Beef Stroganoff

This dinner came out of Lund's Buy One Get One sale - all sorts of good things were on sale, including egg noodles, hamburger, all kinds of good stuff. So... stroganoff!

I found this recipe on Simply Recipes.


I like my stroganoff to be very saucy, and as leftovers this one got a little dry. I recommend doubling the amount of sour cream/water - make it a little juicy, and then sop it up with some good crusty bread. Yum!

Pumpkin Soup

I made my first attempt at homemade soup last night, after cleaning out our pumpkins for carving. I figured it would be very 'green' of me to use as much of the pumpkins as possible. So, I made pumpkin seeds and gave the soup a try. To be honest, it wasn't spectacular - but I didn't follow a recipe, I just made something up. It needed a lot of spices to make it taste like anything - so if you feel like giving this one a try, don't be afraid of your spice rack. Oh, and I got to use the magic bullet! That's always a good time.

Pumpkin Soup
Pumpkin leftovers, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 pint heavy cream
salt & pepper
spices, to taste (I used nutmeg, paprika, cumin, you name it, I probably threw it in there!)

Put the pumpkin chunks & cream into magic bullet, blend until creamy. Put creamy soup in sauce pan over medium low heat, stirring in spices to taste. Make sure it doesn't burn to the bottom of the pot. Serve with some pumpkin seeds for garnish.

Country Apple Pie - Round 2!

I already posted the recipe for my country apple pie, but I had to post these pictures. I picked up a set of leaf shaped cookie cutters to make my fall pies extra special. Look how cute they turned out!

Champagne Punch

This post is long overdue! We made this punch for my birthday dinner. The dinner itself was quite the fiasco - I forgot to put the chicken I was making on a rimmed pan, so the butter leaked out and burned on the bottom of oven. The burning butter smoked SO MUCH that we actually had to drop to the floor of the apartment, open windows, turn on fans, and eventually LEAVE while the apartment aired out. Not exactly the way I wanted to start out another year, but as they say, shit happens.

On the bright side of things, we made this beautiful, delicious champagne punch. I have said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again; but THANK YOU Martha Stewart (and your underlings) for finding such delightful recipes. This one is super easy:


1 bottle of champagne
1/3 cup simple syrup
2 peaches, pitted, and cut in wedges
1 pint blueberries
1 pint raspberries

(You could put in any sort of berry you like, but I definitely love the peaches in there - get creative!)

We made double, maybe triple the recipe, and everyone had quite a lot. It was fantastic! Even better, it doubled as our table centerpiece for the evening, as I put it in a very large, tall vase that we usually use for glads.

These pictures are from round 2 of the champagne punch, which Chelsea, Alexis & I just had to make another time - we had leftover simple syrup & peaches (darn!)

Eggplant Parm

My latest creation: Eggplant Parmesean!

I've been eating a lot of eggplant lately - it's exotic, rich flavor really adds a lot to simple dishes. Over the last month or so, my roommate and I have found some recipes like Tomato & Eggplant Caponata (a room temp veggie dish) and an Eggplant Tortellini (which is really cheese tortellini with a tomato & eggplant sauce).

The caponata dish, while delicious, was quite time consuming and I found it's more well received when served warm. The tortellini though, is an amazingly easy dinner to prepare, and it tastes much more complex and fancy than it really is.

Since we had been experimenting with the eggplant, and I found some gorgeous looking ones at the Maple Grove Farmer's Market last week, I decided to give eggplant parmesean a try. I LOVE chicken and veal parmesean. I've maybe had eggplant parm once, at a restaurant. Felt like something worth trying!

Eggplant seems intimidating at first - it looks much heavier than it is, it oxidizes as soon as you cut it (and I mean immediately!). But, I encourage everyone to give it a shot - it's just like cooking zucchini or other veggies - you just have to get to know it and give it a shot. :)

Here's my recipe for eggplant parm (serves 4-5):

1 large eggplant, cut into 1/2 inch slices (long slices)
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 cans tomato sauce
fresh basil leaves
oregano
rosemary (I didn't have fresh rosemary or oregano, so dried is ok)
1 egg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 T. ground parmesean cheese
1/4 cup grated parmesean cheese
1/2 box mostaciolli noodles


Preheat oven to 350. Mix the breadcrumbs & ground parmesean cheese into a flat bowl. Dip the eggplant slices into the egg so they are coated, then dip into breading mix. Fry in hot pan with olive oil until brown. In a baking dish mix diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and herbs. Spread evenly over bottom of pan. When eggplant is finished frying, place eggplant over tomatoes. Bake for 25 minutes. After 20 minutes, sprinkle shredded parmesean over top, put back in over for remaining 5 minutes. Boil pasta, when cooked, drain & plate with eggplant. Use sauce from bottom of pan for pasta & eggplant. Serve immediately.

Delicious!!

Country Apple Pie

One of my coworkers brought me a bunch of apples from her parents' house the other day, and since I've been craving apple pie (or really any sort of pie) for awhile, I decided to give it a shot.

I've tried making apple pie before, but I've never been able to get the spice/sugar mix right to make the apples all yummy and gooey on the inside. Usually they just end up like sugary apples - more gritty sugar than gooey. But after some google-ing and a little reference cookbook checking, I felt I was ready. And it really did turn out great!

Here's my own recipe (which is a combination of several recipes I found):

1 lb.-ish (enough to fill the pie) tart baking apples, peeled and sliced
1 store-bought pie crust, at room temp
3 c. sugar
2 T. flour
3 T. cinammon (go to town here... use as much as you like!)
1 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. salt
3 T. lemon juice
5 T. butter (in 1 T. pats)

Mix sugar, flour & spices together in small bowl. Place 1st crust in pie pan (preferably glass). Fill with apples, sprinkle with sugar mixture. Drizzle lemon juice evenly over apples. Place butter pats on top of apples, evenly spaced. Cover with 2nd crust (you can be fancy with the top crust or just go with the basic top like me!). Press edge of crusts together with fork, remove excess crust. Cut steam holes to vent. Bake at 375 for 1 hour, or until crust is golden brown.



Maybe on my next attempt I'll try making my own crust! :)

Comfort Food

Yesterday morning I woke up to beautiful sunshine. The promise of gorgeous weather after a ridiculously humid & stormy Saturday made me want a delicious breakfast to go along with it. I'm not much of a breakfast eater. In fact, I usually will only eat breakfast foods when someone else prepares them. Hopefully my future husband (whomever he may be) gets that message early on, cause it'll be a rare and special event that gets me cooking breakfast foods.

Anyways, I was in the mood for something... comforting. I centered on pancakes or french toast, both of which remind me of my childhood. My mom & I made a lot of pancakes and french toast when I was a kid - both allowed me to help with the cooking, and it was something we both liked a lot. Considering I don't have the recipe that I love for pancakes in my apartment (and didn't feel like calling home to get it), I decided on french toast.

We had some leftover italian bread - soft, almost Wonderbread-like stuff. Perfect, since I grew up on white bread that never died. Unfortunately, our eggs were way past their prime and we were out of syrup. A quick run to the store fixed that (thank GOD we live a block from the grocery store), and 30 minutes later I had my french toast.

For a single (large-ish) serving of "Mom's French Toast":

2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 T. cinnamon
1 T. milk
2 T. butter (for pan)






Blend together, soak bread slices on each side until thoroughly coated in egg mixture. Cook in buttered frying pan until both sides are golden brown. Lather on butter and drown in syrup... and enjoy!



It was good, but not the same, not right. I'm fairly certain that I will never be able to make it taste the same as my mother's french toast. That makes me a little sad, that I can't reproduce the flavors I remember from my childhood. I guess that's a part of growing up, be it slightly depressing, that you can't always have things the same. Perhaps I'll just have to convince my mother to make me some (as I'm quite sure that's step one of getting anything to taste better - have someone else make it for you!).