Archives for November 2009

Pasta Primavera!  This is fabulous!  Really easy and very versatile.  You can substitute any of the veggies for any other veggies or you can sub the Italian dressing for some plain EVOO and some herbs.  I made mine as is though- delish!  You could easily pair this with some chicken if you like, but I’m not a big meat eater so we didn’t have any meat alongside ours.

Let’s cut to the chase…. the recipe!!

Pasta Primavera
4 servings

Ingredients:
1-1/2 cup asparagus, cut into 1 inch lengths
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 medium zucchini, cut into chunks
4 oz The Laughing Cow Light Creamy Garlic & Herb
1 cup fat-free, reduced-sodium chicken broth
8 oz whole wheat penne
2 Tbsp Light Italian Dressing

Instructions:
Cook Pasta

Heat dressing in large skillet on medium heat.  Add veggies, cook 10-12 minutes.  Add broth and cheese; cook until cheese is melted, stirring constantly.

Drain pasta, return to pot.  Add veggie mixture, cook until heated through.

We served this up with one of the delicious rolls I made yesterday with a bit of buttah!  mmmmm! 

Didn’t do much else today.  Did some more cleaning- hit the master bedroom and bathroom.  Tomorrow morning I think I’m going to tackle the office and I’ll be done cleaning!  Tomorrow I’ll also be going to see NEW MOON with some of my girls!  I.Can’t.Wait!!!!  Oh and I also get to bake some more rolls in the morning! 🙂 🙂

I guess that’s about it for the evening!  Time to go do some dishes and another load of laundry!

Adios!

Crap! I haven’t blogged in so freaking long!  It’s been weeks!  Let’s just say that I don’t handle stress very well and these last couple of weeks have been very stressful.  That’s why I usually try to keep my life as stress free as possible. 

Let’s see if I can recap the last couple of weeks to get myself up to date here…

I had 4 tests last week, one of which I made a 105.97 out of a 106 possible points!  Weeeee!!  I felt like the smartest person alive when I saw my grade!  What else happened?  Oh yea!!  The 9 story building I was in during class on Wednesday last week caught on FIRE while I was in it!!  No freaking joke.  On.fire.  And I was on the 8th floor.  It took us about 15 minutes to get out of the building because we had to go down the stairs and we didn’t know it was a real fire until we got outside and saw the billowing clouds of smoke.  *gulp*  No one in the building was hurt though.  They said that it was an electrical fire and the building will be closed for a couple of weeks.  Crazy!

That’s just about all of the interesting stuff that’s happened.  The rest of my life has been consumed by projects, homework and STUDYING!

Now I’m on Thanksgiving break enjoying my week off (we don’t technically get the whole week off but all but one of my classes was cancelled for the week and I didn’t think it was worth it to drive that far just for one class).  I did lots of relaxing this weekend, which I needed because I’ve been so sick.  I have been trying to get over bronchitis for about two weeks now.  I think I’m finally getting somewhere since I got to rest and recuperate a bit this weekend.  Thank goodness- I needed it so bad!

Today I cleaned.  The poor house has been so neglected since school started in August and hasn’t had a good scrub since this summer.  It’s been driving me nuts but I’ve been having to put school stuff first and the husband has been trying the best he could, I don’t think he has the patience to clean the whole house, lol.  Poor fella!  I scrubbed the kitchen, the living room, and the guest bathroom today.  And I am tired!  Tomorrow I’m going to hit our bedroom, bathroom and the office.  The kitchen was in the worst shape though.  I found tomato sauce splatters pretty much everywhere in the kitchen!  It was awful! 

Enough about my slovenly ways…

My fun project for the day was making ROLLS!

Last week we did yeast breads in my food prep lab and I’ve been wanting to make rolls ever since!  And with Thanksgiving coming up I figured this would be the perfect time to perfect my bread making skillz. 

So I did two batches of rolls.  One with regular bread flour.  The other with 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 bread flour.  (I’m sure you already know this but if I had used all whole wheat flour they would have turned out very flat and dense.  This is because the whole wheat flour has the whole wheat kernel- except for the husk in the flour mixture.  And with all the extra fiber and nutrients it makes it more dense than the AP flour.)  I used bread flour because it has more protein in it so it develops gluten better resulting in a better rise in your bread and a nice fluffy product!

Here’s the recipe I used (straight out of my food prep lab manual, LOL.  But honestly it’s the best roll recipe I’ve come across.  Seriously.  All the recipes in my betty crocker cookbook called for milk and other weird stuff.)

Yeast Rolls

1 pack active dry yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1-1/4 cups warm water
4 Tbsp melted butter
4 cups AP flour  (or whatever combo of flour you want to use)

1. Combine sugar and salt in large bowl; add warm water to dissolve.  Add yeast; let sit a few minutes until frothy.
2. Melt butter and allow to cool to lukewarm
3. Add 3 cups flour and melted butter to yeast mixture.  Stir to combine.
4. Lightly flour surface with some of the remaining flour.  Turn dough out and begin kneading, adding remaining flour as needed, until no longer sticky.
5. Spray another bowl lightly with cooking spray.  Place dough in bowl; spray top of dough lightly with cooking spray.  Cover with a damp warm cloth and place in a warm place to rise (about 1 hr) until doubled in size.
6. Turn out dough and knead lightly 1 to 2 minutes
7. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into 16 equal pieces and shape into neat, even-sized rolls with your hands.  Arrange rolls in a baking pan that has been sprayed lightly with cooking spray.
8. Cover loosely with plastic wrap that has been lightly sprayed with cooking spray
9. Allow rolls to sit in a warm place to rise (about 30 mins) or until doubled in size.
10. Bake in a 400 degree oven aabout 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Here is my batch made with bread flour…

And here’s the batch that was 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 bread flour…

And of course I had to taste test one of each!

They were both mmm mmm good!  I did favor the whole wheat a little more though because I just love the nutty flavor of whole wheat.  I think I’m going to make some herb butter to go along with them and I’ll be set for my Thanksgiving rolls!  yay!

And now I’ve got to go get dinner started.  We’re going to have some sort of chicken, not sure what I’m going to do with it yet.  And roasted Brussels Sprouts! mmmm! 

Oh and it’s slapsgiving 2009 on How I Met Your Mother tonight! hehehe!

My grocery budget isn’t $20.  I don’t think we could actually live off of that and eat healthy.  This week was the $20 grocery budget.  This week only.  But we actually ended up finding a little extra money in the budget so I got to spend $40 at the grocery store this week!  That’s much more do-able.

So I met my $40 limit with lots of beans in my cart and I also got an extra $10 surprise in my shopping trip.  As soon as I stepped in the door of the Super Target someone asked me if I wanted to participate in a market research survey, and that I would get a $10 target gift card out of it.  I was like heck yes!  So they put a little camera on me and asked me to just do my grocery shopping as usual.  So I went about my way picking up what I needed, checked out, and came back to give them back their camera and they handed me a giftcard!  SWEET! 

Anyhoo- $40 was doable but I hope the business at Justin’s work picks up soon so that I can spend more money on food.  I’m sure I’ll get tired of beans pretty soon! :)   That’s the definite downside of working on commission.