Recipes

I like smorgasbord style eating, lots of options, everyone getting to pick what they like for their plate. One such meal we do this with is Mediterranean mezze.  Easy to throw together, it can be composed of store-bought hummus, canned dolmas, kalamata olives, pre-made falafal, and tabouli, and pita.  You don't really need to cook anything at all and you have a feast on your hands.  But if you have time, I recommend you do one thing from scratch, make fresh pita bread.  Like pizza dough, it takes very little skill or cook time, and the result is so much better than store-bought; it's soft, spongy, and flavorful.  Here's how I make it...

Last week Adam and I celebrated our ten year wedding anniversary.  It hardly seems possible that a decade has gone by since we gathered our family and friends together in a redwood grove in Berkeley and traded vows and rings. Yet here we are. He with silver in his hair, and I with a little more laugh in my lines. We have our two wild haired boys, our now 15 year old cat, and the shelter and promise of our new home. As it turns out, a lot can happen in ten years. We managed to sneak away for a long relaxing weekend in Palm Springs, where we slept in, laid by the pool, and ate late night dinners, but before we left we celebrated with the boys.  At our wedding Adam and I served a family style paella at each table, so we thought it would be the perfect way to recreate the memory. As we sat together in our new backyard, pink peonies on the table like my bouquet, telling bad knock knock jokes, squabbling, sneaking kisses, talking about the big day, we ate our wedding food; our family complete.  

So you guys know we make homemade pizza every Friday, as evidenced by this little movie. Remember when Poppy Haus made movies? We've gotta do some more... Since posting about our pizza tradition, I've heard from so many people that they do the same thing, so I thought it would be fun to share what we put on our pizza each week. The boys almost always have the same thing, but Adam and I tend to use fun combinations of produce and cheese, sometimes with meat, sometimes with a farm egg cracked on top. For this first one, I played with the dough a little, adding some of our fresh rosemary bounty and walnut oil to the mix, topping it with sweet and tart blackberries, a nutty manchego, salty ham, and some peppery rocket added for the last five minutes of baking, no sauce just a bit more walnut oil and sea salt. I think it's rather pretty, and oh it was delicious! Here's the link to my pizza dough recipe with baking instructions. Happy Weekend!  

We are really in the sweet spot of summer, when the corn is sweet, and squash and tomatoes are ripe and full of flavor.  Here's a pretty summer chowder chalk full of everything summer with a simple corn stock, salty Canadian bacon and sweet shrimp.

It used to be that whenever I would go out of town, Adam would get himself Vietnamese take out and watch a bunch of action movies, two things I claimed not to like. I still don't really watch anything without Colin Firth or Julianne Moore in it (I kid), but I did eventually fall in love with Vietnamese food, including Bun Cha, Goi Cuon-Fresh Spring Rolls, and the simple, easy to replicate Chicken Pho Ga- Vietnamese noodle soup.  I made this today for Jasper who is stuck at home with a nasty outbreak of poison oak, because it is his favorite too, and chicken soup really does make everything better.

This recipe is one of those things that came together on a day when we might have been just too tired to cook, and could have very well ordered some take out to get us through. Instead we turned to our old friend the slow-cooker, because I had a hankering for chili verde. The addition of pumpkin makes it a hearty, autumn stew, and we ate ours up with sliced avocado, and honey cornbread.  Here's the recipe...

September in Petaluma means chilly mornings, followed by sweltering afternoon sun. The leaves are starting to yellow, the grass is a pale gold, and it's apple time. I suddenly feel the desire to make heartier fall food, but it's so hot by dinnertime I can't stand to be in the kitchen.  Yesterday I took advantage of the cool morning and made some things ahead of time, a few Asian takes on picnic food, using sweet and bitter vegetables, and some stuffed eggs with a little wasabi kick. Good served cold as lunch food, the salad can also be warmed up and served with pork or chicken at dinner, or with a poached egg over top like everything I seem to make...

Oh mason jar. If you weren't so darn useful I'd be sick of you by now. This summer we spent an incredible amount of time at home, tearing things down, building them up. One week we did decide to get away and disappeared into the woods for some camping by the Russian River. It was a test to see if we are all ready to rough it together in a tent with nothing but fire to cook our food. 

We have a funny little tradition of naming our vehicles in this family.  It started with Adam's old Chevy S-10 "The Green Machine", then my silver Toyota Corolla "Platinum Bomb". Since then we've also named our bike collection: Adam's long suffering "Midnight Blue" beach cruiser, Jasper's brand new "Sergio" orange and black trick bike and my cream colored townie "Cupcake". Wylie rides a little blue strider that he named "Blue Jay", but recently he announced that he'd embellished the name a bit.  It's now called "Lightening-Savory Scone-Blue Jay". You got that right. I'm telling you this little story because we did another remix of the biscuit recipe for Wylie's turn to bring school snacks this week.  This time we used the last of our chard, some over-ripe cherry tomatoes and a smokey cheddar, adding a little whole wheat flour to make a savory version of a scone or a biscuit, really what's the difference? You'd think he would have been so excited that we made actual savory scones in his honor, but I couldn't even get him to take one bite for a picture (and they were delicious). I heard back and most of the kids, including our kid, loved them. So there you have it, and here's the recipe.

It's a little strange not to be hosting any of the holidays this year.  Our new home, with it's small rooms and circuitous floor plan, walls yet to be knocked down and made open, simply can't hold a lot of folks for entertaining. 

Few things in nature are as weirdly beautiful as Romanesco. I think it looks like a prehistoric sea creature, or perhaps like a miniature gnome forest. When Wylie spotted some of this cauliflower cousin at the grocery store last week it blew his mind, so we took one home with us to try. Today I'm sharing our recipe for whole roasted Romanesco with lemon-thyme vinaigrette. I can't bear the thought of cutting it up so I just lay the whole thing onto a sheet pan and slow roast it with a heavy dose of olive oil and sea salt. It becomes so tender that the florets just tear off, leaving nature's design perfectly intact.  Full recipe below...

I've never really loved pesto.  I think I'm kind of sensitive to garlic, so it always tastes so strong to me.  Alas, I had to make pesto as part of my preschool duties this month, so I prepared a mild version using only baby kale and spinach, toasted pine nuts, olive oil and sea salt.  The result is really very delicious, almost creamy despite being vegan.  It would work for a spread on toasted bread, or as a sauce for gnocchi, but today's recipe has it coated onto cauliflower florets and roasted in the oven.  Roasting vegetables gives them a tender, nutty flavor, and adding pesto to the mix only bolsters that quality... 

Almost daily, I whip up a lemon-thyme vinaigrette, toss it with arugula and wolf it down with dinner.  I love the bite and saltiness with the peppery greens.  Lemons and thyme are staples in my kitchen, I use them in so many things, from brines to homemade cleaners.  Grind leftover lemon and thyme in the garbage disposal sometime, it's wonderful.  This pair is also really good for you.  Lemon is astringent and thyme is rich in antioxidants. I thought I'd share a few summer inspired lemon-thyme concoctions with you to try over the weekend.  xo, Heather

I'm still here! I've been buried under a pile of schoolwork, and random blog-related events, the latest being the Blurb Food Fair which I'll be sharing next week. I'm pretty beat, but I'm so ready to get back to Poppy Haus. Today's recipe is a is my go-to snack for feeding the masses over the holidays: stove top popcorn.  I love popcorn, because I can make it at a moments notice, and  when I do it somehow seems a little more special than a bag of chips- not to mention it's a lot better for you. There are so many ways to season popcorn beyond the old standby of butter and salt - here are my favorite fall versions using white or yellow corn kernels. 

I'm a little late getting today's post up, but I had this first grade play about the rainforest to attend, and might I say the jaguar had an excellent performance.  Earlier today I had a breakfast meeting with my friend Pete who is helping me finish my first video post (up next Monday!).  I went to the market and picked up some of the season's first stone fruit and berries.  I get so excited when I start to see peaches and cherries make an appearance, but this early in the season is hit or miss in terms of flavor. It's a good time to use stone fruit and blueberries in a salad, because right now they are more crisp and slightly tart.  I always toss the fruit with a simple lemon-honey dressing to keep the fruit from browning, plus it brightens up the flavor.  We ate our way through this bowl with vanilla scones and my favorite Cole Coffee from Oakland.

One last post before Christmas. We made these wintery cupcakes using a Trader Joe's gingerbread baking mix as the base, adding some grated carrot to mix to moisten the cake and give them a little more texture.  A simple lemon buttercream frosting with some sugary sprinkles and rosemary sprigs make them extra special Christmas treats.  Find the recipe below.  I hope your Christmas is magical! Until then...

T'is the night before Christmas, and when Santa makes his way to the house tonight we will wow him with the most delicious cookies in the world.  They are toasty, chewy, and gooey. They are sooo chocolately. And amazingly, they are gluten and dairy free, made with just 6 ingredients that you probably have in your pantry right now. You should go make some...

I'm in the middle of two projects right now, one that I'm working on for Apartment Therapy's Holiday DIY Gift Guide, the other a new iteration of the paper lantern project that involves collecting hundreds of leaves.  I hope to bring you at least one of those by next week.  In the meantime, here's what we were snacking on this week.  I followed my usual peanut butter cookie recipe, and added a couple of ingredients to the mix to give them a little something more, one being baking cocoa, the other cracked sea salt. The result is a soft at center, crispy at the edges cookie with a peanut butter cup flavor. Here are some glamour shots of cookie eating and the recipe.  Have a great weekend!

Leading up to every major family gathering, someone in our immediate family gets wicked sick. It's a fact. There was the great summer flu of 2010, where we wiped out the entire family while on vacation in Pajaro Dunes. We had already established ourselves as Typhoid Mary the Thanksgiving prior when my nephew Luke was born, and we promptly dismantled the family including the new baby with a preschool acquired tummy bug.  Last year when we hosted Christmas, my husband and I passed a doozy of a stomach flu onto the family, sidelining my sister-in-law Stacey from New Years festivities.  For a family that rarely gets sick, we sure choose to do so at the worst times.  So this last week we were not all that surprised when Wylie spiked a fever and evacuated from every orifice the day before Thanksgiving, the dinner we were to be hosting. The whole family decided to come anyway, and we're still waiting to find out who we've knocked down. Jasper came down with it on Saturday, and is just now feeling better. 

Today's post is by Michelle Syracuse from gather365, a must read for amazing food and drink recipes and East Bay restaurant reviews! xo, Heather

For all the parents who will be holding their heads in their hands on New Years Day, my husband Adam has the cure....

People have all kinds of ideas about Bloody Marys. Recipes haggle over what kind of this to add to how much of that, but for me, a good drink begins with construction.  It's the process that creates the product.  With that in mind, here are the steps to create a damn fine Bloody Mary: