We've Moved!

andasbackpack has moved! We're now over at andasbackpack.wordpress.com I've had so many issues trying to work with this blog, not being able to get headings, format photos, etc. Hopefully WordPress will work better for me and I'll be able to post more often. Please come visit andasbackpack in our new location!

Catch Up

This is kind of an odds-and-ends post. Lots has been going on around here. It's tough to remember it all. We've made some pretty good food. Like these pizzas. The first one was barbeque chicken pizza with smoked gouda, red onions, and cilanto. Delish! And it looks gorgeous to boot. The second is just plain, old pepperoni. What can I say? It's my husband's favorite. And it's pretty darn good.

We had a garden visitor.

I'm pretty sure this is who's been eating my pea plants!! Oh well, he's so cute I can't be too mad. I found a new lunch that I love. And it's real food approved. White bean and avocado wraps. These are really good and super-filling. The veggies are delicious, too. It's just a little purple cabbage, a carrot, some cilantro, and a little onion in an oil and cider vinegar dressing. I know, they sound a little weird. My husband wouldn't try them, but he hates avocados. They're a little messy to make, especially with our misshapen homemade tortillas, but we just wrapped them up in foil, rather like a Chipotle burrito, and they were perfect. They keep in the fridge without getting too soggy, too. Perfect lunch :)

I don't think I ever showed off the super-cute Easter baskets we made for my sister-in-law and nieces. They turned out to be so adorable. I just love them. They are each made out of a paper bag, cut into strips and weaved back together. That was a LOT more difficult than it sounds, trust me! But the end result was so cute, I think I'd do it again. Ask me next year, haha. Everybody got a little candy, some new socks, and the girls got beach towels, too.

I've also been working on a few projects. Guess what this is going to be??

Larry's Quilt

So... our friend and neighbor Larry was turning 60 years old, and since he's currently living in hospice, we haven't seen him in a while. I thought that some type of a nice, bright quilt might be a perfect way to celebrate his birthday. There was a pattern that I immediately thought of using, but the intricate blockwork would have required more time than I really had to spend on this project. So I decided on a nice, bright, value quilt. It's made entirely out of half-square triangles arranged in a warm color/cool color pattern. I've made quilts with half-square triangles before, but I had never arranged them according to color to get a pattern. It turned out pretty neat! This is a really easy quilt to make. You just need some warm colors and cool colors (scraps work great!) in about equal amounts. I pulled these ones out and went from there.

The quilt back is a really soft, colorful, plaid madras. We quilted it in a diamond pattern with green thread, and bound it in an orangey-red dot print that we also used on the front. And that's it. Larry's Quilt.

White Bean Soup w/Rosemary

I don't know how most families solve the problem of the dreaded HOUSEHOLD CHORES. With two people working 40 hours a week, we try to divide things up fairly equally. I'm not going to lie - we succeed at this only sometimes, and it's always an ongoing challenge. On those busy weekdays, usually one person cooks, and the other has to clean up. I never cook on Mondays or Wednesdays, because I get home late from work on those days. The only day when I am reliably home first is Friday, so Friday is usually when I make new recipes or more involved things that take longer. I also don't generally cook with meat, so Fridays are often vegetarian at our house.

Last Thursday night I set out some white beans to soak overnight. I had a handful of small, spotted white beans (pinto of some sort??)leftover from last year's garden, and I supplemented those with plain old Great Northern white beans. When I got home from work on Friday afternoon, I decided to make soup with them. I love soup. When in doubt, you can almost always make soup with whatever you have on hand. I decided to make White Bean Soup with Rosemary and Parmesan. The recipe is adapted from the Williams Sonoma Cooking at Home Cookbook. By the way, if you ever run across this cookbook, I HIGHLY recommend it. I found my copy at Half Price Books - only $9! Anyway, that cookbook rarely fails me.


To be honest, this was an experiment. I didn't know if we would love bean soup. I like beans, but they do need a lot of flavoring to make them palatable (in my opinion). I especially wasn't sure how my husband would feel about this soup. We don't tend to have the same taste in soups, and I think he likes meat in things a lot more than I do. But we both LOVE rosemary, so it seemed a good starting point.

So, long story short. We both LOVED this soup. Seriously, we couldn't get enough of it. It's a hearty soup, too, so it's a meal in itself. If you do want something else, a small salad or sandwich would be great. One night we made one habanero grilled cheese sandwich and split it between us with a cup of the soup, and the other nights we each had a larger bowl with a simple side salad. The flavors in this soup are not complex, but the longer cooking time really infused the flavors throughout and gave it a very satisfying taste. It has become one of our new favorites - a really great comfort food. My husband even wanted me to make more of it so we could store some in the freezer. I didn't think that was necessary, because there's nothing seasonal in the soup - all ingredients are basically available all the time, so you can make it any time you want to. But his point was that he would like to have it on hand for a quick option, if you don't want to spend an hour or more cooking. HA, your classic miscommunication! After we each explained ourselves, we each saw the merits of the other's argument. And I did agree that if he really liked the soup that much, it would be good to have some on hand in the freezer for quick dinners.

Another great thing about this soup is how economical it is. Our co-op sells both carrots and celery stalks individually (if you want), so that's an inexpensive option for this soup that only requires a few of those. Dried beans are dirt cheap, and if you have herbs on hand your only real expense is the parmesan cheese. I don't have herbs in the winter, so I have to buy them, too. Next winter I hope I can fashion some sort of indoor herb garden, so I can have access to at least some herbs all year long. I had a lovely rosemary plant that my mother-in-law gave me, but my dog peed on it, and after that I never wanted to use it for cooking again, dog urine being a culinary delicacy that I don't care to become accustomed to. I want a new one terribly...

But I digress...

Try to soup - it's a winner. Or don't. But you'll be missing out :)

2012 Garden

Yes, we've started our 2012 garden! It's not unusual for me to start seeds indoors by mid-March; I do this most years, because we grow tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants from seed. It always amazes me how tiny these plants start out, and how by July they are almost as tall as I am. It's a bit of a miracle, really. I started 5 kinds of tomatoes. I don't know if we'll end up growing them all, because we have limited space, but as of today, all five have sprouted and they're growing quickly. None of the eggplants are up yet, and only one kind of pepper has so far emerged.


However, it would be UNHEARD of to have any plants outside at this time of year. This is Minnesota, people. Normally we would have snow on the ground, or just recently melted, but we freeze at night all the way through April and part of May in this part of the country. Usually.

But this year has been just WEIRD. We barely froze at all in the winter, and once March came, it was like full-on summer was here. We've had temperatures in the 70s and even a few 80s for the entire month of March. Well, if life is going to give us shitty winters and global warming, I am at least going to get good food out of it!


We don't plant much in the ground, anyway, so we have more leeway against frost in the first place, but with temps in the 70s and not looking to plummet for a long time, we put out cold-resistant stuff last weekend. We planted three window boxes of lettuce and salad mix, two tubs of peas (one snow pea pods and one snap peas), and a cool-weather mixed box of radishes, green onions, and bright lights chard. This is a good month to six weeks before we would normally put even cool-resistant plants out, but this is a strange, strange year.

cool weather box - radishes, green onions, bright lights chard

the peas are coming up!
The plants are a lot of work. Not so much right now when they're tiny little spindly things, but come summer we will have to spend a fair amount of time caring for them. And I love it! I love coming home from work and checking on all my plants first thing. Mostly I love eating them. Can't wait for what's in store for us this summer!!

The Ugly Quilt

Do you ever have one of those projects that you work on for-EV-er? That was The Ugly Quilt for me. I love this scrappy pattern, and there's nothing about it that's terribly difficult. But I thought about this quilt for a long time before I attempted it. I pieced the top fairly quickly, and then my husband and I worked on the quilting for almost a year. It's a really large queen-sized quilt, so that was part of what took so long. We also quilted clovers along the border, and those took forever. Now that it's finished, though, The Ugly Quilt was totally worth it!


The Ugly Quilt got its name from the scrap fabrics used to make it. I went for that ugly look. I love the navy and white background fabric, and then I just chose a great hodgepodge of colorful fabrics (some very ugly!) to make up the patchwork middle and the ring around the edge. It was supposed to have a lot of interest in the fabrics, and I think it does. When it came time to find a backing fabric, we totally lucked out. I found this perfect reddish-pinkish floral which matched the look I was going for perfectly, and it was even on sale. Then absolutely NOTHING except the green dots would do for the binding. I love the overall effect.

I made this quilt with a thin batting, and it's one of the few quilts I've made for myself that's had a definite purpose. I wanted it for a bedspread for our bed. I just wanted something colorful, yet kind of old-fashioned. I loved how this quilt turned out so much that on a whim this past summer we PAINTED OUR BEDROOM and I chose the color to MATCH THE UGLY QUILT!!!! Even now, I love to sit in bed and admire the different squares on my Ugly Quilt.

Catch Up

Happy 2012???
I've been a little MIA this year I guess. Suffice it to say that 2012 has not been a super-fun year so far. In between sickness and injuries and unexpected expenses and some other rather seriously not-fun things going on this year, we have managed to work on some projects and make some awesome new recipes. Let's see if I can do a quick recap to get us up to speed, and then I promise to post here more often. I promise to try at least....

In December, way back when we still thought we might have a winter this year, we decided to try cheese-making one beautiful, snowy afternoon. I love, love, LOVE squeaky cheese, also known as Finnish Leipäjuusto. I grew up eating this mild baked cheese at Christmastime. My dad knew a lady who made and sold it; you can also buy it at local seasonal fairs and locations. Even though my husband does not care for squeaky cheese (he has lost his honorary Finlander card over this), he has always wanted to make it for me. So we tried it.

curdin' up

Making cheese was a relatively straightforward process, if a bit weird. I hate to say it's "weird" to do something as simple as to make food, but there's just something about having a sink full of curds and whey that is...WEIRD. Our Juusto turned out pretty well. I ate it for weeks and we also gave some to my parents for Christmas. I also bought my husband a cheesemaking book for Christmas, and he now wants to make mozzarella this summer, and maybe even more cheeses. Stay tuned for those adventures.


curds and whey in my sink

the finished product

Christmas also was a time of frenzied project-making, as we tried to think of homemade gifts and then get them all made on time. I already posted my niece's Mini Mail Sack. I loved how that one turned out. We also made two homemade teddy bears. I fell in love with the first, and I couldn't give him up, that's how we ended up with two of them. They are named Watson and Bertram. Bertram now lives at my mother-in-law's house.




My smaller niece and her American Girl doll got matching homemade pajamas. The pants were easy-peasy, but the button-down shirt with the collar and pockets was more difficult. The alternate shirt with the hexagon was SUPER easy :) The doll's jammies were kind of just thrown together (and they look like it).







We made a lot of good food. Particular favorites that have been added to our dinner repertoire include almond-crusted fish with buerre blanc sauce (to die for!!), homemade whole-wheat tortillas (we usually make cheese quesadillas with them), beef-barley stew with spinach, rosemary chicken, jalapeno coleslaw, and white bean soup with rosemary. These are just some that I can think of right now. I'm planning a post for the next time I make the white bean soup - that stuff was SOO good! Most of these recipes are real food approved, too. My husband and I have continued to eat real food most often, and for one week each month, we follow the rules strictly. The only real purpose of this is just to keep us on track, so we don't eat out too much or get in the habit of eating too much sugar or anything. We actually don't notice it much at all anymore unless we have to explain it to someone else! We are acutally in the middle of our March real food week right now.

Buerre Blanc Fish