Baby soup

Since it is officially winter (it was -8 when I left for work this morning!) we are eating a lot of soup. Today, I made some for the baby. I used cooked the heck out of some mung beans, added some brown rice and carrots, and voila!

Here are some pictures, before and after the food processor...

I literally just got done making it and putting it in the ice cube trays for freezing, so he hasn't tasted it yet. But I left some aside so we can try it out for dinner. I think it's good myself, or at least would be with the addition of spices, so I think he will be a fan. He doesn't know stuff tastes better with spices yet!

Some new recipes

Last night for dinner I tried out a couple of recipes I found in the isles of Vitamin Cottage. One was for a tuna casserole and the other was for acorn squash, stuffed with rice. We had one winner and one loser.

Loser first: the acorn squash. Now I love me some acorn squash, and I love rice, but this was gross. You roasted the squash halves with honey on them, and on the side, you made rice in chicken broth, and then added lemon zest at the end. The zest tasted pretty bitter, even though I am sure I didn't get pith since I used my trusty microplane grater. Maybe the lemon was just too old? It looked fine, but whatevs. All I know is I won't have this again... however, I may rip off the idea and just figure out a better way to go about it.

And now for the winner! I am not usually a fan of tuna casseroles because hot, canned tuna kind of creeps me out. This was totally good though. You cooked the noodles first, and in a separate pan, sautee green pepper, onions, carrots and peas. Then add cream of mushroom soup, the tuna and the noodles. Mix it all together and put in a casserole dish, and bake it for about a half an hour. Then you mix some breadcrumbs in butter and top the casserole with it, baking for a few more minutes to toast that. The recipe didn't call for it, but my taste buds said salt, so I just sprinkled some on my serving. Although, so did K so I probably should have just added it to the whole dish! It was good, and made a lot. I took some for my lunch today, and still have a bunch left. This is something we will definitely make again.

Ok, Vitamin Cottage- you get a score of 1 each for your recipes this time!

Marshmallows

This year for Christmas, everybody is getting (spoiler alert!) a basket of sweets. I plan on mostly making cookies, but I have a couple of experiments to try as well. I found a recipe for homemade hot chocolate mix, and one for marshmallows. Obviously, I need to try these out before subjecting my friends and family.

The marshmallow experiment turned out pretty well! They were super easy to make. I used shaved chocolate on the top and bottom, instead of the toasted coconut that was called for. And the recipe said to roll the sides in confectioners sugar, which I did, although I won't do that again. I think if I used dust from graham crackers it would've been way better.

The biggest secret to marshmallow making is to use wet hands, and to keep your knife wet. This is the only thing that helps with the stickyness. These treats will be a part of my finished Christmas product!

Turkey

As I mentioned in the last post, I was not in charge of cooking Thanksgiving this year. However, through a happy coincidence, I was given an uncooked turkey for free! Yay! It was mostly thawed by the time I got it, and I wouldn't have had any time to cook it for at least 4 more days. My solution was to butcher it up and freeze it in pieces. I do this often with chicken, just because whole chickens are cheaper. Surprisingly, it was even easier to de-bone the turkey. I think I have already gotten 4 or 5 meals out of it, and still have the drumsticks left. I want to wait until a warmish day so I can pop them on the grill. Grilled turkey drums are the best!

The Salad

Thanksgiving is my favorite meal of the year. It is basically perfect. All of my favorite things, all in one belt-loosening meal. I wanted to cook it this year, last year I even cooked it twice! But, alas, there is a baby in my house this time. And my husband and I can't usually manage to get a regular dinner on the table before 8:00 at night. So we went to my mom's house instead. And I just had to bring two things: mashed potatoes and The Salad. 7 layer salad, to be exact. It is like the equivalent to crack in my family.

I learned how to make it from my mom, but I am not sure where she got it from. I can remember my grandma making it as well, but I think she learned it from my mom too. It wasn't one of those things that was passed down, like say, the family lasagne recipe. It's gotten easier over the years, because you can cheat with things like pre-packaged salad mixes, but overall, its the same old thing.

The 7 layers are: 3 kinds of lettuce, onion, swiss cheese, peas and bacon. The dressing is just mayo (real mayo! I accidentally used miracle whip once and it was a disaster) mixed with a tiny sprinkle of sugar, salt and pepper. You make it in sets of layers in the biggest bowl you can find. And then you let it sit in the fridge for at least a few hours, so everything gets kind of wilty. Writing it down this way makes it seem sort of disgusting, but believe me, my mouth is totally watering just thinking about it!

Breakfast for dinner

There is a lovely thing I like to call breakfast for dinner. Hardly anybody sits down to more than a bowl of cereal or some toast for real breakfast, but there are so many tasty things that are qualified as "breakfast foods". So that leaves dinner.

One of my favorites, and very easy, I might add, is a concoction of eggs, bacon, potatoes, onions and cheese. This mixture is also fantastic stuck in a tortilla with some salsa. But if I have just one hand barely free because a certain baby I know is certain that I need to hold him every second, especially if he senses that I am starving, then a bowl and fork work just as well.

Calzones

Usually friday night is pizza night. But we were looking for something (slightly) different so we decided to give calzones a try. I made the same dough that I always make, but everything else was (slightly) different. After some quick internet searching, we determined that calzones should be cooked at a lower temperature for a longer time than pizza. And we found some hints. For instance, most recipes didn't call for the sauce to be on the inside, and that you should brush the top with olive oil and stab it with a fork .

Tricks in hand, and baby asleep, we got going. I decided to pre-cook onions, mushrooms, garlic and Italian seasoning in olive oil for just a couple of minutes. Then I rolled out my dough, put the cooked mixture, pepperoni, parmesan, feta and mozzarella over half, and folded it up. I decided to use the extra oil from cooking the vegges for the top of the calzone, to add more flavor.

K popped it in the oven, and (slightly) less than 30 minutes later, dinner! For dipping, I just cooked a can of tomato sauce with extra garlic and Italian seasoning until it was warm.

The result was better than we ever imagined! I thought we made pretty mean pizza, but these calzones would kick our pizza's ass!