Carrot Talk

I mentioned earlier that the husband and I were trying to go through our carrots before they started to show signs of fridge age.  We are done!  I'm happy to say it was a nice little adventure.  Here are a few of shots from our creativity.

    

This is my husband's creation.  Doesn't look like it would be all that great but I can assure you it was.  It's pureed raw carrots with vinegar, oil, salt and pepper.  He always serves it with fresh onion and tomato.  In this one he added sardines on top.  I let him have the sardines.

I used the leftover for my lunch along with roasted chicken and veggies.  The bottle has carrot/grapefruit/ginger juice.



Not to be outdone, I found a box of Jiffy Oatmeal muffin mix in the pantry.  Now folks, I don't care to use a mix for baking and this just happened to be a try at easy once upon a time.  It didn't make the cut with the original contents.  I decided to add grated carrots, nuts, cranberries, wheat germ and coconut.  They turned out pretty darned good!  So, go on ahead and get yourself a $.75 box of mix and toss in some things for a just-like-scratch muffin. 

I went a step further and made soup for lunch.  OK...so I forgot to do a lunch the night before and had 10 minutes to throw something together before work.  I ended up with a ceramic mug,a pureed carrot, a 1/4 cup of leftover canned pumpkin, half a chicken bouillon cube, onion and garlic powder, red pepper flakes and olive oil and water.  When I got to work, I just put it all in the mug and popped it in the microwave. It smelled awesome and was delicious!  No one believed it was a last minute idea.  Needless to say, I had the ladies there asking me to post a recipe on the community board. 

I used our final carrot in a stuffed pepper for dinner.  I don't usually follow a recipe which is why I don't post them but I will try my best on this one because I used this recipe as a guide.

I had to use substitutions because I didn't exactly have all the ingredients the recipe called for.

This was the result.  The husband added baked fish and attieke.  I think it was a nice marriage between the two dishes.

Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 T olive oil
1 rib celery, finely chopped
1/2 T ground cumin
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 (10 oz) pkg frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry.
1 C fresh tomatoes, chopped or (15 oz canned, reserving liquid)
1 1/2 C beans (I used black and chickpeas)
1/2 C quinoa
1 large carrot, grated
1 C water
3/4 C reduced fat cheese (I used leftover cheddar and mozzarella)
salt and pepper to taste
2 red or orange bell peppers , halved and ribs removed.

Heat oil in saucepan over med heat. Add onion and celery and cook until soft. Add cumin and garlic. Stir in spinach and tomatoes.

Stir in beans, quinoa, carrots and water. Bring to a boil and cover. Reduce heat and simmer about 20 minutes or until quinoa is tender. Stir in 1/2 of cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To bake:
Preheat oven to 350. Pour liquid from tomatoes in baking dish. I opted for leftover spaghetti sauce since I used fresh tomatoes instead of canned.

Fill each pepper with mixture and place in baking dish. Cover with foil and bake 1 hour. Uncover and sprinkle each pepper with remaining cheese. Bake 15 minutes more until tops of stuffing is browned. Let stand before serving. Drizzles each with pan juices before serving.

This should be the end of the carrot talk.  It was a nice run.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures!