Day 1 of Self Imposed Blogging Challenge

Today's post was made instantly easier when Garrett surprised me with a beautiful, black KitchenAid mixer!

I was so stoked to clean off part of the counter to find it's new home, which I'm not totally sold on yet... right above is where I keep all my spices, baking goodies, canned goods etc and I see some sort of terrible, terrible accident happening.

I can't believe I actually have one of these.

I tried her out today, making these cookies again. The first time I did them in that post, I mixed the dough by hand. The second time, I mixed them using my Cuisinart hand mixer which I've decided is a little bit too powerful, because for this recipe, it almost whipped the dough and made the consistency too smooth. The cookie bites were good but not chunky like I prefer. When I made them tonight in the mixer with the flat paddle on 2 it was just perfect. And for such a sticky, tough dough, it was much easier than mixing by hand, and it kept the chunky texture that I love.

Tomorrow, I make bread.

Ale'd Ginger

I think the reason I wanted to make my own ginger ale is because I spoiled myself with 'real' ginger ale from Planet Organic, Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale.....



...not just Canada Dry, and I couldn't deal with buying the fancy stuff anymore. Plus I got an adorable bottle from IKEA and had to use it on something equally adorable.

Now, traditional ginger ale is typically made with yeast to create the bubbles. I opted to use club soda since I simply couldn't wait for multiple days to drink it, and the idea kind of scared me.

Homemade Ginger Ale

Ingredients:
1 cup diced ginger (tip: peel the ginger using a spoon (thanks Annand!) and then chop)
1 cup brown sugar (you can use white, but brown will give the ale a nicer color)
club soda
lime (zest and juice)

1. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add ginger and zest of one lime. Reduce heat to medium low and let ginger sit in the simmering water for 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit for 20 minutes minimum, or overnight for a spicier ginger flavor. Once the ginger has steeped for your desired amount of time, strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer.

(Normally you would discard the ginger pieces here; last time I saved the ginger and froze it, hoping I can do something with it eventually. It may just end up being used to enhance the next batch.)

2. In a separate saucepan, make a simple Syrup by dissolving 1 cup sugar into 1 cup of boiling water. Set aside to cool.

3. Combine all simple syrup, all ginger water, juice of one lime and club soda to taste in a bottle that will keep the fizz, or drink immediately. Serve with a wedge of lime.

I'm going to try to blog, in some way, for every day of October. It would have been wise to save this post until Saturday, but I received a request from one of my favorite food bloggers, former Edmontonian and current Texan, to post this recipe! Since I receive so few requests, I just had to do it. Take a look at Marynika's blog; the pictures are stunning and as a very lucky tester of some of the baking, the recipes were fabulous.

Enjoy, and look forward to more posts! I can't promise that they'll all be recipes but I'll do my best to make sure it's food related.

Stuffed Pasta Shells

I came to stuffed pasta shells for the first time when I worked in Yellowknife and I built these awesome lasagna rolls. My second fam, the Lindstroms, are big on stuffed pasta shells. Like, really big. Like, I'll be helping them make hundreds of these bad boys next summer for the Wedding of the Century (aka Peeps wedding, which I can't possibly be more excited for). This is one of those recipes that I created myself after quickly perusing multiple stuffed shells recipes on the interwebz.

I didn't think to take photos until they were basically done. But don't worry, you didn't miss much.

Let's stuff!

Stuffed Pasta Shells
A-La-Michetti

Simple Tomato Sauce (quick version of my own recipe)
1 tsbp olive oil
half yellow onion finely chopped
1 clove garlic
dash of red pepper flakes
3-5 basil leaves, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
A few squirts of tomato paste (which I found in a tube, thanks to Mrs. Peeps, at the Italian Market...great for when you just need a bit!)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Saute onion in oil; once softened, add garlic and red pepper flakes. Add diced tomatoes and tomato paste and S&P to taste. Let simmer for as long s you can. I would normally add some marsala or red wine, but I was out and short on time. I would also typically puree this mixture but I thought why not leave it chunky?

Everything else...
1 350g package jumbo pasta shells (Italian Centre Shop has a huge variety on the cheap!)
1 pound Italian sausage meet
1 large egg
16-ounces ricotta cheese
10-ounces chopped frozen spinach, thawed, squeezed dry (or 10 ounces chopped fresh spinach)
3/4 cup Panko bread crumbs (or your own!)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 baking dishes (this made me enough for one full 9X13 dish and a square 8X8 that I could freeze for another night!

What to do:

1 Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta shells until al dente. Drain, rinse in cold water, and set aside.

2 Saute meat until brown, drain extra oil.

3 Beat the egg lightly in a large bowl. Mix in the ricotta, chopped spinach, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese, panko, salt, pepper, and sausage mixture. Fill each cooked pasta shell with some of the ricotta, spinach, sausage mixture.

4 Spread half the simple tomato sauce on the bottom of pan(s). Arrange the stuffed pasta shells in the dishes. Spread the remaining tomato sauce over the top of the pasta shells.

At this point you can make ahead, to freeze (up to four months) or refrigerate before cooking. (If freezing, cover with foil, then wrap with plastic wrap.)

5 Heat oven to 375°F. Cover the pans with foil and bake for 30 minutes, until hot and bubbling. Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese, bake uncovered for 10 more minutes.

These ended up freezing really really well, both uncooked and once I cooked a tray and froze it into portions. YUM! Wedding '12, here we come!

Paired with homemade Caesar salad dressing. DANG!

On a (slightly more) personal note, we lost our floor troll/poor man's Roomba/loving cat Solo last week. We already miss him a lot, and he was around to help me make this dish, as he often did in the kitchen.

Solo Snowballs Green