Technical Difficulties

Hi guys,

Sorry I haven't really been around very much lately. On top of just being busy with A doing fun summer weather activities a.k.a being outside all day and all night, I have been having a lot of spamming issues with the blog. I'm trying to tackle the problem today and so far, all of the spam comments have been deleted, but I don't know where they are coming from. I'm talking about nearly 100 spam comments randomly being left all over my blog. This is not cool. Hopefully, deleting them will be enough for now until I can come up with some kind of spam filter. Until then, I might have to set up some kind of sign in in order for people to leave comments. Anyone else have any problems with spam?

Thanks,
BeanSprouting

**Update** I've updated the comment section to allow comments only from Registered Users. Hopefully, this will solve the spam problem without causing too much difficulty for anyone wanting to leave a comment.

Homemade Granola Bars - a Successful Fail

I've been on an experimental cooking kick this past week. On Saturday, I made peach jam for the first time ever. On Sunday, I tried my hand at making granola bars. On Monday,  I made strawberry jam. (Let's face it, I'm obsessed with jam these days...you can make blueberry jam too, right?? Oh the possibilities!) What oh what will the rest of the week bring??

So, I Googled (shockingly) a recipe for homemade granola bars. I found a TON of really cool looking recipes. I couldn't decide which one to follow, mostly because I didn't have all of the ingredients from any one recipe. Sooooo, I decided to make up my own recipe.

I realize how horrible this picture is, but this was all that was left in the pan. Deliciousness.

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

1/2 cup quinoa
1/2 cup instant oats
2 heaping Tablespoons of peanut butter
3 teaspoons of honey
2 handfuls of raisins
2 handfuls of sliced and skinned almonds

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375F.

In a frying pan, add the quinoa and oats. Let cook for 3-5 minutes on high heat, stirring occasionally. Once the quinoa becomes fragrant, add in the raisins, almonds, peanut butter and honey. Mix until the peanut butter is thoroughly melted and mixed through.

Line a loaf pan with baking paper (parchment paper) and then spoon the mixture into the loaf pan. You want it to be at least 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Bake the mixture for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before cutting.

***I made the mistake of cutting the granola into bars right after they came out of the oven.  I also, might have pulled them out of the oven after only 15 minutes. They totally crumbled and didn't hold the bar shape at all. HOWEVER, they taste AMAZING. We have been eating the mixture with a spoon. I have not quite figured out what to change to make them hold their bar shape.

Peach Jam

I bought a huge bucket of peaches over the weekend. After my husband questioned how I was possibly going to eat all of the peaches before they went bad, I came up with the idea of making some jam. Now, I've never made jam or jelly or marmalade before (what is the difference between the three anyhow?), but I figured Google would help me find my way and I wasn't disappointed.

I found this insanely easy peach jam recipe from In Jennie's Kitchen. Since we all know I like super easy, one pot cooking ideas, this THREE INGREDIENT peach jam recipe was totally for me.

Since I wasn't sure if the jam would come out edible or not, I made a smaller batch and also decreased the sugar so it would be "healthier" for my little bean.

I really think you should try it out for yourself. I made this jar of jam on Saturday afternoon. I let it sit overnight in the fridge to "rest" and this is how much is left (Monday evening).

I'm pretty sure the half empty jar speaks for itself.

Happy Jamming!


Peach Jam Recipe

Ingredients:

5 peaches washed, peeled, pitted and cut up
1 cup of white sugar
Lemon juice (either from one lemon or from my favorite friend the lemon juice bottle)

Directions:

Add the peaches, sugar and lemon juice to a deep stock pot. Bring the mixture to a rolling boil over high heat. Use a spoon to skim the foam from the top. Apparently skimming the top keeps the jam from being cloudy. I'm not sure why it's bad to have cloudy jam, but Jennie said it's no good so I skimmed my jam.

After you skim the top, reduce the heat to a happy simmer...there should still be bubbles. Let it simmer and thicken. I used a potato masher to mash the peaches at this point so it would give me a finer jam. After simmering for maybe ten minutes, the jam should be a good consistency. It will still thicken once it cools.

I followed In Jennie's Kitchen's advice and skipped the hot water method and instead just turned the jars upside down after filling and tightening the lids. Apparently the hot jam creates enough heat to make an airtight seal on the container. Since this was easier than the water bath method, I obviously chose this method. No one has died or gotten sick from the jam so far!!

I let mine cool completely on the counter top and then popped it directly into the fridge so we could eat it in the morning.

My recipe made one 500 gram jar of peach jam.

Pottery Pick-up

Our ceramic pieces were finally ready for pick up yesterday! I could not get there fast enough. Technically, they weren't ready until 2pm, but Alexa and I arrived just after they opened at noon, along with my friend from Novel Style. We were a little too excited! (We even picked new pieces to work on, but that's another blog entry.)

After scoping the scene and finding all of our gorgeous pieces, I stopped to take a breath and a few pictures.

This is my mug. I love how it turned out. I'm not very fancy when it comes to painting or art. I love being creative and doing all kinds of creative, artsy projects, but my skills are lacking. I do however, love the look of this mug. It's a great representation of me...simple, fun and beautiful.

This gorgeous cake plate was made by my friend over at The Charmed Cupcake. I can't wait to see what scrumptious treats she serves on it!

This is one of my absolute favorite pieces. This bowl was created by my friend Rachel. It was her first time painting pottery. I've offered to take it off her hands if she doesn't like how it turned out. I really hope she hates it so that I can buy it off of her!!!

 My friend Christine hand drew and then free hand painted this AMAZING outer space plate for her three year old son. I think that he is just going to LOVE it!

Unfortunately this picture came out blurry, but I couldn't resist posting it because I just love this piece. My friend over at Novel Style created this awesome ring holder using a type of confetti technique. The confetti technique gives the piece a textured feel. I need to make something using this technique, it just looks so cool! So many ideas, so little time!

Novel Style also created this masterpiece. A water color dessert plate and flower tea cup. How cute is the little worm!

Finally, the big shebang! Here is our entire group's finished products. Every single piece is unique, hand painted and designed and absolutely gorgeous.

Pottery Class with the Ladies

Our lovely group!

On Saturday, I organized a girls night out at the ceramic studio, Made By You, in Linz. We had such a fantastic time!

There were ten of us gals and we ranged from super skilled artist to not skilled at all, but we all were able to create some really beautiful pieces. First, Dana, the owner, explained that we should pick our bisque. This is basically a piece of unfired ceramic. Once we chose which piece to do, she explained all of the different techniques and paints that we could use. There were dozens of different colors, paintbrushes, sponges, stamps, stencils, idea books and a variety of other tools at our disposal for creating our masterpiece.

My mug, before it was finished.

I chose to do a mug this time, since I made a dessert plate last time with my mom. The other ladies chose all different pieces - plates, mugs, bowls, tiles, tea bag holders. You name it, we painted it! Some of the gals even put together a set.

This set was created by my friend over at  Novelstyle Blog.

We had such a wonderful time and I am so thankful to everyone who joined in. It was great meeting other English speaking Expats from the community and as always, fun hanging out with my usual group of friends. I am so looking forward to doing the screen printing workshop at Made By You in July!

Here are some of the other wonderful pieces that were made!

 I can't wait to pick up the finished pieces on Thursday!!

How did you get creative today?

Birthday Week

Last Wednesday was my birthday. I turned the big 3-2. I love my birthday. I am a firm believer that on your birthday you should do whatever you want. You absolutely should NOT go to work. And you absolutely should eat your favorite foods! Even though I was still in the middle of the low histamine diet, I opted to take a day off and really enjoy my birthday.

For breakfast, I had toast on real bread, not yucky gluten free bread. (I know, it's really dorky to get excited about toast. I don't care.) For lunch, Alexa and I went and met a friend of mine for delicious cheeseburgers at the burger place in Linz. I was surprised by a few other friends, cupcakes and presents! Lunch was delicious and totally hit the spot. Then for dinner I made pasta with meat sauce. I think that pasta and a good sauce is one of the things that I have been missing the most on this diet. My day of food was delicious! It was the perfect way to celebrate my birthday.

Alexa and Lemon were just exhausted after all those cupcakes!

Gluten Free is not for me.

So it's been a full two weeks since I started this low histamine, gluten free diet to help (hopefully) eliminate my migraines. Day 7 was the first migraine free day. (AWESOME!) I haven't had a migraine since. (EVEN MORE AWESOME!) However, I've had two slight headaches. One was due to the drastic change in barometric pressure and the second was from my new glasses. New glasses always make my eyes tired and give me a bit of a headache.

(What do you think of my new glasses? They're PURPLE!)

Anyway, I am supposed to do this low histamine diet for a full four weeks, but I just don't think I can cut it. I am dying for flavor! I want pasta with sauce and meatballs. I want CHEESE!! I want to eat out! I have finally found two different kinds of gluten free bread that are not only tolerable, but actually taste pretty good, however, I would kill for a laugenstangerl (a pretzel bread). We'll see how much longer I realistically hold out.

I think it might be in my best interest to start slowly reintroducing foods back into my diet. I'll do it just like I introduced new foods to Alexa; one new food every three days as long as there is no reaction. That's my plan. Yeah, this is totally going to happen. See you later gluten free! Bring on the histamines!