Learn to Stamp and Scrap with Lynn Larson

RECIPE: Warm Steak and Potato Salad

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com.  Really good and different!  The salad dressing is fabulous.  You might want to make that on your own for other salads as well.

Ingredients

• 1 pound new potatoes
• 1 pound beef sirloin steak
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 8 cups mixed baby salad greens
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2 tablespoons minced shallot
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon

Directions

1. Place potatoes into a pot, and fill with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook until tender but still firm, about 10 minutes. Drain and cover to keep warm.
2. Preheat oven to broil or preheat a grill for medium-high heat. Season both sides of steak with salt and pepper. Broil or grill steaks for 6 to 8 minutes per side, or to desired doneness.
3. Meanwhile, whisk together oil, vinegar, mustard, and tarragon for dressing; season dressing to taste with salt and pepper.
4. Divide greens, tomatoes, and shallots among 4 plates. Cut warm, unpeeled potatoes into quarters; slice steak into 1/4 inch thick strips. Top salad greens with steak and potatoes; drizzle dressing over salads. Serve warm.

Enjoy!  Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Lynn Larson - www.learntostampandscrap.com

 

Recipe: Stuffed Zucchini Boats

This summer has just been flying by right before my eyes.  The garden has been producing TONS of green and yellow beans, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, blueberries and fresh herbs.  I have been really busy cooking, blanching, freezing and making homemade sauce using fresh tomatoes.  I LOVE having my freezer stocked with these fresh goodies over the winter but making it all up as the veggies are ready is very time consuming.  Not much time for anything else (like posting to my blog).

Anyway, I do have crafty things to share since I have been doing a bunch of craft fairs this year.  Today, however, I am going to post my Stuffed Zucchini Boat Recipe.  I have had some of you ask me about the recipe so I thought I would share it here instead of trying to individually email it out to everyone.  So, here it goes:

STUFFED ZUCCHINI BOATS

4 medium zucchini (can use squash too)

1 lb. ground beef or lamb

1 small onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tsp. oregano leaves (I use fresh oregano from the garden)

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp. pepper

¼ c. grated Parmesan cheese

10 ¾ oz. can condensed tomato soup

1 c. (4 oz.) grated Mozzarella cheese

Heat oven to 375º.  Cut off stem end of zucchini.  Cut zucchini in half lengthwise; scoop out seeds and pulp (reserve pulp) leaving ¼” shell.  In medium skillet, brown ground beef, onion, garlic and oregano; drain excess fat.  Add chopped zucchini pulp, Parmesan cheese, ¼ of soup, salt and pepper.  Arrange zucchini shells in 13 x 9” pan.  Spoon meat mixture into shells.  Spoon remaining soup over top; sprinkle with additional Parmesan cheese.  Bake covered with foil at 375º for 35 minutes or until zucchini are tender.  Sprinkle grated Mozzarella cheese over zucchini.  Return to oven and bake 5 minutes.

Makes 6-8 servings.

These are just delicious!  I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do.

_____________________________________________________________________

I always use recipes as a guide and then modify them to my liking.  Here are some changes that I make to this recipe:      

1.  I add fresh oregano to the mixture when I am mixing in the soup.  I don’t used dried oregano and cook it with the ground beef as the recipe suggests.

2.  I always add more onion and garlic than the recipe calls for.  Just add as much as you like to suit your taste.

3.  I add all the soup to the meat mixture once and it comes out the same and saves a step.

4.  I make this using both squash and zucchini since they are both ready from the garden at the same time. 

5.   I double this recipe and make two huge pans of zucchini boats. 

When they cool, I wrap them individually first in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil before putting them into a freezer bag and freezing them for future use.  When I need them, I just take them out of the freezer, unthaw them and heat them up.  I usually serve mine up with a large batch of rice.  Delish!

Enjoy!

Lynn Larson - www.learntostampandscrap.com

Weekly Organization Tip - Sunday, February 8, 2009

Man how time flies!  It is time for another weekly organization tip.  I just love these tips because they help me to focus on keeping my life sane and organized.  From what I have been hearing, a lot of you really like these tips as well.  So, back to getting organized.  Today's "sanity" tip is for meal planning.  I like to make large batches of homemade meals and freeze portions of them for use later on.   

Here is what I do:

• Pick a day that works best for you to prepare your meals.  I usually like cooking on Sundays.  I usually run errands and spend time with the hubby on Saturday so Sunday is set aside for homemade meals, family day and spending more time at home entertaining.
• I like to plan my meals around the sales ads from my local grocery stores.  I start off looking at the meats and planning my menu ideas from there.
• Whatever you are making for dinner that night just double or triple the recipe so that you have leftover portions to freeze.
• Some things that I like to make in large batches and freeze are:  All types of soups (vegetable, asparagus, split pea, 15 bean, etc.), spaghetti sauce, chili,  stews (like beef or pork), lasagna or stuffed shells and even loaves of bread and batches of muffins.
• Purchase some freezer containers and fill leaving enough room for your items to freeze and expand a little in the containers.
• I wrap my breads and muffins in plastic wrap and them pop them into a freezer bag.
• Put a piece of masking tape or some other type of label on the container and mark the contents and the date that you make the item. 
• Let them cool completely, pop the lids on the containers and put them in the freezer.
• When you have a night of sporting events, dance recitals or just a plain busy day you have a quick, delicious, healthy meal all set to pull out of the freezer and heat up for convenience. 
• For an added bonus, take out a loaf of homemade bread to go along with your soup, stew or chili and have a complete homemade meal ready to go!
• No fast food restaurants needed when you plan ahead!  This will save you time, money, sanity and your health by planning meals like this ahead of time. 

I hope that you enjoyed this week's tip.  I am off to make a bunch of freezable meals today that include:  Harvest Pork Stew, Beef Stew, Spaghetti Sauce and Stuffed Shells.  I am also going to make at least one loaf of homemade bread to go with the Harvest Pork Stew I am making tonight for our Sunday dinner.  I may make another loaf to freeze as well.  We shall see...

I have also been having an urge to make some chocolate chip cookies.  I may make a double batch and freeze some of those to keep for another day as well.  I will wrap up some in plastic wrap and then put them in ziploc freezer bags so I can pull out batches as I need them.  We are having company for dinner on Tuesday and it would be great to have the cookies all made and ready for dessert that night!

I would love to hear what types of meals you prepare for freezing or other tips on how to have healthy, quick meals on busy nights when you don't have much time to cook in the kitchen.  Please leave a comment and tell me what YOU do!

Thanks for stopping by!

Lynn Larson

Breakfast Pizza Recipe

As most of you already know, besides rubber stamping and scrapbooking my other passion in life is cooking.  I just love to cook just about any type of food from homemade breads, soups, crockpot dishes, big family dinners with all the trimmings, desserts, candies, etc.... 

Today I would like to share with you a Breakfast Pizza Recipe that I saw while watching Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentis this morning.  It is very similar in ingredients to the Berry Tart that I make every summer that is just out of this world.  In case you missed it, I shared the recipe for a version of my berry tart using fresh peaches and blueberries with you on my blog HERE. 

I will be hitting the grocery store for the ingredients to make this Breakfast Pizza very soon so I can try this recipe.  I thought I would share it with you earlier than that though because I am sure you will LOVE it!

Family Sunday - What's on the menu?

Sunday is family day in our house.  Every Sunday, we invite company over (usually more family) and have a big Sunday dinner.  Since I was over near Boston, MA yesterday for an all day stamping event, I thought I would make an extra special meal this week.  I have been in the kitchen most of the day getting ready for tonight's feast.  Here's what's on the menu:

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Homemade Braided Egg Bread

Pork roast with apple and shallot sauce

Roasted sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, onions and garlic in olive oil

Brussel sprouts (that were frozen from our garden)

Green beans (also frozen from our garden)

Cooked apples

Beverages - iced tea, water and milk

Dessert - homemade apple dumplings with fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, coffee, tea and hot chocolate.

So far I have the bread all made, baked and cooling on the rack.  I also finished making the Roasted Butternut Squash Soup (to die for, if I must say so myself).  I am starting on the apple dumplings and the cooked apples next.  Hubby picked some very large apples for me that are the size of grapefruits, so I have used them in my soup, the gravy/sauce for the pork, cooking some (like warm, chunky applesauce) and making apple dumplings with them.  It smells so stinkin' good in here!

Here is what my table decorations looked like before I put out my place settings.  I light the candles a couple times of week.  Tonight's dinner will be set out on the island between my kitchen and dining room.  I have a three burner warming buffet where I will keep the Butternut Squash Soup, Warm Applesauce and Brussel Sprouts so they are off the stove and ready to serve.

Over the years, I've had a hard time finding a Butternut Squash Soup recipe that I really love.  I recently got a cookbook called "Bountiful Buffets" by Jamie Gwen and tried the Roasted Butternut Squash Soup recipe out of that book.  I just finished whipping it up and it is absolutely fabulous!  I made a few changes to it, by adding an extra clove or two of garlic and also adding shallots (from our garden) since I didn't have the leeks called for in the recipe. 

The soup is so delicious, I thought I would share it with you

ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP  -  Serves 6

Ingredients:

One 2 lb. butternut squash, halved lengthwise and seeded

3 T extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

1 large leek, white and pale green parts only, washed and chopped finely (I didn’t have leek the first time I made this so I used a large shallot and extra garlic cloves)

1 large garlic clove, minced (I used 3 cloves in mine)

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped (I used a large wild apple)

½ tsp ground nutmeg

1 Bay leaf

4 c. low-salt chicken broth

4 oz. cream cheese

Salt and pepper, to taste

Sour cream, apple slices and fried leeks for garnish

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray a large glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.  Place the squash cut side down in the prepared dish.  Pierce each squash half several times with a sharp knife.  Bake until the squash is tender, about 45 minutes.  Using a large spoon, scrape the flesh into a mixing bowl and discard the peel.

 

In a soup pot, heat the olive oil.  Add the onion and leek and sauté over medium heat until tender.  Add the garlic, diced apple, nutmeg and bay leaf and sauté 2 minutes more.  Add the roasted squash and broth – stir to combine.  Simmer the mixture for 20 minutes to meld the flavors, then discard bay leaf.  In a blender, puree the mixture in batches, adding in the cream cheese to blend thoroughly.  Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

 

Serve the soup hot or cold, topped with sour cream, a thin apple slice and crispy fried leeks.

 

I don't plan on using the toppings listed above.  I have sour cream, toasted pumpkin seeds and thinly sliced apples for mine as a garnish.

The recipe serves 6, but it seems like a lot of soup to me since it is so rich and thick.  If you were only serving the soup with some bread, it would make six nice bowls full and would be a dinner by itself.  Tonight I am serving the soup in some of my small Longaberger mugs (that I use to serve tea).  This is just the appetizer for my dinner so I will have plenty of soup left for another night this week or to freeze.  I have a Holiday Crank Out the Card Class here on Tuesday so that might be a nice night to heat up the soup and have some of my leftover bread!

Happy Sunday!

Lynn

Today's Piece of Vermont - Fresh Peaches...

Do you like fresh peaches?  My son, Cody and I absolutely LOVE them.  Guess what?  They are ripe and in season in our area right now.  We have been bellying up to a couple of peaches each per sitting:))

These are what are left of the peaches Darryl picked.  I made a big breakfast this morning and had Darryl's mom and uncle join us.  I used some of these fabulous peaches to make Peach and Pecan Pancakes with bacon.  Sound yummy?  They were!  They are definitely different from your regular pancake, but they were very delicious. 

The Peach and Pecan pancakes are the ones on the left and my regular pancakes for Darryl and Cody are on the right.  The Peach and Pecan Pancakes have a little multigrain hot cereal flakes added to them. 

If you think that those were good, you should see what I made for dessert for dinner tonight...I made a fabulous peach and blueberry tart (actually, I am typing this on Monday night but this won't post until Wednesday - sneaky, huh?). 

I love to make fruit tarts.  They are so easy to make and they are absolutely delicious.   I usually make them with fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries and even sometimes with strawberries and blueberries.  Tonight was the first time I made it using fresh peaches and blueberries....mmmmm, I can tell you that I will be making this again!

 

If you think this looks yummy, I can assure you that it was!  There is only two slices of this tart left after dinner.  It was so-o-o-o good!

This tart is so very easy to make.  Do you want to learn how? 

Ok, ok, you have twisted my arm...here you go....

I start off by making a simple pie crust for the dough.  You could also make a sweet dough for the crust - like a sugar cookie crust.  Bake the crust in a preheated 375 degree oven for approx. 20 minutes.  Keep an eye on it as it could be done after only about 15 minutes - just until it is golden brown.  Let your crust cool completely.

For the filling - I use 8 oz. of Marscarpone Cheese which is an Italian cream cheese found in the specialty cheese section of your grocery store.  To that, add 1/4 c. sugar and 1/3 c. heavy cream.  Beat that with a mixer until stiff peaks form.  Spread the filling into the cooled pie shell and pop back into the fridge.

For the fruit topping, you can use a mixture of any type of berries or fruit you desire.  I probably used about 7 fresh peaches and skinned them and sliced them for the top of my tart.  I added some fresh blueberries from our bush to add some color to the top.  Oh, I should mention that I added a little splash of lemon juice to the peaches in a bowl after slicing them.  I normally don't add lemon juice, but wanted to prevent the peaches from browning.

As a finishing touch, take about 1 T. of preserves - you could use orange marmalade, etc.  I like to use apricot preserves.  To that, add a little water and either heat it on the top of the stove or cheat like me and put it into a small microwave-safe bowl and "zap it" until the preserves melt.  Give it a quick stir and drizzle over the top of the fruit and there you have it.  Pop it back into the fridge to chill it.  I like to do this at least 2 hours before serving.  You can serve the tart just plain for with a little bit of fresh whipped cream.  Oooh, it is good.  I hope you try it! 

Tonight Cody picked the peaches and came back with a HUGE batch.  He gave Gram half of them and she is making a peach pie as I am typing this post.  I plan on making peach jam and peach syrup with some of the ones I have.  By the time you read this, I should already have the jam and syrup made and canned - whew, I am tired just thinking about it:))

This is an aerial view of the box of peaches Cody brought home for me...  Anyone want a peach?  I am sure we have some to share AND enough to still make my peach jam and peach syrup!

Leave me a comment and let me know what type of tarts you create.  If you make one, happy eating to you!

Lynn

My Little Piece of Vermont - our BIG Garden

One of the wonderful things about having a garden is being able to have fresh veggies right when you want them.  Darryl (my dear hubby) is our gardener and plants a HUGE garden every year.  He takes great pride in planning the layout of the garden, watering it, weeding it and then harvesting all the goodies.  This garden is located down the road from us and all of the neighbors along the way love seeing Darryl drive by on the quad with this veggies.  He always stops to drop some goodies off to the neighbors on his way home!

 

This is Darryl when he came back from the garden with a load of goodies.  (He had no idea that I was taking this picture to put him up on my blog...tee hee).  He rides down to the garden and puts the goodies in this zippered Cabella's tote that is attached to the back of his quad.  A friend of ours gave Darryl that tote because he used to drive down the road almost dropping veggies his whole way home (thanks, Brent!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a close-up of the stash.  Don't these look good?...

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, so there are a few zucchini and squash also mixed in the goodie bag.  I will be making some Zucchini Relish tomorrow with some of those...

 

 

Wanna see some of our BIG garden?

 

 

 

 

This is just a photo of some of the corn patch.  The empty row is where the sweet peas were that Darryl already removed since they have already gone by.

 

 

 

 

This is part of our pumpkin patch.  I LOVE Fall and I LOVE pumpkins and the colors during this time of year.  Darryl picked four pumpkins today to add to our flower gardens in the back yard.

 

Here is a little peak at one of the gardens with the pumpkins added...

 

 

 

The pumpkins are a very dark orange - just beautiful.  I absolutely love them and Darryl knows it.  He brought two pumpkins back on his first trip to the garden and when he ran back for tonight's corn for dinner, he got two more pumpkins for my other garden.

 

 

 

This is a shot of the pole beans with the squash and zucchini peaking out from behind.  The regular bush beans have already ended so that would be the bare spot in the dirt.  The first little patch of green that you see in the lower left corner of the photo is the potato patch.

 

This garden is approx. 25 feet wide and about 60 feet long.  Compared to my "little garden" in our backyard of approx. 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, I guess this is classified as a BIG garden!  I am glad I am not the one weeding this garden!  I am just the one to cook from it and that is work enough for me!  I will have more of our gardening adventures to come so stay tuned.

 

You know, if you are in the area tomorrow night around dinner time, stop on by.  I would bet we could come up with something fresh and fabulous to whip up for you!  Who knows, we may even have you grab a few weeds from that BIG garden to help Darryl out:))

 

Enjoy and thanks so much for taking the time to visit my little piece of Vermont!

 

Lynn

 

Fresh from the Garden - Tomato Bruschetta (and Recipe)

Ok, this is your lucky day - not one, but TWO posts today!  Lots of things going on here at "my little piece of Vermont":))  As I mentioned in my last post, we had company tonight (Monday) for dinner.  After making my batches of sauce all morning, it was time to whip up a couple of things for dinner. 

Darryl (my dear hubby) grilled BBQ chicken pieces on the grill while I went to the garden for a couple of tomatoes and a few leaves of fresh basil.  It is so great to step out your back door and grab some fresh ingredients for a quick dinner appetizer of Tomato and Basil Bruschetta!  Check out the finished product here...

I popped some multigrain baguette slices that were lightly brushed with olive oil on the grill and toasted them until they were lightly golden and had beautiful grill marks to serve with the Bruschetta.  Want the recipe? 

Well, here it is....

 

 

FRESH TOMATO AND

BASIL BRUSCHETTA

 

2 large tomatoes, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 T. fresh basil, chopped

2 tsp. olive oil

1 tsp. red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

 

I start off by preheating the grill before doing anything else.

 

I put everything into a bowl and give it a light toss and pop it into the fridge.

 

Take a multigrain baguette and slice it in ¾” slices on the diagonal.  Brush both sides of the bread lightly with olive oil and put on the grill.  Grill bread on both sides until toasted and it has nice grill marks on either side.  It is hard to overcook the bread (unless you burn it).  The juice from the bruschetta can help soften the toast if needed.

Serve as soon as the bread comes off the grill.  Simply de-lish!!

Feeling Like Martha Stewart....

I have been among the missing for a few days now.  There has been so much going on after returning from Convention with the new catalog release, workshops and our bountiful gardens.  I have spent a good portion of my "free time" reaping the bounty of our harvests. 

I have been collecting, cleaning and freezing our bushels of green beans (dear hubby just brought me another large batch a few minutes ago), zucchini and yellow squash.  I have been picking, using and drying herbs from our smaller garden in our backyard.  The swiss chard is plentiful and ready to pick and our strawberries just keep producing like crazy. 

I was just up at our blueberry bush and collected 1 1/2 quarts of blueberries again today.  It is a smaller bush, but we have gotten at least 12 quarts of blueberries from it this past week alone.  My kids, hubby and I love the blueberries and have been eating plenty of them just fresh out of the container, but I also broke down the other day and baked blueberry goodies the entire day.

I started off wanting to make a Blueberry Tart.  I just love tarts and have a fabulous recipe for a mixed berry tart.  This recipe actually came from Martha herself and had an almond crust that I thought sounded fabulous so I tried it.  This is what it looked like:

It turned out pretty well.  The crust was definitely a fav among everyone that tried it.  The custard portion was a little on the lighter side than normal - not as rich and creamy as other tart fillings, but really good as well.  I found the recipe for this Blueberry Buttermilk Tart on Martha Stewart.com.  She did hers in a square tart pan.  I only had a round pan so here you are. 

After making the tart, I still had about 6 quarts of blueberries left, so I continued to bake...

This was a delicious Blueberry Buckle which is a blueberry version of a coffeecake.  It was fan-tab-u-lous, especially when warm.

I also made a Blueberry Almond Bread and Blueberry Pudding Cake.  They were fabulous!  Here's the group shot as they were all cooling:))  It really smelled good in the house that day!

I froze the loaf of Blueberry Almond Bread...way too many baked goods around...then, we had company for dinner that we shared the goodies with.  After dinner was over, I packaged up some little plates of goodies for some of our neighbors and had my husband deliver them.  They were a big hit and people are asking me when I am baking again - they are even offering to go and pick the berries:))

Off to clean and blanch some string beans for freezing and to do something with 3 more quarts of blueberries in the fridge...any suggestions on what to make?  Leave a comment and share your favorite blueberry recipe.

Happy baking and thanks for stopping by!

Lynn

Seashell Stamp Set Wedding Favors

Wedding favors anyone? 

As one of the services I offer, I make custom items for weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, anniversaries and other special occasions.  This is one of the projects that I worked on this week for a friend of mine, Janice. 

Janice and her husband went to Jamaica to get married on the beach.  They decided to do a wedding reception with their family and friends the week after they returned from their trip.  Janice wanted simple wedding favors with a beach theme for the tables and asked me to make 120 favors for her reception. 

After picking the favor she wanted to use, I went to work punching out the cardstock, stamping the images and watercoloring the seashells.

You can see from this picture how I assembled the bottom layer to the Peppermint Patties.  I made an assembly line and did about 40 favors at one time.

This final picture shows the assembly and stacking of the favors in piles of five so I could count the favors as I went along. 

Yesterday I showed you the card I made for the wedding and today I featured the wedding favors.  Tomorrow you will see the coordinating guest book.

I would be happy to discuss creating custom favors, invitations, thank-you's, baby announcements, scrapbooks, gifts or other items designed for your special event.  You can email me at happy.stamper@yahoo.com for more information. 

Happy stamping,

Lynn