Category: Cooking/Baking

  • Friday Freestyling … One Dish Delish

    Friday Freestyling … One Dish Delish

    Over the past couple of years, I’ve become intrigued by the simplicity of sheet pan meals.

    These easy-to-prepare creations are limited only by what ingredients you have on hand, your imagination and the oven temperature.

    My most recent attempt used farmer sausage, potatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and onions. While the oven pre-heated to 425° F, I cleaned, chopped, and cut the veg and sliced the sausage. I then just tossed it all into a bag and coated everything with a mixture of olive oil, herbs, and spices. From there, the mixture got spread out on a parchment paper lined, rimmed, baking sheet and baked until veggies were fork tender. (Approximately 1 hour)

    Because carrots are more dense than potatoes, they take a bit longer to bake. Next time, I may cut them into thinner slices to compensate for this.

    All in all, the meal turned out tasty and hubs-approved.

    Because the pan was large and I couldn’t think of appropriate props, the dish was challenging to photograph. I decided that fill the frame was the best option.

  • Happiness Is …

    Happiness Is …

    It’s so hard to grasp that 1966 was 60 years ago.

    I was seven years old when Ray Conniff released the song that has lyrics true to this day.

    Happiness truly is “different things to different people”, as the iconic and familiar lyrics state.

    When we sold our condo and started renting a condo from a friend, I was dismayed that the oven in our rental was completely unpredictable in terms of temperature and sometimes was so far out, that I couldn’t risk using it. I was especially distressed because my fussy French macarons need predictable and accurate oven temps.

    Despite how much I insisted, hubs was against letting our friend/landlord know. He didn’t want us to be “those” tenants.

    Finally, last week, I decided to risk hubs’ ire for a day or two and called our landlord. I worded it that I thought he’d want to know because every year, things get more expensive to replace. He agreed 100% and said that from here on in, if anything at all stops working properly, he wants to know immediately.

    My new stove (feature photo) arrived the day before yesterday and everything works perfectly.

    After I made his fave oven-prepared dish for dinner, hubs was ok with the situation, and decided that maybe we need a new fridge too 🤦‍♀️.