• I had to redo my petroleum safety course as well as H2S Alive. H2S is nasty stuff that can kill you very easily if you’re not careful.
• I’ve started working on a gas plant expansion. It’s pretty neat and a very large project, so making the schedule for it is kind of crazy (especially when you don’t know how long things generally take.)
• I’ve had my work computer crash and lost some work, which I wasn’t impressed with. At least it was only 1.5 weeks of work instead of months. Lesson learned: save everything to the network!
• We celebrated two different friends 30th birthdays. Mr. Bean is next, so soon it’s time to start scheming about what to do for his.
• I threw a baby shower for one of my very good friends. It was really cute and everyone seemed to have a good time, so I’m pleased with that. Some pictures of decorations and stuff will come later!
• I haven’t taken very many photos at all – I’ve been focusing on work, eating, exercise and sleeping, so there isn’t much brain power left for creativity at the moment. Maybe now that the baby shower is over it will get better – I don’t want my camera to start catching cobwebs!

What have you been up to over the last week and a bit?

As for these photos of the moon, the other night as I was walking home from the train, I looked up at the moon and was blown away. I tried to take a photo with my phone and was sorely disappointed, so the moment I got home, I broke out my camera, zoom lens and tripod.

For others who use their phone cameras a lot, are you happy with the quality of photo they take or is my technique lacking? (Which is quite possible because I got my phone recently and I haven’t used it very often as I usually forget that I have it. haha.)

What’s new and exciting in your life?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been flirting with a cold – one day I’m feeling fine and the next like I hit a brick wall. Ugh. Whenever I was sick as a kid (or teenager … or even as an adult, really), my mom would recommend eating homemade chicken soup. There really is something about it that makes you feel just a little bit better and makes your head a little bit clearer when you’re sickly! I remember a few months after I started dating Mr. Bean, he got really sick, so I went over to his house and fed him chicken soup. I don’t remember exactly, but I can pretend that it made him feel much better! (Probably having a doting girlfriend feed you soups helps, too.)

Luckily for me, this soup also works perfectly for this month’s Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free challenge, hosted by Maggie at She Let Them Eat Cake, themed “Foods that Heal.” While I don’t really know that much about nutrition or what foods promote healing of the gut or whatever, I do know that chicken soup helps when you’re feeling sick and still tastes great when you’re not!

The biscuits probably aren’t terribly healing, but I love biscuits with chicken soup! This isn’t the first time I’ve made chicken soup and biscuits but this soup uses leftover roast chicken and the biscuits are my adaptation of both biscuits from my mom’s recipe book and from the Joy of Cooking. I think they are still quite light and fluffy and you don’t have to grate the fat into the dry ingredients. (I found that just clumped up anyways, so I was really no further ahead.) Plus, there’s no rolling, so it literally takes about 20 – 25 minutes from start to finish depending on how much they need to cook. I’m definitely going to be making this meal with the leftover soup that I froze once I start working!

Homemade Chicken Soup

Chicken Carcass with some meat left on it – ideally free range organic, but do the best you can
Water
Parsley (and other spices if desired)
Veggies (I used: mushrooms, carrots, celery, peppers, peas and corn)

1. After you’ve roasted and carved you chicken, place the carcass in your slow cooker. Add enough water to mostly cover the chicken. Add spices like parsley, bay leaves, etc.
2. Slow cook your chicken soup until the chicken starts to fall apart. I probably let it cook for a full 18- 24 hours. I love cooking soup in my slow cooker as I don’t have to worry about leaving the stove on.
3. Using a slotted spoon, remove the carcass, bones and meat and place on a plate to cool.
4. Pour liquid through a sieve into a large pot. If there are any meat chunks left in sieve, feel free to add to soup stock.
5. Bring the pot up to a boil. Chop up the veggies and add to the soup.
6. Once the chicken is cool enough, pick off all the meat and put in pot. Discard bones and pour any liquid through sieve into the pot.
7. Once the veggies are cooked, salt and pepper to taste.
8. Serve up and enjoy!

This recipe can make a TON of soup depending on the size of chicken and how much water you add. We ended up freezing some for future use in old glass mayonnaise bottles with a piece of wax paper under the lid. Remember to leave ample space for the soup to expand as it freezes so you don’t end up with broken glass in your freezer!

You could add noodles if you want, but noodles and biscuits are too much starch, so no noodles it was!

Gluten and Egg Free Biscuits (can be dairy free, too!)

1 c. brown rice flour
1/3 c. sorghum flour
2/3 c. tapioca starch
1 tsp. xathan gum
1 tbsp. + 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
4 – 5 tbsp. dairy free margarine
3/4 c. + 2 tbsp. almond milk (or other dairy free milk)
1 tsp. lemon juice
Additions – grated old cheddar cheese (Mr. Bean’s favourite), currants, garlic, chives, parsley, etc

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix together the milk and lemon juice. Set aside.
3. Whisk together the dry ingredients.
4. Measure in the fat into the dry ingredients and work it through with your fingers until it’s pea sized.
5. Add in the cheese (or whatever) to the flour mixture.
6. Using a fork, mix in the milk. The biscuits should be quite wet and sticky but still a very soft dough.
7. Spoon dough onto cookie sheet.
8. Bake for 10 – 15 minutes (depending on the size of biscuits) until they start to turn golden brown and they don’t squish when touched.
9. Remove from oven. Wrap biscuits in a towel on a plate or basket and serve immediately.
10. Enjoy with butter/margarine (Mr. Bean’s favourite) and dip them in the soup or with honey (my favourite).

What’s your favourite”healing” food for when you’re sick?

Shared at: Gluten-Free Wednesdays, Hearth and Soul Hop and Allergy Friendly Fridays.

When I think about it, I’m quite happy with most of the recipes I have tried and posted in 2011. I feel like I’ve learned a lot and expanded my repertoire – from making food for the Daniel Fast I did last January to lots of vegan baking and learning more about raw “cooking” through April in the Raw.

I also feel like I improved my food photography – I made the conscious decision to focus on taking photos of the finished product instead of taking photos all throughout the process like I have previously. I felt particularly inspired by Jenn of Jenn Cuisine and by Dario of Food Pixels, especially in the idea of creating an environment for your food instead of just photographing the food by itself.

I’m looking forward to trying even more new things and hopefully continuing to improve my photography!

Now onto my top 11 recipes of 2011 based on page views. Most of them I’m pretty happy with how they turned out and I hope that you will, too!

1. Vegan Gluten Free Strawberry Shortcake – I made these for Easter dessert with Mr. Bean’s family.

2. Strawberry Cheesecake Raw Cake Pops – made for the raw cake pop challenge. I actually got in the top three!

3. Vegan, Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Pecan Pie Bars – a perfect healthy alternative to traditional pecan pie.

4. Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Raspberry Bars – made just because. My brother asked for them for his birthday because he liked them so much.

5. Raw Tropical Carrot Cake with Cheesecake “Icing” – my submission for “April in the Raw” and it opened my eyes the world of raw cooking – it’s not all corny like in Raw Rose’s cookbook!

6. Mostly Raw Gluten Free Vegan Coconut Tarts with Berries – another (mostly) raw dessert. They are best served cold!

7. Vegan, Gluten Free Potato Bread – for a while I thought that I could save money by making my own bread (and you can). This bread was absolutely delicious and worked really well. I stopped making my own bread as I just didn’t have the time or inclination to do it every week or so.

8. Vegan Gluten Free Blueberry Birthday Cupcakes with Cashew Icing – made for Iris’s birthday food challenge. The icing was particularly delicious!

9. Vegan Polenta Pizza – one of my meals on my Daniel Fast. It was fabulous and I think I should make it again (except with some more protein so it sticks around for longer!)

10. Vegan, Gluten and Soy Free Chive Garlic Cornbread – I just felt like making a variation of the egg and dairy filled cornbread that Mr. Bean likes to make. It was super tasty and quite nice looking!

11. Vegan Banana Almond Flour Pancakes – These pancakes were tasty, but I really need to remake them as I need to find some way to get almond flour and bananas to set without eggs. Any suggestions?

There you have it – the top 11 recipes from 2011 by popularity! I’m quite pleased with pretty much all of the recipes I shared this year and I’m looking forward to trying lots more in 2012!

It’s hard to say what my absolute favourite recipe of all 2011 was. I think the recipe I’m the most proud of are the raw cake pops as I essentially created the coating all by myself and they were amazingly tasty! (For the record, I LOVE raw cashews. They are pretty much my favourite nut.)

What’s your most favourite recipe you made this year?

Click for Larger Image

Top: View of Mirror Lake in Castle Mountain, Banff National Park, Alberta, July 2011
Next Row:

• Left: Mr. Bean’s brother’s wedding in Banff, Alberta, May 2011
• Centre: Photo from my first Studio Portrait Photography Class, May 2011
• Right: Family Photos of my friend and her family, November 2011

Next Row:

• Left: Train going through Field, BC at night, February 2011
• Right: Northern Lights in Northern Saskatchewan, June 2011

Left Column:

• Top: My parent’s dog Lottie, September 2011
• Bottom: Our friend’s son A, March 2011

Right Column:

• Top: Photos I did for my friend and her family, October 2011
• Middle: My friend and her new baby, October 2011
• Bottom: Engagement Photos for my brother and his fiance, September 2011

I know that these photos aren’t of my kids (given that I don’t have any), but I can pretend that my photos are my babies, right?

Do you ever have a strong desire to make cookies? Yesterday I was feeling fairly Christmas-y and decided that Christmas cookies were severely lacking in the Bean household and I needed to remedy that! Instead of defaulting to the usual Bean-family Cherry Almond Crisps, I asked Mr. Bean what his favourite cookies were. As you can probably guess, they’re Ginger Crackle Cookies, one of his family staples.

Given that I am unable to make the cookies exactly how his mum does (the gluten free requirement is pesky like that sometimes), I decided to embark on the adventure to make a similar, more healthy gluten free ginger crackle cookie. I also wanted it to be vegan as I’m saving up my dairy and egg quota for eggnog later this week! I think I was pretty successful – the cookies are quite soft on the inside and slightly harder on the outside, chewy and had the appropriate amount of crackling. They are also pretty delicious to boot!

I based my recipe on this one from In the Kitchen with Kath. I made them vegan, refined sugar, soy, cinnamon and gluten free so that everyone in my family could eat them (as frankly neither Mr. Bean nor I need to eat that many cookies ourselves!)

Vegan, Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Ginger Crackle Cookies

50g brown rice flour
75g sorghum flour
25g millet flour
50g sweet rice flour
50g tapioca starch
20g potato starch
1 1/2 tsp. xathan gum
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ginger
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. cloves
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (if you can have it – I didn’t add it)
Scant 1/4 c. soy-free buttery spread, melted and cooled*
Scant 1/4 c. canola oil*
Scant 1/4 c. grapeseed oil*
3/4 c. sucunat sugar, finely ground
1/4 c. molasses
1 egg replacer (or 1 egg if you can eat them)
Sucunat or other granulated sugar – make sure that your sugar is coarse enough so that they don’t dissolve onto the cookie like mine did!

*I just poured about the same amount of each in the same measuring cup until I had 2/3 c. oil. Anything more than that is too much!

1. Whisk together the flours, xathan gum, baking soda, salt and spices. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the oils, sugar molasses and egg replacer until combined.
3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet and beat until well blended and smooth
4. Cover dough and refrigerate for one hour.
5. Preheat oven to 375F.
6. Shape the dough into 1 – 1 1/2″ balls. Dip in granulated sugar then place on parchment lined cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 8 – 12 minutes.
8. Then cool on a wire rack.
9. Store in a plastic bag or sealed container.
10. Enjoy!

What is your favourite Christmas Cookie?

Shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Traditional Tuesdays and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

I’m assuming that you want to know because you’re still reading. Here it is:

I’m no longer unemployed Bean; instead I’m going to be E.I.T. Bean! (That stands for engineer in training.) That’s right! I have a job!

It’s awesome because a) it was totally a God thing as I didn’t actually apply for the job, they just wanted to interview me and b) it’s a job I actually want! I’ve talked about my previous potential job angst before and about how I was hesitant to really go out and get myself an engineering job. This opportunity literally fell into my lap (praise the Lord!) and who am I to say no when that’s where God wants me to be?

How has God shown you his providence lately?

All these shots are Straight Out of the Camera (SOOC).

For this week’s Good to Wow: Shoot and Edit, I wanted to use gradual filters like what Cedar talks about in her tutorial. Fortunately, I did take a landscape photo, which works really well for that kind of filter. I also fiddled with the white balance and saturation to make it look better.

Original Shot

Looking at photos like that makes me so happy that I live in Alberta and have the Rocky Mountains on my doorstep.

What’s on your “doorstep” that makes you happy?

As I was looking through Emily of One Lovely Life’s blog for recipes to try for the Secret Recipe Club, I saw that she had quite a few granola recipes. (I made her Fall Fruit Pie and it was delicious!) I was suddenly reminded of my childhood activity of making granola and called up my mum to find how how she used to make it. This is tweaked from the original recipe – I used gluten free oats, rice bran instead of wheat bran, added some quinoa flakes and I used some applesauce to keep the honey content lower. We used to also add sunflower seeds, which I didn’t add because I didn’t have any. You can probably add some cinnamon, other nuts or dried fruits – it’s completely up to you!

Homemade Gluten Free Granola

4 c. GF rolled oats
1/2 c. rice bran
1 c. shredded coconut
1 1/2 c. chopped almonds
1/2 c. quinoa flakes
1/3 c. oil
2/3 c. honey (more if you want things to stick together more)
4 – 5 tbsp. applesauce

1. Preheat oven to 300F.
2. Mix together the dry ingredients.
3. Measure out the oil first and then measure the honey on top of it. This helps you from having to scrape honey out of the measuring cup.
4. Pour wet into dry and mix. Add more honey or applesauce to get the desired degree of moisture.
5. Divide granola between two cookie sheets and spread out to an even thickness.
6. Bake for 15 minutes then use a spatula to flip the granola over and respread it out on the cookie sheets. When you return the pans to the oven, switch pan locations and rotate pans so that they cook approximately evenly.
7. Bake for another 10 minutes or until slightly less done than desired (it will continue to cook a bit once it’s removed from the oven.)
8. Put on cooling rack and loosen granola from pan. In another 5 – 10 minutes, repeat.
9. Once cooled, store in glass containers or in plastic bags.
10. Enjoy for breakfast with fruit, on yogourt or added to another cereal!

Did you make anything regularly with your family growing up?

Recipe Shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

When I was growing up, we didn’t really start celebrating Christmas itself until basically Christmas Eve. I especially loved that some of the first Christmas Carols we’d sing were at the Lessons and Carols service at Church as well as on Christmas Eve instead of at the end of November. It made it seem so much more special! My family celebrated Advent and would do the Advent wreath/calendar things in December but we wouldn’t really put up any decorations, including our Christmas tree, until the 20th – 23rd (depending on how organized we were! haha. For what it’s worth, my family is usually one of the families whose Christmas cards arrive after Christmas.) Some of you probably think we’re crazy, which is fine, but we’ve always believed that the 12 days of Christmas start at Christmas and so that’s when we’d really celebrate Christmas and enjoy the Christmas atmosphere. So, I guess one of the reasons why I’m not terribly enthused for Christmas at the moment is that I’m afraid that I’ll be tired of it by the time it actually comes around – do you ever feel this way? Plus, from being in university, I learned quickly that as much as I might have wanted to get into the Christmas Spirit, I couldn’t if I wanted to do well on my finals! Old habits die-hard I guess!

View of the Rocky Mountains on Saturday Morning

That being said, given that it’s now actually December and we’re now in the second week of Advent, Mr. Bean and I have put up our mini Christmas tree, our Christmas lights and our door wreath and that helps make me feel a bit more in the Christmas spirit. I have been listening to the Christmas songs on the radio occasionally while I drive to tutoring because I like the DJ in the afternoon, they give good traffic updates and sometimes secular music annoys me more that 24/7 Christmas music. (I’m really picky, aren’t I? I guess that’s what happens when you enjoy listening to Christian music and then it’s taken away from you – that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! haha.) Despite that, I’m still trying the “dip your toe in first” method instead of the “just jump right in!” method when it comes to enjoying Christmas in hopes that when Christmas finally gets here, I still want to celebrate it! Maybe like Scrooge I’m not so Bah Humbug-y after all; I just take a bit of time to get into the Christmas spirit!

When do you start celebrating Christmas? Are you sick of the Christmas atmosphere by the time it actually comes around?

These photos are Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC) and are my submission for this week’s Christmas/Holiday themed Good to Wow: Shoot and Edit over on Jill’s Blog.