Lemon Poppyseed Scones

In trying to be healthier I've been playing around with whole wheat flour, so far it's going pretty well and these scones were scrumptious and according the online calorie counter I used only 310 calories a piece. They made great breakfasts with tea or coffee while they lasted.

Butternut Squash Bread Pudding

Wow! well it certainly has been a while! No excuse I suppose but we've been busy just trying to keep up with expenses like everyone else these days.
This was a fun recipe I got to try while Boy was out of town so I only had to cook once for the week! And I got to use my pretty baking dishes! This recipe is from myrecipes.com http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/butternut-squash-parmesan-bread-pudding-10000000701119/ . I really enjoyed adding a little fresh sage from the garden though I found processing the squash to be s little more time consuming than I expected.

 

Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups cubed butternut squash
• 1/2 tsp salt divided
• cooking spray for the pan
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 garlic clove minced
• 2 cups 1% milk ( I used 2%)
• 1 cup fresh grated Parmesan ( I subbed the green can terrible I know but cheaper!)
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 3 large eggs
• 2 egg whites
• 8oz cubed stale french bread or about 9 cups

Directions:

1.  Arrange squash on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray sprinkle lightly with 1/4 tsp salt and roast at 400F for 12 minutes or until tender. When you take this out of the oven lower the oven temperature to 350F.
2. Heat oil in a medium nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes or until it softens, add the garlic and saute for one more minute. Remove from heat. Allow to cool while you prep the next step.
3. Combine in a large bowl, remaining 1/4 tsp salt, milk 1/2 cup cheese, pepper, nutmeg, eggs, and egg whites in a large bowl stirring with a whisk. Stir in squash and onion mixture. Add bread and stir lightly to combine. Let soak for 10 minutes, then place in a 2 quart baking dish sprayed with cooking spray.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes or until lightly browned. 

Notes: This was good but personally I love a little more intense of flavors so I think I would double or triple the garlic, pepper and nutmeg next time. I suggest this if you like intense flavors but then again, maybe I'm just weird! Enjoy!

Fried Breakfast Potatoes

Happy quintuple 1! Just thought I'd point out today's date: 1/11/11, got to notice it now since it's gonna be a long while until 2/22/22!
These are the fried potatoes that went with the frittata, pretty simple and easy, just a few steps, more time consuming than the frittata though so if want these with that you should start a bit earlier.

Mushroom and Spinach Frittata

This was part of my attempt to eat healthier, lots of veggies and not too high on the calories.

Pioneer Woman's Nantucket Cranberry Pie

When I saw this recipe on Pioneer Woman's website I knew I had to make it, after all I had all the ingredients but cranberries and those are actually in season right now. So I of course darted off to the store to stock up on cranberries, the rest sit in my freezer awaiting my next urge to make a cranberry recipe. And I nearly forgot to take a picture for blogging so this is the only picture I have, of the last tasty piece. We had a birthday party to go to so I had an instant excuse to bake!

New Years Resolutions and Blueberry Molasses Cake

So wow! I haven't posted in forever! Sorry while I have been thinking about blogging I haven't been very good at sitting down and assembling the posts lately. So in 2011, which seems really strange to type still, one of my resolutions is to blog more consistently and to get off on the right foot here is a tasty cake! This was made from a recipe I found on 101 Cookbooks for Old Fashioned Blueberry Cake, this wasn't the first time I had made the cake. I really enjoy having something sweet for breakfast and this is not too sweet and feels sort of healthy as a dessert, at least to me.

Four Cheese Ziti or Homemade Mac an' Cheese

The official title for this recipe from Cuisine at Home was Ziti with Four Cheeses but it is so easy to make and that sounds much too fancy, to me it felt a lot like mac and cheese just with different cheeses. This dish is amazing, kind of like something you would expect to get at a restaurant, but easy to make on your on stove at home.

Ricotta Cheesecake with Caramel Apple Sauce

Boy has been asking me to learn to make cheesecake for a long time now; so when I spotted this recipe browsing through Cuisine at Home I knew it would end up on our table pretty quickly. This recipe is amazing, and even if you don't like cheesecake you must try this caramel sauce poured over something, it really is to die for!

Meatballs from Cuisine at Home

These are a family favorite, and the good news is they are not challenging to make, it's a lot like making cookies! This recipe can be easily scaled up to fit your crowd, or your freezer, because they freeze quite nicely too! Nothing like homemade meatballs in your freezer ready to be pulled for any weeknight dinner! My experiment with this recipe was substituting wheat bran for 1/3 of the bread crumbs and nonfat milk rather than whole. Result: no impact on flavor, but I'm guessing there must be some improvement on the nutritional information. These are great with pasta, in submarine sandwiches and in soups!

Roasted Cauliflower with Mustard Butter and Sausage

Yes this recipe is a spinoff off last time's recipe. Again this is adapted from the year 2000 Sep/Oct issue of Cuisine at Home magazine. While we were eating this the first time, with no sausage or modifcations, Boy expressed that while he was willing to eat the recipe again he wasn't excited about eating the recipe again. So of course I asked what he thought would have made it tastier, he responded that bacon or sausage would improve it. So I turned right around and added some sausage to it! The following recipe is what I came up with, I used a chicken apple chardonnay sausage from Trader Joe's but fell free to use any mild chicken sausage you like.

Roasted Cauliflower with Mustard Butter

Today I am introducing you to my absolute most favorite cooking magazine, from which this recipe comes. This is from the 2000 Sep/Oct issue of Cuisine at Home. I love this magazine, the recipes are great, the pictures are both beautiful and informative as they often demonstrate at least a few steps of the recipe; and the articles that preface recipes are engaging. It is a joy to read, even when the recipe they are discussing is something I would never normally eat or make. As a result I own all of their issues for the first 12 years of publication and greatly enjoy going through them as the seasons change looking for seasonal recipes and new inspiration. Their roasted cauliflower with mustard butter recipe is a delicious side dish, but we used it as a filling vegetarian meal and loved it, although Boy thought it would be better with some meat in it as a main dish.

Honey Vanilla Pear Cake

Have you ever bought pears from the grocery store? Then you’ll understand how you can completely forget about them ripening forever on your counter until suddenly they need to be used right now. Well using smitten kitchen's nectarine brown butter buckle as a starting point and with modifications from The Flavor Bible I ended up with this cake,

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins from Closet Cooking’s recipe

I wasn't kidding about the giant zucchini last time, I used this recipe to use up the other half of the monster. Boy is big on all things chocolate and told a guest that they were brownies, so yes these are delicious! I again borrowed from Closet Cooking's solid recipe.

Blueberry Zucchini Muffins from Closet Cooking recipe

A coworker gifted me with a lovely homegrown zucchini from his garden, which was just a bit too big for eating straight in my opinion. So, I of course went looking for zucchini bread recipes and found this one on Closet Cooking.

Tomato Mozzarella Pesto Pasta Salad

For me dinner is often a combination of two challenges: 1. what in my fridge is perishable and in danger of not getting used? 2. How can I prepare a healthy dinner containing ingredients that won’t require an extra trip to the store?

This served quite well on achieved the objectives. The perishables involved were heirloom tomatoes from

Plum Cobbler

After a surprise CSA box showed up at our house (I had suspended delivery for a few months and forgotten it was going to show up), I suddenly had a lot of produce to work through including 2 pounds of small mystery plums. And so I searched the internet for ideas on what to do with these and found a recipe for plum cobbler on Simply Recipes: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/plum_cobbler/