Buttery Scones, and Curd

Happy Holidays!

If you are like us you've been spending the days following Christmas - chillin. I love all of the things that lead up to the big day but, I'm grateful when it's done, and relaxing is next up. 

Regardless of where you live, this year the holidays looked different. Many of you opted out of big family events. Some of you ordered food from a local restaurant to support them and others (like Dan's family) got creative with their celebrations. 

Dan's daughter Mary, her husband Matthew, and cousin Elwood organized a traveling potluck. Everyone made a dish packed it in containers for each family and then Dan, Marry, Matthew, and Elwood drove around to family members collecting and delivering the dishes. Then later in the evening, we did a family zoom to connect and do a fun gift exchange. It wasn't ideal but it was fun. 

Each year Mary and Matthew do some kind of cooking project and we are the recipient of some delicious foodstuffs. This year they made lemon, orange, and lime curds. I was anxious to try them out so this morning I made a batch of buttery scones - they were perfect together - I have to admit I did have a second - but it's the holidays nothing has calories right? 

Buttery Scones

2 cups flour

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup cold butter cut into small pieces

2/3 cup milk (I used oat)

1 egg beaten

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and grease a baking sheet. In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add butter pieces and mix into flour with your fingers until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Add milk and mix until combined (do not over mix). 

Put dough on a lightly floured surface and pat into a round circle, cut into 8 wedges and transfer to the baking sheet. Brush the tops lightly with the beaten egg and bake for 12 - 15 minutes. 

Serve warm with the curd - nom nom nom 

I don't know about you but I'm ready for a new year, 2020 has been quite the ride. Thanks for stopping by!

We Pardoned the Turkey

It’s the holidays - my second favorite time of year; my favorite - Halloween. While we’re under a new set of restrictions (no gathering with anyone other than those in your household), I’ve decided to do a little more decorating to make things a bit more festive.

Thanksgiving was quiet. Dan and I spent the day cooking, sipping a few cosmo cocktails, and relaxing (well after cooking of course). We ended the evening watching The Christmas Chronicles II - with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn - it was sappy, cute, and just what we needed to kick off the Christmas season.

For our main course we had roasted butternut squash (from our garden) that was stuffed with a mixture of onions, mushrooms, carrots, celery, walnuts, and wild rice. We roasted the last of our garden fingerling potatoes with brussels sprouts and served it with caramelized onion vegan gravy, vegan cornbread, and cranberry sauce. And for dessert - homemade sweet potato pie with whipped cream. It was delicious if I do say so myself but don’t take my word for it, try this recipe and see what you think. 

Stuffed Roasted Butternut Squash

Ingredients:

For the butternut squash:

1 butternut squash

1 tablespoon olive oil

For the stuffing:

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 ribs celery, chopped

6 - 8 ounces baby portabella mushrooms

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup wild rice

2 1/2 cups vegetable broth

½ cup walnuts, chopped

½ cup dried cranberries

1 teaspoon fresh sage, chopped

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon dried thyme

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F (180C).

To make the butternut squash: Cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out and discard the seeds, then put both halves on a baking tray, cut side up. Drizzle the olive oil on top of each squash and rub it around to coat. Bake for 45 - 60 minutes until the squash is cooked and fork-tender. The timing will vary based on the size of your squash. Be careful to not overcook - squash will have additional baking time after assembled.

Once baked, remove the squash from the oven. Let it cool enough so that you can handle it. Scoop out the flesh in the center of both squash halves, leaving about a 1-inch border all around. Set aside the scooped-out squash flesh and chop it up.

To make the stuffing: In the meantime when the squash is baking, you can prepare the stuffing. In a large pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When hot sauté the carrots, celery, onion, mushrooms, and garlic until the veggies soften and begin to brown. Add the wild rice and veggie broth to the pan, stir and then cover and bring to a simmer. Cook until wild rice has popped. 

Add the walnuts, dried cranberries, sage, thyme, salt, and pepper. When ready, add in the scooped out and chopped squash flesh. Stir well to combine.

To stuff the squash: Pack in as much of the stuffing into both sides of the squash as you can. You will likely have leftovers, but I like to pack it in nice and firmly and make both sides heaping full. Pick up one squash half and flip it on top of the other. Use kitchen string to tie up the squash in 3 or 4 places holding it together. 

Lightly brush the top of the squash with olive oil and bake for 20 to 35 minutes until hot all the way through. Season the top with black pepper and chopped sage. Serve with onion gravy and enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Root for the Roots

Whether your candidate is the new President or not - I’m glad the election is over - I’m tired of all of the divisiveness - it’s exhausting. On the flip side, I am loving this beautiful 70 degree November weather. I don’t recall the last time we had a November this warm and beautiful, not to mention it has given us an extra week of outdoor dining during the pandemic. 

On Friday, I had a birthday celebration lunch with my friend Ellen at a local restaurant - Thirty Bales. We sat on the outdoor patio and had their delicious cauliflower tacos and a couple of glasses of wine. Her birthday is not until later in November but knowing how MN weather can be I texted her and suggested we take advantage of the beautiful weather while we had it! It was so nice to hang out and catch up!

Later in the evening, I learned that I have been accepted into the U of M Master Gardner program - something that I’ve been wanting for a while now. I decided at the last minute to apply - since we are in a pandemic and not going anywhere anytime soon. It seemed like a good time to spend winter studying and learning new things. I am so looking forward to this new adventure. 

After spending a good part of Saturday finishing up the yard work - because we all know that this beautiful weather will not last - I decided to use up some of the root veggies in my fridge. I roasted them with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and then mixed them into a delicious tomato-based sauce to make a hearty stew. I do think the sauce could have been a little less dense but hey that’s what leftovers and veggie broth are for. Tonight we’ll finish it up with some fresh goat cheese and leek bread and a salad. 

Roasted Root Vegetable Stew

Ingredients:

3 to 4 pounds of root vegetables I used  parsnips, turnips, carrots, potatoes, and squash

1 head of garlic, the cloves separated and peeled

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided 3 Tbsp and 3 Tbsp

1 teaspoon Kosher salt

1 medium cup chopped onion

1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste

1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes 

2 cups (packed) of chopped kale or other leafy greens.

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning or dried oregano

Black pepper to taste

Tabasco sauce (optional, to taste)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450°F. Into a large roasting pan, mix together the vegetables, garlic, 3 Tbsp olive oil. Sprinkle with salt.  Roast for 45 minutes, turning the vegetables over in the pan halfway through cooking.

While the veggies are roasting, heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil over medium-high heat in a dutch oven. When the oil is hot, add the onions and sauté until the edges of the onions just begin to brown. Stir in the tomato paste, and cook a minute longer. Then add the crushed tomatoes and the Italian seasoning. Bring to a simmer, then lower the heat to the lowest possible setting. Cover the pot and let cook gently while the root vegetables are roasting.

When the root vegetables are ready (they should be browned on the edges and easily pierced with a fork), remove from the oven. Add chopped leafy greens to the pot of tomatoes. Simmer until the greens are wilted, about 5 minutes. Stir in the root vegetables. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Season with Tabasco to taste if using.

Enjoy - like everything soups and stews get better with age. I’m looking forward to leftovers tonight with some delicious homemade bread. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Fully Loaded Vegan Lasagna

This fully loaded vegan lasagna is a plant-based dish full of hearty, sautéd vegetables and a tofu ricotta cheese that everyone will love - even meat-eaters! 

My lasagna quest started at Aldi with a box of lentil noodles - they sounded interesting and I wanted to give them a try and honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I made lasagna. As it turns out I’ve never made lasagna for Dan so it’s been about 17 years - yikes. In fairness, he made a raw lasagna for me once but forgot to rinse the spinach and it was so salty that we ended up tossing it. Later we took a raw food cooking class and got the recipe but for some reason, we never got around to making it. 

Our harvest is pretty much bottled, I made tomato sauce, jam and sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini fritters, and sauerkraut. We have butternut and acorn squash, fingerling potatoes, and kale - lots of kale in the fridge/pantry ready to be used. Last weekend I cleaned out the garden and flower beds and planted next year’s garlic - the cycle continues. We’ll definitely make some changes to the garden next year and move the peppers to the front where they get more sun - hopefully that will help them ripen. 

One of the reasons I don’t make lasagna is that it has all that cheese, which makes me super sick, and the vegan cheese - well let’s just say it doesn’t do much for me. It doesn’t really melt and the taste is - blah. And for those of you ready to tell me to try X, Y, or Z brand, believe me, I’ve tried it and didn’t like it. 

This lasagna took some prep but I cut down the time by using the tomato sauce I made a month or so ago and I used oven-ready noodles - there were still a lot of dishes - but hey dishes are not my job. I added some Field Roast Italian vegan sausages to the veggie mix and it really hit the spot. 

Ingredients:

Vegan Ricotta Cheese

16 ounces extra-firm tofu

1.5 tablespoons roasted garlic hummus

1 cup sautéed kale

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/4 teaspoon salt

Lasagna

7 - 8 lasagna noodles, you can use pre-cooked noodles

4 cups marinara sauce

1 cup onion, diced

1 zucchini, cut into quarters and chopped

1 red pepper - chopped

1 green pepper - chopped

2 field roast Italian sausages (vegan) - thinly sliced 

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 bay leaf

olive oil

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Bring a large saucepan with tomato sauce, basil, and bay leaf to a boil, then simmer while you prep the other ingredients.

Prep the rest of the ingredients and set aside.

Vegan Ricotta Cheese

Gently mix tofu, hummus, kale, nutritional yeast, salt, and lemon juice with your hands or a spatula until semi-smooth and resembles ricotta cheese.

Vegan Lasagna

Heat a large skillet with 1 1/2 tbsps of olive oil on medium-high heat. Sauté zucchini, peppers, vegan sausages, and onions with salt and pepper to taste for 4-6 minutes until tender and starting to brown. 

Cook the noodles until just al dente and set aside, laying flat in one layer. Skip this step if you are using pre-cooked noodles.

Assemble the Lasagna

Remove the bay leaf from the marinara sauce and spread about 1 1/2 cups in the bottom of a 9×9 inch baking dish. Top with 2 1/2 noodles (I sliced one in half lengthwise to cover the extra space). Then add a generous amount of ricotta, vegetables, and sauce, top with another layer of noodles, ricotta, vegetables, and sauce. Add one more layer of noodles and finish with a generous amount of sauce. You can top it with fresh chopped basil for extra flavor!

Cover lasagna with foil and bake for @ 40 minutes.

Tonight we had leftovers with a green salad - it was delicious!

Enjoy!

Home-made Ravioli - My First Attempt

It’s funny how quickly things change from Fall to blowing snow - sometimes on the same day. The summer garden has been put to bed, the garlic planted and the Halloween decorations are up. Not that we’ll have trick or treaters - but who knows. I’m thinking of tying a rope across the front porch and stuffing goodie bags with candy and clipping them on the rope with clothespins for a non-contact Halloween - we’ll see. 

A couple months ago I was looking for a pasta roller/maker. My stepdaughter has one and we’ve made the most delicious kinds of pasta at her house but that rolling by hand wasn’t quite what I had in mind. However, the attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer was crazy expensive but I found an off-brand that got very good reviews so I added it to my cart and before I knew it - the box had arrived. Now I had to use it and since it was a cold and windy day, pasta sounded like the perfect dinner option.

I'm going to say I got the pasta recipe from my stepdaughter and the recipe for the filling is partially from Bee Seasonal site. The sauce is my own, I just tossed things together until it looked good 

Fresh Egg Pasta

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 eggs - beaten

water

Instructions

Pulse flour in a food processor to remove any lumps. Add beaten eggs and process until the dough forms a round ball (@ 30  seconds). Turn out dough (and any little bits) on the counter and knead 1 - 2 minutes until the dough is smooth. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rest 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Cut the dough into 5 pieces and roll out into sheets (follow pasta machine directions)

Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Filling

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked butternut squash

3 ounces goat cheese

1T fresh herbs - I used rosemary and sage

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Bake squash in a 350-degree oven until you can easily pierce it with a fork - let cool. When cool scrape the flesh into the food processor and process, leaving some chunks. Add goat cheese, herbs, and salt and pepper, pulse to combine.

Putting it all together

Using the pasta machine roll the pasta sheets, dusting the surface with some flour all the time, so the pasta won’t stick to the surface. Put the filling from one side lengthwise, lightly brush the sides with water, and cover it with the side of the pasta sheet. Pinch the sides and cut the ravioli.

Bring to a boil salted water in a large pot and cook the ravioli for 3-4 minutes or until they float. 

Sauce

Ingredients:

1 medium onion - diced

1T olive oil

2T butter

sage leaves 

2 T walnuts, chopped

1 - 2 pears - chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions 

In a large skillet, heat 1 T olive oil and 2 T butter, add the onion, and cook until translucent. Add the pears and walnuts and cook until the pear is softened but not mushy. Slowly add the cooked pasta and toss just until they are coated with the sauce, add sage leaves and serve. 

It took a long time but it was worth it, those little pillows of squash and goat cheese in the fresh dough were near perfection. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

Green Tomato and Cheese Muffins

It’s been far too long since I’ve blogged and I have no good excuses for my absence so I won’t pretend to make one. There have been lots of things going on tho. Dan turned 60, the garden has gone crazy and we’ve been trying to soak up as much of the beautiful fall weather before it fades. 

We’ve had a few events on the deck with friends (sweaters and blankets provided), eaten at a couple trusted restaurants - outdoor seating only. And we’ve done some hiking near Taylors Falls and a long weekend at the North Shore. 

Amidst all of that I have been cooking - a lot! I made sauerkraut - with cabbage from the garden, tomato jam, tomato sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini fritters, and many, many kale salads. The squash is still ripening (this year we tried a new hybrid - honeynut butternut squash. From a food perspective, we are doing well - actually from every aspect, life is good. 

I’ve been working hard to incorporate vegetables from the garden into our daily meals; kale, collard greens, herbs, zucchini, tomatoes (lots and lots of tomatoes), peppers, and eggplant. But the temperatures are dropping and we finally took the plunge and brought in the squash and green tomatoes yesterday/today. So what do we do with all those green tomatoes - jam, relish, chutney, and today I tried green tomato and cheese muffins - they are so simple to make and while I haven’t tried them yet, they smell awesome. 

Ingredients:

2 cups chopped green tomato

3 tablespoons honey

3/4 cup milk - I used oat milk

1 egg

1/2 cup oil (I use Canola)

3/4 cup shredded or grated vegan cheese

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 T baking powder

Instructions:

In a large bowl combine tomatoes, honey, milk, egg, salt, cheese, and oil.   Mix with a spoon.  Add flour and baking powder to the mixture.  The batter will be lumpy.  Spray or grease a 12 cup muffin pan or use paper liners.   Fill cups about 3/4 full.   Bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes until brown on top.   

Enjoy - and since you spent time stopping by, I’ll share some photos of our latest food feasts. 

Tomato Jam - Bottling the Summer Harvest

I hope everyone is enjoying our beautiful September weather. We took a walk early this morning and noticed the first signs of Fall in the red sumac trees. We got the gutters cleaned out and then spent some time in the garden eyeing our peppers, which are not quite ready for harvest but damn they are close. 

Last week celebrated Dan’s 60th birthday COVID style. We had 2 celebrations; one with his siblings and one with his daughters so that we could keep everyone socially distanced and the count at about 10 people. It was fun we ordered food, his mom made his favorite carrot cake and celebrated. We are now both in the same decade and he’s ready to start earning those senior benefits - although he's not ready to retire anytime soon. 

Overall we’ve had a great harvest and we’re still picking zucchini, basil, kale, collard greens, and tomatoes - lots of tomatoes and there are still tons on the vine. We definitely need next week's sun and warmer temps to finish ripening them.

I’ve baked multiple tomato pies, made 4 batches of roasted tomato sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, and now tomato jam, because what goes better with a toasted goat cheese sandwich that a smokey jam. 

I started with an assortment of tomatoes - dense and meaty heirlooms combined with Big Boy, Early Girl, and tossed in a few Roma to round things out. The heirlooms added a depth of flavor to the jam that I haven’t gotten in past years. This recipe is simple, the hard part is not eating it all at once.

Ingredients

1/2 tsp Coriander, dried

1/2 tsp Ginger, fresh

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1 Onion - roughly chopped

4 lb Tomatoes - mixed 

1/8 cup Balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup Brown sugar

1 1/2 cup White sugar

1/8 cup Apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp Cumin, dried

Instructions:

Add everything to a stockpot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer approximately 3 hours. Put in clean jars. The jam will last for 3 weeks in the fridge or longer in the freezer. 

Enjoy!