I’m travelling all over Oregon this week for work (not really all over, mainly the Portland, Eugene, Corvallis area). It’s only Tuesday and I’ve only had one night away from home…I miss my bed already. Not to mention my sweet puppy and Matt….home sick, not fun!
I’m also missing the ability to make dinner and control my lunch. Yesterday’s food included Starbucks at 7am on the drive to Portland, some fruit from the health fair’s buffet, a random piece of chocolate cake around noon, licorice and crackers on the drive to Eugene, Thai takeout for dinner. All fairly yummy, but my tummy wasn’t in it…I felt sick all night and just wanted some home food and cuddling on the couch. There’s an organic soup/sandwich/salad place near my hotel that I’m thinking about trying out for dinner tonight. We’ll see what they have at today’s fair in terms of lunch and how I feel when I get back to the hotel.
The good news is that my hotel has a fitness center and I spent half an hour on the bike and elliptical (total, not each) yesterday before dinner, so at least I’m pushing myself back into the workout habit. The last couple weeks have NOT been very fitness-full, so now that I’m done with that editing project, I should be able to get back into a routine! Hooray!
Exciting news!! Today is the start of Erin’s bake sale/auction! Check it out…there are a TON of goodies. Snacks, baked goods, random gift-type items, personalized products from a variety of very talented people by the looks of it! All of the money from the auction is going to a wonderful cause, so I definitely recommend checking it out! I am contributing another round of nut butter cups, and I got some tips from Angelea and others about some better packaging/shipping methods! The last time I sent them to Dori, they seemed to travel fine, but maybe because it’s no longer freezing cold winter, they got a little melty on their way to Angelea. But she still vouches for their yumminess, so bid away!!
In other excitement, Dori is having the first of two giveaways this week! Since she has had some not-so-great luck with doormats, a really fun doormat online store is giving one of her readers a free doormat of their choices (under $20) from their website!! This is a great chance to enter a pretty unique giveaway contest from a SUPER uniquely fun blogger! If you haven’t read Dori’s blog, set aside a chunk of your day, because it is hilarious and you will want to click through her blog to read her adventures!
Also, there’s a really cute puppy who is blogging some excitement (and a new dress!). She’s a brand new member of the Dog Time Blog Network, so check her out!
Hey hey hey! Look up! A Bacon-Wrapped Life is now located at it’s very own domain name baconwrappedlife.com!!! EXCITEMENT! Also exciting, Dori’s Shiny Blog is now located at dorishinyblog.com, check it out and keep your eyes peeled for some fun on her end to celebrate the change!!
I’ve been absent from the blog for a few days because we were switching servers, updating names, and just generally being busy with chores, errands and some nice weather But I have a yummy new recipe to show for the missing weekend!
This is a conglomeration of this cooking light recipe and a pumpkin ravioli recipe I tried about 4 years ago and turned into an AMAZING pumpkin lasagna recipe that I’ll probably share at some point.
Spicy Sweet Butternut Squash Ravioli with Prosciutto and Parmesan
I roasted the heck out of a butternut squash at 400 degrees for about an hour or so, then scooped it out of the peel (after it cooled) and mashed it. In a pan with a bit of olive oil, I sautéed 4oz diced prosciutto until it was a little crispy on the edges. Half of the meat went into the squash along with breadcrumbs, 1 egg, salt, and parmesan cheese.
I bought a package of wonton wrappers, and these made the ravioli! I filled a wonton wrapper with about 1Tb of the squash mixture, wet the edges with water, topped with another wrapper and sealed all around, making sure to get out all of the air bubbles. I used a biscuit cutter to cut into rounds and set them aside on a parchment-lined tray.
I made 20 ravioli like this and still hade some wrappers and squash mixture left, but knew we wouldn’t eat them, so I just stuck with the 20 (good thing, because I was stuffed by the end of the meal!). Brought a big, wide pan full of water to a simmer and cooked about half of the ravioli at a time, for about 5 minutes with each batch. I pulled them out with a slotted spoon and let them wait on the parchment-lined baking sheet while I cooked the second batch.
As the second batch of ravioli cooked, I heated the remaining prosciutto and olive oil back up and added a little over a tablespoon of brown sugar, a few chopped sage leaves, a pat of butter and a dash of cayenne pepper for a little kick.
After this got all melty, I sort of just wanted to eat it with a spoon!
I melted this over medium-low heat and then tossed it with the ravioli and served, topped with a little more fresh sage and some parmesan! Pretty easy (a little time-consuming because you have to fill the ravioli) and SUPER delicious! You could also buy ravioli and just make this prosciutto brown sugar sauce to coat them, and it would be really really easy.
We served it with a bagged Pacific salad with a bunch of different greens, soy nuts, carrots and a poppy seed dressing. Plus we added a bunch of diced tomatoes from our CSA! It was a nice accompaniment to the ravioli, which had a wonderful balance of the nutty squash, sweet brown sugar, salty prosciutto & parmesan, and a tiny bit of spice from the cayenne!
Last week, for Meghann’s Blogger Bake Sale, I contributed some Mix-And-Match Nut Butter Cups. All the proceeds of the bake sale went to Meghann’s Team In Training, and I couldn’t have been happier to help raise some money for such a good cause! And raise some money she did!! Meghann made a huge amount of money that all went towards fighting Leukemia and Lymphoma. Hooray!!
The winning bidder for my nut butter cups chose half Dark Chocolate with Peanut Butter and half Dark Chocolate with Almond Butter…nice and simple! Being more of a cook and less of a baker, nut butter cups are perfect for me to make, because there is no precise measuring, it’s done a lot by feel, AND I can get messy! Melting chocolate and molding peanut butter cups inevitably ends up with the stove, the counter, the kitchen sink, the table, and the freezer covered in splattered chocolate…weeks later I will find chocolate smeared on my elbow from rubbing up against something in or around the kitchen area. It’s spectacular!
I thought I would blog about my nut butter cups because Erin, of Walk in This World, is having a bake sale (and auction) too! This one is also for a great cause and I’m excited to contribute! This time I’m going to scour my cupboards and make a variety pack of nut butter cups with lots of flavor combinations for the high bidder! More info to come about the goodies in Erin’s bake sale.
In the meantime, here is the creation of the Mix and Match Cups from Meghann’s bake sale!
- Choose some good chocolate. We used organic dark chocolate chips from the Whole Foods bulk section. The bulk foods section of any store is really a major danger zone for me.
- Melt the chocolate! You can melt chocolate in the microwave or in a variety of ways really. But the best way that I’ve found is in a double-boiler setup. A small pot with 1-2 inches of water over medium low heat + A metal bowl over the water (not touching the water) + Chocolate chips. This will slowly heat up and the chocolate will look like a huge globby mess for a little bit.
But then it gets warm enough and becomes a smooth, creamy, gorgeous bowl of melted chocolate and this is the danger point. It’s pretty tempting just to eat this with a spoon (or your hands), but resist. You need this to make your peanut butter cups!!!
- Coat your molds. I use mini muffin cups. I used one silicone pan and one metal pan. They both worked just fine. When I made Dori’s Almond Butter Carob Cups in March, I used some mini heart-shaped silicone ice trays. These were ADORABLE. When coating, you can use a brush or something, or just a small spoon. I have this tiny tiny tiny rubber spatula that is perfect. Make sure you coat all of it…any holes will leak out nut butter, and really, a cup with a hole is not a very good cup. If you want a thicker coating, just go back over them again after they’ve set for just a minute.
- Pop them in the freezer! They’ll only take a few minutes to harden….I usually do this in batches. Fill the molds and let them sit while I run an errand or go to work or whatever. When they’re solid, you can fill!
- Fill with nut butter!! When I fill them, I mix the nut butter with a little bit of powdered sugar. This makes the texture a little better for this kind of treat. You can definitely do without it.
- Back in the freezer! You can definitely try to top them with more melted chocolate right away, but I’ve found that it sometimes gets all mixed up with the nut butter and then it’s just annoying. I pop these back in the freezer (the hardest part is making a flat space) and run another errand!
- Melt some more chocolate, exactly as above, and then top the cups! I usually tap the the tray on the counter to even out the tops and let the chocolate settle into any air spaces it can and then get them as full as possible, smoothing out the tops a little. They’re never totally smooth, but this gives them personality, so if you’re looking for perfect, don’t look here!
- Back in the freezer! I usually let these freeze overnight, just to make sure the top gets completely solid.
- Pop them out! The silicone is nicely flexible so you can get most of them out without a hitch. My metal pan is really nice and with just a little tapping, the hop right out on their own. Yum!
You can eat them frozen and they are delicious!! You can also let them get a little softer, but I’d recommend keeping them in the fridge to keep them from getting too gooey. I used natural peanut butter/almond butter, which should be in the fridge anyway. Usually, they’re probably going to be eaten too fast for it to matter!
Last week we had HUGE asparagus stalks in our CSA box. I have never seen asparagus quite so massive. With the chilly weather and a lack of creativity, I stole this recipe from Maeve for Asparagus soup and switched it up a bit to make a pretty quick weeknight dinner that lasted through two rounds of leftovers. We had soup again on Sunday with our potato cakes leftover from the Passover/Easter dinner, and AGAIN on Monday with some egg salad sandwiches. Yum!! It’s finally gone now, but it was definitely worth the minor effort I put into it 🙂
Maeve is amazing and made an asparagus based stock for her soup….I used veggie broth from a box. It was the middle of the week. Just deal with it :) I also had a different set of vegetables on hand, and didn’t feel like going to the store, so the variety in the soup got switched up a bit as well. This is where the stalks of our Red Swiss Chard (previously noted in the side-dish yuckiness from this past weekend) came into play. I also bacon-ed it up a bit because we had some bacon in the fridge that needed to be used up quickly. This made the original dish AMAZING, but we had it without bacon both times we had leftovers and it was still mucho delicious.
- 1 Box Vegetable Stock
- 2 Tb Olive Oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 Bunch asparagus, tops reserved (we also had some leftover stalks frozen from our yummy asparagus side dish that we served with pan fried scallops a while ago)
- 2 small potatoes, diced
- 2 cloves crush garlic
- Stalks from 1 bunch of red swiss chard, chopped small
- Salt & Pepper
- 1/4 cup milk
- Bacon!
Heat olive oil in large stockpot. Sauté middle portions of asparagus stalks, chopped onion, potatoes, and garlic until a little brown. Add stock to cover and simmer until the veggies are nice and soft. Puree (I used our wonderful stick blender!). Turn it on low heat and add Simmer for 20 minutes covered until vegetables can be mashed with the back of a spoon. Puree soup until smooth. Return to a very low heat and add milk, asparagus tops, and chopped chard stalks. Cook on low until the veggies are cooked through (the chard will take a little longer than the asparagus, so you may want to add the asparagus a few minutes after the chard). While this was happening, we had chopped the bacon and then cooked slowly over medium-low heat to render out as much fat as possible, then cranked the heat to get it nice and crispy. This went on top of the soup! Yum!
We also roasted some potatoes, red peppers, onions and garlic coated in olive oil to serve alongside. When we were cleaning up after dinner, we threw the handful of leftover roasted veggies into the soup and it became a creamy asparagus vegetable soup for the rest of its yummy career.
Thanks for the inspiration Maeve!!
Matt made dessert! We had a package of strawberries from our CSA and he grabbed some angel food cake and whipped cream at the store. This was a complete sugar overload and so huge I couldn’t finish, but a satisfyingly sweet to end the evening.
Happy Passover/Easter/Earth Day/Any other reason to celebrate! Yay!
My big editing job is D-O-N-E DONE! HOORAY! I have a couple tiny things to finish up with it, but the deadline was Sunday night, and I felt like I was back in grad school working on that all weekend. But now it’s finished and I feel GREAT! Tonight has been ridiculously relaxing after a hectic day at work, and I had no idea how restful it would be to come home and not have editing work to do! I spent the night making egg salad for dinner, finishing up my nut butter cups for the blogger bake sale high bidder and doing other little chores, but to not have the huge editing project hanging over my head was amazing!
I have a few things I want to post, since I’ve been a bit behind in updating and keeping on top of some of the fun recipes we’ve been trying. But to celebrate the holiday weekend, you get our Passover/Easter weekend food!
I splurged and bought lamb from Whole Foods for our Saturday night dinner because Matt and I are huge lamb fans and we don’t usually spend extra money on meat for cooking at home (I dream of a day when I can buy half a cow from a farmer and have a huge freezer to store it all away).
We had also gotten a bunch of Red Swiss Chard in our CSA box last week and have been trying to think of ways to use it. I’m usually wary of greens…I have never been a big fan of collard greens or other dark greens when they’re just sautéed or served on their own as a side dish. But, some things I read online about it made me think maybe I wanted to revisit greens.
Earlier in the week, we had used the stems from the chard in a soup (recipe to come!), so we washed and chopped the leaves, which are absolutely gorgeous. I love the bright vibrant colors that you can find in fruits and vegetables.
I decided to jump right into the experiment and just sauté the chopped chard with some olive oil and garlic…..I was skeptical the whole time.
For the lamb, we trimmed off some fat, crushed a couple pieces of matzah, mixed it with some parsley, and coated the lamb.
We pan fried this for a couple minutes on each side and then threw it in a 400 degree oven until it reached 145 degrees internally (medium rare-ish). After we pulled it out, we covered it and let it rest while I finished up the greens and our other side dish.
We served the meat with the sautéed chard and some mashed potatoes (made with some seasoned chicken broth, salt, pepper, and parsley…no dairy!). The leftover potatoes were made into potato cakes the next night to go with the leftover soup from the earlier meal mentioned above! Leftovers all around!!
The lamb was a little less done than we had planned, but amazing anyway. Lamb is one of the few meats I can eat when it is this pink. YUM. The potatoes were super flavorful and went really well with the meat. Matt liked the chard and cleaned his plate, but I couldn’t do it…the flavor wasn’t there for me, but I think it really comes down to the texture and temperature of greens cooked like this. They’re too slimy and soft for me, plus they never seem to be hot…the chard was the last thing to come off the stove for this meal, and yet when I sat down to eat it was already cold…cold and slimy? Not my thing. But the rest of dinner was so good! And look how pretty it is!
Sunday morning we made one of Matt’s favorites…matzah brie!! (Pronounced “BRY†not “BREEâ€â€¦there is no yummy gooey cheese involved in this dish, sad to say). It’s basically french toast made with matzah. We added lots of cinnamon and dipped it in syrup! Mmmm! We also tried to be somewhat healthy and share an orange, but the orange we had was flavorless and just tasted like slightly orange-flavored water. Blech.
In the afternoon, I took another quick break from editing to teach Matt some fun things about Easter (I had no time to make Easter baskets for us this year 🙁 booo.) Matt is horribly disgusted by the smell of vinegar, so we used lemon juice instead…vinegar would have made brighter colors, but no one was gagging at least! The green, blue, yellow, and orange were decently bright, but the pink was super disappointing! I was looking forward to some bright bright pink eggs! The swirly green one is my favorite! 🙂
I look like a monster attacking the camera with my huge hands in this picture, but I had to post it because you can see Santana popping her head up in the background! She wanted to help SO badly!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and Passover! More recipes and yumminess to come soon!
