Squash and Carrot Casserole

About a week ago I got a Vegetable cookbook from CostCo.  Since I am eating so many vegetables I need more ideas on creative ways to make them.  I came across a recipe in the book on how to make a Squash casserole.  The first thing it wanted was stewed squash.  I had no idea how to do that so I looked it up on my iPad.  After I realized it was a method that would make the dish that was already full of calories more fattening I decided to skip that step and steam the squash.  I also decided to add carrots.

Usually in the stewing step the squash gets mashed.  However since we are skipping that all together we have to mash the squash and the carrots after steaming them for 20 min.

 Once the veggies are mashed melt some butter in a skillet.

Once the butter is melted add the mashed vegetables and simmer for a while.

 While the veggie mash is simmering  mix an egg and some milk and a small amount of sugar or your favorite sugar substitute in the bowl.

 Then add the mashed veggies.  If you want you can add a bit more sugar too.

 Now get two slices of bread.  buttermilk was my choice this time.

 Cut up the bread in cubes

 Put it in your skillet to soak up left over veggie mash and the left over butter.

 Add the cubes to your egg and mash mixture.

 Coat the bread cubes with the mixture.

 You can add some more sugar if you like or other spices.  One its all complete you put it in a pan.

 Cook the casserole for 30-40 min at 350 degrees.

 When its lightly golden brown on top and most of the liquid has been absorbed by the bread it is done!

Healthy snack Sandwich and celery

This is a fairly simple snack.  Its a ham sandwich with leaf lettuce and mayo and mustard with celery on the side.  Eating healthy does not have to be a chore it can be delicious and look good.

Steamed Beets and Carrots

This is an extremely easy little meal and the carrots look so pitiful next to the beets lol.

Wash two beets then slice them  follow that up with washing two carrots and slicing them up.  Then steam the vegetables for 15 minutes.  Add to your plate and add a little butter and enjoy.

Stir Fry Vegetable Medley

The beauty of the words Vegetable Medley is it covers any number of combinations of vegetables mixed together and cooked in some form.  This time the food was Stir Fried.

In this delicious meal there was one summer squash, one zucchini, two stalks of celery, several flowerettes of broccoli, and one tomato.

Add oil of your choice to your wok or frying pan and wash and slice and cut into bite size pieces.  add everything but the tomato.  Stir everything around until its almost done then add the Tomato.  Complete the cooking until the food is cooked to your preference or until most of the tomato has made a fine paste on the entire set of vegetables.  Then eat and enjoy.  :) 

Summer Squash Stir Fry

In this stir fry you gather the following ingredients, one summer squash, broccoli, two stalks of celery, one quarter of a green pepper,  two leaves of collard greens, brown rice and seasoning.

First wash the vegetables then slice them or cut them up depending on the vegetable.  In this case of these vegetables I put everything but the collard greens in the pan and stir fried them in olive oil.  I cooked them until they were softened and then added the collard greens.  Further stir frying  until the collard greens were limp.  Then I added the pre cooked rice to warm it up and have it  soak up the flavors in the pan from cooking the vegetables.  In this batch I also added a little bit of soy sauce for a different flavor.  You can add whatever you want.

Roasted potatoes and zucchini

I know that most of the food I am showing you in this blog seems fairly simple.  Well that is the entire point of these dishes.  Many people think that eating more healthy will be more difficult than its worth.  Well this blog is a prime example of how wonderful foods can be added to your diet improving your health and life with very simple ways without taking too much time out of your life.

The potatoes and the zucchini were sliced and then put on a cookie sheet sprayed with  some cooking spray. They were cooked at 450 degrees for about 30 min.  You can go a little shorter if you dont want the potatoes so dark and the zucchini a tad crunchier.  I like my zucchini soft.  :)

A delicious salad

The wonderful thing about having many vegetables on hand is you can create unique salads to your taste.  In this salad there is large green leafy lettuce, celery leaves, collard greens, broccoli, and celery.  Its a very green salad which means its full of useful iron. Generally when I make a salad I do enjoy some color but that day I was in the mood for green only.  It was very delicious.

FarmFreshToYou.com Review

For the last couple of months I have been receiving fresh organic produce from http://www.farmfreshtoyou.com   Before I decided to try a delivery service I had been purchasing my produce from the store.  There were many things I found disadvantages with this.  The first was I had no idea most of the time if the produce was organically grown or even local or from another country.  I often did not know if the produce had pesticide residue or if they sprayed a preservative on the produce.   When I was looking at the produce often I would find it really runty, bruised, with wounds, too soft or generally looking very unappetizing..  I was tired of terrible looking and tasting produce.

One day I decided to run a search on Google.com.  Low and behold I found a local delivery service  with great package choices and very good prices.    Here is a video of my very first delivery and let me tell you those veggies were delicious:

Steamed Vegetables

Here is a great summer selection and a great breakfast or lunch too.  If you have a steaming rice cooker this is fairly easy to do. You simply slice the raw beats, summer squash, and carrots after washing them.  Then you add them to the steaming basket and steam everything for 10-15 min depending on how crisp you want them.    This was one large beet, two carrots and one summer squash.

Broccoli Stir Fry

This is a fairly simple stir fry.  You take some olive oil maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon and add it to the pan.  Then you take about 6-8 Broccoli flowerettes and begin stir frying.  Slice up two celery stalks and add them.  Once the celery is clear and the broccoli is starting to get brown on the edges and soft add boc choy.  Stir Fry until the boc choy is soft then add pre cooked rice and stir fry til they are all cooked.  Then enjoy the various flavors.

Roasted Vegetable Medley Part 2

Roasted Vegetable Medley Part 1

Summer's Evil devils

The summer comes and with it brings warm and sweltering weather.  Perfect and beautiful weather for going out and doing things.  However, Its also great weather for bugs to breed and go about their business.  This is also their perfect opportunity to take over your pantry.  Moths are the subject of this blog. in particular the ones that live in grains.

When you buy a package of whole grain rice you are hoping to enjoy it at some time.  Most people do not eat all the rice at once.  Try as they may rice harvesters are not able to control the moths that come and lay their eggs on the rice.  So it will behoove you to find a way to prevent it.  The best way is to put your grains in the refrigerator to prevent optimum warm dry dark conditions for egg hatching.  But check the bag before you do because once in a while when its hot like this the grains develop on the way to the store cause they do not properly keep them cool.  If they come with larva bring it back to the store.

Now if you do end up with larva and its not overly infested and cannot afford to purchase more rice you can do something about it if your willing.  Take a large plate solid in color and shallow.  Pour out a single rice layer thick on the plate.  Swirl the rice about and then look for moving rice.  Use a spoon to scoop it up and keep doing this until all the wiggly rice is gone.  You can toss them into a water glass they drown in water.  You then put the larva free rice in a fresh baggy.  Keep doing this until you have finished going through all the rice.  Then you can leave the bag for an hour or so to see if any more larva show up by climbing the bag.    Then you preheat your oven for  like 450 degrees then you put all the rice on a cookie sheet and then bake it for 5-10 min.  You will have very toasted rice but any larva that were left will be dried and dead.  Then you put them in a baggie and then the bag goes into the fridge.

I hope this helps and I feel like someone has to talk about these gross subjects cause we all have then happen.