Friday, September 23, 2011

Week 3- What I Made and Ate This Week

I'm starting to like doing this post each week. It seems to give me the extra kick in the butt to actually do some cooking. Nothing too fancy this week but I did take some pretty pictures of the food to make up for my very basic meals.

Monday: Vegetable Soup (VG, V if you dump cheese in it)
Vegetable soup is a no-brainer. As in, you don't need a recipe to make it. It is pretty much impossible to mess up, unless you totally overcook the veggies and everything turns to mush (hint: don't do this). I made mine in a crock pot since I was feeling pretty lazy. One gripe about vegetable soup though, I was trying to think of something I could add which would take vegetable soup from ordinary to extraordinary. I couldn't think of anything so suggestions are welcome. But I did accidentally dump too much grated parmesan into my bowl of soup and since the cheese was already soaking in the broth I couldn't scoop out the extra cheese. And let me tell you, too much cheese in vegetable soup did not suck, not one bit.

Wednesday: Pumpkin coconut bread (VG)
Nothing like cool fall mornings to get me craving something pumpkin. And this pumpkin bread is awesome! Doesn't taste vegan at all and best part of all, the recipe makes two loaves! I usually immediately freeze one of the loaves and it freezes beautifully.

Thursday: Roasted pepper, mushroom, and caramelized onion pizza (V)
There are two things I strongly believe in:
1. There is no wrong mix of vegetables that you can put on a pizza
2. Caramelized onions should be included in every recipe. Every.single.one.
Since finding pre-made pizza dough at Whole Foods we've been making a lot of pizza at home. Plus we haven't found a pizza place in Fort Collins that we are totally crazy about yet. The general formula for our pizza nights involves one pizza that is half cheese/ half meat for the kids and Chris and one veggie pizza that always contains caramelized onions (every.single.time). This time the meat/cheese pizza was ham and pineapple and the veggie pizza had roasted red peppers, sauteed mushrooms, and caramelized onions on it. And because I also think that adding a little green to your pizza makes it pretty (and reminds me of a great pizza I ate in Paris), I threw some arugula on top of the veggie pizza after it came out of the oven.
How pretty is that?
Half cheese/half ham and pineapple
And just in case you don't want to put caramelized onions on your pizza here are a few other recipes that use caramelized onions are are also very delicious:
Caramelized fig spread (VG)
Mujadara (V)

Friday: Beer soaked fries (VG)
It's Friday so really no excuse needed to infuse beer into our food but Friday was a very LONG day for me. The kids had a field trip to a local farm and I was happy to come along as a chaperone. We spent the morning picking cabbage, corn, onions, potatoes, green beans, and pumpkins. I was seriously wiped out after the trip! And Conner and Elizabeth worked hard to dig up some potatoes which I decided needed to be turned into fries.
Digging up taters
I used Tommyknocker Pumpkin Harvest Ale to soak the fries (I chose this beer because neither Chris nor I are too crazy about drinking it so I wanted to use it up on something). And you can't beat having some potatoes picked by your sweet little pumpkins for dinner!
Sweet pumpkins
Verdict: Skip soaking the potatoes in beer and just drink it instead. I really couldn't taste the beer in the fries (so I think they are safe for kid consumption) and they took a long time to bake (1 hr +)!

Enjoy your weekend! And if you decide to infuse some of your food with beer, please share how it goes (unless you're doing the beer can chicken). We are going to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park for one last time before the road to the highest mountain closes up for winter. Though winter seems far away given how warm it is today and is supposed to be this weekend!

2 comments:

  1. I love these posts! Lots of creativity and variety this week. Very impressed by the beer soaked fries. Can't wait to raid your freezer in November. Yeah, I wasn't crazy about the Tommyknocker pumpkin either. So far my favorite is Shipyard Pumpkin. I'm rambling. I miss you all!

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  2. BTW, I thought you had confused mujadara with mujamarra, but I was thinking - a mujamarra pizza would be delicious.

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