Clafoutis (Kla-Foo-Tee) with Peaches

I know, it has been a long time since the last recipe. I have been out of town, then there was the last week of school and that has kept us all very busy.

My daughter, Rachel, found this recipe in an issue of the LDS Friend magazine and she wanted to try it.

In a blender....

...add four eggs and....
...two cups of milk.
She couldn't help but look at the camera while I snapped a picture.

Add 1/3 cup flour....

.....and 1/3 cup sugar.


1/4 teaspoon salt..

...and 1 teaspoon vanilla or Almond extract (which I think would have been better)

Blend together for 30 seconds.

I can't remember where I put the lid to the blender. It'll show up one day.

Pour into a pie dish. I coated the dish with a nonstick spray first even though it wasn't mentioned in the directions.

Rachel puts in the peaches. We are using canned peaches because that is what we have on hand. You can also use strawberries, blueberrie, and kind of berry.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until it doesn't jiggle.

I think with this recipe I would do a few things different. I would add a little more flour; maybe take it up to half a cup. Try a different fruit and have whipped cream to spray on top.

I thought it was good but not great. I will try it again some day with the changes.

PW's Creamy Lemon Crumb Squares

This is the second time I have done this post. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half loading pictures, making sure they are in the right order, and then typing the text to go along with each picture. I previewed the post to make sure everything was spelled correctly and I was very happy with the result. I published the post to the blog. But when I went to view the blog, right away I realized........it's the wrong blog!!!

All that time and effort; I was not happy any more. So here I am, starting all over again. This time I made sure it was the right blog.

Rachel is helping me with this recipe. She is happy to help me. I guess when we're making dessert any of the kids would be happy to help me.

She starts with 1 stick of slightly softened butter and 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar.

We take turns mixing them together.--
In a seperate bowl, Rachel sifted together 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking powder.

She adds 1 cup oats to the butter and brown sugar....

...and stirs to combine.

Next comes the sifted flour mixture. The recipe says to add the oats and flour together, then stir. But I decided it would be easier for her to stir with one at a time.

This is the fun part for kids, I think. Mixing with the hands. (Clean hands.)

By mixing with her hands, she was able to distribute everything more evenly.

Once the mixture is well combined, I put half in a 13x9 baking dish. The recipe calls for a slightly smaller pan, 11x8, but I don't have one that size. We both press down the mixture.

Nest comes the "creamy lemon" part.

In a bowl, mix together 1 (14 oz.) can of sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice and..............

.........the zest of one lemon.

That was no easy task for Rachel. She tried and tried but only managed a little bit of zest.

Scott wanted to give it a try.

He produced more zest but Rachel, not willing to give up, wanted to try again. She got better results for sure but I ended up taking over to finish.

I poured the lemon mixture on the first layer and carefully spread it around. Rachel and I used our hands to sprinkle the remaining crumbs over the lemon mixture. Bake at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Now, the recipe directions say to cool for 30 minutes after baking, then cut into squares and refrigerate for a couple of hours or until cool. However I did not wait that long. It was already 8:30 on a school night so we went ahead and served it hot. It does hold together better when its cool but it tastes good either way. My husband added whipped cream to his so of course the kids had to have some too.





Rachel is very pleased with her dessert. I thought it tasted good and the kids liked it too but I think they prefer cookies, cakes or ice cream. It was fun to try.

Moose Burgers

Two posts in one week; shocking, I know.

For tonights dinner we made moose burgers. Its not as easy to make hamburgers with moose meat like it is with ground beef. Ground moose does not have as much fat as beef so it falls apart easily. My husband's solution is to cook the patties in vegetable oil, which I don't really like. We did find another way to hold the meat together that is tasty and preferable to the oil.

We were watching PBS's, CREATE one night and the program that was on was BBQ University. The host was showing three different ways to prepare and cook hamburgers. Only one way caught our attention and that is to mix shredded cheddar cheese in the groung meat.

This is what I have Emma doing here. She is shredding the cheese right into the meat.

In the frying pan I did add about a tablespoon of olive oil.

I taught her how to make the patties with her hands and to carefully place the patty in the pan.
Can you see the cheese?

The tricky part is to flip the patty without getting splashed with hot olive oil. Emma wrapped a towel around her hand and arm so that she would not get splashed.

Abandoned!! Emma's friend came over to play and I was left to finish dinner by myself.


I buttered (butter spread) the potato-bread hamburger buns and toasted them in a pan.
The patties are a little small. Next time I need to thaw more meat.


Here is my burger. I added sauted mushrooms to mine.
It doesn't matter what kind of meat you use, I think mixing shredded cheese in the meat is different and delicious. We like to add an extre slice of cheese to the burger. We love cheese.

Special Spoons

Here's a sweet gift!

Our home teacher's wife found these cute spoons at a cooking store here in town and thought my kids would enjoy using them with cookies. And did they ever. They argued about who got to use them first and which color. We settled the dispute and the kids took their turns.

At first the dough stuck a little. I found that a little oil helped alot. The kids loved the spoons anyway, they thought it was more than the regular spoons.

Thank you, Debbie!

Sunday Brunch Again

I know, eggs again. But this time it is Emma learning to make sunny eggs.

Look at the picture. Can you tell which eggs were Emma's and which eggs were Scott's?

The eggs with the broken yokes are all Emma's. She did the same thing that Scott did, crushing the egg instead of breaking it open slowly. I am pleased to say that no shell pieces ended up in the eggs.

Emma also practiced the art of flipping the egg.

She did pretty good. Some eggs ended up folded or overlapping others but she got the hang of it.

(Sorry about the foggy picture. My camera was a little cold and the heat fogged my lense.)

I love how this picture turned out. Emma and Scott cracking an egg at the same time. Scott, being a little more experienced, turned out a beautiful egg. Emma's egg is crushed with her thumb and the yoke broke. The cooked egg is done by Emma so I know she is catching on.


And here it is...a beautifully, cracked open egg done by Emma.
I can't remember how many eggs we cooked exactly, my guess would be a dozen or more.
Plenty for practice.

And the meat cooking?

Homemade prairie sage pork sausage. Soooo good!

Scott makes Spagetti

Scott started cub scouts about a month ago and one of the requirements for Wolf is to choose an evening where he gets to set the table, plan and prepare a healthy dinner and do the dishes afterward. It was like my birthday or Mother's Day. All I had to do was take pictures.

I thought spagetti would be an easy meal for an 8-year-old.

This is Scott's first time draining the noodles himself. My camera is in one hand and the other hand is ready to help if he needs it.

Mmmm, the meat. Scott is cooking up what our family calls Italian Caribou. Ground caribou with italian sausage seasoning and no extra fat added.

He adds the sauce. He has learned to use the can opener that opens the can without leaving sharp edges.

He adds the caibou.

Look at that smile. He is very proud of himself. My husband and I thought it was the best spagetti we have ever had.

The vegetables were a delicious toss-the-bag-in-the-microwave variety. It is a mix of yellow corn, white corn, carrots and asparagus.

James and Toast

James makes his own piece of toast.

I love this:

"Mom, can I have some toast?"

"Yes."

He gets his own bread, puts it into the toaster...
...and when the toast is done he can even spread the butter on himself.
Sometimes he spreads the butter like it was frosting on a cupcake, thick and messy.

That's okay. He's doing it himself and he will learn not to use so much.
James can make himself toast anytime.