Week 9: Time Consuming

Recipes to Go: 507 423

Weeks to Go: 52 43

Recipes Made This Week

Coconut Crunch Cookies

Broccoli Chicken Supreme

Slice 'n' Back Lemon Gems

Fiesta Lasagna

Green Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette

Grilled Corn Dip

Lemon Basil Cupcakes

Pesto Veggie Stacks

Three-Cheese Pesto Pizza

Peaches 'n' Cream Cups

While we were still with The Husbands's family for Labor Day, we decided Sunday's dinner needed a yummy dessert. After consulting The Book, we decided the Coconut Crunch Cookies looked the best, which is saying something because it we hadn't eaten all day and everything looked good at that point.

We made a double batch, which normally wouldn't have been a big deal, but the yield on these was surprisingly accurate, so we ended up with tons and tons of really yummy cookies. We ate all we could fit, and took a few home, but we left most of them there to be traded at lunch in Kindergarten.

The Broccoli Chicken casserole was decent enough, but nothing spectacular. And it definitely got not-as-good as the leftovers went on.

Though, maybe it wasn't the casserole's fault. It did have to compete with leftover lasagna later in the week, and few things are as good as leftover lasagna. This casserole took awhile to put together. So with all the prep and just an okay rating, I doubt this one will become a go-to recipe.

These lemon cookies look really good, but they were also a pain.

Probably because I was quite grumpy at the casserole taking forever. In hindsight, these weren't as bad as stated in the recipe. Thanks to my awesome fridge, I only had to put them in there for half as long as stated. Next time, I will try to cut them with a more even thickness, and I will make more icing. I guess I need to figure icing out, because it seems to be all about timing. Things have to be cool enough to put the icing on, and the icing has to be almost set up, but not quite to make dripping at a minimum. But the cookies themselves weren't that sweet, which meant you could eat tons. Good thing I made them for The Husband to take to Young Men's because we didn't eat that many.

The Fiesta Lasagna was worth the hour it took to bake in the oven. I have made Mexican-style lasagna before in this book, but this recipe was the perfect blend of Mexican and Italian flavors.

It hit just the right note and we highly enjoyed the leftovers for the rest of the week. In fact, The Husband got sad that I wouldn't let him eat it for lunch and dinner the next day. In my defense, we had other leftovers to get through, and we need a little variety.

We served the lasagna with a salad with homemade raspberry vinaigrette. This salad had everything in it to be tasty, except that we had to use leftover mustard greens and they were just too bitter.

Some day, we'll make it again, because what the heck else am I going to do with a bottle of raspberry vinegar?

Game Night this week was served Grilled Corn Dip which should have a warning label: Highly Addictive. the Husband had to put it in the other room so we could actually play games.

It was spicy and sweet and creamy and I always seemed to have too many chips or too much dip on my plate at the end, which meant I had to keep eating more. Anyone with extra corn from their gardens should get this recipe. It's a great way to use some surplus.

Saturday morning I spent WAY too long on these cupcakes.

Why? Well, we were short on a few ingredients, so I had to fudge a few, which meant the batter took a little long. Then, they are stuffed, so we had to work that situation out. Then, the frosting is made up of a syrup that you first have to make and cool. Then, we didn't have enough powdered sugar, so I had to process some of my own. I don't recommend this, and I have since re-organized my pantry to make it easier to tell when I need refills on the smaller packages of things, like powdered sugar, brown sugar, and coconut. But The Captain enjoyed helping with the frosting.

Anyway, after all that work, I figured I might as well sugar-ize the basil leaves too. So after about 2 1/2 hours, we had something really pretty to show for all my work, but they weren't as good as the lemon crumb cupcakes, so I don't think it was worth it. I gave a few away--some to our neighbors, some as a "payment" for some plumbing help. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that water started coming through the ceiling on Saturday morning. Not good.

We could have had leftovers for lunch and dinner, but I needed a few more recipes, so I picked our big zucchini, made some pesto and used it for two recipes. I handmade the pizza dough from the Giant Calzone recipe I made before, but it wasn't quite as awesome this time because the dough was tough and too dense.

Other than that, the pizza was good. Very Greek tasting. It won't make it on the First-Sunday-of-the-Month pizza menu any time soon, but it was good to experiment and try something new.

The Pesto Veggie Stacks would have been better if I had sliced the zucchini a little thinner. And if the oil had stayed at the right temperature.

I think this would be a great way to get rid of some excessive zucchini, but they didn't warn me that they would be so filling. I could barely eat one.

I bought some fresh peaches from the Farmer's Market before we left for Labor Day, and I finally got around to using them in the Peaches 'n' Cream Cups.

They were tasty, but the topping was too gingery for me. Next time I'll use cinnamon instead. And like the book points out, this recipe is so easy and so versatile that you could use any fruit and corresponding yogurt.