Ina's Pesto Tomatoes

I made these roasted tomatoes with pesto after seeing them on Ina's show. They were rewarmed before dinner and tasted great, but it was hard to get enough salt into each bite.

Strawberry Oat Squares

I made this recipe from a blog that keeps popping up on Taste Spotting, Oh She Glows. Taste Spotting is probably my favorite food blog (as of today).

(before they were baked)
Oh She Glows focuses on vegan food. I made these bars, but skipped the vegan parts, and used a real egg, and a combination of butter and brown rice syrup, instead of the vegan 'butter' in the recipe. Also, I bought jam instead of making it. As an aside, I bought the jam at Safeway and it was a true effort to find jam that had only fruit, pectin and sugar in the ingredients list. No wonder our country is full of fatties...even something as simple as jam has a ton of ingredients, most of which include high fructose corn syrup. I hope the farm bill is changed next year.

Anyhow, these are a super treat. A great flavor, I love the jam, and they do remind me of Nutri Grain bars, but about 1000x better. This is breakfast for the next week.

Healthy Chili Relleno

Rachel Ray drives me nuts and I therefore never watch her show. However, last week I was finishing a workout and her show was on at the gym, and it caught my eye because she was making a healthy chili relleno. Rachel has no idea how to pronounce relleno.

One of the things that appealed to me was the green rice she made as a side dish. It seemed flavorful and really healthy. I am always looking for more ways to eat spinach.

I am lazy so I didn't actually make rellenos. Instead, I turned this into a rice salad. I thought I would make it a little less spicy by using two serrano chiles instead of one jalapeno. I was wrong because this was pretty spicy. I ate this four days in a row and was not sick of it, which is a major statement. I found this to be very tasty and healthy. I added black beans for some protein.

X and O Meringues

I made meringues for the bridal shower and they tasted wonderful, yet they formed into one large mass, due to three days of rain, I think. Rain is not meringue weather. This is the recipe.

Lemon Tarts

I made mini lemon tarts from this Epicurious recipe. I used 4" tartlet pans with removable bottoms, tripled the recipe, and ended up with 24 tarts. Leigh gave me meyer lemons from her tree, so I used the juice from them, instead of the lime the recipe calls for.

The tarts turned out really well. Everyone raved and even though I'm not a huge tart fan, I also found them to be a perfect sweet to end a delicious meal.

Happy Birthday to Gillian

Gillian requested vanilla cake with vanilla frosting so I made the buttermilk cake from The Joy of Cooking and found a butter and powdered sugar frosting from Martha Stewart. Even though I prefer chocolate cake, this was pretty tasty, and didn't last long.

Spiced Pumpkin & Walnut Bread

I got this recipe from Goop, when I was looking to incorporate more agave syrup in to my life instead of sugar. I made this around Christmas time in Colorado, and everyone enjoyed.