese, chop up the mushroom stems for extra bulk, and probably increase the walnut and nutritional yeast content.

Chevre-Stuffed Crimini Mushrooms with Walnuts and Caramelized Onions

Gluten- and Dairy-Free

Ingredients (all quantities are flexible; adjust to taste/preferences):

  • 12-16 crimini mushrooms, medium to large (use more mushrooms the smaller they are)
  • 1/3 cup walnuts
  • 4.5 oz. chevre or other goats cheese (feta may be too salty though)
  • 3/4 cup chopped onions
  • 2 tbsp. coconut oil
  • 1/4 cup nutritional yeast (I recommend Red Star brand)
  • 6 cloves roasted garlic*
  • 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
  • 1 tbsp. fresh sage, chopped
  • Braggs seasoning
  • Toasted sesame oil

*To roast garlic, wrap a whole head, skin on, in foil and place in the oven to bake at 350 degrees for at least an hour. Allow to cool. The extra from this recipe can be used in any recipe where you would use fresh or powdered garlic, or spread on toast.

Soak walnuts in equal amounts Braggs seasoning and water, enough to cover, plus 1 tsp. sesame oil, for 1-3 hours (at least).

Melt coconut oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onions. Stir often, and when onions start to brown, turn down heat to medium-low. Cook slowly, stirring often, until fully cooked, translucent and golden brown.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Drain walnuts and reserve liquid. Combine walnuts, cheese, caramelized onions, nutritional yeast, roasted garlic (squeeze from the paper by pinching at the top and working down) and herbs in a food processor. Process until the consistency of a thick pate. If it becomes to difficult to process, add the walnut liquid in small amounts until it can be mixed. The mixture should be as thick as possible while still allowing it to be processed.

Wipe down mushrooms with a damp cloth, and gently remove stems. Fill each mushroom cap with a generous amount of filling – this should be heaping. I used my hands, because I had discovered by this point that this stuff was incredibly delicious, and I wanted an excuse to lick my fingers afterward.

Bake in a covered dish for 30 minutes.

Any excess filling is wonderful on crackers. Or you could just make it as a pate or spread in the first place. Enjoy!

A Downtown Holiday Adventure (And Dressember Day #16)

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

We don’t have much time for spontaneous family days in December (it’s true!), but I’ve been taking mental note of downtown festivities as I see them pop up on Facebook and Twitter – a gingerbread replica of the beautiful Fairmont Palliser Hotel, ice sculptures on Stephen Avenue, carolers, fiddlers, and pretty lights, to name a few. I had decided it would be fun to take an afternoon and head down there to enjoy as much as we could all in one day, since I knew making it down more than once wouldn’t happen.

I looked up some of the attractions on advance and made it into kind of a scavenger hunt, so we could cross sights off the list as we went.

First was the gingerbread replica of the Palliser. Truthfully, I also wanted an excuse to go into the Palliser and see the Christmas decorations. Here is what the Palliser really looks like (today):

The real Fairmont Palliser

And here is Neko with the fully edible version:

We took to the +15 walkway system to get partway to TD Square, where we would find the fiddlers performing. On our way, we walked for a bit down Stephen Avenue, and came across the ice sculptures in front of Winners. I hear that other years, they’ve been destroyed really quickly, so we were glad to see them still standing and in perfect condition.

Unfortunately, even though the Downtown Calgary website said the fiddlers would be performing 11:45 – 1:15, and we got to the right spot at 1 pm on the dot, they were already finished and packing up their things. Too bad – I was disappointed.

Thankfully, we had Food Trucks to cheer us up. My YYC Food Trucks app told us that Alley Burger was parked down at Eau Claire, so we hoofed it down there to grab a couple. Good thing we walked so fast! After we ordered, the woman at the till told the next customer there were only four left. We were starved, and so glad to have our burgers and fries. We walked back to TD Square to sit and eat them.

YUM! Highly recommended.

A touch-up for my haircut at Ginger Group and a latte from Caffe Rosso were the perfect end to our adventure.

Tonight, we attended a Christmas party at a friend’s house, and I donned Dress #2 of the day. It’s too big – I nabbed it at a clothing swap earlier this month because I think it’s cute and I wanted another dress for Dressember.

A Day in the Life#1: Unschooling (and Dressember Day #12)

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I’ve decided that periodically, on our days that are especially great (what’s that? You don’t want a play-by-play of the days where we run errands?), I’m going to post day-in-the-life posts showing what we do on a day of unschooling. Over time, these posts will show a variety of types of days, a range of topics, and hopefully a good cross-section of what unschooling an only child can look like.

Today is the first of these! Neko and I had almost a full day at home, and I had some plans of what I could work on with her (yep… that’s not true unschooling), so I thought it would be a good time to start.

We’ve cut out our morning ritual of Neko watching a few (usually at least semi-educational without ads) TV shows and having a glass of chocolate almond milk, as her behaviour has been going downhill lately with more whining, worse sleep habits, and some back-talking and rudeness. I feel Justan and I are at fault, not setting clear enough boundaries and setting Neko up to fail with the morning dose of sugar and screen time. For the past few days, there has been no TV in the morning, and the first thing to pass through Neko’s lips has been protein, or at least whole grains.

8 am We bucked the trend a bit here this morning, and I let her watch Nim’s Island on Netflix, as it was recommended to us recently.

9:45 am Neko did a mosaic craft that my mom gave her for her birthday. Just a bunch of sticky dots that you place on a template, but my thought is that it was useful for… math. And art. And fine motor skills. Oh, and we had breakfast at this point.

11 am I did laundry. Neko finished up her mosaic, and we snacked a bit in anticipation of going tobogganing. Also, Neko put a blanket on the cat. No educational benefit to that, that I can discern, but it was silly and looked cute.

Blanket-on-cat. Cute.

11:45 am Tobogganing! About six blocks from our house, there is a pretty big hill with a nice slope, and now that the snow deep enough and a decent quality, we’ll be over there sliding down that hill often! Last year we got a big, wooden toboggan and two plastic “flying saucers,” and we just got two Crazy Carpets (from the treasure hunt for Neko’s birthday party). This was our physical education for the day. Plus it was just fun. And we got some vitamin D.

Lots of hill climbing… unencumbered glee… and it’s a good sign when you’re laughing hysterically after falling off at the bottom.

This was tiring. And thirsty-making. So we walked home for treats. It was, by the way, nearly impossible to get Neko off this hill.

1 pm Cold drinks! I blended some lemon juice, homemade strawberry preserves (simply strawberries, lemon juice and sugar, simmered) and made us strawberry lemonade. Which, of course, called for fancy glasses. Which, of course, makes it appear that I was filling my daughter with strawberry margaritas. I wasn’t, by the way.

Oh yeah. And water.

Yum!

2 pm Things got pretty boring at this point when we cleaned out Neko’s bed. It’s a loft bed, and she has tons of books up there, and extra blankets, and random toys… anyway. It was gross. And messy. So we did that. (Also, I’m watching Louis CK as I write this and I apologize if it’s affecting my tone.) Neko then chose a selection of toys that she wants to keep on her bed which are, she says, “fake Pokemons.” She basically chose regular toys and assigned them special powers. I don’t get Pokemon. These are life skills of some sort, I’m quite sure.

3 pm As I had promised Neko earlier in the day, it was time for Just Dance 3 on the Wii. This is, for the record, also my workout for the day. That game gets your heart pumping! I also secretly (not anymore) hope it will improve my moves, you know, for the next time I’m at the club.

Hawt. We had a good time.

This, of course, was part two of phys ed for today. And the required daily pop culture lesson.

4 pm Here was my one, actually educational plan for the day: to print off a 10×10 chart so Neko could fill it in with the numbers one through 100. She’s been having trouble learning to count, and I thought a visual cue, and writing the numbers herself, would probably help her make the connection. So I made a ten column by ten row table in Pages, made the cells square, and printed the page. Then I had Neko fill in the bottom ten squares, left to right, one to ten. We then went across and did the teens. Then the twenties. Up until this point I was leading Neko through it, and she wasn’t totally understanding the pattern of the whole thing. But around 28, she saw the pattern. She started filling in the cells by herself, only asking for help once or twice per line. This was so cool to watch. Each time she figured out the name for the next ten spot, she was so very proud of herself. I honestly almost cried, watching her. I told her that once she had filled in the chart, she would be able to count to 100. She said, “I can only write to a hundred, I can’t count to a hundred mommy.” I explained that using her new chart, she’ll be able to count to 100 whenever she wants. Her eyes filled with excitement and she said, “I want to fold this up and put it in my pocket and keep it with me every day!”

Definition of the term “awesomesauce.”

After that, we called my parents so she could count to 100 on the phone for them (my mom is a kindergarten teacher, so she was thrilled to listen), and Justan came home and Neko showed him her number chart, and then she went to play with the neighbours for a while.

Oh, and today was Dressember Day #12.

Dress: Majora (Value Village) // Boots: Thrift shop

Neko’s “Fake Birthday” and Dressember Day #9

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

All day today, Neko told everyone it was her birthday… her “fake birthday.” In reality, today was the day of her birthday party, which I’d be willing to bet is more like her birthday to her, than is the day of the anniversary of her birth. Ah, well. We started off with a “Chickadee Party” with Outdoors In, a local organization that teaches classes about nature and animals. Judy, the instructor, offers a lot of neat classes on seasons, survival, habitats, adaptation and so on to homeschooled kids, and given that Neko is really into nature and science, we go to a lot of these. Today’s class was on birds and different animals and how some adapt, some hibernate and some migrate during winter.

“Mice” hiding under the “snow.”

A mouse emerging from the melting snow in the spring.

The idea was that this was the “Christmas party” to end off the fall sessions of Outdoors In, so we ended with cookies and hot chocolate.

Here was today’s dress:

Dress: vintage store in Vancouver (gift) // Long underwear: Hocosa // Shirt: Old Navy

The evening was Neko’s birthday party. Neko turns six later this month, but given the proximity to Christmas, we try to have her party early. This year marks her first sleepover! We started off with Make-Your-Own-Sandwiches. The girls could choose toasted or untoasted; mayo, mustard or roasted red pepper hummus; ham or chicken; spinach, sprouts, tomatoes, pickles, onions, avocado or red pepper; herbed havarti, cheddar or emmental.

My chicken/hummus/pickle/tomato/sprout/avocado/red pepper/onion/havarti sandwich was EPIC.

Next, we had Make-Your-Own-Sundaes, featuring chocolate marshmallow swirl ice cream (Neko’s choice, but sickeningly sweet) with blueberry sauce, strawberry sauce, chocolate chips, cookie dough, coconut, cinnamon, maraschino cherries, pecans and cashews.

I made a photo treasure hunt, as most of the girls in attendance are just learning to read. This went over like gangbusters.

Going to the basement to find the treasure. Yes, I know how creepy our stairs look.

The treasure was Crazy Carpets! I couldn’t have guessed how well these would go over!!

I somehow managed to not take a photo of all of them playing Just Dance 3, which was the highlight of the night, and so cute and funny to watch. This was Neko’s early birthday gift. Two of the girls went home around 9 pm, while Charlotte stayed to sleep over. While Neko and Charlotte stayed up to read/look at books until 10:30 pm, once we turned out the lights, they were asleep in minutes.

Now, Charlotte has requested I wake her at 7 am to witness the lunar eclipse. That is about two hours earlier than I’m apt to wake up/come alive, so I’m not sure how the morning will look. I’m quite sure, though, that it won’t be pretty.

Soup Day and Dressember Day #8

/ Lindsay / 1 Comment

Sometimes when I have the extra two kids, I like to do theme days. They’re fun for me to plan, because I can incorporate the meals, books, activities and crafts or experiments. Today was Soup Day! There wasn’t a lot to it, but it was fun. First, we read Stone Soup, by Ann McGovern (my copy is from the 70s or 80s and is well loved). It’s about a traveler who stops at an old woman’s house to beg for some food, only she says she has none. He says it’s fine, he has a stone that he can use to make soup. They throw it in a pot with some water and boil it, and he keeps suggesting she add more ingredients (chicken, carrots, onions, beef bones, barley) and of course they end up with delicious soup.

After we read the book, I took out three pots and put a clean, round stone and some chicken broth in each, then let each child choose veggies, legumes/beans, a grain and a meat to add to their own soup.

The three stones we used to make the soup.

Finn only had peas, corn, cauliflower and rice in his; Mairead chose peas, corn, cauliflower, carrots, spinach, rice and chicken; and Neko wanted peas, corn, carrots, cauliflower, legumes, macaroni and sausage. I tried all three, and they were tasty! I also made some fresh bread for them to dip in their soup.

After lunch, we read another favourite – a really funny book by Jackie Urbanovic called Duck Soup. It’s about a Duck named Max who loves to cook soup, but one day, when his friends come to visit, they find a big pot of soup on the stove and think he has fallen in, so they dump it out in an attempt to save him. It’s really cute.

I’m sure we could have done more for Soup Day. Does anyone out there have any ideas?

Also, today was Dressember Day #8. All this time there has been the issue of trying to stay warm… today I was too warm! I was wearing tights, with wool socks and wool/silk blend long underwear overtop, then wool leg warmers, plus my dress and for much of the day, a short sleeved, hooded cardigan. With the soup and bread cooking, I was cooking too.

Dress: Zara // Long underwear: wool/silk blend from Hocosa – LOVE // Legwarmers: Cronert Button-Up Legwarmers from Sock Dreams // Socks: Smart Wool