I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before, but my husband, Sean, tried to get me to take an oath to blog three times a week! And he was serious! I must admit that blogging takes a lot of time for me. I don't just slap some words on the screen, overlook the grammatical errors & move on. I put lots of thought & care into my blogs. However, they do come out quite wordy & very lengthy. Today I am turning over a new leaf; I am attempting to blog more & less...more often, but less words.

So, now to answer the question, where has Jamie been? Being that we live in a seasonal tourist community, winter is my slower season for my private chef business. I do have clients that come into town throughout the year, but I am not as busy as in the summer. This winter Sean & I have worked hard on the Airstream. I should really say that Sean has worked hard on the Airstream. I am so grateful to have a husband who believes in me & loves me so much to work as hard as he has to make my dream a reality. We are converting the Airstream into a commercial kitchen & plan to open a natural foods cafe next month! However, for the record, I will DEFINITELY continue my private chef business; I love it!

In the past several months I have catered some weddings and large charity fund raising events, such as Walton County Habitat for Humanity's Christmas party & Paint A Difference, as well as participated in some cooking demonstrations. (I will include some photos from some of those events.) I have also been developing & testing my recipes for the cafe. It's all very exciting, but lots of hard work. Today was a very exciting day, I finally submitted my building permit application to Walton County! Now I will anxiously await their response! We do have a website for the cafe & Sean has been blogging about his progress in the 'Stream (my loving nickname for the big, silver bullet). Please check out the new cafe website. And for any of my regular clients or potential clients who may be reading this, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email, I am still very much in the private chef business.

And to the foodies out there, more food posts to come soon.





















































































































































(Obviously a cooking demonstration!)

Labels: Airstream cafe, airstream trailer, Dietrich's Cafe, Habitat for Humanity, Paint A Difference, personal chef, Private chef, vegan chef, vegan cooking, vegetarian chef, Walton County

It's the age old summer dilemma...what to do with all the zucchini you have grown or been given. I see magazine articles, television segments & blogs about the many uses for zucchini. I recently read where a city declared "leave some zucchini on your neighbors front porch" day! I thought that was clever, but didn't really solve the problem. Sean & I have been splitting a box of local, organic produce with another couple every other week from a local company called Off the Vine. Yes, we have gotten a lot of squash, all different sorts of squash, but being that we split this with another couple, I haven't had too much. However, a few weeks ago a good friend of mine (the wife of the couple that we split the veggies with) & her son picked me a huge bag of yellow squash & cucumbers from the community garden in Calhoun, Georgia. I immediately started slicing the cucumbers & adding to jars of pickle juice that I had saved for just that purpose--what I call lazy "homemade" pickles; they are actually pretty tasty, however, you can only use the leftover juice for so long before it becomes diluted. But what to do with all that squash?

First, I fried some, which is very unusual at our house; even though I cook a lot of southern food, I very rarely fry anything. They were delicious! However, my eyes burned the rest of the day; I am assuming it had something to do with the temperature of the oil--not a good sign. This past week I was thinking of other ways to use some of the squash. I wondered that if I can make zucchini bread, why can't I make squash bread? So, I did & it was yummalicious! This is completely vegan & full of healthy flax seed! The batch in this picture has the nuts on top because I forgot to stir in the walnuts, so I just added them to the top. I also had some grated carrot leftover from making fresh rolls & threw them into the mix, added some nice color & extra nutrients!























Lemon Squash Muffins

1 1/2 cup grated squash
3/4 cup sugar (I use Sugar in the Raw)
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup + 1 T. milled flax seed
3 T. soy milk
1 T. vanilla extract
2 T. fresh lemon juice
2 T. lemon zest, chopped (if you don't have a zester, use a grater)
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (I use pastry)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 t. cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a cupcake pan (or 8x4 loaf pan if you want a loaf).

Mix squash, sugar, oil, flax seed, soy milk, vanilla, lemon juice & zest in a bowl.
In another bowl sift flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda & cinnamon.

Stir the dry into the wet. Stir in the walnuts.

Bake for 25-30 minutes longer for a loaf. Let cool 10 minutes & the turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.


Enjoy!

Labels: Calhoun Georgia, cucumbers, lemon squash muffins, Off the Vine, vegan cooking, vegan muffin recipe, yellow squash, zucchini

Just to clarify, I am a vegetarian (there are so many classifications, it does not actually matter to me what type I am) married to a vegan. I work as a personal chef. I do cook meat for my clients, please do not flame me for this statement. I would love to cook without meat if the area that I live in supported it; unfortunately, it does not. I must earn a living; I know there are those out there who would argue with me that I should get into another line of work, DON'T! I do not want to discuss my values versus yours. This is my life & I will live it in a manner that I am comfortable with. All of this is to clarify for any potential clients who ended up on blog via my website, that most of the content of my blog is about vegan cooking. However, I do cook meat & cook it quite well; please do not let my vegan ramblings throw you off. And for my vegan friends, I hope this has not offended any of you; I am currently looking for a local source to purchase hormone/steroid-free, ethically raised meat to use in my business.

Now, let's get on with it! Yesterday my mother-in-law, Sue, came over for a visit & to see some of the ultra-tight budget redecorating we have been doing...think classic southern antiques meet the Brady Bunch! I'll save that for another day. I had soaked some pinto beans, so when Sue called to say she was coming over, I put them on to boil. Since she has issues with wheat, I decided a good dish to cook would be a rendition of red beans & rice.

Anyhow, I cooked those darn beans for what seemed like forever & I will have to honestly say, they didn't get quite as soft as I would have liked. I would have cooked them in the pressure cooker...but, just last week I burned some beans in it & I have to ask, have you ever burned beans in a pressure cooker? If not, let me tell you, it smells strangely like marijuana. No matter how much I have scrubbed that pot (no pun intended), it still smells like, ummm, well...pot! Okay, enough of that, because my mother will end up reading this & calling me up & in her oh-so-southern drawl saying, "Now, Jamie, how on earth do you know what marijuana smells like?" Anyhow, I better get back on track before I get in trouble! In the mean time I put some brown rice on to cook. I don't have exact measurements, but a loose recipe follows. What I ended up with was delicious & I have eaten it two more times since, it will end up being three times if I don't get this typed & get into the kitchen to cook dinner.

All in all it was a fun day, we got to visit with my mother-in-law who completely missed the idea that we liked that our $5 chairs (yes, that was for the pair, not each!) are Brady Bunch gold & that we don't mind that they are severely worn & that we were trying to match them with the couch we inherited from my parents who had it since before I was born (I believe I have blogged about this before) & that by recovering our Brady Bunch chairs they would no longer match the 70's couch we have....we are trying to tie our hand-me-downs together! Sue loves to sew & wanted to recover everything in our house yesterday! I say all of this tongue-in-cheek. I have heard horror stories from other women about their mother-in-laws; I am happy to say that mine is wonderful & when we get tired of our Brady Bunch chairs (which may be sooner than later!), then she will gladly help us recover them!





























Jamie's Pinto Beans & Rice
1-2 C. pinto beans soaked overnight (or any bean of your choice)
3 bay leaves
1 onion, diced
3 celery stalks, small chop
6 cloves, minced
olive oil
6 oz. tomato paste
1 T. (or more) vegetable base
water
1 C. TVP
oregano
basil
onion powder
garlic powder
black pepper
white pepper
salt
ground thyme
sage
dash of liquid smoke
dash of turbinado sugar
brown rice, cooked

Cook beans with bay leaves & any leaves you may trim off the celery.

Saute the celery & onion in olive oil until translucent; add the garlic & saute, don't burn garlic. Add tomato paste, vegetable base, seasonings & about 2 cups of water. To this add your drained, cooked beans & TVP. Add more water to obtain desired consistency...the TVP will absorb a lot of your liquid. Adjust seasonings to taste. Let simmer for about 15-20 minutes. Serve over brown rice.























Please forgive the lack of measurements of the recipe, I just typed it from memory, which was just a little of this & a shake of that. Enjoy!

Oh, one more random item to note. I was reading tons of great blogs today all about vegan food & I came across a link on someone else's page to a blog called "One Frugal Foodie". Well, those are two of my favorite things! Food & frugality! Of course I had to check it out & when I did, I came across a gigantic giveaway! So, check it out & enter to win...really, by me telling you this only diminishes my chances of winning, EXCEPT for the fact that I get entered again just for linking her site here! Good luck & if you win, remember who told you about the giveaway--share the goodies!

Labels: Brady Bunch, giveaway, Mardi Gras, mother-in-law, One Frugal Foodie, pinto beans, red beans and rice, TVP, vegan cooking