Recent cooking....

I meant to post these as I took them but didn't get to it....so here is a long posting of various meals over the past couple weeks. All photos can be enlarged if clicked on...

I love apple pie filing but don't really need or even enjoy the crust. The above is simply sliced apples sprinkled with cinnamon and roasted. No butter, no sugar. I'm sure adding a few drops of butter would not add that many calories, but I didn't even miss it. I like my butter in places where I really taste it, like on toast. These apples are delicious fresh out of the oven and very good rewarmed in the microwave - on oatmeal or just plain. I didn't even bother to peel the apples so prep was literally spraying Pam on pan, putting 6 apples through the slicer and sprinkling the cinnamon-then roasting with my weekly veggies (squash, zucchini, cauliflower, etc.). Why didn't I ever think of this before???

I often talk about using baby lima beans. Soak overnight, simmer in morning before work/starting day. Puree some for thickener. I put the whole beans in any number of dishes, like the greens below, or have as an afternoon snack with a little sesame oil and soy sauce.

Bag of mixed Southern Greens, with various mushrooms, onions, peppers. Perhaps a bit too watery with all the mushrooms. Also added chicken broth and white wine. Pretty good, but this batch seems to need more oil for some reason. This keeps in the fridge REALLY well and can be an accompaniment to almost anything. I do so many variations on this - adding tomatoes, pureed squash, various meats, beans, as a pasta dish at room temp.

Big batch of TJ's whole wheat pizza dough. I bought two packages this time and made various pizzas, including individual ones for the kids. They used to really complain about the dark crust but are getting more accepting. Not really sure why. Partly because of the "kid's choice" nights each one gets. This pizza is really hard to control myself around. I try and make the crust thin but end up eating a lot of bread and cheese.

Close-up of ground turkey, artichoke heart, cheese, vodka sauce on left and arrugula, blue camembert, turkey  on right.

Alex eating "white pizza" with small chopped up yellow peppers. He finally admitted that roasted peppers taste good and since admitting it, eats them without complaint.

Natasha eating pepperoni pizza - turkey pepperoni but super-processed-industrial grossness. But yummy! Not sure why she didn't have a fit about the brown crust. Her complaints are mainly vestiges of toddler control issues, but she of course honestly prefers white crust to brown in addition to liking to control her food. On her night she often chooses frozen white crust pizza, which I grudgingly oblige her. I could have put some peppers on her pizza too but figured she had the tomato sauce.