Tuna Noodle Casserole

Ingredients: 4 cans tuna fish, 1/2 cup butter, 4 cups milk, two celery stalks, medium onion, 1/2 cup flour, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Celery and onion in butter.

Add flour and salt.

And milk. (This picture shows the beginning of quite a mess.)

Stir until thickened.

Add tuna fish.

Add cheese -- about a cup. (We forgot it in the ingredients.)

The ingredients to cook noodles. (I gave Mom a hard time about this, but she wanted it anyway.)

Add tuna glop to cooked, drained noodles.

Put it all in a greased 9"x13" pan and bake at 350* until top is crispy.

Santa Fe Black Bean Salad

Katie also made this recipe.

Ingredients: 2 cups black beans, 1 cup cooked corn, 1/2 cup green bell pepper, 1/2 cup red bell pepper, 1/2 cup onion, 1/4 cup lime or lemon juice, 1/2 cup oil (not shown :P), 2 Tbsp cilantro (we don't like cilantro so we don't use it), 1 tsp ground cumin (we use sometimes 1/2 tsp), 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or a few shakes).

Mix the oil, lime/lemon juice, cilantro, cumin, salt, and cayenne in a medium bowl.

Add vegetables. :)

The End. :D

But we usually mix this with our homemade salsa. :)

Salsa

Katie made this recipe. :)

The ingredients for the salsa. Frozen tomatoes from last year's garden, frozen peppers from last year's garden, a medium-sized onion, and a garlic clove. (You can, of course, use fresh or canned tomatoes and peppers.)

Then you sautee the onion in olive oil, add tomatoes and peppers and stir frequently. Throw the chopped garlic in toward the end. Make it to the desired consistency.

Crackers & Yogurt Cheese: Part Two

The next day I roll the cracker dough out on a pastrycloth covered in flour. And cut them out in little circles and put them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake them in 250* oven until dry. (About an hour or so.)

The yogurt with all the whey drained out.

Cutting chives for the yogurt cheese.

My special ingredients for yogurt cheese: black olives, leeks, garlic, chives, salt, and pepper.

The finished yogurt cheese!

Crackers & Yogurt Cheese: Part One

Along with mayonnaise, I also make the crackers and yogurt cheese 'round here. Mostly because I eat the majority of it. :D

First we grind 1 1/3 cups rye berries for the crackers.

While that is grinding, we collect our materials for yogurt cheese: 1 quart yogurt, a colander, a bowl, and a threadbare-but-not-holey towel.

We place the colander in the bowl, the towel in the colander, and the yogurt in the towel. :D Leave enough towel to cover the yogurt.

Ingredients for crackers: 2 1/2 rye flour (you can use any flour), 4 Tbsp butter, 1 cup yogurt, 1 tsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds.

The cracker dough. :)

Let it all sit overnight. (I find that putting the dough in the refrigerator makes it too hard to work with.)

Mayonnaise

I (Kayla) am chief mayonnaise maker in our home. I love making it. I'd also love to eat it by the spoonful, but I've not done that yet. It tastes good on homemade crackers, in egg salad, with tuna fish, cold chicken... Have I ever mentioned I love this stuff? :D

Ingredients -- very good place to start. :)

Eggs and mustard in the food processor.

After adding salt, paprika, and lemon juice and blending it for 30 seconds, I add the sunflower oil.

Once the oil is blended, this is the finished product! Very mustardy and yummy, it be. :)

Recipe for Mayonnaise
1 egg, room temperature
1 egg yolk, room temperature
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
3/4 tsp salt
Couple shakes of paprika

Blend for 30 seconds. Add 3/4 cup of sunflower oil, through the attachment that drips slowly. The longer you mix, the thicker it gets.

Leeks & Dandelion Greens

Mom spent 3 hours in the woods picking dandelions and digging up leeks (she even gave away half), with the help of several young friends. (Katie and I shot 3-D.)

Then she cut the leaves from the dandelions.

And rinsed them well. (After I ate them that night, she told me that some had slugs on them. :P)

Into the salad spinner they go!

Cutting the roots from the leeks.

Sauteeing the leeks in butter.

Adding the dandelions.

The finished product, which we enjoyed that night. The flowers are surprisingly quite yummy. :D