Sesame Noodles with Purple Kale

Extended Life for: Purple Kale

Once again, Vegetarian Times has proven my faithful servant when various produce arrives in our kitchen and I'm at a loss as to what should be done. There wasn't much to change for this recipe and I had no idea on what kind of adaptations to consider, so if you're interested in this deliciuos and simple meal, simply click here. We had the pleasure of sharing this meal with a recent CouchSurfer from the Netherlands it was complimented well by Altitiude's Tumblewheat brew, if you're in the Laramie area that is.

Italian Potato Soup

Extended Life for: Sun-Dried Tomato Garlic, Shallots, Spinach, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Parsley Ingredients:

4 cups Potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 Onion, chopped

1 cup Carrot, chopped

2 Shallots, minced

1 clove Garlic, minced

2 tsp. Sun-Dried Tomato Garlic

1 can Great Northern White Beans

1 can Butter Beans

1 can Diced Tomatoes

2 cups Spinach, chopped

3 Tbsp. Parsley

3 cups Chicken Broth or Cold Chaser Tea
Balsamic Vinegar

Olive Oil

Shredded Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

Heat a bit of olive oil in a stock-pot; saute onion, shallot and garlic in warm oil. Add chicken broth or tea, carrots and potatoes, bring to boil. When potatoes are tender, add canned beans and tomatoes, heat through. Add spinach until wilted. Serve in a bowl garnished with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and paresan cheese.

Catfish Cakes

Extended Life for: Catfish, Egg, Parsley, Onion

Fish is NOT a favorite food for the palate of Melissa Harrington. For MONTHS we've had an uncanny amount of fish in our freezer. Occassionally, I will feel inspired to eat more fish or try to get rid of it bit by bit. I came across this recipe on Allrecipes.com and thought "I'll give it try." Little did I know that I would love every savory morsel of Catfish Cake that would grace my tastebuds. If you're wanting more fish in your diet or have a husband who wants more fish in their diet, yet you're not so sure you can do it, give this recipe a try - it just might win you over!

Ingredients:

1 lb. Catfish Filet
1 med. Onion chopped
1 tsp. Mustard
1 tbsp. Mayo
1 tsp. fresh Parsley, diced
2 1/2 cups Italian Bread Crumbs
2 Eggs
Splash of Milk
1/2 cup Flour
1 cup Vegetable Oil for frying

Directions:

Place catfish in saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to boil until fish flakes easily with fork. Drain fish and mash/flake fish in a medium bowl. Stir in onion, mustard, mayo, parsley and bread crumbs. Beat eggs and add some milk, place in shallow bowl. Pour flour in shallow bowl. Begin forming patties with the fish mixture. Before frying each patty, dip it in the egg mixture then the flour, then add patties to hot oil and fry until golden brown on each side. Continue until all mixture has been fried, serve warm and ENJOY!!!

Blackberry-Apple Pie Crisp

Extended Life for: Apples and Blackberries Take a long good look at those blackberries...now, give me one good reason why they were disposed of? We're not sure either, but thankful for the opportunity to work with these delicious little morsels.

Ingredients:

1 pre-packaged 9in. Pie Crust
1 lg. pkg. Blackberries
2 lg. Apples; peeled, cored, sliced
1 cup Sugar
Sprinkling of Cinnamon

3/4 cups Rolled Oats
1/3 cup packed Brown Sugar
1/8 cup All-Purpose Flour
2 Tbsp. Butter
Sprinkling of Cinnamon

Directions:

Place crust in bottom of 9 in. pie plate. In a bowl, mix apples, blackberries, sugar and cinnamon. Let set for 20 minutes. Meanwhile; mix oats, sugar, flour, and cinnamon together, cut in butter until mix is crumbly. Pour fruit mix into pie crust and top with oat mixture. Bake in oven at 400 for 45-50 minutes until heated through and crispy. Enjoy with ice cream, whipped cream or great friends and great conversation!

Beer Cheese Soup

Extended life for: Parsley, Cottage Cheese, Onion, Ranch Dressing and Left-over Twice Baked Potato FillingWe had the pleasure of inviting our friends over to celebrate the joy of new life being formed. Knowing of the male counterparts love for beer cheese soup, I decided to seek out a recipe that would please his palate. We had some local brews left over from our night of Catfish Cakes as well as some filling from the Twice-Baked potatoes, I took advantage of these items and used a Beer Cheese recipe from Allrecipes.com to whip up this tasty soup.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp. Butter

1 Onion, chopped

2 cloves Garlic, minced

1 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce

12 oz. or so Light Beer (we used Altitude's Tumblewheat)

14 oz. Chicken Broth

3 Tbsp. Cornstarch

1 cup Milk or Half-and-Half

1 cup Cottage Cheese

1 1/2 cups Baked Potato Filling of Mashed Potatoes

2 cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese

3 Tbsp. Fresh Parsley

Directions:

Melt butter in a heavy-bottomed pan, saute onion and garlic. Add Worcestershire sauce and stir well. Add the beer and bring to boil for 3 minutes in order to cook out the alcohol. Add chicken broth and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Combine cornstarch with equal amount of water and set aside. In blender; mix milk, cottage cheese and potato filling. Add potato mixture to the pot and heat through. Gradually add shredded cheese until melted. Last, add the cornstarch mixture and heat until thickened. Garnish soup with parsley and bacon bits, enjoy with dear friends!

Twice Baked Potatos with Butternut Squash

Extended Life for: Butternut Squash, Cottage Cheese, Sour Cream, Half and Half, Parsley In my youth, mother once discovered a recipe for twice-baked potatos that she began preparing for our Christmas dinner. I LOVE them! It's all the joy of a baked potato but more compactly presented and all things are mixed together and delicious!

After most of Mike's foraging outings, if he brings something home I'm not familiar with cooking or have grown tired of it's usual manner of preperation, I hit the internet and begin searching out new ways to use specific ingredients. A few months back, it was Butternut Squash. I made my way to the Vegetarian Times website and did a search on Butternut Squash. The most intriguing recipe was this one for Tangy Twice-Baked Potatos, so I saved it to my recipes and awaited the day when it would be time. I baked the squash, gutted it out and put it into the freezer until the day would finally came. And dear friends, it has come! Here is my version of the Vegetarain Time recipe (measurements may not be completely accurate).

Ingredients:

8 medium Russet Potatos

2 cups cooked Butternut Squash

2 Tbsp. Butter

1/2 cup Cottage Cheese

1/2 cup Sour Cream

Half-&-Half, until desired consistancy

Parsley, diced for garnish

Directions:

Bake potatos at 350 for about an hour or until tender, let cool slightly. Slice potatos in half length-wise and scoop out pulp. Mash potato pulp with squash, butter, cottage cheese, sour cream, half-&-half and any desired spices. Spoon this mixture back into potato skins (if you have bonus mixture save it for the beer cheese recipe I will soon be posting!) Bake potatoes for 20-30 minutes or until heated through at 350. Enjoy with Catfish Cakes or for a light lunch.

Orangies

Extended Life for: Orange Juice, Eggs, and Orange ZestInspired during my hour spent watching the Food Network while at home with the Harrington's, I was quick to seek out an opportunity to use Paula Deen's Orange Brownie Recipe. Unfortunately, mine did not turn out as brownie like as I would have liked and took entirely too long to cook, the concept still seems amazing and wonderful and worth every attempt to re-create. I simply direct you to Paula's online recipe because I made only two adjustments: more orange juice rather than extract and longer bake time...because of altitude or oven or barametric pressure or....any number of other reasons.

Blue Blue Cornmeal Cake

Extended Life for: Blueberry Yogurt

Once upon a time I purchased a package of Blue Cornmeal, not knowing when it would come in handy, but knowing that it would indeed prove to be a super investment. How right I was. This cake can easily be made with yellow cornmeal, but the blue definitely adds some excitement and flare to the project!

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups Cornmeal

2/3 cups All-Purpose Flour

1/2 tsp. Salt

1 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 cup Unsalted Butter

1 cup Sugar

3 lg. spoonfuls Honey

4 eggs

1 tsp. Vanilla

1 container Blueberry Yogurt

1 cup fresh or frozen Blueberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350, grease and flour a 9 in. cake pan. Sift together cornmeal, flour, salt and baking powder. In sepearate bowl cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in vanilla. Gradually add dry ingredients and yogurt alternately. Pour batter into pan and bake 45-50 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 30 minutes on a wire rack. Serve with blueberry yogurt and whip cream on top or enjoy as is.

Strawberry Yogurt Pancakes

Extended Life for: Yogurt, Strawberries, Whole Milk (Whey), Eggs and Orange Juice On occassion, when foraging, Mike hits certain departments pretty big! Recently, he hit it big with dairy, a rare luxury, however a welcome one. With numerous eggs, yogurts and a smattering of other products I went ahead and made some old favorites with some new twists!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Vanilla Yogurt or whatever yogurt happens to be available

1/4 cup Orange Juice

1/4 cup Whey or Milk

2 eggs

1 cup Fresh or Frozen Strawberries

Shake of Cinnamon

1 cup Spelt or Wheat Flour

1/3 cup All-Purpose Flour

1/3 cup Oats

2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Baking Soda

OR You can replace the last 5 ingredients with 1 2/3 cups Master Mix.

Directions:

Simply mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients seperately then together and procede to cook on a griddle as with any and all pancakes.

Ham and Asparagus Strata: a.k.a. Bread Lasagna

Extended Life for: Eggs, Half & Half, Monterrey Jack Cheese, Asparagus, Cottage Cheese, and Sandwich BreadA few posts back I mentioned my love of Strata's. This one turned out exceptionally well. It served as a perfect meal for Family Dinner night with Harrington's and lasted us well into the next week.

Ingredients:

6 Slices of Bread
1 1/4 cups Grated Cheese
1 1/2 cups Cottage Cheese
1 pkg. Deli Ham
3/4 cup Asparagus, one-inch pieces
5 lg. Eggs
1 cup Half-and-Half
Salt, Pepper, Mustard and other spices to taste

Directions:

Grease bottom of square baking dish. Tear or cut bread into 1 inch pieces and lay on bottom of pan. Next, layer some of the grated cheese and cottage cheese, followed by ham and asparagus. Continue layering until there are no more ingredients. In a separate bowl mix half-and-half, eggs and spices, pour over bread, cheese, ham and asparagus layers. Top with extra grated cheese if available. Refrigerate minimum of an hour, up to overnight. Remove from fridge 20-30 minutes before placing in the oven. Bake for 50-55 minutes at 350 or until puffed, golden brown and lightly set in the center. Enjoy with family and friends.

Overnight Cinnamon Rolls + Big Batch Cinnamon Rolls

Extended Life for: Whole Milk (Whey), and Grapes (Raisins)

While at the Allen's for our first Christmas of 2010 (celebrating the New Year in Deadwood, followed by a warm Christmas by the fireplace with my dear family, after the new year began) I of course felt the need to send my parents to the grocery store so that I could prepare them mass amounts of Cinnamon Rolls. Many may be surprised to learn that my very own mother was a great baker of cinnamon rolls while I was in my youth. Often for Christmas we would enjoy warm, sticky cinnamon rolls during our easy days at home. Being the lover of food that I am and a sucker for memories, I was fully inspired to bring back the tradition of cinnamon rolls for Christmas.

I experimented with a couple recipes, the first one can be found at Allrecipes.com. The only adjustment I made was to use whey (from Mike's cheese-making) rather than milk. The other recipe is from a Mennonite Cook-book I received from my dear sister-in-law. The recipe made an uncanny amount of cinnamon rolls. As any sane person would do, I simply rolled out multiple batches, added the cinnamon sugar, rolled and froze for another day. Here then is the Giant Batch Cinnamon Roll recipe...(P.S. The greatest attraction of this recipe is it is a no knead dough, but a huge batch!)

Ingredients/Directions:

1 cup warm Water

4 pks. dry Yeast

1 tsp. Sugar

Mix these three ingredients in a very large bowl until dissolved. Set aside.

3 1/2 cups hot Water or Whey

1 cup Margarine

1 cup Sugar

4 tsp. Salt

Combine and stir until melted. Cool to lukewarm and add to yeast mixture.

10-12 cups All-Purpose Flour

Beat in flour until the dough is thick but still sticky, not stiff enough for kneading. Place in another large greased bowl, grease top of dough and let rise until double in size. Sprinkle flour on counter and roll dough into a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick (May do this in multiple small batches or go for the whole thing at once).

2 1/2 cups Brown Sugar

1 1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

3/4 cups Nuts, Raisins or Chocolate Chips (optional)

Mix and sprinkle over dough. Roll dough up like a jelly roll and cut into about 1-inch slices...NOW: either don't cut through to the bottom and just wrap 6-8 rolls in wax paper and saran wrap to freeze OR place in greased pans, let rise until double again. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. If you are preparing from frozen, remove from freezer night before, finish the cut and place in greased pans in the fridge until morning then prepare as directed.

Ranch Potato Soup

Extended Life for: Organic Ranch Dressing, Sun-dried Tomato Garlic, Whole Milk (transformed into fresh cheese).

I love soup! This is common knowledge. Laramie has experienced numerous days of below zero temperatures this winter making my love for soup that much more pronounced. Potato soup is always comforting and perfect on cold days. This one was simply thrown in a crock-pot, which also implies, I don't know exact amounts, so I'll give you the ingredients and as my Grandma occassionally does, let YOU figure out how much you need for your own personal pot.

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Carrots

Onion

Broth or Cold Chaser Tea

Seasonings of choice

Crumbled Fresh Cheese (optional)

Heavy Cream (to be added in the last half hour)