Posts Tagged ‘Cooking’

Spinach Pizza, Strawberry/Walnut Pizza, Baklava

Monday, March 8th, 2010

I made a few things this last week that I thought others might like to try.

Roasted Garlic and Spinach White Pizza. If I were you I would add even more roasted garlic and mix the ricotta with some pesto as it was a bit bland until I started dipping it in pesto while snacking on it at book club.

I knew I would have extra dough when making the above pizza, so I decided to whip up a dessert pizza as well. I rolled out my dough, brushed it with a bit of butter, baked it until golden brown, mixed together cream cheese-vanilla-powdered sugar-lemon juice to make a filling, sliced up strawberries, candied some walnuts, and drizzled the completed pizza with some agave nectar.

Reader Haley, a friend of TH from BYU, was kind enough to both provide me with the recipe for her delicious Baklava and gift me a bottle of Orange Blossom Water when she ran into That Husband at a wedding in Utah last weekend. What a sweetheart! Everyone who tasted the dish raved about it, and I even had one couple tell me they had debated whether it was store bought or homemade. What a compliment! It was time consuming, but rather foolproof. Haley’s Baklava Recipe.

Super Cook

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Recently I’ve embarked on a project to cook meals using items we already have in our freezer/fridge/pantry as much as possible. I can be a bit of a bit of a pack-rat when it comes to food, stocking up on things and then somehow finding it difficult to find a way to incorporate them into the rotation. I wouldn’t have this problem if I would use the same recipe more than once, but as I’ve told That Husband many times, there are just too many fabulous recipes out there for me to commit to one long term!

I can contribute all of my success with Operation Cleanout to Supercook.

Plug in the ingredients you have on mind, and this nifty little site searches through other sites like allrecipes.com, recipezaar.com, and marthastewart.com to come up with recipes that are filled with components you already have on hand. My freezer is almost empty (though I still need to get rid of all those popsicles I bought during my first trimester) and now it’s time to move on to our kitchen pantry and the garage closet.

Glazed Clementine Chiffon Cake and Baked Spaghetti

Monday, January 25th, 2010

This past week I made:

Glazed Clementine Chiffon Cake for a friend’s birthday. Delicious, except I added in 7 medium egg whites because I didn’t have 6 large egg whites. I thought it tasted a bit eggy so I wish I would have stuck with 6 medium and called it good. Citrus fruit is cheap right now (I bought the cheapest citrus I could find, tangerines I believe, instead of clementines) and the glaze on top was really tangy and sweet.

lemoncake

And this weekend That Husband and I have been devouring the Baked Spaghetti I made. No picture because taking a good picture of a casserole is almost impossible. I used whole wheat spaghetti noodles, added in chicken and finely diced mushrooms, used less spaghetti sauce then it called for (probably half the amount) omitted the french fried onions, and sprinkled cheddar cheese on top instead of parmesan. It’s so good that TH has asked me several times if I’m going to make it again, since I rarely make the same dish twice (too many options out there for me to stick with one!). I don’t really like spaghetti normally, too much tomato, but I loved this dish, probably because of the cream cheese. I highly, highly recommend it.

Making It Deceptively Delicious

Monday, January 18th, 2010

One of the first cookbooks I invested in as a newlywed was the rather well-known title Deceptively Delicious. I flipped through it, put it up with the rest of my cookbooks, and didn’t touch it again for about a year. Then I got pregnant and started to want to incorporate more vegetables into my diet, but I found myself either not desiring them when I had them on hand or not being able to finish them all before they went bad. I also tend to cook larger dinner meals like casseroles other such reheatable dishes and eat those  for both lunch and dinner through the week. I wanted more veggies but I wasn’t willing to undergo the change to my habits that I thought would be necessary to get them.

The author of Deceptively Delicious, Jessica, talks about how the idea for her cookbook came in a eureka moment. One day, I had my own lightbulb turn on and realized that I could use the deceptively delicious system* of adding pureed vegetables to my dishes to increase our veggie intake. We didn’t have any kind of steaming system so I rigged up my own by placing a colander in a large pot filled with water and dumping a bunch of carrots/peppers/broccoli/mushrooms/peas/other fresh veggies in and steaming them until they were soft. I then added the now-soft veggies to my food processor and blended until smooth. The purees are placed in quart sized plastic bags labeled with the date and contents and stacked in the freezer. When you open the door to our freezer you are greeted with a wonderful assortment of green, orange, white and red bags. To use a the contents of one of the bags in a dish I fill the kitchen sink with hot water and defrost.

Now I hardly ever make a dish that doesn’t have some type of pureed vegetable added to it. Instead of making these muffins with pumpkin, I once added carrots, and the next time added a sweet potato/pineapple blend. Last week I made mashed potatoes and turned them a lovely shade of green by adding a bag of green beans, a bag of asparagus, and a bag of broccoli. They may look a little strange, but I really enjoyed the way the broccoli and asparagus flavored the potatoes.

Tonight I whipped up some Mexican Cornbread Casserole and added a carrot and green pepper blend (as well as a can of refried beans). Instead of making a dish composed of corn, beef, and cheese, I came up with something with corn, beef, carrot, pepper, and refried beans, topped with a handful of cheese. Tastes great and doesn’t look quite as crazy as the green mashed potatoes do. :)
With the lovely little Beaba Babycook my parents gifted us I’m finding myself using fresh purees instead of frozen ones when I have veggies on hand because the system is so simple. Tonight I browned the hamburger, mixed the cornbread, and steamed the carrots and green pepper all at the same time, layered it and baked it in the oven. By the time baby is old enough to start eating solids I’m going to be a pro at incorporating veggies into our dinner dishes.
There are most certainly difficulties with this method, as my dishes end up being runnier on average than they would be without the vegetable additions. The next dish I’m going to try is this Baked Spaghetti with the addition of some shredded chicken, and I’m thinking I might omit the milk altogether and replace it with a vegetable puree or two.  It’s always an adventure when I cook, especially now that I’m attempting to modify every recipe I get my hands on, but I no longer feel guilty that we aren’t getting enough veggies in our diet!**

*I realize that Jessica didn’t invent the concept of adding pureed vegetables to dishes but we most certainly use the term whenever I’m pureeing and adding veggies to any dishes. It’s just a fun phrase to use!

**Before someone brings it up, I will note that I still am working to find ways to incorporate fresh vegetables into my diet. The crunch of carrots has been particularly appealing lately, and I always love to make tacos loaded with lettuce, tomatoes, and avocado (which is a fruit technically!). This system has become a way for me to do even better than I was before.

Stocking the Fridge/Freezer for Hungry Husband

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

I just finished a 6-hour cooking marathon, during which I made:


Burrito Pie


Chicken Pot Pie


Cozy Cottage Beef Stew Soup

(still in the crockpot actually)


Freeze Ahead Fried Rice

(I used pork)

Thanksgiving Muffins

(I substituted carrot puree for pumpkin because I forgot to pick up the pumpkin on my grocery run today)


Blackbery Strudel Cookies

(I used blueberry jam and dried blueberries)

After 6 straight hours on my feet this computer-addicted blogger/photographer is exhausted, and I still have to pack for 10 days in Washington. Why did I put myself through this? To prevent That Husband from surviving on tuna and peanut butter sandwiches for the 5 days that I will be in Washington while he is still in Texas (he joins me and my family on Monday). The chicken pot pie is in the fridge, meant to be eaten tomorrow, the beef stew is still in the crockpot (I’m guessing he will just store and eat it from the crockpot while I’m gone, never transferring it to another container), the fried rice and burrito pie are sitting in plastic bags in individual portions in our freezer,  the thanksgiving muffins are also being stored frozen in hopes he’ll have a “grab and go” meal in the mornings, and the cookies were made out of love (and because I knew I would want to snack on something sweet after all that cooking. If this keeps him full, I think I’m going to start cooking like this once a week, and keeping a freezer stocked with individual-sized homemade meals for him to grab when I’m not home. Does anyone else do this? Any cookbooks or websites you can refer me to for meals that freeze and reheat well? (Must be something that is cooked already, and can be reheated quickly in the microwave, otherwise I don’t think he’ll make it.)

*All images from this post found at the site where the recipe is located.

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