The Only Good Thing About Yesterday...

was the ribs Mike made for the Gator game. I found this recipe a few years ago, but we don't make it as much anymore. Ribs are not exactly health food... but they sure are good! These are supposed to taste like the ribs from Applebee's, but I can't vouch for that because I've never had their ribs.

Mike used our first bit of home-grown produce to the barbecue sauce: a hot red pepper! It was exciting to use something we grew ourselves.

enjoying some homemade goodness.

Although it didn't help our luck, Sophie got a treat from the new pizza place that opened up across the street. They also make biscuits that look like pizzas, which she will be getting for her birthday!

"Ooooooooooooooooooh!"

Funny Sophie Picture


a combination of me balancing my Sunday dinner on my lap and Sophie licking her chops, hoping my balance is not so good.




and since you're curous: green salad, chili, and George-Foremanized grilled cheese.

Oh My!!

Yes we have been eating food here at the Wolfe house. I've even tried a few new things. I have no real excuse as to why I haven't been updating my food blog. I've been busy substitute teaching, and sometimes it's a stretch to get dinner on the table, and getting dinner on the blog is a very remote possibility. But anyhoo, here's what's been cooking:


Beef and veggie stir-fry with brown rice and a fruit salad. I got a delicious black bean and garlic stir-fry sauce from Importfood.com that makes me want to stir-fry everything! I was kind of in a stir-fry rut, so I was glad to find this product. I like to make stir-fry dishes because I can get away with a favorable vegetable:meat ratio.


Next up: last weekend, we went to the downtown Leesburg Farmer's Market and got some stuff for that night's dinner:


These are what the vendor called Cranberry Beans, I'm guessing because of the color. I had no idea what they were until I saw them shelled, then I realized they were pinto beans!

Here they are freshly shelled and ready to be cooked. As you can see, these are much more colorful then the dried variety you get at the grocery store.



On the table, with fresh grilled pineapple (brushed with honey and brown sugar). grilled chicken, and some baby carrots. This was a great meal! Very fresh tasting.


These are pumpkin bars from the latest Penzey's spices catalogue. My mom made these first and raved about them, and I had some canned pumpkin left over from the pumpkin cream cheese muffins, so I decided to give them a try. They have a browned butter icing on top.

I've never tried my hand at browned butter icing, but I must say that it was VERY rich. Almost too rich for my taste. The bar part was very good, but I think next time I'll try it with a cream cheese icing. To me, cream cheese and pumpkin go together like Gators and football!




Last night we had breakfast for dinner: waffles, hashbrown casserole, and a fruit salad of bananas, apples, and pineapple. The waffles were made with my all-purpose baking mix, but last time I made the mix I replaced half of the AP flour with whole-wheat flour. I think they still turned out well. I'm quite proud of the casserole; it's the first one I've made that turned out halfway decent. I always underestimate the cooking time!




And finally, the spoils from this morning's farmer's market:

Rome apples, very fragrant green onions, baby asparagus, whole wheat bread, and some handmade soaps.

A New Recipe

I am totally addicted to this new recipe, Parmesan Crusted Chicken. I tried it by itself the first time and it was delicious, but we've discovered it's even better on a salad! It's great cold or warm from the oven.



And as a bonus, my very first fall table:

Punkin' Crazy!

This time of year, I get the craving for everything pumpkin!! I saw these Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins in an old issue of Taste of Home my mom gave me and I just had to try them. Doesn't this picture make you want to lick the page?

The only downside of this recipe was the nutritionals. They taste great, but holy cow, TWO CUPS of sugar for twelve muffins? I cut it down to one and a half cups and still felt like I was coming off a sugar buzz after eating one. A total of three eggs doesn't help, either.

The other weird thing about this muffin was the fact that it says it makes 24 muffins, but I wound up with twelve. I might have been able to stretch it out to 16, but there was no way I could have made 24. Yet I had enough of the filling to make twelve dozen of these babies!

These muffins are good, but I think I'll mosey on over to Dee's Eating at Home? and see if her recipe is a little less guilt-inducing.

We've continued to enjoy some cooler weather here in Florida, even though it's been accompanied by LOTS of rain. It's nice to use my oven again! Mike and I went to Sam's Club last week and got a bunch of meat for our new freezer (did I mention we got a deep freezer? We got a deep freezer). We got ground beef, two packages of boneless skinless chicken breasts, frozen vegetables, and pork tenderloin, all of which got repackaged into individual servings and frozen. I've already used lots of it, such as these meat loaves, topped with a sauce made of ketchup and Chinese oyster sauce.


Another use for the ground beef: meat sauce over whole grain pasta with a Tuscan Garlic Loaf from Publix. We had a salad with this meal, too. I decided to include such a simple meal because I needed to rave about the BREAD. Oh my goodness, this bread was amazing. There were whole garlic cloves in it, which were soft from the baking process. If you love garlic half as much as I do, go buy this bread NOW!


When I browned the beef for the pasta sauce, I made extra for tonights dinner; soft tacos.
As you can see, everyone was excited about tonight's dinner! We were in for a surprise when we starting eating, though. I made the taco meat the same way I usually do, but I used cumin from Penzey's spices for the first time. A word to the wise: cumin from Penzey's is a LOT stronger than the stuff you get at the store. That stuff should come with a warning label. Of course, I'm a spice wimp, but even Mike thought it was extra spicy!