Chickpea Croquettes

When my mom and I were visiting Boulder in December we ate at this great vegetarian restaurant called Leaf. We ended up sharing the falafel in a pita. It was a pita filled with chickpea croquettes, red pepper hummus, lettuce, tomato, and red onions. It was one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life; seriously, I loved it!

Well a few weeks ago I decided to try and make this myself at home. I figured this could be one of my new things I try during the month of February (as part of my new years resolution). So I did some research and came up with a recipe to make the chickpea croquettes. It was SO easy and they turned out perfectly!

The whole meal was easy to put together. Once you have the mixture for the chickpea croquette, it takes 6 minutes to cook, then you just load up a pita with hummus, tomato, lettuce, and red onion. YUM!

The best part is that it is so easy to make this chickpea mixture, and then you can keep it in the fridge so it makes a really easy meal for more than one day.

4 Cheese Baked Ziti

I've become quite the baker recently, but cooking? Cooking is not really my thing. It's not that I don't like to cook, it's that I don't. I don't really like to eat the same thing more than one day in a row (and honestly, I don't even like leftovers that much anyway, they just don't taste the same) and it is hard to cook just one serving of anything. It takes so much time, and there is so little product. Plus, you have to buy so much of each ingredient only to use a little, so a lot of food ends up going bad before it gets used again. For that reason, I don't often cook.

Last night was bunco night, and it was my month to host (by host I mean provide the food at someone else's house since I can't exactly have people over here). There were going to be 8 people there last night, so I had to come up with a dinner for 8 people. Let me tell you, I was nervous! What if what I made turned out badly and no one liked it?!? On top of worrying if my meal would turn out good, I had to make sure it was vegetarian for me, but something others would like as well (so nothing anyone would think was "weird" haha). So, I had decided I needed to find a pasta dish because that would be easy to make, easy to make for a group, easy to transport, and something everyone would like. I decided on a 4 cheese baked ziti and it turned out delicious! It wasn't hard to make at all and everyone LOVED it! :) They even asked for the recipe. yay! This meal was by NO means healthy, so I wouldn't make it often, but it was very tasty. I'd make it again for sure

4 Cheese Baked Ziti

Ingredients:

1 package (16oz) ziti

2 cartons (10oz each) refrigerated Alfredo sauce

1 cup (8oz) sour cream

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 carton (15 oz ricotta cheese)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided

1/2 cup grated Romano cheese

1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

1 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Cook pasta according to package directions; drain and return to pan. Stir in Alfredo sauce and sour cream. Spoon half into a lightly greased 3 qt baking dish.

Combine the eggs, ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, Romano cheese, and parsley; spread over pasta. Top with remaining mixture; sprinkle with mozzarella and remaining Parmesan.

Cook and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Uncover; bake 5-10 minutes longer or until bubbly. Makes 12 servings.

Stuffed Roasted Red Pepper

I started this post a week ago and never got around to finishing it. Last weekend I went to the Farmer's Market and got some fresh vegetables. One of the things I picked up were red peppers. I found a recipe for stuffed roasted red peppers, and decided I wanted to try it. I don't cook much, not because I can't, but because it's a lot of work for one person. I love this recipe though because you can do most of the work beforehand and then just stick it in the oven when you are ready to eat. Also, the stuffing mixture refrigerates well so it can be saved for a meal at a later time. This was my first time to try quinoa - I really liked it! Oh, and this was definitely the first time I ever roasted a red pepper on my own. It was easy, and yummy!

Anyway, I found the recipe online and sort of just went with the general idea and added in as much of each ingredient as I wanted:

1 roasted red pepper

1 cup quinoa, cooked

black beans

frozen corn

diced fresh tomato (from the farmers market)

chopped cliantro (also from the farmers market)

cheddar cheese, shredded

dollop of sour cream

salt

pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roast the red pepper. Mix together all other ingredients in a small bowl. When pepper is done roasting, peel the skin off, cut off the top, and stuff with the quinoa mixture. Bake in oven for 30 minutes. See? easy! And, oh so yummy!

I'd say this goes along with my new years resolution to try new things each month. This was my first time to roast a red pepper, and my first time to try quinoa. :)

Try New Things - Farmers Market

One of my new years resolutions was to try at least one new thing every month this year. The idea behind this was to make a small effort to break out of my everyday habits, and add a little variety to my life.

Well, I did something new today! I woke up early this morning so that I could go to a local farmers market. This is something I had actually been wanting to do for awhile, but never really looked into. I eat a lot of different vegetables now, I like fresh grown vegetables more than the kind I generally buy at the store (I had a student last year who would bring me some from her garden at home), and I really like the idea of supporting local farmers. So, despite the fact that it was something like 27 degrees, I headed out this morning.

I'm glad I went, it was really neat! I talked to some super nice people, and I got some great fresh vegetables!

Stay tuned this week for more new things, as I try some new ways of cooking my vegetables. fun! :)

Black Bean Soup

There are certain foods that I am drawn to, no matter what they are in. Some I have mentioned before: tomato and mozzarella, avocado, and pumpkin to name a few. But also, black beans. I LOVE black beans.

This morning a recipe for black bean soup showed up on one of the blogs I read. All day at school I could not stop thinking about that black bean soup, so I decided to try it out for dinner. This is one of those recipes that will become a staple for me. (Maybe it could even become my new speciality Missy, since I don't eat my old one anymore haha!) It literally takes under 5 minutes to prepare and it tastes great! Plus, you can easily keep these ingredients on hand for times when you want to throw something together quickly without any real planning.

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup salsa

1 1/2 cups vegetable broth

1 t cumin

Combine everything in a food processor (or if you are me and don't own one, throw it in the blender haha). Blend until fairly smooth. Heat in a saucepan over medium heat. Ladle into bowls, and garnish with cheese and sour cream. That's it! It's so simple, but tastes really good! YUM!

Tomato Mozzarella Panini

I would say this is a far cry from my healthy veggie pasta I made last week, but it sure is delicious! For those who know me well, or have gone out to many meals with me, you probably know that if something has tomato, basil, mozzarella, or sundried tomato listed in the ingredients I will pretty much always order it. There is something about those ingredients that I just cannot stay away from! I'm not sure why I hadn't attempted this before because it is SO easy, but tonight I made myself a panini with tomato, basil, mozzarella, and a sundried tomato pesto. Of course I loved this, I order something very similar often at restaurants. As inexpensive and simple as this was, I think I will be making it far more often haha YUM!

Let me just share with you the amusing story about how I came to have this panini pan. About 2 years ago I was hanging out with Darren, John, and Bridget in Austin and Darren mentioned to us that there was this "amazing deal" going on at Linens n Things (or maybe Bed Bath and Beyond, same difference haha) and they had these cooking sets on sale for only $9.99. Each set was for a different purpose and had 20 pieces in the box including cooking utensils like spatulas, tongs, etc and some type of pot or pan. There were something like 10 different sets for purposes such as cookies, cupcakes, paninis, pizzas etc.

So the four of us truck out to the store so Darren can check out this "amazing deal". In his defense, it was a good deal, and Bridget and I each bought a set (this would be where this panini pan came from, that I hadn't used in 2 years haha). Well, Darren being Darren, decided that since it was a good deal, he had to buy them all. Seriously, hundreds of dollars on these random cooking sets! We tried so hard to talk him out of them because seriously, the boy has never even used a microwave lol! He kept saying that in a year he would be moving out and wouldn't have all of John's cookware anymore and he needed those things. I'm not sure what he needed them for, since he doesn't cook and I'm quite certain I witnessed him trying to cook fajita meat in a pot one time haha. He especially seemed to think that he needed the tongs! It was so ridiculous, and as hard as we tried, we couldn't talk him out of it.

Days later, he retuned them all. If that wasn't an "I told you so" moment, I don't know what is. Oh Darren and his good deals. Just can't pass up a good deal. haha!

veggie "pasta"

I've started a number of different posts this past week, yet none of them have been finished or posted yet. I blame it on a lack of time, and the fact that when I do have ANY time at all that I'm not doing school stuff all I want to do is nap. Hopefully I'll get a few of those finished in the next few days and you will have some things to read.

In the meantime I thought I would share with you what I made for dinner tonight. If you like vegetables, this was fresh, yummy, filling, and extremely healthy. It's a whole recipe made out of only vegetables, AND you don't even use any oil or butter to cook it! Seriously, how can you go wrong here?!? So here is my veggie "pasta":

You could have used any pasta you wanted for this and just made the veggie sauce to go on top, but to make it healthier you can substitute thin zucchini strips for the pasta (which is obviously what I did).

I didn't really follow a recipe exactly, I just went with a basic idea I found and made up my own quantities. All you have to do is put some chopped onion in a sauce pan with a few tablespoons of water, and cook until it starts to brown. Then add chopped eggplant and cook for about 8 minutes until the eggplant is almost cooked. Add some chopped up yellow squash, red bell pepper, and garlic, and cook about 2-3 more minutes. Add some canned fire roasted tomatoes, a little pepper, and some fresh basil. Cover and let simmer on low for about 10 minutes so the flavors can blend together. While that is simmering, julienne cut some zucchini. Place the zucchini on a plate, add some sauce on top, and eat! yum! :)