recipes

I’ve been missing posting up recipes so I thought I would start a monthly recipe post.  The last day of the month I’ll pull up some of the meals I made over the course of the month. I’ll tell you a bit about them, if we liked them or not, or some other detail.  I doubt I’ll include full recipes since most of the time I wing it with my recipes.   With no further delay here are our meal highlights for January 2020. 

Spring Salad Mix

Mmmmm… I really like this salad, easy to make.

I discovered these amazing mushrooms at the local Asian Market when I was helping my son get stuff for a science experiment.  Enoji mushrooms.  They are super small, thin, and come in a bundle.  They have a slightly nutty taste. I love them in this salad as they just kinda slip into all the small spaces.

Add a strawberry, two cups spring greens, a bit of crumbled feta, a medium carrot fine grated, and a stalk of celery diced medium.  I don’t put dressing on as I don’t care for it. My son really likes it as well. 

Pineapple Rabbit is a dish I came up one night when I was looking for a quick way to cook up some rabbit legs.  I took some pineapple sauce, poured it over the rabbit.  Then I added some pineapple slices leftover from pizza night and let it bake in a 350 oven til done.   The sauce is one much like the one I linked below.  (amazon affiliate)

January meal highlights : mine!

Pizza Night

Once a week (almost) we have pizza night.  I was inspired by Lori and various other friends.  It makes for an easy meal with plenty of conversation in the making of a meal.   We use smaller naan bread, red sauce, add some oregano and basil, cheese and whatever toppings we want.  Sometimes we nix the red sauce for homemade pesto.

I like to push the edges a bit with my pizza.  My motivation is often that I want to use up some leftovers.  🙂  I almost always put pineapple on my pizza, and some type of meat.  Might be turkey livers leftover from Christmas dinner, or pickled eggs, or whatever is sitting about. Add sauce and cheese, and generally anything is good.   I’m thinking my pizza tomorrow will have some potatoes, bacon, and maybe mushrooms on it. 

What do you put on your pizza?

Pickled Cauliflower

So I have this thing where I can’t eat cauliflower, broccoli or other such foods. My digestive system is rather unhappy, but for whatever reason I can eat pickled cauliflower.  This year I thought I’d experiment and make my own pickled cauliflower. Since I had the jars, and the pickling juice I tried some carrots as well. 

I’m going to pull out my cauliflower tomorrow as it has to set a bit before eating.  Oohh… I should try it on pizza!!!   🙂  If homemade pickled cauliflower works it will be a pickle recipe more frequently made.

Cranberry, Turnip, Beef Dish

I really don’t know what to call this dish.  It’s super easy to make and one of very favourites. You can serve it with hulled millet, potatoes, rice, or noodles.  It works well with most anything. Hubby said this was his January meal highlights.

This particular dish I normally do with pork tenderloin but this time I thought I’d do it with ground beef. I took a pound of ground beef, three honey garlic sausage (just the meat).  Fried it up with some onion, added some diced turnip (was about 2/3 a normal rutabaga head).  The smaller white turnips work well too.  Add some diced mushrooms and a good handful of cranraisins.  Season as you’d like, this time I added salt, pepper and a shepherd’s pie seasoning pack. 

I learned how to cook hulled millet this month (there was a package at the foodbank that had sat for quite a while so I brought it home to experiment with).  I found a recipe for millet porridge and it worked out okay.   I served some to my tenant and her son and they both liked it (first time I had squash and I liked it!!).  My 14 year old lad had seconds. I wasn’t keen on it hot but enjoyed it cold, and it was most excellent with this meat dish.  Hubby really liked it too. 

Bean and Ham Stew

I also made Bean and Ham Stew which both of my guys kept calling a soup.   Hubby wasn’t keen on it but he really needs to be in the mood for ham to eat it and it didn’t work for him this month.  The lad, myself and our tenant enjoyed it full well. 

The recipe I used served only as a guide as it wasn’t particularly well written.  🙂   5 cans beans, 1.5 pound ham diced, onion, diced bell pepper,  minced garlic, two cans tomatoes, season as you like, celery, and carrot.  I had to kinda guess on the amounts and what seasonings to use.

Carrot StamPot and Sausage

We’ve done a variety of sausage dishes since I’m trying to empty our freezers a bit. I chose to highlight this dish because my lad was surprised at how much he liked it.   It’s easy to do.  For January this was definitely a highlights meal for my 14 year old.

Mince some onion, fry it up.  Add some water, potatoes and carrots to the pot.  Let it cook. If you have an already cooked sausage lay it out over the veggies if they cook, if not, as it all cooks get your sausage done.  I did my sausage in the oven, starting it about 1/2 an hour before the veggies started to cook.  This way it was all done at the same time.   Mash the veggies together well and then enjoy.  You might want to pepper and salt it.   Some folks do, others done.  I add a bit of salt as it cooks, leaving the fellows to add pepper when they eat it. 

Other meals we’ve done over this month that I’m not highlighting are turkey shepherd’s pie, turkey soup, meatballs, scalloped potatoes etc. I can’t do them all eh!  And besides… I don’t have pictures of them all, sometimes my fellows gobble things down before I say HEY!  I need a picture!  🙂  I told hubby I was writing this post and he said “Don’t forget to tell them about your ovenbaked french toast.  That was really good!” So I told you.  Now go make it!  This is the recipe I used (I think).

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed a month of our meals.  Maybe it will inspire some meals in your house!  

I don’t know about you, but in this house we have zucchinis galore.  So many zucchinis I need to figure out what to do with them.  Perhaps you have the same struggle I have… finding zucchini recipes to use up the abundance from the garden.

Here are some of the recipes I have used.

One of my favourite ways to use up zucchini is by making zucchini bread or cake.  Everyone in the house enjoys it, and I can fancy it up with chocolate chips, white chocolate, or a cream cheese icing.  Ix nay on walnuts or nuts as they aren’t enjoyed in this house. 

I have made Chef Savvy‘s chocolate chip zucchini bread.  This was the third variety I made and the lads like it but they both said “has too many chocolate chips in it”.  It’s also a bit of a drier loaf.  Just not our favourite but not bad. 

Chocolate chip Zucchini bread from the food network was the winner of the three I made.  I made this chocolate-less zucchini loaf as well.  It was okay but the lads like chocolate in their zucchini breads.  🙂

Yummy Chocolate Zucchini Cake

I also made my stand-by chocolate zucchini cake.  I made two this year and stuck one in the freezer.  Hubby requested cream cheese icing.  Which worked out well.  I had intended to have one for my birthday but that day was a bit of a write off so I saved it for our HOPE picnic.   The children demolished it in short order. 

One of the many zucchini recipes we tried was pancakes which were great fresh, so-so reheated next day, but meh for day three.   So eat them fresh, they are very delicious.  Day three we let the rabbits and mice enjoy them and they went over quite nicely there as well.  🙂  I can’t find the recipe I used so I guess it’s a never you mind moment.  🙂

More zucchini recipes

Our absolute surprise of the season is how wonderful zucchini patties are.  Oh wow.  These are so good and they are easily adaptable seasoning wise.  You reheat them easily in a toaster oven.  They have been a huge hit with all members of our family. 

I also made zucchini relish.   I haven’t tried it yet because we still other relish we are using up.   

Good for a church social

For the church picnic I made Easy Scalloped Zucchini.  Huge hit.  Easy to make though I made more than I should have.  This didn’t reheat particularly well so I suggest making enough for one meal. 

Zucchini pie was marvellous.  Oh just a wonderful dish.  Reheats up a charm.  The recipe we used made two pies for us and after two days we only have 1/4 pie left which will be lunch for one of us.   The recipe called for shallots and low fat items.  I used onions and what we had in the house.  I wasn’t fussing over buying things we didn’t really need.   This was seriously good food and we’ll make this again. 

I have plans to make another zucchini cake and bread, possibly more zucchini relish. My hubby keeps sharing zucchini recipes with me one is which is zucchini boats .  I’ll give some more to the local foodbank (they’ve already received a few).   All in all, I will manage to use up the abundance that God has given us and we’ll enjoy good food in the process.  

What about you?  How do you go about using zucchini in your household?

OH!   I had a lot of fun on family day, I made a brand new recipe!   It was a huge hit with our Brazilian student.   Oh.. the recipe?   Chicken Stir Fry.

Do note, that I am a throw it together type of cook.  🙂  Hopefully you can deal with it.

Directions

1 large onion diced
2 Carrots shredded (one large, one medium)
Celery.. four stalks (costco bagged celery) diced
1 sweet pepper (I use the long red ones)
Toss in some veggie oil and let it cook until tender. Add some garlic salt, pepper and other favourite seasonings (I have a roast potato blend from Epicure that I currently love).

Once it is a bit soft toss in some diced already cooked chicken. probably about 1.5-2 cups. Could be a bit more, just used up what I had.

Add some already cooked macaroni. I used about 1/4 normal sized package. I drizzled some olive oil over it since it was a bit dry. Let it cook a bit. Taste tested it and said hmm.. needs something more so…

Added some more pepper and then about an inch and a half of orange-ginger stir fry sauce.

Put some grated Parmesan cheese on the table for those who think cheese belongs with everything (like my household!)  🙂

It was a rousing success with all members of our household.