Veggie Pasta Bake

In the past few weeks I've started trying to regularly cook.  Not just making dinner, but cooking actual things, mostly so that I can have leftovers.  The other part of the goal is to make things that are healthy: lots of veggies, lower fat, that sort of thing.

In that spirit I made this pasta bake last week.  It is based on a recipe from the Hungry Girl 300 Under 300 cookbook.  The original recipe says that it makes 4 servings, but I actually divvied it up into just 3.  I also changed the pasta to what I had in my cabinet (macaroni rather than ziti) and made a few other changes.  Let's be honest, I used more cheese.  

Ingredients:

• 5 ounces (about 1 1/2 cups) uncooked pasta
• 1 cup thinly sliced/chopped onions (about 3/4 of a medium onion)
• 2 cups thinly sliced mushrooms (I used one package of button mushrooms)
• 1+ Tbsp minced garlic
• 2 cups spinach (I used one bag of spinach from the salad section)
• 3/4 cup light or low-fat ricotta cheese
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 1 1/2 cups crushed tomatoes
• 1 cup part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:  

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees
2. Prepare pasta to al dente, drain, and set aside in a bowl
3. Heat a large skillet sprayed with non-stick spray, to a medium heat
4. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until onions are soft (about 3 or 4 minutes)
   
5. Add mushrooms, garlic, and basil.  Cook until mushrooms are soft (about 3 minutes)
   
6. Add spinach and, again stirring often, cook until spinach is wilted and excess moisture was evaporated (about 8 minutes)
   
   
7. Remove skillet from heat and add ricotta cheese.
   
8. Transfer everything from the skillet to the bowl with the pasta
   
9. Add tomatoes and 1/2 cup of the mozzerella cheese.  Stir
10. Spray a 8in or 9in square baking pan with non-stick spray.
11. Add mixture from bowl
    
12. Top with Parmesan and the rest of the mozzerella
    
13. Bake about 15 minutes (until entire dish is hot and cheese on top is melted)
    

Chocolate-filled Croissants: Valentine's Treat #2

Since a package of cinnamon rolls only makes 8 treats--and I wasn't sure of success--I decided to make another type of small-batch, easy treat.  This is something I've made before, and they are fast and easy.

The only rough part is that they call for nutella or other chocolate spread.  Which isn't terrible, but then I have left-over nutella.  Which means that at some point I end up eating a spoonful out of the jar.  Again, not a terrible hardship.  But it is a little shameful, and a little bad for my healthy-eating goals.  In this case, however, I already had a partial jar, so this recipe was actually helpful.

All you do is unroll the Pillsbury crescent rolls, spread with a spoonful of nutella, roll up, and bake.  Be sure to roll from the wide end toward the point, and to put the point on the bottom before baking.

Heart-Shaped Cinnamon Rolls: Valentine's Day Treat #1

I was looking for something festive, but easy to make to share with my co-workers on Valentine's Day, obviously I went on Pinterest.  Well, not obviously.  But that *is* a good place to just see a bunch of ideas in one place.  I saw this recipe's photo, followed it to the Pillsbury site, and thought: "Dang!  Easy, cute, cheaper than bakery cinnamon rolls.  A winner!"  

Well, it turns it it wasn't as easy as I thought.  "But, why?" you might ask.  Well, apparently the Pillsbury people make several different kinds of cinnamon rolls and they are relatively different...and the vital preliminary task of unrolling the cinnamon rolls is made significantly harder if they are not technically rolled in the first place.  Yep, somehow I managed to buy the type of rolls that are more of a solid roll with cinnamon stuff on top.  

"Ok.  No problem," I thought.  I can do this.  And I did!  They turned out pretty cute, actually.  Here's what I did:

1. Take a cinnamon roll and rip it in half.  Then stretch each half out and pinch ends together to made one long piece.  (Now, if I'd really been thinking, I would've just cut a spiral myself.  But did I do that?  Uh, no.)

2. Fold long piece in half and pinch bottom together.

3. Roll under loose ends to make a heart-shape

4. Spray an 8 or 9 inch round pan with non-stick spray and place hearts around edge, points to the center

5. Bake according to the package directions

6. Separate the rolls and then use frosting that came in package, if you like.  (I left mine plain and brought the frosting and a knife, so that people could add as much or as little as they liked.)

African Peanut-Sweet Potato Stew

When I graduated from NC State with my Master's in Public History, I needed to celebrate.  And I needed the celebration to be huge.  So, my roommate, classmate, fellow graduate, and best friend Emily and I went on an awesome--but budget conscious--girls' celebratory trip to Florida.  We stayed at a Disney hotel and spent time at all the Disney theme parks.  (We also took an Orlando city bus to Sea World.  That was an adventure in more that one way.)

For our trip we bought the Disney dining plan and we decided to go to several really cool restaurants for dinners.  One was the Boma restaurant in the Animal Kingdom resort/hotel.  (No, we didn't stay at the Animal Kingdom.  Duh.  We were poor grad students.  We stayed at the bargain Disney hotel where the outdoor stairways were disguised by giant Rubics cubes, not the hotel where giraffes can visit your room's porch or whatever.)  Boma was--and still is--a buffet that serves all kinds of African food.  It was amazing!  Of course, while we were trying all kinds of things, the parents with 2 or 3 kids in tow were dishing up mac and cheese.  But, really, they should know better than to bring their kids to fancy places with "weird" food.

The single most memorable thing that I tried was a peanut stew with root vegetables.   I literally have had dreams about how good this stuff was and I remember thinking at the time, "This has to be something I could make and it would be so good on a cold winter night."  With that memory in mind, I recently started searching for a recipe to try.  I couldn't find the actual Boma recipe, but there are tons of African peanut stew recipes out there.  I found one that used a crock pot from Good Housekeeping and used it as the basis for my first attempt at recreating that long-ago food memory (see recipe below).

I won't say that my recipe is as good as the Boma version, but I really, really liked it.  It is definitely a keeper.  Also, it kept and reheated well.  In fact, the leftovers might have been better than the stew on the first day.  The spices could be tinkered with to produce a stew that is to anyone's liking.  This version is very mild and the peanut butter is the dominant flavor, but if you wanted it spicier you could definitely do that, too.  

Recipe makes 5 generous (2 cup) servings

Ingredients

• 3 heaping teaspoons minced garlic
• 1 - 2 cups fresh cilantro leaves and stems, chopped (I just chopped all the leaves in a grocery store bundle)
• 1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2/3+ cup creamy or chunky peanut butter (I used Skippy reduced fat creamy peanut butter and it was awesome!)
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. ground red/cayenne pepper
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 cup water
• 3 lb. sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 package frozen green beans, steamed or otherwise prepared as directed on package
• unsalted, dry roasted peanuts

Directions

1. Peel and chop sweet potatoes
      
   
2. Drain and wash garbanzo beans
3. In blender, blend garlic, cilantro, tomatoes with juice, peanut butter, cumin, cinnamon, ground red pepper, and teaspoon salt.
        
   
4. Pour peanut-butter mixture into slow-cooker and stir in water. 
5. Add prepared sweet potatoes and garbanzo beans and stir.
   
6. Cover slow cooker with lid and cook low setting for 8 to 10 hours or on high for 4 to 5 hours or until potatoes are very tender. (It took mine more like 5 1/2 hours, but some of my sweet potato chunks were a bit larger) 

   

   Yes, this really is just a photo of my slow cooker cooking.  You can tell it is really early, though, because there's no condensation on the inside of the lid :)

7. About 10 minutes before sweet potato mixture is done, cook green beans as label directs and gently stir green beans into stew.
8. When serving, top with a handful of peanuts.  Stir peanuts in before eating. 

 

Victory: Success in Fixing my Vacuum!

Let's be honest, I'm not super-handy.  I can follow directions like a champ, but I don't have a lot of confidence in my abilities to, you know, actually fix stuff.  Not in a real, permanent way.  For anything even remotely complicated, I mostly end up having to ask my dad for help, paying someone to fix it, or replacing whatever the broken thing is.

There is one major exception to this rule of thumb, however:  my vacuum.  I've managed to fix it multiple times, mostly using my own know-how, manuals I've found on the internet, and--in two separate instances--a replacement part that I bought on Amazon.com for less than $5.

Needless to say, every time I repair my vacuum I feel like a genius or a hero...or something.  It is a tremendous sense of triumph to "win" over the broken thing, to have control over something that is messed up in my life! :)

My most recent triumph was when my vacuum's belt broke.  I was minding my own business, vacuuming my living room, when I just slightly bumped the front into my TV stand.  Unfortunately, it started to make a terrible noise and smelled like something was burning.  (Smells-like-burning is pretty much always a bad sign.)  I turned it off and took it apart at the bottom to find this had happened:

After a bit of research, an order online, and waiting a few days, my replacement part arrived.  I threw it in the vacuum and I was ready to go!  Victory!!