VeggiesandValentino

Hello CEiMB members and all! I STILL have not gotten around to being able to put pictures up Thanks to Liz of The Not so Skinny Kitchen I think that my problem can be fixed by just getting a separate memory card reader for my computer without having to plug my camera into the computer so yayy!! Hopefully I’ll get to buying one ASAP but since finals start on Monday and the wedding is in 28 days (yikes!!) I may still not be the best blogger until the New Year, but I cant wait to be cooking for two and having lots of meals to share!! 

As far as Ellie’s Chili goes, I though it was really good! Thank you to the blog I’ll Eat You for hosting this week, go over and check her blog out!  I am a recent fan of cumin and loved it in this recipe! I subbed out veggie crumbles for the meat and l love a chili with lots of beans in it. My secret awesome addition to the recipe was to serve it with a big dollop of garlic hummus on top instead of sour cream…yum!! I cant believe I have never done this before…now I’m going to be putting hummus on top of all sorts of soups and chili! Hope everyone is getting ready for a wonderful holiday season Its pretty cold here today in Oklahoma, Stay Warm Everyone!!

I miss posing so much and I have made so many wonderful things to share but my computer is for some reason not recognizing my camera when I plug it in and we all know food with no pictures = no fun:(

Hopefully I’ll get this worked out soon and be able to catch up although law school finals and my wedding are quickly approaching leaving me with not much spare time to blog. I am still avidly reading all my favorite blogs even though I haven’t had time to comment, just know that I’ll be back blogging in full force with pictures as soon as I can! Oh and congrats to all the bloggers that won FoodBuzz awards! You guys are such an inspiration and I hope that someday I can be there myself!!

Hello all! Sorry I didnt get to post yesterday, but it was a busy day and I couldn’t get my camera to upload the pretty photos of my muffins

I made them on Wed. and thought they were pretty good, but as the finace put it “not as good as other pumpkin muffins you have made”. Thank you oddball oven mitt for hosting this week, very good pick for Halloween week and you can find Ellie’s recipe here.

Does anyone have fun Halloween plans for tomorrow?? Longer post with pictures soon!

Hello! Do you all like my fall blog makeover? I figured I have been featuring pumpkin so much in my cooking lately that I should at least have an autumn theme to my blog right now! In fact a have a super fast yummy pumpkin breakfast to share that I cant get enough of since I discovered it! Pumpkin dark chocolate oatmeal! 

I use the following to make this super easy filling fall breakfast:

1/c cups quick cooking oats

1/2 cup pumpkin

1 cup water

Combine these first three. Place in microwave for about one minute.

Add cinnamon to taste, stir and put back in the microwave for another 30 seconds to one minute. Take out and stir in a tablespoon of dark chocolate peanut butter. I like Peanut Butter and Co. Brand but there are several others and you can also make your own! See my easy instructions here. 

The flavor combination of the pumpkin and the dark chocolate in a big yummy warm bowl is amazing! Like eating dark chocolate pumpkin brownies for breakfast. You can also add a little honey or brown sugar if you like it a little sweeter but the chocolate peanut butter adds plenty enough sweetness for me. 

The second super easy meal that I made different versions of for dinner yesterday and lunch today are lettuce wraps!

I have always loved the lettuce wraps from P.F. Changs, I used to eat the chicken version and then when I quit eating chicken I switched to their delicious tofu ones. I don’t know why I never though about how you could make them SO easily at home and fill them with whatever you want!! I bought a bunch of organic romaine leaves at the grocery stores yesterday and I’m putting them to good use. Last nigh I made asian inspired lettuce wraps which I didn’t get a picture of before I devoured them..oops. I put into a skillet a mixture of brown rice, mushrooms, spinach, and tofu with garlic spices and soy sauce.

For lunch today I went the mexican route and it was great too! I put 2/3 cup TVP in a skillet and reconstituted it with about 4 tablespoons of black bean and corn salsa, to that I added about 1/2 or so cup frozen mixed veggies (corn, carrots, peas, green beans) and cooked them all together till they got nice and hot and used them to fill my lettuce wraps with some cheese on top!  Geeze these are so good, and so easy and so healthy! I’m mad I haven’t been playing around with these recipe ideas for years!! 

I would like to wish my wonderful Fiance a very Happy 3 Year Anniversary!! It is the last year for us to celebrate this anniversary (when we became on official couple) before we switch over to celebrating our wedding anniversary date! We aren’t getting to celebrate tonight because med school test block is coming up again and that means no spare time for fun things like dinner, but we will just have to pick a random night after test block is over and celebrate then! So until I get taken out for a nice dinner looks like lettuce wraps and oats it is!

Hey everyone! Sorry I’m a day lat on posting since I made this meal for dinner late last night! The Ellie recipe was very good and super adaptable to what you like (I left out the chicken). Check out the original recipe here. 

The most exciting part of this recipe for me was that I decided to make my own tortillas which I have never attempted before. Being the spinach lover that I am I decided to make spinach tortillas because I though they would go great with the spinach inside of Ellie’s recipe. Tortillas are actually really easy to make, but it was hard to get the dough rolled out really thin without sticking! To help with this problem I sprayed wax paper with olive oil spray and used the rollomh pin to roll them out on top of this. I thought they turned out really yummy but not quite as pliable as I would have liked, maybe because I was trying to not add a ton of oil… oh well, it’s a work in progress! 

Here what it looked like after a added some filling and was letting it melt in the skillet. 

Yummmmm melty cheeseeeeeee

The finished product! 

Here is the recipe I used to make the tortillas, I looked at some other ones the just made up my own recipe based on those!

Whole Wheat Spinach Tortillas 

1 10 oz box of frozen chopped spinach cooked in the microwave, don’t drain it, just add the spinach water into the flour mix!

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

to taste add any of the following, garlic powder, seasoned salt, cayenne, basil….whatever you love!

1. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, pepper, and oil. Stir until crumbly.

3. Add the (hot or warm) spinach mixture, including the water left  from cooking. Knead  adding additional flour as needed  to make a smooth dough. Knead dough for about 5 minutes.

4. Divide dough into 4 parts (for 10 to 12-inch tortillas) or more (for smaller tortillas).

5. Pre-heat a griddle or large skillet over medium heat. Spray with cooking spray. Add the tortilla and cook about 30 seconds until flipping and then on the other side. Make sure they are getting those nice brown spots! 

Start cooking the tortillas while you are still rolling out the rest of the dough. Stack cooked tortillas on a plate or in a bowl with a clean towel around them, until all are cooked. Serve warm, filled with any of your fav. fillings!

On another note its the weekend, yay!!!! Can’t wait for hang out time with my man If you get bored this weekend stop by JCrew.com, they are having a great fall sale, I got a bunch of great stuff for great prices! I always love getting those online- shopping boxes delivered to my house, its like a holiday!

I have two lovely pumpkin recipes to share with everyone today and to mix it up from the usual sweet pumpkin recipes I have been posting they are both savory meals! I was so excited to see the other day an article about how good pumpkin is for your heart, which is awesome. I always knew that pumpkins were full of beta-carotene which is also so good for you (and your eyes) but I was happy to find out that they are even more healthy than I knew! So be good to your heart and eyes, eat more pumpkin! Yum

Pumpkin Apple Cider Soup

Recipe:

Serves 2.

1 15 oz. can pumpkin

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 cup vegetable stock

1 tsp curry powder

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1 tsp cayenne pepper

One big handful spinach

Combine all together in a small pot and stir until hot and add spices to your liking!

This is a creative recipe that a threw together last night! Pumpkin Fried Rice!

This was so satisfying! 

Recipe:

1 cup brown rice

1/2 cup pureed pumpkin

stir these together in a pot until the pumpkin is all blended in and creamy.

Then add 1 TBS teriyaki sauce 

Stir in 2 cups of mixed vegetables. I used mushrooms, carrots, peas, corn and green beans. 

Add spices depending on how spicy you like it. I added cayenne and red pepper flakes.

Top off with a little soy sauce and enjoy! This recipe can be changed in so many ways! 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week! See you back here on Thursday for CEiMB and my first attempt to make homemade tortillas, eek!

Hello all! Sorry for the long absence this last week but I have been crazy busy/sick! I had two wedding showers last weekend and they were both so much fun! I’m going to miss this getting gifts all the time thing after I get married! I even got some great cookbooks which I will share soon!  On Monday night I got some sort of stomach virus and while I was pretty much recovered within 24 hours the doctors still ordered a easy to digest liquidy diet, which was perfect for this weeks CEiMB pick! Tuscan Vegetable Soup (click for recipe) hosted by wonderful Lobster and Fishsticks blog. This soup was so yummy! The only thing I changed was to add brown rice and a little aged balsamic vinegar. The brown rice added a nice texture to the soup and made it a complete protein with the beans in the soup too! I also had to sub the canellini beans, which I do love, for Borlotti beans (also known as cranberry beans) because its what I had on hand at the time. I would definitely make this soup again even if this dinner isn’t winning any photography awards!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

I also made another really yummy soup this weekend, Pumpkin soup! It was sooooo good! I cant wait to try more pumpkin and other winter squash recipes this fall and winter. Especially because I won my first blog giveaway and it was a wonderful vegetarian soup cookbook!!! It came from Tami from the wonderful blog Vegan Appetite. This cookbook is amazing and has 100 vegetarian soup recipes plus breads to serve with them, YUM!

How fun! I’ll be making LOTS of recipes out of this cookbook!

I’ll post the pictures and recipe to my Pumpkin Apple Cider soup next post for now I’m off! Hope everyone had a great day, just one more until its the weekend again!!

So I am officially in love with Valentino’s spring 2010 collection, it is so artistic and the line is exactly why I love Valentino so much. The dresses are romantic and flowy but also a little sexy. I love how some of the dresses mirror the rosette designs of the Valentino purses this season! Here are some of my favorites, check them all out here!

I didn’t do a good job taking pictures of meals today due to lunch out with the law girls (I am still having trouble not feeling weird whipping out my camera at restaurants, but I’m sure I’ll eventually get there!) I suggested that the four of us go to lunch at O Asian Fusion and I think everyone enjoyed it. My meal was great, I ordered the tofu garlic stir-fry as spicy as they could make it and it was oh so good! After lunch we hit campus corner for lattes and dessert at The Earth. I got a fabulous lemon blueberry scone, it was just how I like them, not hard and not too sweet. It had little flecks of lemon zest all through it, yum! I remembered to get a picture of it, but not until after I had broken off a big chunk to try!

For dinner I just ate my left over stuffed acorn squash and a bunch of walnut sun-dried tomato hummus with veggies so none too exciting! Anyone else loving reading all the food blogs that are participating in Vegan MoFo right now? I think it is so fun, everyone is so creative and talented with making such delicious looking healthy vegan food! Ok well this was just a short post, still have productivity to accomplish tonight. I need to hit the grocery store tomorrow to stock up on necessities and the stuff for the CEiMB pick this week, chop suey! I plan on vegetarianizing it which should be fun. Nighty night all!

Wow, what a wonderful weekend! I have quite the recap but I will try to be somewhat quick about it. I need to update my blog  more often so that I don’t forget anything that I wanted to share! The fun weekend was started off Friday night when my Dad took Mark and I to a great restaurant called The Metro Wine Bar & Bistro for dinner. This weekend was the Theta Centennial celebration, meaning that the sorority that I was a member of in college, Kappa Alpha Theta, has now been on OU’s campus for 100 years! Wow! A whole bunch of Theta alums came in town for it, including my Mom who was also a Theta and her friends. My mom hosted a get together for her pledge class at my parents house, so Mark and I lucked out because my dad was kicked out of the house and wanted to take us out! I ordered a special off of the seasonal menu and it was wonderful….The waiter asked if I wanted to add goat cheese on top and of course I did! It made it even better, the waiter said that another customer who ordered it has requested the goat cheese and the waiter thought it was such a good idea that he always asks people if they want to add it now, so I’m liking whoever this person it was that first requested it, good call!!

 Eggplant Ragout Stuffed Poblano: 

Braised red cabbage, roasted new potatoes, truffled pumpkin seed & tomato vinaigrette.

I enjoyed spending time with the men in my life if only my brother could have come too!

The weekend was fun of entertainment also because Mark and I’s good couple friends Katie and Zach came in town and stayed with us! I made pumpkin muffins on Saturday morning for us to all munch on for Breakfast, the pumpkin seemed really appropriate because it was actually pretty chilly this weekend! I adapted the pumpkin muffin recipe from the Big Book of Vegetarian Cookbook. 

I added some jumbo dark chocolate chips for good measure! They sure were good warm out of the oven, but it does seem that pumpkin baked goods are always even better the day after they are baked, I guess it gives the flavors more time to meld.

We had a wonderful day on Saturday, the four of us went to eat at a greek place called Zorba’s that Mark and I really like for lunch and I even told them to remind me to take pictures for my blog, but then the food came and we all dug in and forgot!

Saturday night the Theta dinner and dance was really fun even though the night ended up having an upsetting downside when OU lost their football game to Miami Alas, we made the best of it and still had a great night going out to a bar with a bunch of friend until late. 

Here are some pictures from the night, my Mom and I making out little Theta kite and the awesome ice sculpture of the Theta house!!

On Sunday the boys went to see some zombie so Katie and I shopped around for a bit and got coffee. Soon it was time for Katie and Zach to head back to Dallas. Mark decided to take a nice rainy chilly day shower, while I got inspired by the latest issue of Martha Stewart living and decided I wanted to make us stuffed acorn squash for dinner! I thought that this was so fun, I loved roasting the squash and using them as little squash bowls for the bulgar wheat filling!

I vegetarianized the Martha version by using soy crumbles instead of beef. I also used vegetable stock instead of water, Craisins instead of raisins, added spinach, deleted the cinnamon and nutmeg, and added shredded goat cheese on top! I really liked this but I think next time I would add more parsley and maybe some paprika or chili powder to spice it up a bit. Here is the Martha version of the recipe, I think that it really lends itself to using whatever vegetables that you like. 

Moroccan-Style Stuffed Acorn Squash

(Recipe Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Serves 4)

• 2 medium acorn squashes (ab 2lbs), halved & seeded
• 2 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 lb. ground chuck (95% lean)
• 2 tsp. course salt
• ground cinnamon
• ground nutmeg
• 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup bulgur wheat
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup golden raisins
• 1/4 cup Italian flat leaf parsley
• 2 tblsp. toasted pine nuts

1. Preheat oven to 400. Place squashes, cut sides down in a 9×13 inch casserole dish. Bake until tender, 35 to 40 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a 4 quart pot with a tight-fitting lid over medium heat. Add ground beef, a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg, and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring frequently until browned and cooked through, 5-7 minutes. Transfer beef to a bowl or plate using a slotted spoon, keeping as much of the cooking liquid in the pot as possible.

3. Add onion, and cook until slightly translucent, about 5 mins.  Add garlic, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add remaining teaspoon salt and the bulgur, and stir to combine.  Add water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.  Take pot off the stove and let sit covered for 5 minutes.  Fluff with fork, and add reserved beef, the raisins, parsley & pine nuts.

4. Scrape out baked squashes, forming 1/4 inch thick bowls, and fold flesh into bulgur mixture. Divide among squash halves, and return to the oven. Bake until warmed through and tops are browned. 12-14 minutes.

My Mom and Mark both enjoyed the squash as well, it makes a cute semi-impressive looking dinner but it is really very simple, love meals like that!! I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend and now I’m off to catch up on all the blog reading on my google reader that I didn’t have time to read over the weekend! Oh and that law school reading too….. which is not quite as enjoyable! 

Oh wow its amazing how well those three little words go together! The Peanut Butter & Co. makes a wonderful Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter but I had finished my jar and didnt feel like driving across town to Super Target because thats the only place that carries it soooooo I created my own, then ate about half the jar..ooops. I tend to do that with peanut butter, I love it!! I actually considered naming this blog PeanutButterAndPrada  

This suff is awesome on everything! Apple sclices, banana oatmeal muffins that I thawed out of the freezer that I made a couple weeks ago, and  not to mention straight off the spoon!

To make your own dark chocolate peanut butter take a jar of natural peanut butter, two tablespoons dark chocolate coco powder (I used Hersheys), and a big ol’ squirt of honey or agave nectar! Feel free to eat and and enjoy knowing you are getting all those good dark chocolate antioxidants and protein to boot! 

The funny thing is that I normally am not a chocolate lover at all, I would pick pretty much anything other than a chocolate cake or chocolate ice cream for dessert! However I do like dark chocolate a lot more than milk chocolate. Mix some dark chocolate chips into anything with peanut butter, pumpkin, or banana and I’m sold!

I’m so looking forward to tomorrow! The Med student will be all finished with test block so we can celebrate!! Also, Supreme Court Justice Kennedy is coming to my law school tomorrow to speak with students, how cool! After reading so many supreme court cases it will be great to actually be in the same room with one of them and be able to ask him questions. 

Also, if anyone wants the recipe for the banana oat muffins let me know! They are pretty yummy, healthy, and freeze wonderfully!