Yummies

Hey, just felt like sharing a recipe for one of my favorite fall foods: roasted butternut squash soup. It's like, so good.

It's dairy-free but still so creamy somehow, and you can make it vegetarian by substituting vegetable stock for the chicken stock.

I like to make a lot, either to share with people or to freeze some for later. So this serves about 5-8 people. Also, it tastes so much better if you can use all organic ingredients (stock and veggies are pretty cheap).

Ingredients:

2 medium-large butternut squashes

2 quarts/cartons chicken stock (homemade or store-bought is fine).

2 stalks of celery

1 large onion

1 large carrot

3 shallots

2 apples

olive oil

cayenne pepper (or chile powder is fine too)

curry powder

allspice

cinnamon

rosemary

salt and pepper

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Peel and chop squash into 1-inch chunks, scraping out all seeds from the middle (this is a pain in the ass). Arrange in a large baking dish with shallots (peeled and chopped in half) and sprigs of rosemary (dried rosemary is fine too). Season generously with salt and pepper, and drizzle a little olive oil over the whole thing. Roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until squash is tender.

Chop the onion, peel and chop the apple, carrot, and celery (you don't want celery strings in your soup). Heat a large stock pot over medium-low with a little oil or butter (I like to use butter for this, you just need a little). Once the pot is hot, pour in the onion, carrot, celery, and apple. Season generously with salt and pepper. Cook them all together for 10-15 minutes until the veggies are soft and translucent. You don't want to brown them or caramelize them, so make sure the heat isn't too high. At this point, pour in the roasted squash and shallots, and then pour in enough stock to cover everything. Add in a healthy dash of cayenne, a tiny dash of curry, a regular dash of allspice, and a regular dash of cinnamon. It's very technical so get it right. Bring soup to a boil and then lower heat. Simmer for 5 minutes. At this point, you must blend the soup. If you have an immersion blender it is so much easier, but it can be done in a regular blender. Just add the soup in small quantities, and go REALLY slow. Once blended, if the soup is too thick, you can add a little stock to thin it out. You want it to be thick, but not like baby food. Taste for seasoning, and add whatever is missing. And then, voila! Soup du jour!

Serve with a little dollop of sour cream or yogurt, or toasted nuts if you're fancy. Crusty bread is a must!

There you go loves!

Tuna Yogurt Tomato Sandwich

This sandwich is BOSS. It is my brain child. :)

Ingredients

• 2 slices multigrain bread
• 1 can tuna
• 6 cherry or grape tomatoes
• meunster, provalone, or cheddar cheese
• plain greek yogurt
• mayonnaise
• dill
• pepper
• a handful of mixed greens
• IF I had them....I would add cucumbers too.

Directions

1. Open, drain, and prepare the tuna as you normally would -- i mix in just enough mayo to coat it (no sogginess!) The yogurt will add creaminess later.
2. Chop up the tomatoes, and add them to the tuna with a generous amount of black pepper and dill.
3. Slice up your cheese and lay it on a slice of bread.
4. Add the tuna in a layer.
5. Add a layer of mixed greens
6. On the other slice, spread some plain greek yogurt, generously.
7. Put it together and slice it in halves or triangles :)

eggs in lisa's life

For those out there who don't know, I used to hate eggs.

I mean, I used to HATE EGGS!

Eggs made me gag and my mother made me eat them and it made me really dislike Sunday mornings; we had eggs on Sunday mornings before going to church.

Now, I could tolerate a scrambled egg. Fried eggs of any kind made my Sunday morning breakfast jump into my napkin and down the toilet. (See my eggs really didn't like me either). Hard boiled eggs were the absolute worst. It is no wonder deviled eggs come from these. They are definitely born in hell. My throat began to close up even at the mention of a hard boiled egg and the smell made me run across the border into Canada. (Fact: There are no hard boiled eggs in Canada).

Things change, people grow up, eggs become more friendly. I began to start enjoying scrambled eggs and would order them on the rare occasion we went out for breakfast. I would even partake in the scrambled eggs at the DC.

Now most of the time I wouldn't condone this kind of behavior, but in college there are those far and in between nights when the alcohol comes out. On one of these occasions in junior year, whilst living with some of the most glamorous people on Stanley Street, one of my housemates decided to whip up a late night fried egg, oe. (That means over easy). Damn! Did that egg look and smell fantastic! I couldn't just watch as Nina ate her egg alone. I would have to eat one for myself. And guess what? I enjoyed it. And it wasn't just the slight inebriation because I continued to cook and eat an oe egg on top of a slice of toast as a breakfast staple a good three or four mornings out the week.

I will put that same oe egg on top of a bowl of oatmeal, grits, rice and beans, in a sandwich or burger, and more. Oh the delights of the incredible edible egg!

The hard boiled however, has been a harder egg to crack. But today might have marked the day that Lisa came to terms with her last egg demon. While reading Rebecca Currie's food blog, I came across a recipe for egg salad. While quite common and served at numerous functions, egg salad has always been another egg "no-zone" as they are made from hard boiled. Reading this post, the thought came that I may be ready for the final leg in this journey; that now is the time to accept hard boiled eggs as a part of my life. Here is the post:

"I made this for the first time maybe a year ago when I was really hungry one afternoon and everything I thought of making was missing some key ingredient. After running through a dozen potential options in my head, all of which weren’t going to work for one reason or another, I was left with eggs as the only possibility. Scrambled eggs didn’t sound good or fried eggs either, I didn’t want breakfast, and then I realized I had mayonnaise and I could make egg salad.

Egg salad! Brilliant!

And it was fabulous. And then it was vastly improved the next time when I had it on an everything bagel.

So my new favorite thing is egg salad on an everything bagel.

And it seems sort of silly to give a recipe for this — like telling people how to pour a glass of milk — but I’m going to anyway, because it won’t hurt and it’s the first recipe I’ve put up in a really long time. You gotta to start somewhere.

My New Favorite Thing Egg Salad

[I think everyone knows how to make hard-boiled eggs but just in case ... place eggs in a single layer in a pot and cover with cold water. Cover the pot. Put over high heat and bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and let simmer for 15 minutes. Remove eggs and chill.]

Makes 1 large or 2 small servings

2 hard-boiled eggs
1 Tablespoon mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon mustard
salt
pepper
paprika

Remove shell from eggs. Slice eggs crosswise, then chop. Put the chopped egg into a small bowl and add mayonnaise and mustard. Stir to mix. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and paprika.

I use yellow mustard, cause I’m a yellow mustard kind of person, but I think whatever kind of mustard you like and/or have around should work.

Serve on bread or crackers or a tortilla or a bagel. If it’s your lucky day, you’ll have an everything bagel in your house and you’ll get to eat it on that.

Yum."

So tune in to see if I've gone from this to this

BBQ Pizza

We made a pizza!

We made it with the recipe we found here!

We added ("Gaby, what did we add!?") spices and fresh basil!

It was pretty good! (We used too much BBQ sauce, if such a thing exists. Be wary.)

We also drank beer! We found it here.

I had the California common. Gaby had the weizenbock. They were great! I think I'll have another...

Banana Muffins

Lisa and I made some really delicious muffins last night!  Here's the recipe - 


Ingredients - 

• 1  3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1tsp baking powder 
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 medium size)
• at least 1 cup chocolate chips :)

Directions - 

1. Mix all dry ingredients in one big bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, mix the egg, oil, OJ, and vanilla.
3. Add wet bowl to dry bowl and mix until just blended.
4. Add mashed bananas.  Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Fill muffin tins, 3/4 of the way full in each cup.
6. Bake at 400F  for about 15-20 minutes.  Check with a toothpick to make sure they're baked through.

Spinach Soup

1 lb of spinach
Garlic
1 small onion
1 stick of celery
1 carrot
Red Bell pepper
3 eggs
¼ cup parmesan cheese
Navy Beans
Tubettini
Olive oil
Salt, pepper, nutmeg, oregano, crushed red pepper
Boiling Water, or broth.


Chop and saute all of the vegetables with seasonings while you steam the spinach for about 5 minutes in a pot with a cup of water (add some olive oil).  


Add the vegetables to the spinach and heat for a few minutes.  


Beat the eggs with the parmesan cheese.  Add it to the pot, stirring constantly (the water should not be hot enough to cook the egg). 


 Slowly add boiling water to the pot, while stirring.  Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer while you cook the Tubettini.  The eggs will curdle and thicken the soup.  

yummers.