Zucchini brownies

I made the King Arthur zucchini brownies recently. I liked how they turned out, but neither E or L liked them, so I brought them to share at work.

Blueberry muffin bread

I made this blueberry muffin bread for a Labor Day party. I didn’t have vanilla, so I subbed in maple flavoring. I really liked how it turned out. It went pretty quickly, so other people seemed to like it too.

GF Zucchini Bread

I had some zucchini I needed to use up and I wanted to make something gluten free so I could bring it to work to share. I found a GF zucchini bread recipe from the Power Hungry blog. I followed the recipe exactly, except I used dairy milk and forgot to add the vanilla. I was pretty happy with the texture of the final product, but it wasn’t sweet enough for me. I was trying to figure out how to incorporate honey as the sweetener instead of the coconut sugar. My gf coworker said she liked it, so that made me happy, but if I make it again, I’ll definitely change the sweetness up a bit.

Peaches! Preferred crisp recipe

I was able to get in on an order of a flat of peaches. The noon lions club does a fundraiser selling peaches and pears from Colorado in the summer. Once they were in and ripe and ready I had to figure out what to do with all of them!
They came on Tuesday, we ate a bunch, but they were ready for being used by Thursday and Friday, so Thursday night I made a gluten free peach crisp to bring to work. I used a recipe from Cookie and Kate. I followed the recipe pretty closely except I put it in a 9x13 pan, so I scaled the recipe by 1.5 to fill the pan generously.

Saturday was a very busy cooking day. In between literally running to the farmers market I made Smitten Kitchen’s peach butter and I adapted the Original plum torte recipe from the New York Times to use peaches.

For the peach butter, I used the instant pot to cook the peaches. I cooked at HP for 8min with a NR. I used about a half cup of water, but it would be better with much less. After the peaches were cooked, I used the immersions blender to purée everything. Then I added the sugar and lemon juice and set the IP to sauté. This part took the longest time, and it may have been better to transfer to the stove because I kept having to turn the sauté off because it was splattering so much. The end result was good. I ended up with three pint jars and stuck two in the freezer. If I had canning equipment, I would try to can it so as to not take up freezer space. Maybe next summer.

For the torte, I made the batter as called for, but I grated some ginger in. I used about four large peaches cut in at least 1/8 wedges which I arranged skinned side up in a large outer circle and smaller inner circle around the pan. I grated a bit more ginger on top. I was happy how it turned out. I thought it tasted like some Kuchens I’ve had in Germany. Not too sweet, but the cake was nice and buttery. E didn’t like it because it wasn’t sweet enough. The recipe does call for sprinkling sugar on top depending upon the sweetness of the peaches but I opted to not add more sugar. Oh well, more for me.

I have about 5 peaches left with lots of possibilities, so stay tuned!

Rice Cooker Mexican Rice

We had an impromptu dinner with my sister and threw together some burritos. I cooked some Rancho Gordo San Franciscano beans in the IP and also the standard refried beans for E, but the highlight was the rice. E requested Spanish/Mexican rice, so we searched for recipes online. My last attempt  at Spanish rice years ago was a bit of a flop that tasted way too tomato-y. I hadn't re-attempted since!
E found one recipe, but it didn't appeal to me. The directions used a microwave, which we don't have, and it said it would take 30-40 minutes. My sister found an Instant Pot recipe, but since the beans were still cooking, I decided to go rogue and just use the rice cooker. I thought it turned out pretty good and even E complemented the rice.

We roughly followed the recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch in terms of ingredients, but here are the details used:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1.5 Cups white rice, we just used the short-grain rice we normally have, didn't have long-grain rice
1/4 onion, this was probably about 1/4-1/3 cup finely diced
2 garlic cloves
2 large/Med-large tomatoes finely diced
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1/4-1/2 tsp salt or to taste
1/8-1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper or to taste
1 Tbsp cilantro finely chopped

1. Saute the rice, onion, and garlic in oil in a saute pan for about 3-5 minutes until the onion and garlic become soft.
2. Transfer rice mix to the rice cooker, add the tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, and pepper with enough water to cook -I added water up to the "2" line in the rice cooker bowl. It was probably about 1-1.5 cups of water.
3. Set rice cooker to regular rice setting, on our Zojirushi, it is Reg/Sushi setting, and press start.
4. When rice cycle finishes remove bowl from cooker, add cilantro, and mix. Add any salt or pepper to taste.

If you want to make it spicier, you could probably add in some chopped jalapenos with the tomatoes, but we had some spice-averse kiddos who would be eating as well.

IP Beans with Chorizo

This Budget Bytes recipe calls for pinto beans, but I used some Rancho Gordo Yellow Indian Woman beans and a half package of Trader Joe’s soy chorizo. This is ended up more like Chili than I was anticipating, but it was still pretty good! I would make this again!

Lemony White Bean and Arugula Salad

I have arugula growing like crazy so I found Giada’s Lemony White Bean and Arugula Salad. I used Rancho Gordo flageolets and honey in place of the cannalini and maple syrup. I skipped the capers, but missed the saltiness.
It kept in the fridge pretty well, but I probably won’t make this specific thing again.