Mini-Bundt Pan

I made myself a cake in my new 6-cup Bundt pan.
I just used the plain yellow cake recipe (halved it) from the good old Better Homes and Gardens red&white cookbook, and glazed it with powdered sugar icing.  The finished product is sitting on a smaller sized plate (salad plate?).

Slow Cooker Veggies Chili

This is a recipe I modified from the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker for Two cookbook.  There, it's called "Quick Hominy and Zucchini Chili".  I made it this summer when I had a whole bunch of zucchini.  I liked it, but thought it needed something else--like maybe beans.  So this time I thought I would try adding some black beans.
At the grocery store, I saw a tube of chorizo, and thought that might be nice to add.  And I couldn't find hominy at either of the 2 stores I went to that day, so decided that a can of corn would be a decent substitute.  Also, none of the tomatoes looked good (no surprise in January) so  I got a can of diced tomatoes to use instead of fresh.
Here's the chopped zucchini, canned diced tomatoes, canned corn, and canned black beans in the slow cooker:

Then I cooked the chorizo in a skillet.  After a few minutes, I added a couple stalks of celery and an onion and let them get nice and soft.

Next I stirred everything in the slow cooker and set it on High for 2 1/2 hours.

I served it with some sour cream and avocado.  It made 3 large servings, but it could be 4 regular servings if you were going to have salad or something on the side.

New tea area

I have moved the tea area to the tea trolley and lacquer cabinet in the dining room. And wow, did I gain a lot of counter space!

Tonight's dinner is going to be rump roast, cooked in a little wine and crusted with herbs and black pepper. I am also roasting a sweet potato and a white potato--together-- and have made TJ's gingerbread. I think we will also have peas and salad. Yum.

Leftovers

So I'm already way behind on the resolution to cook 3-4 meals a week--this week I mostly ate leftovers.

I made a "Red Wine Turkey Stew with Biscuit Dumplings", but I think that counts as last week.  The recipe is in Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two .  Here's a picture of everything in the slow cooker:

I used Marie Callender's biscuit mix for the dumplings.  The stew tasted good, but it needed more liquid.  Maybe the chunks of veggies and meat needed to be smaller?  And I think I would skip the dumplings on top and just make biscuits or have bread on the side.

I've also been eating my leftover meatloaf (same recipe Mom used) for ages.  Luckily it's pretty delicious.  I had meatloaf sandwiches a couple times, meatloaf with fries and salad, and last night I had meatloaf with salad and parsley pesto potatoes (put pesto and potatoes in aluminum foil and bake in oven).  This meatloaf is Italian, so I prefer to eat it with marinara sauce rather than ketchup.  Here's my plate from last night:

I need to get to the store to buy more celery so I can make my next planned dish...

Orecchiette with Ham and Peas

I had intentions of making the recipe DALS had up earlier in the week. It looked simple but tasty, a slightly different way to do pasta, and a way to combine pasta and peas. Alas, the website has been down this evening so I went in search of an alternative---I already had the water boiling and the orecchiette package open. The closest thing I found was Rachel Ray's recipe

http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-search/rachael-ray-30-minute-meals/orecchiette-with-pancetta-and-peas

so with a few substitutions I made that. It was quite yummy. All the other orecchiette recipes called for heavy cream.

Of course, now that I am done, DALS is available again. Here's the recipe I had in mind to do:

http://www.dinneralovestory.com/could-not-have-been-easier/

Her technique is a little simpler but the results are probably very similar.

No photos, but I think you can imagine what this looked like.

Crispy Black Bean Tacos

The inspiration for this evening's meal started with a comment post from Dinner a Love Story. The commenter said she had made the following recipe and it was very popular at her house.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Crispy-Black-Bean-Tacos-with-Feta-and-Cabbage-Slaw-351271

It sure looked like something we would like so I gathered the (few) ingredients we didn't already have.

The first step was to make the slaw dressing:

Then add the slaw mix and salt and pepper to taste:

Next step was to mash the canned black beans with some ground cumin:

After that I heated the olive oil in the pan, added small corn tortillas, put the black beans on top, let that cook for a few minutes then added the slaw.

At the table we added sliced grape tomatoes and tapatio sauce.

Now, this was indeed an easy project, but it really only put me in mind of taco bars which were staples of family meals around here! The real keeper part of this is the slaw which was very easy and totally delicious.

Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

My goal is to EAT REAL FOOD and to only buy what I need when I  go grocery shopping. This week, I bought food for three vegetarian meals that I wanted to try.

I did the shopping Thursday evening, so that night I made the easiest one. Minestrone soup (from a can) and grilled cheese sandwich. The soup was only OK, and a homemade version would have been better. For the sandwich, I used fresh mozzarella, and a Mediterranean olive spread, to help the flavors match the soup. It was nice and melty. Yum.

The really exciting meal was last night though. It was based on a recipe on Skinnytaste (Loaded Baked Sweet Potato) and it was so good.

Basically, you take a sweet potato, and bake it the microwave, then stuff it with Mexican-style toppings. I added a little more black beans, and didn't add taco seasoning to the yogurt, because I didn't think it was necessary. Also, her way seemed like a lot of work. I basically cooked the potato, then added the beans, salsa, green onions and let it absorb in a little. Then I added  a little cheese and some greek yogurt. I also cut up some avoccado and red onion, but ended up eating those separately.

I had a hard time getting a decent picture of the results. This one was the best. 

 

The thing is, I was a little unsure. But the sweet potato makes a really good base. It is much more moist that a regular baked potato, and mixes in really well with the toppings. I'm not sure about a sweet potato with bacon on top, but I bet a more traditionally loaded potato would be yummy too. I'm never going back to boring whites again!

Now to eat the leftovers...

Fresh Pasta!

Tonight I decided to try out my new pasta roller-outer.

It's so pretty!

I followed the recipe for the dough that was in the guide from the pasta roller, though I only used 2/5 the amounts.  I had some trouble getting it to the right consistency--first it seemed like way too much flour, so I added water (per the guide's suggestion) but then it got sticky, etc.  Eventually I had a ball of dough, which I cut into slices.

Guiding the dough through the roller was actually really fun.  And it seems like it would be a much easier way to roll out sugar cookies.  However, the guide just said to roll it to the thickness I wanted--I had no idea which thickness I wanted!  And as you can see, I still had some holes in the dough.

I decided to make the tagliolini noodles.  Which was also fun, except the noodles came out all clumped together.

Finally I tried going back to the roller to make some dough thinner, and those noodles came apart better.

 Then I left the pasta to dry for an hour, hoping that they would shrink apart as they dried.  They didn't.
Finally I boiled the noodles, and served them with chicken picatta and green beans.  (I use Giada's recipe for chicken picatta.)  I thought maybe the noodles would de-clump while boiling.  That also didn't happen.

But it was still a tasty dinner.  I think the key with the smaller tagliolini noodles is to roll the dough really thin before putting it through the cutter part.  Next time.

For this morning: I thought I would share the link to Dinner: a Love Story and her 7 new meals in 7 days (extended to 14 days because she is nice) and thought we could refer to it for ideas.
http://www.dinneralovestory.com/seven-days-seven-meals-are-you-in/

Today's Mercury News had a meatloaf seasoning recipe that used quite a few of the Penzey's spices I bought plus a good meatloaf recipe so I think that will be one of my dishes.
http://www.mercurynews.com/recipes/ci_22288145/recipe-homemade-meatloaf?source=pkg