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!
Your food is always so vibrant and beautiful!
I hear you on slurping dressing from the bowl. I can’t keep from dipping my fingers into your Lightened up Lemon Tahini dressing.
2 hard drives crashes in 24 hrs? That’s the techie gnomes being very mean. Glad you have recovered.
Don’t you hate it when the pictures are fabulous and the food isn’t! I sure do. Your cat is amazing, by the way.
Maybe cook the peppers some separately, so you don’t have to have the stuffing in the as long absorbing water.
ouch – that is a bad friday! you’d think it was a full moon or something.
for the peaches – it sounds like you may have sliced them too thin and/or cooked them too long. you have to get the grill really hot and just sear them for a min.
LOVE the idea of mixing the hummus with cider for a vinaigrette – i have some basil pesto hummus that sounds perfect for!
Too bad about that pizza, the pictures are making me drool right now! Do you add any sort of breadcrumb or binder to the stuffed pepper mix?
I use apple cider vinegar to condition my hair, but I might just have to take the bottle out of the shower to try out this instant hummus dressing you speak of. Would that be gross haha? Ok maybe I’ll buy a new bottle.
I think it really depends on the peaches you’re using. If they’re not very ripe yet then they stay better on the grill. Also in my family we don’t eat grilled peaches without ice cream so that could be what was missing ;)
These all look so tasty — and your photography is inspiring!
my husband always says “saturday is caturday!” so i looove your tagline!
i simply don’t like grilled fruit because fruit is supposed to be cold and fresh unless there is cobbler topping involved. perhaps that is what your brain is thinking too?
It’s totally freaking me out that someone else named Lindsay has already mentioned this (and just a couple comments ago), but I will second it – the not-ripe stone fruits I’ve found to work better grilled. The ones that you would wait a few days before eating. Also, thicker slices and ice cream would certainly help! :)
Have you ever made stuffed peppers in a slow cooker? That is the best way to cook them in my opinion- the slow and even heat cooks them to perfection every time! And they only cook about 4 hours as opposed to a soup or chili that would take 8. You can check out my favorite stuffed pepper recipe here: http://cocinaencantada.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/bell-pepper-stuffed-with-coconut-rice-black-beans-and-mango/
All of this food looks so yummy! I wish I had a solution for your watery bell peppers problem, but I do have a suggestion for the grilled peaches. I’ve done them before, and to keep them from turning into a hot, mushy mess you need to buy them suuuuper UN-ripe. They should be pretty hard, with little to no give, but still smell like a peach when you bring your nose near the unbroken skin.
If you get a chance to try grilling peaches again, please post about it! I would love to see if it works out :)
I don’t know how you cooked the filling, but my boyfriend’s mother gave me some hints on this. She sears them in a saute pan (on all four sides) with olive oil, then before stuffing them sprinkles salt in the insides to absorb the water. Also for the rice filling, cook it in a sauce pan with onions, slowly adding water spices etc. more like a risotto letting it absorb little by little and stop before it’s all the way cooked so it finishes in the oven. You can also seal the tops with oil so it crisps to a nice golden brown. I could eat stuffed peppers everyday. Hope you find the right balance.
when i make stuffed peppers i boil the peppers in water on the stove. just enough to soften them up a bit. then i make the filling. i put the filling in the cooked peppers then add layers of some sort of sauce. and put the sauce on top. then i eat them. never put them in the oven or anything like that.. mine are never watery! always good!
Your food photos always look sooo delicious! I’ve grilled peaches before — I think the trick is to grill them when they’re juuust short of ripe and still a tiny bit tart. I sliced mine up and grilled them on the George Foreman and they were deeelish.
I’m not sure if someone has already mentioned this or if you did this already, but when I make stuffed peppers I blanch them first, so they only need to cook a little longer in the oven to get all the flavours mixed. I’ve never had watery stuffed peppers that way.
Thanks!
Ahhhhh you gotta share that pesto recipe, I have parsley coming out of the wazoo. And the red pepper filling mmmmm looks so good! Maybe roasted the peppers before, fill, then re bake again?
That fruit pizza looks awesome! And so does the pepper…even if it didn’t taste great, presentation is pretty dang important :) have a lovely weekend!
I have been meaning to tell you for a while that one of my favorite things you do on your blog (other than your personality, obviously) is show that not every recipe is a total success. I love that, because up until the past couple of years, I felt like trial and error was just plain wrong, and recipe flops were the sign of a bad cook. It’s only been in the past year or so that I’ve been more willing to experiment in the kitchen, and since then, I’ve found so many new recipes that I love and I’ve tweaked some old ones to make them things that I now love. And even more shocking to me was the fact that once I started experimenting, THAT was when I started to love to cook.
You have a lot of amazing recipes here, so thanks for sharing the great ones. And thanks for showing us the times that they weren’t so great either.