Food lately...

Remember how I went on a food-picture-posting-binge right after we got our new camera?  After laying off the food pictures for a few months, I'm ready for another round.  And I hope you are too :). Here are some things we've been eating lately:

pizza

(Let's call it "margherita pizza" instead of "cheese pizza")

more pizza

(this one we can call "the best pizza ever".  It is technically called the "walk-in-the-woods pizza" and the recipe is from the book Fresh and Green Table.  The mushrooms are marinated and sauteed, the cheese is gouda, it is drizzled with maple syrup.  soooooooooo good.)

caprese salad for me for lunch (while I fight off Violet.  I need to start making her her own!  Tomatoes and cheese, two of our favorite foods.  She is definitely my daughter.)

Those yellow tomatoes were so sweet they tasted like dessert.  I still think about them longingly from time to time.

potato-sausage-kale soup 

I've made this two weeks in a row because it is so good, and this week the breadsticks I made were the best I've ever made!  I kind of made up this recipe/combined a few different recipes, but let me know if you want it, because I wrote it down.

popovers - tonight

I wish I had taken a side view picture of these because they rose up so high and beautifully!  We ate them with butternut squash and apple soup.  One of the best things that has happened to me lately was when we all sat around the dinner table eating this meal, because Violet LOVED it.  She kept saying, "I like the soup, mom!  I'm filling up my tummy!  I like popovers!".  

Noodle Love

Someone just tell me to stop posting food pictures - I'm addicted!  I wasn't going to post about this, even though it was delicious, but the pictures of Violet eating her noodles were too cute not to share!

These were SPICY, and it didn't slow Violet down at all!

(If you are interested, I got the recipe here but used udon noodles instead of lo mein.  And here is the picture.  They are called Dragon Noodles, which I think is a cool and dramatic name.)

I'm so proud

Here's how dinner went tonight: 

(I'm just so proud, I couldn't help but share!)

Violet ate all 3 of her edamame dumpling before I finished serving myself.  "More!  More!" she cried.  Then she ate 5 more dumplings (which I believe is only one less than I ate).

Then she started on her applesauce without me having to tell her to.

The she ate all of the zucchini on her plate and said, "Zucchini!  Like candy!"  Then she ate the rest of the zucchini that was in the serving bowl.

Then I tried to clear her plate (with the two pieces of broccoli I'd put on her plate just for show, with no hopes that she would eat it) and she said, "NO WAIT!  MY BROCCOLI!" and ate both pieces while saying, "Mmmm, broccoli, like candy!".

I'M SO PROUD!  I feel like I put so much effort into making sure she eats more than just cheerios all day, that it feels sooooooooooo good when it pays off.  

(An old picture, but this is the same meal I made tonight that Violet devoured.)

Putting my Mothers' Day gift to good use

We bucked tradition and had pizza night on THURSDAY!  Crazy, I know. 

You guys, the pizza pan Glenn got me for Mothers' Day made our pizza SO good!  Seriously, it was the best pizza I've ever made; the cast iron just really improved the texture of the crust.

I made one of my favorite pizzas that I hardly ever make (I blogged about it here).  I'm glad I did because it was the best it has ever been because of the new pan.

And since we are on the subject of food, here are a couple of other good things we've eaten lately!  (Sorry, I know I've been posting a lot of food pictures lately, but our new camera takes such good pictures of food!)

These edamame dumplings (from the book Sprouted Kitchen) were awesome:

And this salad (from the book Plenty) was delicious. 

I think I am going to make both the salad and the dumplings again next week because they were so good.

Our food lately...

If you care, here is what we've been eating lately.

This pizza was a winner:

We go to the farmer's market every week, but all winter didn't buy much. But this last week the summer produce was out in full force!

The strawberries were so good and so cheap, and I was told this was the first crop of tomatoes of the season!

If you don't love oatmeal, but realize that it one of the healthiest and least expensive breakfasts around, you should try overnight oats!  I did this week, and it is my new everyday breakfast!  Also, it is soooooooo good with those amazing strawberries from the farmer's market.

(basically, you just mix 1/2 cup of oats with 1 cup of almond milk at night in a tupperware, and then put it in a bowl with berries and a little sugar the next morning. I love the texture, and it is nice not to have hot oatmeal now that it is warm outside.)

As for the tomatoes, I had this amazing salad for lunch.

I used the basil from my own plant!  This salad was so good that Violet ate tomatoes for the first time!  She just kept asking for more, and I was so proud.

Success: Veggie Burgers

I have tried making veggie burgers in the past.  As you may remember, they were ok, but not great.  They always just tasted too bean-y, like I was eating a bean burrito instead of a burger.  Well, then Glenn got me this book for Easter:

And I found a recipe in it for the most delicious looking mushroom-brown rice burger.  The recipe was definitely more involved than other bean burger recipes I have tried, but I was hoping the extra work would pay off.  Well it did!  These burgers were awesome!

We ate them on English muffins with spinach and tons of avocado.  The recipe made six huge patties, and as proof that they really were good, Violet ate a whole patty all by herself!  The texture was perfect; they didn't fall apart at all, which is an issue I've had with bean burgers in the past.  

(Note to Annie [because she has this cookbook and might actually make these soon]: don't skimp on the fennel seeds.  It makes it taste like sausage!)

Honey-Lime Tilapia

We tried this meal for the first time last week, and we LOVED it, so we had it again tonight!  The tilapia is so good, and amazingly easy.  I got the recipe here.  You basically just mix together lime juice and honey and marinate the fish all day.  Then you dip it in flour, and fry it in a skillet.  When Glenn took his first bite of it, he exclaimed, "THAT IS SOME GOOD FISH!".

Guess who else loves it??  Violet!  I'm so proud that she eats fish so enthusiastically.  She also had a big bite of the asparagus tonight at dinner!  Just one bite, but she didn't spit it out, so I'm calling it a success.

In other news, Violet had a good time playing with her friends during my institute class today.  

(love these girls)

Pizza Friday - Part 4(?? I am losing track of how many times I've posted about our pizza...)

Remember how yesterday at the Farmers' Market I bought some things for our pizza?  And how it was beets and swiss chard, and I was nervous that it was going to be a really weird pizza?  Well, it was good!

Violet even gobbled it up, so you know it wasn't too bad.  We liked the beets, but didn't love them, and the swiss chard/garlic cream sauce mixture was delicious.  So there you go - you can really put just about anything on a pizza and it will be a hit.

The end of veg month...

February is over!  I had a ham sandwich yesterday to celebrate.  I will share our menu for last week with you, to finish up the month (see week 1, week 2, week 3) but we didn't eat very many new meals.  

Sunday - we had breakfast with my family before they left to go home, and then I think we had cereal or something for dinner.  I didn't take a picture of breakfast, which is a shame, because it was beautiful. We had toast with avocado, queso fresco, and pickled red onions.  It is one of our family's favorites.

Monday - Black bean soup (see week 1)

Tuesday - Breakfast for dinner (pancakes)

Wednesday - Stuffed Bell Peppers

I didn't have  recipe for these, and I was afraid they wouldn't be good, but they were.  Glenn LOVED them.

Thursday - Tortilla soup (see week 2)

Friday - We ordered pizza because I forgot to make the dough before leaving to do the laundry.  

So for February, I planned a whole month of meals at one time.  It took me about an hour to do, but it was so nice for the rest of the month!  Usually on Saturday morning before we grocery shop, I try to plan the next week of meals and I hate it.  Having the whole month planned took away so much of the stress, and we saved a lot of money!   I want to stick with it, so I planned the whole month of March yesterday. 

Also, last night my dad made the stuffed poblanos that I made in week 2, and they looked much more beautiful than mine!  I wish I was there to eat with them! 

p.s.  I completed my NYR of eating veg for February, and I also am now 50 for 50 on writing in my journal everyday this year. (we are 50 days into this year already, can you believe it??)

Vegetarian Month - Week 3

I almost forgot to post this even though I said I would yesterday!  We are so busy having fun!  I love having my family here.

Here is how week 3 went down:

Sunday:  Jamaican Shepherd's Pie (from Veganomicon)

I made this once before, and posted about it.  As I had supposed in that post, it was much better with regular old mashed potatoes instead on manioc root.

Monday:  Chili (from Fresh and Green Table).  

We forgot to take a picture til it was almost gone, but here is what we got.  It was delicious!

In the bowl

in the pot

Tuesday:  Rice Noodles in Curry Sauce + Veggies (no recipe)

This wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.  I took the lazy route and bought a prepared curry sauce, and it didn't have very good flavor.  Oh well.  Now I know to just always make the sauce from scratch.

Wednesday:  Bean burritos

These were exactly like the burritos we had in week 1, but I crisped them up in the skillet before we ate them, and it made them awesome.

Thursday:  Seven Treasure Tart

We ate this with my family this time, and they loved it! I'm so mad at myself for not taking another picture, because this one was way prettier than the last one.

We had pizza tonight, of course.  One week left!

Vegetarian Month - Week 2

We are still going strong in Vegetarian month around here!  Remember how last year, I ate a ham sandwich on the first day?!  Haha, I have done so much better this year.

Sunday - Stuffed Poblano Peppers

link

This was one of the two new recipes I tried this week, and we really like it.  We ended up just putting the stuffed poblanos plus a lot of the tomato sauce in tortillas and wrapping it up, so it was really like stuffed poblano burritos!  Yum!

Monday - Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

You guys, I forgot to take a picture of this.  And it was SO beautiful!  I am so mad at myself.  We had it with popovers, as usual.  We have had this several times; it is actually one of the meals Glenn requests the most often.

Tuesday - Honey Pasta Salad

Another of our regular meals, and also one of Glenn's favorites.  I posted the recipe last February, so here is the link.

Wednesday - Vegetable Pot Pies

We mostly celebrated Valentine's Day on Wednesday, and so I made the biscuits in the shape of hearts, even though it was a day early.  The vegetable filling on these was delicious, but the real star was the feta-scallion biscuits on top!  I followed this recipe, except I didn't realize I was out of frozen peas until dinner was halfway made, so I used corn instead, and it was delish.

Thursday - Tortilla Soup

Of course, on actual V-Day we had a totally non V-Day related dinner.  Except I REALLY LOVE tortilla soup, so there you go.  First, here are all the toppings:

And the assembled soup:

Tonight, we are having pizza as usual, and I'm planning on making exactly the same pizza I did last week.  So just refer to last week's post if you are dying to see a picture!  

Vegetarian Month - Week 1

So vegetarian month is going great!  You know, last year when we did this, it was pretty hard work.  I was trying all these new recipes, and some were good but some weren't.  But since we have continued to cook mostly vegetarian meals since last February, it hasn't been much of a switch to do it again.  I have actually only tried one new recipe so far!  

Here is an overview of this last week.  Tonight, I'm just making pizza, so I figured I could leave that out.  

Monday - Black Bean Soup

This is the new recipe I tried!  I didn't think one black bean soup could be much better than any other black bean soup, but this one was so good.  Glenn even loved it, and he usually loves neither soup nor beans.

Tuesday - Baked Pasta

Penne with tomato sauce, broccoli, and zucchini.  There is no recipe; it's pretty hard to mess up pasta.  Pasta is seriously the easiest thing to make vegetarian and have it be really good still.

Wednesday - Seven Treasure Tart

I have made this several times now, and we love it.  It is from my current favorite cookbook.  Basically it is a bunch of winter vegetables and feta cheese wrapped up in pastry dough.

Thursday - Bean burritos

Seriously, the ugliest picture ever, but I'd decided to take pictures of dinner all week, so I wanted to follow through.  Violet liked these, and ate one all by herself, and wanted more!

Update:  By popular demand (aka Annie asked), I am adding the picture of the pizza we ate tonight.

The sauce was the rest of this amazing tomato-garlic dip I got at the farmers market yesterday. We ate most of it for lunch with pitas yesterday, but there was a little left that we used for this pizza.  Other than that, it is just mozzerella, spinach, and a little bit of feta!  Delicious!

Book I Just FInished: Dinner: A Love Story

I just finished a book I loved!  However, you may remember that Glenn wrote one of my New Years Resolutions for me, and that it was to read 50 books this year and cookbooks don't count.  Well, this one was a cookbook (with lots of interesting chapters besides the recipes) and so I didn't record that I read it on goodreads, since that is how I am keeping track for my NYR.  I didn't want to forget that I read and loved this though, so I thought I'd post about it.

Like I said, this book isn't all recipes.  In fact, I'd say at least half of the pages are stories about the author's road to having a good family dinner every night that her kids will eat.  Also, the recipes all looked amazing.  Most importantly, I didn't feel like a bad mom at the end of it like I did after reading French Kids Eat Everything.  After reading this book, I do feel like we don't eat enough fish.  I'm going to make it an unofficial NYR to cook some sort of seafood once a week this year (except in February, obviously) (also except when we are in AZ).  I'm going to start with the Greek style shrimp with feta from this book!  It looks amazing!

Persimmons

Did you know persimmons are in season?  We snatched some up at the farmers' market yesterday!

And guess who loves them? Violet couldn't get them in her mouth fast enough!

This is the face of a girl who charmed all the vendors at the farmer's market and has a face smeared with strawberries to show for it. (But it was already getting dark when I took this picture, so it is hard to see how messy she was.  By the way, it was only like 4 o'clock when I took the picture, dumb daylight savings.)

Dinner: Grilled Mushroom and Asparagus Salad

Remember my new favorite cookbook, The Fresh and Green Table?  Well, the soup I made for when my mom was here was amazing.  Glenn was probably the biggest fan of it, and he usually doesn't care for soup!  On Sunday night, I made a third recipe from this book.  It is a salad with grilled portobello mushrooms and grilled asparagus on top of a mixture of spinach, napa cabbage, scallions, and cilantro.

(our camera is terrible at night, so neither of these pictures is great.  I posted both so you can imagine something in between for how it actually looked :))

The best part was the mushrooms.  They were marinated in all kinds of good things before they were grilled, and were absolutely delicious.  

K, no more food posts for a while, I promise.

Pizza Friday - Part 3

see part 1 and part 2

I can't help it, I like taking pictures of the pizzas I make so much I just have to share them with you!  

This week we had Pizza Friday on Tuesday, because we have dinner plans on Friday (which is code for celestial marriage institute class where they feed us dinner).  This pizza had a homemade alfredo sauce, mozz cheese, caramelized onions, and prosciutto (which is code for ham, but prosciutto sounds so much fancier and is basically the same thing).  Oh yeah, there was also fresh thyme, just 'cause I was putting anything I had on this pizza, and I wish I had tripled how much thyme there was, because those were definitely the best bites!