 |
|
Even though we are still in the lower 110 F most days, we had quite a bit of rain and a drop in temperature last week and things are starting to happen in the garden!
The seedlings are starting to emerge, some new growth is happening on the transplants and there is a promise of cooler weather (well, “cool” is somewhat relative in Phoenix) and the fall growing season starting!
I can’t wait!
If you live dairy-free, you may still be on the hunt for that cheese substitute that brings you closest to that melty, ooey-gooey bubbly goodness that we used to know!
There are lots of cheese substitutes out there and I have probably tried them all. Some are better than others, but between funky texture issues, odd flavors and a host of melt ability and ingredient issues, it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble, so I mostly do without.
A couple of weeks ago, Follow-your-Heart contacted me and asked if I would like to try their new Vegan Gourmet Cheese Shreds.
Follow-your-heart products are a staple in my house. I have used their Vegenaise for near 10 years now as our only “May0”. Not because of any kind of restrictions, but because we just love the flavor of it!
A few months ago their diary-free cream cheese and the dairy-free sour cream have joined our list of staples. Follow-Your-Heart just have this way of making non-dairy so tasty!
In addition to being dairy free and cholesterol free, their new shredded cheese alternatives are also lactose free, soy free (!), gluten free, Non-GMO Project verified and contain no preservatives or trans fats!
So, of course I jumped at the chance to try their new cheese shreds!
I got to play with 3 flavors, the cheddar shreds, the mozzarella shreds and the fiesta blend shreds.
Of all three flavors, the cheddar shreds were probably my favorite. They seemed to be closest to the “real” thing! Does it taste exactly like cheddar cheese? No. But close enough for me, especially when incorporated in recipes!
Do they melt? Oh yes, they do! They take a tad longer than regular cheese, but they melt beautifully!
It is more of a soft melt and reminds me more of a melted American cheese kind of consistency, rather than other kinds of melted cheeses! It works beautifully in cheese sauces!
And in these Grain-free Cheddar Bacon Spinach Muffins:
{I replaced the parmesano regiano with 2 tbsp. of nutritional yeast.)
And it took this Dairy-Free Mexican Queso Dip/Sauce to a whole new level!
And it brought these Quesadillas back into my life.
Since the cheese shreds melt a tad differently to “normal” cheese, I adopted a different way of preparing the Quesadillas when using the vegan shreds. It’s a quick and easy way to a perfectly melty Quesadilla!
I sprinkle the cheese shreds in the warm pan first, and let them melt.
Then I cover it with a tortilla and press down a little. The melted cheese shreds will no adhere to the tortilla and are already mostly melted.
Now turn the tortilla around, add the shredded chicken/meat/veggies (or just nothing like my kids prefer it,) spread the quesadilla sauce on the remaining tortilla and cover the fillings with it.
Now let it cook for about one minute, then flip it around to cook the other side and you have the perfectly crispy Quesadilla, complete with lovely melted cheese inside!
One other, quite delightful little thing I discovered about these shreds, is that, unlike ANY other cheese substitute I have tried, these cheese shreds actually turn into that slightly golden brown and crunchy cheesy goodness when you melt it/cook it long enough. Just like real cheese!
Those little crispy cheesy bits taste the most like real cheese to me! I have so far refrained from just sprinkling the cheese shreds in the pan and letting them all become crispy, cheesy little nuggets, but I think the day when I will do just that is not far off!
If I would have to find one con, then it is that the shreds are just a bit on the salty side for our liking. I find I can adjust most of my recipes to accommodate that, but for some recipes it may be harder to do so!
You can try the shreds for yourself with this $1 off coupon from Follow-Your-Heart here.
Follow-Your-Heart are also running a recipe contest until the middle of September to launch their new shreds and you will receive a higher coupon value after you submit a recipe to the contest.
Check out all the great recipes that have already been submitted!
Not to mention the fantastic prizes for this contest! Go check it out! And let us know if you enter one of your recipes to the contest, so we can all go and vote for it!
If you feel like voting for my entry, it’s the Dairy-Free, Grain-Free Cheddar Bacon Spinach Muffin.
Pin ItLately, I have been so busy, with so many things. Things I want to share with you. Things that all require at least one post by themselves, yet I never quite get past the beginning, as the next thing demands my attention.
So, as a result I have a flurry of unfinished blog posts, that never quite made it onto my blog.
What kind of things, you ask?
Well, there is
So yes, it has been an eventful summer! And for the moment, at least until the kiddos are back in school and we resume some kind of normalcy, the unfinished blog posts probably stay that way!
However, I will leave you with a few photos!
Some of my pots. They are starting to go somewhat scarce and dormant for the summer. With those it’s not so much a matter of production but sheer survival. However, if they survive the summer heat, they usually go into a second production cycle after the heat lets up a bit!
Growing potatoes in grow/root bags and coffee sacks, filled with mulch! The potatoes you see here were planted at 4 different stages, so the harvest should keep us in potatoes for a few months, without having to store them much (no cellars/basements in Phoenix!)
Bavarian Leberkaese, which literally translated means Liver Cheese. The funny thing is, it neither has liver nor cheese in it. But it is a very delicious Bavarian sausage!
I have found some more things that you can grow/re-grow from grocery store produce!
Mason Jar meals galore!
We scored more inexpensive organic peaches, nectarines and figs and I’m canning and freezing like a champ!
My kids have been involved in quite a bit of gardening and fruit picking this year! They are really getting into the whole growing stuff! Good thing that I am too!
Yummy breads coming out of the oven every week!
At a 120 F you have to get a little creative with the shade cloth in order to give your plants at least half a fighting chance! What’s climbing up on the side are sweet potato vines! They LOVE the heat! Did you know that you can eat the leaves of the potato vines? You just sauté them like spinach leaves. Oh, and the sweet potatoes are another thing you can grow from store produce! This particular one I grow mainly for slips and the leaves, but I have a couple of other containers that I am growing for the sweet potatoes!
Field trips and new adventures are a necessity during the long summer break! And so much fun!
How is your summer going? Are you looking forward to the start of school or are you going to miss the little people being home all the time?
Pin It1. Fresh out of the oven right now! Sicilian No-Knead Sesame Bread, made with whole durum flour! So easy and definitely a family favorite!
2. Mason Jar lunches are being prepared for next week!
3. Things are growing in the garden, despite the adverse conditions inherent to the blisteringly hot Phoenix summers, followed by the somewhat more destructive Monsoon storms! The new transplants and seeds for the fall planting season are going in too, but that’s a whole post all by itself!
4. Figs Galore! Fresh fig abundance has come to our house, thanks to a friend with a very prolific fig tree! Now we are reveling in fresh figs, fig jam, bacon-caramelized onion-fig chutney and homemade fig and coconut ice cream!
So, as I’ve been amping up the gardening activities around here in my tiny backyard, the question of a compost heap of course came up. It makes sense to make our own compost, keep the fruit and veggie scraps out of the landfill and generally give the kids a chance to observe the cycle of nature.
However, we are in the middle of a big city, we have a tiny backyard and we don’t really want a stinking heap of all sorts and attract every undesirable critter in the neighborhood!
So, after some extensive research on the art of composting, I felt moderately comfortable in tackling this task, without the undesirable side-effects.
When I checked out what the city ordinances might be in regards to composting, I found, much to my surprise, that the city actually encourages composting! Not only that, for $5 they offer compost bins, which are essentially cut up trash cans. Since other options for a compost container have been considerably more expensive, I thought using one of those would be a good way to start and take it from there.
My husband went to the place to pick one up, but as it turns out, the only one that could possibly fit into the trunk of our car, even with a lot of bungee cords, was the most beat up one around. It didn’t even have the lid properly attached - they improvised with a chewed up bit of pvc pipe!
I forgot to take a picture of our bin. In fact I didn’t take any pictures of the entire process, so keen was I to cover the mess up!
It was also very blue, since it had been a recycle bin in it’s former life. Even though the main décor color in my garden is actually blue, I really didn’t want a great blue bin attracting all the focus. Especially as it’s just not great to look at.
It was beat up (literally, like somebody had actually beaten it with chains or something) and even though it was blue, it seemed to have various shades of blue and not in a good way. Some faded, some not, some black stains, some faded white logo printing on it. Just not pretty at all. Not that compost bins have to be pretty, but if you put it in a very small garden, it’s going to be a focal point, even in the very back corner of the garden, behind the raised bed!
So, I had a look around my extensive craft stash and found that I had two cans of brown spray paint for plastics with inbuilt primer (score!) sitting in my cupboard.
And since I didn’t just want to spray the whole thing brown, I also got out some scrap vinyl and cut out a variety of shapes on my silhouette.
That was actually the most time consuming part of the project. Once I had those cut and applied to the trash can, cleaned up the messily drilled holes a little, it was really fast. Remember, it’s a dry heat around here and at 7 PM we still sport 110 F and up, so things dry really fast.
The trick was definitely light but sweeping spray action and going over everything several times that way. Voila, not a single drip in sight. It helps that the paint was dry practically the minute it hit the can!
I let it dry for another hour or so, just to be sure I hadn’t missed a spot, then I peeled the vinyl off and now we have a Compost Bin worth looking at! It’s not exactly a thing of beauty, it’s still a compost bin, but it has some interest now! And now all the fading and beat marks add to the interest and texture of the whole thing!
And now we’re busy filling it all up!
This is the temporary setup for now, we’ll be swapping out the bottom once we’ve found a suitable piece of scrap wood and some bricks. But for now, we’re using what we had, which happened to be more bright blue. I sense a theme!
I got us a bucket with a gamma lid for the kitchen. It’s a generous size, so we don’t have to take it out after every meal preparation and the gamma seal lid prevents odors and fruit flies. So far it has worked out well!
I also stuck instructions as to what can and can’t go in the compost bin on the bucket, so the kids can be reminded (and their dad too!)
I have plans for a Vermi-Composter, but that has to wait until it is a little cooler, so we don’t fry our little worm friends!
More on that in another post however, since I also combined it with some major garden bling that I am in the last stages of finishing!
Pin ItIt’s summer time and everything moves outside - except for around here, where everything starts to move inside! We do, however, have the privilege to spend most of the rest of the year in lovely temperatures and outside, including the “Winter” when everyone else is holed up!
Just lately, I’ve been gardening a lot, turning much of our unused patio and portions of our yard into planting areas for fruits and vegetables! I have been growing things in the odd container here and there, the last 3 years or so, but I really want to kick this up a notch or three and grow a lot of our own stuff!
We do get a double growing season around here, which is great (Spring and Fall) but this year I am also trying to grow at least some things through the blistering heat. It requires a lot of babying of the plants, especially in the early stages and some creative use of shade clothes and watering techniques.
So far, so good, but with temperatures of 120 F in the forecast, things are getting pretty dicey out there!
Since we can’t be outside much and the kids are of course on summer break, we’ve been making things for the garden inside.
My kids totally delight in rock painting, which we have done several times now.
They love the walk around the neighborhood, hunting for the roundest, smoothest and biggest (or smallest) rocks.
And they love the actual painting - and then the playing with the finished product, as well as placing them all over our garden!
And I’ve been busy making other things for the yard, mostly inspired by a variety of pinterest pins I have collected over time, which I will be sharing with you over the next little while.
The first little project I want to share with you, are quick and easy solar lanterns. Very little effort and a lot of savings by doing it yourself, even if you purchase all the components!
You will need:
These mini solar stake lights. I purchased 12 and with shipping and tax, they came to $1.80 each. If you can find them at your local Dollar Tree, they’ll be even cheaper!
Mason jars (1 pint, with lids and bands)
Wire
I got the Heritage Collection Pint Jars at Target for $10.99. As I wanted blue lamps, that worked out pretty well. If you can’t find them at Target anymore, they are also available here.
You can also do it with different lights of course, but these happen to be the exact size of the mason jar band, meaning you just need to wedge them in the band, with no glue or anything, screw them on tight and you are done!
If it seems a little loose, you can put a ring of hot glue around the inside, where the band meets the solar light. If you get a lot of rain where you live, you may want to do that anyway, so the rain won’t fill up your jar over time.
Mine worked out just perfectly, so no glue was needed!
I put the band (minus the lid) on the jar and screwed it on loosely.
Then I took the stake off the solar light and dropped the top in through the band.
Then I tightened the band and that was it! The light settled into a nice and tight spot. But not so tight that I couldn’t get it out again!
Then I just made a little hanger with some wire by wrapping it around the lip of the jar a couple of times, wrapping it around the side and up to be joined into a hoop.
And that’s it!
Twelve solar lanterns for $3.70 each. Not bad, considering that the solar lids alone usually retail for $11 and up ... each! And then you still have to provide the jar, which would add another dollar or so to the final cost!
I put mine on Shepherd’s Hook Stakes all over the garden! Not only do they look lovely, they have functionality since we have a lot of raised beds and containers all over the garden now and it helps to know where the corners are, when it gets dark!
Other notes:
Hello and welcome! The Daily Bytes Blog initially started out as the extension of my digital scrapbooking design business. Over the years, it additionally morphed into the place where I shared a lot of my interests, loves, musings and hobbies. For the last several years, I took a break from regular blogging and was more focused on sharing my art journey through Facebook and Instagram.
