{daring cooks: nut butter}

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

I was really looking forward to this months challenge of making a nut butter and then using it in an entree So was John. He was ready for a daring cooks challenge that was super savory and this one was it. The challengers gave us several recipe options to use our nut butters in. The nut butters could be made of peanuts, cashews, almonds or whatever nut we wanted. I had just made some peanut butter and as peanuts are easy to get locally, I went with that for my nut butter. You can check out my previous post on making peanut butter here. For my entree, I chose to go with the Asian Noodle Salad with Peanut Dressing recipe. Let me tell you, I could eat that dressing by the spoonful! It was absolutely one of the best things I've ever tasted and paired with the rest of the ingredients, it was wonderful. I highly recommend making this sauce and just spooning it over everything you eat. The recipe made more dressing than was necessary for the dish but it refrigerates well and can be used in a variety of other dishes.

In order to make this dish entirely local, I switched up some of the ingredients to make my own version. I loved how easy it was to make it from all local and fresh ingredients...it really added to the scrumptiousness of it all. The sauce would not have been easy to make using all local ingredients except that I already had the soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and ground ginger on hand.

Since beginning our locavore challenge, we have run out of noodles so, for the first time in my life, I made from scratch pasta!  I was super excited to give this a try and found a simple recipe over at the Food Network website. It required a good bit of kneading with gave my forearms a workout. I'm sad to say they were even sore the following day! I am so happy I'm climbing again now that we've moved one mile from the climbing gym. I will no longer be shamed by making pasta again. Anyway, I have no pasta roller so this stuff had to be rolled out with my awesome long rolling pin. I think it needed to be a little thinner but my arms were done. The pasta on its own was pretty delicious and a lot of fun to make. I did a half recipe of the pasta since that was all the flour I had left. It made plenty to serve us four times.

To get the original recipe and other options we had, check out The Daring Kitchen.

See my version of the recipe after the jump

{vegetable + meatball soup}

This is my second attempt at a vegetable soup and I think I finally got it right. This soup was absolutely delicious and I think one of the best things I've ever made. Since I had ground beef I decided to add a few meatballs to the mix but you could easily leave them out and sub a vegetable stock for the chicken stock to make this vegan. You could really put any veggies you have on hand into this and it will come out good.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{farmers market + carving a chicken}

This Saturday was our first trip to the main farmers market in town. There were many more vendors there compared to Tuesdays market. We were most excited to find meat and cheese vendors as I'd used the last of our frozen meats to make all of last weeks meals. Unfortunately, the main meat vendor was out of chicken so we purchased some round steak, sausage and ground beef. We later discovered a local butcher who carries Polyface Farm chicken and bought an entire bird.

There are still not very many veggies at the market but we were able to buy butternut squash, potatoes, lettuce, goat cheese and more homemade pasta in addition to the meats. I was super sad not to find any tomatoes but hoped that at Tuesdays market the tomato vendor would be there. John was thrilled to discover that there are such things green eggs. We learned there's no difference in taste and that the color varies based on the type of chicken.

More pics after the jump

{stuffed beef burgers}

Inspired by the Mozzerella Stuffed Turkey Burgers I made a couple months ago I decided to give it a go with the beef I had in the freezer. We had no buns or the ingredients to make them so these were bunless burgers that I topped with a tomato sauce made from the tomatoes I bought at the market. We used up the last of the asparagus and potatoes to finish up the meal. Deliciousness.

More pics and recipe after the jump

{butternut squash, steak + sweet potato pasta}

At the market on Tuesday I found the vendor Nellies Noodles. They were selling a few varieties of handmade pastas so I picked up the sweet potato one to try out. Since I'm still using what is on hand and the few things I picked up from the market, I chose to pair it with some roasted butternut squash and pieces of steak cooked with some stubbs marinade. It couldn't have tasted more delicious. The textures were very smooth and it was incredibly savory.


More pics and recipe after the jump

{the first cookout of the year}

The snow is finally melting! We can see the ground and the weather is a lovely 65 degrees. This is our first Spring in the mountains so we are really looking forward to a lot of camping and cookouts as the weather continues to warm. One of our favorite things to grill is hamburgers, so as soon as we realized that Sunday was going to be in the 60's we made plans to have a cookout.

More after the jump

{slow cooker pepper steak}

recipe source: allrecipes.com
Comfort food. Flavor. Colorful. Tender. This recipe was incredibly easy to put together and came out tasting oh so lovely. The only problem I had was smelling the delicious aromas all day without being able to eat it. I served it over some yellow rice to complete the meal. John was a huge fan of this dish and enjoyed the leftovers for his lunch.

{chili take two}

recipe source: Cooking Light
So since the first chili didn't turn out as well as I'd have like it, I've kept looking for a new chili recipe. I think I have found a keeper. This one was a much better consistency and had really delicious flavors. We are not huge fans of chili powder since it gives us heartburn so I only put in about two teaspoons of chili powder instead of the two tablespoons it called for. I've never had chili that uses red wine it it but it really gave it some nice flavor. Of course it needed more salt than what was called for so if you make it, try to salt it throughout the cooking process. Top it with a little grated cheese and some sour cream and enjoy!

{beef chili}

recipe source: Eating Well
What better way to warm up after canon balls in two feet of snow than with some warm chili. The recipe didn't actually call for using a slow cooker, but I used one anyway. Playing in the snow sounded more fun than spending my snow day cooking. I cooked it on high for 4 hours and it turned out just as well as if I had done it the way they called for. We topped it with a little goat cheese and light sour cream and scooped it up with tostitos.

I altered the recipe by using ground beef instead of beef round. Now that I'm looking at the recipe again, I think I forgot the beer, that might have helped the flavor out. It all tasted good, but was just not the best chili I've ever eaten. It didn't really thicken up like the picture Eating Well shows, but maybe the beer would have helped. I think next time, I'd add more salt and possibly a small can of tomato sauce to help it out.

More pics after the jump

{hungarian beef goulash}

recipe source:: Eating Well
This was amazingly delicious. The flavors were really good and the red peppers were very flavorful. I added a few carrots into the mix since I had them and needed to use them. We bought some potato gnocci to try with this and it turned out pretty good. Next time I think I'll use noodles though. Since I didn't have any paprika, I substituted some cayenne which gave it a really nice spicy flavor.

More pics after the jump

{flemish beef stew}

recipe source:: Eating Well
This is a wonderful slow cooker recipe that has delicious flavors. I prepped it all in about 45 minutes this morning and cooked it on low for 8 hours. Everything came out nice and tender. I think next time I will add in more carrots and some potatoes. There was definitely a lot of meat in the stew and it easily could have had less. Of course John thought it was great!

More pics after the jump