Sunday, February 26, 2012

Pinterest changed my Life

Laugh all you want but many of you can say this. I have always enjoyed baking and some cooking. The cupcake craze plus my love of them had already gotten me to experimenting but Pinterest got me to work. This summer I started looking up recipes then the site went viral. Now I cook almost three emails a week from pins plus whatever baking I do along the way. I love all my other helpful boards but I am going to be in the kitchen before doing a DIY project. It may sound strange but I photograph some of my food because I keep them with the hand written recipe...found a cookbook project, pinned it and now making my own. I take more photos of dessert than real food but I am working omit. One I will share comes from my
Meatless Monday collection. It's quinoa stuffed red peppers.


Quinoa Stuffed Bell Peppers
adapted from Vegetarian Times

Ingredients:
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 ribs celery, finely chopped
1 8-oz. pkg. mushrooms, stems removed and saved for another use and caps sliced very thin
1/2 of a poblano pepper, diced
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 – 15 oz. cans diced tomatoes, drained, liquid reserved
1 – 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
3/4 cup quinoa
1 1/2 cups grated carrot
1 1/2 cups grated Pepper Jack cheese, divided
4 large red bell peppers, halved lengthwise, ribs removed
Directions:
Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and poblano pepper and cook 5 minutes, or until soft. Add cumin and garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Stir in mushrooms and drained tomatoes. Cook 5 minutes, or until most of liquid has evaporated.
Stir in quinoa, carrots, and 1 3/4 cups water. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 20 minutes, or until quinoa is tender. ( i just cook quinoa and carrots with veggies in a large deep skillet) Combine quinoa and carrots with black beans, 1 cup of cheese, and the onion mixture from the first step, . Season with salt and pepper, if desired.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Pour liquid from tomatoes in bottom of baking dish.
Fill each bell pepper half with heaping 3/4-cup quinoa mixture, and place in baking dish. Cover with foil, and bake 40 minutes. Uncover, and sprinkle each pepper with 1 tablespoon of remaining cheese. Bake 15 minutes more, or until tops of stuffed peppers are browned. Let stand 5 minutes. Transfer stuffed peppers to serving plates, and drizzle each with pan juices before serving.

Life Happened

Too much has happened this year to even consider recapping. In 2011 I turned the big 3-0 so the reality of getting older has set in and the reality of feeling old is a hard pill to swallow...I choke on it multiple times a day.
I am still a health but exercising freak but knees have almost put my running shoes on the shelf. The big turn around this past year was I got my parents on board and the two of them lost around a total of 100lbs. My mom turned 50 so she lost 50. Hopefully we all gained a few years of life!
I am still doing the same job and I love it more now than ever. The start of this school year was difficult but that just helps me see the progress. I have lots of new children and I love them dearly. For new readers I will explain that I don't talk about my job for confidentiality reasons but it is a big part of my life because of my coworkers and especially my children.
As I mentioned I am loving the iPad. My apps keep me buys from words with friends to my biggest life changer Pinterest. I learn something new every day and get lots of great ideas. More to come in future posts.
I tried to spend this past year being present in my life. 2010 was spent filling voids left behind so I made the effort to spend more time just being present and no blogging and really not much picture taking. One day I may forget it all but for now I am just keeping those memories within.

Hiatus

Can't believe it has been a little over a year since my last post. I could make excuses but really I have been pursuing some new interests. Well and my laptop bit the dust so my iPad has too many time wasting apps. I was introduced to the blogger app some time back but forgot that I downloaded it until a friend mentioned it in her blog post...thanks Lindsey! hopefully I will make more of an effort to catch my few readers up and maybe attract some new followers...come back for catch up posts