Sunday, August 25, 2013

Food, Glorious Food!

I hadn't been to the farmers' market in Auburn, about 30 minutes east of Sacramento, since last fall, so I thought I'd head that way this morning.  I find the Auburn market tends to have a few more interesting things than the Sacramento farmers' markets I usually visit (although our large one downtown is also good for finding unusual things--maybe next weekend!).

Because I picked out early variety tomatoes to grow in our garden this year, they're near the end of their season and not producing like they did in July.  Still, I want to stock the freezer with a few more batches of roasted tomatoes before the summer harvest is done, so I purchased some tomatoes and roasted them later in the afternoon today--yum!

I also visited the mushroom stand and picked out two nice, big portobello mushrooms.  Hubby's not normally content to eat a dinner without meat--unless it's a big dish of mac 'n cheese--but I thought I'd see if I could cook something that would make both of us happy, and I found the perfect recipe:  Cheese and Spinach Stuffed Portobellos.  They tasted like lasagna or pizza--something deliciously excellent like that.


This is a photo I grabbed from the website and not my own, although ours looked pretty much the same.  If you might be interested in the recipe, click HERE.  I used the roasted tomatoes I made--that I roasted with onions, garlic, basil, and a few other spices--in place of the marinara sauce in the recipe.  These stuffed mushrooms were filling AND only 200 calories a serving.  We also had an avocado and tomato Caesar salad.

What else did I bring home from the market?  Well a bag of tomatillos and a few jalapeno peppers made a nice Mexican green sauce; I think I'm going to use it in chicken enchiladas tomorrow.  And peaches became a low fat version of peach cobbler.  I also scored a bag of padron peppers--I'm going to share those with a friend.  I had my first batch last year and, frankly, they were the main reason I headed back to the Auburn farmers' market!  All quite yummy!

So, for the most part, I spent my Saturday engaged in food-related activities.  But I finally got into the Sweat Shop Saturday evening, where I cut another 300 scrappy squares for the Pie in the Sky quilt.


This gives me 900 squares and I think I need somewhere between 1000 and 1200, so I'll keep cutting next week.  And maybe I'll do a little bit of counting again too, because I don't suppose it would be a good idea to end up with a couple hundred extra scrap squares.

3 comments:

Judy in Michigan said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCSoljKnqU
Now that you've cut a million 2.5" squares, check out this youtube. I'm not sure what you'll do with your squares, but this method uses 5" squares to make scrappy 4patches. Good thing to know in the future.

Sandy said...

We're so on the same wavelength Kim, making salsas and roasting tomatoes! I also grow much of my own, but do frequent our excellent farmers markets here on the Monterey Bay. That porabello recipe is just what I've been looking for, for another meatless meal option. Thanks for that.

Cutting all those squares can be tedious, but what fun it will be putting them all together. I look forward to seeing what you make!

Happy Quilting to you!

Deb@asimplelifequilts said...

I admire your ability to cut everything first... I almost always break down and start sewing them together midway!