Andrea’s Recipes

I always feel so elegant when eating crepes, even if I’m tres casual at the time. We’ve enjoyed them on several occasions since trying the wonderful recipe in The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, and each time I glanced at my herb garden, thinking about adding herbs to the batter and making some savory crepes. After I stumbled across this recipe at Epicurious, I knew I had to make it.

The crepes are slightly crispy when they come out of the oven topped with grated Parmesan, and you just pour on that slightly spicy sauce and serve. It’s one of those dishes that’s great for company because you can prepare the crepes and sauce a day or two ahead, then whip up the filling just before assembling and baking. As someone who is fond of baked manicotti, I found this much easier because you don’t have to stuff the pasta and worry about it breaking. The crepes roll up around the ricotta filling and go in and out of the pan easily. Michael said, “Wow!” when I plated them and kept saying how good they tasted. I guess the flavorful crepes made him feel pretty special, too.

This is my entry for this month’s Grow Your Own event. The fresh basil and parsley came from our indoor herb garden. When bell peppers are in season, you can use those instead of the spinach in the filling, and of course fresh tomatoes straight from the garden will taste delicious in the sauce.

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Pasta Primavera Continue Reading »

Tags: crepes, herbs

It’s May and I want to dream about picnics and cooking outdoors. We thought summer was well on it’s way when temperatures climbed into the 80s a couple weeks ago, then we were startled with the cold front that came through yesterday bringing lots of rain and dropping temperatures back into the 40s. Everything is damp and the chill in the air makes for perfect soup weather, especially if it’s a little spicy like this one I warmed up for lunch. It tastes great with a slice of cornbread on the side or crumbled in the bowl, and makes me feel all warm inside. I needed that pick-me-up as I watched a river run through our backyard, cutting a swath in the garden. At least it wasn’t in the house! Maybe the mud pit will dry out enough that we can finish planting this weekend.

I like to make this soup in the slow cooker because it is so easy for a busy day, or even for overnight. The ham bone goes in for lots of flavor, but if you want a vegan option then skip the bone and use a rich homemade vegetable stock instead of water. Also, if you add the salt late rather than the beginning of the cooking process, the beans will be more tender, so hold that salt!

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Tags: peppers, slow-cooker

First things first: there’s still time to enter the Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas cookbook give away! Visit the original post and tell us about your favorite pizza toppings to enter!

The dessert pizza with the cinnamon and ice cream was delicious, but then so were the savory pizzas we made. I chose to top one with a homemade tomato sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil from our indoor garden (photo below), a pizza I knew the boys would like, and the other was based on The Biancan pizza recipe in the book with a few differences. This white pizza (photo above) is brushed with herb- and garlic-seasoned olive oil, sprinkled with Parmesan, and topped with sauteed spinach, mushrooms, red onion, roasted garlic, feta, and a sun-dried tomato pesto that we make every year with our homegrown basil. The boys snubbed the white pizza, but Michael and I really liked it.

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Tags: cheese, cookbooks, grilling

Aren’t these cool looking? I am lucky to have the talented Jeff Meyers as my brother-in-law. The man is an artist, illustrator, musician, cake decorator, writer, and all around stand-up guy. He does it all and all his kids are musically gifted, too. It’s like being related to the von Trapp family! Seriously, he’s done a great job putting together some very nice logos for Grow Your Own and he’s doing some more work for Andrea’s Recipes, so this site should take on a more polished look in the coming weeks. A big thank you and props to Jeff, and I highly recommend his services.

So go ahead, grab a new badge for your next Grow Your Own post! I’ve posted them below as well as at the Grow Your Own page.

BADGES (200 pixels wide)

SMALLER BADGES (good for sidebars, 150 pixels wide)

I wish I could come home after picking up the kids from school and have time to cook a nice meal. I long for a calm, zen-like cooking experience each day, but instead I find myself chasing after my sons who prefer to run amok, trying to keep them from raiding the refrigerator and the pantry even though I fed them a snack as soon as we got home. We had to put locks on to keep the Three Amigos from eating us out of house and home. Yesterday’s meal was supposed to happen on Monday, but the events of the day and the constant distractions left me disorganized and frustrated at dinner time and I pulled out some leftover pasta sauce and boiled some spaghetti. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact spaghetti with tomato sauce and/or meatballs is Michael’s favorite meal, but I had a grilling recipe up my sleeve for Cinco de Mayo which I had to grudgingly postpone.

I thought I could start some of the prep for dinner on Tuesday morning, but Monday night we remembered Top Gun, our three-year-old, had a project due for school the next day and I needed to finish some prep work on that before we could do it in the morning. So Tuesday morning was spent cutting photos and pasting them memory-book style onto a piece of paper describing his favorite things, and then we wrote our story about Spike’s visit (Spike is the class mascot, a stuffed kangaroo) and pasted more pictures onto that story. Continue Reading »

Tags: fish, fruit, grilling, herbs, spices