Yesterday involved two hard drive crashes and one huge blog crash.
Happy Friday?
For the past several months, I’ve been having issues with my blog going down or being slow to load during peak hours, so I finally decided to move OSG to a Dedicated Server and as anticipated there were some major hiccups!
The good news is that the blog is now on its own private server! It’s roomy, sleek, speedy, and it should have much less (if any) downtime as compared to the previous set up. Yes, I’m knocking on wood…
The other good news is that Eric was able to recover the content from the two crashed hard drives. We’ll never know why two of our hard drives decided to crash 24 hours apart, but I’m thankful that I have a tech savvy husband or I’d probably still be using a typewriter and rotary phone.
Although, some days its tempting…
(Dad, can I borrow yours?)
Housekeeping complete, let’s get down to the stuff you didn’t see on the blog over the past couple weeks!
As you may know, I only post my favourite recipes on the blog, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. Check out the pictures below for a little behind the scenes action over the past couple weeks.
This fruit pizza was my pride and joy.
All that gorgeous chopped fruit, the sweet sauce…the photographs…
and one bad crust made from Teff flour.
[I should have made this cinnamon sugar fruit pizza crust!]
I scraped the fruit and sauce off and we enjoyed it sans crust.
I made grilled peaches on the BBQ and I concluded that I like peaches way better fresh. They were just plain ‘ol mushy and sad looking. What did I do wrong?
I made a wildly addictive Parsley Walnut pesto for dinner one night, adapting this recipe.
It basically involved me spoon feeding myself over the processor bowl until Eric had to pry it from my lifeless hands.
If you’re classy and whatnot, you can have it over pasta with a classy sprig of parsley.
I prefer spoon feeding, personally.
I whipped up a creamy Avocado Lime Dressing. It was great over pasta. I used my 15 Minute Creamy Avocado Pasta sauce as inspiration, and added some lime & lime zest, apple cider vinegar, decreased the garlic & oil, etc.
One lucky day I was actually able to snap a picture before I inhaled my lunch.
I’ve been enjoying a huge stir-fry with some type of protein (chickpeas, beans, quinoa, etc) and my favourite instant creamy dressing for lunch lately.
Instant Creamy Dressing: Mix 2 tbsp hummus with apple cider vinegar (just enough to thin out). Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Instant. Addictive. Try it!
Confession: I’m so addicted to this dressing, I sipped it from a mason jar once.
Maybe more than once.
That’s a bit embarrassing.
A couple weeks ago, I made cheezy stuffed peppers with brown rice.
Great in theory.
Bad in outcome.
The filling was super tasty on its own, but once cooked in the peppers it got all watery! What’s the secret to non-watery stuffed peppers?
I must find out.
Happy Caturday!
That fruit pizza looks amazing!!
are you baking the peppers in a bit of water? maybe it’s too much. when I bake my peppers I put less than an inch of water in the baking dish … but then again I don’t do much for the filling, usually just brown rice and beans with some dry spices then out of the oven I add avocado
I never had watery stuffed peppers and I don’t know if this is the solution, but I always include some kind of breadcrumbs or its like. It might be that this absorbs the water… I also cut my peppers in half and stuff each part of the pepper separately, lying them on a piece of baking parchment. This way any excess liquid can evaporate while baking.
Hope this might help. And good to hear that the blog is now in tip-top shape :-) I have a techie for a husband as well and I’m telling you I wouldn’t survive two days without his help (somehow I mess things up quite a lot :-) )
Oh and I never bake with any water! Just cut them in half, put the filling in, place on parchment and pop in the oven.
Even if these recipes didnt necessarily turn out how you would have liked….they sure look delicious! Especially that pesto! Wow! All your pics make any food look amazing!
Wonderful Angela! That pesto looks incredible!! Must make it for dinner tomorrow night!!! :) xxx
That fruit pizza looks soo good, too bad the crust didn’t turn out! I’m sure the toppings were super yummy by themselves :).
Thanks for sharing some ‘behind the scenes’ photos!
Gizmo and Beethoven, say Happy Caturday back at you. LOL
hehee
I’m not sure if you’re already doing this, but try filling the peppers after cooking them. I’ve always done it that way and have never had a problem with watery-ness (:
Hi Angela, I don’t know how you survived your crash – I would never want to be near a computer again after that!
As for the peppers – if you boil them in water for about 4-6 minutes first (just enough to cover the bottom 1/3 of peppers) – then bake them – they come out “stiffer”.
I never heard of adding ACV to hummus! I always plop hummus on my salads but it doesn’t “spread”…
love these recipes! they ALL look so so addicting! glad the housecleaning is done! ;)
I need to try all of those recipes stat! They all look too delicious to eat!
I will be right over. I know you need someone to help eat those great dishes.
My hubby is a techie guy too. What a blessing. We are creating my blog together…..or should I say he will be teaching me how to do it all. I am a good student though and I show the teacher my appreciation with great food treats :)
Thank you for your blog Ange. It is a must read for me.
I hope you are doing well. You are a light in this world…..don’t forget that.
I love the sound of the instant creamy dressing – you can’t go wrong with hummus! :)
What a cute picture of sketchie! What was the temperature you baked them at? Maybe it needed to be a bit higher. Also, i find if you use watery vegetables in the stuffing that happens. If that is the case, cook them to get rid of the water before stuffing the peppers.
I still need to make that Avocado pasta sauce…I’ve been eyeing it forever!
Good luck on your new server– hope there is no more crashing in your future. I don’t know if I can handle any more OhSheGlows withdrawals ;)
I’d love to hear what the recipe is for the pizza topping!! I love fruit pizzas in the summer :)
The photos are phenomenal, so even if it didn’t taste good, it all looked great!
I highly recommend the fruit pizza sauce that I linked to…its an avocado based one and super yummy with fruit pizza!
Oh my gosh I wish I had the time you do to experiment with recipes and have fun in your kitchen! All of these adventures look so fantastic, even if they didn’t turn out. It’s to bad you don’t have a dog, I’m sure he’s love some of your blogging mistakes, I know ours do!
Have to agree – hummus that has been thinned out a little bit with some sort of liquid is such an addictive dressing! I’ve also made your creamy avocado pasta sauce with lime before… and I added in cilantro to give it a Mexican flair. :)
So glad to hear you managed to recover your files from a crashed hard drive! Three cheers for Eric, I’d say, for doing it for not one but two hard drives. It’s so scary when that happens… and worse when it’s irreversible. :\ I have a tech savvy brother, and thanks to him I’ve become ten times more competent when it comes to computer stuff than I otherwise would have been. (Those techies are definitely unbelievably valuable treasures in today’s technology-dependent world, aren’t they?! I guess the more business-y term would be “assets”…)
Being able to access your site easier at peak times = just pure awesomeness. Thank you for going through all that trouble! :D
Cook the peppers and the filling separately :)– slice the peppers in half before you cook them
Uses an extra pan & is not quite as stuffed pepper-esque as you might have been imagining it, but it definitely works well!
My moms recipe for stuffed peppers takes raw rice in it, and she cooks them for a while in the oven with the tops on to and covered with foil so the liquid from the peppers and the tops and foil cook the rice.