Potato and Spinach Salad, Lemon-Mustard Dressing

This dish is something I ate at a potluck and have been trying to re-create ever since. I have mostly not had luck trying to make up the recipe on the fly. Today I took a little time and came up with something that resembles the original dish.

3 Cubed and boiled potatoes
Fresh spinach leaves
Optional: other veggies that sound good to you

Dressing (whisk together ingredients while potatoes cook):
1/8 Cup olive oil
1/8 Cup Lemon juice
2 tsp stoneground mustard
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 garlic cloved diced or pressed very small
salt and pepper to taste

I cooked and drained the potatoes and put them in the bowl and poured the dressing over them while still hot. Let them sit for a couple of minutes and prepare the spinach to add. I added a large handful of spinach and ripped it into pieces easy enough to eat. I pickled some green beans recently that sound pretty good in this as well as the sliced onion I added.

Scones or Biscuits?

Wait a minute, these scones look just like biscuits!

The name definitely depends where you live in the world.

Ginger Lemon Soother for my tired voice

My life has gone zero to sixty in how much I use my voice to talk to people (on the six days on, one day off schedule). As a result I am losing my voice. I have a sore throat and lately I've been coughing at night because my throat is itchy. What a terrible and uncomfortable situation!

After some internet searching I found a delicious recipe with only a few ingredients. Lemons. Ginger. Water. Honey (or I have also used Agave).

I used about 2 inches of ginger peeled, then cut into thin rounds and put into about 4 cups of water heated to a boil. Then I let that simmer for 15-20 minutes. The result is full of ginger spice! I put the ginger tea into a glass jar (with a lid!) with a juice of one lemon and sweetener to taste.

With all my talking and sometimes LOUD direction giving to unwieldy children on bikes (for my job) this gives my throat a little relief. I like it warm OR cold!

Homemade Soda Making

These days, I have sugar cravings in the form of soda. I don't know what's gotten into me! I've been able to satiate myself with some wonderful Columbia Gorge juices (Red Ginger Limeade is such a winner!), but now I think it is time for the real thing: homemade soda.

Ginger ale is very easy to make:
1 empty 2 Liter plastic bottle
~ 1 C of sugar
~the juice of 1 lemon (or lime. I love lime!)
1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
2 Tbsp. finely grated fresh ginger
water, to fill the bottle almost full (a couple inches from the top)

The levels of ginger, citrus, and sugar can all be changed according to personal preference. For example, for an extra bite in my soda I add more ginger and less sugar. Today, I realized I had barely any ginger, so I added the juice of 1 lemon AND 1 lime. I had maybe a teaspoon of ginger so I added that too. My hope is that it will be a more Sprite/7up taste with a slight zing of ginger in the end.

After putting all the ingredients in (dry stuff first, then the lemon and ginger) I swish them around in the bottle before filling it with water. A note: Yeast feeds off of sugar. So I want to make sure the yeast is evenly distributed in the sugar and juices and that's why I swirl everything around before letting it all sit. The mixture then sits for about a 1.5-2 days in a warm dry place. My bedroom.

Another note: The plastic 2 liter is important because this mixture becomes pressurized as it ferments. A glass bottle could explode if you left the bottle capped for days and days. But it shouldn't get to that point, the soda is done after a maximum of 2 days.

When the soda is ready, the bottle with be very VERY firm. Put it in the fridge overnight to stop the fermentation process (this works because the yeast gets too cold to be actively eating the sugars. Brrr.). The bottle should be opened with care so that it doesn't explode everywhere. Just like any other soda, open it pole, pole (slowly, slowly) as they say in Sawhili. I even take it a step further and open it over a sink. But, I am cautious person.

Pour the soda over a strainer and into some glasses and your are done! Photos to follow...