Carrot & orange soup with a side of Sunflower Dinner Muffins

Carrot and Orange Soup
This is a very healthy Vegetarian Meal and it is quite delicious! The soup also has fresh thyme which is an herb with many great benefits! These Dinner muffins work well with this soup too. While you are waiting for the soup to cool down before processing make your muffins and they will be out just in time for the soup!


Serves 4
Ingredients:
1 lb Carrots
1/8 cup olive oil
½ cup orange juice
4-5 cups vegetable stock
1 small onion, roughly chopped
3-4 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried
Salt and Pepper
Sour Cream and nutmeg, for serving

Procedure:
1. Peel and Slice carrots.
2. Place carrots and oil in a large heavy based pan and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the orange juice, stock, and onion, Bring to boil.
4. Add thyme, salt, and pepper, reduce heat and cover.
5. Cook for 20 minutes or until carrots are tender, allow to cool.
6. Process the mixture in batches in a food processor or blender until smooth.
7. Return soup to pot and reheat.
8. Serve in bowls and top each with a dollop of sour cream sprinkled with nutmeg. Garnish with a small sprig of thyme.

Sunflower Dinner Muffins

Wet Ingredients:
1 egg
¼ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
1 cup milk
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup sifted white flour
1 cup unsifted whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup sunflower seeds

Procedure:
1. Beat wet ingredients together until well mixed
2. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the center
3. Pour wet ingredients into the well and stir gently until ingredients are just moistened
4. Fill well greased muffin cups 2/3 full with batter
5. Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes or until tops are rounded and lightly brown.
6. Serve at once

3 Pumpkin Breads and the Incredible Edible Egg

Finding a can of Pumpkin Puree in my pantry i decided to make some pumpkin bread. As usual i began to round up my ingredients to make sure i had everything, but of course there were no eggs. But instead of waiting to get the eggs i decided to find an egg subtitution online. The First Substitution (Shown Below) i used gave me a wet moist and slightly mushy bread it was not really successful but the whole loaf was eaten at least. Since i still had more pumpkin puree leftover i decided to make another loaf the next day with the real incredible edible eggs and it came out exactly the way it should of and was of course delicious! Two days after that still having leftover pumpkin puree i decided to make another loaf and even though i had eggs this time i still wanted to try another substuttion. So just in case i ever had another incident where i had no eggs i would know the perfect egg substitute. And so for my final loaf i used a banana to replace the eggs and it turned out pretty good too! The Batter felt a lot thicker than the first two but it turned out just as good as the one with the real eggs! So it turned out to be a succesful experiment and i now know what i can use if i ever need to make a vegan bread!

The Egg substitutions:
(1st) 1 egg = 1 tsp baking powder + 1 tsp oil + ¼ cup water
(2nd) 1 egg = ½ banana
See this site below for more information about Egg Substitutions and recipes:
http://vegetarian.about.com/od/vegetarianvegan101/f/eggsubstitute.htm

The Pumpkin Bread Recipe:

The Gear:
2 mixing bowls
Measuring cups (1, ½, ¼)
Measuring Spoons (1, ½, 1/4 tsp)
9x5x3 inch Loaf pan
Mixing spoon
Sieve
Cutting Board & Knife

The Ingredients:
½ cup chopped nuts
Butter for greasing
Dry ingredients:
1 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
Wet Ingredients:
1 cup pumpkin puree
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten or Egg Substitutes
¼ cup water
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

The Plan:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Gather ingredients
Chop Nuts and put aside
In one measure out and sift together the dry ingredients
In another bowl mix together the wet ingredients
Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients but do not mix to thoroughly.
Stir in the nuts
Pour batter into a well buttered loaf pan
Bake for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean
Turn out of pan and let cool on rack.
Enjoy!

Grilled Ham and Chesse.

Every year my Aunt and Uncle bring over a Honey Baked Ham for Christmas, and it's delicious. The next couple of days we usually have some some cold ham sandwiches with the leftover ham and leftover rolls. And finally my Mom gets the ham bone and makes a delicious pot of beans.

This year for some strange reason we still had a lot of leftover ham in the fridge. And since it's been in there for over a week it didn't seem to fresh or appetizing. So I caramalized some onion and sauteed it with garlic and threw in the diced up ham and some pickled jalepeno peppers.

Then I dressed the sourdough bread with spicy brown mustard and grilled it in butter. I also melted some colby cheese on the bread while it browned. And when it was nice and toasty I put it on a plate and added a spoonful of the ham. very, very, very good. :)