If you’ve been following us since the beginning (or if you’ve checked out the archive), you know that our first recipe ever posted was raspberry jam. We couldn’t believe how easy it was to make, how delicious it was, or how quickly our friends and family gobbled it up; we had to make more jam!
Two recipes in one! Making my life a bit easier…
I love roasting vegetables. It really brings out the flavor and is very easy…but it also takes a long time, something that between work and school I really don’t have. About once a week I have enough time in the kitchen to roast vegetables, and this week I decided to really take advantage of it.
A few years ago I found a recipe in a magazine (I wish I remembered which one!) for roasted fall vegetables with two more recipes using those leftover vegetables in different ways. I roasted two half sheet pans of veggies and served half for dinner that night. The rest I saved to make soup for an easy and delicious weeknight meal.
It’s fall, which means my supermarket is filled with cheap varieties of squash. Spaghetti squash is kind of strange. But it’s also healthy, versatile, easy, and tasty.
The best way to extract the stringy-insides is to bake it first. I cut it in half, seasoned it with sprinkles of salt, pepper, and olive oil, and popped it in a 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. After letting it cool enough to be able to handle, all I had to do was take a fork and shred the insides (after removing the seeds in the middle, of course).
There are so many ways to eat a potato. Here is just one of them. It’s boring, we know, but it’s also easy and oh-so flavorful!
I often try to make granola bars, only to find myself with granola in the end. After watching Ina Garten so easily make granola bars for her friends, I decided to try it out again. I added dried fruits and flax seeds to her basic recipe, and omitted the nuts so I could bring them into school (nut-free) and snack on them while there.
I ended up with 17 granola bars. There should have been 18, but one completely crumbled. I had it with milk the next morning. These granola bars were pretty easy to make. I cut them after a few hours and wrapped each one in wax paper. I then stuck them in zip-top baggies and stored half on the counter and half in the freezer.
Next time I think I’ll lower the sweetness and add some chocolate chips.
Sometimes my refrigerator is empty and I have to go out and buy food. It gets expensive and truthfully, sometimes I just really don’t want to go outside. So I don’t. And I get very hungry/grumpy.
I already had some leftover vegetarian chili, and I was at the the supermarket and became inspired; tortillas were on sale and I didn’t want to pay the price of the kosher/vegetarian frozen burritos I saw there. So I decided to make my own frozen snacks. These are my emergency snack burritos:
Some are prettier than others, but they'll all keep me from starving.
I’m not really sure how it fits in to our Middle-Eastern style of cooking, but chili is a staple at the Blanco family’s Shabbat dinner. Our mom always makes it the same way, but when I make it I like to experiment a bit.
I had the perfect variety of fresh peppers on hand from my vegetable-picking trip to a farm in New Jersey so I decided to bring chili to my brother’s house for Friday night dinner. What I didn’t have readily available was ground meat. So I left it out.
I also wanted to put some chopped green pepper (also picked at the farm) in here, but when I cut it open I found a caterpillar, so I threw it out. It was green and fuzzy and still alive. And it freaked me out.
We waited all summer, and now the fig tree in our backyard is finally producing some delicious fruit! Aside from eating figs for breakfast and snacks throughout the day, I decided to incorporate them into dinner. Now we’ve eaten salad with figs in it for the past three nights.
Ricotta cheese is really very easy to make. It’s also really expensive at the supermarket. I decided to give homemade a try, and the result was soft and creamy, a perfect filling for my manicotti dinner!
Basically, all you have to do is heat milk. I chose whole milk because that’s what I had, but you can use any – skim, heavy cream, or a combination.
Do not let the mixture boil.
When it is just before the boiling point, add a teaspoon of acid. I used lemon juice, but you can just as easily use vinegar. Watch the curds and whey separate (it’s very cool!). Let the mixture sit for a while and then drain it in a cheesecloth (or paper towel) lined sieve.
As annoying as Rachael Ray is, a lot of her recipes are delicious and easy. After watching her make toasted ravioli, I decided to try it on my own, with a few tweaks. Rachael used fresh herbs and made a delicious looking roasted red pepper dipping sauce. I was pretty lazy and used only what I had on hand, so stuck with the seasoned breadcrumbs and jarred marinara sauce. They still turned out delicious.