Summer Recipes

I did a little cooking class in September for the young women in our Spanish Fork Ward. Unfortunately I don't really cook from recipes, so I have had to figure out what the recipes are.  As I learned in culinary school, a recipe is a guideline.    And as we know about guidelines from Pirates of the Caribbean, guidelines can  be broken. So I am covered. 

Raspberry Sauce
Can be put on a variety of things.  I specifically made it as a dressing for a fruit salad.  
1 pint fresh raspberries
2 T sugar, or more to taste
1 tsp. orange zest
zest from half a lime
2 T orange juice

Place raspberries in blender.  Blend until smooth.  Strain out seeds by pouring puree into strainer over a bowl.  Use rubber spatula to push the raspberry puree through strainer.  Mix in remaining ingredients  to raspberry puree.

Pour sauce over diced fruit.  Cantaloupe, orange slices, apples, raspberries, or whatever you want.  Just make sure there are oranges in there because they goes so well with the sauce.

Variation: To make into a syrup for french toast feel free to use frozen raspberries that have been defrosted. Add more orange juice and sugar to get the right consistency. Omit the lime zest. Put ingredients in a pot on the stove and heat to bubbly.  Taste for sweetness. 
Add orange zest and a splash of orange juice to the french toast batter.

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Not a Summer Recipe, but one that was asked for. These are easy and don't require you to go buy ingredients you wouldn't normally have.(other than yams...) You can use milk instead of cream if you would like. The sauce is good on cooked carrots too.

Yams that Aren't Gross
2 yams, 1" dice 
6 Tbl. brown sugar
1/2 c. cream
3 Tbl. butter
1-2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary
2 tsp. minced fresh parsley
salt to taste

Boil yams in a pot of water until soft.  Drain. In collander.  While yams are cooking combine sugar, cream butter, rosemary in small sauce pan and put on low heat and stir periodically.  It should end up the color of caramel sauce. After yams are drained put in a bowl or back in the pot they cooked in and mash.  Or put them in your kitchen aid with the paddle and mix until there aren't any lumps.  (Any lumps will be less tasty and kind of dry.) Add the sauce, parsley and salt. Mix it all together.  Adjust the thickness with milk or cream.  Top with minced parsley and a rosemary sprig if you want. 

Fun Baby Project

Recently I have become very excited about the new baby girl that will be arriving this winter. I have been thinking of all sorts of projects that I would like to undertake to get ready for her. Last weekend I made a blanket cover for her car seat. I didn't see the need of having one last time around, but found that putting a blanket over the car seat isn't practical when it is snowing or windy. I found a great tutorial on a fantastic blog that gave me the basics of what I needed to do. This is a great little project that takes only a few hours. The longest part is picking out the fabric and waiting for it to wash and dry.

I had looked at purchasing one on etsy.com , but I knew I could make one exactly to my liking and that would fit my car seat for much less $. It cost me less that $13 to make, since all the fabric I used was on sale.

We purchased a used dresser to go in the girls room this week. Hopefully I can get Kyle to strip off all 4 layers of paint off of it so I can repaint it. This will be the first piece of nursery furniture for the baby, so I have to try to figure out what colors I want to do in the room first. Since we are renting and the walls will be white, I have to paint it a color. I'm thinking a light yellow.

The next sewing project will be a crib skirt. I have used the underside of the crib as storage, and I would like to cover it up and make it look less cluttered. I'll let you know how that all goes. :)