For a really wonderful veggie meal that makes amazing leftovers for several nights, uses up random vegetables in the fridge, and provides a really comfort-food level of satisfaction, this gratin is a great choice.

I started with a couple different recipes, and can’t remember exactly what I ended up doing (the danger of waiting months to post these things).  The veggies used: potatoes, onions, sunchoke (jerusalem artichokes), carrots and zucchini. 

They all got sliced thin and layered (with cheese).  Some liquid (a milk mixture, I’m sure) gets poured down through the veggies, and then it’s all topped with a seasoned breadcrumb mix.  I’m pretty sure I just used a basic gratin recipe from Better Homes & Gardens and switched up the vegetables based on what I had.  Keep in mind that some veggies that you might add (zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant?) might provide more  liquid, while root veggies like potatoes, carrots, etc. will soak up more liquid….adjust the amount of milk/broth/liquid accordingly.  Bake it up until everything is tender and cooked through.  We had this a couple times as a whole meal and it was really satisfying.  We also enjoyed it as a side (and I took some to work for lunches as well).  Wonderful all around.  And a great way to get random vegetables out of your fridge.

Although it doesn’t really dish up so well, you can see the pretty layers at least a little bit…

I think we preferred one of the middle syrups, but can’t remember which for sure.

Santana was intrigued (as she always is when we’re eating at the table), and was sporting her new holiday sweater & fancy Hawaiian collar that she got in her stocking! 

The coffee was an anniversary surprise from Matt’s favorite coffee place in Seattle…Caffe Vita.  Now two and a half months later, we’ve just finished the first bag (Caffe Luna blend), so we’ll be starting the Holiday Blend in March.

The waffles we made came from AB’s I’m Just Here for More Food, and were spectacular.  Instead of paring down the recipe, we made about 18 waffles and froze the 12 or so that we didn’t eat.  They have been wonderful homemade frozen waffles ever since then.  They were thin and crispy and very very tasty.  Not your typical waffle batter, but very delicious and froze really well.  Here is our gigantic stack.

Matt loves his coffee and waffles!

Santana may or may not have had a bite of waffle.  We’ll never know!

Why all the excitement??? Big huge enormous wonderful news!

Matt proposed!!!! AHHH!! So, it’s been almost 2 weeks since then, but it happened on 2/13 and I am still sort of reeling.  We aren’t in any hurry to start planning, but are really enjoying the love….lots of love to go around.  Plus, Santana is so happy! Look at her excitement:

Of course, we put the ring on the pup…she was not very happy about this, but it made for a funny picture: 

Here’s the ring on me

I LOVE it! The diamond was a gift from my grandmother for my undergrad graduation and it means a lot to me that we could take that diamond and get it set in the perfect ring.  Especially with someone I’m so crazy about. LOVELOVELOVE

Vegetable Chickpea Curry

This recipe comes mostly courtesy of Cooking Light (I halved the recipe to fit in our smaller crock pot and mistakenly forgot to halve the liquid portion…solved this with some creative straining and re-seasoning).

With our CSA box coming every other week and random cravings for vegetables lately, we came to the conclusion that we’d try to take our Monday-Friday dinners meat-free.  We made it through week one and are just starting week two.  The first week was pretty easy, since we had a crockpot full of sweet potato soup leftover to start us off on Monday, and we went out for Thai on Tuesday (Thai is one of the easiest cuisines to go meat free with).  Thursday, our planned risotto was a bust when I was off my feet with a lingering back pain and really just wanted a big plate of stir fried veggies…Buddhist Tofu from the Chinese place across the street it was (so delicious and simple!). 

However, I imagine it will get a little more challenging in the coming weeks.  To prepare for this, we started a list of things that we love that can easily be meat free. We have a long list already…and most of the things so far didn’t even come off of that list! One stipulation: we aren’t going to make meaty things with meat-like products….the point of this experiment is for us to eat more veggies, not to eat more fake meat.

This is a dish we actually made a couple weeks ago, but I just realized that it’s not one that’s on our list…adding it now!  I first made this before Christmas for a couple friends and it might be the new favorite Italian dish in my repertoire.   Special thanks to our Kentucky friends Bob & Shannon, who sent us two jars of homemade marinara sauce.  AMAZING.  We still have one left because I want to save it as long as possible.  We shot through the first one with this dish and then a mini-meatball sub and salad dinner a couple nights later. 

Zucchini Parm for Two

• 1 large zucchini sliced lengthwise into four strips
• 2 Tb flour
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
• marinara sauce
• a handful of your favorite italian cheese

1. Heat 1/4 inch vegetable oil in a deep pot over medium heat
2. Bread each slice of zucchini by dusting in flour, dipping in egg white and then dredging in breadcrumbs (you could also use cornmeal and it would probably be amazing)
3. Fry in hot oil, about 2-4 minutes per side, depending on heat of oil and thickness of zucchini.  Flip when crust in deep brown in color.
4. Drain on paper towels.
5. Place zucchini slices in a small baking dish in one layer.
6. Top with marinara and cheese.
7. Broil or bake until sauce and cheese are hot and bubbly.

I served with roasted broccoli and shallots and some orzo tossed in some additional marinara (which I was eating right out of the pan while waiting for the zucchini to fry…very classy).

This is ridiculously easy and made a fun and easy dish to serve to company.

Love it.

Anyway, we’ve had lots of delicious things going on.  I’ve got a few recipes and more detailed things to post, but for now, here’s a breakdown of some really wonderful things we’ve been eating.

Root Vegetable Chowder, thanks to Emeril (with lots of additional veggies tossed in)

Cheddar Garlic Chive Scones topped with pan-fried ham and sunny side up eggs for breakfast:

Cuban-inspired panini: ham, turkey, thin-sliced pickles, onion, tomato mustard—all on garlic bread.

Chili Mac Casserole, made with ground turkey and topped with a corn tortilla chip crust (plus cheese, sour cream and salsa, obviously).

Roast chicken with kale pesto rubbed under the skin, with green beans and potatoes and a Caesar salad.

  Amazing breakfast scramble with bacon, spinach, potatoes and onions….plus Beecher’s flagship cheddar. This was our treat breakfast for the week and was so so spectacular.

Spinach, onion and garlic english muffin pizzas with italian and feta cheeses. Plus a side of broccoli.

And I’m still celebrating this amazing Christmas present from Matt:

Love <3

This is almost directly from a Cooking Light recipe.  Ridiculously easy with really interesting flavor combinations. 

1. Roast beets.  I used the Cooking Light recipe to do this—425 degree oven, scrubbed clean, roasted for 45 minutes.  Slightly cooled, trim roots and rub off skins.
2. Slice beets into wedges (about 8 per beet, if you’re using medium-sized).  Some of mine were huge.
3. The feta cheese (yummm) gets mixed with everything down to the black pepper and blended with a whisk.  It was really thick and difficult for topping the salad, but so worth it.
4. Top greens with beets, red onion and dressing.  The recipe called for fresh parsley at this point.  I left it out.

Gorgeous plate.   

We made these poppy seed pan-roasted turnips, but I was not a fan.  The recipe was a bit strange, but this was mostly am experiment to see if turnips will be one of our regular veggies…the answer: NO.  I’ve had a few things with turnips in them that we fine, and I loved the Winter Vegetable Stew with Maple Glazed Tofu we made last year, but this was not good.  If you love turnips, maybe you will appreciate this recipe from Mario Batali, which clearly uses far less poppy seeds than I did (although I followed the recipe exactly, so who knows).

Shepherd’s pie is one of my favorites.  One of the first real dishes I made from a recipe and figured out how to just make it work on my own.  So this was just a hodge podge of what we had and a sauce made around that, and thus I have no actual recipe to give you.  It’s pretty easy…some semblance of a meaty, vegetable-filled stew type deliciousness, in a crust (or not), topped with mashed potatoes.  If you don’t have the patience to pipe steaming hot potatoes on top (I was impatient, and really wanting browned peaks and thus burnt my hands in the process of this whole thing), you can just spread them on in a flat layer.  It will still be tasty.  Really, when you call something “Baby Baby Shepherd’s Pie,” people aren’t so concerned with whether you have browned peaks of potato on top.

Yes, we are absurd.  Yes, if you love adorable baby animals and don’t appreciate the meat-eating-ness of some people, it might be slightly offensive to reference the babies in the title of the meal.  I apologize.  For real.

Also, we served it with a salad….that makes up for some of the absurdity, right?

Second, a quick look at what happened to some of our Thanksgiving leftovers last week…

Our mini turkey cutlets on a warm roll, with a smear of cranberry sauce on either side. YUM!  These turkey cutlets were really delicious and actually pretty easy…I may start doing this kind of thing on a more regular basis.  2 turkey tenderloins made a huge amount of turkey bites…spectacular

This slightly strange picture is a view of the inside of a sweet potato ravioli that was pretty tasty and a big step outside of the box.  We took our leftover sweet potato casserole (minus pecans), seasoned it up a bit, and turned some gyoza wrappers into ravioli.  Boiled them and then tossed in a pan of cranberry glaze made with a bit of leftover cranberry sauce all spiced up.  Strange? Yes, very.  But the tangy sweetness of the cranberry sauce went really well with the smooth creamy flavor of the sweet potato.  And it used up our leftovers pretty wonderfully.

We also whipped up an apple pie at the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  I think we loved it so much I failed to get a picture.  It was huge.  I used my grandma’s recipe, substituting the Pillsbury dough I had in the fridge for her homemade crust and crumb topping, but the filling was all her.  yummm….we ate this with vanilla ice cream for a few days and now we are pie-less.  It was a good couple of weeks full of pie and it will be missed.

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A couple weeks ago we tried two different types of halibut.  There was a buy-one-get-one-free sale on the frozen packs of halibut at our grocery.  They’re pretty decent quality, frozen pretty quickly after being caught, and simple to prepare.

The first preparation was a spicy seasoning on a simply grilled filet, served with my carrot perfection (a little too much honey on this batch) and some creamy parmesan risotto. 

Because we didn’t give the fish enough time to defrost in the fridge (8 hours, as noted on the package, was NOT enough), the fish stuck a little to the grill.  Also, because the fish was thick on one edge and thin along the other, not all was as moist as it should have been.  However, pretty tasty, and ridiculously easy on our stovetop grill pan.

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The second was an almost-easier foil packet of halibut, zucchini, yellow pepper, onion, leftover kale pesto that had been hanging out in the freezer, seasoning and white wine baked in the oven.  Served with a boxed mix of lentil something or other that made a pretty tasty side.  Again the first fell apart a little bit, but it was SO moist and the sauce formed by the wine, veggies and pesto was unbelievable.  I can’t remember if we had bread to soak up this sauce, but if I made this again I would be sure to include it.

I would definitely recommend these frozen fish packs.  These particular packages were each individually vacuum-sealed, with two coming to a pack.  They’re really easy to work with and relatively affordable.   With just a little seasoning and some veggies, they make for a light and filling meal.

Mid-month, around my birthday, we flew to Hawaii (a  partial work trip) and took full advantage of the sun, relaxing atmosphere, tourist-y goodness, and amazing food.   Here are some pictures to share: 

Love

Some of the food….

Sampler (for lunch) at the Kona Brewing Restaurant. Lots of pineapple at the Dole Plantation…where we tried to refrain from chomping them right of the stems    

Fancy dinner at Roy’s, where we had an AMAZING meal:

Free spicy edamame appetizer. Pineapple martini (that piece of fruit had been soaking in vodka for days).

Macadamia-crusted Mahi Mahi w/ lobster butter sauce.

Caramelized scallops with a blueberry vinaigrette and some bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes I think. The scallops were cooked to perfection.

Finally, pineapple upside down cake, which you give them 30 minutes to prepare because they make each one fresh.  They sliced the pineapples thinly so there were juicy amazing layers of pineapple on top of the cake.  On the side: vanilla bean ice cream in a burnt sugar cup.  All in a caramel sauce.  Unbelievable.

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To wrap up our wonderful November, we are in the middle of a spectacularly relaxing Thanksgiving weekend.  We’ve been together almost 3 years and this is the first time we’ve spent Thanksgiving together.  It was wonderful.  We went with turkey tenderloins, sliced into medallions, marinated in Annie’s Natural Tuscany Italian dressing, breaded with Panko breadcrumbs and pan fried.  Really yummy.  With some comforting sides and homemade stuffing/dressing….yum! We went with a nice mix of new/more-involved things and easy standbys. Matt was in charge of the traditional green bean casserole and did a great job!  I made some dinner rolls from a Cooking Light recipe, and my favorite was the turkey knot…

Here are the rest of our pictures, including pumpkin pie that we were so excited about we made 4 days earlier, and some gorgeous orange flowers we got for $5 on sale!

Thankfulness all around!  Happy Thanksgiving!  Let’s cross our fingers for a December that is full of pleasant surprises, healthy families, lots of love and new adventures.