Potatoes and Parsnips in Four Cheese Herb Sauce

OH.MY.GOSH!!

I made the most delicious sauce today!
Seriously, I almost cried.

• 1 sweet onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 medium potatoes, sliced
• 2 parsnips, chopped
• 2 TBS olive oil
• 3 TBS butter
• 1/8-1/4 cup flour
• 1 pint half-n-half
• 2 TBS thyme
• 2 TBS Italian four cheese mix
• salt & pepper

Saute the onion in olive oil over medium heat. When the onion is about half cooked, add garlic. Add butter, be careful to monitor heat so that the butter melts but doesn't burn. Once it is melted, mix in enough flour to make a paste. Mix in half and half, thyme, four cheese mix and sea salt and pepper.

O.M.G!! It was YUMMMMMY!!! I wanted to eat it right then.

Place potatoes and parsnips in a baking dish. Pour the sauce over the potatoes and parsnips mixed it in, and bake the whole thing at 350F for an hour.

It was delicious!! I will definitely make this again. My son and husband weren't so sure about the parsnips (although they each had two huge servings), so I may omit them in the future. I think they just weren't expecting them.

In any case, I definitely have big plans for that sauce!

Grilled Salmon

• Salmon fillet
• Sea salt
• Pepper
• Red wine (cabernet shiraz),
• Sprinkling of cayenne pepper

While the grill is heating up, pour the wine over the fish and sprinkle the salt and peppers on the fish. Let set until grill is hot.


I have never grilled fish before, and I thought that the fish would get flaky and fall through the grill. So initially I had covered the grill in tinfoil. That didn't seem to work well for flipping the fish, so I tore it off. And you know what? The fish never stuck or started to fall apart - it was beautiful.

I grilled them on both sides until the fish was opaque all the way through. I think it was less than twenty, maybe less than fifteen, minutes total grilling time.

They were delicious! I had a small piece and my husband had a piece, and my son ate this whole plateful that you see here in the picture. He said it was the best fish that he had ever eaten. I would make this again.

Northern Pike in a Caper Sauce

I got some northern pike on sale last week and wanted something quick for dinner tonight, so pike it was.

Northern pike is a fairly common, mild-flavored, predator fish from where I grew up. It has a loose skeletal structure which makes it very difficult to get completely bone-free. But this was professionally filleted, so I was good to go.

I actually took the recipe from the package the fish came in (but of course I made a few changes). It had capers in it and I had bought a jar of capers months ago, but didn't have any recipes to use them in. Mmmm... capers!!!

• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 small tomato
• 1-2 TBS butter
• 1-2 TBS wine or sherry
• 2 TBS basil
• 2 TBS lemon juice
• 3 TBS capers
• 2 TBS Italian four cheese mix
• salt & pepper

Mince garlic and saute in olive oil. Chop up tomato and throw in the pan with the garlic. Throw wine (I actually used sherry), basil, capers and butter. Cook until the butter is melted. Salt and pepper to taste.

I used my clay pot cooker for the fish. It works great for fish too! I put a little olive oil in the bottom of the pot, But I don't think this was necessary. I put the fish fillets in frozen and poured the lemon juice and the caper sauce over the top. I sprinkled on the Italian four cheese mix and baked this for 20 minutes at 500F.

It was DELICIOUS!!!! This is going on my favorites list. And now I have a recipe to use up those capers on. Mmmm... capers!!

Lasagna Bake

I had a bunch of ingredients that needed to be used up: mozzarella, cottage cheese, sweet onion, and unflavored yogurt. Hmmm... what could I make?

Lasagna bake!!!

What's that? What about the yogurt? Trust me.

First, turn the oven on to 350F and grease a lasagna pan well with olive oil.

• 1 lb mini lasagna noodles
• 1/2 lb shredded mozzarella
• 1/2 lb cottage cheese
• 1/3 lb plain yogurt
• 1 lb ground turkey
  
• 1/2 sweet onion
• 1 jar/can favorite spaghetti sauce
• 1 TBS garlic salt
• 2 cup shredded mozzarella for topping
  
• Parmesan

Par-cook the noodles and mix with the mozzarella, cottage cheese, and yogurt.

Then mix in the spaghetti sauce and ground turkey sauteed with sweet onions, garlic salt, and top with shredded mozzarella and parmesan.

Bake for about an hour at 350F.

How was it?

DEEE-LICIOUS!!

Cream of Cauliflower Soup

I love cream-of soups. They are my favorites. But I have had so much trouble finding a good recipe for them. I have tried many different ones over the years without much luck.

But if at first you don't succeed -- try, try again.

I had some left over cauliflower and half-n-half and some determination, so I decided to make cream of cauliflower soup.

I found recipes for cream of mushroom and cream of celery so I took some ideas from them and then just had to wing it. I've made lots of from-scratch pudding and thought the base for the soup would be very much like that.

• 1/2 head cauliflower
• 1 thick slice sweet onion
• 2 TBS butter
• 3 chicken bouillon cubes
• 1/8 cup flour
• 1/8 cup Swiss cheese - chopped or grated
• 2 cups half-n-half
• 2-1/2 cups water
• 1 egg - mixed well

Chop up cauliflower and throw into a sauce pan with 1/2 cup water. Cook on medium heat.

Finely chop one thick slice of sweet onion. I love the Andes sweets, or, if you can get it, my all time favorite is Vidalia! Throw the chopped onion in with the cauliflower along with two tablespoons butter.

When the cauliflower is just about cooked through and the water has boiled down, throw in bouillon cubes. Sprinkle flour over the cauliflower and mix in.

Turn down the heat and pour in half-n-half, rest of water, and egg. When the soup has heated up, add Swiss cheese. Cook until thicken.

Once the cream has been added, DO NOT OVER HEAT!!!

This was the best cream-of soup that I have ever made. I would definitely make this again, and I plan to try other versions, like: mushroom, broccoli, potato... OH! I CAN'T WAIT!!

Traditional Manicotti

I got this recipe from the 1000 Vegetarian Recipe book. I'm telling you, I LOVE that book!!

2 heaping cups of cottage cheese (it was supposed to be ricotta, but I had to substitute cottage cheese + romano)
1/4 cup Romano (see, I told you)
3/4 a package of frozen spinach
1 cup chopped mixed sweet peppers
3 chopped scallions.

This is what it looks like all mixed up. I also added some salt and pepper.

This recipe is actually called "Traditional Canelloni" in the book, but I didn't have canelloni, I had manicotti. Hey, it's all just pasta.

Cook the pasta most of the way. Drain and run cold water over it to cool it down enough to handle it, because you have to stuff them.

The book showed someone using a spoon to stuff the pasta, but good luck with that. I used my hands. We evolved them for a reason, you know.

Here is Neo asking if he can have some yet. Doesn't it look like you could just stuff him in one of the manicotti?

Awe! What a cutie!!

But NO!! You can't have any!

Put the stuffed pasta in a grease baking dish. Pour pasta sauce over the top. I made my own with tomatoes I canned from my own garden, but you can use what you want. The sauce should just about cover the pasta.

Sprinkle romano and parmesan on top and cook in for 30-40 minutes at 375 F; or until the pasta is completely cooked and the cheese on top is browned.
Mine didn't quite make it to the browned stage since my son kept hounding me about when it would be done.

Like every five minutes!!

It was pretty good. Well, I'll say it has great potential. I would definitely try this again, with a couple of changes...

Changes I would make:
* Cook it longer.
* Use thicker sauce. I did not spend a lot of time making sure the sauce was right before I used it and I added extra water to it because I didn't have enough to cover the pasta sufficiently.
* MORE CHEESE!!! Hey, I'm from Wisconsin! Maybe a little mozzarella grated on top. Yummy!!

Marmarumalade Chicken

Today I was inspired by the large quantities of clemetines that were left over from when I had a cold and the marmalade that I made with some of them for my son the other day. I thought the marmalade would go very well with chicken, so I devised a recipe to bring the two together.

1 whole chicken

8 clementine sliced thinly

1/4 cup lemon juice or 1 thinly sliced lemon

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 cups spiced rum

2-3 TBS cilantro - fresh or dried

2/3 of a can of apple/passion/mango juice concentrate

In a large bowl, mix everything but the chicken. Place the chicken in this marmarumalade(by the way, my clever husband came up with that name. I like to name my dishes fun names, and I think that name fit well). Marinade for about 20 minutes. Flip the chicken over and marinade for another 20 minutes.

Then it was into my clay pot cooker. I stuffed the chicken with the sliced clemetines and poured the marinade into the cooker.

I let it cook in a 450 degree oven for about an hour and twenty minutes.

It came out a little crispier than I had intended but the clay pot cooker did its job of keeping the chicken moist, and it was DELICIOUS!!


I would definitely make this again!