Saturday cooking

I love my Tea Time magazine. There are beautiful place settings and china to look at, brief and interesting articles about the history of tea or tea accouterments, and recipes. I had tried a recipe of English Pea salad in mini-phyllo cups a year ago and liked it, and I decided to make it again, along with a recent recipe from the latest issue- egg chicks. Here is the result.

I got some reduced, on sale veggies a few days ago and today I decided to do something with them.As I've mentioned before, at my branch of the Kroger Grocery store, they put 'about to go over' veggies in a red net bag and put them in one certain spot in the produce section. Anything in the red net bag is 99 cents. So a few days ago I picked up a bag of yellow squash and a bag of peppers. Since they really do need to be used up quickly, and there is only one of me in the house, I have to cook them all at once and use them in batch form. The peppers will become a rainbow pepper soup, and now that the yellow squash is cooked it can be consumed as a side dish over the next few days.

All I did for the peppers is wash them, put them whole in a gallon sized ziploc, added oil, and tossed inside the bag. WHen you're roasting veggies it's critical that they are evenly coated so they brown well and the flavor is sealed in. That's pretty much the only trick with roasting. Then you dump them out into a baking dish and sprinkle with salt. I roasted them for about 45 min at 375.

For the yellow squash, I carmelized an onion in a large saute pan and then added the yellow squash and let them cook a long time, turning occasionally.

Since a frugal cook never turns on the oven for one purpose only, in roasting the peppers, I added a pan of broccoli I'd bought on Kroger's regular weekly sale. They were really fresh and firm. I love Kroger's produce aisle, lots of good, healthy fruit and veggies there. Plus, the Phyllo cups were in there too, browning. (Browning a little too much, drat). So the oven at least had a few things in it to warrant using the electricity for almost an hour.

A frugal cook also does not use up ALL of what she has, and in that vein, I set aside some peas and did not use them all for the mini-phyllo cup English pea salad. I may make the peppers into soup, or perhaps I'll grind them in my chopper and make a pepper dip. If I do that, then I'd use the broccoli, peas, and yellow squash in a veggie soup. I'll see. That's the beauty of making things in large batches and refrigerating. It puts off the decision making for a few days.

The wind is whipping here, so much so I worry about the power going out, but so far so good. I'm listening to RefNet, Christian broadcasting, while I cook and clean up the kitchen. After that I'll try to make a mixed media planner/art journal while a movie or TV show is on.

Happy Saturday!!