Martha Mondays: 2/15

The Martha Mondays project for 2/15, chosen by Karen at At Least Twice a Week is Spinach Frittata with Green Salad from page 44 of Jan/Feb Everyday Food. If you need the recipe, let me know. Thanks to all who are participating!

Game Day Cupcakes by Teen Martha

Teen Martha (seen here hamming it up) had a Superbowl party to go to and decided to make Martha’s Red Velvet Cupcakes to take along. Teen Martha has always been a fan of red velvet cake. I made it one year as her birthday cake.

The baking of these went well (they were even done when Martha said they would be, which never happens), although the batter did not look very red, so Teen Martha added more red food coloring and in the process got some on her ‘What Would Martha Do t-shirt, not to mention all over the counter. What a mess! I think that the next time I make these I’m just going to leave out the food coloring. It doesn’t add any flavor and I don’t have any need to eat food coloring. Anyone have hints on how to get red food coloring out of a t-shirt?!

Teen Martha frosted them with the cream cheese frosting given in the recipe but made some gold with chopped chocolate on top and the others blue and white (team colors for the Superbowl teams). She was very proud of her creativity.

These cupcakes were great, but as always with red velvet cake, it’s the frosting that really makes it worth eating!

Martha Mondays: Crayon Hearts

Today’s Martha Monday’s project was chosen by Lyndsey at Tiny Skillet. The project is crayon hearts and it’s perfect for a Valentine’s Day craft to do with your kids.

You take a piece of waxed paper and fold it in half lengthwise, then open it up and place crayon shavings on half of it. Making all those crayon shavings took forever! They kept jamming up the pencil sharpener I was using. I tried using a vegetable peeler but that didn’t make the nice curly shavings.

Once you have enough, you fold the paper back up, and fold the edges to hold it in. Iron it between sheets of craft paper (I used parchment). Let it cool, then cut out heart shapes from it. Martha says to hang them using thread, but we just used tiny dabs of museum gel to stick them to the kitchen windows. They really are pretty and look like suncatchers. The key is to use lots of different shades of pink and red crayons. Spread the shavings out in a very thin layer. In places where mine were thick, the hearts did not cut out well, and the waxed paper peeled off a little.

This is easy and very family-friendly and is a cute project to make for Valentine’s Day.

Heart Sandwich Cookies

The recipe for this is on the back page of Jan/Feb Everyday Food. I was dying to make them since they looked so cute, and had healthy ingredients like rolled oats and whole wheat flour in them!

I mixed up the dough and refrigerated it. When I went to roll it out, it was kind of a mess. It was very crumbly. I gave up on the rolling pin and just used my hands since it was the only way I could get to stick together somewhat. I ended up with a thicker dough than Martha said – I just could not get it thinner without crumbling.

Even though I mumbled and grumbled under my breath as I was making this one, it did turn out reasonably well. The cookies are crunchy and hearty. They are filled with Nutella, which my kids are simply nuts about. My cookies are a bit bigger than Martha’s suggested size – I didn’t have a 2 inch heart cookie cutter and had to use a bigger one. Even with all of those bumps in the road, these were good, and quite cute too! This is a cute cookie for Valentine’s Day.

Basement Gardening Update

I think we can now unquestionably say I have a black thumb. Mr. MarthaAndMe got me one of those hydroponic self-contained little gardens for Christmas and I am attempting to grow herbs. One month after we got it started, I have one little pot that did not do anything, 3 that are slumped over and dead and one that grew (basil). Mr. MarthaAndMe took it apart and determined the pump is broken, so we’re ordering a new one. I’ve transplanted the basil (the only survivor) into a little pot in my kitchen. I’m clearly cursed.

Dude Martha Makes Sugar Cookies

Dude Martha (my son who just turned 12) is now in middle school. This quarter he is taking Home and Careers. I have fond memories of Home and Careers, or Home Ec as we called it then (which I took at the very same middle school, only then it was junior high!). We baked and cooked lots of things and I still have the recipes for many of them. We also sewed a quilted cover for a bread basket – in the shape of a chicken. My mother still has it, actually.

Home and Careers is a little more varied these days. They make them take career assessments and try to focus on other home related chores outside the kitchen as well, but they do still get to cook and bake and they also have to sew a little pillow this year.

Dude Martha has always had some talent in the kitchen, so this class should be a breeze for him. The teacher is giving them extra credit if they bring in a note from home saying they baked or cooked something themselves. Although the quarter just started a week ago, Dude Martha is all over the chance for extra credit and asked if he could make cookies. We got out the Martha Stewart Cookies book and he chose Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies. Now, if it had been me, I would have obviously chosen something with chocolate! He went to the kitchen and got to work. I was called in a few times for questions (“it says coarse salt – what do I do?” and “is this butter soft enough?”) but other than he did the whole thing himself.

I did help a little when he was mixing and the dough would not come together. Even though he softened the butter, there were still some hard chunks and the dough was very sandy and not holding together. I performed a magic trick I’ve recently started doing, which I want to share with you. Somehow in this cold winter weather, my butter seems to do this a lot. So I just stick the mixing bowl in the preheating oven for a minute or two. When I pull it out, the butter has softened completely and it all comes together nicely.

These cookies were really, really good. They are crunchy, chewy, and sweet with just a hint of lemon. They are quickly disappearing. Thumbs up on the cookies and for Dude Martha!

Veggies in Parchment

I’m really into this cooking in parchment paper concept. My latest foray is veggies in parchment, which is in Jan/Feb Everyday Food. This could not be simpler! Put asparagus, broccoli and snap peas on a piece of parchment paper. Sprinkle olive oil over it. Fold the paper over it and twist the ends. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes and you have lovely veggies, with no mess to clean up.

Martha Mondays: 2/8

The Martha Mondays project for 2/8 is crayon hearts, chosen by Lyndsey at Tiny Skillet. Sounds like a great project for Valentine’s Day!

Martha Mondays: Postcards

I used to love to send postcards when I was a kid. I always sent them to my grandmother, who stuck them into random pages of her cookbooks. She always said she liked to happen upon them in the future. When she died, we found lots of them in her cookbooks.

This week’s Martha Mondays project, chosen by  Sarah at Mum in Bloom, is to make your own postcards. The project is very simple. Print out the template for the back of the postcard and glue it onto the back of a 4×6 photo. The photo I used is one we took on the shores of Loch Ness this past summer.

Here’s a little secret. You don’t even really need to print out the template. You can simply mail a photo if you write the address on the right hand side and leave a place for the stamp. In fact, you can mail all sorts of weird things. There’s a whole little business surrounding this in Florida, where we go every spring. We have mailed a whole coconut (no packaging, just a label), a flip flop (again, just a label) and a plastic bottle with a note in it (label glued on the outside), all sold in gift shops down there.

My aunt, who was postmaster of her town, used to mail her own photos as postcards often (without any backing glued on) while on vacation.  If you’ve got a printer with you, this is a great way to send personalized postcards for very little cost. I have to say I always do like to look through postcards though wherever we are. I like to see what photos are being used. I have some blank postcards I bought as a child and now have all the ones  I sent my grandmother and they are interesting to look through.

Quinoa for Breakfast?

Martha wrote her personal column in Feb Living about her favorite breakfast dishes. One that caught my eye was breakfast quinoa. Quinoa is a grain that is similar to barley or Israeli couscous.  I’ve experimented with it a few times as a side dish, but never would have considered it for breakfast. So, one morning, I decided to try it. The recipe has you cook the quinoa in milk and it says it should take 23 minutes total. You add brown sugar and cinnamon for flavor.

I cooked mine for 30 minutes and it was as hard as pebbles. I had to abort since I had to get going, so I just covered it and turned the stove off. When I got back home an hour or so later, I added more milk and turned it on again for about 15 minutes. Still too hard. I put it in the fridge and got it out the next morning. This time I added a lot more milk  – all in all I would say I at least had to double the amount of milk this called for – and cooked it for another half hour. Finally, finally, it was soft enough to eat.

It tasted a lot like steel cut oatmeal, especially with the cinnamon and sugar, which is how I make oatmeal. It was something different, but I would probably rather have oatmeal.