What I've Been Cooking and Eating....

Keeping busy with cooking and eating!  Here are some recent meals.

Beef Ragu with Warm Spices

From America's Test Kitchen  Pressure Cooker Perfection cookbook. 

(On sale RIGHT NOW for $9.99!)

Instant Pot Carrot Cake Oatmeal with Cream Cheese Yogurt Sauce

From Tidbits

Lemon Crepes With Sweetened Ricotta

From Real Simple.

This recipe is AMAZING and pretty easy.  The candied lemons are super delicious.  

Quinoa & Black Bean-Stuffed Peppers from Taste of Home. 

A stuffed pepper recipe that no one in the family thought I should make again, mainly because I have made other stuffed pepper recipes that were tastier.  This recipe calls for ricotta cheese and salsa which, when mixed, made the stuffing was an odd pink color.

(Tiny photo because my photo didn't turn out well either!)

The recipe was not a complete loss! The next morning I toasted a corn tortilla and topped it with some leftover stuffed pepper filling, a fried egg, cheese, cilantro, and bacon for a delicious breakfast! 

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Blueberry Balsamic Topping, a recipe from Calivirgin, a local olive oil company.  The pancakes were delicious and the blueberry topping was so good that I could have eaten every bit of it all by myself! 

Another tasty recipe was Smokey Black Bean and Sweet Potato Chili, a Weight Watchers recipe from their Smartpoints Cookbook. This recipe comes out to ZERO points on the Purple Plan.....unless you top it with queso fresco and sour cream like I did!

I served Taste of Home's Moist Red Pepper Cornbread on the side. The next morning we, once again, topped leftovers with an egg!  

And finally, a recipe my that my family called 'very green':  20-Minute Grilled Lemon-Rosemary Chicken and Leeks. This recipe is from the June 2018 issue of Cooking Light Magazine and is also a dinner recipe option on the Cooking Light Diet. This meal was very good but the cooked leeks were difficult to cut into bite-sized pieces.  I liked them but the family said not to bother with them next time.  The marinade and grilled lemons were delicious! The side dish is a heavily modified version of Pappardelle with Lemon Gremolata and Asparagus from MyRecipes. Due to #covidcooking I substituted cooked farro that I had on hand for the pappardelle.  And I accidentally put the Lemon Gremolata on the chicken instead of the asparagus dish. It still turned out very tasty!