#1,883: One-Pot Spaghetti and Sausage

This super simple recipe got super good reviews from my family even though they were appalled that I would put grated carrots in this dish.  Can you even see them?  NO...yeah, neither could I.  But my husband and my middle child both tried picking it out at first.  (Insert eye roll here).  My husband complained that his body would start rejecting the veggies as soon as he started eating it.  Needless to say, we had leftovers, and my husband happily ate those (I thought he was going to have to fight my oldest for it, but she was kind and let him have them).  :)

The only thing I did differently with this recipe was that I did NOT add the canned cherry tomatoes.  Adding grated carrots was a big enough risk for me to take, and I knew they would all just pick out the tomatoes anyways.  This is definitely best served with grated parmesan cheese on top.  I will definitely make this again. 

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

8 ounces sweet or hot Italian sausage, casings removed

1 onion, halved and thinly sliced

1 carrot, grated

4 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tablespoon tomato paste (I probably used more like 2 tbsp)

10 ounces spaghetti, broken in half

1 14-ounce can cherry tomatoes (I omitted and added a little bit of jarred spaghetti sauce instead)

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large wide pot over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook, breaking up the meat into small pieces with a wooden spoon, until lightly browned and no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Pour off the fat from the meat.

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and the onion to the skillet; cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Stir in the carrot, garlic and tomato paste and cook until the garlic softens, 1 to 2 minutes.

Add 4 1/2 cups water, the spaghetti, cherry tomatoes, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper to the pot. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer; cook, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is tender and the sauce thickens, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the parsley; season with salt and pepper and toss.

#1,882: Roasted Broccoli Steaks

I found this recipe in a recent issue from Food Network Magazine, and I seriously fell in love with it!  Oh my goodness it is SO good.  The only thing I don't love about this recipe is the stalks of the broccoli, but I normally cut that part off when I roast my broccoli.  So when I made this a second time, I cut off the florets and just roasted the tops.  For me personally it was better, but that's just personal preferrence.  Also, I LOVE feta cheese so I would love to add it to my dish next time, but I didn't have any on hand (and didn't really want to spend the money on it right now), so I subbed out grated parmesan instead.  This was delicious! 

2 heads of broccoli
¼ c Olive oil
Salt, to taste
Red pepper flakes, to taste
2 tbsp blood orange juice (I used regular orange juice)
1 tbsp lemon juice
parsley, to taste (I used dried)
red onion
feta cheese (I used grated parmesan)

Trim 2 heads broccoli; slice from the stem end into thick steaks (some florets will fall off). Toss with olive oil and salt. Roast on a preheated baking sheet at 450 degrees F until browned, 15 minutes. Whisk 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons blood orange juice and 1 tablespoon lemon juice; season with salt and red pepper flakes. Drizzle over the broccoli; top with parsley, red onion and feta.

#1,881: Italian Meatball Stuffed Crescent Ring

I totally forgot to take a picture of this once we cut into it!  Grrr I hate when I forget to do that!  Sorry!  Oh well, you'll have to use your imagination for this one, or go to the original website where I found this one.  As you may have read/noticed in my last post, I had several cans of crescent rolls I needed to use up, so I wanted something easy to make with them, but would also be a good (and kid/hubby-friendly) main dish.  Although my family really enjoyed this recipe, it would have been 1000 times better if I had used homemade (cooked) meatballs instead.  I strongly suggest doing that if you have the time!  But I was going for convenience and quick, so I used the frozen ones.  Still good, but not nearly as good as my own homemade meaballs.  :)  Regardless, I would definitely make this again for my family!  

24 (1-inch) frozen cooked Italian-style meatballs, thawed and halved

1 1/2cups marinara sauce

1cup shredded mozzarella cheese (4 oz)

2cans (8 oz each) Pillsbury™ refrigerated crescent dinner rolls

1tablespoon butter, melted

1tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

Heat oven to 375°F (350°F for dark or nonstick cookie sheet). In large bowl, mix meatball halves, 1/2 cup of the marinara sauce and the mozzarella cheese.

(If you are a visual person and want to see how to do this, here is the link with images to the original website) Unroll both cans of dough; separate into 8 rectangles. On ungreased large cookie sheet, arrange rectangles in ring so short sides of rectangles form a 5-inch circle in center. Dough will overlap.

Spoon meatball mixture on the half of each rectangle closest to center of ring (each rectangle should have 6 meatball halves).

Bring each dough rectangle up over filling, tucking dough under bottom layer of dough to secure it. Repeat around ring until entire filling is enclosed (some filling might show a little).

Gently separate dough perforations on top until filling peeks through. Brush tops of dough with melted butter, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. 

Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until dough is golden brown and thoroughly baked. Cool 5 to 10 minutes before cutting into serving slices. Just before serving, in small microwavable bowl, microwave remaining 1 cup marinara sauce uncovered on Medium-High (70%) 1 to 2 minutes or until hot.

#1,880: Lasagna Crescent Roll Ups

Somehow I stumbled across this recipe not too long ago and I figured it would be the perfect (easy!) recipe to use up some crescent rolls I had in my fridge.  In fact, I had everything on hand except the ground turkey, so I used bulk pork sausage instead.  My family LOVED these roll ups and I will definitely make these again.  They enjoyed them so much, I almost had to tell my 10 year old to stop ooh-ing and aah-ing over them!  :)

If you aren't sure how to roll these up based on the directions, just go to the original Pillsbury website where it shows pictures.  :)  It really is so simple!

This recipe makes 16 roll-ups.  

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 lb lean ground turkey (I used bulk pork sausage)

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon garlic salt

2 ½ tablespoons tomato paste

2 cans refrigerated crescent dinner rolls

4 sticks string cheese (each string cheese cut into 4 pieces)

In 10-inch skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Cook turkey, Italian seasoning, garlic salt and tomato paste in skillet 8 to 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until turkey is no longer pink. Remove from heat.

Heat oven to 350° F. Separate each can of dough into 8 triangles. Top each with 2 heaping teaspoons turkey mixture, covering two-thirds of the dough. Leave space on all edges. Place a quarter of a cheese stick on widest end of each triangle. Fold outer corners in over cheese, then roll up, ending at tip.

Bake 15 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet immediately; serve. Serve with marinara sauce, if desired.

#1,879: Double Chocolate Banana Muffins

In case you haven't been able to tell by a lot of my posts, I find a lot of recipes from magazine subscriptions.  Oh how I love cooking magazines.  Taste of home is one of my favorite magazines, and I found this recipe in a recent issue.  I saved it to make another time, but when I was cleaning out my freezer I found a bag of bananas, so I knew it was perfect timing to try it!  It was super easy to make, and the batter was delicious.  I may not have asked the kids if they wanted to lick the spoon.  (Shhh, I know....don't eat batter with raw eggs in it.  It so hard not to though!) 

Oh my gosh, these are seriously, so, so good.  The tops are a tiny bit crispy (in a good way), but the muffin itself is so moist.  I need to get bananas on my grocery list so I can let them get over-ripe and make this again!!  The kids are going to LOVE these for breakfast tomorrow.  Next time I'm adding some wheat bran and flax seeds to the mix though.  

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1-1/3 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 medium)

1/3 cup canola oil

1 large egg

1 cup (6 ounces) miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°. Whisk together the first six ingredients. 

In a separate bowl, whisk bananas, oil and egg until blended. Add to flour mixture; stir just until moistened. Fold in chocolate chips.

Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 20-25 minutes. 

Cool 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm. Yield: about 1 dozen.

#1,878: Baked Zucchini Fries

As I was flipping through one of my Family Circle magazines, the very last page had a recipe for baked squash fries on that not only looked good, but it looked easy and a little different.  This recipe used hot almond milk instead of eggs (you could use eggs though), and had flax seeds and almond flour.  All of these are ingredients that I have on hand.  The recipe calls for using zucchini and yellow squash, but I am not a big fan of yellow squash so I just used the zucchini.  The breading didn't totally coat every piece, and fell off a little bit, BUT it was delicious.  That could have been partially my laziness though because instead of placing the breading mixtures in shallow bowls as the directions state, I threw them in Ziploc bags and just shook it all together.  I do not have time to bread each piece when it's just me eating it.  I'm OK with imperfections!  :)

 Even Allison (10) thought they looked good and asked to try it.  (She thought it was eggplant which is why she asked, but she enjoyed it even knowing it was zucchini).  These were so good, I'm not only making them again for lunch today, but I'm putting zucchini on my grocery list again.  YUM! 

Serves 4

1 tbsp olive oil (I used my Misto)
1 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper
1/3 c almond flour

1/4 c Parmesan
1 1/2 tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 1/4 c hot almond milk (or 2 eggs, whisked)
1 zucchini cut into matchsticks
1 yellow squash, cut into matchsticks

Heat oven to 350.  Lightly oil a baking sheet with 1/2 tbsp olive oil.

Combine sea salt, pepper, almond flour, and Parmesan in a shallow bowl. 

Place flaxseed mixture in a separate shallow bowl.

Dip each squash stick in flaxseed mixture, then lightly shake off excess.  Transfer to flour mixture and turn until lightly coated. 

Place squash fries on prepared cookie sheet and drizzle with remaining olive oil (I sprayed the tops with my Misto).

Bake 10 minutes, then turn over and bake another 10 minutes.  Fries should be golden brown. 

#1,877: Pumpkin Oatmeal Bars

I had about a cup of canned pumpkin leftover from the Pumpkin and Oat Cookies I made for my kids, and knew I couldn't let this yummy veggie go to waste.  So I did a quick google search for pumpkin muffins (I wanted to make something healthier for my kids for breakfast) and came across this recipe which I adapted a little (obviously 1 adaption was to make it into bars instead of muffins).  Let's be honest, as much as I love cooking, the less time I have to spend prepping or cleaning up, the happier I am.  These fell apart a little when I tried to cut them before they cooled (only becuase I was too impatient to try them), but held together pretty nicely when I did actually give them time to cool.  My kids LOVED these.  As soon as the pan was gone, my kids asked me to make them again!!  I am more than happy to oblige!  :) 

1 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 tablespoons almond butter (I used 3 tbsp melted coconut oil)

1/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

2 and 1/4 cup rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F and then grease or line a muffin tin for 12 muffins.  (I used an 8x8 pan)

Starting with the wet ingredients first (pumpkin, maple syrup, eggs, etc.) layer everything except the chocolate chips into a blender or a food processor and blend for about 30 seconds, or until smooth.  (I put the pumpkin, syrup, eggs, vanilla, almond milk, and coconut oil in a blender.  Then I put everything in a bowl and mixed it together so that the oatmeal was more chunky).  

Using a spoon, gently stir the chocolate chips into the batter. Pour the batter into the muffin tin, filling each about 3/4th of the way full. Bake in the oven for 22 minutes, until light golden brown.

Allow to to cool for at least 10-15 minutes.