Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween

Tonight in celebration of Halloween, I am cooking a recipe that Rachael Ray had on her 30 minute meals show on Food Network the other day. It is Harvest Moon Macaroni. You can find the recipe on Food Networks website.

The recipe calls for frozen butternut squash. I unfortunantly was unable to locate the boxed squash at my grocery store. Of course now there are millions of grocery stores, but it is finding that one that carries it! I am all for convenience! I had to bake the squash and then puree it. To do that you cut it in half lengthwise and clean out all the seeds and as much as the yucky dark orange stringy things from it. It won't hurt if you cannot get all of the strings out. Then you place it flat side down on a cookie sheet and cook at 400 degrees for 45 minutes or so. Then you let it cool enough and scrape the squash in your blender and puree. Now I am waiting to make the dinner. I will post what I thought of it and if it seemed like a hit.

The other day I made the guacamole and it tasted like the real deal. I will post the recipe later. But since using salsa (I love to drown things in it), the dip turned tan. So I added green food coloring while I blended it. It didn't look too bad and Jonah at it. At first he was looking at me like I was nuts. But he eventually gave in.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

IKE

Well, I have not posted anything in a while since Hurricane Ike decided to grace us with it's presence weeks ago. We did not get any rain but we had 70 MPH winds. My weather radio was alarming to stay off the roads. It was pretty bad. We had trees and electric/phone poles down. Many people were without power here. I was extremely lucky since I did not lose power. I did have power surges which caused my CPU not to work (since it was running when it hit-and it was on a surge protector). So anyway, I haven't posted much since then.

I did make a quick meal in my crockpot the other day. I need to use my dried black beans that are in my food storage. I cooked the dried beans in my crockpot. Of course when they are done, you drain and rinse them. You then put it back in your crockpot with a little water and then salsa to taste (I had my beans swimming since I wanted a stronger salsa taste). I had that on warm/low for about 8 hours. When I got home I added minute rice to it and let it cook until the rice was done. It makes a really good burrito filling. My only problem was getting the beans to set. I had to cook them for two days which I know should not take that long.

I am trying the silken guacamole tomorrow. It has tofu it it. I have been watching Food Network lately (mainly Racheal Ray and Semi-Homemade) and Sandra Lee was making guacamole. Her guacamole did not have tofu, but it had peas and salsa in it. I am going to experiment and combine the two recipes (the tofu guac is the recipe mentioned earlier that was in a "Wondertime" article about dinner dips). From what I have heard that peas and tofu blend with the avacado flavor so you get the good stuff and not taste it. So I decided to sacrifice my son to this experiment. Hopefully, he will just eat it. I am also sprinkling in flaxseed meal in it. I don't know but I am crossing my fingers that it will be good!

Speaking of the Food Network and Rachael Ray, there are a bunch of recipes I want to try. What is so cool about Food Network is that you can watch the shows online. So check it out if you can! I think they have some neat recipes on there. I will post the recipes I try of RR with a link because they just sound yummy and very healthy.