Tostadas de Queso Quemada

I like easy recipes, but I love experimenting and a good challenge even more. Unless I'm pregnant. Pregnancy Purgatory takes over and demands my complete lack of anything fun or good. I am a prisoner in my own body. I simply eat to survive. Save an occasional splurge out at a restaurant when Baby decides he wants a bit of flavor or -GASP- actual nutrition, 90% of the calories I consume are from toast because that's about all my stomach can handle. Cooking? Forget it! That dives my soul into the depths of Prego Hell.

WHO the crap has that bad of a pregnancy? That she can't even cook dinner??? I do, that's who!

This was a healthy dose of both ease and experimentation. That's why tonight, no matter how bad my feet hurt afterwards, when I got a sudden craving for a Veggie Queso Fresco Tostada I jumped at the chance to make it! I hadn't eaten much for 7 hours, so as soon as my husband got home from work and the grocery store I grabbed the ingredients and set in to work.

.....Did I even kiss you hello, Sweetie? *So sorry!*

Now, I can't cook without doing something out of the ordinary. And since my husband was taking a shower before dinner, I had a few extra minutes to experiment in the kitchen. I cut a couple chunks off my queso fresco and popped it in the oven under the broiler.

Let me explain, I am culturally schizophrenic when it comes to queso fresco! When I lived in Mexico, I was served queso fresco on just about everything. Fresh, crumbly, slightly sweet, super-mild, wonderful cheese! Then, each time my husband and I went to Nicaragua on mission trips with our church years ago, I fell in love more and more with their fried cheese, which is just really, really salty queso fresco fried up. But tonight I didn't want to be miserable with heartburn until 3 in the morning after eating fried cheese, so I just thought, "What the heck, I'll bake it and see what it does!"

Queso fresco is crumbly, but at the same time retains a lot of moisture. So, when I put it in the oven it took several minutes to even start to dry out. The moisture that leaked out at first then burned while I continued to bake it, leaving a blackened film on the foil-lined pan and an unpleasant sweet brunt smell, but the cheese itself turned out PERFECTLY!!! I think next time I will lay the cheese out on paper towels for a few minutes first to absorb the excess moisture previous to baking.

WHAT YOU NEED:
12 tostadas
1 package queso fresco
2 packages of your favorite frozen vegetable blends (But feel free to add whatever else you like, like corn or beans)
Olive oil infused with your favorite spices
Sea salt

HOW TO:
Saute veggies in olive oil and salt them well!
Cut 12 slices of queso fresco for baking. If you like salty food, salt the queso freso before it goes in the oven.
Crumble the rest for the topping.
In a foil-lined baking pan place sliced queso fresco. Broil on each side for about 3-4 minutes, ONLY until it starts to brown slightly. You really don't want it to burn, even though at this point I am calling it queso quemada (burnt).
On tostadas, place broken-up queso quemada (baked cheese), then veggies, and crumbled queso fresco.
Yum! Eat! (This would also be fantastic with a good slathering of salsa verde on top!!)

SERVES: 4 hungry adults 3 tostadas each!

COST: $11 for 12 tostadas (91 cents each)

Butternut Squash Bisque w/ Roasty-Toasty Bell Peppers

I'll never be a famous blogger that makes tons of money from the shear volume of hits they have on their website and the ads they have on their pages, or receive a million offers a month to host giveaways for washers and dryers, hair products and new cookware and cloth diapers and ... new cars, or whatever the heck people get for just being a blogger. Or go on talk shows and become a famous chef, that no one really knows anything about... mysteriously... PepperOnce is a recipe box. It's open for whomever may pass along and look inside and find something that sparks their interest and ACTUALLY cooks it for their family. It's a recipe catalog of things I cook once and forget I ever made, so that my husband can scroll through the pages and decide what we're having for dinner next week (because I HATE being the only one planning the family menu). It's a fun place to get out my frustration of being a stay-at-home mom with nothing else to do but clean up cheerios and poop all day long... comforting boo-boos along the way. It's a recipe box for my daughter, for the day that she leaves for college and realizes that she never listened to any of my cooking advice, gains 15 pounds her first week eating cafeteria crap food, and can't travel home every weekend to eat my food - she can figure out easily from my blog how to cook it herself. Or I can print it out and gift it to her when she gets married. It's a place I can share a little more of myself with people I don't get to hang-out with very often, but wish I could get to know better. It's one of the best ways to share a funny story (or, obviously, a good recipe) with my best friend. It's one of the only avenues of remaining fairly anonymous. It's a place I can brag. (It's definitely not a place I can be "real" because my mom's reading it... But,) It's mine. It's a place for me. No one else has any real say. Suggestions, sure. Decisions, naught! I can make up whatever the heck I want, and someone might actually take my advice on it. I do have more hits from other countries most days, so I can call things what I want... And I'm calling this a Bisque...

A bisque is by the very name and etymology of the word made from seafood. Never you mind this small detail, this is a bisque. And a really dang good one at that.

WHAT YOU NEED:

1-1&1/2 lbs. Butternut Squash, chopped (bags of frozen works GREAT!)

1 small bag of mixed frozen Organic Bell Peppers

1 large Onion, sliced

1 clove minced Garlic

2 TBSP. Unsalted Butter

2 TBSP. Olive Oil

Sea Salt & Fresh Ground Black Pepper

4 cups Veggie Broth

1 cup Heavy Whipping Cream

HOW TO:

In medium saucepan, over medium heat, melt butter with olive oil. Saute onion and peppers. (This would've been SO much better if I had roasted the peppers!!! But, alas, they were the bagged frozen kind.) Add garlic towards end of that. Salt at each stage, lightly. Add squash. Cook for about 10 minutes, half-covered. Add veggie broth and let boil for 5-ish minutes, stirring a few times. Pepper it up! (Black pepper makes everything better!) If you do not have an immersion blender, use a regular blender. Add cream when blending. Serve piping hot! *Pairs perfectly with Ham-Swiss-and-Mayo sandwiches (Arnold's Oat Nut Bread is PERFECT!!)

Simple. Easy. Quick. YUMMY!

ENJOY!! =)

Blueberry Walnut Salad

I found this recipe on AllRecipes.com. Not only was it only a few ingredients (so it was super easy), but it incorporated at least three "super foods"!

I like a meal that looks and tastes gourmet, but takes less than five minutes to make!

WHAT YOU NEED:
5 oz. mixed organic greens (with spinach)
6 oz. fresh blueberries
1 oz. raw walnuts
3 oz. feta cheese
Raspberry vinaigrette

WHAT TO DO:
Mix them together to your taste

COST: About $6 for 2 servings

YUMMMMMMM!!!!

Let me know if YOU have a good addition/variation to this salad! =)

Copycat

There's something about creating food that is exciting... and disappointing... all at the same time. Last night I was at a loss as to what to make for dinner, and only had about an hour before I had to walk out the door for an event, and had a timebomb of a baby in her crib. I already had black beans cooking the whole day, so I wandered through the contents of my fridge, which all had claim on them for other meals, and ingredients in my head. I thought, "Well, quinoa goes well with everything... I could steal a little bit of this or that from other meals..." And then I tried to open the blasted quinoa package and it had a recipe on the back for a quinoa and black bean dish! "AH! They STOLE my idea!", I thought. Then I realized that the person who came up with that idea had probably been in a pinch for dinner at the time, too. There's no real genius to this. Just well-timed ideas =)

Black Bean Quinoa Mess That Turned Out Great
What you need:
4 cups cooked black beans
3 cups cooked quinoa
1 cup cooked corn
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 organic red bell pepper, minced

What you do:
Mix it all together =)  Good hot or cold. Serve with chips.

White Cheddar Asparagus Soup

When my family moved into our current apartment, friends of ours that already lived in the same building brought us dinner our first night. The apartment really wasn't as clean as I wanted it, and I had a BUSY 7-month-old baby to look after while my husband was working 60 hours a week at the time. So, BLESSED BE my dear friends, they brought us a wonderful Cauliflower Cheese Soup, along with German Soup Pearls. I begged my friend for the recipe, and she had to translate it (and the measurements) out of German, because her Jamie Oliver cookbook was ... in ... German ... Go figure!

Anyway, I spend 106 words telling you this, really just to let you know that this White Cheddar Asparagus Soup is a deviant of Jamie Oliver's Cauliflower Cheese Soup recipe. I like to get pretty creative with recipes, but this time it was out of necessity. I didn't have any carrots, and I didn't want my beautiful asparagus (that I didn't have any other real plans for) to go to waste. I bought it at a store called The Fresh Market, where most things are too high-priced, so when I do find a steal I buy it with grand hopes of making something wonderful out of it. I honestly liked this version better than the original, especially because I used white cheddar instead of sharp... And I am a sucker for white cheddar =)

WHAT YOU NEED:
1 bunch asparagus (about a pound), cut off thick bottom ends
1 head of cauliflower, use only the florets (about 3 cups)
1 large onion, cut in small sections
2 organic celery sticks, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1-2 TBSP. coconut oil (or olive oil)
5 cups vegetable broth
1/2 tsp. cracked brown mustard seed
Sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper, to taste
Tiny pinch nutmeg

HOW TO:
Heat oil in large stock pot over medium heat, throw in all cut veggies, and leave 10-15 minutes with lid half-covering pot. You may want to check in and stir every few minutes.
Pour in vegetable broth. Leave half-covered to boil for another 10-15 minutes, stirring the same.
Take off heat. Add mustard, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Add an equal portion of veggies/broth and cheese to blender. Pour into another vessel once blended very well. (It might take three turns, depending on your blender size.)
Serve with asiago crumbles, and garlic toast -- Mmmmm! Perfect combo! (By the way, have you ever tried parsley on garlic toast??? It's fannntassstic!!!!!!!)

SERVES: 8

COST: $9 ($1.13/each serving)

Ajwain Butternut Curry

Ajwain is described at Penzey's as Thyme + Pepper, and that's exactly how it smelled when I was in the store last Sunday.* I was intrigued at it's smell, because, except for a tiny amount in Italian dishes, I really am not a big fan of Thyme. I read a bit about it on Wikipedia, and although there are differences (obviously), when I cooked it, it really DID smell like that wonderful spice in the store!!!

Tuesday night I was going to make a Butternut Squash Soup that I found a recipe for, and well, by now you should realize what I'm about to say... I CAN'T stick to a recipe! I ended up making a fabulous curry. Following is the recipe -- a little of what I did, and a little of what I should've done - as usual! =)

WHAT YOU NEED:
1 Butternut Squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed (considering the time of year, the one I bought was the largest my grocery store had. In summer, it might've been considered a medium... Let's say about 2 lb. after cubing)
3 TBSP. butter
Sea Salt
Thyme + Fresh Ground Black Pepper = "Ajwain" (Grind in food processor together to really blend the flavors!)
6 oz. Organic Low-Sodium Chicken Broth (or homemade is even better!)
A HOST of spices: Dried Minced Garlic, Dried Minced White Onion, Ground Anise Seeds, Parsley Flakes, 5 Dried Sanaam Peppers (if you are feeding children leave these out!), Curry (I used some sweet-mild-red-ish leftover curry we still had, out of a packet... I really couldn't tell you which one it is! Sorry!), 3 small pieces Australian Crystalized Ginger, a very small bit of Ground White Pepper
1 can of Coconut Milk (okay, there are two types in the Asian section of the grocery store... I don't know the difference, but one is thicker. It is more expensive. Buy the cheaper one, it is thinner and better in curries!!!)

HOW TO:
I really suggest fresh Butternut Squash. Frozen would just turn to mush in an instant.
Put Butternut Squash, 1 TBSP. butter, and a pinch of salt in large soup pot, on Medium heat. Stir more or less continuously. Add another TBSP. butter and pinch of salt as you see the first one has melted. Same with third... You are coating the squash with butter and salt, lightly sauteing. Do not let the butter get too brown.
Sprinkle in "Ajwain", a bit at a time and stir. (I don't measure very often, so my best guess here is... to your taste. Is it getting pretty fragrant? That's what you want!!)
Add 1/3 of Chicken Broth at a time. You are still stirring often. Let each 1/3 of broth reduce quite a bit before adding the next. (This is a little time-consuming.)
By time the chicken broth has boiled and reduced three times, the squash will be cooked through. Add the can of Coconut Milk and remainder of spices, reduce heat to low. Let simmer for a few minutes, stirring a couple of times.

Serve over Quinoa and Steamed Veggies! YUM! (SUPER healthy, cheap, and you won't miss meat!!! Did you know that Quinoa has THE most protein in the plant kingdom?)

PS - If you want to go completely vegan, use coconut oil in place of butter, and vegetable broth instead of chicken!)

SERVES: 6

COST: Around $13 ($2.16/serving)


*My mom & dad might be some of the most thoughtful and generous people alive!!! They sent me a gift card - and AMAZINGLY by God's sweet provision, a coupon came in the mail on the same day!!! So, check out my loot!

$25 goes a lonnnnnnnng way at Penzey's!

The 3 jars on top are going to my best friend. The other 3 jars I have long been coveting =)

Sanaam, in the center, was a hit in the butternut squash curry! It's Scoville Unit ranks around 40,000!!! It lit my husband on fire!!! I was not brave enough to actually take a bite out of one, but I did enjoy the heat it left in the curry =)

Seriously, four oz. of parsley was bigger than my head!!! Quite a bit of that is heading your way as well, Debby! =)