Goat Cheese Pasta with Spinach and Mushrooms

I'm on a mission to clear out the backlog, which is getting harder to do since I'm cooking every day. Sometimes twice a day. Plus some other un-named surprise projects that I'm working on…

Let's start with this guy:

ooo yeah! Goat cheese AND mushrooms?! Now you're talkin'

Recipe here

Pre-roasted mushrooms. I forgot to take an after picture. I forgot to take a lot of pictures, honestly. I'll give you a verbal description of the after part. They basically looked like I had sautéed them only with less juice coming out. So maybe we didn't really need a picture for that anyway.

Mom crumbled the goat cheese. One good thing about this house is we usually have a wide assortment of cheeses on hand. We didn't even need to buy the goat cheese for this because we already had some! Yesssss

As the internet says: wahlaaaa!

Then we argued over where the bowls were from and whether or not certain people were there when they were purchased. 

Please excuse the lack of pictures. I figured everyone knows what boiling pasta and chopped spinach looks like and I have yet to master the art of taking pictures of food on wood surfaces with spoons nearby and small bits of ingredients scattered near the bowl. Yes, it is an art and I have *clearly* not even begun to try to master it. Also, I just learned a lot of the food blog photographers take their food pictures with natural lighting in the daytime. I feel like that's cheating because who the heck eats dinner at 4pm in the winter when there's daylight.

Anyway, back to the recipe. I vote: pretty good. For me, the mushrooms were the best part of the whole thing. I would have eaten them by themselves. I thought there was entirely too much basil in this but Mom firmly and loudly disagreed. Basil has it's place, but I don't think it's in this dish. I was really surprised how much the reserved pasta water helped to make this super creamy. You probably don't need ALL of it as I found it created some runny goat cheese water at the bottom but if you plan to use this for leftovers it's probably not a bad idea. Since we were using leftover goat cheese, we only had about 4 oz instead of 6. It wasn't awful. I have only ever found it in 4oz or a giant log so don't be afraid to just use the 4oz log.

Stuck to the script: almost perfect except for the reduced amount of goat cheese. 98%

Breakfast for Dinner: Stuffed French Toast and Potato & Egg Bake

I ran out of vegetarian meals just in time for family dinner this week. Perfect.
I scoured my Pinterest and found this yummy looking stuffed french toast recipe.

I mean look at this! So good! Here is the recipe.

I also wanted to have a few more options as sides so I thought I'd cook up this potato bake I have every once in a while for breakfast.

Uh… YUP.

Here it is, fellas.

Let's start with the french toast...

This is what I dipped the toast in. Mom said I hadn't mixed it enough at this point so she took a whip to it for another 5 minutes. Who has time for that??

The filling. It tasted good just on its own, as Michael can attest to.

I could only fry two at a time… I miss my griddle!

Since the texas toast was so big, I had to make sure to fry on every side so we weren't eating raw egg.

I don't have more pictures of this whole process. I think you can guess where it goes.

Potatoes! I forgot the eggs in this picture. Add them with your mind.

Everything but the cream and eggs.

We needed the oven to cook the bacon (first time trying that!) so we put it in the toaster oven to cook the eggs and cheese. Also, I didn't use the right cheese but I'm ok with that.

All done!

And mimosas! (bacon not pictured)

I forgot to take pictures of making the blueberry (not blackberry, couldn't find any) compote. Sorry!

Please don't tell my grandmother I served something in a pot. 

This was freakin' delicious! Go make this right now! It was easy and yummy and I need to make it again ASAP. The only thing was it took a while because I could only cook two at time. We doubled the recipe to make enough for 5 people but it could have served 6 with everyone getting two triangles. The compote was a nice topping, although I wish it was thicker. We only bought one orange for the zest and it ended up only giving 2 teaspoons for the filling and the coating each.

Every time I make the potato bake some of the potatoes come out not done. I don't know what it is. I cook it for almost an hour which is twice as long as the recipe says and it's still not done. And they're so little! I dunno, man. Still good, though. I usually just put the egg yellows in it and save the whites for something else. 

Side note: the turkey bacon in the oven turned out good. I think we left it in for longer than we should have but it was a nice, different way to cook it. Less greasy. 

Stuck to the script: about 95% for the french toast because we used a different berry and less orange zest. Maybe the same for the potatoes because we used a different cheese and we had to cook it longer.

Crispy Cheddar Chicken

Here we go! Clearing out the backlog!

I found this recipe on Pinterest. Looked simple enough. I'm pretty much always trying to find ways to cook chicken so that it tastes fried.

One good thing about this recipe is that it didn't require a lot of ingredients.

I'm trying to figure out scarves. Clearly I have a ways to go...

It wanted one sleeve of crushed Ritz crackers except we bought the no-name brand and they were all loose… I had to guess. It ended up being almost half the box.

I made Mom cut the chicken and coat them cause I didn't want to get my hands yucky

Before cooking

After cooking.

I paired this with some Uncle Ben's garlic and butter rice and roasted some frozen green beans with a bit of shallots, olive oil and salt.

As you might have noticed, I got pretty lazy and chose not to make the incredibly simple sauce. I was getting a bit hangry and just wanted to put food in my mouth as fast as possible. It was fine without it. The chicken was surprisingly moist and not soggy as it sometimes is when you bake breaded chicken. You could just taste the cheese a bit, more would have been ok. Mom was super frustrated about the method they wanted you to coat them in. Probably didn't help that we were using 2% instead of buttermilk or cream. You're supposed to put the cheese on before the crackers and after the milk which is kind of silly because cheese doesn't stick to milky chicken very well. We ended up doing some sort of variation of the order and then dumping crackers and cheese onto the chicken in the pan. We had SO much cracker left over. We crushed about 1 1/2 cups worth and it was too much. Definitely try again.

Stuck to the script: 100%! Go us!

Epic Crispy Quinoa Burger with Beer Caramelized Onions

Oh man, I am so behind on posts. I think I have at least 4 things I need to post on right now. I am the worst! I'm hoping to make it up by posting this recipe because it is pretty epic, even if we didn't include half the toppings.

See how good that looks?! We got the recipe from this website through Pinterest.

I knew pretty much immediately that I would not be going through the ordeal of making fries without my trusty deep fryer which is currently in storage in Virginia. Also I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who doesn't care for sweet potato fries so I wasn't too disappointed that I wouldn't be making them for this burger.

The recipe called for cannellini beans which they didn't have at the store. A quick google search told me that navy beans, cannellini beans, and northern beans were in the same family. While this may or may not be true, I didn't really have much of a choice and went with the white navy beans.

The need to soak beans overnight is annoying. I never think that far ahead. I tried soaking for less than two hours which while surprisingly effective, was not effective enough. Google to the rescue! Apparently you can cook them in the oven as a soaking alternative. I covered the beans so there was about 1 inch of water over them and cooked them at 400F (I think) for about an hour and a half. Ta-da! There was still an excess of water in the pot so Mom had to drain them a bit, but still easier than remembering to soak them the night before.

Cooked quinoa freaks me out. It looks like tiny eyes. I thought red quinoa would be different. I was horribly mistaken. It was worse.

Mashing the beans… I should have gotten this result with the black bean burgers.

They held up so much better than the other burgers.

Super crispy! Forgot to put the cheese on and cover the pan though. Oops! I put some in the toaster oven and overcooked the rest in the pan to melt the cheese.

Guess my parents thought the onions and cheese weren't enough toppings

Is this really the only picture we took of the onions?? Well, they took a really long time to make. We used only half an onion because that was a really huge onion and about half the beer the recipe called for. I was adding a very small amount at a time and it was going well and then I lost patience and started added more at a time and it stopped drying up quickly so I stopped adding the beer. More for me to drink!

This was a pretty good recipe and fairly easy to put together. I really loved how the patties were so cohesive and I didn't have to worry about them falling apart while cooking. As for the recipe's claim that they rival beef burgers.. I have to say I disagree. They were good, but not THAT good. There's just something about the greasiness of a beef burger that can't be rivaled by quinoa. Definitely try this one if you're into veggie burgers. Maybe more salt, oil and spices would have helped. Let me know how it is with the fries...

Therese's Homemade Granola

My dad bought some granola at the Superstore the other day for his cereal and it cost over $4 a box. That's kind of nuts, if you ask me. I looked at the ingredients and became convinced I could make it better for cheaper.
Next came the task of gathering all the ingredients I wanted to put in there. I *really* wanted dried blueberries for some reason. Strawberries too if I could find them. We already had most everything else I needed at home! Free! Kinda!

I looked at Pinterest for granola recipes but they all seemed to have a high amount of sweetener or fat like butter which kind of goes against the whole granola is healthy thing.
I looked at a few and used them as a basis to make my own recipe.

We also had chia seeds and dried cranberries! Surprise!

The blueberries here I found at Save-On foods and I think it was under $4 for that bag and I only used about half. 

I was a little concerned there wasn't enough liquid in the mix but I wasn't really sure what else to use. I didn't want to make it too sweet or too fatty and I didn't think water would be helpful. 

Before

After

Yummy!

Not bad for winging it! There's a couple things I would change, but there's only about a tablespoon left in the jar so I think that means it was good. 

I would have definitely added more oats as two cups didn't seem like enough with the amount of other dry ingredients I put in. Three or four is probably a better number. I would also shorten the time it was cooked for to eliminate a slight burnt taste. My cousin also suggested adding egg whites to create clusters which is a great idea. I actually just saved some egg whites this morning and I think I'll use them tonight to replace the contents of the now-empty jar. 

Here is the recipe I used, adjust accordingly. I will try to post updates or a new post when I try it again.

Therese's Homemade Granola

2 cups rolled oats

1 Tablespoon chia seeds (white)

3 Tablespoons dried blueberries

2 Tablespoons dried cranberries

pinch of nutmeg

pinch of cinnamon

1/4 cup melted butter

3/4 cup maple syrup

2 Tablespoons vanilla

Cook at 350F for 15 minutes. Stir, then cook for LESS than 25 more minutes.