Busy Sunday, and muffins!!

So we have taken to cooking and baking on Sundays... And it is kinda awesome!  Today, we mixed up a double batch of maple, bacon, scallion and cheese biscuits and froze them. That way, they can be baked fresh in the morning (or whenever...) and enjoyed hot, right out of the oven!  We also mixed up a batch of granola, with pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries and dried apricots, and sweetened with a little maple syrup and honey... I'm really looking forward to having that with some yogurt!  

For Sunday dinner we made a pretty big salad...  We had quite a lot of meat this weekend, and a big bowl of fresh veggies sounded pretty good.  We made our standard Asian dressing, which is just vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and peanut oil, brought to a boil and then cooled.  We had some Brussels sprouts that we steamed, some cabbage (red and green) and some lettuce mix from the farm share.  We tossed all that in the dressing with some scallions, and then toasted a package of Raman noodles and slivered almondsin some garlic butter to add some crunch!  Oh and we might have added some farm fresh strawberries to it as well... I have to say, it sounds a little strange all together, but it was tasty, and it really hit the spot.

Last week we made some cranberry orange muffins, which I toasted some almonds for and mixed them in also.  They are pretty tasty...  I mixed a couple of different recipes to create one I liked, so they have orange zest, and orange juice in them... Making them very orangey and tasty! 

Sam starts his new job this week, which is extremely exciting!  It also means we will be delving into meals that take shorter amounts of time to prepare, and also more snack like foods for the work day, somany more things done in e dehydrator! Though I might do a round of plain old kale chips tomorrow... We do have kale from our farm share in the fridge!  

Yeast Free Pizza, or BBQ Sunday part deux!

What to do with all this left over BBQ sauce we made last week... That was the question that prompted Sunday's dinner this week.  BBQ sauce is not my favorite thing, but it is growing on me.  I like tangy, sweet, and spicy, but for some reason BBQ sauce never combined those flavors in a pleasing way. And I am realizing that maybe that is because the store bought stuff just isn't very good... The sauce we made last week is tangy, sweet and spicy, and actually pretty tasty! And it made quite a bit... Well really only a glass jar full, but for a household of two, it's a lot.  So last night we made BBQ pizza! 

We are without a kitchen thermometer at the moment, so I didn't want to play around with yeast.  Too hot it dies, to cold it doesn't activate, you know, it's temperamental...  So I found a yeast free pizza dough recipe.  It basically needed to be kneaded for about five minutes and baked about twice as long.  It was good, but not as good as the yeast recipe we usually use.  Instead of tomato sauce, we used the BBQ sauce, and sliced red onions and cherry tomatoes thin.  We baked that first, till there was about ten minutes left and then poured on the sharp cheddar and mozzarella and finished it up.  It turned out so tasty!  Matched with a salad with a lemony dressing, and a nice summer blonde, it was a perfect meal before an evening of the Tonys and the finale of Game of Thrones. 

BBQ Sunday!

So this weekend we randomly decided that we should make BBQ beef, since it is so hot, and we can cook it in the slow cooker. Well this lead to quite a bit of "cooking", to make all the pieces for our Sunday Funday BBQ Feast!  

What we made:

Bread and butter pickles

No mayo coleslaw

Slow cooked BBQ beef

Barbeque sauce

Coffee Ice Cream

Brownie roll out cookies

It has been a busy day!  We also mixed up maple, bacon, scallion, cheese biscuits, which we froze and will bake for breakfast throughout the week... I'm pretty excited for those!!

This was my first true foray into the pickling realm, and according to Sam it went well! I happen to not like pickles, but these actually aren't too bad, I have already eaten two!  They are pickled with apple cider vinegar, which I think helps...  I'm glad it went well, cause now I want to try pickling other things, like green beans, red onions and maybe even asparagus... I think we might need to get some canning jars!

Leftover Pot Roast Pot Pie

Tonight marks the debuts of the dehydrator I got for my birthday. Overnight a tray of blueberries will dehydrate to become "dried blueberries" which then will go into the granola I have plans to make next in the dehydrator!! It is very exciting!  

For dinner tonight I threw together a pot pie utilizing leftovers. I added a can of corn, some celery and a can of cream of asparagus soup to left over pot roast and potatoes, and topped it off with a layer of puff pastry.  Although everything is better with puff pastry, it was still pretty tasty, if I do say so myself! And it yielded plenty of left overs for lunch!

Sometimes I hate technology...

After a long week...

This was the dinner I came home to Saturday night, after a long week of manual labor. Eggplant parmesan!!  Sam made breadcrumbs from a stale bit of a left over French baguette and mixed in fresh herbs from the garden, and made tomato sauce. It was crispy and delicious!!  

Labor day!!!

I am having some trouble posting... So here is the text that was supposed to go with that picture...

Our delicious labor day feast!!  We had hot dogs grilled on the foreman, classic potato chips, buffalo tofu, and potato salad. The potato salad was made with potatoes and an onion from our farm share, and a garlic aioli Sam made from scratch!!