Boys Will Be Boys

Posts Tagged ‘allrecipes.com’

I’m trying to round up our garden pictures from the summer and sort through them to eventually upload onto Flickr.  But in the meantime here’s some of the rewards of having a nice garden.  Last weekend I was on a mission to get some things made and frozen before the rainy season hits us.  I made my second batch of spaghetti sauce (so imagine this as my second pot & counter of tomatoes this size).    I let the pot cool and then we freeze them in Ziploc bags so they take up less space.  We use them fast enough that I don’t worry about them going bad and we have a really nice frost free freezer in the garage. 

(Tomatoes and the sauce simmering) 

I also whipped up pesto from some of the basil we had.  I use almonds instead of pine nuts though because the price of pine nuts is a bit much imo and I like almonds.  We freeze them in ice cube trays and then I put them in a Ziploc bag.  I did this same process when making baby food so I have oodles of ice  trays on hand for it! 

(Basil & Pesto Cubes) 
Recipe for Pesto here:  Easy Pesto

I also made zucchini cakes, similar to crab cakes.  I have had lots of zucchini lately thanks to our wonderful neighbors, Carl & Linda.  I didn’t take a picture but I found the greatest recipe for Zucchini Cobbler.  I made it a week ago for a neighborhood get together and nobody could believe it was zucchini.  They all thought it was apple!  It’s delicious and a great way to use up zucchini!!!   I’ve made the recipe a few times and each time it gets rave reviews.

(Zucchini cakes and the work area as I was prepping for pesto)
Zucchini recipes here:   Zucchini Cakes & Zucchini Cobbler 

(a lot of my recipes, like these, come from allrecipes.com )

Pictures of the actual garden coming soon! 

I love to cook, perhaps the whole starting the kitchen on fire when I was in 2nd grade was just the start.  (Short of it~ small town, dad a firefighter, me trying to cook frozen hash browns, starting a grease fire, then proceeding to try and put it out by water and lastly smothering it with things.) Afterwards my parents gave me a microwave cookbook and I wasn’t allowed to touch a stove for a very long time!  I haven’t set a kitchen on fire since, although the fire dept. has been called out due to um my lack of attention span on um … a grilled cheese night during college.  OOPS!  My mom’s going away present when I moved in with Patrick was a couple cookbooks!  You think she was trying to tell me something? 

So anyhow, we like to entertain. (Yes, even Patrick gets into it!)  I actually wish I could do it more but sometimes the kiddos just take the entertaining energy out of me!  I like to break out all the magazines, the cookbooks, do some web searching and come up with new things to try.  Yes, my friends & family end up being my guinea pigs but I haven’t killed anyone yet. I have my recipes all organized in various 3 ring binders, magazines overflow and I am addicted to www.allrecipes.com

Sunday night we had our friend/neighbor Carl over, while his wife is off in Alaska, and our good friend “Sam the Man” joined us also. 

I’ll put the actual recipes behind a cut but here’s the menu, I guess you could call it that.

Apps: Spinach Dip & Cream Cheese Puffs

Salad:  South-of the-Border Caprese Salad

Dinner:  Penne Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Dessert:  Sour Cream Peach Pecan Pie

Click for Recipes

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