Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Catching up is hard to do....

I haven't felt like being on my computer much lately... but after a busy day at work training new hires today... I'm ready to sit down and zone out!

Over the last week or so I've made a few things but just didn't feel like posting...  Last week I made potato salad with a bunch of herbs from my garden... I threw a little bit of this and that and it turned out pretty good. Matt wasn't too thrilled with it... something about cold potatoes he doesn't like :oP

Next up is to the mystery veggie I bought at the farmers market. So if you haven't guessed, they are round zucchini. These turned out pretty damn good!!

Stuffed Zucchini

  • 3 zucchini
  • 1 pound hot sausage
  • 1 cup bread crumbs
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 (32 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  1. Preheat oven to 350°F
  2. Trim stems from zucchini and slice lengthwise. Scoop out seeds and put in bowl. Mix seeds with sausage, garlic, bread crumbs, 1/2 cup mozzarella chesse and Parmesan cheese. Stuff squash with sausage mixture and place in 9x13 inch baking pan. Pour sauce over squash and cover pan with foil.
  3. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until sausage is cooked. Remove foil and cover with remaining  mozzarella cheese. Cook until cheese is melted. 
Here is the finished product!

Super yummy! The only thing I would of done differently was cook the zucchini a little bit before I put it in the oven with the stuffing. 



I had a lot of the stuffing mixture left over, so I made a pasta bake with the left overs on Friday last week... This was the BEST pasta bake I've made. I mixed the left over stuffing mixture and a jar of sauce with cooked rigatoni and added a little bit more cheese to the top. Cooked it for 30 min at 350° and there you have it! Tonight's dinner is the leftovers of this... yum yum! For some reason I think pasta tastes better when it's reheated as leftovers :)


Last but not least we went to the Strip District on Saturday to Heinz History center. We stopped by Bella Notte Pizza, Pasta & More. We walk in and grab a booth...  The girl who gave us our menus was far from pleasant... but forget her... our server we had a was great and the pizza was awesome! We ordered a medium 8 cut pizza to split between myself, Matt and his Grandma. We sat in a booth right in-front of where the guy makes the pizza. We watched him toss the dough and get out pie ready and before we knew it, it was at out table. This thing is huge!! As you can see to the right... the slices easily equal 2 normal slices of pizza... I could barely finish my second slice! Over all  the service was great, besides miss grumpy, and the food was great too.

Well it's time for me to vamanos! Later all! 

Bella Notte Pizza Pasta & More on Foodio54


Bella Notte Pizza Pasta & More on Urbanspoon

Monday, July 18, 2011

Floods and Fire Trucks....

This evening has been one hell of an evening! It started with the downpour that happened right before 5pm when I was leaving work. I get a call for my boss, who left work in the middle of the storm, that she was soaked and had to take off she shoes and socks to get to her car. She told me I better leave now because the lake outside of our building came back. Every time we have a downpour our parking lot floods, but today was bad. So my co worker and I left to find lake has devoured the cars in the parking lot. We were both lucky but mine was not good.

So we stood around the water was not draining...it just came down too fast for the sewers to handle it. So off came the shoes and socks, rolled up my pants and off into the water I went. The water was about an inch from going inside my car... some people were not so lucky and had water in their car :( The water came up to a little over the middle of my calf, I still got my pants soaked. I was able to start my car and get out of there.

We then went to Matt's grandmas for dinner tonight and it started to rain like crazy again. We're eating dinner and the fire siren starts to go off at the fire station behind her house... It's raining like mad, so we didn't think much of it.... Until we come home to this....
A total of 6 fire trucks and god knows how many police cars. They were letting people back into the building when we got home... I think I building got struck by lightening... by the time we got out of our car everyone was back inside and no one to ask what happened. Usually the building across from ours is the one that get's struck, last year it was hit 4 times.

Well, that was my evening... let's hope it simmers down!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Mystery Veggie

Here is what I picked up at the market this morning... Hmmm.. what are the two round green things on the left?? ;)

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Going Bananas!

I was going to make banana bread tonight, but I thought I'd make banana bread muffins instead. I decided to mix things up a bit and add mini chocolate chips and coconut. I also added chopped almonds, since I was out of walnuts.





Mom's Banana Bread with a twist :)

2 Cups flour
1 Cups Sugar 
½ Cup Apple Sauce (or Cinnamon Apple Sauce)
3 Bananas 
1 Eggs 
½ tsp Baking Powder 
1 tsp. Baking Soda 
½ Cups walnuts (chopped) 
½ tsp. Vanilla 
Pinch salt
½ Cup Mini Chocolate Chips
½ Cup Shredded Coconut  

Mash bananas mix in oil, sugar, egg, and vanilla. Then add flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Add Coconut and Chocolate chips. Divide equally into loaf pans. Makes 1 large loaf.
Bake 350° for 1 hour.

If you want to do the muffins, Bake at 350° for 15-20 min.

There you have it! Super easy and super yummy... Enjoy!! :)

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Gimme Cookie!!

Over the weekend I went to a party and of course I couldn't go empty handed. If you know me, you know I love to bake. So, I ended up making 10 dozen cookies... Yeah, when I bake, I power bake! *lol*  I ended up bringing half to the party and the other half went with Matt and I to work. Anyways, everyone loved the cookies and people were asking who baked them :) hehe.... The major hit was the Orange Slice Cookies, they have a little bit of everything in them. Perfect combination of sweet and salty if you ask me! They are a little time consuming to make but oh so worth it!

Orange Slice Cookies


1 cup chopped candy orange slices
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup coconut
3 cups corn flakes
1 stick of butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°.
Mix the candy, pecans, coconut and corn flakes; set aside.
Cream butter, sugars, vanilla and eggs.  Sift together the dry ingredients.  Add to the creamed mixture, mix well.
Stir in the orange slice mixture.  Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet.  Or use parchment paper.  The cookies flatten and spread.

Bake for 12 minutes
Makes 5 dozen

Tonight for dinner we celebrated with steak and roasted vegetables... Celebrated??? Yep, Matt was offered a new position at his job as a Pharmacy Tech! :) So, until we go out on the weekend tonight we had Steak marinated in red wine vinaigrette and roasted sweet potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash and onions in a balsamic glaze. the glaze was easy to make and really good. I put way too much on my plate and only ate half of the steak... but I was a good girl and ate all of my vegetables! *lol*

Balsamic Glaze for Roasted Vegetables.

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, pressed
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh basil

Whisk vinegar and mustard in medium bowl. Gradually whisk in oil. Stir in garlic, thyme, and basil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour over vegetables and toss to coat. Bake vegetables at 450° for 35-50 minutes.

Well that's it for tonight... Need to get a few things done tonight before America's Got Talent! :)

Monday, July 11, 2011

Homemade gnocchi

Welcome to my first post from my new toy... I now have a smart phone. this is going to be short n sweet tonight...

So when i made potato skins a lil ways back, I needed to use the center of the potatoes for something. I attempted to make gnocchi at 11pm. The dough was a little sticky, since I ran out of flour but it would do. I froze the dough for a dinner down the road and here we are. They turned out ok... a little bland but had the right texture... I think I might take a stab at them again, since I have more potatoes I need to use.

Monday, July 4, 2011