Hearty Tomato Bisque and the Onion Monster!

Brooke: I love onions. I love onions so much that I could eat them like an apple.
Me: Really? Like an apple?
Brooke: Yeah I really like them. You rememb...
Me: (Interrupting) Prove it.
Brooke: Uh...what?
Me: Prove it.
Don't fret. (onion monster enters the scene...luckily we captured it all on film to show you guys)

(Source) Onion Monster

She shows no mercy.

RAWR!

Muahahaha (Evil cackle after onion defeat)

Shortly after we put the onion out of its misery.

This my friends is a recipe that will stand the tests of time. It is one of the most phenomenal, knock your socks off soup recipe. Words.... wor... they can't even describe this masterpiece.

Tomato Bisque Recipe
adapted from The Food NetworkServes 4-6
Ingredients
1T olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
5T all-purpose flour
5c chicken broth (or veggie broth)
1 (28oz) can whole, peeled tomatoes (with liquid), chopped
3 parsley sprigs (or about 1/2T dry parsley)
3 fresh thyme sprigs (or 1/2T dry thyme)
1bay leaf
1 cup heavy cream
1 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions
1. Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, celery, and garlic and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until soft and fragrant, about 8 minutes. 2. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Pour in the broth and tomatoes and bring to a boil while whisking constantly. Tie the parsley sprigs, thyme, and bay leaf together with a piece of kitchen twine and add to the pot (sprinkle in if using dry ingredients). Lower the heat, place the lid on, and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. For those of you who are impatient like me, fill kitchen sink with ice cube (aprox. 1 tray) and ice cold water to speed up the cooling process. 3.When the soup base is cool, remove and discard the herb bundle. Working in batches (if you need to), transfer the mixture to a blender and puree until smooth. Using a sieve (I used my food mill) over a large bowl, strain the tomato puree. Return the puree to the pot and reheat over medium heat. Whisk the heavy cream and salt into the soup and season with pepper to taste. Divide among warm soup bowls and serve immediately.

Almost all gone!

Morning Inspiration

I am up and feeling way better today then yesterday! I think the Echinacea is finally kicking in! Another cup and I am on the go. I'm going to pick up bread at the New French Bakery for work today at D'lish! It is wonderful there. We have great fall produce, pumpkins, cute gourds, and squash of many shapes and sizes, and so much more!


By the way- the farmer's market and canning last night was a wonderful success! It took much longer than I thought but it was well worth it! Now we can have fresh tomato sauce in the winter! I also made applesauce. I used Haralson, Sweet 16s, and I think the third variety was the Stella. When I took the canning class, Anna told us that it works really great to use a variety of apples when making the apple sauce. This is a great sight to check out for learning more about our apples in Minnesota.



Morning Inspiration







If this doesn't get you in the mood for Autumn and Thanksgiving I don't know what will!









My sister's dog Riley doing dog yoga in the morning. (And the fact that there is actually dog yoga out there! )This should remind us that stretching is good for your soul. (This is not a picture of her actual dog, but it does look really close)



You are never too old to jump in leaves!









Get some of your weekend tasks done today that you put off on the last two days!

Canning 101

With the summer season cooling rapidly, I bet many people are rushing around trying to squeeze in the last little bit of summer's food juices (literally!).


My exciting summer garden adventures are over and the Minneapolis farmers markets are starting to taper.... so its time to start PRESERVING!!! I am lucky because I have always been so close to my grandmas' great cannings that I haven't even given canning much more of a thought. I still get some canning from them, but I have to wait for such a long time in between that I wish I knew more about the underrated art!


My inspiration sparked from work one day (Local D'lish). Ann (the owner) decided to contact one of Minneapolis's well-known healthy living/eating experts Anna Dvorak. This woman is amazing and so inspirational. Check her out here and here! Fantastic artist as well!

The class was great. Ann and her daughter CC, Anna, and I canned all night long! It was very nice because we got to do a lot of hands-on to really learn the tricks and techniques. At the end of the night we walked home with a tasty treat! (A jar of concord grape jelly!) We even used organic sugar!! I'll let you know how my canning goes this weekend!

List of things to can before fall:

Tomatoes (stat!)

Apples (while the pickin' is good!)

Some fruits... (the farmers market will show me what there is now!)

Wish me luck at the Farmers Market this Saturday!!! Depending on how early I want to wake up I will either go to the Midtown Farmers Market or the NE Farmers Market!

Pizza Party

Last night my boyfriend Dan and I made some homemade pizza! Dan usually gets roped into my cooking and baking adventures because he likes to cook and we usually have great success cooking together!

We cheated with the pizza a little because we used Boboli ready-to-bake pizza crust. However, I feel that the sauce made the pizza! I didn't think this was going to be a fantastic feat so I didn't take any pictures unfortunately :( . This picture is similar to the slice of heaven it resembled.

Pizza Sauce Ingredients

2 garlic heads (medium sized), roasted*

1 medium onion, diced small

2T extra virgin olive oil

28 oz. can Italian plum tomatoes or 5 to 6 fresh

Pinch of cayenne pepper

1T sugar

Kosher Salt

10 basil stems, whole (leaves reserved for the topping)



In a deep saucepan, combine sweet onion & oil over low heat until the onions are translucent. Crush tomatoes & drain well. Add to pan with sugar, garlic, & cayenne. Season with salt. Place on medium heat for 15 mins., stir occasionally (we used homegrown tomatoes so they had a lot of water still after draining so we let them simmer longer to evaporate some of it). Add basil stems sans the leaves & cook another 5 to 10 mins. Do not puree. Remove the basil stems, adjust seasoning to your taste, and spread on pizza crust!

After we spread the sauce on we chose to top last nights pizza with pepperoni, Mexican cheese blend (would have preferred moz. but Mexican was what we had on hand); from my garden the basil, banana peppers, and jalapenos!

After the masterpiece was done we popped it in the pre-set 350 degrees oven for about 15 mins. (or until the cheese melts completely and starts to brown on the edges).



*here is a simple garlic roasting how-to that I found very helpful...and fragrant!


Muy Delicioso!

Healthy Pasta!

I was brainstorming today about what to eat; as I usually end up doing in the middle of my mug of coffee or on my bus ride between classes. I often find that I rarely have any time during the week to make a meal meal more than a couple of times. So subtracting out the days for left-overs that usually leaves me with at least 3-5 meals where I don't have a lot of time to prepare an extravagant dish.

Lately I have been finding everything that I can whip up quickly is usually not the healthiest for you.... anything prepacked with an expiration date that is longer than three months from now is probably chalk full of preservatives that are unnatural for our bodies.

Pasta is my favorite go-to dish for a quick meal, so I decided to do some research for everyone and find some pasta dishes that are healthy to for your body and quick to make.
(These pictures are not pictures I have taken. They are pictures from the website that the recipe is located on.)

No Bake Mac&Cheese
from: EatingWell

This recipe contains most of the ingredients you would have on hand. I would advise switching the cheese depending on what you liked. I even kick it up a bit by adding some spices and additional veggies like red peppers and some Sriracha sauce! And for those meat lovers, this dish would be very youthful with some chopped up hot dogs or more fancy with some thinly sliced prosciutto.


Prep time: 20mins
Total time: 25mins
Per serving: 412 Calories; 13 g Fat; 7 g Sat; 1 g Mono; 37 mg Cholesterol; 56 g Carbohydrates; 22 g Protein; 7 g Fiber; 640 mg Sodium; 236 mg Potassium

Athena Pasta Primavera
from: EatingWell

What I like about this recipe is that everything is literally fresh. The recipe is so simple that you could change it depending on what veggies are in season. You could also tailor it to your favorite veggies. It is a very filling dish, but with the nutrients you gain from the veggies and the whole wheat pasta it is a quick and healthy dish to keep handy!


Prep time: 30mins
Total time: 30mins
Per serving: 305 Calories; 6 g Fat; 3 g Sat; 3 g Mono; 13 mg Cholesterol; 51 g Carbohydrates; 10 g Protein; 8 g Fiber; 326 mg Sodium; 236 mg Potassium


Whole-Wheat Pasta with Garlic and Olive Oil
from: MarthaStewart

This is probably the easiest pasta recipe I could find. Once again, like all of the other pasta recipes, this one could be tailored to what you like to have in pasta. Personally if I'm feeling like something a little less sharp I would replace the parsley with basil and I would definitely add some tomatoes. Preferably cherry tomatoes!


Sorry guys, Martha doesn't have the nutritional values nor length of time it would take to make. If I were to guess though:
Prep time: 5mins
Total time: 15mins

Exploring the New French Bakery!

Today I visited the New French Bakery to get some bread! This is where Local D'lish gets all of their fresh bread. They have many great sorts of breads from a cinnamon raisin loaf to baguettes to certified organic rolls! They make new batches daily and have markdowns for their breads that weren't made that same day!
I snagged a baguette and the raisin loaf for myself! A hearty loaf of bread is also on my list of foods to tackle and be really good at making. Leslie greeted me from behind the counter, and Rebecca chimed in on information about their store. The New French Bakery is located on 26th ave and 26th street in south Minneapolis accross the street from a popular hang-out Memory Lanes. Check them out! Also, check their breads out at Local D'lish! Buying local is soo rewarding and SOO fresh!
(The baguette picture was found on the New French Bakery website, and unfortunately I didn't have my camera with to take a picture of the outside so I found that on Google)