Recently, I’ve been trying to cook healthier food and more vegetables.  However, when I’m planning meals each week, I often find myself uninspired when it comes to veggies.  It’s easy for me to do something simple like a stir fry or curry, but other than that, I’m not very creative.  Without the internet, I think our meals would be completely boring!

This week for our Menu Monday, I’m sharing a simple roasted vegetable recipe.  This might be one of my new favorites!  You can find all of the ingredients in any well-stocked grocery store, and even though it takes a little bit more time to cook, it is WELL worth it.

Roasted Vegetables

Prep Time: 15 mins  Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

• 2 T olive oil
• 1 large yam, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 large parsnip, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1 inch pieces
• 1 zucchini, cut into 1 inch slices
• 1 turnip, peeled and cut into 1 in pieces
• 1 bunch fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1 red pepper, or 1/2 cup prepared roasted red pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease 1 baking sheet with 1 tablespoon olive oil.
2. Place the yams, parsnips, turnips, and carrots onto the baking sheets. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, then add the zucchini and asparagus, and drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Turn over veggies, and continue baking until all of the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes more. Once tender, remove from the oven, and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet.
3. Meanwhile, roast the red pepper in a toaster oven under the broiler, several minutes per side.  Keep close watch so the pepper doesn’t burn.  Remove red pepper from oven, and place in a sealed tupperware container for 4 minutes to steam.  Remove red pepper, and peel the skin carefully.  Slice pepper into 1 inch pieces.
4. Toss the roasted peppers together with the garlic, basil, salt, and pepper in a large bowl until combined. Add the roasted vegetables, and toss to mix. Serve at room temperature or cold.

Feel free to substitute other vegetables or herbs you have on hand.  The basil was particularly wonderful combined with the sweetness of the yams.  It was very tasty!

I’ve always struggled with planning ahead, so the last few weeks I’ve been making an extra effort to plan meals ahead of time and use a list for my grocery shopping.  I decided to create a document that would help me both plan AND shop, plus it’s pretty and cute when I hang it on the side of my fridge to remind me what’s for dinner each night.  Gotta love something that makes me smile when I look at it every night while cooking dinner!

At the top, it includes the dates for the week.   Below that is a section for breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day, and then below that is a section to jot down items needed (in this case, ones I need to purchase) for meals for each day.  At the very bottom is a section for extra items I might need on a daily basis, like bread or milk.

And guess what, I’m going to share this with you!  Let me know if it’s helpful.  I’ve printed a few copies and LOVE using it to help keep myself organized.

Here it is, just click on the link and the PDF will download.  Grocerymenulist

I’m bringing back Menu Mondays! This is for two of my friends who said they don’t have good lentil recipes – to which I say, how can that be?!? I used to hate lentils, but that was before I found out how much I loved Indian cooking. The great thing about lentils is that they’re cheap but filling! You can find brown, green, or yellow lentils at most super markets, and if you want to get fancy you can find special daal (that’s lentils) at Asian or international markets in most major cities.

I’ve made this recipe several times. It’s very easy and the ingredients are easy to find, even though it’s Indian. The flavors are subtle, but delicious.  You can easily substitute other vegetables and just adjust the cooking time.  Serve this with hot basmati rice.

Ingredients

1 cup yellow split mung beans (you can substitute yellow lentils, but I prefer the flavor of the mung/moong)

2/3 cup finely chopped onions

1 tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger root

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1/3 teaspoon turmeric

3 medium-sized potatoes (3/4 pound), peeled and quartered

1/2 small cauliflower cut into 1 1/2 inch flowerets (about 2-3 cups)

1 table spoon of salt

For the tadka (which is a fancy glaze at the end):

12 tablespoons of ghee (clarified butter – use light vegetable oil as substitute.  We use about half of the amount)

1 teaspoon cumin seeds (NOT powder)

2-4 green chilies, seeded and minced, or 1/4 -1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons of lemon juice

2-3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:

1. Pick over, clean and wash beans or lentils.  Use a wire strainer if needed.
2. Put the mung beans in a deep pot, along with chopped onions, ginger, garlic, and 3 cups of water.  Add turmeric, and bring to a boil.  Watch the pot carefully, because the water will foam FAST once it boils.  Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 15 minutes or until beans/lentils are cooked.  Add extra water if needed.  (I’ve found that it takes closer to 30 mins to get the beans/lentils well cooked)
3. Add potatoes, cauliflower, salt, and 2 more cups of water, and cook for an additional 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender and the beans are thoroughly cooked.
4. To make the tadka:  Heat the ghee over high heat in a small frying pan.  When it is hot, add the cumin seeds and fry until they turn brown, being careful not to burn the seeds (15 seconds!)  Add green chilies or pepper, and stir.  Immediately pour the contents into the stew.  Add lemon juice and chopped coriander to the stew.  Stir well to mix.  Check for salt, and serve the stew with a bowl of hot basmati rice.

Serves 6 people.

One of the first things I complained about in our new (old) house is the kitchen faucet.

See here?

(No, my kitchen isn’t this clean.  This is from when we were house hunting almost a year ago.)

Well, that there faucet BUGS THE CRAP OUT OF ME!  Seriously.  It’s a pull out spray faucet and is lovely and everything, but one VERY important feature is lacking.  Rotation.

I kid you not – our faucet does not swivel, twist, rotate, or whatever you want to call it.  It is permanently stuck in that one position.

Which means, our 2 basin sink is annoying to do dishes in, because water only fills one side, and to get in the other, you have to pull the sprayer out, turn the water on with the other hand, fill/wash item, put item down, turn sprayer off, and then put sprayer back. Way too many steps.  OR you can spray water EVERYWHERE while you attempt to use the sprayer once the water is already on.  I full admit to using both strategies and hating both!

So, I’m on a mission to find a new kitchen faucet.  Maybe someday we’ll gut the whole room and redo it (cracking linoleum floors is SO stylish right now), but for now, I just need a functional kitchen.  I’d be a happy woman if I had a better faucet.  *ahem*

But I can’t find one I like! I’m super picky and heavily research any purchases that I’m going to be stuck with on a day to day basis for more than a week, so I’ve been waffling about this for months.  So please help me!

Here’s my requirements:

- Needs to have a brushed or polished silver finish

- Needs to either have a three hole fixture or an included deck plate (or both)

- I’m liking the current goose-neck high-arch look, and since we have a big sink, I think this will work

- Needs to be a pull-out or pull-down sprayer since the other whole for this is currently occupied by our broken RO water dispenser.  The sprayer should have a pause button or some cool feature similar to that

- Needs to not cost an arm and a leg (less than $300 for sure, but preferably even less…)

There ya go, now hit me with some ideas!

These are just about the cutest things ever!  How could you not love an elmo cake pop!?!

I’ve never tried making any of the cake pops, but I think they are super cute and fun.  She also has one for Easter (a little chick, a lamb, and an egg!)  Check it out

via Street Party « bakerella.com.

Let the saga continue

As I said in my last post, our garbage disposal went kaputt, and before that, our dishwasher began it’s slow death.  And in the middle of all of this, something scary and horrifically amusing contribute to the next Thing That Broke.

Nothing actually broke, though.  Maybe except for our pride.

Here’s how it all went down:  My husband and I were supposed to eat dinner in the campus dining hall one Wednesday night.  I had let a few students know that we would be there and we’d like to eat with them.  We figured that was simple enough.

However, we arrived, and the only students that were there had already eaten and were just waiting to ask us a few questions.  Instead of forking over our cold hard cash and eating alone, we decided it would be wiser to just walk the block and a half home and whip up something quick.

The only thing I could think of that we had the ingredients for and would be fast was fajitas, so I got to work on slicing the chicken, the onions, and the peppers while my husband took a side trip to his office to grab a few things.  He is the stir fry fajita man – he’s just way better at it than I am – so when he returned, he stuck the cast iron skillet on the stove to get things moving along, and started working on the marinade.  Meanwhile, I started shucking corn.

Well, about 30 seconds later, you could smell something smoking.  But nothing was cooking yet!  The cast iron skillet was getting really hot – as in, RED hot – and set off our smoke alarm!  (Have I ever mentioned that I hate how all our smoke alarms are wired together so that when one goes off, they all go off?  Genius idea for safety, but incredibly annoying when there’s no imminent danger)

We fanned some air around, turned down the heat a bit, and eventually the alarm turned off.  But that wasn’t the end of things…

About 30 seconds later, while I’m shucking corn, I look over to see my husband pouring oil into the still-kinda-red-hot skillet, and BOOM!  Fire.  Like, 12 INCH HIGH FIRE!!!!    

I thought it would just die down a bit, you know, like when people use wine on cooking shows and it goes in flames and then just peters out…but no.  It didn’t.  It got BIGGER.

So, my dear husband yells for me to get the fire extinguisher, while the flames are high enough to start getting at our cabinets!  I’m freaking out, because there is smoke and I can’t breathe and I’m thinking that our new/old house will burn down.  Luckily, we have a fire extinguisher in our kitchen.  Note to all:  put one in your kitchen!  And on every floor of your house.  It doesn’t take long for things to get out of control.

With fire extinguisher in hand, DH successful puts out the crazy kitchen fire!   We both look at each other in total amazement at what has just happened, and at the crazy mess in our kitchen.  Holy cow – we had a fire in our kitchen!

And of course, I had to take a picture.  :)  The aftermath:

You can see the black soot all the way up to the ceiling, on the microwave, and if you look closely, you can see the creamy sandy stuff that comes out of the extinguisher is EVERYWHERE, and in some places, there are oil splatters from the fire.  Dinner was obviously ruined, and our kitchen was a mess.  We’re still finding some of the powdery stuff in pans all the way on the other side of our kitchen.

After spending a whole day cleaning (the day the disposal dude was here), you can still tell that we had a fire in our kitchen.  The black scald mark at the bottom of our microwave is permanent, plus there is oil and black soot permanently in the top vent of the microwave.  Fortunately, we hate our microwave – it’s kind of narcoleptic and likes to just stop working at random – so we don’t really care that it essentially has a brand on it.  Someday we’ll replace that monstrosity of an appliance anyways.

Ah, the joy of cooking.  

We’ve had a busy week here on the prairie, and so I thought last night would be the perfect night for a nice night “in”.  I planned a fancy homemade dinner for us to enjoy at home with a glass of wine.  All of the recipes are from The Pioneer Woman- which is a MAGNIFICENT resource/website.  You must check it out.

I made the following:

Simple Green Beans – cooked with garlic, onions, H2O & a vegetable boullion cube

Cheesy Potato Cups – Potatoes, cheese, butter, 1/2+1/2 and green onions

Rib-eye Steak on the grill – seasoned only with salt and pepper (DH is the grill master, so I had nothing to do with the meat)

Blue Cheese Creamy Onion Sauce – Oh man, this is UH-mazing.  You have to try it.  It’s so bad for you, but sooooooo good.

Here’s a few pictures of our delicious dinner.

Before the steak:

With the steak…

I’m still drooling as I write this.  Too bad there aren’t any leftovers except for the potatoes.  THe dinner was delicious and a nice mid-week treat.  We usually cook fancier meals on the weekends when we have more time, but this weekend we have a cookout and a luau, so yesterday seemed to be a nice substitute.  :-)

I just stumbled on a magnificently hilarious website, if you haven’t seen it, you must check out the Cake Wrecks website. It’s hysterical!  You can’t laugh much harder than a playboy bunny cake for a 6 year old, or the “sausage” cake for grilling season, or the distorted looking chicken-pox horse.  Here’s a sampling:

Ah, such romance at work here.  :-)

I laughed so hard looking through some of these train-wreck cakes – made by PROFESSIONALS!  Sad, but true.  Enjoy a good laugh, and head on over.  You won’t be disappointed.

Even better, she has a book!  I’m not sure I would buy it, but I’m sure Romy would enjoy it thoroughly.

Here’s some photos of the amazing baked fudge I made last night.  It was super easy.  Here’s a link to the step by step directions from Pioneer Woman.  We skipped making homemade whipped cream because I didn’t have any, but luckily we had some left over in a can from an ice cream party a while back.

Before the whipped cream…oh man, this stuff was amazing.

With the whipped cream.  I’m gaining weight just looking at it.  Don’t ask how much sugar and butter is in this, you’ll faint.

I had to adapt and make this without my mixer because, well…….

It’s in this pile of boxes.  See it on the bottom left?

Because…

We are…

MOVING!

More to come soon.