Weekly highlights

It’s spaghetti squash season!

I roasted this while Kyle was out of town so I had two noodle-y dinners all to myself. Ok, not ALL to myself, the kids wanted in, too.  But I supplemented their portions with whole wheat spaghetti.

I was inspired by this recipe for creamy tahini spaghetti squash by a new to me site, the roasted root.  My dinner was actually nothing like her recipe but I bookmarked it make sometime.  In the meantime, I made my own thing that was so good, I have to share.

To top the noodles, I made a little sauté with broccoli, walnuts, and sun dried tomatoes.

Spaghetti squash with broccoli and walnuts [serves 2]

Ingredients:

• 1 spaghetti squash
• 1/4 cup olive oil, divided
• 1 small head broccoli, chopped
• 1 cup walnuts
• 1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes plus packed oil
• 2 tbsp tahini

Directions:

Cut the squash in half, rub all over with 2 tbsp of the olive oil and put cut side down on a greased baking sheet.  Roast for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees F until a fork pierces through the skin easily.

Once it has cooled a bit, flip it over and pull the flesh of the squash away from the skin in shreds (like noodles).

While the squash is roasting, add the rest of the oil into a large skillet and saute the broccoli florets on high heat.  Add the walnuts and continue to sauté until they are toasted and browned all over.  Add in the sun dried tomatoes and stir to combine.

Once everything is done cooking, spoon the broccoli and walnut mixture over the noodles and drizzle some tahini on top.

Ready to chop.

Don’t be afraid of high heat guys.  Sizzle sizzle.

Here’s what the squash looks like when the flesh comes off.  NOODS!

The kids devoured this.  It makes sense since walnuts are their favorite nuts and broccoli is their favorite veggie.

Tahini is hit and miss with them, but I am LIVING for it at the moment.  The Trader Joe’s brand is soooo good I could eat it straight up (which is not the case for other brands of tahini).

You want in on this, I promise.  Do it.

Dessert face included candied ginger, some kind of chocolate with almonds that I can’t remember, and the second half of the Lula’s hawaiian rocky road from the day before.

Here I am getting ready for some carrot prep.  I’m kinda liking this routine.  Chopping carrots is a little fun.

For lunch I threw some stuff together that I’d already prepped – roasted Brussels sprouts, roasted walnuts, smoked salmon and then some carrots on the side.

I was on my A game and so the kids’ lunch was ready before I even picked them up from school.  Boom!

Chicken, roasted sweet potatoes, and broccoli.

P helped me get the pantry squared away while V was napping.  😛

For my next meal while Kyle was gone I made this Greek chicken salad.  The last of the garden’s tomatoes are slowly dwindling.

Here’s the kids’ version (I added chickpeas in place of feta – not because they don’t like feta (they do!) but because I only had really fancy feta that I didn’t want to share).  Hashtag selfish.  Hashtag don’t care.

Here’s mine.  It was as good as it looks.

V made applesauce at preschool and P was jealous, so I told him we could make some at home.

I bought some honeycrisps and borrowed a friend’s peeler/corer/slicer and P and I had a blast.

OMG this thing is SO COOL!!  I never thought such a tool would be worth it, but I fell in love on first use.  It’s amazing!

In SECONDS (with zero effort) it peels, cores and slices an apple.  Legit blew my mind at the ease and speed it did it.

The peel “ribbons” were also a big hit (which they ate while the apples cooked away in the slow cooker).

I let them chop them with plastic knives.

And I gotta say, I was pretty impressed with how well they did!

My sweetie taking a break from playing to eat apple noodles.

He is suddenly SO into soccer.

As a former soccer player I’m thrilled!  I don’t want to push sports on him and his interest up until this point has been luke warm, but it seems to be growing day by day and he asks to go out and play soccer every day, and doesn’t even mind if it’s just him by himself kicking it around.  I see improvements by the minute and am crossing my fingers that it blossoms into a true passion because it’s so special seeing your kid feel joy about something which you too love very dearly.

And if not him, then perhaps her…

She’s a total stud already, so I have no doubt about her abilities…only time will tell if the drive is there too…

Either way, it’s their choice what they want to pursue.  And I’m loving them playing together independently.

I cooked dinner while listening to their made up games with water beads.  Can you see them through the window there?

Still in Mediterranean mode, I sautéed zucchini and bell peppers in sun dried tomatoes and oil.

LOTS of sun dried tomatoes.  That Costco jar of them has lasted longer than I thought it would, but I guess it is OVER TWO POUNDS.

I wish they were organic, but I’m having a hard time finding organic sun dried tomatoes that are oil packed anywhere…

Saute away.

Add some shrimp.  And by “some” I mean 50.  Because otherwise people will feel slighted.

Look at all that lovely sauce that has formed…the noodles will take care of that.  Kyle used sourdough too.  The more (carbs) the merrier.

I haven’t been to TJs in so long, so I haven’t gotten my beloved pecorino romano in a while.  Obvs Nugget has pecorino romano too, but I decided to get the Grand Ewe Uniekaas instead and I didn’t want to buy too much cheese (I mean, I WANTED to, but I knew I shouldn’t…).  I wasn’t sure if the flavor would go with the meal, so I started with just a touch.

And it was so delicious I added more after digging in. Sheep cheese is so good, and I’m *thinking* that I tolerate it even better than goat milk dairy.  Of course there seem to be exceptions to every single thing I start to learn about my gut, so I’m not really holding my breath on this one, but sheep cheese seemingly has zero effect on my body (whereas goat is mostly nada reaction, but every once in a while I feel like certain kinds might?).  It’s all so confusing.  Probably has to do with the fodmaps I’ve had in the day and stress (exercise, immune system survival, emotional and psychological factors of parenting while Kyle’s out of town, etc etc) and female hormones and a million other things that I can’t possibly compute before eating.

All that is to say, the Grand Ewe Uniekaas is DELISH and I added a ton more to my bowl.

Mine is the spaghetti squash one with zucchini.  Kyle’s is the zucchini free one with wheat noodles.

Smorgasbord of chocolate that followed.  This is how I want to end every day, but I’m really doing my best to take at least a couple of nights off every week.  I’ve been doing so so at it.

Remember those library books I was telling you about?

Here’s a thought…don’t try canning for the first time starting at 9 pm.

This attempt was both a failure and a success, because I learned a lot from it.

I’ve been pouring over the ATK preserving book for the better part of the week and googling every question along the way trying to figure out if I can steam can with my instant pot.  The answer is basically no, but as you can probably imagine, I’m not one to take no for an answer.  But I also don’t want to kill my family off from unsafe practices.  Normal people would probably perfect the meticulous details of the techniques as written several times over before ad libbing on something so serious, butttttt, that’s where I deviate from normal.

So anyway.

First I sterilized the new jar with the sterilize setting on the IP.  Then I poured the hot applesauce (which I got back up to a rolling boil on my amazing slow cooker that has a saute setting) before I added it to the hot jar.  Yes I burned my fingers a lot because of course I don’t have appropriate canning tools (yet).  Don’t worry I ordered this set on amazon right after.  😛

So then I set the IP to the steam setting and left the venting slot open.  For 30 minutes.  Or so I thought.  I accidentally did it for 60 minutes, which is why problems arose.  Namely, the water I added wasn’t enough and the pot went dry by minute 50.  Which meant the applesauce was basically boiling away in the jar as it was in direct contact with the bottom of the IP.  Oh that’s another issue!  The IP wasn’t quite deep enough for me to put a rack down, so the jar was directly on the bottom of the insert.  Is that a no no?  So many problems!!  Ha.  Ok, so then when I opened the lid at the end, the applesauce was kinda leaking over the edges.  That’s def not good.  I know it should be a clean seal for sure.  I think the applesauce had also reduced since it was still cooking!  The head space was significantly more than when I poured it in initially.

That said, when I check on it the next morning it was a SUPER tight seal…

But those air pockets can’t be good…

So I just put it in the fridge to eat this week.

I don’t trust my first go with so many wild cards and obvious sources of error.

P mentioned that we hadn’t had chili in a while and I figured why not?  We still had tomatoes from the garden, and the pantry always has dried beans and quinoa…so I pulled some beef from the freezer and in under an hour I had chili made!  I’m not exaggerating on the time frame either.  I started it right before drop off and the part that took the longest was getting the frozen meat to thaw, but the saute function of the IP took care of that pretty easily.  After that I just dumped stuff in, set it, and went about our morning…and then voila!  They each had chili for lunch.  And then a few more times throughout the week plus once on the weekend.  And it’s still not gone!

How has it been so long since I have had Mary’s Gone crackers?  I think I had a stale box a while back because they weren’t doing it for me, but then this box of black pepper was making me feel all the feels.

I had three more servings this size (of the crackers and cream cheese) which is a respectable amount, I think.  Don’t you?  And then to finish it off I had the bag of kale chips.  Those are 100% single serving bags.  Does anyone else not finish them?  I hate to admit this (because I think I’m a pretty good cook) but store bought kale chips are just so much better than anything I can make.  I’ve tried at least 5 times to make them myself and they are no where near as good.  Oven. Dehydrator.  Doesn’t matter.  I like the packaged stuff.  Do I lose my hippie namesake now?  I hope not.  Maybe I will go back to making my own plant milk to compensate.  😛