Where in the World is Rebecca Today?

Two posts in one day! Go me!

My husband is fantastic. And I’m not just saying that because today marks three months of being married and two weeks of me officially living in the UK. When we knew we wouldn’t get to spend Christmas together, we decided to hold it after I arrived complete with all the proper Christmas trimmings…which included a turkey, a Christmas pudding, Christmas crackers, and cranberry sauce. I made Tim a shopping list, and he set out to get everything we needed. I thought he was only going to get me 1 or 2 bags of cranberries….so imagine my surprise when I opened the freezer to find SIX BAGS OF CRANBERRIES!

So this morning I decided I wanted to make cranberry muffins. I have a really yummy recipe from Vegetarian Times I found several years ago, but that recipe was in US measurements and requires stuff like ricotta cheese and orange juice (the recipe is no longer on their website, sadly). I wanted to make simple, easy cranberry muffins, so I went to my favourite British Chef - Jamie Oliver. Sure enough, he had a simple recipe, which I’ve copied below to make it easier for you:

Cranberry muffins

Ingredients
• 60g softened butter
• 155g sugar
• 250g plain flour
• 2x teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 125 millilitres milk
• 250g cranberries
• 2 eggs

Method
1)Put the butter and sugar in a medium sized mixing bowl and mix them together until completely blended. Add two eggs, one at a time, beating them into the mixture.
2)Put your flour in another mixing bowl. Add two teaspoons of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Measure out 125 millilitres of milk. Then add small amounts of the flour mixture and milk alternately to your original mixture giving it a good stir each time, until all the milk and flour has been added and the mixture is smooth.
3)Finally, add the cranberries to the mixture. Spoon your mixture into a paper-lined cake tray. Fill the cases 3/4 full. There should be enough mixture for 12 muffins.
4)Pop them in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius or gas mark 4 and bake them for 25 - 30 minutes until they are golden brown. Leave your muffins to cool for about 20 minutes and then enjoy!

I didn’t have any stick butter, and the village shop only had lard in a stick, so I used butter out of the Lurpak (which has the bonus of already being soft). I also increased the amount of berries to 300g, as the bag I had was 300g and I sprinkled some sugar over the tops of the muffins before they went into the oven.

And here’s my finished muffins, all 11 of them (I had to taste one, you see!):

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Tim and I got a bread machine as a wedding gift from parents of a childhood friend of mine…and we LOVE it. It was the first thing to come out of it’s box when I arrived, and I was immediately making bread in it. We even scored organic locally milled (at a real windmill) wheat flour for our first loaf, and it was delicious. For our second loaf, I picked up a Hovel bread mix for white bread, and that went quickly!

While we were doing our weekly shopping at Tesco, we saw that there were several types of bread machine mixes, so we picked up one of each to have a go and see what we liked. Yesterday, I decided to make the Ciabatta. And the photo above is how it turned out. I followed the instructions exactly - 250g of mix, 175ml water, 2tsp olive oil. The only “difference” was that the machine was moved to the end of the counter (it’s the sticking out bit not supported by cabinets) and I was also doing a load of wash at the same time.

Do you think the vibrations from the washer (particularly that spin cycle!) could have caused the bread to not rise (or mix!) properly? I tried it a second time with another Hovel Mix, and while that bread turned out edible, the top isn’t smooth the way the first two loaves turned out, it’s all bumpy. Edible, but kind of ugly looking.

I can’t put the bread machine where it had been for the first two loaves, as that was on top of the old dryer we’ve gotten rid of (well, it’s as far as the front garden, we’re waiting for pick up).

Any ideas?

PS - we also determined that making our own bread will cost much less than buying a loaf. The mixes cost from 30-75p/loaf, but if we make it from scratch, we’re spending less than 30p/loaf. It does take 3 hours, but the machine also has a timer, so we can set it at night to wake up to fresh bread or even have bread waiting when we come home from a day out!

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I decided to make Thanksgiving dinner today. Originally, Tim’s mum was supposed to come over, as today is her birthday, but Tim’s dad has been in and out of the hospital and needed to go in again today, so I was just cooking for Tim. And boy, did I cook A LOT. He’ll be eating this stuff for weeks!

This wasn’t the first time I was away from home for Thanksgiving Thursday, but it was the first time I’d be away from home for Family Thanksgiving. My family celebrates the holiday on the Sunday after and we try to get as many people of the family together as possible, so on the Thursday I’ve sometimes gone to a boyfriend’s family dinner instead of spending the day with my mom and aunt. This was, however, the first time I’ve ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner on my own…or really, ANY of the dinner other than the vegetable!

I used an assortment of sites/people for help - some of my friends gave me great advice, my mom gave me her stuffing recipe, and I used google to find recipes (that I wound up adjusting/tweaking!) for today. Obviously, the centerpiece of today’s meal was turkey. At first, I wasn’t sure we’d find one in Tesco…we were in the “fresh” meat section and hadn’t seen any turkey and I had finally let Tim pick up a whole chicken when we found Turkey crowns (breasts) in the frozen section.

I did most of the cooking yesterday. Tim doesn’t have the type of oven/stove you expect to see in a US kitchen. He has a counter-top oven that has two burners on top..and, you can only use one burner while the oven is on! I knew it would be a challenge, but I was prepared and with making notes and a schedule I had it all figured out. Good thing we now have things like microwaves so I was able to make a lot of things last night and reheated them today!

The oven was, obviously, being taken up by the turkey, and while the turkey was cooling I cooked the pan(s) of stuffing - that I had put together the night before.

I wanted mashed potatoes (though Tim says mine are what he’d call “creamed potatoes”), and since I knew that would take up a burner for a long time, I decided to hunt out a way to do them in the crock pot. Surprisingly, I found a very simple recipe and started the potatoes before we went to bed, so in the morning I was able to mash them and leave the crock pot set to warm.

I started to combine a few Thanksgiving traditions from my family and I made sweet potatoes (usually made by my Aunt Beatie for Sunday dinner) and glazed carrots (usually made by my Aunt Janie for Saturday night dinner). The carrots were made on Wednesday, and put into the microwave for heating.

The other vegetable I chose to make was brussel sprouts, because I found a recipe online for Golden Encrusted Brussel Sprouts, and Tim and I both thought that sounded good.

Rounding out the plate we had gravy, which I wimped out on and made from granulates, jarred (not canned!) cranberry sauce, and cranberry orange muffins.

For dessert, I wanted to make pumpkin pie…but I couldn’t find a pumpkin, so we bought a butternut squash instead and I followed just the filling recipe from this website. The recipe said the pecan/graham layer was optional, but I think it would have been better with it because the pie needed to be a lot sweeter. If I follow that recipe again, I’ll either add more cinnamon and sugar, or I’ll add the optional layer. For a crust, Tim found me pre-made puff pastry sheets and for a pie plate, he bought a shallow cake tin, so I dubbed it “Deep Dish Pumpkin Pie”. We also had a pre-made apple pie made by a company called (mom, you’ll love this) Aunt Bessie’s. The apple pie turned out to be crap though, as despite it being in the oven for the full 50 minutes and the top browned on it….the bottom never cooked and when we dished it out it was stringy dough! Sadly, the apple pie was to be the back-up if the pumpkin pie didn’t turn out well, so we wound up not having dessert.

Tim’s gone off to work (2-10 shift today), and at some point I need to put away our leftovers!

for a vegetarian who has never cooked a turkey before on her own, looks pretty good!

The Deep Dish failure

Ready to eat!

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I made an English Breakfast the other day. It started out as me wanting eggs and offering to make some for Tim, and then Tim suggested we make sausage (and veggie sausage). We needed more bread and by the time Tim got dressed and went to the store, it was late in the morning and we had things we wanted to do for the day, so he suggested we turn it into brunch and “pad it out” a bit with some baked beans (which is part of a traditional English Breakfast) and then I suggested we add in the grilled tomato as well.

Thus, I cooked an English Breakfast:

Tim has half a veggie sausage on his plate…he liked it better than I did!

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Until 12:00PM CDT tomorrow, save 80% off ALL gift certificates on Restaurant.com! I just ordered 12 gift cards for my mom and I to use for friends and family and paid LESS than the cost of ONE card. Think of how impressed people will be when you hand them a $25 restaurant gift card! Consider enrolling people in the “dinner of the month club” for only $25 for the entire year. Or, purchase restaurant.com gift certificates for yourself and save them for when you travel!

Go to http://www.restaurant.com and use code EIGHTY when you check out!

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It’s hard finding food to eat while traveling. A simple road trip with friends can turn disastrous if you can’t find food for the vegetarian. I’ve made a few discoveries along the way that might make it easier for other vegetarians who travel:

• Turnpike Rest Areas - the PA, DE, MD, and NJ Turnpikes (and probably others too) all have Roy Rogers in most of their rest areas. Roy Rogers will sell vegetarians (or anyone else, really) a bun with cheese. Sometimes you need to call it a grilled cheese for them to realize what you’re asking for, but most of the time you can get this, and then load up on the veggies at the fixin’s bar (lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onions). Depending on the cashier, I’ve been charged for either a kid’s meal ($1.99) or a biscuit ($0.60) with cheese ($0.10).
• Burger King BK Veggie - in 2002, Burger King introduced the BK Veggie. When it was first introduced, it was cooked on the same grill as the meat burgers, but in 2004 Burger King changed their policies (and their burger) to microwaving the Veggie burger so it would not be cooked near meat. Because of their “have it your way” campaign, you can ask them to put lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onion on it as well.
• KFC Vegan Chicken - As of June 2008, KFC Canada is now offering vegan chicken. I haven’t yet tried this, but it’s apparently being offered at 300 of their 400 stores across Canada so far. I’m hoping I can try this before I leave, but I’m betting the Dauphin KFC doesn’t have it!
• A&W Root Beer Veggie Swiss Burger - What inspired this post was a trip today over to the mall. I needed milk, and I decided to stop in at the A&W for a root beer float. I was perusing the menu while I waited for my float, and I discovered they offer a Veggie Swiss burger on their menu. The combo meal is over CDN$7, the same price as a triple burger, but it also comes with a side salad, so you might even get to make two meals (or a meal and a half?) out of it. The Veggie Swiss is a veggie patty with Swiss Cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle.
• Subway Veggie Sub - I can’t forget this staple of my travel (and local!) diet. Subway will put whatever you want on the sub (provided they have it…for a while they didn’t have spinach, and then some shops took out tomatoes for a while) and you can even get it toasted. A 12-inch veggie sub is only $3.99, and you can always bring a cooler along and save half for later!

There’s plenty of other options too - Pizza, ordering breakfast at a diner (minus the bacon/sausage), or ordering a side salad, too. Unfortunately, there’s very little healthy choices for vegetarians at McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Arby’s. McDonald’s sometimes has yogurt parfaits, but more often then not the store is out of them. At Wendy’s, the options are the taco salad (without the chili - give it to a meat eating friend), fries, or a frosty. And at Arby’s - well, they offer apple turnovers, mozzarella sticks, and curly fries. I have had luck with ordering a market fresh sandwich without the meat at some locations, but others have no idea what you are talking about.

I always make the mistake of not planning ahead for trips, but I’m getting better. On my flight up to Canada I packed myself a boxed lunch (I’m not sure I can call it a bento), and I plan on doing the same for the trip home as well as for my flight over to the UK. I haven’t started planning for the UK yet in terms of food, but Tim and I will manage. If we wind up eating pizza a lot, so be it. I could probably live off pizza anyway!

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J IMed me this afternoon and asked me if I wanted to help C pick apples at her grandmother’s. Apparently C went over to pick apples while her grandmother is out of town and there was a whole bunch as well as loads of string beans and cucumbers, so she wanted some help. I agreed, so she came and picked me up.

Her grandmother’s apple tree is HUGE and a ton of apples had already fallen to the ground from the windy storm we had on Friday, but there were still so many left to pick that when we got back to C’s house to cut them up, we filled 2 gallon sized ziplock bags and one quart sized bag before we gave up for the night…and we still had a huge bagful of apples we didn’t cut, AND there was probably the same amount of apples that we picked on the ground around the tree!

The apple tree

Our Haul:

Not pictured: a giant tubfull of cucumbers and a quart sized bag of string beans.

Our hands are stained brown from all the apple cutting we did tonight, too.

Tomorrow is a BBQ over at C and J’s…should be loads of fun! :D

*edit* I was telling my mom about how chilly it’s been and how all the cats keep sleeping on the bed in such a way that I can’t get in with them, and she asked for a picture:

And last night, Hobbes decided getting stuck ontop of the fridge was a good idea:

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This afternoon, C and I went to the “Farmer’s Market”. The first weird thing about this market is that it’s only open from 5PM to 8PM on Friday’s, and it’s in the Rotary Club building. But…okay. I figured it was later in the evening so more people could get to it. This is a small town, and probably most people work 9-5, so having market in the evening made sense.

Market, if you could call it that, was a joke. I think there were maybe 8 stands total, and at least three of those had or were baked goods stands, one was crafts, and one was used books (where, ironically, I spotted two Karen Kingsbury books!). The first stand had “Peaches and Cream” (white and yellow kernel) corn…$6/dozen. At home? I think the last time we were at market it was 12/$2.25. So right away, I knew this wasn’t going to be the type of market where I go with $10 and bring back a week’s worth of veggies. C and I did manage to get a bag of tomatoes for $5 that had about 20 small-to-medium tomatoes in it, and I bought some raisin bread and some cheese buns.

The best buy, though, was a Saskatoon Berry pie. C insisted that I had to try saskatoon berries since they are a local berry, so she bought a pie for us to have for dessert tonight. So good! Saskatoon berries sort of taste like a cross between a blueberry and a cranberry…actually, it reminded me a lot of the lingonberry. Apparently there’s a saskatoon berry farm near Dauphin, so C is going to check and see if it’s still saskatoon season and if we can go to get some fresh saskatoons. I’m just sad I won’t be able to bring any home to share with mom, but fruit can’t be taken into the Us :(.

I’m glad the raisin bread was only $2. There’s hardly *any* raisins in the bread at all, so really I might as well have purchased a loaf of white bread. The cheese buns are good though. I had to sample one tonight when I got home along with a slice of tomato on it. The tomatoes are alright, but not as tomatoey as local tomatoes. Being away for the summer, I missed out on my aunt’s “tomato man” (her neighbour) giving her tomatoes that she always passed on to us.

C had never been to market before, either, so we both came away disappointed, but glad we had checked it out.

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…but you can’t take Lancaster County out of the girl!

I wanted snack food. For the past few days I’d be watching TV or something around 10PM and just wish I had a handful of pretzels or chips to munch on, so today I decided to go get something to munch on in the evenings. There’s no Gibbles, no Utz, no Hanover….not even Snyder! The only pretzels I could find looked…not very good, so I settled for some salt and vinegar chips…and I bought the brand closest-sounding to home:

Old Dutch.

Oh, and how cool is it that the potato chips are in a box?

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