Blueberry Syrup

One of my first ever posts here was about my favorite homemade pancakes, and the theme of pancakes and waffles comes up occasionally in this blog... which made the fact that I ran out of maple syrup (practically a Canadian standard) even more sad. 

The budget is tight lately and I have been heavily using web couponing, half-priced and reduced price items to fill the gap, and needless to say, with money low, maple syrup is one of the luxuries that went first. 

However, all is not lost.  I have a bounty of on sale frozen blueberries in my freezer, and since I don't want to give up my pancakes any time soon... I have patched a good blueberry syrup recipe out of two different ones I found in web searches.  It's probably healthier for me and the little guy anyways...

Blueberry Syrup

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of frozen blueberries

3 tablespoons of organic cane sugar (or honey, maple syrup, xylitol or reg. sugar)

1/2 cup of orange juice

1 tablespoon of cornstarch (can be omitted if you prefer)

 Directions:

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, mix 1 1/2 cups blueberries, sugar and 1/4 cup orange juice. Bring to a boil while stirring and mashing in the blueberries.   
in a small bowl, mix the remaining orange juice and cornstarch, and stir that into the blueberry mixture. 
Keep stirring until thickened, and serve warm.  Store unused tightly wrapped in the fridge.  Use your own judgement, but I wouldn't keep it more than a week just to be safe.  This recipe could probably be canned to keep it longer or give as a gift to friends and family with some homemade pancake mix.


Original recipes:


Blueberry Syrup - Food Network 
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/blueberry-syrup-recipe/index.html

Blueberry Waffles with Fast Blueberry Sauce - Allrecipes
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/blueberry-waffles-with-fast-blueberry-sauce/Detail.aspx

DIY Homemade Pedialyte Recipe

With the summer heat approaching for many of us, and illness a constant possibility for us people with children, I thought it was a great idea to re post this information from the website CraftGossip :) Here you will find a recipe to Homemade pedialyte with simple ingredients you may have lying around the house.

Pineapple Sorbet

Pineapple Sorbet

Ingredients:

1 can of pineapple chunks


Directions: Pour the can of pineapple chunks, juice and all, into a shallow freezer safe container and freeze for a day or two. Alternatively, you could freeze it in ice cube trays, which would also make it easier to make small batches if you wished to.  Let the frozen pineapple sit out for about 10 minutes.  If you used a large shallow container to freeze it in, break the pineapple apart into chunks.  Use a food processor, blender, or in my case a magic bullet to process the pineapple into a smooth  consistency.  This might take a bit of work and a few minutes, you will probably need to shake a magic bullet a few times to make sure you get it all, and in a blender or processor it may take a spoon and shorter bursts to finish it off, but the outcome is still a surprisingly easy dessert.  You can try adding a splash of coconut milk for flavour, or use different fruits and experiment. 

It's been a while...

Well, let us not dwell on the fact I haven't had any time to post here in quite a while, and move right on to the food related stuffs... okay?  Lately I have been hearing a lot of bad things about food colouring.  I hear that red and yellow have toxins in them, that they are all chemicals that have health effects, and even of a study showing a link between ADHD (which I have by the way) and artificial food colourings... it leaves a person wanting to find an alternative. 

I already know the basics of some of the natural food colourings, like spinach for green, beets for purple, turmeric for yellow... but the one that I knew I can't live without is the one that was harder to find.  Blue.  Fear not, because I found a link to a recipe for natural blue food colouring, and it turns out I had an idea what it was too.  I once heard of dying yarns with red cabbage to get a beautiful shade of blue, but I thought it was only achieved by adding alum powder, which didn't sound tasty at all.  This recipe doesn't contain anything nasty, so I hope to give it a try and maybe save my child from food colouring related illness... at least at home.

How to Make Blue Food Coloring

 

 here is also a link to wikipedia on the subject of natural dyes that may be helpful / interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_coloring#Natural_food_dyes