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By Emily, July 29, 2010 2:53 pm

I sometimes decide to make random things I’ve never made (or had) before and can’t stop thinking about it until I do so.  This week, it was stuffed peppers.  Tuesday’s trip to the CSA yielded 6 green bell peppers, among other things and last night I put my (rather spontaneous, recipe-less) plan into action.

For a meal created without a recipe, these peppers came out pretty good.  We ended up adding a bit of salt and they could’ve used more herbs, but they definitely weren’t bad.  An even better, and unintended, result was that my husband felt completely full afterwards, which is apparently a rarity.  I guess I need to work on making more filling meals for the poor guy.

There are a million stuffed pepper variations, this is mine.  They’re sort of Italian-style…with black beans.  Stuffed peppers are a fabulous way to use up bits of ingredients in your pantry.  The half an onion, leftover beans, half box of pasta and that bit of cheese you don’t know what to do with?  This is it.  If you’ve got rice or quinoa or other vegetables, use those.  I didn’t buy anything specifically for this recipe besides the peppers and they turned out really well.

Also, I would like it apologize in advance for our harsh kitchen lighting.  It is very non-conductive to food photography.

“Whatever’s In The Pantry” Stuffed Peppers

Serves 4

You’ll need:

• 6 bell peppers
• 4 oz uncooked orzo pasta
• 1 tomato
• 1 cup black beans (or whatever beans you have on hand)
• 1/2 of an onion
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• salt
• fresh basil
• fresh oregano
• mozzarella cheeese

1.  Cook the orzo according to package directions.

2.  While the orzo cooks, cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds.

3. Dice the tomato and onion.  Finely chop the basil and oregano.

4.  Drain the orzo and transfer it to a mixing bowl.  Add the tomato, onion, ricotta, black beans, salt and herbs to the bowl.  Mix well.

5. Stuff each of the peppers full of the orzo filling.

6.  Top each pepper with a bit of shredded mozzarella cheese.  Cover with foil and  cook at 350° for 30 minutes.  Remove the foil and cook for another 10-15 minutes until the cheese has browned a bit (or, in our case, until you can’t wait any more)

7.  Serve and enjoy!

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By Emily, June 25, 2010 11:28 am

I’m just a girl who can’t say no.  At least, to free food.  So when FoodBuzz contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I’d like to try one of Buitoni’s new premium frozen meals for 2…for free, I said yes.  Sure, frozen dinners aren’t something we consume often around here, but I figured one night of processed food wouldn’t kill us.

Brian and I decided to try the Shrimp and Lobster Ravioli with Garlic Butter Sauce, because if you’re going to buy a frozen meal, you may as well get something more interesting than cheese or chicken.  The preparation was incredibly simple (one of the purposes of a frozen meal).  The box contains a package of sauce and a good number of ravioli.  You fill a pot with water, add the pouch of sauce and bring the water to a boil.  Then you add the pasta to the boiling water with the plastic bag of sauce floating in it and cook for 5 minutes.  Remove the sauce packet, drain the pasta, toss the pasta with the sauce and serve.

First, the bad:

• According to the box, the package contains a complete meal.  Maybe it’s just me, but I like to have more than just pasta and sauce as my meals.  Like, a vegetable, perhaps.  We added a side of spinach.
• There was more sauce than I would’ve liked and it was really thick.
• The ravioli wasn’t very flavorful and some of the seafood pieces were a little chewy.
• I wasn’t real happy with the nutrition facts.  That’s a lot of fat, cholesterol and sodium.  Luckily, Brian and I have been subsisting on a lot of salads lately.  You can decide how you feel about them for yourself though (click to enlarge).

Second, the good:

• The garlic butter sauce was yummy and added a lot of flavor to the dish.  And better too much than not enough, right?
• There was definitely the right amount of ravioli for 2 people.  Often, I’ve found that a frozen meal only serves half the number of people its supposed to.  This one actually satisfied.
• Ease of cooking; only one pot required!

The verdict:  Overall, the meal was good.  It tasted good, it was easy to prepare and we were full at the end.  Would I buy a Buitoni frozen meal again?  Probably not.  It’s more sodium, fat and ingredients than I prefer, plus the meals retail for between $7.99 and $9.99, at least where I live.  That’s more than I’d like to spend on one “meal” which needs a vegetable.

Disclosure: Free Buitoni frozen meal coupon was  provided by Buitoni through the FoodBuzz Tastemaker Program.

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By Emily, May 17, 2010 8:14 pm

Several articles I’ve read about being a “good blogger” suggest that bloggers shouldn’t apologize for not posting, because it draws attention to the fact that they haven’t posted when, actually, no one had noticed in the first place.  But its been 17 days since I’ve written a “real” post, and even that was just Highlights, so it’s really been 18 days and that really annoys me.  So, this is not an apology, its an explanation.  Because I suspect some people noticed that I went from several posts a week to no posts for several weeks.  And I’m not happy about it.

Between April 29 and now, I’ve been sick, gone to my sister’s senior art exhibit, gotten almost healthy, studied my butt off for a teacher licensure test, taken the test, done a ton of lesson planning, grading and trying to figure out this summer, gone to my sister’s graduation from college and gotten sicker than I was the first time (visiting the doctor tomorrow).

You may notice that neither cooking nor blogging is in the above list.  Luckily for you, I’m in quarantine tonight instead of at bible study, so I have the time to share what I finally made when I got myself into the kitchen last night.

Last spring, before I got married, my mother gave me a bunch of recipes that my family eats regularly to get my started in my new life.  One of them, Farfalle with Gorgonzola and Walnuts, is a family favorite that’s simple and delicious.   I made a few adjustments to make it more vegetarian-friendly and balanced.  Enjoy!

Pasta and Broccoli in Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

Adapted from Good Housekeeping, serves about 6

• 13.25 oz (1 box) whole wheat pasta, any shape.  (I used rotini this time around)
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 3/4 cup vegetable broth
• 4 ounces crumbled Gorgonzola (Adjust to taste)
• 3/4 lb. broccoli
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1.  Cook  and drain the pasta according to the directions on the package.  Return the drained pasta to the pot.

2.  While the pasta is cooking, dice the broccoli, stem and all.  It’s all edible–don’t just use the florets!

3.  In a small saucepan, combine the half and half with the vegetable broth and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.  After boiling, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes.

4.  Add the Gorgonzola and salt and pepper to taste.  Whisk until melted and smooth.

5.  Add the broccoli and cook it until it’s as tender as you want it.  If you want it really tender, you may want to steam it separately.  I like my vegetables pretty raw, so I just added the broccoli to the sauce, mixed it in, and moved on.

6.  Pour the sauce and broccoli mixture over the pasta and stir to combine evenly.  Top with chopped walnuts before serving.

7.  Enjoy!

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By Emily, April 18, 2010 5:04 pm

As some of you know, I’ve been participating in the Outside the Box Challenge, which has encouraged me to make new things, use new ingredients, change my workout and think more  about what I eat.  This week’s challenge was to use an herb you haven’t for a while and report on how it went.  I made three different recipes using fresh tarragon (I always never use fresh herbs), and thought I’d share my favorite.

(I know it looks blurry, there was a lot of steam)

The best things about this recipe for Chicken Tarragon from AllRecipes:

• 10 ingredients, 9 of which I didn’t need to go to the store for
• 35 minutes
• 1 skillet, 1 baking dish, knives, and couple cutting boards are all the dishes you need.

I love dishes where you throw everything in the oven and it all cooks together.  I’m not even sure it was necessary to brown the chicken (confession: I used turkey breast–it’s what I had!)…mine didn’t really brown and it still tasted good.  Plus, we’re getting 2 meals worth of vegetables out of the recipe.  I’ll probably try it out again, perhaps using different vegetables and herbs to see what I can create.  If you’re looking for an easy dinner, I’d definitely check out the recipe.

Side note: there wasn’t any grain in this recipe, so I decided to make another side.  Brian suggested I use up the container of Israeli couscous that’s been sitting in our pantry forever.  I decided to attempt a cheaper, less fresh, version of Giada’s Mediterrean Salad, which is still one of my favorite things.  I prepared a dressing of lemon juice, dried basil, pressed garlic and salt, poured it over the cooked couscous and added a handful of dried cranberries.  Despite missing the fresh basil and lacking mint and almonds entirely, the pasta tasted amazingly similar to the original dish.  Now we need to get more Israeli couscous so I can eat this all the time!

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By Emily, March 21, 2010 7:11 pm

As I mentioned this morning, yesterday was just an awesome day.  The awesomeness culminating in a meal so good I could barely believe I’d cooked it.  I make a lot of so-so recipes, but last night’s broccoli lasagna was perfect.

I used Real Simple’s recipe for Three Cheese Broccoli Lasagna.  Often Real Simple recipes (at least the ones in their emails) don’t really appeal to me, but since lasagna is one of Brian’s favorite foods, I grabbed the recipe and added it to my Evernote account.  Yesterday I decided to try it (it helped that mozzarella and ricotta were on sale).  It was the first time I’d made lasagna and I realized I cheated a little by using no-boil noodles (in my defense: the recipe says to!) but it’s really not that hard, and this recipe’s definitely worth it.

I’m sure that the recipe would be great as written, but I decided to make one change and take it a step further by making my own marinara sauce.  Slashfood posted a recipe for All-Purpose Marinara back in September and this seemed a good opportunity to try it out.  I halved the recipe because I knew it was going to make way too much sauce, substituted petite diced tomatoes for whole and used less chili flakes than suggested (I didn’t measure).  I only simmered it for an hour or so.  The sauce has nice spice to it and halving the recipe provided us with about 6 cups of deliciousness.  I froze the sauce we didn’t use for the lasagna and look forward to defrosting it for pasta or some other creation.

In short: Delicious vegetarian lasagna, made even better by homemade sauce.

That, and the fact that it was such a beautiful day out that Brian and I enjoyed our supper outside on our balcony.  Hopefully that’ll happen a frequently over the next 6 months or so.

Enjoy!

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By Emily, December 10, 2009 2:13 pm

Included in my list of favorite things:

• Dishes that can be made in under half an hour
• Dishes that are vegetarian
• Chinese food, on occasion
• Pasta
• The Pioneer Woman
• Recipes that turn out better than I expect

All that to say that, once again, The Pioneer Woman has outdone herself.  Her Sesame Noodles are all of the above and I can hardly wait to make them again.

From time to time I make “stir-fry”.  My stir-fry generally consists of frozen vegetables cooked in soy sauce and served over rice.  Impressive, I know.  But it was always missing something.

Thanks to the Pioneer Woman, I now know what that something was: sesame oil.  Get some, it smells like Chinese food.  No joke.  I did have to shell out a little money for it, but it was totally worth it.

Vegetable “Lo Mein”

(Adapted from The Pioneer Woman’s Simple Sesame Noodles)

You’ll Need:

• 12 ounces whole wheat spaghetti (or whatever thin pasta or rice noodles you have on hand)
• ¼ cups soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 4 cloves garlic, pressed or  minced
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• Several drops of Tabasco sauce
• 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons hot tap water
• 1 lb. frozen mixed vegetables
• Optional: 4 green onions, sliced

1.  Cook the pasta/noodles according to package directions.  Drain.

2. While the pasta cooks, whisk the soy sauce, sugar, garlic, rice vinegar, sesame oil, Tabasco sauce, vegetable oil and water together in a bowl.  Adjust to taste.  Smell the Chinese food-y smell.  Get excited.

3.  In a skillet, heat the mixed vegetables until defrosted and cooked through.

4.  In a large bowl, or the pasta cooking pot, combine the pasta and mixed vegetables.  Mix.  Add the sauce and mix until combined.  Serve warm.  Enjoy your fake, fast Chinese food.

Disclaimer:  Vegetarian it may be, but this dish, sadly, isn’t exactly good for you.  The sesame oil is very high (14 g in just 1 tablespoon!) and the soy sauce has 920 mg of sodium per tablespoon.  So, as with everything, this dish should only be consumed in moderation–but it’s really really good!  And, clearly, restaurant Chinese food probably isn’t great for you either

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By Emily, October 26, 2009 10:49 am

It’s possible that I said I was giving up on Rachael Ray recipes.

It’s also very likely that I lied.

Why? Because in my recipe binder I had a recipe for Penne with Pumpkin Cream Sauce.  My love for pumpkin outweighs my disappointment in Rachael’s recipes.

Luckily, this Rachael recipe was one of the better ones I’ve made of late.   The recipe is extremely simple: Cook pasta.  Cook onions.  Add pumpkin puree and heavy cream to onions.  Boil.  Add Parmesan cheese.  Add pasta.  Mix.  Serve with more cheese and fresh parsley.  Despite the simplicity, the pumpkin cream sauce was really yummy, though it did benefit from salt.  The sauce was, surprisingly, not overwhelmingly pumpkin-y.  But it was really good.  And it’s really nice to have something else on my pasta besides standard tomato sauce.

It is sort of a mental trip though…I kept expecting the orange pasta sauce to taste like cheddar cheese :)

On a side note, I can’t remember the last time I had “regular” pasta.  I’ve gotten completely used to eating whole wheat pasta and was rather confused the other day when some of the teachers at lunch were maligning the cardboard-like taste of whole wheat pasta.  Anyone else completely and happily converted to whole wheat pasta?

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By Emily, August 29, 2009 7:13 am

I spent too much of yesterday agonizing over a barbecue.  It was my church’s women’s fellowship barbecue and, being new to the area and all, I really wanted to go.  Attendees were supposed to bring their own meat to grill and something to share.  First issue: I thought it was pretty silly to go to the store to buy meat and, more than likely, a roll, for a single person.  I don’t have hamburgers (or turkey burgers, or veggie burgers, or hot dogs) in my freezer waiting for occasions like this.  Nor do I want to.  So I agonized over whether to go to the store so I would have something for the grill.  Second issue: Then I debated over what to get-should I get meat? Veggie burgers? Vegetables to grill?  When possible, I don’t like to introduce myself as “Emily the not-quite-but-almost-vegetarian”.  If the conversation gets there then fine, but it’s not the point of my existence.  So, really the whole debate was about what first impression I wanted to make.

In the end, I brought nothing but Mediterranean Salad (and I am getting to the part with the recipe).  I hoped that no one would notice that I hadn’t brought anything for the grill.  Know what?  No one did.  There were so many pasta salads and bean salads and fruit salads and Mexican dips that no one noticed that my full plate didn’t have anything from the grill or any meat.  I had a really good time spending the evening conversing about things other than my eating habits.

What to bring to share was much easier for me to figure out.  I knew right away what I wanted to make.  Last year, before I was really into cooking, I saw Giada De Laurentiis make this Mediterranean Salad on Everyday Italian.  It was a big hit at last night’s get together.

The dish contains Israeli/Mediterranean couscous, which I’ve found at food co-ops and Whole Foods  It’s a small pasta, different from “normal” couscous.  The recipe says any small pasta will work, but I’ve been so happy with the couscous that I’ve never tried it.  Add in some broth,* garlic, lemon juice and zest, fresh mint, fresh basil and dried cranberries and it’s a delicious side salad (or meal, if I have my way).  Check it out.

*Switch out the chicken broth for vegetable broth and this dish is vegetarian.

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By Emily, August 27, 2009 6:38 pm

Last night for dinner I tried out another Rachael Ray recipe (seems like there’s been a lot of her, sorry).  Creamy Pasta with Spinach and Fried Capers is a fine dish, but it needs some work.

The dish was, as promised, easy to make.  The taste is pretty bland overall, though the capers add a nice kick when you get one.  Next time I might add more capers and sauce (it’s creamy, but there’s not a lot to go around).  Today, while heating up the leftovers it occurred to me what would really make this meal good:  Sausage.  Guess it’s a good thing I haven’t gone vegetarian yet.

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By Emily, July 18, 2009 2:34 pm

Last week was the final week (I hope) of last minute menu planning and food shopping.  I decided to make a recipe without reading it through and, as a result, found it to be less than I’d hoped for.

The recipe, Mac ‘n’ Goat Cheese, is from Everyday with Rachael Ray.  I liked it because it’s simple and includes some of my favorite ingredients: pasta, garlic, cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheese (we replaced the goat cheese with feta) and walnuts.   Plus it was vegetarian and I really need to work towards deliberately planning vegetarian meals.   Now, before I shower Rachael with criticism, I must confess that I didn’t follow the directions completely.  I cooked a pound of pasta (because I hate having a box with just a little bit of pasta in it!) but I neglected to increase all the other ingredients.

The dish came out fine otherwise however, and since we had tons of leftovers, I cooked up more spinach and garlic for the second night and added it in.  The problem with this “Mac ‘n’ Cheese” is that it isn’t really mac and cheese…it’s more like pasta salad.  The dish never gets baked (despite the misleading picture of the macaroni in a baking dish in the magazine) so the cheese doesn’t melt, and there’s nothing crunchy.  For a pasta salad, it was good.  But I wanted to make mac ‘n’ cheese.  In fact, my Man and I ate the leftovers cold. Granted, if I’d read the recipe all the way through before cooking it, I would’ve know this.

If I wanted to make this pasta salad again, I’d probably increase the amount of garlic, cheese, nuts and especially tomatoes and spinach even further.  I think a few sliced black olives would be a nice addition as well.  I’d also switch out the pasta for whole wheat pasta, which would leave me feeling less guilty for eating the same meal for dinner three nights in a row.  If you’re craving really good mac ‘n’ cheese instead of pasta salad though I would definitely re-recommend Cheese Lovers 5 Cheese Mac and Cheese.