Friday, October 23, 2009

Roasted Vegetables

These roasted vegetables are an easy and tasty way to add a side dish to your dinner.

I chose to use a colorful combination of potatoes, carrots and onions for this, but you could use any number of veggies (though I would say root vegetables work best).

Dice up the potatoes into bite size pieces - I chose purple potatoes and charlotte potatoes. Next cut up the carrots, and slice the onions. I season it with rosemary from my garden, a bit of salt and pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Bake at 350°F for about one hour.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Potato Leek Soup

My favorite soup. Simple, tasty and smells excellent while cooking.

2 tbs butter or olive oil
3 leeks (or more if you like)
4 medium potatoes
2-3 cloves garlic - I used 1 large clove of fresh garlic, much too strong to use any more, you may not want the garlic to steal the show from the leeks!
1 qt. chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste
milk or half & half to desired consistency

Slice the leeks and soak out dirt. Strain and set aside.

Dice garlic, set aside.

Cut potatoes into thin slices. Add to pot with butter or oil. Saute until they start to brown.


Add garlic, saute for 1 minute, be sure not to burn! This alters the flavor, and not in a good way.

Add the leeks and saute until they soften up.

Next, add the chicken stock.

Simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes, until potatoes are well cooked.

After turning off the heat and allowing the soup to cool a bit, add half to the blender, blend until smooth (or a bit chunky if you like it that way) then set aside. Add the other half and blend, then mix in with the other half you set aside. Add milk or half & half to your desired taste/consistency. You may not even want to do this, depending on your taste. You can also add salt and pepper as desired, and I like to add chives as well.

Serves about 4.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Stuff and Things

First of all, I haven't posted in forever because I have been making stuff like crazy so I would have things to post here when I don't have time to cook/bake/craft. I also forgot my password and Google was not as helpful recovering it as one might think, so it's taken me a while to guess enough to get it right.

Moving on.

A delicious cinnamon raisin bread...a perfect breakfast treat for those cold mornings we have had all week!


The recipe can be found here

Be warned though, this recipe makes at LEAST 3 loaves. I finally used rapid rise yeast for this and was so much happier, it took so much less time to rise the first time, and a fraction the second time. But I only have two full size bread pans...so I had to wing it, there was SO much extra dough.

I actually liked the alternative better! Little muffin sizes!


Side note: my boyfriend enjoys this so much in bread pudding! This bread can also be frozen.

So get to it. Now.

More to come. Lots more.