Guest Post with Chestnut Mocha - Popcorn Recipe x 3

Hello Kitty & Buck readers!! We're Katie and Ben, we blog over at Chestnut Mocha. Today we decided to share with you some home-made popcorn recipes. First, the story behind it!  Last summer we moved from Russia to Idaho because Ben got a new job here. Now we live in a small town surrounded by the mountains and a big lake. Our best friends in town are Ben's parents. We come to each other's houses for dinners every once in awhile and watch movies together. We have a funny tradition of bringing "a simple gift" every time we go to visit them. It could be anything: a branch of the fur tree from our front yard, today's newspaper, ice cream, something else we found on our way or in a store...  Sometimes we make popcorn!  Here are a few of our favorite recipes:

Ingredients:
16 cups popped popcorn
4 oz white chocolate baking bar
6 oz white chocolate chips
1 drop pink food coloring
Using a double boiler (or something that works the same way), melt the chocolate. Add 1 drop of food coloring and mix through. Pour the chocolate over the popcorn and mix it through. Set aside until chocolate sets and serve.

Ingredients:
16 cups popped popcorn
1 1/2 cups dry-roasted peanuts
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine sugar, honey and corn syrup. Bring the mixture to a boil and stir constantly. Do not boil too long or your popcorn will be rock hard. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla. Immediately pour over popcorn, mixed with peanuts, and stir to coat. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Ingredients:
16 cups popped popcorn
2 tbsp. butter, melted
2 tbsp. honey
sea salt to taste
Melt the butter. Add in honey and stir until combined. Add a couple dashes of sea salt. Pour over freshly made popcorn. Stir well. Taste and add more salt if needed.

We hope you enjoy these! Come check out our blog for more recipes and fun! Katie&Ben

Wow, thanks Katie & Ben, those popcorn recipes look amazing! I've been doing it wrong all this time, I usually go for the plain salted and buttered variety. I'm definitely going to give these a try next time I snuggle under a blanket with a movie.

Please take a minute to visit Chestnut Mocha, it's full of lovely pictures, adventures in Idaho (and beyond), lomography and more. If you head over soon, you could also enter their "Share The Love" giveaway, which is a pretty impressive haul with a bunch of prizes, worth $300.

Kitty
xo

Guest Post with Jessie from My Mod Style - Chickpea Tacos Recipe

Hello Kitty & Buck readers!! My name is Jessie and I blog over at My Mod Style. One of my favorite things to share on my blog is vegan recipes. I thought I would share one of my favorite meals with you. Since I'm vegan I often get asked, "What do you eat????" I eat all kinds of fun plant based meals that are very healthy and delicious. One of my favorites is Chickpea Tacos. We eat this meal almost weekly because we love it so much. Plus it's super easy to make. If you love guacamole like I do, this meal is for you!


This recipe was adapted from a recipe by Lindsay Nixon. She makes all kinds of great plant based meals. Our food choices are heavily influenced by her cookbooks. We try to use as many organic foods as we can while cooking. We also do not eat foods that have added oils or have very little.

INGREDIENTS FOR CHICKPEA TACOS:
2 cans of Chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 tbsp Liquid Aminos (If you can't find Aminos, you can substitute Soy Sauce)
4 tsp Lime Juice
4 tbsp Taco Seasoning, use this recipe to make your own
Tortillas - we use these, sprout wheat and good for you! No added oils.
Kale, you could use any lettuce or greens

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

So what do you think? Easy, right? They are so yummy! I love them! I hope that you will try them. If you do please let me know. I like simple meals that can easily be changed to how you like them. You can add whatever toppings you like and use whatever taco shells you want. This is just how we eat them. As far as the guacamole goes, my husband always makes it. He only uses lime juice and garlic salt. He just does it to taste. I hope you enjoyed my recipe post! I do have more on my blog if you are interested. You can view them HERE.
Thanks Kitty for having me!

Thanks so much for sharing this recipe Jessie! I actually made this for my dinner (and lunch) this week and I can confirm it's deliciousness! I'll definitely be making it again. You should give it a go, you won't be disappointed. And please head over to Jessie's blog and say hi as well, she's a great blogger and an all-around nice gal! I know she will welcome you with open arms :) Kitty xo

A Very Thrifty Christmas - Recipe Peanut Butter Cups

This recipe is so easy, and so delicious, it makes such a great last minute gift. Who doesn't love peanut butter plus chocolate? Here's what you need:
Peanut butter base:
50g (2oz) dark brown sugar
200g (7oz) icing sugar
50g (2oz) unsalted butter, softened
200g (7oz) smooth peanut butter

Chocolate topping:
200g (7oz) milk chocolate
100g (3 1/2oz) dark chocolate
decorations (I used edible glitter in a "Penny Copper" shade)

All you need to do is throw all of the peanut butter base ingredients into a food processor and blend until they reach a sandy consistency. Since it's so hot here right now, mine was more like a lumpy sand, but it still works fine.

Lay out 48 petit four cases into a mini-muffin pan, or somewhere you can line them up neatly and they won't slide around. Add one teaspoon of the peanut butter mixture and press down into each case. Depending on how generous your teaspoon is, you might end up with more or less cups. Also, you may find the irresistible urge to nibble on some of the peanut butter mixture, which can greatly reduce the number of peanut butter cups at the end.

Chocolate Topping:
Set up a saucepan with a small amount of water (maybe 3 inches in the bottom) simmering on a low-medium heat. Use a heatproof bowl suspended over the water to heat the chocolate gently. Make sure the bowl isn't touching the water, and stir the chocolate regularly so it melts slowly and doesn't burn. Once it's fully melted, spoon the chocolate on top of the peanut butter mixture and tap the tray gently to get a flat and even coverage. You can sprinkle with Cachou balls, (edible) glitter, or whatever fancy decoration you feel like. Refrigerate for about an hour and they're ready to go! Yum, yum.

The recipe I used here is by Nigella Lawson (in my own words).

Girl knows how to make a Christmas treat.

Kitty

xo

Recipe - Baked Peanut Butter Tofu Salad

This is a super easy dinner I made, I thought I'd share it with you in case you need to make a meal in a hurry. It's possible to prepare the tofu the night before, it gives it more time to absorb the flavours of the marinade, which is always a good thing!

Tofu Marinade
1 tbl Sesame Oil
3 tbl Peanut Butter (I used crunchy, it gives a nice texture, and anyway, it's my favourite!)
Juice of one orange, freshly squeezed (if it's not very juicy, use 2 oranges, you need about 1/3 cup)
1 tbl honey
Cayenne pepper to taste (a pinch is enough if you don't want it too spicy)
500g packet firm or extra firm tofu

Whisk all of these ingredients together in a bowl, they look a little gross, but they are yummy, trust me! you could also add some finely grated ginger for some extra flavour, I didn't have any on hand.
Chop the firm (or extra firm) tofu into small-ish pieces, I went with bite-sized for my salad. I used 500g of tofu, which is a standard packet. You should marinade for at least 20 minutes, the longer you marinade, the more flavours are absorbed.
Once the tofu has become tasty, line a baking tray with foil, and spread the tofu out in a single layer. Bake in a moderate oven (180ºc or 350ºf) for approximately 15 minutes, turning after 7-8min. My oven is a bit weird, so watch your tofu as it may need less time, and it's no good if it burns, which can happen quickly thanks to the oils and the sugar in the honey. It also depends on how thick/thin your tofu pieces are.

Salad
Well, I mean, it's salad, do whatever you want! For mine, I used some fresh leaves (Cos Lettuce), sliced yellow capsicum, thinly sliced cucumber and some sautéed veggies.

Sautéed Veggies
1 ripe tomato, sliced into thin strips
1 red onion (small - or half a large one) finely sliced
1 large green or red chilli, finely diced
1/2 tsp Garam Masala

This part is easy! Throw the tomato, onion, chilli and garam masala into the pan (yep, that's everything) and sauté for about 5 minutes, until they soften and become fragrant.

After that, just pop it all into your bowl and nibble away! This served two, but I had a fair amount of tofu left over for a midnight snack.

I know it's probably not salad weather for you if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, but it's a good salad in that most of it is warm, so you can tolerate it more in the chilly weather. Also, it's delicious thrown on a slightly toasted wrap and eaten that way, especially if you use spinach leaves for your salad.

What do you think? Do you have any favourite tofu recipes? I'm trying hard to eat more salad (at least one meal per day) and would love ideas on veggie options that are filling. I don't like eating too much tofu, so it gets tricky. I'd love to hear your thoughts :)
Kitty
xo

*I use non-gm organic tofu, and everything else is organic except for the sesame oil and cayenne pepper. I like to use organic produce where possible, especially for my leafy greens.

Recipe - Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble

Hi there! I thought I'd try sharing some recipes once in a while as I love cooking and baking, and it's kind of fun making it look pretty for photos while I'm making it! I always get my fresh produce through an organic grocer who delivers to my front door, and this week, I had some rhubarb in my box. I haven't eaten rhubarb as an adult, but I remember my grandma making various rhubarb jams and other yummy sweets from her homegrown supply! I'll warn you in advance, I'm one of those annoying cooks who just throws a 'bit of this' in and whips up 'a bit of that'. I don't really measure things, so I'll make an effort to be clear with my measurements for you, but they might not match what I made exactly!

As they say in professional recipes, pre-heat your oven to 170º C (approx 350º F). Who wants to wait for the oven to heat up when you're ready to cook that tastiness?

3 cups of fresh strawberries, quartered or eighthed, it really depends how big they are to start ;)
1.5 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 2cm (1 inch) slices
The juice of one lemon, keep the rind for the topping. You can buy one at the market, or pinch it off your neighbor's tree like I did. (Branches hang over the fence, so technically they are mine, right?)
1/4 cup caster (fine) sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar (loosely packed, you don't want your teeth to fall out)
3 tablespoons of flour. This is to offest the goo-iness of the cooked strawberries. I used White Wings gluten free flour because it is great. I also used self-raising because I had no plain gluten-free flour. Plain is probably best, but such a small amount of self-raising doesn't really hurt. You could probably use less flour or skip it altogether.

I REALLY made this part up as I went along. I even made a little more at the end so it covered my filling better. You may need more or less, depending on the size of your baking dish.

approx 100g unsalted butter
1/2 - 1 cup plain flour
1/4 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence)
Finely grated rind of one lemon (you didn't throw it away did you?)
approx 3 tablespoons of sugar (I used brown sugar again because I like it the best)

For the filling, you just need to dump all of your ingredients into your baking pan and mix them up! So, so easy!

The topping is almost as easy. Chop the butter into small cubes, and add the rest of the ingredients. You need to rub the butter in between your fingers to blend it with the flour (and flavors) until it resembles biscuit (cookie!) crumbs. Once that is done, sprinkle it evenly over the fruit mixture and pop it in the oven! (this is a work in progress below, you should cover the fruit completely)

When I was at school, I studied food technology and became an expert at cooking the most complicated thing possible in 70 minutes, which included all prep, cooking, cleaning and eating. I'm a big clean-as-I-go cooker, I HATE cleaning up a huge kitchen mess. So usually, you'll find my kitchen spotless as I'm pulling my baking out of the oven. After you put the crumble in the oven, finish cleaning. You'll feel better afterwards, I promise! It needs to cook for around 40 minutes. You can tell it's ready when the fruit mixture is nice and bubbly and the crumble has a nice golden brown hue :)

I'm SORRY! I know that is the most terrible pun you've heard all day, maybe even all week. I just couldn't help myself! This recipe is super easy to make, and trust me when I say, it is DEE-licious. I had mine with a little bit of vanilla bean ice cream mmm. mmm.

I hope you enjoyed my first recipe! Leave me any comments or advice, I always love to hear what you're thinking!

Kitty
xo