Just Call Me Chef

I have recently expanded my cooking horizons, you see I don't normally cook.  It has always been the hubbys job to cook dinner.

The other night, I made a delicious Butternut Squash Pizza. It was a play off of this recipe from allrecipes.com.

Ingredients

• 1 cup thinly sliced onion
• 1/2 butternut squash - peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 1 (16 ounce) package refrigerated pizza crust dough
• 1 tablespoon cornmeal
• 2 tablespoons grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Place sliced onion and squash in a roasting pan. Sprinkle with rosemary, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil; toss to coat.
2. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until onions are lightly browned and squash is tender; set aside.

1. Increase oven temperature to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). On a floured surface, roll each ball of dough into an 8 inch round. Place the rounds on a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal (you may need 2 baking sheets depending on their size). Distribute squash mixture over the two rounds and continue baking for 10 minutes, checking occasionally, or until the crust is firm. Sprinkle with cheese and remaining tablespoon olive oil. Cut into quarters, and serve.  

Now, the above recipe is where I drew my inspiration from. I however, used a premade pizza crust that was on a super sale  in the bakery dept.  I then made a garlic paste using minced garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little bit of flour for thickness.  

Spread that onto the crust, then put on the butter nut squash, onions, more garlic, rosemary, and just because we wanted a fancy pizza we put some feta crumbles and some prosciutto. We topped it off with nice thin slices of tomato.

 


I hope you enjoy this, we sure did, especially with a fabulous bottle of red wine. MMM!


I also made caramel apples the other day, which everyone else like but I could not eat. I tried but for some reason it bothered my teeth.





Hope everyone is enjoying the last of beautiful fall days. We sure are, this is my little princess sporting her father's orange hunting vest from when he was that age.  His mom made it for him 26 yrs ago.

 

We have been taking lots of long beautiful walks through the town and even hit up some thrift stores where I purchased the flannel shirt I am sporting. It is a Ralph Lauren in the men's section and was only $3.00 and is super comfortable.

Have a great day everyone!

Pink Sparkly Boots, and Super Delicious Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

 

I am seriously dying over how stinkin' cute these cowgirl boots are.  I am for sure getting them for my little cowgirl this winter, just hopefully not at 35$ a pop, I will have to look on Ebay, but they are of excellent quality.

Now, I have a question to ask.  Do any of you NOT have T.V.?  Because, we don't (yet) and I like it this way.  We seem to spend much more quality time together as a family since not having TV in our new place, (think Yahtzee, Scrabble, and Jenga) I am enjoying it, but today I realized that I may have to go back  to having TV, you see, I have a dilemma.  Since we don't have T.V., my husband decided that instead of spending all day together as a family like he promised today would be, he felt the need to go to his (usually drunk) friends house to catch part of a game- 1 1/2 hours part of a game, so I think I need to order some T.V.

Quite a dilemma, huh?!?!

 

Anyways, as I sit here stewing about my dilemma, I am eating my emotions in these delicious Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, I even added cranberries to one batch of them.  YUM!!!

I got the super easy recipe from My Baking Addiction, it is rediculously easy, I even had all the ingredients on hand, which if you know me at all, never happens when I am trying to bake something.

They are my most favorite cookie in the whole world, but super expensive at the store for just 6 of them!

I hope you will try this recipe...

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from allrecipes

yields 16 large cookies

Ingredients

1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk
1 tablespoon vanilla paste (extract will work just fine)
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Method

1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt.
2. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
3. Add vanilla and chocolate chips.
4. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.


I will be posting a tutorial on this wreath for Halloween sometime tonight or tomorrow.

 

I just need to add a few more spooky elements, and then I will post it,

but right now I am going fishing with my family.

Have a great Sunday everyone

Baby on the move!

Yep, my little 10 month old Olivia is on the move- she is walking!!! I seriously can not keep up with her. She is cruising all over the place, making one mess after another. This is definitely a fun, but tiring age! I am trying all sorts of new activities with her, trying to expose her to new things- but she just doesn't seem to be interested unless it goes in her mouth, which I must say is not the best place for sidewalk chalk. Needless to say, I think I was jumping the gun a little bit on that one.

I am stuck in limbo and I hate it, the hubba wubba applied for a job back home that would move him up in the company and give him a pay raise. I am hesitant to admit that I am now sure if that's what I want to do. I would love to be near my family, but I feel like it has taken me until just now (1 1/2 yrs since we moved to our current town) to finally have a social life, friends, obligations, etc., etc. I am not so sure I want to start all over again, I am not friends with the same people I used to be friends with back home, so if we moved back, I would be starting from square 1 all over again. I also love where we live now, it is so cheap to live here, it's beautiful here with mountains and rivers everywhere, there is virtually no crime and an incredible school dept here.




Theses are pictures I took of the town where I live- It is so breath taking-ly gorgeous here!

I really just want to know what I need to plan for, I hate the "not knowing", and the hubba wubba still has not heard anything on the job since he applied- the job has been closed for application for over a week now! I am losing my mind stressing over this.


On a side note, I scored at the garage sales this week-

• 2 pairs of Gap jeans for $4
• huge play dough set with play dough toys $5
• alphabet and number magnets $1
• interactive play mat $1
• steam carpet cleaner $20
• 2 pairs of Jeans for Olivia .50 cents
• awesome cat scratcher $2
• 2 summer outfits for Olivia $2
• set of thank you cards $1

total = $36.50

getting cool used new stuff = priceless!


Well that's all for now because I really need to get cleaning because I have cousins coming into town tomorrow, I will be back later though to post a recipe for my delicious whole wheat banana pancakes with strawberry topping! I just made them this morning and the hubba wubba even like them which says a lot because he hates it when I want pancakes for breakfast!