Kitchen Day

Phew!!  This has been a very busy, but very productive day in and around the kitchen.  I ran to Appleton to World Market for chocolate, and it turned out to be on sale (hooray!).  Then drove over to Penzy's Spices to pick up some sea salt for myself and cinnamon for my mom.  I also had a coupon for a free container of minced garlic, which I forgot at home, but they still gave me the free container (hooray!).  Drove home and started working in the kitchen.  Ruth!  Pay attention - these are all good recipes to use up that crazy humongous squash!  I found these few recipes on Martha Stewart's site a couple of days ago and wanted to try them right away.  So I pulled some dough out to rise and started chopping vegetables - butternut squash, red potatoes, carrots, parsnips, red onions and smashed garlic cloves, plus some freshly ground pepper, the aforementioned sea salt, and some good quality olive oil.  Oh, and did I mention the bacon again?  Well, I had to use up the rest of the package from before - we're going on vacation, can't have good bacon going to waste!  With a quarter of the roasted vegetables I made the Roasted Vegetable Pizza with Ricotta Cheese.  Amazing!  All three of us really liked it a lot.  I was slightly skeptical of root vegetables on pizza, but it was a hit.  While the pizza was baking I pureed the rest of the vegetables up for the Roasted Fall Vegetable Soup.  Also fantastic, but I am saving that to take up to Wausau tomorrow evening for dinner with my parents.   Hmm... unless I need to have a small bowl now to make sure it is still okay...

And then to top it off, two desserts - one to take to share with my parents and the other for Student Ministries.  I stuck with the ridiculous caramel oatmeal squares that I have become obsessed with for my parents (also courtesy of Martha Stewart), and then made a new recipe, 

brownies topped with chocolate chip cookie dough for SM.  

In other kitchen-related work, our friends Heath, Jim & Jenn came to help us pick up and move some restaurant equipment we purchased - a big electric convection oven, a chest freezer, hand-washing sink, mop bucket and ringer, and a 20 quart Hobart Stand Mixer, which doesn't weigh nearly as much as Jim & Justin would have you believe!