Pumpkin Oatmeal

I've been on an oatmeal kick lately. Maybe it's the cold weather that makes me want hot oatmeal for breakfast. Last week I blogged about Banana Berry Oatmeal and this week we are having Pumpkin Oatmeal. I love all things pumpkin but had never thought of putting it in oatmeal until now. Pumpkin is actually very good for you. It's a great source of Vitamin A.

Pumpkin Oatmeal
Serves 2

1 cup oats (not quick cooking)
1 3/4 cups water
1/4 cup ground flax
1 tsp cinnamon
Dash of salt
2 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 cup pumpkin

Bring water and oats to a boil. Reduce heat. Stir in in flax, salt, and cinnamon. Simmer for 5 minutes until oats are cooked. Remove from heat, stir in pumpkin and maple syrup.


This oatmeal turned out to have a great flavor. However at times it was a bit gritty. I'm not sure why that was. It wasn't enough to make me not want to make it again though.


This oatmeal would be a great way to use up a last bit of pumpkin from a can when you don't need an entire can for another recipe. I will be making this again. It's great in the winter.

Other Pumpkin Recipes:
Pumpkin French Toast
Pumpkin Cupcakes

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

For my birthday last fall my in-laws gave me a toaster oven. I had wanted one for awhile as a way to bake small things without heating up the entire oven. I think it will be particularly useful in the summer months when I want to bake but don't want to heat up the house with the oven.

The model I got is a Cuisinart Convection Toaster Oven.


It's really a neat little appliance. It does both convection and convention style baking as well as broiling and toasting. It's the perfect size for my family since there are only two of us.

Now the instruction book that came with the toaster oven had several recipes in it and one of them was Roasted Sweet Potatoes.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Serves 2-3

2 large sweet potatoes
2 tbsp Earth Balance
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp light brown sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cut sweet potatoes into 2-3 inch spears and place in a large bowl. Sprinkle brown sugar and salt over sweet potatoes. Melt butter and pour over sweet potatoes. Stir to coat. Spread sweet potatoes on a baking sheet covered with foil. Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally.


These potatoes were so delicious. And so easy! They made the perfect side dish. I really enjoyed them. We will definitely be making this again.

Butternut Squash and Sausage Pasta

I've really been enjoying exploring vegan cooking and one of the best parts is getting exposed to all sorts of new foods that I might not have ever tried otherwise. One of those foods is Field Roast Grain Meat.

Field Roast Grain Meat is actually a meat substitute made out of wheat gluten (sorry celiacs but this is definitely not for you). I had read about how great it was and really wanted to try it. I found it at Whole Foods near the dairy section by the tofu. I decided to use it to turn this recipe, Pasta with Roasted Butternut Squash and Sage, into a vegan dish.

Field Roast offers several flavors of its grain meats. I decided to go with the Smoked Apple Sage Sausages for the recipe:


At first I was a little wary. I mean it looks like meat but its not really meat. What exactly is it going to taste like? And more importantly what will the texture be like? I am very big on the texture of my food. There are certain foods I don't like because of the way it feels in my mouth. Shrimp, lobster, scallops, and ham to name a few (hmm...all meat).


Anyway I already bought the things so we had to go for it. Now on with the recipe!

Roasted Butternut Squash and Sausage Pasta
Serves 3-4ish

1 butternut squash
2 apple-sage Field Roast sausages,
Olive oil
White onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped or pressed
Penne pasta, about 8 oz

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Peel and chop butternut squash into 1 inch pieces (make sure to scoop out the seeds in the middle), and place in large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Stir to coat. Spread in glass pan or baking sheet and roast in oven for about 30 minutes or until fork tender.


Meanwhile cook pasta according to directions, drain and set aside. Slice sausages into 1/2 inch rounds. Heat oil in skillet and add onion. Cook for a few minutes then add garlic. Cook a couple more minutes. Add sausages and cook until browned. Add pasta and roasted squash. Stir to coat everything, adding a bit more olive oil if necessary.


Voila!

The result: I made my husband try the Field Roast first because he will eat anything. He loved it! And so did I! It is seriously the best non-meat "meat" that I have tried. The texture is really good and it had great flavor. My husband said he could seriously eat it all the time. He has already been asking when we can buy it again because he wants to try all the flavors. I thought the apple sage sausages worked really well in this recipe.


Next time I might make a few changes though. This pasta dish didn't really have a sauce, just some oil coated all over everything. The roasted squash and the sausages were really flavorful so it didn't necessarily need it though. However next time I might try some veggie broth mixed in at the last step. Or I might try a bit of soy cream or thick coconut milk as a substitute for the cream in the original recipe. I might also drizzle with balsalmic vinegar as the original recipe calls for that as well.

The Field Roast sausages cost about $5 for a 4 pack if I remember correctly. We only used two of them in this recipe so we had two left over for another dinner. That means the "meat" portion of our dinner cost $2.50, which is not really any more than you would spend on real meat (maybe even less!). Even if you aren't interested in a vegan lifestyle, consider trying this stuff. It's way healthier for you than meat and you might find that you like it better.

Can I also just throw in that another great thing about vegan cooking is that you never have to worry about contamination from raw meat? That is something my husband and I have thought of several times while cooking these past few weeks. You can cut everything on the same cutting board, you don't have to be meticulous about washing your hands and your knives and getting nasty meat juice on the counter. Nope! It's great!

All in all the recipe was a success and I'm looking forward to trying more of Field Roast's products.

More pasta recipes:

Chickpea Pasta

Garden 2009: Failures...

I wanted to write some posts to catch up on my garden from last year. A couple weeks ago I wrote about my garden successes in 2009. Today is the opposite - the plants that were complete failures in 2009.

Cucumbers. Cucumbers were a complete and total failure. I tried planting them twice and barely got any flowers, much less a cucumber. They would grow into these pitful looking plants and then die. I'm not sure what went wrong with them. Not enough water, bugs, the soil, who knows. It could've been anything. I'd like to try them again in 2010 though to see if we fare any better.

Corn. I tried planting corn in a three sisters garden in one of the beds along with pole beans and pumpkins. The three sisters garden is a method of companion planting where the pole beans use the corn for support and the pumpkins grow around the bottom of the corn and keep the weeds down. The pole beans also fix nitrogen in the soil for the corn. Well I ended up with some decent looking corn stalks, but very few actual ears of corn. And the ears we did get were not developed all the way. We may have been picking it too early. Also an animal of some sort got in the garden and ate some of the corn so that didn't help at all. We're going to try corn again but not in the three sisters format.

Pole Beans. I am totally done with pole beans from now on. They were the bane of my garden in 2008 and were also a pest in 2009. I planted them around the base of the corn in the three sisters garden (see corn above). They wound around the corn stalks for support and then kept right on growing until they pulled the corn stalks over. We did get more of a harvest off the pole beans in 2009 compared to 2008 but I thought the pods were a lot tougher than bush beans. Also the pole beans were home to the BIGGEST grasshoppers I have ever seen. They totally freaked me out.

Soybeans. I thought it would be great to plant soybeans in the garden because I love edamame. I had visions of my freezer stocked with edamame and I could snack on it all winter. So I planted an entire plot of soybeans. And they grew just fine. They even survived a deer attack. But when it came time to harvest them, oh boy. I think we let them stay on the plant too long so they were a little tough. And really, really hard to get off the plants. We sat out in the garden all afternoon one day pulling soybeans off the plants. We never did get them all. If we plant them again, it will only be a few plants and I will keep a careful eye on them.

Peas. Peas were one of the first vegetables I planted last spring. I planted two short rows of them by my onions and lettuce. They were supposed to be self-supporting plants so I did not use a trellis. They took forever to grow and did not produce very many pods at all. I probably got about a half-cup of peas total for the whole year.


Herbs - Cilantro, Parsley, Oregano. I planted all three of these herbs two or three times and they never grew. I direct sowed them into the garden and not one sprout came up. This year I will start seeds indoors so I can set the seedlings into the garden instead of direct sowing.

Beets. We tried two different plantings of beets, one in the summer and one in the fall. The plants never came up for the summer planting. For the fall planting, they did come up and get some decent leaves but they never got big enough to produce any fruit.

I think that's pretty much it on the crops I consider failures. There were also a bunch of crops that were in between. Not a wild success but not a complete failure either. I'll try to write up a separate post on that and also on a phenomenon in the 2009 garden - surprise plants!

Bite Bags

It has taken some time, but I have managed to transition to using reusable bags when shopping almost all the time. I have a stash of them that I keep in the car at all times and actually remember to bring them in the store about 90% of the time. Then when I get home and unload the groceries, I immediately put the bags back in the car. Yea for a good system.

It has always irked me though that even though I try to be good about using canvas shopping bags, I still used plastic produce bags. It doesn't seem right to put a plastic bag inside a reusable bag. The point is to keep plastic bags out of landfills right? That includes those little produce bags too.

Let me introduce you to Bite Bags. These are reusable produce bags!


I can't remember how I heard about these bags. Probably on a website or forum or something. Anyway as soon as I read about them, I went straight over to the website and ordered the "Rustic" 3 pack. I really wanted to order the cute pink ones but figured my husband wouldn't be too crazy about shopping with little bags with pink trim.

Total cost with shipping was around $18 for all three bags. They arrived in about a week. So far I LOVE them! They are perfect for grocery shopping. And what I didn't realize until I got them is that they are see-through. Here are two of mine in action with some potatoes:


I have used them at the grocery store several times now. Anything that I would put in a plastic produce bag I now put in these bags. I've also used them for dry beans from the bulk bins. The bags have a drawstring top with a cord lock that keeps the bag closed.

The problem now is that I only have three of them so I might be placing another order soon. I see that they also sell a little snack bag which would be great for my brown bag lunches during the week.

To purchase Bite Bags, go to www.sustainablebite.com

Surprise Harvest

Look what we found in the garden today:


Surprise! The carrots we planted last fall (and never picked) had survived the crazy snow. The snow has finally melted almost all the way so we were able to go check out the garden this afternoon. And we dug up these carrots. We already tried one and they are nice and crunchy. Maybe next year I'll plant carrots in late fall on purpose so I can harvest them in January.



I'm getting excited for the 2010 garden!

Banana Berry Oatmeal

I came across this recipe over at The Discerning Brute, a blog for guys that I happen to read sometimes (hey it's interesting!). It looked super delicious and very healthy so I knew I would try it. I made it for a late breakfast/early lunch last weekend after we got back from a morning at the gym and grocery store. Here's how I made it, with a few variations from The Discerning Brute's original recipe:

Hearty Banana Berry Flax Oatmeal
Serves 2

1 1/2 cups of oats (not instant)
1 cup of water
1 cup almond milk
1 Tbs Maple Syrup
1/4 cup flax meal (ground flax seeds)
Handful of almonds (or your favorite nut)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 Large Banana, sliced
1/2 cup blueberries

Combine the water, milk and oats and bring to a boil over medium heat. Lower heat to a simmer and stir in the maple syrup, flax, almonds, cinnamon and vanilla. After 5 minutes the oats should be cooked so turn off the heat. Stir in the blueberries and banana.


My take on it: The original recipe called for equal parts oats and liquid (water + milk) which I completely disagree with. I've always made oatmeal with a 2:1 liquid to oats ratio. But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I only reduced the amount of oats from 2 cups to 1 1/2. I should've reduced the amount all the way to one cup because I still had to add some more water during the cooking process. However it may also be a personal preference. I like my oatmeal more liquidy.

I also forgot to add the almonds in the middle of the cooking so I threw them on top and stirred them in at the end. And my banana wasn't quite ripe enough.

Despite all that, I really liked the flavor of this recipe. AND it is so healthy for you. Blueberries, oats, flax, cinnamon are all great things to add to your diet. If you've never used ground flax before, I encourage you to try it. I bought a bag of Bob's Red Mill ground flax a few months ago and I've been putting it in everything. Smoothies, yogurt, cereal, oatmeal and cornbread to name a few. You can also stir it into soups and sauces. It's a great source of Omega-3 fatty acids.


Doesn't it look yum? I think I would eat this every morning if I could get myself out of bed early enough. This is the type of breakfast that keeps you full all the way till lunch.

Bottom Line: Definitely making this again with more liquid or less oats next time.

Top 10 Reasons to Eat Oatmeal

KC Restaurant Week!

Today is the beginning of Restaurant Week in Kansas City. What is restaurant week? Well I got this neat card in the mail telling me all about it. Kansas City Restaurant Week is a city-wide event to raise money for Harvesters. A lot of restaurants will be offering a multi-course lunch and dinner menu for which 10% of the price of each will benefit Harvesters.

Check out the restaurant list to see if your favorite restaurant is participating and to check out the menus. Restaurant week runs from January 22-31, so if you were planning on going out to eat anyway, you might as well hit one of these places and help out a good cause.

I am trying to decide if I want to visit one of my favorite restaurants or try somewhere new. There are so many to choose from!

Naan

Yesterday I posted about the Chickpea Curry we made last last Sunday and today I'm posting about the Naan we made to go with it. I'm super excited to post this recipe because it was really fun to make and turned out really, really good! Naan is a type of flat bread. We've made it once before a looooong time ago and couldn't really remember how it went. So we found a recipe on All Recipes to try.

Naan
Makes a lot

1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp from a jar)
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons soy milk
1 egg, beaten
2 teaspoons salt
4 1/2 cups bread flour (may not need all of it)
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 cup butter

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes, until frothy. Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 6 to 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface, or until smooth. Place dough in a well oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside to rise. Let it rise 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Punch down dough. Pinch off small handfuls of dough about the size of a golf ball. Roll into balls, and place on a tray. Cover with a towel, and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.


During the second rising, preheat grill to high heat. Melt butter in microwave and stir in garlic. At grill side, roll one ball of dough out into a thin circle.


Lightly oil grill. Place dough on grill, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until puffy and lightly browned.


Brush uncooked side with butter, and turn over. Brush cooked side with butter, and cook until browned, another 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from grill, and continue the process until all the naan has been prepared.

Naan in various stages of completion. The one on the left is a bit overdone.


Perfect Naan!


My take on it: We made mostly as directly, substituting soy milk for regular milk and putting the garlic in the melted butter instead of kneading it into the dough.

The hard part of this recipe was rolling and grilling the dough. We used a two-man process. I rolled out the dough while my husband grilled it. I think rolling it out really thin helped them cook better. That was mentioned in the comments to the original recipe over at All Recipes. We used our grill pan to cook them on the stove top and it worked out perfectly. We could grill three naan (naans?) at a time. Even with three going at a time, it still took quite awhile to process them all. We ended up with 19 total!

The entire recipe from start to finish took about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. So definitely not a recipe for a week night. However it was totally worth the time and effort on a weekend.

The naan was sooooooo delicious. We gobbled them up. And there were so many of them that we enjoyed them all week long. I could definitely see making a whole bunch of these at once and freezing them individually so we can pull them out to have with dinner at any time.

Bottom line: Definitely making this again!

Chickpea Curry

So last Sunday we decided to make Indian food for dinner. We hadn't had Indian food in forever and it sounded really good. I found what looked like an easy recipe for Chickpea Curry on All Recipes.

Chickpea Curry
Serves 4

4 medium potatoes, cubed
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 10.75 oz can condensed tomato soup
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

Place potatoes in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil over high heat; simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain, and set aside.

Warm oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in onion and garlic, and cook until the onions are soft and translucent. Stir in curry powder, garam masala, ginger, cumin, and salt. Cook for 1 or 2 minutes, stirring. Pour in soup, cream, and chickpeas. Stir in potatoes. Simmer 5 minutes.



My take on it: The original recipe called for milk and I substituted coconut milk instead based on some of the comments to the recipe. I used coconut milk from a can, not the kind in a carton by the regular milk. The can kind was super creamy and thick. Other than that I made the recipe as directed.

And boy was it delicious. And easy. I really liked this recipe. It was a nice mild curry. We ate it with brown rice and naan. Naan is a type of flatbread and I plan to post the recipe tomorrow.


There was a ton of everything leftover so I enjoyed leftovers for lunch for at least two days. Although I had to eat my food in the break room instead of at my desk because I didn't want to smell up the cubicle area! P.S. Our house smelled like curry for at least a day after this.

The only thing I didn't like about this recipe was the condensed tomato soup. We could not find a brand of condensed soup that did not have a whole bunch of crap listed in the ingredients. We ended up buying it anyway because I really wanted to make this recipe. Next time I will try making it with plain tomato puree or chopped tomatoes or my own tomato soup. Honestly I didn't notice the tomato flavor at all so I bet it would be easy to substitute something else.

Bottom Line: Will definitely make again and will seek out other curry recipes to try.

Kale & White Bean Soup

I came across this recipe in my January issue of Real Simple (which I am a little behind in reading). I was intrigued because of the kale. I didn't think I'd ever had kale before and wanted to try it out. Here's how we made it this past week for dinner.

Kale & White Bean Soup
Serves 8

2 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (15.5 oz each)
1 cup whole wheat elbow pasta
1 bunch kale, thick stems discarded and leaves torn into 2-inch pieces
2 tsp dried rosemary
8 cups water
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, celery, onion, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 4-6 minutes.

Add the beans, pasta, kale, rosemary, and 8 cups water. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until pasta and kale are tender, 4-5 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice before serving. Serve with warm bread.


The steam kept getting in the way of the picture!

My take on it: I didn't change much from the original recipe. I used whole wheat elbows instead of the pastas they suggested and also omitted the optional parmesan rind and cheese. I used dried rosemary instead of fresh. One other change I didn't notice until now is that the recipe called for Kosher salt and I used sea salt. Not sure how much of a difference that would make.

Overall the soup was easy to make. Once again the hardest part was washing and cutting the kale, which I successfully delegated to my husband. It was fairly quick to make as well and was a one-pot meal. It also made a lot of soup. Plenty for dinner and lots of leftovers.


The taste, however, was a bit sub-par. It was a little bland, which was surprising considering the amount of salt. It seemed like something was missing. We both thought it was odd that the recipe called for only water for the liquid instead of stock or broth. We did like the kale part. I expected it to wilt like spinach does in soup, but it held its shape and bite better. Kale has a different flavor than other greens and I could see myself using it in other recipes.

The next day I took some of the leftovers for lunch and afterwards I felt thirsty all afternoon. I think it was because of all the salt. I didn't notice it as much in the taste but I sure felt it later.

Bottom line: We said we would try this recipe again with some changes - using veggie broth or boullion instead of just water and maybe adding some carrots for color. However there are so many great soup recipes out there that I doubt we ever come back to it.

Not all was lost though. It was a great exposure to a new ingredient - kale! We might try growing it in the garden this year now.

Other soup recipes:
Tuscan Bean Soup
Roasted Eggplant Soup
Summer Stew

Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

When I first saw this recipe in The Kind Diet, I thought "Hmm this looks good but I bet it's a pain in the rear to make" and skipped right on by. I came back to it later when it was time to do some Christmas baking and decided to take a stab at it. Turns out my first impression was totally wrong. These peanut butter cups were actually pretty easy to make!

Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
Makes 12 (or a whole bunch of minis)

1/2 cup Earth Balance butter
3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup maple sugar or white sugar
1 cup chocolate chips (vegan or carob)
1/4 cup soy, rice or nut milk
1/4 cup chopped pecans, almonds or peanuts

Line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners. Set aside.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs and maple sugar and mix well. Remove the mixture from heat. Evenly divide the mixture, approximately 2 tablespoons per cup, among the muffin cups.

Combine the chocolate and milk in another pan. Stir over medium heat until the chocolate has melted. Spoon the chocolate evenly over the peanut butter mixture. Top with chopped nuts. Place in the refrigerator to set for at least 2 hours before serving.


My take on it: I made the recipe exactly as directed, except I used mini muffin cups instead of full size cups. I don't remember exactly how many minis I got out of the recipe but it was well over 2 dozen, probably closer to 3 dozen.

It was actually really easy. There's no baking, only melting and layering. The hardest part was getting the stuff into the tiny muffin cups. If I had made these in the regular size cups it would've been a snap. However I'm glad I didn't make the large ones because they are really rich. I don't think I could eat a regular size peanut butter cup.

So I took these to two family Christmas gatherings and they were a hit at both! They were absolutely delicious. We did not have any leftovers to bring home.



Bottom Line: I will definitely make these again, particularly to take to a party.

Sicilian Collard Greens

For the past few months I've been been experimenting with vegan cooking. I find it really interesting and challenging to cook in a different way than what I'm used to. In November I bought Alicia Silverstone's new book The Kind Diet. The book has a lot of useful information on a vegan diet and lots of really yummy looking recipes. Sicilian Collard Greens is one of those recipes.

I used to think "greens" were gross. I couldn't imagine ever eating them. Until I participated in a CSA program in 2008 and received a ton of mustard greens. I hate letting food go to waste so I had to figure out a way to eat them. I started out with Mustard Green Gratin, which is basically a ton of cheese mixed up with some steamed greens. Then I tried eating them just steamed with apple cider vinegar. Then a few months ago we made a side dish of cooked spinach with white beans one night from a recipe in Real Simple and I loved them. So I guess I like greens now. They sort of grew on me in a way.

Sicilian Collard Greens
Serves 2

1 bunch collard greens
2 tbsp pine nuts (I used pepitas)
3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp raisins (I used Craisins)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Cut out the central rib and stem from each collard leaf. Rinse the leaves in a sink of cool water, lifting them into a colander to drain a bit (you want some water to remain on the leaves). Tear leaves into smaller pieces. If desired, chop some of the stems into bite size pieces.

Toast the pine nuts or pepitas over medium heat in a dry skillet for about 5 minutes. Shake the pan often to keep nuts from burning. Transfer to a plate and set aside.

In case you are wondering, pepitas are pumpkin seeds without the shells. I love 'em. This is what they look like:


Place the garlic and oil in a large skillet and saute over medium heat for 1 minute until garlic is fragrant. Add the damp collards and stir, then cover the pan and cook for 2 minutes longer. Add the raisins (Craisins) and pine nuts (pepitas) and stir. Cover and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the balsamic vinegar, cover and cook for 1 to 2 minutes longer.


My take on it: The hardest part of this recipe is washing and trimming the greens. That takes the longest. Other than that, the recipe is pretty simple. I used Craisins and pepitas only because I didn't have any raisins or pine nuts. We ate this with brown rice for a healthy dinner.


I liked this recipe while my husband didn't like it as much, which is rare. Usually he eats everything and I'm the picky one. He said there was a flavor in there that didn't sit right with him, though he couldn't put his finger on it. He thought maybe it was the pepitas.

Bottom Line: We will make this again, but with a different nut or seed instead of pepitas.

See my first vegan recipe: Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

B.Y.O.B Popcorn

Bring Your Own Beer Popcorn...? Nope it's Bring Your Own Bowl for free popcorn! On Tuesdays Dickinson Theatres have a great special - all tickets all day long are $5 each and if you bring your own bowl they will fill it up with popcorn for free. And give you free refills as many times as you want. The picture I posted is the big popcorn bucket that my mom gave us for Christmas. It's the best! And its green because it's reusable to we're creating less trash.

My husband and I have gone the past three Tuesdays. For $10 we get a date night out with free popcorn. We usually get a large drink too which costs about $5, but hey that's still only $15 for a night out!

According to the website it looks like the special is only for KC metro area theatres. But even if you don't live here, look for great deals on movies in your area by checking the theatre websites. Dickinson doesn't heavily advertise their BYOB special. I found out about it from my mom who saw it on their website. And each time we've been to the theatre there are lots of people without bowls who actually pay for popcorn. Suckers!!! We always tell them about the special though so they know for next time.

AMC theatres offers cheaper tickets on weeknights and in the morning. Around here the tickets are also $5 for weeknight movies and Saturday and Sunday morning movies. We almost never go to the movies on Friday or Saturday night anymore. Why pay double and fight the crowds if you don't have to?

Oh and in case you are interested the three movies we've seen are:

Invictus
Up in the Air
It's Complicated

I enjoyed all of them but of the three I liked Up in the Air the best. Looking forward to the Oscars!

Pumpkin French Toast

This year my company gave us Christmas Eve as a holiday. My husband also had the day off too. We decided to spend the day at home playing games, relaxing and just spending time together. We are lucky to have lots of family gatherings around the holidays so we knew that the entire Christmas weekend would be jam packed full of activity. It was nice to have a day to ourselves.

Since we were staying home I wanted to make a special breakfast. I decided on pumpkin french toast after searching the web and finding this recipe at Post Punk Kitchen. I absolutely love anything pumpkin and I love french toast so it sounded like a winner. This is actually a vegan recipe and I thought it would be interesting to try to make french toast without eggs.

Pumpkin French Toast
4 servings

1 cup pumpkin puree
1 1/2 cups almond milk (or any other non-dairy milk like soy or rice)
2 tbsp corn starch
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 stale baguette, sliced into 1 inch pieces
Cooking oil for pan

Mix together all ingredients except bread and cooking oil. Spread out bread slices in a single layer on a rimmed pan (I used a jelly roll pan). Pour on pumpkin mixture and flip to coat. Let sit for 20 minutes, then flip over and soak for 10 more minutes.


Preheat a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Spray with cooking oil or pour a little into the pan and cook the soaked bread slices in batches for 5-7 minutes on one side and 3 minutes on the other. They should be golden to medium brown and flecked with dark spots. Serve with Earth Balance butter (if going completely vegan) and warm maple syrup.


My take on it: Instead of using pumpkin puree from a can (which I normally do for pumpkin recipes) I used our homemade pumpkin puree that we made last fall from the pumpkins we grew. It had been in the freezer for awhile and this was its debut appearance. I also used soy milk instead of almond milk.

Everything about this recipe was going fine until I got to the cooking part. In the original recipe, the poster says she uses a cast iron skillet so I thought I would do the same. That was a mistake. The bread just stuck to the skillet and never seemed to cook no matter how much oil I used. I finally gave up on the cast iron and switched to non-stick. Once I did that the cooking part went much smoother. However even after cooking, the bread was mushy in the middle. It didn't want to cook all the way through. I think it was because the bread I used wasn't very stale at all. It was too soft.


In the end we both liked the recipe enough to try it again. We ate all 8 pieces, mushy middles and all. The flavor was great and it was pretty easy to make, though it takes longer than regular french toast due to the soaking time. I want to try making this again with older bread to see if that helps the mushiness.

I also wonder if this recipe would be good baked in the oven instead of cooked on the stove. Like french toast casserole or bread pudding. I wonder if it would set without the eggs. There was a lot of soaking liquid leftover so you might have to reduce the milk a smidge, or maybe let it soak overnight.

Bottom Line: I will make this again.

So. Much. Snow.

When I woke up this morning the outside temperature was 4 degrees F, with a wind chill that makes it feel like -8 degrees F. On top of that I also forgot to turn my alarm off last night so it woke me up at 5:45am on a Saturday! I tried to go back to sleep but couldn't so got up to use the restroom. On the way back to bed I managed to get tangled up in the space heater and knocked it over on top of my foot. It's one of those radiator-looking space heaters and one of the edges came down right on top of my little foot bones. I actually started crying like a little kid! My sweet husband got me an ice pack and my laptop and so here I sit in bed, icing my foot and typing this blog. It has not been a great morning for me!

Anyway what I wanted to blog about today was snow. Ever since Christmas, Kansas City has been covered in a blanket of snow. It actually snowed on Christmas Day which doesn't happen very often around here. And that's fun and pretty until you realize you can't get out of your driveway to go see your relatives.


Usually when we get snow around here it melts after a couple of days. We don't normally have days and days of single digit temperatures. But this year we did so the Christmas snow couldn't melt. And then it snowed again. And again. And it all piled on top of the previous snow. And then this past Wednesday we got several more inches of snow. It's insane! I don't know if I've ever seen this much snow!

My dog Rosco loves the snow. He rolls around in it.


Pretty icicles at my aunt's house the weekend after Christmas:


The patio furniture on our back deck:


The flower bed is completely covered now:


Tomorrow the high is above 20 degrees F. It's gonna be a heat wave!!

Garden 2009: Successes!

So since I completely abandoned my blog last year, I didn't post anything about my second year of gardening. I had so much fun with my first garden that I had to do a second garden. Browse through the 2008 posts in the spring and summer months if you want to read about my first garden. There are only a bazillion posts about it.

Well did I ever garden last year. I made the garden MUCH larger and organized the growing area into ten 10' x 12' beds. That doubled the growing space compared to 2008. 1200 square feet! Instead of having one big square dirt area for everything, I now had ten separate beds with grass paths in between. Here's what it looks like:


Thank you to my husband for making me this diagram! We still have the same compost bin and it works great. The entire area of the garden is fenced in to keep our dogs out, however it doesn't keep other animals out unfortunately. The two shapes at either end are mulberry trees.

The ten separate beds worked out great and I think it will be even more beneficial in the future years when I have to rotate the plants. For example brassica plants (ex. broccoli) can't be planted in the same place for five years. It would be hard to keep track of exactly where they were planted in a big dirt square. Now I can just rotate them from bed to bed.

The grass pathways were also wonderful because I had a lot more room to move around and places to lay tools and baskets without worrying about damaging the plants. I can also get a wheelbarrow in there now.

We planted a TON of stuff last year. Some plants were wildly successful and some were miserable failures. Today I'm going to post about the sucesses and we'll save the failures for another time.

Bush Beans. One of our most successful crops was bush beans, aka green beans. This year I bought bulk bush bean seeds from a local store. We did three successive plantings of two five foot rows, four weeks apart. We had more beans than we knew what to do with. We filled up the new freezer and gave a lot away. And we even composted a lot that we let go bad by accident. Here's a picture of a day's harvest that included a lot of green beans:


Lettuce. Another very successful crop was lettuce. We also bought bulk black-seeded simpson (green leaf) lettuce seeds from the local store. Buying bulk seed is the greatest. The smallest amount you can buy is more seed than we would need in a year and only costs a buck in general. In the spring I did two sucessive plantings of a 10' row of lettuce about four weeks apart. Those two rows gave us more than enough lettuce. In the fall I also did two successive plantings of a 10' row about 2 or 3 weeks apart. I don't think we ever made it to the second row of lettuce before the frost hit. We were still eating off the first row. And we were picking lettuce into November! Here's the spring lettuce:



Radishes. Another great crop was radishes. So easy to plant and they mature in 30 days. You can plant them in spring and fall but we just did a fall planting. We had one that looked like a butt! I know I took a picture of it so as soon as I find it, I'm posting it.

Hot Peppers. We had great luck with hot peppers - jalapenos and sport peppers. We bought one seedling of each at a local nursery and dropped them in the garden in May. They produced like crazy and we canned a lot of pickled hot peppers and also canned jalapeno jelly. I did try to grow a jalapeno plant from seed but it didn't make it.

Some herbs. As for herbs, basil was successful again in 2009 but we did not make as much pesto as we did in 2008. Now I'm rationing it so it will last me until the basil is ready this summer. We also had good luck with dill, thyme and sage, all grown from seed.

Tomatoes were also very successful. We grew yellow pear, grape, roma, big boy, jet star and celebrity. The yellow pear, roma and big boy I grew from seeds. The seeds did much better this year compared to 2008 because I put a lamp real close to them. As a result they weren't reaching so much for the light and grew much sturdier. The yellow pear tomatoes were out of control. They produced hundreds of fruit. We had no idea what to do with it all. Eventually we just gave up on them and let them be free. The romas were fantastic as usual and we froze a lot of tomato sauce and tomato puree.


Turnips, surprisingly, were also crazy successful. We threw the seeds in the ground at the last minute in the fall and nearly every single one sprouted. We picked the last of the turnips on Christmas Eve before all of Kansas turned into a frozen tundra covered in a foot of snow.


Bell Peppers. I'll also throw bell peppers into the success category. We had seven bell pepper plants total with a variety of green, red, yellow and orange. We ate a lot of fresh pepper and also froze a big bag of pepper strips for cooking this winter.

Flowers. I also planted one full bed of flowers in the 2009 garden which was really fun. The best ones were the dwarf sunflowers. Compared to last years 12 foot sunflowers these things were tiny and cute. I always have to plant sunflowers because they are the Kansas state flower! I also planted zinnias, cosmos and bachelor buttons, as well as marigolds all over the garden.

There you have it. These were the sucessful plants. But oh there were some failures and I'll write a separate post about that in a few days.

Lentil Taco Filling

A long time ago I came across this recipe on All Recipes. I hadn't cooked much with lentils (if ever) and it looked like a good way to serve Mexican food without meat (I don't eat a lot of meat these days). I saved it to my recipe box and then never made it. Finally a few weeks ago we got around to it. I pretty much made it as directed.

Lentil Taco Filling

1 cup finely chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 cup dried lentils, rinsed
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 1/2 cups chicken broth (use veggie to make this vegetarian)
1 cup salsa

In a large skillet, saute the onion and garlic until tender. Add the lentil, chili powder, cumin and oregano and stir. Cook for one minute. Add the chicken broth and simmer for 30 minutes or until lentils are tender. Uncover, cook for 6-8 minutes longer or until mixture has thickened. Mash lentils slightly. Stir in salsa.



Use filling wherever you would normally use taco meat, in soft or hard shells, on nachos or in a taco salad. Top with whatever you want.



When I made this recipe I used our homemade chicken stock from the freezer and served it in soft wheat tortillas with brown rice and black beans. I normally use veggie stock for everything but since we had the homemade stuff available I went with that. I remember that the lentils seemed to take longer to cook than what the recipe suggested but I don't remember how long. I don't know if I bought the wrong kind of lentils or what. I did not rinse them as the recipe suggests so maybe that's what went wrong. It was not a big deal though, we just cooked them a little longer.

My husband and I both really enjoyed this recipe. I had a great flavor and was a good way to enjoy Mexican food without meat. You could easily make this a vegetarian meal by using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. And by leaving off any cheese or sour cream it becomes a vegan meal. Eat it without a tortilla and it becomes a gluten-free meal. So adaptable to everyone's diet needs!

I will definitely be making this recipe again. Dried lentils keep forever so I plan to stock up on them. The ingredients for this recipe are pretty much pantry staples around here so we could whip this up anytime. And lentils are cheeeeeap. We buy them from the bulk bins at Whole Foods. They are much cheaper than meat. And better for you nutritionally. They have very little fat and a lot of protein and fiber. They also are a good source of iron and folate (good for us girls). Click here to see some nutrition information about lentils.

If anyone has any good lentil recipes, please share. I'm starting to like them a lot!

A Second Life for Holiday Cards

I love getting holiday cards every year from all our friends and family. I like to see the cards people choose and read their family update letters of what's been going on with them all year. Makes me feel a little bit closer to those who are far away.

However I hate what happens in January. I have all these great cards that people put their love and well wishes into and what am I supposed to do? Just chuck them in the trash (or recycling bin)? It just doesn't seem right.

This year after I was done putting away all the decorations, I googled "recycle holiday cards". I thought I had heard about a program before that gave a second life to cards and lo and behold, it popped up.

The St. Jude's Ranch for Children has a Recycled Card Program. People mail in their used cards and the children help make the new cards by removing the front and attaching a new back. Then they sell the cards to raise money for the ranch.

What a fantastic idea! I gathered up all my cards (including some that were still hanging around in a drawer from last year - ooops) and mailed them all this week. It cost less than $3 to mail them to Nevada and I felt better that the cards will have a second life.

Next year I'll consider buying some cards from them instead of buying new cards. It's good to support the program from both ends of the spectrum. Wouldn't it be funny if I got back a card that I donated?

Click the link above to read more about the program and to find out where to mail the cards.

New Year's Resolutions

Hello blogosphere! I'm back to blogging again! First I would like to apologize to all the people who left me nice comments the past year. I just moderated them all last night. About half my comments are spam so I have to moderate them. That's why they don't show up right away on the blog.

So why did I abandon my blog for the past year (and a few months....)? Well I think I mentioned in one of my last blog posts that I was previously using my work laptop to blog. Then my job tightened security on our computers so much that I couldn't even get to Blogger to do blogs. Then I tried using my husband's Mac laptop to blog and I just hated it. I couldn't figure out how to do pictures and I didn't have Word (usually I type my blogs in Word and then copy them over to Blogger) and I'm just not a Mac. I'm a PC. I was so frustrated that I just gave up. Then I got busy doing other things and never figured out a solution.

Until now. My Christmas present to myself this year was a new PC laptop for personal use. And it is fan-freaking-tastic. It is so nice to have a separate computer for personal stuff like pictures, budgeting, Facebook and blogging. I never have to use my work computer for personal stuff anymore and I'm no longer paranoid about the IT police coming to get me for too many personal files and Web use logged on my work computer.

I never really quit writing blogs really. I just quit posting them. I'm always writing them in my head and taking pictures of everything with the intention of posting a blog. That means I have a pretty big back log of stuff to post, which I'm hoping to do over the next couple of months.

But first, what I wanted to post today was my New Year's Resolutions. I have been thinking about them a lot and wanted to put them out there in the open so I can be held accountable. I like resolutions that are attainable and measurable. None of this "I want to be a better person" or "I want to get in shape". How do you measure that? That's why those resolutions never work.

Resolutions are really just goals when you think about it. So these are my goals for the year. The first one is a little embarassing but I'm just going to lay it out there:

1. Brush my teeth every night. I'm horribly lazy about brushing my teeth at night. I do brush them every single morning, but at night I usually just go to bed without brushing. It's terrible, I know! I never got into a good habit of brushing before bed. So during the month of January I'm going to focus on brushing my teeth every single night. I've read that it takes 21 days to develop a habit, so by focusing on this one thing for 30 days hopefully I'll develop a habit of it.

2. Take a Spanish class. My husband and I have talked about taking a Spanish class for years. Ever since we graduated from college. We both took French in college and neither of us know much Spanish at all. I see real value in learning Spanish these days and I think languages are really interesting. There is a community college in town where we can take a beginner's class. This is the year we're going to finally do it.

3. Run a mile under 6:00. Now this goal may be a stretch. I compete in corporate olympics with my company every year and last year in the track competition I ran the mile in 6:09. I'd really like to break 6:00 this year. However I don't have much control over whether I get to run that race or not. The company is only allowed 2 entries in each age group and there are three strong female runners at my company in my age group. So if I don't get to run that race then I want to break a personal best in another race, such as under 2 hours in the half marathon.

Those are my three goals! Not too much but still challenging. I honestly could've thrown up at least 20 goals but wanted to keep it simple. Can I accomplish them?

Happy New Year!