COOKING UP A STORM

For a few days over the course of the past week it's been rainy and cold in NoCal. This is my absolute most favorite weather. You'd think I'm a summer baby what with all of our trips to Hawaii but no. I love a good storm. What I also love to do is fire up the stove when it's cold & dreary outside - so it's warm and cozy inside. 

I recently made quite a few new dishes:

• Pot Roast with Mushrooms in a Cream Marsala Sauce - the pot roast probably could have cooked for another couple of hours (it'd already been on the stove for 2.5) for hte meat to get as tender as I would have liked it, but I need to eat before 8 p.m. or else I have GI issues at night so we ate when it was time to eat instead of when it was optimal to eat. The pot roast was okay. I didn't love the flavor of the meat, but I didn't hate it either. The mushrooms were as great as ever. Instead of tarragon I used sage and it was a nice compliment. 

• Gluten-free Almond Joy Bars - I found this recipe on Elana's Pantry, a new to me blog, late last week. I shared it on Google Reader for Alan and a couple of our friends that have gone Paleo/Primal. Alan responded within minutes that we had to try it so I cooked up a batch on Saturday night before heading out to our friend's party. We cut into it yesterday morning and while good, I think the batter tasted better than the final product (if that makes any sense). These bars turned out more cake-like than I had anticipated and the almond flavor was a bit too overwhelming for me. Also, despite cooking it for the required time, I felt like our chocolate never really melted to the consistency that I would have liked. I'm sure I'll make these again but I'll probably make a couple of modifications to the recipe.

• World's Best Tomato Sauce - I used to read a blogger back in the day but I can't remember her name or what her site was. What I do remember is that she advertised the world's best tomato sauce and she was not lying. And it's super easy to boot! I used the next-to-last tomatoes from last week's harvest plus a full head of garlic to create what amounted to one full bell jar of spicy, garlicky tomato sauce. I think we'll use it on a batch of zucchini lasagna or something this week. 

• Homemade Coffee Creamer(s) - This afternoon at lunch I tackled the recipe for the cinnamon streusel and pumpkin spice varieties of homemade coffee creamer found online at Deliciously Organic. They're not completely carb free but they are all natural, using maple syrup as the sweetener. I've been using sugar-free vanilla syrup from Torani and y'all know anything that is sweet and "sugar-free" is made from nasty ass chemicals so I feel okay with the trade off on this one. The cinnamon one (on the right) was the more successful of the two because it was easier. The pumpkin spice recipe called for pureed pumpkin so I baked my own pumpkin but I don't know how I feel about the puree verus Starbucks' fake pumpkin flavor. It's decided more real, but also more squashy. I'm thinking that the next time I make it I might just skip the pumpkin puree altogether and use cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg to give the spice part a whirl.

And now I've got pretty much a full pumpkin on my hands. I'm definitely going to roast the seeds. And I think I might try making this pumpkin custard from Nourished Kitchen.

Finally, after successfully making something with coconut & almond flour I have plans to make this Paleo Banana bread recipe, but I'm going to switch things up and make a zucchini bread using the monster I picked off the vine on Saturday.