Breakfast Casserole / Burritoes

You know how I said that for everything I bought, I was going to get rid of something else? Well......that is easier to say than to do. For months I have been looking for a cheap heart shaped ramekin, and I finally found some in Marshalls. Two red ones jumped into my grabby little hands, and then Kevin said I should get the pink ones to have a full set. (They only had 2 of each color left.)

Therefore, we have found room for 4 more things. Being Valentine's Day, I just had to find some things to make in these cute heart dishes.

Amanda makes a hick-hiney breakfast casserole, so it seemed like the perfect yummy breakfast. It was supposed to be justified by my spinning/yoga class this morning, but the class was full when I arrived 10 minutes early. It was only half over by the time I finished my solo workout, and I was tired enough. Who needs an incredibly sexy 50 year old woman teaching me how to work out? Seriously, I am the youngest in the classes I have taken, and by far the most out of shape. These people are incredible!

Start out with cooked hash browns and crumbled bacon.


These hash browns might look like french fries to you. Because they are. That's what we had in the freezer. Once they are cut into serving sized portions, nobody can tell the difference.


Then sprinkle some bacon on top of the fries. Oh, mercy.... What a sight for sore eyes. Since everything so far is cooked, I had to grab handful and chow down.

Then the green peppers get added to the top. Every time I see green peppers I think about Evonne. She told me a story about going on a trip with a friend, and she ate something with green peppers right before the long car ride. She had these horrendous burps, and even though she directed them towards the window, her friend kept commenting on how bad they smelled. So much for a romantic Valentine's meal....

Then add the eggs and cheese. We put it in the fridge overnight and the cheese dried out a bit. Next time I will put the cheese on it right before baking. Amanda's recipe calls for cream of mushroom soup, and I replaced that with a little bit of water. Leave a little bit of room at the top for the eggs to puff up.

When it comes out of the oven and has cooled, cut the pan into burrito sized rectangles and freeze individually. When you are ready to eat a burrito, microwave one rectangle and then put it on a tortilla with some salsa. Don't let anyone watch you eat this; it makes them jealous, especially when they learn that they can't go buy it.

Breakfast Casserole

12 eggs

1 lb bacon, crumbled

1 can cream of mushroom soup (or 1/2 C water)

1 can mushrooms

1 small onion, chopped (or a small handful of dried onions)

1 green pepper, chopped

1 bag hash browns, cooked

2 C grated cheese.

Cook the potatoes and bacon, and crumble the bacon. Put the potatoes in the bottom of a greased pan with the bacon sprinkled on top. Sprinkle with the chopped green peppers. Mix the eggs, onions, and soup or water together and pour over the green peppers. Sprinkle on the cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until knife inserted comes out clean.

Kamikaze Pancakes

Early in our relationship, Kevin introduced me to The Egg and I, a restaurant in Uptown. I opened the menu and fell madly in love and may never recover. There in black and white were the words I had always fantasized about reading: "Kamikaze Pancakes." They are made with buckwheat flour and bananas, blueberries, and walnuts are baked in. Then they are topped with more bananas, blueberries, and walnuts.

One pancake is the size of the plate and leaves you stuffed. Never being much for moderation, I always get two. Come on now - we only go there once or twice a year, and all things should be taken in moderation, including moderation itself.

Since we sometimes need a kamikaze fix in between visits, I modified an oatmeal pancake recipe to include buckwheat. If you use the 1/4 C spoon to make them they will fit nicely in the toaster the next day.

If you don't have any buckwheat or buckwheat flour, go ahead and use rolled oats instead. If you are missing some fruit or nuts just leave it out or substitute a different kind.

Kevin likes to say, "You eat one," while holding a single finger in the air to illustrate just how dense these are. If you like light fluffy pancakes, don't bother making these. They are hearty and filling. (But really I eat more than one at a time. More like 2 on the first serving, 2 for the second serving, and several bites into the second serving I realize that I might explode if I take one more bite.)

Yum. I can hardly wait to dig in.

Is there even a pancake underneath all this topping?

Kamikaze Pancakes

1/2 C whole wheat (or soft wheat) flour
1/2 C rolled oats
1/2 C buckwheat flour (or more rolled oats)
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 T sugar
1/3 C powdered milk
2 eggs
1 C water
2 T oil
1 mashed banana
1/2 C washed blueberries
1/8 C chopped walnuts


Mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet ingredients and beat it a bit with a fork, then mix in the mashed banana. Make a well with the dry ingredients, pour the wet into it and mix until just moistened. Gently fold in the blueberries and walnuts and bake on a hot griddle. Top with more blueberries, banana slices, and walnuts, and also your favorite pancake toppings, such as applesauce or maple syrup.

Penzeys Spices

Kevin is the best husband in the world. I know, I know. You think your husband is the best, but that is simply impossible. You only think it is because you have never been married to Kevin. Let me indulge myself in a little brag session. Please try to contain your intense jealousy; it will eat you up from the inside out if you do not get a handle on it.

The moment I see Kevin when I return from a shopping trip, his face lights up and he asks if I will show him my new treasures. Then, with genuine interest, he discusses each item while I tell him what I like about it and why I chose it.

If Kevin comes shopping with me, which he loves to do, he will wait outside the dressing room with my purse. If I head towards the dressing room without handing my purse to him, he will ask if I would like him to hold it for me. Each time I come out, he will tell me how cute I am in the clothes. If, while he is waiting, someone asks about the purse he is holding, he grins and says that it matches his shoes.

The only time he got embarrassed was when he was shopping alone for lingerie and the price wasn't ringing up. He tried to say he didn't need to buy it, but the clerk insisted it was no problem and ran to check the price. She was gone a long time, leaving him with a pair of sexy women's underwear at the front of a long line of suspicious stares.

This weekend Kevin, the amazing husband extraordinaire, accompanied me to a Penzeys store. We first heard about Penzeys two weeks ago at the symphony. Kara told us that it was a fabulous spice store that sells really good spices in 1/2 cup jars for cheaper than at the grocery store. I had the urge to throw my 5 year old spices in the trash and start fresh with a whole new rack but, alas, my thrifty nature dictates that each used Ziploc bag be used two or three times, and therefore getting rid of a cabinet full of old spices is completely out of the question. Being a cheapskate is a heavy burden.

As I made my final selections, Kevin went through the store and gathered every edition of the complimentary magazine distributed by Penzeys. Then we spent the entire 45 minute ride home enduring sharp hunger pains as I leafed through the recipes [and Kevin glanced over while driving extremely safely], complete with delectable pictures. Each page we turned revealed something more appealing.

Here is a picture of our fabulous new spices in our nifty new spice rack.

And this is a picture of some of the displaced food items that were made refugees by the new spice rack. The middle shelf was 1/2 inch too short to fit a rack, so we took it out and stacked the racks, and are now seriously short on shelf space. Bye, bye old food. We don't know where you will go, but you are no longer welcome here.

White Chicken Chili

We've got beans. Bunches and bunches of them. Right before Christmas we ran out of beans in the freezer. We usually cook up a couple of pounds and freeze them in sandwich sized bags. I went downstairs to the food storage closet and *GASP* there were no more black beans. How could this be? Immediately I called Amanda, my sister-in-law, and told her that I absolutely needed some beans. Would she pick them up from the bean mill for me? I wasn't playing games - I needed 50 pounds of white beans, 50 pounds of red beans, and 100 pounds of black beans. Now we have our year's supply of beans, and now we are in dire need of some recipes to actually use them.

As it turns out, the black beans weren't ready so we still don't have them. It makes me tear up a little. *sniff*

I have been wanting to try a white chicken chili for awhile. We were both leery of it because chili just isn't chili if it doesn't have any chili powder. Alas, we had to leave our preconceived notions behind and take a leap of faith in our bean-using adventure.

This is a simple recipe. Basically, you throw all the spices together, let it simmer, and then throw in the beans and chicken. One bite and we realized that it is really very good. Really really. The cumin, which I usually don't like, gives it a familiar chili flavor, and it is very filling.

Here is the original recipe.

White Chicken Chili

1 small handful food storage onions, or 1 small onion
1 can chopped green chili peppers
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
3 cups chicken broth

2 cooked chicken breasts
3-4 cups cooked white beans (or 3 cans)
1/3 cup shredded white cheese (I used mozzarella)

1/8 cup parmesan cheese

Bring a pot of water to a boil and throw in the frozen chicken breasts. You do not need to thaw them first. Let them boil for a few minutes, until they are white all the way through. Then chop them into bite sized cubes.

If you are using a fresh onion, saute it in a little oil. Otherwise, put the food storage onions, green chilies, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and chicken broth in a soup pot and let it boil a few minutes. Throw in the beans, chicken, and cheese and stir it up. Heat everything thoroughly then take it off the burner. Alternately, you can add cheese to just your own bowl.

Poppyseed Cookies

These tiny sandwich cookies are my absolute favorite. They take forever but are so completely charming that one look (or bite) melts all the frustration you had while you were rolling out and cutting a billion little 1 1/2 in cookies.

I brought these to work on my birthday this year, and everyone still talks about them. They are sprinkled with sugar and salt. Nobody expected the salt, so they were thrown off and they didn't like the distinct taste. Of course, I reached out and tenderly told them that the cookies do require a sophisticated taste and some people just aren't refined enough to enjoy such an adult pleasure. Needless to say, "Megan's Cookies" carries mixed connotations.

If you are looking for flaky salt, Trader Joe's is a great source. Or, you can just use fine grained sea salt.


It is easier to sprinkle the sugar if you use a mini strainer.

When you are rolling them out, it is easiest to do it between two pieces of saran wrap. The dough stuck to the counter, and it also stuck to the silicone baking sheet. And I hollered in frustration. Keep it simple and just stick to the plastic wrap.


This time, I made half of the cookies with sugar and salt on top, and half with just sugar. The ones that have flaky salt on them are the ones I sandwiched with chocolate. Yum-O-Licious. Here the fabulous, golden brown cookies. Oh, dear. I think I may have died and gone to heaven. I really didn't expect to get here.....now I don't know what to do with myself.

The ones with just sugar are just going to stay as they are. Mostly because when I was rolling out the cookies I looked at the clock and cried to see it was taking so long for so few cookies. Then I cried again when I was finished sandwiching the salty ones because then there were only half as many cookies. It was too much to bear, and this way they look more plentiful

This is my favorite one. Where is my heart? Oh yeah - Kevin has it.

Grapefruit Extravaganza

Every year Grandma Neves has sent us a box of 9 grapefruit and 12 oranges. They are wonderful, but it is a lot of fruit for 2 people to enjoy. This year she pre-ordered the fruit so that all her kids and grand kids had them this one last Christmas. At her funeral, Aunt Louise mentioned that she had made sure that she got them ordered, so this year, more than any other, I want to be sure to savor every piece of fruit.

The oranges are easy to eat but it can be hard to enjoy a grapefruit every day for almost 2 weeks straight. There aren't a plethora of recipes for grapefruit, but I am doing my best to scrounge up at least a couple. If you have been lurking around this blog and have a recipe that you use, be sure to post it in a comment!

The one I tried today is served warm with honey and cinnamon. It is amazingly easy - hardly any extra work from just eating it with a spoon. The honey mellows out the tartness and broiling it makes it extra juicy.

Broiled Grapefruit
1 grapefruit
1 t honey (or more)
sprinkle cinnamon

Cut the grapefruit in half. If you are feeling especially energetic, cut the sections so it will be easier to eat later. Drizzle the honey onto each half, and sprinkle each half with cinnamon. Broil for 4-5 minutes until top is bubbly. Watch out for grapefruit juice shooting into your eye!

Pumpkin Dip

This pumpkin dip was the hit of the company holiday potluck. At least that's what I tell myself. Three women and two guys asked me about it. They talked about how much they like pumpkin (of course) and how wonderful this dip is. I smiled and reveled in my glory, sprinkling my tidbits of pumpkin lovin' comments through the conversation.

Thie dip bowl absolutely must be labeled during a potluck. Otherwise some people will think it is bean dip and that would be a disaster. Just imagine a salty chip dipped in sweet pumpkin.

You know that handy little trick where you dip apple slices in lemon water and they don't turn brown? Yuck-O-Rama. Don't bother doing that. If you wanted to eat something that tasted like a lemon, you'd just go get a lemon. Apples should never be defiled by the vile taste of lemon. Brown apple slices are far superior to white lemon-apples. And if you're really concerned about it, just serve it with ginger snaps instead of cut up apples.

Pumpkin Dip
8 ounces softened cream cheese
1 1/2 C powdered sugar
1 can pumpkin
1 T pumpkin pie spice
1/4 t ginger
dash nutmeg
Blend everything with a hand blender until it is smooth and creamy. Refrain from eating the whole bowl immediately with a spoon. It will be hard to show that much restraint.

Enjoy with apple slices, ginger snaps, nilla wafers, or graham crackers.

Turkey Noodle Soup

What do you do with the leftover turkey? Make soup, of course!

Sometimes noodle recipes call for salt, but I don't like to knead noodle dough with salt because it cuts into my hands. Salt the water instead. Also, the standard is to use 1 egg for each person, but I think that is too much. 1/2 egg is more like it. It really isn't an exact science - you can have wildly different ratios of eggs to flour and they will still be perfect.

The noodle sheet should be smooth and elastic - but it doesn't have to be perfectly square.

When the noodles come out, just put them on a dowel and let 'em hang while you finish the rest of the noodles.

Here they are - hanging around and waiting for you to use them. The best thing about fresh noodles is how tender and fluffy they are.

Turkey Noodle Soup

2 carrots, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

3 T food storage onions

1-2 C turkey

2 T chicken broth

sea salt

noodles made from 2 eggs

Cover the turkey carcass in water and boil a couple of hours. Strain and put everything except the noodles into the turkey water and cook on low. Make the noodles while the veges cook. Turn up the heat and let it come to a boil right before you finish the noodles. Add the noodles and boil 3-5 minutes until they are tender.

Noodles

2 eggs

2 T water

2-3 C whole wheat pastry flour, whole wheat flour, or all purpose flour

Beat the eggs lightly with the water and mix with 1-2 cups of flour. Knead lightly, adding more flour until it creates a firm ball. Press it into a flat disk and run it through the noodle maker. Keep folding the noodle sheet and running it through, creating thinner sheets until it is smooth and elastic and fairly thin. I usually stop at setting #4. Then run it through the fat noodle cutter. If you don't have a noodle maker, come to my house and make them, or roll out the dough and cut it into 1/4 inch strips with a butter knife.

Turkey - It Ain't Like Momma Made It

Kevin made everything except the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving this year. He's really great like that. About 3 hours before dinner I was sitting around, pouring through the ads when I started thinking that we should eat Thanksgiving dinner so we would have to start to preparing the food. I asked Kevin what he wanted me to do.

He answered, "I am making the turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, and cranberry sauce. You can make anything else that you want to have." WOW! Just one more reminder of why I married him. Why did he marry me? I have no idea, but now he is trapped and I am the luckiest girl ever.

He found a recipe for turkey online and wanted to see if it was better than how he usually makes it. It turned out very moist and delicious - even the white meat leftovers. After we ate he mentioned that he always just cooked it like his mom - but now he knows that he can branch out and find what he likes best.

Honestly, I was a little leery of the recipe. I come from the strict religion of "Don't Cook Oil Above its' Smoking Point." But it turned out really, really, incredibly really good.

Even Harper got to chew on a bone for awhile.


And then he scoured the ads to find all the good deals and took a nap in front of the heater.

Turkey the "Too Good to Believe" Kevin Way

Thaw turkey completely and remove all gross little pouches and innards from the cavity. Rinse it off and completely towel dry the inside. Put it on a rack inside your roaster. Lightly coat the outside of the bird with olive oil and then sprinkle sea salt over the outside and rub in lightly. Use about twice as much sea salt in the cavity and rub that in. (Don't oil the cavity.)

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Cook bird for 15 minutes (it will smoke because it is above the smoking point for olive oil) then reduce heat to 350 and cook for 1 hour. Reduce heat to 325 and cook for 1 more hour. Check the temperature of the bird. It must be 165 degrees or greater; check in the thigh close to the body. If it isn't done reduce heat to 300 and check every 15 minutes until it is done. If the bird gets too dark at any time during the cooking process, cover it with tin foil and continue cooking.

Sweet Potato Fries (or Steak Fries) and Pumpkin Parfaits

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I was worried that I missed the chance to try some pumpkin recipes. So I asked Kevin if it pumpkin season was over. He told me it was OK to eat pumpkin any time of the year. Even on Valentine's day. And I listened to him for a couple of reasons.

1) He is extra smart and I like to listen to everything he says.

2) He gave me the answer I wanted to hear.

So we are going to keep eating "fall" foods until either Kevin demands that we give them up until next year, or else I get tired of them.

If you don't like sweet potatoes go ahead and use regular potatoes. Nobody will think any less of you for it. It is fun to leave the skin on and cut them into wedges. Kevin tried these fries two times, just to see if he would like them better the second time. Both times he gagged and made a face similar to if he just found a giant cockroach in his sandwich. I like them with shredded cheese melted on top or else dipped in ranch.

Sweet Potato Fries or Steak Fries

4 large potatoes

2 T oil

1 t paprika

1/2 t cumin

1 t salt

1/2 t pepper

Mix the oil and seasonings in a large bowl. Cut the potatoes in quarters and then lengthwise again. If you are using sweet potatoes, I like to cut them a little bit smaller.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Broil for another minute or two to make the fries a little crispier.

Pumpkin Pie or Parfait

1 can pumpkin

1 1/2 C milk (any kind - I used skim)

2 eggs

1/2 C maple syrup (or granulated sugar)

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t salt

1/2 t ginger

1/4 t cloves

Mix everything together and either pour into a pie shell or into a baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until somewhat firm. This is not as thick as most pumpkin pies since it uses milk instead of evaporated milk.

If you are making a parfait, let the pumpkin mixture cool, blend it with a hand blender, then layer whipped cream with the pumpkin in an ice cream glass.

Bean and Ham and Bean Soup

A ham bone had been sitting in the fridge for a few days, and I had promised that I would use it, and demanded that I absolutely did not want it thrown out. So I finally decided that I would have to make good on my promise and make some soup. It was about 9 PM when I started.

Drat! We were out of white beans. Oh, wait! There was one bag hiding at the bottom of the bean pile in the freezer. It was 2 pounds, and the recipe I had called for just 1 pound, but I used the whole thing anyways. After all, soup is very tolerant to tweaking.

Then I brought the beans to a boil, rinsed them off, and threw everything into a crock pot. At noon the next day Kevin emailed, "This has got to be the best Bean and Ham soup I have ever had. Got to go get more... Bye!" I smiled when I read it. He's the best. And he was right - it was "bean and ham" and not "ham and bean." There were a whole lot more beans than ham. It's healthier that way.

If you have a bunch of friends, it would be great to invite them over for this. The soup is good and all, but ham and bean soup just isn't something you eat as leftovers for days on end. Or, if you ARE the kind of person to do that, nobody else probably wants to be around you much. And they probably call you "Stinky Stinker" behind your back.

Ham and Bean Soup in the Crock Pot
8 C water
1-2 pounds white beans, sorted and rinsed
1 T lemon juice
1 T honey - optional
1 bay leaf
1 handful of food storage onions (or 1 onion chopped)
1 ham bone with a bit of meat on it
1-2 C chopped cooked ham

Rinse and sort the beans, then throw them in a pot with a teaspoon of baking soda. Bring it to a boil, then rinse the beans. Then rinse them again. Get 'em good and extra rinsed. Then add everything to the crock pot and let it cook on low either overnight or all day, up to 12 hours. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

Sweet Potato and Chocolate Pumpkin Pie With Marla

Marla is fabulous. She is easy going, and she doesn't care if we cook all evening only to have the food end up yucky. She would just feed me a Fiber One Pop Tart (with a reminder on why you should eat them in moderation) and call it a successful evening.

For this particular get together, she had found a recipe for Sweet Potato Pie. The same blog contained a recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Pie. So off we went on our adventure, with the firm desire to produce something edible at the end of the night.

Here is Marla with her apron, looking particularly stunning. I have no idea how she kisses, but she is a fantastic cook, so ya better watch out if you are trying to take her on a date. She's a fire cracker. Really, I have no idea what that means, it just sounds wild and crazy.

The pies are finally in the oven.

Where they cooked and cooked and cooked, until Marla couldn't wait any longer. She left for her church meeting, and I stayed at her house until they were done. Then until I was finished taking pictures and eating my pieces. All alone in her house. With nobody to supervise me. And then.......well, nevermind. I won't talk about that here.

Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 - 15-oz. can pumpkin puree (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon (or pumpkin pie spice)

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 cup milk (low fat is fine)

1 pie crust (graham cracker or pastry)
In a large bowl, beat eggs with a whisk until slightly foamy, about 1 minute. Whisk in all the remaining ingredients, except the milk, and beat until smooth. Then gently whisk in the milk. Pour the pumpkin pie filling into the crust and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, until pumpkin filling is set.Cool completely in the pan before slicing and serving.

Sweet Potato Pie

cup cooked, pureed sweet potato

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 large eggs

2 tbsp all purpose flour

1 graham cracker pie crust
Preheat oven to 350F. Press sweet potato puree through a wire strainer to make it as smooth as possible, adding a tablespoon or two of water if you are working with leftover potatoes to make them a bit more pliable.In the bowl of a food processor, combine all ingredients except the flour, and whiz until smooth. Add in flour and pulse the food processor a few times until it is fully incorporated.Pour filling into pie crust. Place the pie crust on a baking sheet and place baking sheet on the middle rack of a preheated oven. Bake for 50-55 minutes, until pie is set and jiggles only very slightly when the pan is bumped.

Banananana Muffins

The goal for today was to make something with pastry flour. Jeffrey was kind enough to give me a whole lotta' soft wheat (which becomes whole wheat pastry flour when ground) a couple of weeks ago, and I have been studiously putting off making anything with it.

BUT NO MORE.

Looking back at the original recipe, I made some pretty wild deviations. Here is the original. These muffins are incredibly moist, especially when you consider that there is no butter or oil. Feel free to cut back on the sugar a bit, and you don't need quite so much baking powder.

If you don't have any soft wheat or whole wheat pastry flour, go ahead and use regular whole wheat flour. Or, if Armageddon is upon us, use white flour. (Just don't tell me about it.)

Grandma Grabbert put a poem into the Burlington cookbook about following the recipe:

I didn't have potatoes, so I substituted rice.

I didn't have paprika, so I used another spice.

I didn't have tomato sauce, so I used tomato paste.

A whole can, not half; I don't believe in waste.

My friend gave me this recipe, she said you couldn't beat it.
There must have been SOMETHING wrong with it, I couldn't eat it.

So there ya have it. Not all substitutions turn out as good as these muffins. Usually (I swear it's true) I try the recipe exactly as it is the first time, so I don't end up writing off too many recipes because of my wild ideas on how to improve them before I even make it one time. But, seriously, the original recipe had an ingredient list 4 pages long. I wasn't going to embark on such a crazy adventure. So I shortened it by combining similar ingredients.

Banana Muffins

1 1/4 C whole wheat pastry flour

1 C rolled oats

1 T baking powder

1/2 t salt

3/4 C yogurt

1/4 C applesauce

1/2 C maple syrup

1 egg

1 t vanilla

2 large bananas, mashed

1/4 C chopped pecans

Mix dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl. Mix wet ingredients together in a small bowl. Make a well with the dry ingredients and pour the wet bowl into it. Fold until barely combined and spoon into muffin cups. Sprinkle with chopped pecans. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

Phenomenal Lentil Soup

Did I just say LENTIL soup is yummy? It absolutely is. It freezes well, keeps quite a while in the fridge, and has a savory heartiness that satisfies your hunger.

In fact, I brought some to work and Kevin S. ate some and said:

"You're the best, this stuff is phenomenal!" (that's where the title of the post comes from)
to which I replied, "And who'd a thunk that it was super healthy, too!"
He responded, "No kidding, I still don't believe that."

So there you have it. A meatatarian has pronounced lentil soup as good enough to eat. Just so there is no confusion, my husband Kevin did not say that. He won't touch this stuff. Kevin S. is a coworker. But Kevin my husband is missing out on oh-so-much delight, waiting to happen right in his mouth.

When you are making this, the saffron yogurt is really worth the effort of finding some saffron. If you make it in advance, the yogurt will take on more color and turn a rich yellowish orange. Get Spanish saffron but not Mexican saffron. I don't know what the difference is, but the Soup Peddler said it, so it must be true. In the cities, go to Trader Joe's for super cheap saffron.

Here is the pot of soup right before I added the kale.

And here it is when it is finished and screaming to be scooped into your bowl and eaten just as quickly as possible.

Lentil Soup

2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed

1 handful dried food storage onions (or saute 1 chopped onion)

1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes

2 cups water

2 T beef bouillon

3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped

Saffron Yogurt

pinch of saffron (30-40 threads)

1 tablespoon boiling water

two pinches of salt

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Bring 6 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan, add the lentils, and cook for about 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.

While the lentils are cooking (or the night before if you think about it), make the saffron yogurt by combining the saffron threads and boiling water in a tiny cup. Let the saffron steep for a few minutes. Now stir the saffron along with the liquid into the yogurt. Mix in the salt and set aside.

In a heavy soup pot over medium heat, add the onions, salt, tomatoes, lentils, and water and cook for a few minutes, letting the soup come to a simmer. Stir in the chopped greens, and wait another minute. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Ladle into bowls, and serve with a handful of shredded cheese and a dollop of the saffron yogurt.

The Spell Has Been Broken

Aren't these mini pumpkin pies darling? They are absolutely adorable, but deceiving. They are gross. For the past couple of months I have been drooling over everything at 101cookbooks.com. She is a marvelous cook and everything I have tried is extra yummy. Until now. The pie filling is a deviation from the standard pumpkin pie. It uses coconut milk and hazelnuts. Sound great, right? Nope. Maybe she doesn't have the exact same taste as me, after all. The spell her website had over me has been broken. I will now broaden my recipe horizons.

Actually, it could have been the new silicone mini muffin pan. Has anyone else used silicone and had a disgustingly gross taste bake into your food? Can you get rid of it? Yuck-O-Rama

Anyways, it is back to the standard pumpkin pie recipe for me. Good old evaporated milk.

Pumpkin-Licious

It all started with one giant pumpkin. There is no picture to document the existence of this beast. But here is HALF of the flesh, roasted and cubed. Doesn't it look just like a giant bowl of cantaloupe? It doesn't taste like it. Trust me - I tried it.After I bought the giant pumpkin, I read that you should use a sugar pie pumpkin if you are planning to make pie. So I went back to the store and bought a sugar pie pumpkin. Then I saw an organic one. Does the organic produce really taste better? I thought I had better try it out, so here they are: the organic is less than half the size of the regular one, and it cost slightly more. Needless to say, we've got a lot of pumpkin. So far we have had pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin dip, and now pumpkin pie. All pumpkin recipes are yummy.

And here are, cut in half, spritzed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. The seeds are also getting roasted at the same time.

After all the work cutting and roasting the big pumpkin, I simply didn't have the energy to actually make a pie. So I put everything in the fridge. Then I saw Jeffrey and he told me that I needed to strain the pumpkin before using it, or else it will be too wet and will ruin the recipe. Thankfully, he caught me in time, and I rushed home to strain it in a cheesecloth.

It is amazing how 1 pumpkin produces less than 2 cups of roasted pumpkin puree. Straining reduced the puree by half.
The pie is great. I was too leery of spending a lot of time on cute little pie-lets, so I opted for one big pie the second time. It isn't as cute, but it is a lot less work. And many fewer tears will be shed it it doesn't taste good.

Now that we made a pie from scratch, next time I will buy the pumpkin puree in a can and be done with it. That one step will take the pie from an all afternoon event into a 1/2 hour breeze. And it will be just as good. It you are looking for something fun to do with your family, making a pie from an actual pumpkin might be a fun family activity.

Pumpkin Pie Recipe

1 pie crust
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 eggs
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin (or 2 cups if roasting the pumpkin yourself)
1 (12 fluid ounce) can Evaporated Milk

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Combine sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves in small bowl. Beat eggs lightly in large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk. Pour into pie shell.
Bake for 50to 60 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Dive in and eat it all before anyone else tries to come and try it.

Sugarless Coconut Cookies

These wonderful coconut cookies are just what the doctor ordered. They are sweetened with bananas, sweetened coconut and chocolate. Yum-o.


First, mash up 3 bananas. I felt really clever when I thought of the potato ricer, thinking it would create perfectly mashed bananas. It turned into a gloppy mess, but the bananas got mashed.


A cookie scoop makes life a lot better. If you don't have a cookie scoop, go out right now and get one. They are fabulous. With a cookie scoop you can make cookies three times as fast, you don't have to put your grubby hands on the cookie, and you can gain even more weight (easy cookies get made much more frequently, and therefore, you eat many, many more cookies.) But this is about why you should get a cookie scoop, so forget that last thing.

Smash them down a bit - these guys don't flatten at all in the oven. Then realize that I forgot to put in the chocolate chips. *GASP* That will never do. Put everything back in the bowl and throw in some chocolate chips.

Ahhh...that's better. A tray of perfectly flattened cookies ready for the oven.

And here they are - all packed up and ready to be delivered. Will you be my friend if I bring you cookies once in a while?

This adorable box is from Sweet Celebrations. I went to get some dipping chocolate, only to be affronted by a "Going Out Of Business" sign on the front door. Sheesh. They were out of chocolate, but I got a bunch of cookie cutters, goodie boxes, and cupcake liners.


Coconut Cookie Recipe:

3 large ripe bananas, well mashed
1 t vanilla
1/4 C coconut oil - barely warm so it isn't solid
2 C rolled oats
1/2 C flax meal - or almond meal (ground up almonds)
1/3 C coconut
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder
6 ounces chocolate chips (1/2 a bag)

Mix it all together and bake at 350 for 13 minutes, until they start to get golden brown.