Roasted Veggies, Homemade Marshmallows, & Apple Pie Experiments

Yesterday I went on a bit of a cooking frenzy.  I was inspired by my kids to batch up some breakfast items.  Every morning I get "what is there to eat?" thing and there is never anything they want.  So I decided to solve that problem for the next couple of weeks.  So I batched up (with their help) a bunch of breakfast burritos and pancakes.  That got me rolling.  I had read something about "breakfast pies".  I asked the girls if they'd eat such a thing.  Both said no resoundingly!  But then the last box of apples from our tree sitting in our garage popped in my mind.  So I let my imagination chew on that and "breakfast pies" for a bit and proceeded to make a shopping list. 

I couldn't decide what to make.  I had several ideas in my head, so I decided to buy refrigerator crescent rolls, but then I found something better.  Crescent Recipe Creations.  I took this stuff home and placed 6 pieces of dough in 6 muffin tins.  I proceeded to make various mini apple pies involving fresh apples, cooked apples in a pie mixture, 3 kinds of cheese, and bacon.  Yes bacon.  All turned out good, but there will be further experimentation to perfect the faves (based on my families' so sophisticated taste buds - and I'm not joking here).  I'll post my final recipe when done.  Here are a few pictures of what I did:

 

 

 

Just FYI.  The pies involving bacon were a hit!

Then I went on to make dinner.  I've been craving roasted root veggies lately, so I made up a pasta dish involving roasted carrots, parsnips, turnips, onions, garlic, celery and mushrooms.

I peeled and chopped up a turnip, two parsnips, and 3 carrots.  I then peeled and quartered an onion, chopped the ends off of about 10 cloves of garlic (so you can easily squeeze out the roasted garlic), chopped up 2 ribs of celery, and cleaned about 10 button mushrooms.  I tossed them with about 1/8 cup of olive oil, kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.  I roasted all of that in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes.  I then cooked up a little over a half lb of campenelle pasta.  I tossed the veggies and pasta with my butter sage sauce, which was about 1 tablespoon of bacon grease (from the pie project) 3 tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil.  I threw in 1/4 cup of sage leaves and fried them in the butter mixture until they were nice an deliciously crisp.

It was a fall comfort delight!

Then, for the  Pièce de résistance!

 

Homemade Marshmallows!  These were so easy and fun.  I'm not a huge fan of marshmallows, so I wondered if homemade would be better.  I figured if they weren't, my kids love marshmallows, so nothing would go to waste.

Were they good?

Hell yeah!

Then I found out this is similar to the recipe Thomas Keller uses along with homemade graham crackers (this recipe isn't his).  Guess what I'm thinking of making next......LOL!

If you want to try making your own (a fun way to impress people at a potluck and it's simple) you can find the recipe at Epicurious.com or where I originally saw it at Bon Appetit Magazine.

So now I'm dragging my behind off the computer and heading out to my garden to produce another round of food to cook and write about.

Happy Fall!

Potato Chip Oven Baked Chicken and more

I was feeling like some comfort food on Monday and this is what I came up with. Potato Chip Oven Baked Chicken:

I crushed one medium bag of Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips into very fine crumbs and added about a tsp of garlic powder and a half tsp of dried sage and mixed that all together. I took 6 chicken thighs and brushed them with milk and rolled them in the potato chip mixture. I placed them in a baking dish and baked them for 55 minutes. There is no need for salt or pepper because there is plenty on the potato chips. They turned out crunchy and yummy!

Then there was the fresh chard from our garden. The same plants we've had since last year! I chopped them up, removing the stems, sauted them in some olive oil for a bit then added 2 tbsp water and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and cooked until wilted. I sprinkled kosher salt to taste as the last step. This was fresh and light. A nice contrast to the chicken.

I also boiled a half pound of bow tie pasta, then melted a tsp of butter and drizzled with olive oil parmesan cheese and a pinch of kosher salt.

While I was getting all of this ready I grabed 1 1/2 lbs of the sandwich bread dough I had made a couple of days before and baked a loaf of whole wheat bread. I think I over warmed the milk and messed up the yeast a bit. The bread didn't raise as expected, but it did come out pretty good. I enjoyed a slice for breakfast the next morning with some of my homemade apple butter. Yum! More soothing comfort food before a long day at work.

Chicken and Orzo Salad

This was a yummy dinner. My kids scarfed it down! I cooked two chicken breasts in chicken broth and then cubed them. I cooked one cup of orzo according to package directions. While that was cooking I harvested about a quarter cup of basil from my garden and chopped it up, cubed up a cup of Provolone cheese, chopped up a 14 oz can of small artichoke hearts (drained), seeded and diced an nice fresh tomato from Fortuna's Farmers Market, chopped up about a 1/2 cup of pitted Kalamata olives, shredded a half cup of pecorino parmesan cheese and crumbled a 1/2 cup of feta.

Once the orzo was done I tossed it with the chicken and 1/3 cup of Ken's Steak House Greek dressing which has feta, black olives and olive oil in it. Then I added the artichokes, provolone, tomatoes, olives and basil and tossed. Finally I added the feta and parmesan and gently tossed and seasoned with pepper. This is served on a bed of lettuce and seasoned with salt and pepper as desired, but with the feta, parmesan and Greek dressing, it really doesn't need very much salt.

I should have taken a picture of this salad, because the colors were really quite pretty, and it tasted even better then it looked.