Tiny Kitchen's Weekend Workout

My husband and I have decided next year is our year to buy a new house. Yes, I am super excited...and a little bit terrified. I have never had to sell and buy a house at the same time. I know people do it all the time, but I have fears. What if I fall in love with a new house before we can get this one sold? What if this one sells immediately and we have to squat somewhere before we find our new house?  OR you might ask, what if everything goes perfectly smoothly?  :)

One of the biggest reasons we want a new house is to have a bigger more functional (read "fun"ctional) kitchen.  The other biggie is we want (need) a basement. In addition, to the extra space Midwest tornado season freaks me out not having a basement in which to immediately retreat in case of emergency. Back to the kitchen...I am desperate for more counter space. I would absolutely love to have an island. In my current kitchen, I am constantly juggling and not always successfully. Cooking/baking which I truly enjoy can quickly become very frustrating.

This weekend, for the most part, I was able to juggle and avoid frustration pretty well. I think my nightly tidy up sessions are definitely helping. Limited space means everything needs to be picked up and its place or it looks like a disaster. I started slow and built up to a Sunday kitchen fest. Friday night I made the Sweet Potato Peanut Stew  and Saturday I made the the S'mores Pudding, both of which I posted here.

Sunday, I had a full schedule of baking and cooking planned. First up, Lemon Blueberry Scones. I wanted to include a delicious treat with a cute mug I had picked up for a friend's upcoming birthday. She has a good dose of Anglophile in her, so I knew scones would be a good treat. I remember she loved a lemon blueberry cake I have made in the pastm so when I found the Lemon Blueberry Scone recipe I thought I had a winner. 

One of the most intimidating things about pastries in my opinion is getting the butter mixed in correctly. To create tender or flaky pastries the butter needs to stay in little pieces. When it melts it then creates little air pockets and buttery yumminess (that might not be the technical description, but it is true.)  You want it to remain as cold as possible and resemble coarse crumbs when mixed iwth the dry ingredients. Then when the heat hits those cold butter bits - they melt create a tender flaky texture. This recipe recommended freezing the stick of butter then grating it. I loved the idea of not having to spend all the time cutting the butter into the flour mixture. I expected to fly through the butter grating, but it took longer than I expected...frozen butter gets pretty hard and it is still a slippery thing.

I eventually got there. I had to remind myself frequently that it was not cheese and caught myself trying to nibble a few shreds.

It is important to not overwork the dough, so after adding the wet ingredients you want to mix very minimally. Because I was working with delicate berries too, I mixed very lightly than rounded the dough up right on the counter and pressed it into the circle.

Cut the circle in eight wedges and place on the baking sheet. One of the wedges crumbled as I tried to move it. I just rounded that one portion into a round scone. I have seen scones shaped both ways, but my mom always cut hers in wedges, so that is what I do.

After baking, I dipped the tops into a lemon glaze. The glaze was made with lemon juice, powdered sugar, vanilla and melted butter. I'd never used a glaze with butter in it, although it does make sense since most icings have butter in them. Also, butter and scones...

I packaged up a few for the birthday girl. Took a couple to my mom, shared one with with my niece and her grandniece since they were here when they came out of the oven - lucky taste testers. In the end, I had one left for my husband and one left for me. Forced Portion Control at work :)  And it was a good thing there was only one for me. They were tasty little morsels and I would have had a hard time stopping.

A few weeks ago, my niece and I were talking about her plans to prep more freezer meals. Her husband has gone back to school to be a male nurse...sorry I can't resist....to be a nurse. She has a long commute for her job and they have an adorable two year old. She definitely knows the value of meal prep!  After our conversation I ran across this on the bargain shelf at the bookstore.

I decided to try the Butternut Squash Chard Lasagna. (Sorry, I can't link this since it came from an actual cookbook, but if anyone really wants the recipe, let me know and I will post picture of recipe). Obviously, I am not a vegetarian, but I do like veggies and definitely would like to have more meatless meals in my repertoire.

This recipe had many steps. I actually kind of liked that because it seems like most of my cooking is pretty quick and this was a nice change for a Sunday afternoon. Now, I didn't make my own marinara, but that could have been fun to do. I do have a bowl of tomatoes that need attention.

First step was to make the cheese filling - ricotta, Parmesan, garlic, onion and spinach. The filling included oregano and a very unusual lasagna spice...cinnamon. More on that later. First lets see what a giant pan of raw spinach looks like after three minutes over the heat.

 Not much at all. But that beautiful dark green makes up for the shrinkage :)

Next step was my beloved butternut squash. It actually had been in the microwave while I worked on the spinach. The recipe said to cook for 5-6 minutes and then peel off the skin with a vegetable peeler. That worked pretty well except around the bottom where the flesh is thinner. It was too soft to peel that way.

 Then butternut is sliced into pretty little planks.

More greens to be wilted for the last layer. This time rainbow chard. I love the variety of colors in each bunch. I bought two bunches - first one at the farmers' market, but then I realized it wasn't enough and had to get more at the grocery store.

Ready for assembly. For the record, grating the mozzarella was SO much quicker than grating that butter!

 Sauce, noodles, butternut, cheese filling, etc.

I had way more squash squash planks than for the one layer listed in the recipe, so I just added another layer. I love butternut, so that seemed like the reasonable thing to do. 

 Ready for the oven.

It took about an hour and 20 minutes to cook. The squash was still a bit al dente in places.

My lasagna made 10 hearty servings at 433 calories each - definitely a better value than a 300+ calorie Lean Cuisine that leaves me hungry. I packaged three portions for this week's lunches and two portions each in two foil pans to freeze for future meals.

Veggies and cherries completed my meals. Sneak peek at the next recipe can be seen at the top of this picture.

These pans are now safely in my work freezer. No excuses if I ever forget to bring my lunch! I love these containers I found at the Dollar Tree. I used up my stash of them this weekend, so I need to pick up a few more.

I had my first lasagna meal today for lunch. Like most casseroles, soups, stews the flavors were better the next day. Things just need a chance to settle and mellow. Back to the unusual lasagna spice - I was thrown a bit by the cinnamon. It does kind of make sense with the sweetness of butternut, but it doesn't not compute with lasagna in my mind. I had to do a little reframing. I am calling this more of a layered veggie casserole and it is really is quite good. Given all the recipes out there and my crazy need to try new things, I am not sure I will get back to this exact recipe. However, if I do, I think I might leave out the noodles. They didn't seem too necessary. I guess they hold the layers together a bit more than just the squash, but I might be able to live with a messier casserole. In the meantime, I am confident I will enjoy my lunches this week and having the frozen portions later this fall.

My last two recipes of the day were super simple. Making two was really as easy as making one since there were both hummus.  Remember Maddie Lymburner from the Sweet Potato Peanut stew?  Well, I did a little poking around on her website and found a video for three hummus recipes. I was instantly smitten by the colors. I chose to make two of the three - Green Pea and Thai Red Curry. Spicy Black Bean  I will get you next time. I had the ingredients for black bean too, but somehow making three seemed a bit extreme without a party :)

A set this picture up to show the similarity - tahini, salt, pepper and garlic were common to both. Garbanzo beans would have been in both, but I only had one can, so I subbed white beans for the other one (I couldn't tell the difference). Each had a citrus component and then the seasonings were different.

A handful of cilantro  pretty much insured I would like the Green Pea Hummus. I have seen recipes that use all peas - I might try one of those in the future.

 I ended up adding a touch of cilantro to the Thai Red Curry because I love it.

 I like my hummus a bit tangy so I ended up using the juice of a whole lime/lemon instead of the half called for in the recipe.

See, aren't these just begging for a party?

I was very happy with how both of them turned out. I have to be honest though I am not totally on board with the tahini - I expected it to have more flavor on its own. Perhaps it does add to the creaminess, but I didn't have the patience to blend it super smooth. Good thing I don't mind a little texture. The friend who pointed me to this website, mentioned that her favorite use for hummus is in a simple dressing. I will definitely give that a try...and of course, make more hummus. I am invested in a decent sized jar, so I need to branch out.

I didn't mean to cook all vegetarian, but looking back it turned out that way. The hummus and the stew (if you don't use turkey broth like I did) are actually vegan. The lasagna and the desserts were clearly not vegan - well, we don't need to talk about cheese, butter and cream do we??

By Sunday evening I was exhausted, but I forced myself to clean up before bed.

Good night tiny kitchen....