We raced the birds to the tree this weekend then set up our ladder and picked, washed then ate and pitted a big bowl full of cherries.

I highly recommend.

I ate all my brownies… and didn’t photograph, I guess I’ll have to make more!

A weekly post capturing a single moment from our wild life, to savor.

I love my lentils and this is by far my most favorite recipe. They can be slopped on bread for a sandwich, or served in a bowl with some cheese as a chili like soup!

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 red or white onion (small dice)

1 bell pepper (small dice, any color sweet pepper works)

1 anaheim pepper or jalapeno (small dice)

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 & ½ cups dried french green lentils (brown lentils work too) rinsed

One 28 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes

3 cups water

2 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon whole grain mustard

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

fresh ground black pepper

6 buns (we used New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro buns)

1 tablespoon butter (for toasting buns, optional, and if your feeling wild, grate some aged white cheddar on top too!)

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan on a stove top over medium heat, then add the onion and peppers, cook until softened or until onions turn transparent (about 5-10 minutes), add the chili powder, stir then turn off the heat.

Get out your crock pot!  Add the warm onion mix to the crock pot/slow cooker.  Then add your lentils, tomato’s, water, soy sauce, mustard, brown sugar, salt and grind in some pepper (basically everything else), stir all ingredients till well mixed then cover with lid and cook on low heat for 6-8 hours(french green lentils take longer then brown ones). Remember NEVER TAKE THE SLOW COOKER LID OFF!

If you want to make this recipe without the crock pot/slow cooker, just combine ingredients in a large pot on low, stirring every now and then till lentils are cooked through (about an hour or so).

Once  the lentils are done, or you are ready to eat, slice the buns, butter and then toast them under your broiler!

Recipe Adapted from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker

A weekly post capturing a single moment from our wild life, to savor.

A weekly post capturing a single moment from our wild life, to savor.

I’m almost 30 years old, and until today have never made my own pizza dough. Weird, eh?

I don’t know how, it wasn’t intentional, I love pizza. We buy local whole wheat pizza crusts and make pizza weekly, it’s just so much fun. I’m new to Active-Dry yeast, and maybe that has something to do with the lack of pizza dough in my life (for heaven’s sakes, I even worked in a take-and-bake pizza place my first year of college (mysteriously, I never had to make the dough)).

Well, today was a new day, and started out like any other weekend morning, a small child climbing over me and trying to put my glasses on at 7:30am. So much for sleeping in. Around 4pm inspiration struck, can you guess, yes, pizza.

I whipped out a couple classic cookbooks  “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” and “Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza and Calazone” compared and contrasted their recipes… and started foaming my yeast!

Three little pizzas sounded like a good idea (since there are three of us), so after mixing my dough and letting it rise and then rest, I cut up my big ball of dough… and rolled these babies together.

I stretched them out, then put them down on a polenta and flour covered pan.

Toppings were prepared!

The first two in the oven were BBQ Chicken and BBQ w/out chicken pizzas!

Then the Mediterraneanish pizza with sun dried tomatoes, blue cheese, arugula (thanks Rene!) and artichoke hearts.

Wowsers… they were good!

It was so much easier than I though! I might start a weekly pizza ritual… although I also said that about making cheese, and have yet to make another batch!

The picture below shows us raising the two posts!

Here it is installed, in just 3 hours, we went from a stack of wood to a beautiful Pergola! Our living room faces South West and get’s lots of  late afternoon sun with its gigantic window. The idea is that the we can have some shade cloth or a bamboo rolling screen to help shade the late afternoon sun that comes in that window!

This is obviously a very abbreviated version of our installation and work! If your interested in Timber Framing here’s the website http://www.swiftsuretimber.com for our family business! We are insanely blessed to have so many dear friends help us over the past few months, put this all together and then put it up!

Did I forget to mention food? Ah yes! I spent all day Saturday preparing for the party! Chocolate coconut oatmeal cookies, hot artichoke and cheese dip, potato and asparagus salad, garlicky hummus, stuffed eggs, white chocolate chip cookies with dried cherries… the list goes on! I don’t think I’ve spent that much time in my kitchen in a while, I had a blast!

Here’s a couple versions we’ve had over the past few months…

Lemon Sticky Buns

If you decide to make these sweet buns of heaven, make sure your cream cheese (for the frosting) is at room temp, or warmer!! Our first batch turned into chunky city, and we were running around the neighborhood begging more powdered sugar from the neighbors!

Walnut Sticky Buns

This is actually a wacky recipe mix of The Joy of Cooking’s Sticky rolls and Martha Stewart’s Monkey Bread Recipe.  I use the sticky part of the sticky rolls, and the bread part of the monkey bread recipe, a wicked collaboration. If your curious about the monkey bread I blogged about it here.

I’ve been meaning to make cheese for a while! I was even gifted with some cheese making supplies & a cookbook this past holiday season. Even though I read the book cover to cover, I never got around to making any cheese. It sounded scary. Boil a pot of milk, and magically you have cheese (oversimplification, yes)?

So, I signed up for a cheese cooking class at our local Co-Op! I feel much more comfortable learning it in a class, before experimenting at home!  It was on Saturday and on Sunday morning I purchased a new Stainless Steel pot, a slotted spoon and we were making cheese!

First the Mozzarella

Then the ricotta.

YUM YUM YUM!

The mozzarella & ricotta have been used in pizza, risotto and eaten fresh! They turned out FABULOUS… to our surprise!