Darek + Stacie

I don’t know if i’m going to accomplish my “52 new recipes in one year” goal. March and April turned out be very non-productive months for me, in a lot of ways. When we did try new recipes, I didn’t do a great job of taking pictures. So, with that in mind…

I found this recipe in a magazine.

A somewhat random picture of the peppers and onions:

And the finished product:

It doesn’t look much like the picture. I think it was pretty good, though honestly I don’t really remember; it was so long ago. Well, May, but May feels like a lifetime ago.

These cookies are YUM. You take a cake mix, mix it with 2 eggs and something like 1/3 cup of oil, and drop it in spoonfuls onto a baking sheet to bake them in the oven. They turn out to be soft, yummy cookies. We used a spice cake mix and cream cheese frosting. I put them out at a party and they were devoured instantly. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the cookies to show you, but here are the ingredients:

Some of the best cookies I have ever had. Very easy to make, too. Try them. You’ll like them.

Oh. My. Gosh.

This recipe = Amazing.

It’s one that Darek got from his cooking class; definitely made it worth the price of the entire series, if you ask me.

We started by cutting some veggies (asparagus again, yes):

Since Darek’s class was a few days before valentine’s day, they learned how to make it in heart-shaped parchment paper. Cute…

Fish (we used red snapper but any kind works) goes on the parchment paper and is then covered with lemon juice, white wine, butter, salt, and veggies:

Not very many veggies fit in the pouch, so I contributed by cooking the leftovers in oil and season all:

The fish & toppings get wrapped up in the paper and baked in the oven for about 10 minutes, then come out and cool for a few:

Then you open up the pouch and all the yummy goodness is there waiting for you…

And it was SO GOOD. We’ve made it another time since then (this was back in February) and we used salmon, which was even more SO GOOD.

MMmmmmm….

I love asparagus. I wouldn’t have touched it 2 years ago, but I’ve matured quite a bit in my food tolerance since then.

This was just cooked in butter and olive oil, then sprinkled with parmesan.

Tasty. Not the healthiest way to cook asparagus, but you could leave out the butter and have it taste pretty much just as good with less fat.

Recipe – Asparagus Parmesan

Another magazine recipe. I’m really, really trying to like more vegetables and use them a lot more when we cook. I don’t really care for zucchini, but in certain forms they are starting to grow on me. I think they look pretty neat, anyway.

The zucchinis got cooked in olive oil:

I just realized that this asparagus did not go in this dish. But the picture has already been uploaded, so here ya go:

The recipe called for tomato-basil pasta sauce, but I forgot to buy that, so I just added basil to regular pasta sauce:

The sauce, seasonings, and veggies come together:

Layer of cooked penne, layer of sauce mixture, repeat, cover with cheese:

in the oven:

final product:

Pretty tasty. The recipe also called for green beans, but I skipped those. I don’t like my veggies to mix. I would make this again.

Baked Penne with Zucchini