Meatless Monday: Red Wine Marinated Mushrooms

We have a few bottles of red wine hanging around the apartment, and it turns out that when you cook mushrooms in red wine, they come out delicious.

Ingredients:

• Mushrooms - we didn't use enough, because Mr. Barefoot always forgets how much they cook down. I would use about 20 next time, or really, the entire box.
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 1/2 cups red wine (or just pour until they are covered. You can also add some water.)

Procedure:

1. Slice and prep mushrooms.
2. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat.
3. Saute mushrooms in butter until soft and cooked. Add garlic and cook for until garlic is slightly cooked.
4. Pour in red wine. Allow to come to a boil, then simmer.
5. Simmer until wine becomes a thick sauce (5-10 minutes).

We had ours over salmon, but they would be fantastic with just about anything, or just served over cous cous or rice. Or risotto. Man that would be amazing.

On the Horizon

It's that time of year - no, not my usual pre-thanksgiving franticity, but pre-finals time. Time to focus on school and not making interesting new meals. So I end up making lists of foods I want to try, and putting them on the back burner for winterbreak. No surprise that a lot of them are types of mac & cheese.

So what's on the list?

Beer Mac & Cheese

Apple Mac & Cheese (omg it's gonna taste like the melting pot. And I'll probably try this sooner because apples are still in season.)
Leek Mac & Cheese

Pesto lasagna

Carmelized onion & feta sandwiches

also a Winter Lager Soup in a cookbook given to me by Z3P.

I also want to work on perfecting my pizza crust recipe. The one I'm using is pretty good, but it doesn't produce quite enough dough.

I would also like to start making myself breakfast burritos. I had one recently that was extremely delicious. They might be a good finals attempt, since they are quick and easy, and a good way to get nutrients, and will hold me over while I sit in the library for 5 hours.

What kind of cooking goals do you have?

More Pumpkinspiration

I posted awhile ago about pumkin lasanga. A few weeks ago, Mr. Barefoot's friend came over and we attempted pumpkin lasagna. Verdict? It was pretty good. Definitely a B+ meal.
We used this recipe, and it was good. (Plus, no bake lasagna noodles may be the greatest invention ever.) It was a little mild for my taste, and I like my lasagna to have the ricotta and sauce mixed together. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but maybe something a little more like my sweet potato mac & cheese. Like I said yesterday, I currently have 3 pumpkins, plus another 2 cups of pumpkin puree in my freezer, so there's a lot of room for experiment. I want to try a pumpkin mac & cheese, and also these.
We also had a pumpkin soup at the wedding over the weekend, and that was amazing.

Menu Planning

This weekend, we did something we haven't done in a long time. We bought groceries, we came home, and we did most of the prep-work for a week's worth of meals. Together. Which was really fun.
I'm not sure, honestly, how well everything is going to keep. But for right now, we have four meals in tupperware containers. Plus, we are trying two new recipes this week! Hopefully, I can remember to write about them on time, and to offer pictures.
What's on the menu?
Salmon with CousCous
Seitan Chili (which Mr. Barefoot is going to make, and has named "devilishly hot seitan chili")
New Potato Curry
Sweet Potato Tacos

Additionally, my cousin got married over the weekend and the decor from the wedding included several small pumpkins, which were given to guests at the end of the night. I took three. (In my defense, there were 9 leftover...it's not like I was taking them from other people.) I want to try making this, but we are with Mr. Barefoot's family this weekend and everything I ever cook at their house ends up being an unmitigated disaster. So this brings my next question - how long do pumpkins keep for?

Butternut squash bean bake.

I'm on my own for a few days, as Mr. Barefoot is out of town. I'm eating up the rest of my Costco butternut squash and found this recipe. I've adapted it slightly and added beans, onions, and spices.

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs butternut squash, clean and cubed

1 small onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 can cannelini beans

1/2 cup parmesean cheese, grated.

Italian spices

salt

pepper

Olive oil

Procedure

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2) Heat olive oil in a small pan, saute garlic and onions until soft/transparent.

3) Combine squash, spices, oil, beans, and onions and garlic in a bowl. Toss until coated.

4) Pour mixture into a bowl and cover with parmesean cheese.

5) Cook for 50 minutes.

Verdict:

This was good, but make sure to cube the squash a lot smaller. The stuff on the bottom was great, but the stuff on the top did not cook well. I also added about a half cup of half and half towards the end (last ten minutes), and that helped a lot. I also tossed on some mozzerella cheese. I would wait to add the parm until the last 10 minutes.

Cheating.

I want to eat all good, local ingredients. I want to make the sensible financial decisions. I want to make delcious, transcendant meals. But sometimes, you just can't.
Today I'm trying to make this using this recipe. Reader C. sent me the recipe as a possible thing to do with a pumpkin, but since I already mashed my pumpkin up, I decided to just buy butternut squash.
Have you ever tried peeling a butternut squash by the way? It's very very hard. So I totally took the easy, cheating way out. I bought 2lbs of pre-cubed butternut squash at Costco. I used about a quarter of it for this, meaning I have plenty left for Moroccan spice butternut squash and butternut squash soup.
Yeah, it's cheating and it's not local and it's probably kind of expensive (I think I see BNS for $3 at the farmer's market, but arguably, this is two squashes worth and so $6 is pretty reasonable.) But I just made risotto in 5 minutes. It probably won't taste like transcendance in a bowl, but it probably will taste pretty darn good. I'll let you know.

Link Love

I don't read a lot of cooking blogs. I don't know why I don't, except that a fair number of them are very meat-y. Also, some of them with their obnoxiously good food photography are scary. My food? Does not look like that.
But just this morning, loyal reader and high school friend C. has turned me onto Cheap Healthy Good. And within 5 minutes of perusing it, I found like, 12 new recipes I Must Try.
Mr. Barefoot reads food blogs. Then he sends me links to things he, or I, or we, should make. Then we don't. He turned me on to Crockpot 365, which is great. But I simply do not have the energy to peruse a dozen food blogs. I read blogs written by people who like to cook (i.e. That Wife) but I don't really have a good store of food blogs.
So share your link love! What are your favorite food blogs? Are any of them vegetarian or pescatarian or vegetarian allies (i.e. make some meat free meals?)