I am on Pinterest and it has been really inspiring to my cooking and crafting. I have tried a few recipes and crafts from there and this is one of the ones that has become a regular at our house. You can follow my boards here.

Heather over at Heather’s Dish, had a great recipe for these Tomato Basil Quinoa Cups. I love recipes like this because they are a great way to use up what you already have in the fridge while being simple and versatile.

I made my Quinoa Cups using spinach, mushrooms, basil pesto and sun dried tomatoes and three cheeses (cheddar, mozzarella and parmigiana). I pretty much followed her recipe outside of that but I added an extra egg to bind my extra filling in. Quinoa is super good for you and is different in texture and taste than rice or barley or anything else that we regularly cook with.

The cups were super easy to make and one batch made two dozen cups. We froze the extras to have for quick meals. We do the same thing with meatloaf. This makes dinner way too simple on nights that I don’t want to cook.

We put the mix into lined cupcake pans. I do not think that it is really necessary to line the pan because the little paper cups were super hard to get off when the Quinoa was hot. They were much easier once they cooled so I will not use the liners next time.

Please check out Heather’s blog. She is a lot of fun and has great recipes with tons of pictures.

Enjoy!

My mom is one of those cooks that no matter what she has in her refrigerator or her pantry, she can throw together a meal that is tasty and new. I am blessed to be raised in that environment because, while I am not as skilled as she is, I can usually find something to throw together.

This Sausage and Spinach Pie is an example of a “thrown together” meal. I took a bunch of left overs that we we had in the fridge and put this together.

I started out by laying out my store bought and rolled out pie crust. My grandma would be ashamed that I use store bought crusts but I have yet to consistently be able to make a decent pastry on my own. I follow her recipe and grew up watching her make pies but when I try to fly solo, I fail. Maybe I will do a crust lab and a blog post about it in the future.

After letting the crust warm a little on the counter, I rolled it into a pie pan.

Next, I browned some sausage links that I had cut up into bite size pieces. This trick of using links cut into pieces can also be used on Italian sausage or bratwurst, when you cut them and then brown them, they plump up like little meat balls. This works great if you are one link short of one for everybody in your family to make a meal.

I added a large yellow onion and some baby bella mushrooms that I had in the bottom of my fridge. I was pleased with the good crust that I got on the mushrooms, I thanked the sausage fat for that.

Next, I poured my sausage mixture into my crust and put a couple handfuls of spinach on top. I sort of tossed the spinach and sausage mixture together.

I then went about preparing what will bind my pie together. Eggs. I cracked 8 eggs into a bowl and scrambled them. I added a little milk and did some more scrambling until the egg mixture. I added salt and pepper to the egg mixture as well as some garlic. It is easiest to add it here since the egg will be covering the rest of the pie.

I folded over the edges to keep the egg  mixture in the pan and the pie is ready to start baking at 350 degrees. I was using a toaster oven which has a tendency to brown the tops of things a little more than my big gas oven. To avoid burned cheese, I add the cheese almost half way through the baking but before the eggs have started to bake up, the eggs were just starting to cook around the edges. If you are using a conventional (not toaster) oven, you can preheat and just add your cheese before you put the pie in the oven.

I added a handful of mozzarella, a sprinkle of feta and a sprinkle of parmigiana. I was trying to clean out my fridge, so I pretty much just used up the bits of cheese in the bottoms of the bags that I had. You can use whatever kind of cheese you like.

Just bake the pie until the egg does not jiggle and the cheese is golden brown and bubbly. I had to watch mine and put aluminum foil on the top to keep my cheese from getting too brown because I used the toaster oven.

The baking took around 45 minutes at 350. It might take a little longer in a conventional oven.

Enjoy. We sure did.

My dear friend Taylor bought me a wonderful little cook book when I was a sophomore in college. It is the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. The more that I use it the more I like it. The best part, besides the wide range of recipes entailed, the book is not bound but it is in a binder type book. This is so nice because I can take one page out and use it, then put it back when I am done.

I have a long and detailed history with bread making. Bread making and I, we have gone though phases when we were hot and heavy. I was making bread a few time a week using my grandma’s sour dough starter. We have since cooled our relationship to a casual friendship, I am still good at making bread but I do it maybe once a month.  I have made a “butter horn”bread type of recipe before but it was more involved than this recipe and I am very happy with the result of these.

I have always been a farm girl. A garden that is less than an acre, would be, quite frankly, an embarrassment where I am from. I have had to change my views a little since moving into a less isolated setting, our yard is less than a quarter acre. This year, my husband, and I (more me than him) decided that we should plant a real garden. Last year, I had a container garden that was less than successful. I hoped to be more in my element by actually planting a real garden.

We selected a little area in our back yard and began the process of begging, borrowing or stealing a tiller. We ended up finagling a new friend into helping. RJ (@YoungShepherd) and I met kind of randomly when he won a flock of goats and mentioned in his blog that he was in NE Oklahoma, I am very close to NE Oklahoma so I shot him a message telling him that I would be more than happy to help him with his flock. We have stayed in contact since.  Please check out his blog.

We went and picked RJ up at the animal shelter where I volunteer sometimes (his mom works there, she is a great lady). We all got back to the house and put him straight to work. He had to give Alex a lesson in tilling.

We had barely gotten started tilling, and we discovered some what of a road bump. We found an old fence post. The previous residents of this house must have been over-achievers, they encased a basic chain link fence post in three feet of concrete. We had to dig down the entire length of the post and then go buy a sledge hammer to escavate it from the middle of our garden. It was quite the ordeal.

We finally got the stupid post out of the ground and decided to take a break. We had lunch and I gave RJ a drop spindle lesson. He is wanting to learn some fiber working to get ready for his mohair sheering in the fall. RJ helped us finish up by working in some compost and some fertilizer. Our little garden was really starting to shape up.

Alex and I took RJ home and checked out his goats and chickens. That kid has some great livestock. We cannot wait to go back and see them all again.

We got back to the house and promptly started planting. I had started quite a few plants in containers and we got everything put into the ground. Alex rocked our green beans and purple green beans.

I was a good supervisor in my work boots.

All together we planted a row of green beans, purple beans, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, head lettuce, celery, green cabbage and red cabbage. We were exhausted at the end of the day. We got a really nice rain to help everything get started the next day. We could not be happier.

I was in a baking mood and I was bored since my hubby is out of town so I got a little creative to make him a little surprise for when he gets home tomorrow.

Here is the recipe:

4-5 Cups of Flour

2 1/2 teaspoon of yeast (1 pack)

1 egg

1 1/4 Cup of Milk

1/3 Cup of Butter (+ a little for melting)

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 Cup of Sugar

I used my mixer with a bread hook but you can make the dough in a bread machine if you like.

Place half of the flour in the mixer along with the yeast.

Place everything else, except the rest of the flour, into a sauce pan and heat until just warm enough to melt the butter ( do not add the mix if it is hotter than ~130*F, you will kill your yeasts).

Pour liquid mixture into the flour and begin the kneading.  Add remaining flour as needed to create a nice ball that is not all sticking to the side of the bowl.  Let the dough knead for ~3 minutes.

Then just let your dough rise. I am impatient so I put mine in a 170*F oven that I had pre-heated and turned off.  I boiled some water and placed it in a pan then put the whole mixing bowl into the hot water and warm oven.  This worked really well except that I had the bright idea to put a damp paper towel on the top to keep the dough from getting hard. I do not suggest trying that. It was a pretty epic fail.

Let this rise until the dough as more than doubled in size.  Dump the risen dough onto a floured surface. I used my counter with some parchment so I didn’t have a huge mess. Roll your dough out into a pretty big circle.  You want your dough to be about a half an inch thick when you are done.  You are then going to cut this up like a pizza.

Take each pizza shaped slice and loosely (very loosely, do not make this tight) roll them up into little cresent shaped rolls. Bake in a 350*F oven until golden brown.

When these guys are hot out of the oven you will want to slather them with butter on the top.  I just took the whole stick and kind of colored the top with butter. I used less than a teaspoon but that was the simplest way for me. I am sure there are health codes that tell you not to do this but it sure tastes good anyway.

Enjoy. Please put your pictures in the comments

The boys (Alex and Josh) and I have been a little bad about cooking dinner and eating together this semester, so we decided to cook through the Real Simple magazine menu for October.  I absolutely love this magazine and we thought that by having to cook every week night we will eat better and eat out less.

Week 1

Monday: Tilapia with Peppers and Olives

We really like this meal and it was a good way to start off our month of cooking at home.  We do not often eat fish, mostly out of cost and laziness.  I did a stint of pescitarianism a year or so ago and loved it so it was really nice to have  a fish dish to start off. The fish was yummy and we decided to add some rice because we are pretty hungry people and wanted a little extra. The onion and pepper mix was perfect to go with the fish, we omitted the olives because we are lame and don’t like them.

Tuesday: Beef and Bok Choy Stir-Fry

I had never tried bok choy before and I really enjoyed trying it.  The bok choy is pretty tangy and went really well with the salty of the steak in soy sauce glaze. This was one of my favorite meals of the week and Alex was the chef this night.

Wednesday: Spicy Orange-Glazed Drumsticks with Green Beans

I really really looked forward to this meal all week. I love spicy and orange so this was right up my alley. The green beans were super yum and it was great with the compliment of corn bread. I loved the sauce, chicken kind of weirds me out for strange reasons but I think this would be really good in other recipes.

Thursday: Roasted Pork with Brussels Sprouts and Apricots

This meal was a little bit of a stretch for us because green vegetables generally are not welcome with the boys (Alex is a better sport than Josh, he will want that noted).  I love Brussels sprouts and this was a really great recipe for them. The pork was yummy as all tenderloin is but the sprouts were the star of the show for me.  The tangy of the sprouts with the sweetness of the apricots and almonds definitely did it for me.

Friday: Spaghetti with Sweet Potatoes and Ricotta

All I have to say about this is WOW. I never would have thought that sweet potatoes and spaghetti could rock my world the way that this did.  I am not a huge fan of ricotta cheese but I gave it a chance with this and oh it was so good.  The nutty sharpness of parmesan cheese with the sweet softness of sweet potatoes and then you throw pasta into the mix, it is hard to go wrong really.  I will definitely be making this dish again. It was super easy and I usually have all the ingredients on hand.

The food experiment is going well thus far. We have not been taking pictures of all of our meals this week but I will still do a review of  our favorites at the end of the month and I will do my best to have Alex do another guest post

For all these recipes please visit www.realsimple.com.