Roasted to Perfection

The weather is turning and there is a chill in the air.  This is my favorite time of year.  The season of comfort food! I tried two new recipes this past week; French Dip Sandwiches and Root Vegetable Gratin.

French Dip Sandwiches
What you will need:  rump roast (4-5lbs), a packet of french onion soup, a packet of roast beef seasoning (I think McCormick was the brand I used), 1 can beef broth, hoagie buns, mozzarella slices, onion, green pepper

Place the roast in your slow cooker.  In a bowl mix the broth and seasonings.  Pour over the roast and cook on low for 8 hours.  After the 8 hours, shred the beef and place it back into the slow cooker for another hour.  Before serving sandwiches, saute onion and green pepper slices in olive oil.  Heat your broiler.  Line the hoagie bun with a slice of cheese on one side and the pile of meat and peppers on the other.  Place under the broiler until the cheese is melted.  Serve with a side of juice from the crock pot.

Root Vegetable Gratin
This recipe came from Sandra Lee's Semi Homemade.  I like to watch the Food Network when I'm working out.  It seems to be the only time I get to watch TV and learn new recipes.  I have never tried parsnips so I thought I would try this recipe.  Here is the link for the recipe.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sandra-lee/root-vegetable-au-gratin-recipe/index.html
I changed a few things.  I didn't have thyme so I used a bay leaf in the milk.  I did not use the canola oil, but instead used 3 tbsp of butter.  Otherwise I followed the recipe closely.  I wasn't a big fan of the parsnips.  They have an interesting flavor. The great thing about this recipe is the base you start with. If you read the mac and cheese recipe I posted, the base is exactly the same.  You can use this base for gratin potatoes as well.

Baked Mac and Cheese with Apple Pie Squares

I have to start by apologizing for not being very creative with my blog.  I've viewed dozens of fabulous cooking blogs that have step by step pictures.  They are really fun to look at.  I can't seem to remember to take photos of my food.  When I am cooking, I am cooking.  I am fully immersed in what I'm doing and I just can't seem to remember to stop and take pictures.  Maybe others have a photographer standing over their should?  I don't know.  I will try to take more pictures, after all we do eat with our eyes first and I myself prefer a cookbook that provides pictures of the food over one that has no pictures.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese is simple to make and you can play with the kinds of cheeses you use and the add ins.  I decided to make this a pizza mac and cheese.

What you will need:  3 Anaheim peppers, 1lb pasta, 2 1/2 cups milk, 3 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp flour, 1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese, grated, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated, 1/2 cup pepperoni, diced, fresh basil leaves, chopped, Italian bread crumbs.

First roast your peppers.  A simple way to do this is to turn on the broiler.  Place the peppers on a cookie sheets and broil for 5-8 minutes, turning once.  Remove them from the oven and place in a boil covered tightly with plastic wrap.  Let sit for 20 minutes.  Rinsed under cold water and peel the skin off.  Remove ribs and seeds and slice thinly.

Next, heat 2 1/2 cups of milk in a small sauce pan.  Just keep it on low heat so it warms.  Boil your pasta until it's a little undercooked.  I used whole wheat penne and cooked for 8 minutes.  Meanwhile, heat 3 tbsp of butter in a medium sauce pan until it gets foamy. I added a few onion flakes for flavor.  Whisk in 3 tablespoons of flour, one at the time making sure that the mixture become smooth in between tablespoon additions.  Then add 1/4 cup milk and whisk until smooth. Slowly add all the milk, constantly whisking to make sure it's smooth. Add the cheddar cheese and stir until melted.

Drain your pasta and place in a large bowl.  Pour the cheese sauce over top and add in the Parmesan, peppers, basil, and pepperoni.  Stir together; add salt and pepper to taste.  Transfer to a casserole dish. Top with Italian bread crumbs.  You can buy them seasoned or if you make your own, just add Italian seasoning.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until bubbly hot and bread crumbs are browned.  You can also make this ahead and refrigerate it until you are ready to eat.  I did this and had to bake it a little longer to make sure it was warmed through.

Apple Pie Squares

What you will need: 2 cups sugar, 4 cups diced apples, 1/2 cup oil, 1 tsp salt, 2 eggs, 2 cup flour, 2 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp baking powder





Apples resting with sugar and oil



I start with a good baking apple, something a little tart.  Peel and core the apples and dice them.  Mix the apples, sugar and oil together and let stand for 15 minutes. 



Meanwhile mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. 

 In a separate bowl beat the eggs and vanilla together.

After the apples have sat, stir them and the eggs into the dry mixture. 

It will be very thick and lumpy. Spread the cake batter into a 9x13 pan

or a 9 inch spring form pan.  Bake for 30 minutes if using the 9x13 pan



and 40-50 if using a spring form pan.





Serve with whipped topping





Oatmeal Brownies

I've been making this one for a long time and claim that it's healthy than most brownies because of the oatmeal;)

What you will need: 2 sticks melted margarine, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup white sugar, 1 tsp soda, 1 1/4 cup flour, 3 cups oatmeal.

Mix all together and spread in a greased 9x13 pan.  Sprinkle the top with chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, m&ms, nuts,  whatever you like!  Bake for 20 minutes at 350.

Not a great picture.  It never occurs to me to take
a picture until after things have been eaten!

Cocunut Cream Cheese Cookies? Yes Please!

I found a recipe for cream cheese cookies on the internet.  It looked simple and I just happened to have all the ingredients on hand so I thought I'd try it.

What you will need: 1/2 cup butter (at room temp), 3 oz cream cheese (at room temp), 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1 3/4 cup flour, flaked coconut.

Beat the softened butter and cream cheese together.  Add in the sugar until mixed. Beat in the egg and vanilla.  Then add in the baking powder and flour.  Refrigerator for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Roll the dough into walnut size balls and then roll in flaked coconut. Bake for about 10 minutes, until the coconut is toasted.  The orginal recipe called for rolling the balls in super fine sugar, but I wanted to try crushed walnuts and coconut.  Coconut was the winner!

Whole Grains

I feel like I've been super lazy today even though I took Connor to swim lessons, did two loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen (this is a daily task), and went to the grocery store. Oh, I took the garbage out and cleaned the laundry room and the master bathroom.  *sigh* I guess I did more than I thought.  I was up until midnight last night because my Bible study group met until 11:00.  I guess I'm just tired and sick of the summer heat.

So, it's 4:45pm, the children are at the neighbor's playing and I feel like I should do something, anything!  Well, I guess I'll blog about the latest recipes I've tried.  They both came from Lorna Sass' Whole Grains Everyday, Every way.  I love whole grains.  I'm enjoying learning about them and cooking with them.  Oh, and Lorna has a great website http://lornasass.com/home Check it out!

Barley

So the first recipe was.....Farro Salad with prosciutto and asparagus

This one sounded really yummy and the picture in the book looked great, but I didn't really care for it in the end.  I may have used too much lemon juice, but the dressing was too bitter.  Next time I would add a bit of sugar.  I also used barley for this because it is really hard to find farro in the Midwest.  Cook according to directions.  You'll need about 4 cups.



An ice bath



After washing and cutting the asparagus, steam them in boiling water for about six minutes; until bright green.  Immediately transfer to an ice bath to stop the cooking process.

Mix up your dressing.  I always use a pint jar with a tight fitting lid.  Shake to combine the ingredients.  3 tablespoons olive oil, grated Parmesan, 2-3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice and the zest, 1/2 Dijon mustard, salt and pepper to taste and here is where my taste buds ask for a little sugar.

The finished product

The next recipe was Hominy with shredded chicken and peppers

This one was superb!  I've always been curious about hominy and while I didn't cook it from scratch (I used canned) it was still good.  I didn't take pictures of this one, I'm sorry, but here is what I did.

To prep slice an onion really thin, seed and slice up a green and a red pepper into thin sliced, seed and mince a jalapeno.
Heat olive oil in a pan and toss in the onions and bell peppers.  After they start to soften add in the jalapeno and two cloves of minced garlic.  Cook for about a minute.  Add 2 teaspoons of dried oregano and cumin.  Stir. Add one can of diced tomatoes with the juices and one can of drained and rinsed hominy (yellow or white).  Cook until heated through.  At this point, I added shredded chicken, but sauteed shrimp or sausage would be delish as well.  Whatever you feel like.

That's it!  It was so good:)

Summery Salad and To Good to Be True Dessert

I've become addicted to Pinterest.  It's a cool site (http://pinterest.com/) to find things that interest you. You can 'pin' them and put them into your boards (kind of like online files).  Of course I've been pinning recipes left and right.  Today I made a Martha Stewart dessert and a nice salad for dinner.

Martha Stewart has this recipe on her website so here is the link for you.  They are called Chocolate Coconut Bars. Super easy and delicious!http://www.marthastewart.com/313038/chocolate-coconut-bars#slide_17 


Next up was a nice summery salad.  If you want to make this, remember that the beans need to be marinaded for 6-8 hours to put them in the fridge before bed time.  Here is the link from Kalyn's Kitchen.  http://www.kalynskitchen.com/2006/06/weekend-herb-blogging-35-oregano.html
I did change a few things in the recipe (of course).  I didn't add any extra balsamic vinegar.  I chopped up fresh basil as I have it growing on my deck right now.  Instead of feta, I threw in some mozzarella balls that I had soaking in oregano basil infused olive oil.

Served over a quinoa cake.

Here is the recipe for the quinoa cakes.  I think they lacked flavor and will work on them in the future. They did work well with the cucumber tomato salad.  http://www.handletheheat.com/2011/06/quinoa-cakes.html
Enjoy!  And don't forget to check out Pinterest:)

Black Bean, Edamame and Wheat Berry Salad

Lately I've been interested in trying new grains.  The latest one I've picked up at the store is wheat berries.  Here's a little information for you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatberry  I have also started cooking my own beans instead of buying them canned.  You will save money if you buy them dry and after being cooked, they will keep for up to six months in the freezer.  Plus, I have the time to soak and simmer them all day so why not!?

What you will need: 4 cups water, 1/2 cup dry wheat berries, 1/2 cup of dry black beans or 1/2 can of black beans, 1 cup frozen edamame (cooked and shelled), 4 tbsp salsa, a drizzle oil olive, salt and pepper to taste.

Combine the water and wheat berries in a 3 qt sauce pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and cover. Allow to simmer for 55 minutes or until the wheat berries are tender. Cook the black beans if using dry.  I soaked mine for 6 hours and then simmered for about 90 minutes.  Strain the wheat berries under cold water. Drain the beans from their juices as well. Combine the wheat berries with the remaining ingredients.

Instead of salsa, you can add a chopped tomato, red onion, and add a couple tablespoons of red wine vinegar.