Pesto Christmas Tree Pizzas

Okay so these are about a week late... but better late than never.  You will forgive me, because these pesto Christmas trees are not only delicious, but also incredibly adorable.  The idea is simple: roll pizza dough out into a triangle, cover with pesto to make it green, and "decorate" using vegetable ornaments!  In this case, it suggests thin slices of half a red onion, and diced red pepper, but you could go crazy and decorate with the prettiest veggies you have. I could see kids getting a kick out of decorating their own little pizza tree, and it could be a good way to get them to eat their vegetables (or, you know, adults who hate veggies, too!).

This meal could easily be streamlined.  You could use ready-made dough and store-bought pesto.  Just chop your veggies, roll the dough, decorate, and bake!  Dinner is ready in no time and it looks like you're Martha Stewart.  Of course, knowing me, you will not be surprised to hear that I made my own dough and pesto.  Have you made pesto before?  It was so simple.  I used Food Network's recipe, but basically all you have to do is blend together basil, garlic, pine nuts, and olive oil.  It suggested adding cheese but I thought it was good enough without it.

Obviously I struggled a bit with the rolling... have you ever tried to make pizza dough triangles?  It's a tough job!  By my second tree, I gave up making trunks!  They were adorable just the same, and soon good with the pesto, a little mozzarella, and plenty of "ornaments."  If you're missing Christmas already, whip these up - or pin it for next Christmas.  They'd actually be pretty cute if you wanted to bring a couple to your New Year's Party.

Speaking of New Year's... whoa.  2015 was pretty terrible.  But it's ending on a high note.

Recipe:

pesto Christmas tree pizzas
from A Couple Cooks
makes 4 large trees or 8 small

Ingredients:
1 pizza dough
1 red pepper
1/2 red onion
1/2 cup basil pesto
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
kosher salt

Instructions:

1) Place a pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 550 degrees.

2) Prepare the toppings: dice the red pepper.  Thinly slice the red onion, then rinse it under cool water and pat it dry to remove some of the bite (I never knew this!)

3) When the oven is ready, roll out the dough into a triangle shape, adding a small rectangle for a trunk.  Place the dough on a floured pizza peel.  Quickly assemble the pizza.  Spread a thin layer of pesto, then sprinkle with cheese.  Add decorations of red onions and peppers, and sprinkle with kosher salt.

4) Transfer the pizza to the oven on the pizza peel, and bake until cheese is melted, about 5 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly, then serve.

Lentil, Tempeh, and Sweet Potato Chili

I love tempeh.  I know I have said this before, but it's just the best meat substitute a vegetarian can ask for.  In fact, just today I bought tempeh bacon, which I am super excited about.  Fakin' bacon!  I honestly cannot wait for breakfast tomorrow.  I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, this tempeh was not bacon-ified, but was used as the main protein in a super tasty chili.  It's flavored with garlic, chili powder, cumin, turmeric, and coriander, which is not your average chili spice mix.  Not to mention the red pepper, sweet potatoes, and red lentils (which thicken it beautifully). You end up with a colorful, delicious, thick, hearty chili.  I like to eat chili over rice, with a little sour cream.  I often add cheese, but I thought it didn't necessarily match the flavor profile here, although if you were feeling cheesy, I say go for it.

This recipe makes a lot of chili.  I ate it for well over a week, and even brought some to my friends (who happily ate it and did not think tempeh chili was too weird!).  That reminds me - my mom said today that she knows this is one of my secrets to living on a small budget.  She said I cook something and then eat it for a week.  It's true!  Luckily I am the kind of person who can eat the same thing for lunch for a week.  I also hate throwing food away, so it works out well.  Chili for days.

Recipe:

lentil, tempeh and sweet potato chili
from Produce on Parade
serves 8 - 10

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional; I left it out)
dash of black pepper
7-ounce package tempeh, diced
1 medium red bell pepper, diced
1 medium sweet potato, diced
2 15-ounce cans diced tomatoes
8 cups vegetable broth
2 cups dry red lentils

Instructions:

1) In a very large soup pot, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat.  Add the next 9 ingredients (up to the black pepper)  and saute for about 5 minutes, until fragrant and the onions begin to soften.

2) Add the tempeh, red bell pepper, and sweet potato.  Saute for a few minutes, then deglaze the pan with the canned diced tomatoes.

3) Add the broth and lentils.  Stir well and bring to a boil over high heat, then cover partially and reduce to a simmer.  Simmer for about 30 minutes.  Next, remove the lid and continue to simmer for about 10 minutes while stirring occasionally.

Leftovers Remade: Thanksgiving Dinner Crescent Ring

Are you sick of Leftovers Remade recipes?  Don't feel too bad - my family was getting super sick of eating leftovers, no matter how much I fancied them up!  I promise this is the end of it!

Crescent rings are sort of one of my favorite things, even though I rarely eat them myself.  I just like to make them because they are so pretty!  I made an Italian grinder ring, and one stuffed with scrambled eggs, bacon and cheese .  This one - surprise surprise! - was stuffed with Thanksgiving leftovers!  Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, veggies, gravy - whatever you want to use up.  It's pretty quick - you're eating dinner in 30 minutes, tops.  And then throwing out the remnants of your Thanksgiving dinner because it's been days and your family is begging you to stop forcing turkey and mashed potatoes on them :)  On to new recipes tomorrow!

Recipe:

Thanksgiving dinner crescent ring
from Tablespoon
serves 10

Ingredients:
2 tubes crescent dinner rolls
2 cups mashed potatoes
2 cups cooked turkey, chopped
1 cup vegetables of your choice (I used squash, peas, and carrots)
1 cup stuffing
1/2 cup cranberry sauce

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Unroll crescents and spray a large pizza pan with nonstick baking spray.  Place the longer end of the crescents in a circle onto the edge of the pan.  Leave a circle in the center with all the crescent points laying over the outside edge of the pan, all the way around the pizza pan, to create a sun-like ring of crescents.

2) Spoon mashed potatoes, turkey, vegetables, stuffing and cranberry sauce on top of the large ends of the crescents. Pull the pointed edges of the crescents up and over the filling.  Gently tuck each crescent lip underneath the inside end of the crescent ring to secure.

3) Bake for 18 - 22 minutes, to until the crescents are golden brown.  Cool slightly before slicing and serving.

Leftovers Remade: Leftover Muffins

Do you always watch the recipe videos that have taken over Facebook this year?  I do.  Even when it's something I have zero intention of making - for instance, I just watched someone making teriyaki chicken tacos.  I don't know why, but I guess it's similar to watching Food Network, which I love, except it's sped up to be done in under a minute, and I like that the directions appear as text on the screen.  I've never shared one of these videos myself, but I am glad that the rest of you do.

This recipe, as you may have guessed, came from a recipe video on Facebook!  My aunt Regenia shared it the week before Thanksgiving, and I thought it was genius.  You basically just stuff whatever you have left inside a ball of canned crescent dough, bake it, and voila: leftover muffins!  I immediately added crescent rolls to the grocery list.

And how cute are these?  You can stuff them with whatever you want: stuffing, vegetables, turkey, cranberry sauce - use up those leftovers!  Cutting open each one became a surprise at my Leftovers Remade party.  Will this one have brussels sprouts?  Is this the one where I ran out of turkey?  Will this one be mostly squash?  It was kind of fun :)

I hope you are enjoying your Christmas break.  I am in total shock that it's already Monday and I've been off for 4 days.  I'd like this to last forever, please.

Recipe:

leftover muffins

from Foodbeast on Facebook (click for the video!)

yield 8 muffins

Ingredients:

1 can refrigerated crescent roll dough

1 cup chopped turkey

1 cup stuffing

1 cup vegetables of choice (i.e. mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, squash, etc.)

1/2 cup cranberry sauce

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350.  Spray a muffin pan with oil and set aside.

2) Open crescent roll dough.  Each rectangle will become one muffin.  Lay out a rectangle on a lightly floured work surface and top with 1 tablespoon each stuffing, turkey and vegetable.  Add 1 teaspoon cranberry sauce.  

3) Carefully fold up edges and roll dough into a ball around the fillings.  Place completed muffin into muffin tin, and repeat with remaining dough and filling.

4) Bake 14 - 18 minutes or until golden brown.

Leftovers Remade: Leftover Hand Pies

This was another dish I made for my post-Thanksgiving Leftovers Remade party.  I think that this was the one I was most excited about, because they took the most work (after all, yesterday's casserole was much-loved but really didn't take a ton of work; I almost felt guilty accepting compliments when all I did was take the vegetables, turkey and gravy that other people had brought to Thanksgiving, and threw them into a baking dish!).

These little gems are hand pies.  They're made from homemade herbed pie dough and stuffed with whatever you feel like stuffing them with!  Use up those leftovers stuffing and veggies and turkey (or leave out the turkey for the vegetarians!).  Instead of gravy, these guys stay moist from leftover cranberry sauce, which adds a little tart sweetness to the rich savory little pies.  I think these were so much fun to put together, but even more fun for my Leftovers Remade partygoers to eat!  If I am remembering correctly, these pies were the first things to go; I'd say they were the most successful out of the three recipes I made.  If you have an overfull refrigerator, you might want to try these little pies today!

Recipe:

leftover hand pies
adapted from leftover Pop-Tarts from Parsley Sage Sweet
makes 9 - 12 hand pies

Ingredients:
for pie dough:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage (I had to use 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
about 6 tablespoons ice water
for filling:
1 cup chopped turkey
9 heaping tablespoons stuffing
9 tablespoons cranberry sauce
9 tablespoons of each leftover veggie you want to use (I used peas, squash, mashed potatoes, etc.)
1 egg, beaten

Instructions:

1) Make the pie crust first: Blend the first 6 ingredients in a food processor until herbs are very finely chopped  Add butter.  Pulse processor until mixture resembles coarse meal.  Transfer to a large bowl.

2) Using a fork, mix in enough ice water to form moist clumps.  You want it to look raggedy with lumps of butter.  Gather dough into a piece of plastic wrap and gently flatten it into a rectangle.  Wrap tightly and chill 30 minutes.

3) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Remove dough from the refrigerator and let sit for a few minutes until workable.  Place chilled dough on a lightly floured work surface.  Cut out as many small circles or rectangles as you can.  Wrap and refrigerate dough scraps, taking them out and reworking as you go until you run out of dough.

4) Brush half of your circles with lightly beaten egg.  Let sit until egg is tacky instead of wet and slippery, about 5 minutes.

5) Spread 1 tablespoon stuffing over each of the egg-brushed circles, leaving about 1/2-inch or a bit more clean along each edge so you will be able to seal them.  Top the stuffing with 1 to 2 tablespoons chopped turkey, and 1 tablespoon of cranberry sauce.  Feel free to add around 1 tablespoon of any other leftover vegetable you have.  Spread each layer so it covers up to the clean borders.  Repeat with the rest of the egg-washed dough halves.

6) Top each filled circle of dough with another circle, not brushed with egg.  Press down the edges to seal it well, then press the tines of a fork all around the edges to seal.  Repeat with remaining pies.

7) At this point, you may freeze them on a baking sheet and then place in a bag and freeze up to 3 months.  Or, to eat now, gently lift pies and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Brush each pie with remaining beaten egg.  Pole three rows of holes with a fork to vent the pies.  Place baking sheet n the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

8) Remove baking sheet from refrigerator and place in oven.  Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until light golden brown.  You can freeze them at this point as well.

Leftovers Remade: Leftover Casserole

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  Mine was about 700 times better than last year, so that's great!  I am still wearing my robe, drinking coffee and trying to wake up from all the excitement from the past couple days.

Did you have a big fancy Christmas dinner?  We had planned on it, but ended up just reheating some leftover soup!  But I know that lots of people have a repeat of Thanksgiving.  The good news is that I am about to start a 3-post special called Leftovers Remade!  After I hosted Thanksgiving, this is what my refrigerator looked like:

All that good for one person!  So I knew I had to do something fancy to use up lots of the leftover food.  I decided to host a Leftovers Remade party on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and invited lots of my family back to the house to eat more!  I made three different dishes using leftover things like turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes.  First up is the leftover casserole.

What's great about this casserole is that it's ridiculously easy, easily customizable based on what you happen to have left in our refrigerator, and yet it looks fancy and people are impressed.  Leftover stuffing forms a "crust" of sorts; it gets pressed down into the bottom of a baking dish.  Leftover veggies get put on top; I used brussels sprouts, carrots, peas and corn, but you could use green bean casserole, succotash, broccoli, whatever you have (I left out beets just because I didn't want everything turned red!).  Chopped turkey goes on top (but it would be easy to make this without meat!), followed by some gravy to keep things moist.  Mashed potatoes form the top crust, dotted with some butter if you're feeling decadent.  Bake until everything is bubbly and hot.

I'm happy to say that this casserole got everyone excited to eat the same things they had just eaten two days earlier.  That is pretty spectacular.  Plus it used up a lot of leftovers!  Most of the casserole got eaten, but I delivered the rest to my uncle Scott, who was obsessed with it.

I hope you have lots of leftovers in your fridge today, and that you need some ideas on how to recreate them into something your family wants to eat.  Stay tuned for more :)

Recipe:

leftover casserole
from Stepable
serves 6

Ingredients:
2 cups prepared stuffing
3 cups diced turkey
1 cup cooked vegetables
1 cup prepared turkey gravy
2 cups mashed potatoes
4 tablespoons butter

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Press the prepared stuffing into the bottom of a 9x13" baking dish.

2) Sprinkle vegetables on top of stuffing.  Add turkey, and pour on gravy.

3) Spread the mashed potatoes over the top, and dot with butter.

4) Bake until hot and bubbly, about 20 minutes, and serve.

Salted Pecan Bourbon Pumpkin Pie

It's my first day of Christmas vacation.  It's early in the morning for me to be up and showered - it's 9:30 AM on Christmas Eve.  But how can I sleep when there is so much going on in my head?!  I was awoken earlier by texts from my friend Cathleen - she had her beautiful baby girl!  I had been waiting for these messages, so even though texts don;t usually wake me up, I sprang up immediately.  I got too excited to fall back to sleep.  I showered because I am meeting two wonderful friends for breakfast in an hour. Then I couldn't stop thinking about Christmas Eve, and how it has always been my favorite day of the year.  Last year though?  It was tough.  This Christmas, while definitely not where I expected my life to be, is so much better.  The people in my life want to be here with me.  My friends and my family love me and I love them.  And don't get me started on how much I love my dogs.  I've had a rough year, but I am content with where I am right now.

Tonight I will be heading to Jeff and Heidi's for the annual Haley family Christmas Eve party.  Then I will be spending the night at my mom's house like the good old days :)  The pups and I are kind of excited to have a sleepover and make a nice breakfast to eat with my mom and sisters tomorrow.

One thing on my to do list still: what the heck am I bringing to the party tonight!?  Did today sneak up on anyone else?  I am leaning towards a dip of some sort, or maybe some kind of cake... as you can see, I am all over the place.  But I'm here to give you some help if you're still trying to figure out to what to bring.  Enter, salted pecan bourbon pumpkin pie.  This was my dessert for Thanksgiving, chosen out of a magazine by Kenzie.  The name is a mouthful, but there is a lot going on in this pie.  It starts off like any of pumpkin pie (with the addition of a little bourbon), but then it gets topped with a crunchy layer of pecans cooked in molasses and brown sugar until they are sticky and incredible.  Top the whole thing with some flaked sea salt and, if you're feeling decadent, add some bourbon whipped cream (I never got around to that part).

To be honest, desserts did not really go at my Thanksgiving, so I can't tell you that this pie was devoured by happy family members.  The only dessert that really got eaten was Rice Krispie treats.  Everything else was barely touched!  Bizarre.  But it's still a pretty great recipe if you want to make a pie that's not-your-average - and if you're still sitting there staring at recipes trying to figure out what to bring to your Christmas party!

Recipe:

salted pecan bourbon pumpkin pie
from a magazine... not sure which one because Kenzie sent me the recipe!
serves 8

Ingredients:
1 baked pie crust
1 15-ounce can pumpkin
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup half and half or light cream
2 tablespoons bourbon
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons molasses
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup pecan halves
1/2 teaspoon flaked sea salt
1 recipe bourbon whipped cream, below

Instructions:

1) Prepare baked pie crust and set aside.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In a large bowl, combine pumpkin, 1/2 cup of the brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.  Stir in eggs until combined.  Stir in half and half, bourbon and vanilla until combined.  Pour pumpkin mixture into pie crust.  Cover edges with foil and bake 40 minutes or until edges begin to puff and center is almost set.

2) Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, combine molasses, butter, and the remaining 1 tablespoon brown sugar.  Cook and stir until sugar is dissolved and butter is melted.  Stir in pecans.  Spoon pecan mixture over the top of the pie.  Place a foil-lined baking sheet on the rack below the pie.  Bake 15 minutes more until center is set.  Sprinkle with sea salt.  Cool completely.  Chill within 2 hours.  Serve with bourbon whipped cream.

3) For bourbon whipped cream, in a chilled bowl, beat 1 cup whipping cream, 1 tablespoon bourbon, and 2 teaspoons sugar until soft peaks form.