July.22/2010

Hi all,

We did it!!! We successfully made our first two dishes. yummmm! The first dish was the Broccoli Cheddar soup, and it turned out great and tasted magnifico! The recipe was easy to follow , but a bit of prep work was required, like chopping onions, shallot,garlic, potato, and of course, broccoli. I really allowed Missy to use a knife and chop up the garlic and shallot. Ha! Ha! Her eyes were stinging. Oh yes, and we even made our own croutons. I think the funiest part was when I had to blend the boiling soup mixture in the blender afterwards to a smooth texture. Well, the first time I had too much in there and the lid and the ingredients just about flew off. I had a bit of a mess to wipe up afterwards. We served it up to the family for lunch . My youngest son kept guessing what it was that made it green. He thought possibly Spinach, Peas, Celery- all wrong. My other son said 'It looks like puke soup". How nice, but honestly, it was great and everyone liked it. The recipe came from Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbook website- vegetarian section.

The Brocolli Cheddar Soup

Alright now for supper, we made quite a simple recipe called Pesto Ravioli. The pesto was made with olive oil, sundried tomatoes, thyme, hot peppers, walnuts, and garlic- all blended together and tossed with the cooked pre-made ravioli. Placed on a bed of spinach, and sprinkled with goat cheese. Well, my kids usually don't like stuff that is too spicy or has unusual ingredients in it. I was pleasantly surprised that they ate it up and two even went for seconds. The most complaining came from the youngest about how the ravioli was stuck together. "Winer"- we call him. It was good though, a bit too much hot peppers. This recipe found in the same place as the above one.

Pesto Ravioli

Thanks for reading! Now, time to start thinking about our Challenge for next week.

Bye! From Missy and Mom

July 21 2010

Heyy

I am so excited to start cooking tomorro! I want to kno how to make more than KD, haha! Plus it will help my self confidence go higher! Or so my mom and bf think! they never said it, but i kno it went thru their minds!

Today my teacher showed us the movie "Food Inc" IT WAS DISGUSTING! before i was only half-vegetarian, now im a complete vegetarian! the image of all those animals, skinned and hanging on those racks have now scarred my mind forever. I told my friend about it after and the next thing he does is offer me a pepperoni stick! yea good friends!

Does anyone kno wat Surf and Turf is?? my bf is apparently really good at making it but i have never heard of it!

Do we have any non-meat foods in this house? im hungry, no starving is the better term! a Crave cupcake would be really good right now! Bye people!

Missy<3

First Week- July.20/2010

Hi All,

We are here sitting in my daughter's room and finally did it! We created our blog together. Not sure if anyone but us will see this or even care, but it's for us and we're proud!

After seeing the movie, "Julie and Julia" we got talking about , "how wouldn't it be fun if we did something similar. " We love to bake together and actually volunteer together at an organization for sick kids and bake 2-3 times a month. We definitely have desserts down to a fine art, she calls, "The Philadelphia Cheesecake cookbook" her bible.

Now that she is a teenager, she keeps asking if I can teach her how to cook. Things like roasts and fancy dishes, veggies, soups, etc. I think she seems to think that she's moving out soon and will have to know this stuff. As her mother, I'm thinking she's rushing things and has all the time in the world. I am not looking forward to the day she leaves, contrary to many mother/teenage daughter relationships of horror, ours is pretty amiable. I love her and she knows it! That's why, before time runs out on us, we are gonna do this instead of saying we should have done that.

We thought it would be hilarious to find a cookbook written by someone sharing our last name. But after much research, found none, except some series called" The Hannah Swenson' mysteries. The author wasn't even a Swenson! Then we found, Heidi Swanson's 101 cookbooks website and well she has hundreds of recipes that she has created or found. Plus, gluten free and vegetarian recipes. My daughter was ecstatic, she likes the idea of going vegetarian and I don't mind broadening my horizons. We are also hoping to try out recipes from other works, maybe even a few Julia Child ones.

So, without further ado, this upcoming Thursday we will attempt our hands at creating the Broccoli Cheddar soup and the Red Pesto Ravioli. Both are from her vegetarian section. We'll let u know how they turn out.

Bye from Missy and Mom