I'm a straight forward kind of girl and I like my food to be straightforward too. I don't want to eat cauliflower that's mascarading as potatoes.🥔 I'm not interested in snacking on crispy bits of kale, passing themselves off as chips. 🥬And I certainly don't want to eat squash under a false "pasta" pretense. 🍝 Don't get me wrong - I actually like cauliflower, kale AND squash - I just want my vegetables to be vegetables and my carbs to be carbs. Can we all just stop pretending that vegetables are other things? I don't care how you slice them or what you add to them - beets still tastes like beets. 😅 When I was first introduced to spaghetti squash, I was fooled by its clever name. I wanted to treat the long tender vegetable strands just like their wheat based counterparts. I put it in a bowl and covered it with pasta sauce and served it to my poor unsuspecting family. 🤣 The taste is fine, the problem comes when your brain tries to reconcile the difference between the spaghetti like dish that you see and the vegetable that you taste. Once I learned to treat my spaghetti squash like the vegetable that it is and not a carb, we got along much better. Southwest Spaghetti Squash and Spaghetti Squash Scampi are some of our favorite ways to eat the delectable gourd. Today, I'm adding Spaghetti Squash with Lemon Cream Sauce to our repertoire. If you're a fan of squash - you will love this. Spaghetti Squash with Lemon Cream Sauce 1 spaghetti squash, halved crosswise 3 Tablespoons butter 6 fresh thyme sprigs 1/4 cup fresh sage (or 1 teaspoon dried sage) 2 Tablespoon pumpkin seeds 1 clove garlic, minced 1 cup half and half (or heavy cream) 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon lemon zest + 2 Tablespoons lemon juice Parmesan cheese
Sprinkle with thyme and reserved seeds and sage. Serve with cheese.
I got so excited about this squash that I totally forgot to add the cheese. Oh well. It was delicious - even without it. For me, this is a main course but you could serve it as a side dish as well. Ciao!
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I've never been so thankful for self checkout lines at the grocery store than I was yesterday. Let's just say that there was an unbelievable sale on my favorite brand of flour soooo... I bought the entire display. 😬😅 This isn't my first flour hoarding episode so I knew full well the incriminating stares and judgmental comments that I was inevitably going to face from the cashier - not to mention the other shoppers that are clearly shocked and somewhat offended by a grocery cart overflowing exclusively with bags of flour. 🤣 Hello self checkout. No accusatory stares or snide comments - AND I saved $5.00 a bag! It was totally worth buying my weight in flour. 😂 So what's a girl to do with all this flour? Bake bread of course. 🥖I'm generally a yeast bread kind of girl but I've had this recipe for Orange Cranberry Soda Bread in by blog cue for a while and what better time to give it a try right now while I'm armed with a surplus of flour? Soda Bread is a quick bread that doesn't require any yeast so all of you who have yeast-phobia - this is the recipe for you. All of its leavening comes from baking soda which means there's no fussy rising to deal with. It’s dense, but still soft at the same time. And it has the most delicious crispy, crusty exterior that you'll ever taste. Orange Cranberry Soda Bread 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries 1 Tablespoon orange zest 2 Tablespoons orange juice 1 3/4 cup buttermilk 2 1/2 cups flour 3/4 cup whole wheat flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 4 ounces white chocolate, cut into 1/2" chunks
Bake 35-40 minutes at 400. Cool 1 hour before baking. Cranberry Orange Soda bread. 👍🏻
Ciao! Christmas with this crew never disappoints. There is no shortage of jokes, belly laughs or exceptionally competitive family game nights, when we all get together. 🤣 This year we packed all of our family activities into one adventure filled week. We visited a winery, the Toledo Zoo, had a Western theme day, prepared and enjoyed the feast of seven fishes, decorated a Gingerbread barn, built 3 giant jigsaw puzzles, went to the movies, baked cookies and bundled up and took some very cold walks. 🍷🐯🤠🦐🍿🍪❄️ We accomplished a lot in a short amount of time but more importantly, we were all together - at least for part of the time. Christmas 2022 was one for the books but the moment that we got back home, I felt an overwhelming sense of urgency to get the Christmas decorations put away. Who would have guessed that the best way for me to recover after a 12 hour road trip was to stay up until midnight - un-decorating a Christmas tree? 😂 Why is it that the very decorations that I love and adore right up until a holiday, suddenly feel like clutter as soon as that day passes? I'm one of those weird people who actually enjoys un-decorating after the holidays. 🤷🏻♀️ I think it's because the putting away of holiday decorations inevitably leads to the cleaning out of other areas of the house. The closets gets a good clean out, the laundry room gets a once over and the pantry gets an overhaul. My most recent pantry clean out produced some very interesting finds. 😅 I couldn't even remember why I had bought two cans of clams in the first place but there they were - just waiting for me to make them into chowder. I had no choice. Clam Chowder 1 3/4 pounds small white potatoes, cut in half or quarters 2 (6.5 ounce) cans chopped clams 2 cups chopped onion 2 1/2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons pepper 2 (10 ounce) cans whole clams 2 cups half and half 2 Tablespoons butter oyster crackers
Bring to just simmering just around edges of pan. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper and serve with oyster crackers. Stay warm out there friends.
Ciao! I'm not really a "New Year's resolution" kind of girl, but this year I've decided that setting more goals for myself is actually one of my goals for 2022. Does that even make sense? 😅 I've never been shy about using the "I'll start in January" excuse to procrastinate the changing of my bad habits but I've never really taken the opportunity of a new year to clearly define achievable goals for myself either professionally or personally. And before you start thinking crazy thoughts - bungee jumping in Nepal is NOT one the goals I'm adding to my list for 2022. 🤣🏔 Dedicating more time to recipe development is one of my goals for early 2022. Like many of the recipes that I post, I found the inspiration for this Apple Blackberry Betty in my Cook's Country magazine and I tweaked it to make it my own. America's Test Kitchen is the creator of that magazine and they are the master of recipe creation and recording about all the trials along their journey to perfection. This year, try and keep in mind that my goal is to work on creating new and unique recipes and not reach expert level food scientist status. 👩🏻🍳 😬 The more time I spend on recipe development - the more appreciation I have for the people that do it well. A really great recipe doesn't just happen by accident which is exactly why I wanted to share this Apple Blackberry Betty recipe with you. It's amazing and you know that it's been created and tested with extreme care because it's come from America's Test Kitchen. Apple Blackberry Betty 7 slices hearty white sandwich bread 1/2 cup + 1/3 cup brown sugar 3/4 teaspoon salt 6 Tablespoons butter, melted 1 1/2 pounds Golden Delicious apples, peeled and sliced into 1/2" slices 1 pound Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced into 1/2" slices 2 Tablespoons water 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 3/4 cup blackberries, cut in half
Cover with foil. Place pan on baking sheet and bake 60-70 minutes at 375. Remove foil and bake 15 more minutes. Serve with ice cream.
If you're an experienced goal setter - I'd love to hear your tips and strategies. I would love to hear what's worked for you and what your own goals are for 2022. 😌 Ciao! |
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