Lollygagging in Lisa's Larder- March

Since Patrick maintains this blog most of the time, I thought that I would add a monthly post about the fun stuff I did in the kitchen. I took pics throughout the month of the things I made that were tasty, pretty and worthy of documentation.  This first post will have some items that I make weekly and I will include them this month but won't bore you in future months unless I do a different variety or it is just exceptionally noteworthy. So here goes.  Sorry there is not an aroma app for you to fully appreciate the pics. 

 Ravioli: Since they were such a hit at Christmas we have made them since we moved into the house.  This is the only picture I got though because I had not decided to do this post until after these were fixed.  We did a batch on a Sunday afternoon when we had friends over.  It was a great visit, lots of laughter, wine and good eats.

 Granola- a weekly staple. Cinnamon vanilla and it smells so good when it is baking and tastes great each morning.

 Bean soup- took the opportunity of off season to can up some bean soup. "Souper "easy but yet a quick meal on busy nights. Wonderful with.......

 Fresh wheat bread- another weekly or bi-weekly staple. With the bread proofing setting on my new oven I am able to bake bread on weeknights after work. AMAZING. I actually have some in the oven as I type. Patrick eats it almost daily at lunch. He uses the bigger loaf for his sandwiches and the smaller is usually used as toast or with other meals.

Blackberry rhubarb jam- I have both rhubarb and blackberries in the freezer from last year. When I saw the new rhubarb peeking it's head up out in the yard I thought I would make some room in the freezer for this years supply.  I found a cool free program on the internet that prints out fancy labels for jam.  I tried it out and it works great. I could print it on sticker paper if I wished but typically don't like to put stickers on my jars.......big mess to remove. 

 Vegetable broth- I save all the "scraps" from veggies and put them in the freezer. When I have a big bag I boil them up with some thyme, salt and pepper.  It only takes 30 minutes in the canner and boy does this stuff have flavor.  We use it to cook rice, steam green beans, use in roux''s and anytime a recipe calls for water or broth. I think of it as free since it is made of all the scraps that would normally get tossed.

 Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  Thanks to Terri Street, a friend of my mom's for this family favorite. Sometimes you just need dessert.

 Cheese enchilada''s- I found a wonderful recipe for homemade enchilada sauce. It was really easy and used some of my summer canned tomato sauce. Patrick told me to never buy the canned stuff again.  Sorry Old El Paso.

 Pizza- YUM.  This used my wheat crust, my homemade pizza sauce, last summers dried cherry tomatoes and last summers preserved pesto. Seeing as we don't have a cow I had to purchase the cheese. Oh well.

Kielbasa- Used a few of our frozen peppers from last summer but that is about all.  Still delicious and pretty with lots of color. And last but not least

Future food-- Tomatoes, peppers and basil that we planted from seed are still under the grow lights.  We will start hardening them off this weekend and disassemble this growing station which we put up temporarily in the laundry room.  They have done great and thus far we have not lost any to dampening off, which unfortunately happened last year to several of the plants. 


April preview-----anticipate an egg dish. We thus far have 4 eggs that the ladies have deposited for us.  Happy spring.  Call ahead and feel free to join us for dinner any time you wish. Cooking is always more fun when the kitchen is full of laughter and friends.