Dinner

Dinner
Last night I picked some things out of my garden for dinner. I love it when I get to use fresh veggies and herbs for dinner. We are currently having a tomato and pepper overload in our garden so I decided to make some veggie sandwiches.

I cut everything up and cooked the onion and pepper in a little olive oil. I chopped up the basil and mixed it with some mayonnaise. I spread the mayonnaise on the outside of the bread. Then I layered cheese, tomatoes, pepper and onions in the sandwich. Stephen then grilled the sandwiches for about 5 minutes on each side.

Add some milk, banana, and veggie chips and we had a delicious meal.

Andon of course picked out the peppers and onion and just ate the cheese.

Carrot Cookies

Andon and I tried a recipe for carrot cookies the other day. They are very good more like little cakes then cookies but delicious. So I wanted to post the recipe. I made a few changes from = the original recipe in order to use what I had in the house.

Carrot Cookies
1 cup Butter
1 cup Sugar
1 tablespoon Orange Juice
1 Egg
1.5 - 2 cups grated Carrots
2 2/3 cups Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
3/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg

Cream the Butter and Sugar. Add Egg and Orange Juice. Combine Flour, Baking Powder, Cinnamon, and Nutmeg. Add the flour mixture and the carrots alternately to the butter mixture. Mix to form dough. Drop by teaspoon onto cookie sheet. Bake at 375 or 12-14 minutes.

I have found that a batch of almost any cookies is to much for our family at once. Instead of baking all of the cookies I scoop out the dough to make cookies but I then freeze the scoops. Once they are frozen I place them in a container which I keep in the freezer. When ever we want cookies I just heat up the oven and pull out the frozen cookies.

Carrots

I have found that carrots grow like crazy here. Right now we have an abundance of them so I have been looking for ways to use them. I have developed a recipe for carrot bread which Andon and I made today while Brylynn took a nap (in her swing of course). I also found a recipe for what we call Carrot Butter Andon liked it and it made a good snack. I might try adding some cinnamon to it next time.

Carrot Bread
Mix together
1/4 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix together then add to the flour mixture
3/4 cup applesauce
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir in
2 cups carrots

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes


Carrot Butter
1/2 cup pureed carrots
3 tablespoons cottage cheese
1 tablespoon orange juice
2 teaspoons smooth peanut butter
Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Serve on crackers or bread.

Andon’s favorite lunch

Lunch is always a big decision I get tired of grilled cheese and I want to be sure I am making something healthy and giving Andon variety. So I found a recipe to try and after adjusting it to my taste I have a good lunch recipe both Andon and I like.

Veggie Nuggets

1 cup chopped fresh or frozen veggies (we like carrots and broccoli)
1 cup shredded cheese
3 slices whole wheat bread
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoon water

Heat oven to 375° F. Cut up the bread into very small pieces. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Form the mixture into nuggets and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 20-25 min.
Let cool and enjoy with some ranch for dipping.