Calf tongue tacos

They were delicious!

whole wheat pastry

I have been meaning to finally share my pastry recipe with y'all, but in reality, so much of my pastry is done by eye, and in the notes I did take, everything is by weight, so it may not help you much! But whatever, if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly, yes? As our dear G. K. would say.

So. Essentially, take the pastry recipe you always use. Measure whole wheat pastry flour instead. Work in the butter. Instead of water, add yogurt. If you don't have enough butter, use some cream cheese also. That is the easiest way for me to put it.

Amy's Basic Pastry

1 coffee mug full of WWPF (I buy bulk bags of flour and leave a mug in there, sorry if that seems quirky! It's like... 2 cups or so? A bit less?)
1/4 c cold butter
1/4 c cream cheese
4 tbsp yogurt (or sour cream, or cream, or WHOLE milk IF YOU HAVE NO OTHER OPTIONS)

If you don't know how to rub butter into flour or how to bake pastry, you'll want to google that as well - all I can claim to help with is the conversion to whole grain.

Pictured above is my take on Jamie Oliver's Toffee Apple Tart - IT WAS AMAZING. Sweetened condensed milk was double the price of unsweetened, for a reason I can't fathom, so I simmered 2 cans unsweetened condensed milk, 1/2 brown sugar, and about 1/4 c butter until it was toffee. YES.

I also took these pictures for you during the course of my experiments:

cottage cheese and cherry jam

more cottage cheese and cherry jam... but this time, with:

a cooked date-apricot filling on diced apples, and...

a vanilla glaze

One thing I did learn from this experiment, aside from the fact that WWPF is totally doable and delicious, is that IF you want to use white flour, for extra-special occasions, using just butter and cream cheese - no liquid - makes the most flaky, amazing pastry imaginable.

slow-cooker tomato sauce

Sam and Julia have asked me before for a basic tomato sauce recipe - so here we go.

6 cans diced tomatoes (796 mL)
6 onions, peeled & quartered
1 head garlic, peeled
1 1/2 tbsp herbs (I have a mix I made which is equal parts parsley, basil, oregano, salt, and crushed chilli peppers, plus about a half part broken bay leaves)

Cook on high for about 12 hours. The first 5 hours or so cook the onion & garlic, and the next chunk of time is to reduce the liquid (I leave the lid off for the second phase). I use this for pizza, so I don't want it runny. If you are using it for pasta, you could just check it and stir it and call it ready whenever you are happy with the consistency after 5 hours. Use a soup blender thingie to blend until smooth. If you don't own one then you'll have to chop everything before putting it in.

Makes about 4-5 litres. I canned it the next day (9 x 500mL plus about 750mL leftover - but I also used a couple extra cans tomatoes because I added too many herbs by accident, augh!).

OR... If in a hurry, combine 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 diced onion, and about 3 cloves garlic (Magic Bullet or by hand) and about 1/2 tsp mixed herbs - bring to a boil, lower to medium, and let simmer till reduced to desired consistency. I don't *recommend* the fast way, but when you realize last-minute that you have no sauce for the pizza you were about to bake, it works.