Breadveggies: Gingered Carrot Zucchini Bread

If you've ever planted a zucchini plant, you're probably familiar with how overwhelming they can be once they start producing.  There's even a "Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Porch" day.  I try to shred and freeze as much as I can to keep up with it, and that means that I have a frozen stash of zucchini on hand for most of the rest of the year until the next garden zucchini-fest comes around.

I'm always on the lookout for ways to use that zucchini, and this Gingered Carrot Zucchini bread recipe is one of my go-to's for several reasons.  One: it is delicious.  Two: it is easy.  Three: the recipe makes 2 loaves at once, so I can either give one away or freeze it for later.  Four: it's a nice way to show kids that vegetables aren't scary.  I mean, this bread has not one, but TWO vegetables in it, and it's fantastic!

There's a Leek in my Stroganoff!

So, you know how much I like to share quick, easy, yummy dinners that my family enjoys, right?  I kind of look at this blog as a small part of my legacy...a sort of recipe memoir online that my kids will be able to reference when they're grown up and on their own and craving a taste of home.

On that note, this recipe is one that pops up for dinner probably every other week.  It takes less than a half hour, and if I set my rice cooker and have a teeny bit of prep work done, I can cut that down to under 20!  And it's the kind of dinner that wraps you up like a warm, comforting blanket of creamy deliciousness and soothes all that ails you.

I'm just going to jump right into the recipe.  The original recipe is from Jamie Oliver, which is just icing on the cake for me, since I have a minor chef crush on him.

Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

One of the most frustrating thing about being a good home cook is that I try so many recipes that a lot of times, even if my family completely loves a dish, they forget about it.  That's why, when there's a dish that they request, or that they get excited when I mention, you know it's a winner.  My homemade chicken pot pie is one of those dishes.  I'm pretty sure it is on the list of reasons that my husband asked me to marry him.  It's just that good.

The story behind the origins of this recipe are funny.  Both haha funny and odd funny.  You see, in high school, I worked at JC Penney...in the housewares department.  Most teens would prefer to be surrounded with trendy clothes, but I was in my happy place seeing all the new kitchen gadgets, designing displays matching dishes with table linens, and restocking small appliances.  But, to be honest, it was slow a lot of the time, and there's only so much cleaning, restocking, and straightening that can be done.  So, if I had finished all that and was still bored, I would flip through the cookbooks.  That's where I found the original chicken pot pie recipe...in one of those cookbooks.  And I copied it down on a piece of spiral paper that traveled with me to college and to my first house with my husband, adding notes and tweaks along the way.  Of course, that was many years ago, and all I remember about the cookbook now is that it had something to do with farms.  I changed the recipe quite a bit too, with all my "tweaks", but the method stayed the same.

Celebrating Sochi with some Boozy Borscht!

So, in case you haven't heard, there's some winter Olympics going on in Russia right now...

Also in recent news, my hubby bought me a great little recipe book called Apothecary Cocktails: Restorative Drinks from Yesterday and Today for this past Christmas, and I've really been enjoying trying some of the concoctions in it.  One, in particular, seemed like a perfect fit for this event: Roasted Beet Borscht with Sour Cream and Vodka.  I mean, ALL THE RUSSIANNESS!!!!

King Cake

Mardi Gras is awesome.

Let's face it, even the name rhymes with "party claw".  Forget that it's just "Fat Tuesday" in French...you have no choice but to celebrate on a day named Mardi Gras.

My father-in-law's family is from Louisiana, so our ties to this celebration run to the core.  Ask any of my kids.  The family's favorite dinner?  Gumbo, hands down.  Party beads have been a regular part of the dress-up bins since before the girls were walking.  We may even bleed green, purple, and gold.  But, the Mardi Gras culinary tradition that has our heart in it's sweet, sweet grip is that of the king cake.

King cake has many different forms, and is found in many different countries.  When I was younger, I loved reading a book about a French orphan girl, and was enthralled with her description of finding the bean in her "galette des rois", and getting to wear a paper crown and call the shots all day.  In Mardi Gras terms, it's the last indulgence before Lent comes and spoils the fun by reminding us of sacrifice and restraint.

Cook it Once, Cook it Twice, Cooking Chicken Soup...

Okay, so, if you read the last post, you now have a pretty good recipe for a roasted chicken.  If your house is anything like mine, when you're done with it, you might not have much left except for the bones.  You could throw them away, or you could use them to make even more yumminess by making some chicken stock.

My apologies in advance, but I don't have pictures for the stock part.  It's something that I generally throw together without even really thinking about it, much less about taking pictures to blog.  I'll have photos of the good stuff, I promise.  You'll have to use your imagination on the stock for now.

Really quick, for those of you wondering about the difference between stock and broth, from what I understand, broth is made with scraps and meat as well as bones, whereas stock is usually more just the bones.  This means broth is usually a little richer and deeper in flavor.  Lesson of the day.

Just-Like-Rotisserie Chicken

Roast chicken is one of those things that just screams "home cooking" to me.  And it's not hard to make well.  But it's also really easy to grab a rotisserie chicken at the store for a few bucks.  Which is a lot quicker and easier.  Very tempting.  Especially when you can grab one for, what, like five bucks?

Until you start to do a little research about those chickens.  Turns out, some of them are there because they were the rejects of the meat counter to begin with.  A nice way of not wasting the meat coming close to it's "sell by' date.  Others are specifically designed to be rotisserie birds, injected with a solution so that they can stand those hours under the heat lamps waiting to be bought without losing that extreme juiciness of the meat.  And the list of ingredients on most rotisserie birds is long and full of scientific names.  Sodium tripolyphosphate, anyone?  Starts to get a little creepy to realize that it's more of a Frankenchicken than Grandmama's delicious dinner's relative.