bruschetta twist, cousin of the infamous tomato cheesie

When did this turn into a food blog? I even said nuggets cooking didn't happen often. I think it's just because it's summer and I have some spare time on my hands but here it goes:

1. Toast a slice of good quality bread (not the squishy white stuff they have these days; I used Trader Joe's Artisan bread)

2. Spread some Boursin cheese on your slice of bread. It comes in several different flavors. I used the garlic one and bought it for about $3.50 at Trader Joes.


3. Slice some cherry tomatoes (or any kind, really), yellow squash, red bell pepper, and a clove of garlic.

4. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan and add veggies, except for tomatoes and garlic. Add salt and pepper, then the garlic (it burns easily so we didn't want to put it in at the beginning). Let cook for a minute or so then add tomatoes and reduce heat to lowest setting (tomatoes added last because we don't want them to get mushy and fall apart). Add a dash of freshly grated parmesan cheese and stir to allow the cheese to melt and tie together the veggies' flavors.

5. Then spoon veggie mixture on to your bread  and boursin cheese. Top with a tad more parmesan and put in toaster oven for a minute to melt cheese. I was going to also add chives or green onions, but forgot. They would go well with this recipe but it is also delicious without.

Quinoa stir-fry

Guess who cooked again?
...
waits for guess
...
okay fine, I'll get on with it.

This time I made stir fry with quinoa. I'm not really sure what quinoa is, except that it's kind of like couscous and is a rice-like grain. Anyways, I started out by sauteing my veggies in about 2 tb of butter.

Said veggies: white onion, red onion, red bell pepper, and squash 

I ended up not using the green onions, tomato, and yellow cherry tomatoes because I had originally planned on putting them in a quesadilla but found out that I had no cheese. So quinoa  stir-fry it was.

Veggies cooking. Added a tad salt and pepper

Now, the quinoa bussiness...

I'm not the best chef, you see, I don't know how to cook quinoa. Somewhere online said to do 1 parts quinoa to 1 and 1/2 parts water. so I did that except to make it more flavorful I used chicken stock instead of water and let me tell you, that was an excellent choice. however, it seemed like that wasn't enough water so I added a bit more liquid, let it absorb, and let sit for 5 minutes. Then, I stirred in my veggies and added some corn from the freezer for sweetness. Now, let me tell you this is excellent and you can cook it in less than 30 minutes easily. I'm not even a fan of peppers or squash, but in this recipe I liked them.

um.. soup and salad (I need to think of better names for my creations)

I cooked *big wet eyes brimming with pride*

First, not too fancy, just a salad

Isn't she beautiful?

She was Whole Foods inspired. One day it was too hot outside to do anything so my mom and I decided to go there for entertainment and look at all the pretty foods we can't afford and take as many samples as possible. But anyways they had this arugula, red onion and corn salad.

So mine is arugula, lettuce, corn cut off the cob (because it's better that way), shallots, red onion, and I think that's all. I wanted Olive Garden dressing because it's da bomb wtf so I tried to make my own and adapted copykat's here. btw I just want to point out that I was very proud of myself for figuring out how to make the link go into just "here" instead of having all the bogus wtf.
I didn't have all the ingredients so I just left out the Romano cheese (replaced with freshly grated Parmesan), Italian seasoning, parsley flakes, lemon juice and sugar. wtf that's alot of ingredients left out but it still tasted good. I think I threw in some oregano, rosemary, and regular Italian dressing to make it a bit better. And I used more garlic, which is always a good thing. However, this dressing doesn't taste like Olive Garden's at all really to me (maybe with right ingredients), but I still liked it.


My other baby: I made this soup with Trader Joe's 10 beans mix or something like that. It's just a super colorful mix of beans in the bulk bins. However, I didn't know how to cook them and they were underdone even after 40 minutes cooking. But they added a nice flavor and the rest of the soup was good. I put in half an onion, some celery, four or so potatoes thinly sliced, and I can't remember if there was anything else. I cooked  them with the beans in chicken stock and as it cooked I put Colby Jack cheese in. My great Aunt Nena taught my mom this trick. It thickens the soup and also just makes the flavors all go together so much better. I usually also have a side of grated cheese so I can sprinkle even more on while I eat it. Sooo good.