In the Kitchen

This last week was a good week for cooking. I feel like I haven't done much of that since I moved into my new apartment, for whatever reason (maybe partly because Kelsey is gone now and I don't have someone other than myself to cook for on any kind of regular basis). As much as I love grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, and chicken and hummus wraps (which have been my staples for the last two months), I've been thinking I ought to reintroduce some variety into my diet. I also decided that it might actually be cheaper to cook (since I'm on a tight budget right now) - if I'm eating leftovers all week, I'm not eating out, and am therefore (in theory) saving money.

This past week I made spaghetti (easy) and chicken-broccoli-rice casserole (also easy) - no recipe required for either of them. But I also got to try out a few new recipes for one reason or another, and I thought I'd share them here.

Acorn Squash
I'm not sure this actually qualifies as a recipe. When I swung by the grocery store on Monday to pick something up, they had squash on sale and since it was fall break and I was in a fall mood, I decided to try baking acorn squash to go with my dinner. As long as you have a decent knife, it's pretty simple - just cut the squash in half and scrape out the seeds, then place both halves face-down in a baking dish filled 1/2-inch with water. Bake it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes and you're ready to go. You can scrape it out of its skin and eat it with a little bit of butter and brown sugar, and a dash of nutmeg (that's the important part). One acorn squash makes about four servings - good stuff.

Three-Ingredient Pumpkin Cake with Allspice Cream Cheese Frosting
Our Enrichment dinner group had its first meeting on Thursday, and the theme was Fall Favorites. I finally gave up on trying to find a fall-themed recipe that didn't involve pumpkin (not because there weren't any out there, but because most of them would require time and ingredients that I didn't have). The cake turned out really good, though, and the frosting was amazing. The original cake recipe was called Two-Ingredient Pumpkin Cake, but so many of the reviewers recommended adding two eggs that I decided to follow the recommendation. Maybe someday I'll try to make the cake without the eggs and see how it turns out, but the egg version was delicious.

Three-Ingredient Pumpkin Cake
1 package spice cake mix
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 13x9-inch baking pan. In large bowl, mix together spice cake mix, pumpkin, and eggs until well-blended. Spread evenly into prepared pan (batter will be thick). Bake for 25 minutes in preheated oven. Let cool, and then frost, if desired.

Allspice Cream Cheese Frosting
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup butter or margarine
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
4 cups confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk

In a medium bowl, blend the cream cheese, butter, and allspice. Gradually mix in the confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and milk until the mixture is spreadable

Cheddar-Garlic Biscuits
This one came about because I needed something to go with the chicken-broccoli-rice casserole, and because I had half a 99-cent box of Bisquick to use up (I bought the box for pancakes awhile back, but I almost never use Bisquick). The Cheddar-Garlic Biscuits sounded slightly fancier than regular biscuits, and my roommate swore they tasted just like the famous Red Lobster version (I cannot verfiy this because I've only had those once, but the biscuits were pretty good). And amazingly enough, the biscuits were still good the next day, too.

Cheddar-Garlic Biscuits
2 cups Bisquick
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons margarine or butter, melted
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Mix together Bisquick, cheese, and milk. Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown. Meanwhile, combine butter or margarine and garlic powder. Brush over warm biscuits.

Macaroni and Cheese with Butternut Squash
The theme of this week's ward mingle was "Secret Ingredient Sunday". I wanted to make tomato soup cake, but decided not to partly because I had made a spice cake earlier in the week, and partly because we usually have an overabundance of desserts at ward mingles. But I recalled an article I read earlier in the week about a recent study on children who are picky eaters. Part of the article talked about recipes that "trick" kids into eating their vegetables - like macaroni and cheese with pureed butternut squash mixed in. This seemed like a nice secret ingredient recipe. In reality, I don't know that the squash really adds anything (maybe not even much in the way of additional nutrients, either) but it was fun to try, and I thought it was pretty good as far as homemade macaroni and cheese goes.

Macaroni and Cheese with Butternut Squash
1 1/2 cups elbow macaroni
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 cup butternut puree (I used a couple small jars of baby food)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
4 ounces cream cheese (supposedly you can use the reduced fat versions of both cheeses, but I didn't try that this time)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add macaroni, and cook according to package directions until al dente. Drain in a colander.

While macaroni is cooking, coat a large saucepan with cooking spray and heat over medium heat. Add the oil, then the flour, and cook stirring constantly until the mixture resembles a thick paste, but has not browned, 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the milk and cook, stirring every now and then, until the mixture begins to thicken, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the squash puree, cheddar, cream cheese, and seasonings, and stir until cheese is melted and sauce is smooth. Stir in macaroni and serve warm.

(The mixture congeals as it cools, as a I learned after hauling it all the way over to the Institute building, but it still tasted good, it just looked funny.)