happy Halloween!

Boo!


Somebody better get over here, quick, before I eat the whole pan myself and make myself sick:

Mmmmmmmmmm........

boo!

Happy Halloween! We didn't really do too much Halloween-y stuff today, but I did manage to spend some time in the kitchen!

We observed "All Saints Day" in church this morning, and it was, frankly, kind of a bummer of a way to start the day. Important, but still not exactly uplifting, ya know? So, regardless of what church is about, there is one constant -- church ALWAYS makes me hungry! Enter, breakfast burritos:

So decadent. So packed with protein. SO TASTY! MMMMMMMM.

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I cooked up a gorgeous pumpkin last night, and I just HAD to show you a picture of some of the finished puree:

LOOK AT THAT COLOR! Courtney described it as, "Crayola crayon macaroni and cheese color!" Right on! This will make one gorgeous batch of pumpkin soup in our near future!

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I also made granola this afternoon:

Loaded with the usual good stuff, I am always impressed by how heavenly the granola smells when it comes out of the oven! Toasty, roasty, sweet, maple-y goodness! I am on a quest to eat better breakfasts, (I'm not huge on breakfast in general, but do need to eat something substantial,) so I hope bowls of granola will help me get to lunch without eating a bunch of crap at work!

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Dinner tonight was another success from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers:

"Whole-Grain Pasta with Greens and Tomatoes" ROCKED! Yum! I had been feeling a serious lack of veggies this weekend, and this pasta, along with a side of roasted broccoli, helped fill the void. Mmm!

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BOO!

boo, food, hipster kitty

First off, happy very belated Halloween! Hope you had a good one. Dan and I had a pretty low-key day -- we ran errands in the morning/afternoon, went to a play/puppet show thing in a park that a friend was playing music for, and had leftovers for dinner. :) We did finally carve our pumpkin, though, and had plenty of seeds to roast! Yum.

On to food . . .

Lunch Sunday:

Buttery cabbage and onions over egg noodles, with sides of homemade applesauce, and rye bread and butter. Humble and tasty!

Dinner Sunday:

Fried rice! How is it possible that I've forgotten about this simple, quick, and delicious meal for so long! You'll be seeing more fried rice in my not-so-distant future, for certain.

Dinner Monday:

Despite the quesadilla looking like the star of this meal, that humble black bean soup in the background was delicious! (Well, so was the quesadilla, but the soup recipe was new.) I picked up Love Soup by Anna Thomas a few weeks ago, and this is the first chance I've had to cook from it. I made "Black Bean and Squash Soup," on page 140, and it was SO easy and SO delicious! (And doesn't really taste like squash, which is a good thing when squash is in season but you have an anti-squash partner.) I didn't really follow the directions in the recipe, just chucked everything except the salt in my Crock Pot (dried beans included!), turned it on, and went to work. Came home, added salt and veggie broth base, pureed with the stick blender, and voila! Yum. We've been eating this soup all week for work lunches, and I'm still not sick of it!

Last but not least, you know all the hipster cats wear their scarves inside during cold weather:

I don't make a point of torturing the cat very often, but this was worth it!

pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin!

First, Dan and I finally got around to carving our pumpkins this past Sunday night:

I'll let you guess as to which one is mine, which is Dan's.

Next, we saved every last pumpkin seed from our carving to make . . .

Tamari-Roasted Pumpkin Seeds! (They are all gone already. Bummer.)

Last, I used a can of pumpkin to make . . .

Tofu Pumpkin Pie! Even though the crust crumbled off of this piece a little bit, it still tasted stellar. I love this recipe so much, I will probably never make a regular pumpkin pie ever again!

Happy belated Halloween!

Crummies!

Well, despite my Thursday post where I said I was going to have a super-busy weekend, it ended up being pretty quiet. Friday night, I was supposed to tag along with my friend Dan to Northfield, because they had a show, but Dan decided to ride with the band at the last minute, so I was sort of "uninvited." I ended up spending most of Friday night on the phone with various friends and my mom, so I wasn't bored or anything . . . just not what was originally planned!

Saturday early afternoon, I had an interview with a local high-end kitchenwares store for a part-time, seasonal retail position. Yes, I had already accepted a part-time seasonal retail position with a national chain, but I was so excited about this local store, (where I actually shop,) I wanted to take the interview anyway. They ended up offering me the job on the spot, (after a 90 minute interview!), and offered me WAY more money than the chain retailer, with the potential to increase my wage over time with training to $12 per hour! It's a dream job, almost! I start on Tuesday night. (And yes, I quit the other position already.) I'm oh, so very excited about this job -- during the interview, it came up at one point that I store my surplus kitchenwares in my living room closet. My interviewer exclaimed, "really? Me too -- I store stuff on a bookcase in my living room, and another manager stores extra kitchenwares under his bed!" I think I may have found my people. :)

Saturday night, Michelle and I went to see So It Goes at the Kitty Cat Klub in Dinkytown. Michelle told me that I had seen them once before, but I couldn't remember . . . but . . . I really really enjoyed their set! They are loud and crazy (yes, I wore earplugs,) and if the stage had been larger, I think they would have rocked out WAY more than they were able to. I will need to buy their CD, once some extra cash happens into my life!

This afternoon, I was supposed to get together with Dan, (reschedule from Friday night,) but we ended up cancelling, because he leaves for tour on Tuesday, I have a low-grade fever and a cough (beginnings of a cold, methinks,) and neither one of us wants him to be sick on a van for 12 days with his entire band. Boo! Fortunately, I did use the extra time to my advantage. After I moped around on the couch for awhile feeling crappy, I got up off my butt and did a little cooking:



I decided to follow my plain beans 'n rice recipe, and give it a few little somethings extra. Mmmmm . . . it's chillin' in the fridge right now, (to give time for the flavors to mingle,) but I think this will make a nice one-bowl meal a few times this week (lunches, dinners, maybe even breakfast once!)

I also cooked up the kale that has been hanging about in my veggie drawer for a week now, and had that for dinner with some leftover sloppy lentils and butternut squash.



Culinary deja vu? Certainly. Tasty? Definitely.

Off to a movie with some friends tonight (more about that later,) and then back to the ol' grind tomorrow. Gah. Have good weeks everyone, and if you partake, Happy Halloween!