Butternut Squash Soup.

Fall to me means time to break out the crock pot. Time to make some chili. Soup? You've got it. So my husband's recent absence (and his general dislike of butternut squash and its related recipes), I decided it was time to make myself some soup. I found two good recipes, and molded the two for one that is creamy and putting a taste of fall in your mouth with each bite. Bonus? You can roast the seeds too, which are just as delicious as those from a pumpkin.

While this soup doesn't go into the crock pot, it still has that rich fall flavor that will warm up your insides on a chilly-to-the-bone day.

Butternut Squash Soup
Serves 6

Ingredients:
-2 medium-sized butternut squash
-2 tablespoons salted butter
-1 medium onion, diced
-4 cups chicken broth
-4 ounces light cream cheese
-Dash of cayenne pepper
-Salt and pepper (to taste)

How to:
-Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
-Cut butternut squash in half length-wise and scoop out insides.*
-Save seeds for roasting.**
-Drizzle squash with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. (I use an olive oil spritzer.) Place face down on a baking sheet.
-Roast squash in the preheated oven for 50 minutes, or until tender.
-Once cool, scoop inside of squash from the skin (or just peel the skin off) and set aside.
-Melt butter over medium heat.
-Cook onion in the butter until soft.
-Add broth, roasted squash, and cayenne pepper.
-Heat thoroughly (about 10 minutes). Once hot (and the squash is soft), add cream cheese. Either blend mix in a blender or food processor (I used an immersion blender) until smooth and add back to pot. Do not boil.




*Per experience, the easiest way to do this is to slice small bits off each of the ends and cut in half while the squash is set upright.
**I cleaned them off, put on a cookie sheet, sprayed with olive oil, salted, and put in the oven at 275 for 15 minutes. They didn't seem done, so I forgot about them. I have NO idea how long I actually cooked them for, so I can't really blog the recipe. I did, however, eat them. They were fine.

Grandma C's Egg Salad.

My Grandma C. was a very special person in my life. Her passing left a big hole in my heart. I do, however, have many wonderful memories of her and our time together.

One thing I can always do that makes me feel closer to her (other than drape myself with her jewels) is to make egg salad. Growing up, the ladies in my world loved egg salad. The men? They hated it. The second those eggs started boiling, you'd hear my dad or my grandpa start griping. "WHAT IS THAT GOD AWFUL SMELL?"

We'd chuckle, and proceed with the peeling, the stirring, the mixing. These days, I've tweaked her recipe slightly (I never admitted to her that I hated green olives) and now have my own version, but it never fails to make me smile and think of our lunches together.

Grandma C's Egg Salad
(serves 6-8, based on size of sandwich)

Ingredients:
-10 hard boiled eggs
-2 celery stalks (or you can make it Grandma C.-style and chop up some green olives)
-5 tablespoons light mayo (or to taste)
-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

How to:
-Hard boil the eggs. (Everyone has a different way to do this, but I cover the desired amount of eggs in water, bring to a boil for a few minutes, then I turn the heat off, letting sit for about 15 minutes. This seems to work pretty well, but do your own way!)
-Dice celery into small pieces.
-Chop eggs and mix with celery, mayo, and Dijon mustard.  Don't over-stir, you want it still chunky.
-Add salt and pepper to taste.
-Sprinkle with paprika. (Not entirely sure what this does aside from making this look like a giant deviled egg, but it looks nice.)
-Spread on bread, crackers, or just eat with a fork. I do all three.

Chicken Mozzarella Spinach Macaroni & Cheese

Lately, P.I.C. and I have been feeling the effects of a small bank account. One fabulous honeymoon, a fabulous destination wedding, a last-minute trip to Europe, then TWO MORE DESTINATION WEDDINGS (I'm not complaining, I swear)..but yeah, that eats up any discretionary income we might have.

We have found that an economical dinner has been to roast a chicken one night, then find more chicken-related dinner items for the rest of the week. Seriously. A chicken is maybe $6...it will feed us for FOUR meals. Budget-conscious kids, TAKE NOTE. In any event, we were running toward the end of our chicken stash, and coming off a big run this morning, I knew I needed some carbs. For me, that means one thing: MACARONI AND CHEESE.

But I didn't want to go spend more money. I had some limited items in my cupboard and fridge, so I figured, time to see where all of this cooking practice has gotten me. TIME TO INVENT MY OWN RECIPES. So, ladies and gents (wait, are there any guys reading this?), without further ado, I present my own version of a macaroni and cheese.

Ingredients:
-2 and a half cups pasta (I used the rest of a box of macaroni and some whole wheat penne)
-1/4 cup unsalted butter
-1/4 cup flour
-2 cups milk (I used 1%)
-2 cups mozzarella
-1 cup frozen spinach
-1 cup chopped cooked chicken
-1/2 onion
-3 cloves of garlic
-1 tsp oregano
-1/4 cup fresh grated Parmesan
-1/4 cup panko (any bread crumb will do, I just had this on hand)
-salt
-pepper

How to:
-Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
-Cook the noodles according to package directions.
-Mix together the panko and grated Parmesan.
-Saute onion, garlic, and spinach until onion is translucent and the spinach is no longer frozen. Stir in the chopped chicken. I used a little olive oil spray, but a drizzle in a pan would work just as well.
-Melt the butter. Stir in flour until well blended. (I use this tool. It has changed my life for any sort of sauce. I HIGHLY recommend it, and anything by Pampered Chef. Plus, it's called a mini-whipper. AMAZING.)
-Gradually add the milk, blending it well. Let mixture boil for a minute.
-Add oregano to milk mixture.
-Stir in mozzarella to the milk until creamy. It does get a little gooey, but don't fear, it works out.
-Stir in spinach mix to the cheese sauce. Salt and pepper to taste.
-Add in cooked noodles. until all noodles are coated with the sauce.
-Pour sauce into an 8x8 pan.
-Sprinkle the Parmesan and panko on top of the mixture.
-Bake for 10 minutes until top browns and mixture is nice and bubbly.

Enjoy!

Caprese on crackers.

P.I.C. and I love a good cocktail hour. Well, we love cocktails. We also love appetizers, which simply MUST accompany our cocktails. Today, it had to be simple (we were hungry), and it had to be more than cheese and crackers (our standby). the result? Caprese crackers. Simple, light, and full of summery flavor, they were the perfect bites for us to chat about life, love, and our future. Just kidding, we were watching the end of Season Five of How I Met Your Mother. Heh.

Ingredients:
-Crackers. (I like Triscuits.)
-Sliced tomatoes
-Fresh mozzarella
-Basil (I didn't have fresh, so I just subbed in dry. It worked, but fresh basil would be SO good.)
-Olive oil
-Balsamic vinaigrette


How to:
-Top crackers with pieces of mozzarella and slices of tomatoes. 
-Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. 
-Top with fresh cracked pepper and salt. I sprinkled with dry basil also. (If I had fresh, I'd have put it between the cheese and tomato.

The continual onlooker...Oxford.

Pasta Salad...Italian-style.

The VERY best thing about training for a half-marathon is the license to eat carbs like it's your job. Seriously. (The worst? Getting up every Saturday morning at 5 a.m. and running, rather than enjoying delicious sleep.) Of course, I've blogged my recipe for the Southwestern Pasta Salad. You should have known that I have other versions. OF COURSE I DO. Momma needs her carbs. She gets them this way. Oh yeah, and with beer too. Duh.

Ingredients:
-1 box of bow-tie pasta
-One red pepper
-One yellow pepper
-One orange pepper
-One cucumber
-Half a pint of grape tomatoes
-Four ounces of feta cheese (I used a tomato basil flavor)
-Eight ounces of chicken breast meat, cooked, cut into bite-sized pieces.
-Italian dressing

How to:
-Cook pasta according to package directions. Rinse with cool water.
-Chop all veggies into bite-sized pieces.
-Toss all veggies, cheese, pasta, and chicken.
-Drizzle with Italian dressing to taste.
-Eat.

The finished product!

I'm currently obsessed with Aldi's light salad dressings. Oxford just likes to supervise.

Tuna salad, guacamole-style.

Lunches...the bane of our existence. Well, figuring out how to keep it interesting, delicious, yet not waste-expanding. That's tough. Tonight, I whipped up something a little different. Tuna salad. Boorrrrring. We've all had that. Perhaps you've heard of using avocado instead of all of the mayonnaise to make it healthier. I decided to do that. 

But that's not exciting enough. I put a quarter of a jalapeno in there. I added some lime juice. Salt and pepper. Then I threw some corn in there to add a little bit of texture. I wish I had cilantro. Really, this is more guacamole with a tuna bonus, but I'm gonna go ahead and call it a sandwich filling. A damn good one, right?

Ingredients:

-Two cans of tuna (I prefer the white albacore)

-One ripe avocado

-One lime

-Quarter of jalapeno, if desired

-1.5 tablespoons mayo (I like the olive oil kind)

-Half cup of corn (I used frozen, but I bet fresh would be amazing)

How do:

-Drain tuna.

-Mash avocado into tuna. Add lime juice and other ingredients.

-Salt liberally (or to taste).

-Spoon into pita with some romaine lettuce and some sliced tomatoes.

Avocado pie.

My coworker and I have this new thing called "Recipe Wednesdays." He gets the Food section of the New York Times brings it to my office, and we go over the various recipes and concepts and decide what I should try. Recently, it was an article in using avocado for sweet treats. I was intrigued. I have become quite an avocado fan for not having avocado until I was in my twenties. So, avocado pie was my first choice. Three ingredients blended together into a creamy consistency and poured into a crispy graham cracker crust. A few hours of refrigeration and perhaps a liberal application of whipped cream, and you have a delightful summer dessert that tastes pleasantly of key lime and kiwi. Two thumbs up!

The recipe is courtesy of avocado.org.

Ingredients:

-One ripe avocado

-Can of sweetened condensed milk

-Half cup of lemon juice

-Graham cracker crust

How to:

-Scoop out the avocado and put in food processor. 

-Add lemon juice and milk. 

-Process until the mixture is smooth and creamy. 

-Pour into graham cracker crust, and refrigerate for a couple of hours.

-Top with whipped cream, if desired, and serve. 

Avocado pie. Sweet and lovely.

I like mine with a little whipped cream. Okay. A lot of whipped cream.

Happy Summer!!!

Breakfast potatoes.

One of the best things about having long runs on the weekend is my ability to gorge on carbs post-running. Some days it's french toast, but mostly, it's tortillas (breakfast tacos, guys!) or potatoes (I am half-Irish after all). Lately, I've been making them from scratch. It is SUPER easy and cheap. I highly recommend it. Therefore, I shall give you my recipe (that's not really a recipe) to make delightful carby goodness to accompany your eggs.

BREAKFAST POTATOES

(Serves two)

Ingredients:

-5-6 yukon gold potatoes (I base the number of potatoes on their size)

-quarter of a large yellow onion, diced

-2 tbsp olive oil

-Salt and pepper to taste.

Optional: Chopped mushrooms, chopped green pepper...really, anything you might want to add. These are just two I've tried in the past.

How to:

-Cut the potatoes into smallish chunks. You want them to cook relatively fast, so small bits are good.

-Put them in a large skillet and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are semi-soft. You don't want them mushy. 8 to 10 minutes should do the trick.

-Drain the water from the pan.

-Add onions and olive oil to the pan.

-Cook for another 10-15 minutes until a nice brown crust starts forming on the potatoes, stirring occasionally. If you don't want them as crisp, cook for less time.

The lovely brown crust...the best part!

Plated, for your viewing pleasure.

I like to top them with perfectly runny eggs.

A bloody mary goes AWESOMELY with these potatoes.

Enjoy! P.I.C. has assured me he will guest blog his awesome bloody mary mix, so stay tuned for that!

Breakfast burritos.

My brother and his wife just had a baby. She is the most precious baby in all of the land. Trust me. I have since learned from the plethora of friends having babies that the best thing to bring is FOOD. Busy new parents don't have time to cook, so if you do it for them, or make it as easy as just turning on (and the turning off) the oven, they will actually have a chance to put some real food in their bellies.

Of course, armed with this knowledge, I took to the internet. I found several recipes promising to be perfect for freezer. One in particular intrigued me: Breakfast Burrito. I am a HUGE fan of all things breakfast and burrito. Odds are very good that if there is a breakfast burrito on the menu, I am ordering it. It's just my style. Even McDonald's breakfast burritos are pretty tasty to me (and only $1!!!)

In any event, I found this fantastic recipe for breakfast burritos.

I whipped them up one night (among some other items that may or may not be blog-worthy) and having left behind a few to sample (OBVIOUSLY), declare them ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS.

Here are some helpful hints:
-1/2 cup might be too much to fill. I was doing less to get a good tight roll.
-It took me a few tries to get the hang of rolling, but once I did, I was on a roll. Ha. See what I did there?
-I used low fat sausage and 2% cheese to cut back on the calories. I'm healthy like that.
-I used the 8 inch flour tortillas. They were perfect and yielded 22 burritos. Not too shabby.
-I didn't let them COMPLETELY freeze before individually wrapping. I left them in the freezer for an hour and a half or so. I think it worked fine.
-Don't forget to write reheating directions on the package if you are gifting the burritos so your pals know exactly how to make them taste best.

Enjoy!

The guts of the burrito. OHSOGOOD.

Pasta salad...Southwestern-style.

I hate figuring out what to have for lunch. The worst is when I haven't planned well and have to figure out what to eat at the exact moment I am starving. The fact that I am in a rather large metropolitan area and can have pretty much anything my heart desires makes it even more difficult. I like to ease this stress in my life by planning lunches at the beginning of the week. I can eat the same thing for a week without complaint, so really, it's just a matter of varying it up from week to week.

Lately, due to our running training schedule, P.I.C. and I have been trying to make sure we get enough carbs in our diet. My eating tends to run along the lines of low carb. I can't shake the "pasta and potatoes are bad," entirely, so I figure in moderation, I should throw them back in. Not much is better than a hot baked potato with a dab of butter and salt and pepper, right?

In any event, we've been doing pasta salad for our lunches the past couple of weeks. I try to vary it on a theme to make it more interesting. The pasta is, of course, whole wheat. I use lots of veggies. Legumes make an appearance. Of course, chicken is in the mix for some protein, as is cheese. This week? I went Southwestern.

Ingredients:
-1 13.25 ounce box of whole wheat pasta (this week was penne)
-6 ounces of cooked chicken breast (I like to use the frozen chicken tenders. They defrost fast and cook quickly.)
-1 red bell pepper
-1 orange bell pepper
-1 yellow bell pepper
-1 jalapeno pepper
-1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
-1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
-1 cup frozen corn, thawed
-1/2 cup spicy ranch dressing
-1 lime
-Salt and pepper to taste

How to:
-Cook the chicken, if necessary. This time, I just sauteed in a little olive oil, seasoning the chicken with some cumin, salt, and pepper.
-Cook the pasta according to directions. Rinse with cool water.
-Chop the peppers into small pieces.
-Mix chicken, peppers, beans, and corn together.
-Squeeze the lime into the mix.
-Mix the ranch dressing with a half cup of water. (I really dislike low fat dressings, so I just mix them with water to keep the taste, just lower the calories.)
-Mix in the dressing.

Serves about six.

Southwestern Pasta Salad.

Cheeeeeeeese.

Enjoy your lunch.

In remembrance of our luna de miel...

So, obviously, P.I.C. and I loved our honeymoon. Spain was the trip of a lifetime. We talk about it all the time, still, and fantasize about how we can make a life in Madrid happen. (Seriously, if you know, PLEASE let me know. We'd be eternally grateful.)

In any event, tomorrow is our one year wedding anniversary. Of course, we have lovely dinner reservations to celebrate the day, but of course, I had to show my love to my husband by cooking him something special. I took him back to Spain for the evening.

After setting the mood with my "Salsa Fever" station on Pandora, I whipped up some of our favorite tapas:  tortilla española, gambas al ajillo, y pan con tomate. (For those who cannot speak some Spanish, that is Spanish tortilla, shrimp in garlic and oil, and bread with tomato.)


Thanks to our Eat This, Not That cookbook, I had a super simple recipe for the tortilla.


Tortilla Española (from Eat This, Not That)
(Makes six servings)
Ingredients:
-3 yukon gold potatoes, chopped into small cubes (I did not peel) 
-1 sweet onion, diced
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-8 eggs, beaten


How:
-Put the potatoes in a saute pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, and boil for about ten minutes.
-Preheat the broiler, if necessary.
-Add onion and olive oil. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I never measure olive oil, I just dump it in and pretend like I measured it.) Cook til the onion starts to brown, maybe another 10 minutes. (Heat is set about medium here.)
-Add the beaten eggs, cover. Cook for about ten minutes, or until the eggs are just about set.
-Put the pan in the broiler to brown up the top. I started with the broiler on low, but found that I needed to crank it to high to get it to brown. I would say four minutes on the high setting would get that nice brown crust.
-Once the top is nice and brown, pull out and let set for a few minutes. 
-Flip the tortilla out of the pan and cut into wedges.


Gambas al ajillo (I used this recipe.)
(This serves two.)
Ingredients:
-Half pound medium shrimp 
-One tablespoon olive oil
-One clove of garlic, sliced thin
-Dash of red pepper flakes
-Splash of cava


How:
-Heat the oil with the pepper and the garlic until the garlic starts to brown.
-Add the shrimp and cook for about a minute, when it starts turning pink.
-Toss some cava in there. (Also, drink some. Seriously. It's delicious.)
-Cook for another minute or so. 
-Toss a little sea salt on there.


Pan con tomate (I figured this one out on my own.)
(Serves two.)
Ingredients:
-One third of a baguette (I used the remainder of a two-day old one from Trader Joe's, but fresh is best.)
-One medium tomato
-Tablespoon of olive oil (again, I just kinda eyeball this.)
-Salt


How:
-Chop the tomato into chunks. 
-Add tomato chunks, olive oil, and salt to food processor or blender. Process til well-blended.
-Taste and add more salt.
-Cut baguette length-wise. Toast (or broil, which is what I did since I had the broiler already on.)
-Spread the baguette with the tomato mix.


The result?

A super simple dinner for anyone who loves a good tapa. Seriously.

P.I.C. was happy. I am happy. We drank a bottle of cava. I'd say our anniversary celebration is off rather splendidly.

Sweet potato hash with eggs.

My husband says that I'm truly great at creating dinners out of the random ingredients in our house. I'm not going to lie, I agree with him. I knew tonight we'd be having eggs of some variety. My initial thought was to make scrambled eggs with leftover roast chicken, blanched asparagus, and feta cheese. On the side would be a sweet potato hash.

Sounds pretty good right? Well, it did until I recalled a lovely sweet potato hash that one of our favorite local restaurants served. Only they served it with fried eggs on top. The runny yolk of the eggs acts as a "glue" to the hash making one delicious casserole-type dish.

I found this recipe for the sweet potato hash. I followed it pretty closely, using two smaller sweet potatoes and half of an onion, but omitted the bacon. Instead, I blanched some leftover asparagus, eight stalks or so, chopped it up to the size of my sweet potato cubes, and tossed that in at the end.

I topped it all off with eggs: two for my husband and one for me.

The end result:

Pre-mixing of the yolk.

Now THIS is the way to eat it.

My tips? Runny yolks are a must. They are the glue that make this dish taste SO much richer than it actually is. Two thumbs up in this house.

V Day Special.

The past three years for Valentine's Day, P.I.C. and I menu plan and pick out a meal to make at home. While we love going out for dinner, we enjoy the intimacy of being at home, turning all external noise off, and just enjoying each other's company. We also probably drink too much for a school night, but that's neither here nor there. This year, I elected to try cooking mussels for the first time.

I went with this recipe, and decided to cook three pounds of mussels rather than the five pounds suggested. It was just the two of us after all.

We got our mussels from the amazing Dirk's Fish and Gourmet Shop, which, if you're in Chicago, you MUST patronize. Seriously. I get all serious seafood purchases from there. They are friendly, the entire place smells amazing, and the prices seem fair for the quality.

I entrusted my sous chef, P.I.C., with the task of debearding and scrubbing the mussels. (Full confession? We had to youtube a how to video.) Luckily, most of them were already debearded, so it wasn't a huge task

NO BEARDS HERE.

The mussels turned out fantastic. I would definitely make this recipe again. You must like a punch of mustard though. It, along with the herbs, gives quite a bite, in the best way possible. I love mustard, though.

I cheated and bought cheese and fruit for an appetizer (try the triple cream gorgonzola from Trader Joe's...it's AMAZING). The good? We love cheese, and the creamy blue paired brilliantly with the cava we cracked. The bad? We ate so much damn cheese that we had to toss quite a bit of our mussels. That was sad for me. Additionally, three pounds of mussels is WAY too much for two people. Lesson learned.