Happy Easter!

Since we have work tomorrow, we’re staying home for Easter. However, we are by no means spending it alone!

We’ve lived here long enough now that we have our own ‘family’ up here – wonderful friends & neighbors – who are going to be coming over today for dinner…and probably board games. This is the first year we’ve had anyone other than just the two of us at our home for a holiday meal, and we are so excited!!!!! Plus, we have a new dining room table that seats 6+ people…so what better way to enjoy it?

Here’s what’s for Easter dinner today over at our house:

• hot cross buns** (I’ve never had them before!)
• salad**
• glazed ham
• garlic mashed potatoes**
• green bean casserole**
• corn casserole (Mike’s favorite)
• pasta & sauce (a tradition from my family Easters)
• beet horseradish for the ham (a tradition from my mother-in-law’s Easters)
• Cake**

** – Our friends are bringing them over…one less thing to cook 😉

I hope that you enjoy your Sunday today, be it Easter Sunday or just another Sunday. Enjoy!

Hi everyone! I’m not quite sure where the last week went…but it sure went. It was my first week off from pep band & the start of spring concert season, so I suppose you could say I really enjoyed the extra free time. I have to admit, though – I didn’t make anything too ‘spectacular’ for dinner – we also went out to eat on Friday night because yours truly didn’t want to cook.

So, here we are. A new week, Daylight Savings Time; spring is trying desperately to arrive in Northern Michigan and it’s going to be really interesting to see how long it takes for all this snow to melt. I’m so ready for warmer weather; I’ve even purchased a gardening book in anticipation of having another garden this year. I’m starting to forget what it looks like up here without snow.

I’ve decided to try and post our dinner plans for the week here, as a means of trying to plan ahead for the week and to make sure that I’m not constantly opting to go out to eat for dinner, “because we can”. I’ve also got a huge ‘Saved’ list on my Feedly & likes on WordPress that I’d like to start going through 🙂

Week of March 9-15, 2014

Lunches: Sesame Noodle Salad, sandwiches, leftovers

Sunday – Lunch, leftovers or soup. Dinner is Sunday Night Pizza Night.

Monday – Buffalo Chili

Tuesday – Baked Chicken with Roasted Potatoes & a veggie

Wednesday – Baked Broccoli Macaroni & Cheese (I’m at honors band so Mike gets to make this one)

Thursday – Kielbasa, Sauerkraut, & pierogi (and a veggie of some sort)

Friday – Risotto with Chard & Sun-dried Tomatoes

Saturday – Lunch, freezer food or soup. Dinner, TBD.

I suppose it’s time to head out to the grocery store…have a wonderful, relaxing Sunday!

Oddly enough, as much as I enjoy cooking, when it comes to baking I am very sporadic. I have to really *plan* ahead when I want to bake something, and I often get impatient halfway through – which will have an end result of something going a little wrong with what I’m making. I know darn well that baking=chemistry, and when following a bakery recipe you don’t stray from the measurements or else whatever you’re making will end up somewhere along the lines of dry or crunchy, under or overcooked, or too flat.

I think it’s safe to say that I did okay with these!

Even though they are double chocolate, they are muffins (though my husband said they were more like cupcakes) and I admit that I did eat them over the course of the week for breakfast. I do love me some chocolate for breakfast (as anyone from high school and/or college can tell you…and my husband for that matter). A great chocolate fix, and there’s vegetables it! Woohoo!

Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

adapted from For the Love of Cooking

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups shredded raw zucchini

1. Preheat the oven to 350*. Take your muffin tin and a) line it with with paper liners (like I did) or b) spray it with cooking spray.
2. Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together in a bowl until well-blended. Add the chocolate chips and mix in.
3. In a seperate bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, sugars, and vanilla together until they’re well-combined. Add the zucchini and mix.
4. Slowly add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture until just combined. Spoon or pour (depending on your bowl) evenly into the muffin tin.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
6. Once you remove the tin from the oven, let it cool for a few minutes before removing the muffins & letting them cool some more.

Mmm…chocolate

Yet again, this is another one of those recipes that I saw on a blog & couldn’t quite get out of my head. I’m not sure if it was because of the usage of zucchini, the double-chocolate-ness, or both. But I have to vouch that they are easy, delicious, and definitely worth making again – if any of you have some large zucchini that you need want to get rid of, make these.

In addition to the chocolate, I loved the fact that these muffins were very moist (as much as I hate that word but whatever). They didn’t dry out and honestly, I couldn’t see nor taste the zucchini in them – which can be either a good or a bad thing. They were, however, also very easy to make and as I said before, a great way to use up some zucchini that’s been there a while in the fridge (like mine was). These were a fun and delicious kick-off to my first week of school and if you decide to make them, I’m sure you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.

First off – I apologize if any of you had tried to click on my link from Facebook or Twitter and got a failure message. I forgot to click Publish. I mean, duh. So, sorry about that!

As you saw in last week’s CSA post, we have been swimming, so to speak, in leafy greens. A fellow blogger noted that I was “the queen of greens”. Which I think has a nice ring to it :-D! Nevertheless I had one heck of a time trying to figure out different and creative ways to use up the produce.

• The basil & garlic scapes were used to make some delicious garlic scape pesto (which I had written about this time last year)
• bok choy went into a huge stir-fry
• the beets & kohlrabi have been pickled – recipes to follow if they turn out just right!
• sauteed kale made a great lunch for me
• salads, salads, salads

Thankfully, this week’s harvest gave us a bit more variety, crunch, and er, shapes, to work with? 🙂 We received it on Tuesday, and believe it or not – a good portion of this box has been put to good use already!

• Two heads of kale (one was a ‘top off’ choice)
• bok choy – used in stir-fry
• fennel – used in the pickled beets
• 3 cucumbers – included what I call “cucumber salad”
• sage
• thyme
• romaine –  used in a Greek salad
• swiss chard – blanched & frozen for fall soups
• spring mix lettuce
• beets (top off choice) – pickled

I am finally starting to get the hang of planning our meals around produce. So far, it has created less waste and has been more friendly on my grocery budget. I just hope that this is a plan that I can stick to!

**Shared at Inherchuck’s CSA Round-Up!**