A long-time favorite

I've been trying to make new ways to jazz up my grilled cheese sandwiches..... and I think i found one of my new compilations. American cheese, Havarti cheese (If you haven't tried it yet put it on the top of your list!), and some tomato slices (I've already started looking forward to fresh summer tomatoes).

Does anyone have any other ways they serve their grilled cheese gooeyness?

The Perfect, Simplest Spaghetti Sauce

I pulled this recipe from one of my favorite "webcookbooks" Smitten Kitchen and adopted it to my own tastes. This recipe is very easy; it will be even more wonderful in the summer when tomatoes are in season and abundant. This recipe also inspires me to can some whole tomatoes this summer so I can easily whip some up next winter!

(Source)
Onions

Whole Canned Tomatoes

Simmering Sauce

Finished Product
(Yes, I always get whatever I am cooking all over my stove...)

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions
adopted from Smitten Kitchen
Serves about 4 (I would add another half recipe if you have garlic bread that you like to load with sauce!)

Ingredients
24oz of whole peeled tomatoes from a can
1 medium yellow onion
5 tbsp of butter
Pinch of salt
Clove of garlic (minced)
Pinch of Italian seasoning

Put can of tomatoes, butter, onion (half chopped, other half whole) in a medium pot, garlic, and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Turn the oven on to a simmer and let the pot of sauce ingredients simmer slowly for 45mins. Check on it occasionally to stir. When the tomatoes start to soften after about 30mins. squish them on the side of the pot with a wooden spoon to crush. Discard the half onion. I served this over angle hair pasta that I seasoned with the Italian seasoning (you could also sprinkle some into the sauce while it is simmering) with garlic bread! Mmmm...!

Christmas day at our house...

Christmas day is here and our family always likes to take the day slow. We usually sleep in, check to see what kind of surprises Santa left with a big cup of coffee to drag us out of bed. And then we sit around the kitchen and visit, listen to music (currently Tom Petty), and cook, prepare, bake, etc... depending on what we have going on and what we are craving. My dad usually gets that look in his eyes and you know that you are in for a kitchen treat.


This morn we decided to counteract all of that sweet that we had yesterday by chopping up some veggies and made Pico De Gallo! One of my mom and my favorites.

These spicy pickled garlic cloves my dad got for Christmas yesterday, and we thought it would be the perfect new ingredient to include in his Pico De Gallo. OH, and it was.

Avocados. Not necessarily in season, but still great to add to this concoction. Only put avocados in what you are consuming or it will all be brown in a couple of days.

Our final result. Delicious, snack to counteract all of the sweet toothing we did and will be continuing today! YUM!

Back to more eating! I hope everyone is enjoying their Holidays!
Merry Christmas!

Pico De Gallo

equal parts:

Green, Yellow, and Red Peppers

Onion

Jalapeno (quantity depending on how spicy you want it)

Tomatoes

Garlic (we did 8 cloves [our bowl was about 2 gallons])

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