Biting off more than I can chew?

I usually spend Sundays cooking up yummy food for the week, it takes me most of the day, but it’s SOOOO worth it!  I’ve come to really love my time in the kitchen as well as the time and effort it takes to obtain quality ingredients.  Today, however, I was cooking up a Fabulous Feast of Fall Foods and it got a little out of hand…

1st up….a batch of applesauce.  Apples from the CSA fruit share, cut, peeled and put in the crock pot!

Next up were the beans for my Pumpkin Chili (I got a cooking pumpkin from the CSA this week and wanted to experiment).  Dry beans are cheaper and better than canned because canned foods contain BPA.  It’s quick and easy to soak/boil your own – just takes pre-planning. 

 

Finally it was time to tackle the pumpkin!  This pumpkin looked huge sitting on the counter waiting to be cooked!

 

It’s much easier to cut when you aren’t trying to salvage it for a jack-o-lantern! 

 

I was so excited that it all fit in the pot to steam!  I steamed it for about 20 minutes.

 

This next picture is after it was steamed, I know it looks the same as before!  The flesh was all cooked and it was super easy to cut the skin off!

 

While the pumpkin was steaming I whipped up some Egg Muffins for breakfast this week.  Usually I eat Steel Cut oats that I cook on Sunday and reheat but I have an insane amount of eggs from the farm so I made these.  I hope they are good!  I put mushrooms, broccoli, and green onions in each cup then poured in eggs, with a little milk (like scrambled eggs).

While the eggs were baking I cut the skin off the pumpkin and pureed it in the blender, here’s the finished product!  It was WAY more pumpkin than I needed for my chili (and I used double what the recipe called for too), so I put the rest in a seal-a-meal and froze it, I think I’ll make pumpkin soup in a few weeks!

 

Finally it was time for lunch!  I made this pasta last night, but it’s one of my favorite dishes these days!  It’s just left over veggies and pasta but it’s yummy! This time I sautéed some mushrooms, eggplant, onions, kale, and cherry tomatoes in about a tablespoon of olive oil.  I cooked the broccoli with the pasta and tossed it all together then put some parmesan cheese on it!

 

After spending a few hours cleaning out the closet and walking to Giant for more big trash bags, it was time to finish up the cooking! 

1st up was getting the chili started.  I decided to use my Polyface Ground Beef – soooo yummy, it doesn’t taste like meat & it didn’t smell while I cooked it!

 

While the meat was cooking the applesauce was cooling, I didn’t put any cinnamon in it, just apples in the crock-pot for about 5 hours.

 

This is a crappy picture of he chili, I meant to take a picture of it in the bowl but I forgot!  The corn is farm fresh as well!  The chili is yummy – the spices and the pumpkin give it a different flavor that is quite yummy!

 

While the soup was cooling I put together my lunch for tomorrow (this is what I’ll be eating most of the week – I have 2 all day meetings this week which mean I’ll likely eat out those days, boo.  I much prefer eating the yummy stuff I cook than going out!)

This is one of my favorite lunches – 1/2 a baked sweet potato with pecans & salt, salad – mix of 3 types of greens from the CSA (the red container has dressing – just olive oil & balsamic), fresh (still warm) applesauce with cinnamon on top & fat-free Greek Yogurt.  My snack this week will be Bosc Pears from the Farmer’s Market.

 

Finally, the last thing to do was to roast the pumpkin seeds.  I’ve never liked roasted pumpkin seed but I decided I should try – I could always throw them out after I roasted them!  I must not have had roasted pumpkin seeds done right because the ones I made are AMAZING!  I tossed the seeds with a teaspoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of garlic powder, and a teaspoon of salt.  It took forever to cook them, but it was worth it!!!!!  YUMMMY!

 

Usually I don’t attempt this many big projects, but I enjoyed the whole day and I’m so happy I have so many yummy, healthy, clean things to eat this week! :-)