Cilantro garlic butter, my busy kitchen and week two of my trip.

As promised I am posting the recipe for this cilantro garlic butter. It makes just about everything taste better, so far I have had it on toasted French bread, beet greens, steak, pasta...yum !
It's very simple, the only trick is to be sure your butter is soft. To make this vegan use Earth Balance instead of butter.

 Cilantro Garlic Butter

Ingredients

1/2 cup soft butter
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped

1) Start by whizzing the peeled garlic cloves in your mini-food processor.
2) Add the fresh chopped cilantro. Whiz that a bit.

3) Add the soft butter and whiz some more until it's fairly smooth. It's doesn't have to be pureed.

4) Scrap into a small bowl and store in the fridge, try not to eat it on EVERYTHING :-)

I have been busy in my kitchen lately, I do spend a lot of time there. Cooking food from scratch is my default mode, I have come to realize.
Continuing with the winter squash theme, I made a pumpkin pie out of the rest of my frozen squash. Just remember to turn the oven down from 425 F to 350 F after the first 15 minutes...I forgot and while the pie is long gone, it was a bit brown on top.

One night I was feeling lazy so I took some pesto from the freezer for pasta. It was some I made this summer with almond pulp instead of other nuts or seeds and froze without the cheese. I do like it this way better.

With some locally grown and processed chorizo, I made chili the other day. What a great fall meal, served with my cornbread muffins. I threw the almond pulp from my almond milk into the muffins and it added a nice texture.

I got really ambitious and made my vegetable Wellington tonight. I was a bit lazy about draining all the liquid from the vegetable so it was a bit sloppy. It still tasted great and was a good paring with the flat iron steak we grilled, much like we do our flank steak.

To warm up the kitchen in the morning I baked apples, great smells and yummy to eat with hot cereal in the morning.


Here is week 2 of our latest road trip:

Day 8: Crazy found art sculptures in someone's yard in Hanksville, UT.

Day 9: Striped Mountain near the Henry Mountains, great place to find 200,000,000 year old petrified wood.

Day 10: Our campfire by Oowah Lake in the LaSal Mountians outside on Moab UT.

Day 11: We hiked to Warner Lake in the La Sal Mountains, UT.

Day 12: Red sandstone canyons in Colorado.

Day 13: T-shirt seen in a visitor's center on I-70 in Colorado.

Day 13: Genevieve on a hike outside the Mount grandparents cabin in Eldora, CO.

Day 14: Princess KitKat, roommate of the senior Mounts in Boulder, CO.

What's been happening in my kitchen lately and a week of photos from my trip.

I have been thinking of a way to share my most recent trip and still post about food. This latest adventure was not really about food so instead I'll combine it with what I cooked once I got home.

With all the winter squash we grew this year, I knew I had to use up the frozen squash from my freezer, sooner than later. I decided on my spicy squash soup, wow, it was great. The first night I served it with crusty French bread and some excellent garlic cilantro butter, I concocted at the last minute. That butter with fresh cilantro is so good, I will make it again, take photos and post about it soon.

Since I usually make about a half gallon of soup for the whole week, we had it again last night with fresh spring rolls. I usually make these myself ahead of time. I was inspired by my sister-in-law Marty, who served them as a "roll you own" meal while we were in Lakewood. I like not having to do all the work !!

My always-moist-pork chops were an easy dinner after a day doing piles of laundry.

With the cooler nights finally here, I revisited my gourmet mac and cheese, adding sauteed mushrooms and chard, topping it with the almond pulp from my homemade almond milk. It was so good, Bob couldn't stop eating it, luckily I made a large pan, so there will be another dinner there served with a large green salad.

Blogging about a three week road trip after the fact can be long, painful and tedious. I decided instead to break it into week segments with a photo for each day, photos I haven't already posted on Facebook. Here is week 1, enjoy !!

Day 1:An artsy shot of the shoe tree on highway 50 in Nevada.

Day 2: Fall colors on the road up to Wheeler Peak at Great Basin National Park.

Day 3: Taking a moment to commune with an ancient Bristlecone pine, it smells like honey.

Day 4:We saw lots of wild turkeys on this trip, too bad Ben Franklin couldn't convince anyone they should be our national bird.

Day 5: Driving through the San Rafael Reef, is always a dramatic experience.

Day 6: Our camping spot in the Henry Mountains.

Day 7: The Henry Mountains are known for the very large mule deer.