I chose Hearty Onion Soup Gratin from Jan Living to get us back into Martha Mondays. It’s basically a French onion soup with turnips and carrots added in. I am a lover of French onion soup and have been making it a lot recently (I had one batch where I didn’t stir my onions enough and a tiny bit burned and turned the whole soup bad).

This recipe was fairly simple:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
2 tsp fresh thyme
salt and pepper
4 cups beef stock
4 small carrots, halved lengthwise
3 baby turnips, peeled and cut into wedges or chunks
4 small dried bay leaves
4 large slices of bread
8 slices Gruyere

Heat oil over medium heat in skillet. Cook onions until translucent, about 8 min. Reduce to low and add thyme and cook until golden 35-40 min. Season with salt and pepper

Preheat broiler. Bring stock to boil in pot. Add carrots and turnips and simmer until almost tender, about 5 min.

Divide vegetables among 4 bowls, add onions. Add bay leaf to each. Pour in stock. Place a slice of bread on each and 2 slices cheese. Broil until bubbly.

So now that you’ve seen Martha’s instructions I’ll confess what I did. First of all, I forgot the bay leaves entirely. I didn’t have enough fresh thyme so I used dried. I actually ended up roasting my veggies (and I used baby carrots cut into chunks) in the oven. I added the onions and veggies to the stock (I had about 6 cups of it) and let it simmer for a while so the flavors would combine. I like to make my bread separately on a roasting pan and if we’re eating at home alone, I cut my cheese covered bread into chunks before adding it to my soup to make it easier to eat!

With all that being said, I enjoyed this very much. Really, you’d have to really do something horrible to make me reject a bowl of French onion soup! I enjoyed having more veggies in it and have been eating leftovers for lunch.

Here’s the schedule moving forward for the coming weeks. If this doesn’t work for you, let me know. If you’d like to join up, let me know and I’ll add you.

1/17 Steak and Potatoes Kinda Gurl

1/24 Megan’s Cookin’

1/31 Sassy Suppers

2/7 Perfecting Pru

2/14 Tiny Skillet

2/21 Sweet Almond Tree

2/28 MarthaAndMe

I chose Hearty Onion Soup Gratin from Jan Living to get us back into Martha Mondays. It’s basically a French onion soup with turnips and carrots added in. I am a lover of French onion soup and have been making it a lot recently (I had one batch where I didn’t stir my onions enough … Read more →

It’s time to get Martha Mondays rolling again, so my pick for Monday 1/10 is Hearty Onion Soup Gratin from p. 188 of Jan Living (if you need the recipe let me know). I’ll post a schedule for the coming weeks soon.

Interested in playing along? Just leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll add you to the blogroll so you can have a turn picking our project. Anyone can cook along with us. Just check back on Mondays and leave a comment with a link to your blog or just a comment with your results if you tried it.

It’s time to get Martha Mondays rolling again, so my pick for Monday 1/10 is Hearty Onion Soup Gratin from p. 188 of Jan Living (if you need the recipe let me know). I’ll post a schedule for the coming weeks soon. Interested in playing along? Just leave a comment or send me an email … Read more →

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrated. I thought I would share a photo from ours. My dad made this yule log for Christmas dinner. He says he made it once 30 years ago, but I don’t remember it. I think it looks gorgeous. The cake was very moist, but he used a prune filling that had some liqueur in it and I didn’t care for that. The mushrooms were light and yummy though.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrated. I thought I would share a photo from ours. My dad made this yule log for Christmas dinner. He says he made it once 30 years ago, but I don’t remember it. I think it looks gorgeous. The cake was very moist, … Read more →

Thanks to Karen at Karen and Charlie’s Kitchen for choosing this week’s pick-your-own project  – Thanksgiving tablescapes. I liked the one where you make a small pumpkin into a candleholder, so I did a trial run with that, which looks sort of lame since it’s crooked. I guess you need a straighter pumpkin to get it to work! I just hacked away at it with a knife to make the hole, then pushed the candle in. I like this idea a lot, even if mine wasn’t the greatest in execution!

Here’s a photo of a centerpiece I bought a few years ago (I think I got it at the grocery store to be honest!) and which I really still love a lot.

Thanks to Karen at Karen and Charlie’s Kitchen for choosing this week’s pick-your-own project  – Thanksgiving tablescapes. I liked the one where you make a small pumpkin into a candleholder, so I did a trial run with that, which looks sort of lame since it’s crooked. I guess you need a straighter pumpkin to get … Read more →

After attempting to contact two different people (the one scheduled for this week and then the one scheduled for next week who both are MIA), I’ve given up and picked the Martha Mondays project for Monday myself. And to make myself feel better, I’ve chosen Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Crunch and Caramel Sauce (p. 212 in October Living). If you need the recipe, let me know. It appears to be completely evil and diet-wrecking. It’s supposed to taste like 100 Grand candy bar, so I thought it would be appropriate as Halloween approaches.

If you’d like to join Martha Mondays (and are willing to commit to picking a project once every 3 months!), leave me a comment or send me an email. Anyone can play along. Make the recipe or project chosen and post results as a comment here or on your own blog.

After attempting to contact two different people (the one scheduled for this week and then the one scheduled for next week who both are MIA), I’ve given up and picked the Martha Mondays project for Monday myself. And to make myself feel better, I’ve chosen Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Crunch and Caramel Sauce (p. … Read more →

Thanks to Brenda at Brenda’s Canadian Kitchen for choosing today’s project, Pumpkin Muffins.

I love to bake with pumpkin in the fall and often make pumpkin bread and pumpkin cookies. The muffins sounded good. They’re made with yogurt and half whole wheat flour. I did not add the nuts since some family members don’t like them. They were simple to mix up. The recipe says it makes 12 jumbo muffins – I made 24 regular muffins with this. Mine took forever to bake. The recipe says 25 minutes for the jumbo muffins so I thought mine would be done before that, but they actually took about 10 minutes longer.

I liked them, but thought they were a bit lacking in flavor. The recipe uses pumpkin pie spice which I generally don’t like. I think you get a better flavor if you use separate measurements of regular spices. I ended up sprinkling some cinnamon and sugar on top of these to make them look nice and to jazz them up. Also – as I was tasting these I realized there was no salt in the recipe which might have been part of the problem too!

I’ll be interested to hear what everyone else thought.

Thanks to Brenda at Brenda’s Canadian Kitchen for choosing today’s project, Pumpkin Muffins. I love to bake with pumpkin in the fall and often make pumpkin bread and pumpkin cookies. The muffins sounded good. They’re made with yogurt and half whole wheat flour. I did not add the nuts since some family members don’t like … Read more →

Today’s project, Pear and Apple Phyllo Crisp from Oct Living was chosen by Teresa at Homemade Iowa Life.

Sorry about the photo for this. It really did look pretty. This was very simple to make. I could not believe only a few sheets of phyllo were needed. I sprayed the top of my fruit with a little Pam and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon which make it look prettier and gave it some extra sweetness.

This was terrific the first day but quickly became mushy, so it’s really something that doesn’t keep well unfortunately. It was delicious though. The crispy phyllo combined with the soft fruit was a nice combo.

1/2 c pecans
1/2 c plain fresh breadcrumbs
1/4 c sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
6 sheets frozen phyllo dough 11 1/2 x 15 each thawed
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
2 small firm pears, such as Forelle or Seckel
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled
Preheat oven to 400 with rack in top position Combine pecans, breadcrumbs, sugar and cinnamon
Line baking sheet with parchment and top with 1 phyllo sheet. Brush phyllo with butter all over and sprinkle pecan mix over it. Repeat 4x. Top with remaining sheet and brush with all but 2 tbsp butter.
Slice pears and apples 1/8 inch thick, discard seeds. Arrange in a single layer on phyllo, leaving space between fruit and a 1/4 inch border around the edges.
Brush fruit with reserved 2 tbsp butter. Sprinkle with sugar and dust with additional cinnamon.
Bake, rotating sheet halfway through, until phyllo is golden brown and fruit is soft, 28-32 min. Let cool slightly. Cut into 8 pieces.

Today’s project, Pear and Apple Phyllo Crisp from Oct Living was chosen by Teresa at Homemade Iowa Life. Sorry about the photo for this. It really did look pretty. This was very simple to make. I could not believe only a few sheets of phyllo were needed. I sprayed the top of my fruit with … Read more →

Teresa at A Homemade Iowa Life has chosen pear and apple phyllo crisps from October Living for next week’s project.  Let me know if you need the recipe!

Teresa at A Homemade Iowa Life has chosen pear and apple phyllo crisps from October Living for next week’s project.  Let me know if you need the recipe!

Today’s project was chosen by Pru at Perfecting Pru. This (click here for recipe) is a great fall dish. And I have to say it was pretty easy to make. You roast all of the vegetables (red potatoes, red onions, garlic, butternut squash, and carrots) at 450. Then you puree them with water (I used chicken broth and I used a handheld blender to puree instead of the blender method). You push it through a fine mesh strainer (this took a while), then add more liquid, a little lemon juice and salt and pepper. I added some cream and a pinch of dried mustard, as well as a pinch of salt. I served it with a dollop of sour cream in each bowl.

I loved, loved, loved this. It’s fantastic. It has a really deep, rich flavor that is very complex. And it is really something you can have made in about an hour and a half (an hour of which is just roasting time). I will definitely make this again and will probably play with the ingredients. Parsnip or rutabaga might be fun to try. I often make butternut squash soup in the fall, but this has a deeper, more complex flavor that I really loved. Mr. MarthaAndMe liked it, even though he generally is not a fan of butternut. Dude Martha did not care for it. Sigh.

This made a lot and I froze some for future dinners, so that’s a big plus!

Today’s project was chosen by Pru at Perfecting Pru. This (click here for recipe) is a great fall dish. And I have to say it was pretty easy to make. You roast all of the vegetables (red potatoes, red onions, garlic, butternut squash, and carrots) at 450. Then you puree them with water (I used … Read more →

After a couple of months of missing it, I was happy to be able to participate in September’s Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. This month’s recipe is cookies and cream cheesecake cupcakes, from the Martha Stewart Cupcake book. The idea is that these make mini cheesecakes. You put an Oreo at the bottom and make a cheesecake batter with crushed Oreos in it.

I used reduced fat cream cheese without even thinking about it – that’s what I always buy. I think that might have been a mistake since I could not get these to set up. I baked them for 10 minutes longer than Martha said and they were still wiggly. I took them out and hoped that when they chilled they would set up. They were mushy. You couldn’t peel the wrapper off, so we ended up eating them with spoons. Oh well. They still tasted great and if they had set up, they would have been beautiful. So lesson learned here – use regular cream cheese!

After a couple of months of missing it, I was happy to be able to participate in September’s Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. This month’s recipe is cookies and cream cheesecake cupcakes, from the Martha Stewart Cupcake book. The idea is that these make mini cheesecakes. You put an Oreo at the bottom and make a … Read more →