L Got J to Eat Vegetables.

Well…we would have posted a picture of dinner tonight. Except, we ate it all.

I surprised myself by finding a lovely recipe for vegetable pizzas with a twist. And J ate all of his (note: he is not a fan of tomatoes, peppers and sometimes cucumbers). 

Veggie “Tostadas”- basically a pizza-ish tortilla with a deconstructed guacamole and hummus combo. All of the YUM!

You will need (for 2 tostadas):

*Two flour tortillas

*Olive oil

*S&P

*Hummus (**see note below**)

*1/2 cucumber-ish

*1/2 tomato-ish

*3 tiny sweet peppers (baby peppers?)

*1/2 avocado

*some feta cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350. While waiting, place two tortillas on a baking sheet and brush olive oil  across. Place in oven for 8-10 minutes (until crispy).

2. Chop tomatoes and peppers. Saute in olive oil until soft.

3. Dice cucumber and score 1/2 an avocado.

4. Take tortillas out of oven, and spread with some hummus. Crumble feta over top.

5. Sprinkle with S&P, and spread as many of the tomatoes/peppers, cucumbers and diced avocado as you want. 

6. Eat. 

**So, in our case, we had 7 steps. Somehow, J accidentally put the hummus in the freezer last week while unloading groceries from the store. Needless to say, we had a hummus puck to defrost before it was even close to being able to spread across the tortilla. Never a dull moment with J, never a dull moment. 🙂

So good. And healthy, nonetheless.

Just a quick post!

-L and J

 

Tikka of redemption

Well, it looks like I’m forgiven for the Great Chicken Taco Scare of 2013. In fact, L and I made enchiladas out of the end result, which were pretty good. I got up this morning and made this:

Vegetarian Tikka Masala

YOU WILL NEED:

a crock pot

3 small potatoes

an onion

half a bag or so of frozen peas

couple of shakes of coriander (weird little spherical spice, which are actually cilantro seeds)

1/2 a teaspoon of curry (spicy spice)

1 teaspoon of minced garlic

rice (optional)

WHAT TO DO:

Chop up the potatoes, skins and all. Peel and chop the onion. Toss them deftly into the crock pot, then put in everything else. Cook on low heat for 6-7 hours. If it gets a bit dry, you can add a little water to it. If you like, you can put the rice in at about hour 4. This can be served with naan, if you’ve got some handy.

EEEEAAAAAT.

-J

Dinner cooked together is always better…right, J?

Today was J’s first day of work- hooray! Today was my start of the weekend- hooray!

To start our weekend, J and I decided to make dinner together and watch The West Wing together. We have been watching it on Netflix. We are obsessed.

Anywho, we made this for dinner.

 

It actually made this, plus a small loaf pan. SO MANY VEGETABLES.

Oh, yeah. It is garden lasagna.

You will need:

*9 lasagna noodles

*3 1/2 cups of milk

*1/2 cup flour

*1/2 cup parmesan

*s&p

*chopped vegetables (we cut up more than we probably should have, hence the second pan)…we used an onion, 1/2 head of cauliflower (florets only), 2 stalks of broccoli (florets only), couple of carrots, couple of stalks of celery, and a zucchini

*olive oil (some)

*container of cottage cheese

*3 cups of shredded mozzarella

*1/2 bag spinach

 

1. Boil noodles. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Oil in pan; cook onions with salt and pepper.

3. Once softened, dump into large bowl. Add oil back to pan (back on heat), and cook zucchini.

4. Once cooked, dump with onions. Add oil back to pan (back on heat), and cook broccoli and cauliflower.

5. Once cooked, dump with others. Add oil back to pan (back on heat), and cook carrots and celery.

6. Once cooked dump with others.

7. Other pan…flour and milk on the stove. Whisk thoroughly. Bring to boil.

8. Once boiling, remove from heat, stirring in parmesan and spinach, with some s&p.

9. In another bowl (if you have any left by now…), add cottage cheese and 1/2 of the mozzarella. Mix.

10. Grease a 9×13  pan, and dump 1/3 of the spinach sauce. Add three noodles across the pan. Spread 1/3 of the cottage cheese mixture onto noodles. Add 1/3 of vegetables on top.

11. Repeat 10.

12. Repeat 10 one last time.

13. Put the rest of the mozzarella on top of the lasagna.

14. Bake for 20 minutes covered, remove foil, then another 20 minutes to broil cheese.

15. Wait 10 minutes, serve and eat. We had ours with a nice Riesling. Yum.

 

What else are we doing tonight? Assembling wedding invitations. Excellent. More wine!

-L & J

Tacos, Schrödinger’s Cat style

So.

Here we are.

And I may have messed up dinner.

And L isn’t home yet.

Anyway, here’s what happened:

L sent me a recipe to make, for Mexican shredded chicken, to put in the crock pot to make tacos with later tonight. I scrolled too far down on the link she sent me, and instead followed a recipe for something else. Something else which is not meant to be put in a crock pot. I did this anyway, without realizing my mistake until later. Here’s what I put in:

-A shredded chicken breast (shredding chicken breasts, by the way, is DISGUSTING when they aren’t cooked.)

-1/2 an onion, diced and cooked in olive oil (I’ve recently learned how to cook onions, so I put them in EVERYTHING. Here’s a tip: don’t put onions in everything. Just most things.)

-2 cans of diced tomatoes

-half a bag or so of frozen corn I found in the freezer

-a little thing of what appears to be leftover black beans

-a tiny can of tomato paste

-various spices: cumin, onion powder, onion onion (which you actually CAN put in everything), garlic powder, chili powder, and pepper.

It’s been a couple hours. I haven’t opened the pot yet. According to Schrödinger (and some sketchy associative logic), the food is, as of this moment, SIMULTANEOUSLY TERRIBLE AND AWESOME. I got a job recently, and today I decluttered the apartment and vacuumed- presumably, L will still want to marry me after tonight. I’ll keep y’all updated.

-J

YOU GUYS

LOOK WHAT WE MADE THIS MORNING. Yum. They are the best thing ever. I know that’s what we call everything on this blog, but I mean

COME ON.

RASPBERRY SWEET ROLLS WITH CREAM CHEESY TYPE ICING.

Rolls:

Preheat oven to 425.

*2 packets of yeast (MAN that stuff is weird. I mean it’s ALIVE? And we use it in BAKING?)

*2/3 cups of sugar

*1 cup of lukewarm milk

*2 eggs

*1 stick of butter

*4 1/2 cups of flour

*1/4 tsp salt

Raspberry Filling:

*10 oz. frozen raspberries (not thawed)

*1 tsp. cornstarch

*1/4 cup + 2 tbsp. sugar

*1 tbsp. raspberry jam

Cream Cheese Icing:

*1/2 cup powdered sugar

*3 tbsp. cream cheese

*1 tsp. vanilla extract

*1 tsp. milk (or more depending on how thick or thin you want the icing)

1. In a small bowl, mix lukewarm milk, yeast, and sugar. Place a dish towel over the bowl, and let it sit for 5 minutes, while the microscopic yeast wizards perform their magical ceremony to make the dough bigger. Somehow.

2. Next, in a large bowl, mix the yeast mixture with 2 eggs, softened butter, and salt with an electric mixer.

3. Add flour into the bowl, 1 cup of flour at a time.

4. If you are like me, and don’t have a stand mixer, now is the time when you roll up your sleeves and knead the dough until it forms into a ball.

5. Place dough into a greased bowl, set dish towel back over top, and let it rise for about 30 minutes (quick yeast-if you don’t have the “quick” kind, this will need to sit for 1 1/2 – 2 hours. eek!)

6. While waiting for the dough to rise, grab a small bowl. Mix together raspberries, jam, cornstarch and sugar.

7. On a flour-dusted surface, roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or, again, if you are like me and don’t have a rolling pin, roll it out by hand).

8. Spread raspberry filling on the dough, all the way to the edges.

9. Roll the dough tightly into a log, and cut into 12 individual rolls.

10. Grease a 9×12 pan, and place the rolls in pan. Bake for 25 minutes.

11. While rolls are baking, mix together cream cheese (softened), vanilla, milk and powdered sugar. If you want it a little thinner, just add more milk ( a little at a time).

12. Remove rolls from the oven, and let cool for 10 minutes. We made scrambled eggs while we waited.

13. Drizzle icing over rolls.

Devour all the foods…ok. Just kidding. But we may have each had 2 rolls. Breakfast is ready to warm up for tomorrow before church!

J & L

We threw our first party!

Right now…really tired.

Last night…awesome time.

New Year’s seems like a great time to invite a few friends over. So, we did.

And, we did it all for $100!

Main reason: Aldi. I love Aldi. We are lucky enough to live near two stores, and we buy all of our groceries from there. In an average week, J and I will spend about $35-40 a week on groceries from Aldi ($5 a day to feed two people three meals). For $100, J and I were able to buy groceries to make:

*mozzarella filled biscuits

*baked chicken nuggets

*mini tacos (made for a different post this summer)

*crescent roll- wrapped sausages

*champagne jello shots

*mimosa punch

*homemade herbed shortbread and crackers with brie and havarti

*candied mixed nuts

*curry-roasted chickpeas

*veggie chips

*tortilla chips and salsa

*chocolate truffles

*key lime pie truffles

 

We fed about 20 people and had hardly any food leftover.

What do we have leftover? Cookies.

 

So many cookies. Everyone brought at least a dozen cookies.

 

We rang in the new year with good friends in our home, which was definitely nice.

2013 brings the year that J and I finally get married, after our 7 1/2 year long relationship. We are a little excited, to say the least.

Looking forward to what 2013 will bring!

 

-j and l