Leftover ham...ham and lentil soup with roasted sweet potato

There's nothing like a leftover ham bone; but what else can you make with it besides split pea soup? That was what I wanted to find out.

 I got my massive pot out and started to heat it up with some grapeseed oil.

I sautéed the leftover ham bone with 3 diced onions and the same amount of chopped celery. Once the onion and celery were soft I added in two cups of dry lentils, two packages of dry onion soup mix, 24 cups of water and two large cans of crushed tomatoes. 

I added in quite a bit of salt and let this simmer for an hour.

I diced up the remaining ham from off the bone and set that aside.

Meanwhile I thought the soup needed something extra so I peeled a large sweet potato and diced it up. I generously coated this with grape seed oil, salt, pepper, ground ginger and ground curry powder. I baked this at 375F for 1/2 hour; I wanted them fork tender but not mushy.

I then added in the diced ham and roasted sweet potato.

The lentils got tender and thickened the soup nicely.

I continued to let the soup simmer and developed flavour.

What is soup without a biscuit? I made a traditional baking powder biscuit; I thought the buttery flavour with pair perfectly  with the intensly flavourful soup.

Right before I served the soup I removed the ham bone from the soup and picked the rest of the meat off of it (I did not realize how much meat was left on it!)

This was a hit. 

Liam liked the soup but he LOVED the biscuits!

So my birthday week has officially begun and the presents started to roll in. I love my friends; I am so blessed.

I sterilized the jars so I could "can" the remainder of the soup; I had a little left over to share!

Our little fashionista!

I also made the chocolate zucchini muffins from my own blog. That was funny; I often go to my own blog to find recipes I like. I should really get this printed off!  I was letting the muffins cool on the table...

...I turned around and this is what I saw...

I then sat him in his chair and he devoured it. He always has room from dessert; that's my boy!

Look who's home from school....he was a little excited.

Sibling love💜

Enough to share!

Update: I ate the soup again and oh boy it keeps on getting better; it ate more like a rich stew.  It was absolutely delicious if I do say so myself! 

Falafal craving!

What a wonderful day yesterday of hanging out with my sister, grocery shopping, sewing with my mom and playing with the kids.  I had been craving falafals and bought everything to put in the pitas but couldn't actually find the falafals I usually buy; this is what causes my love-hate relationship with Costco! Costco, you make me love something and then you take it away; but if that's my only trouble in life I got no troubles!!!

I got home and thought; "why can't I make a falafal?". I looked up this recipe and decided I had enough of the ingredients to make a rendition.

I added 2 chopped onions, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 can of drained chickpeas, and 1 cups of frozen peas to my food processor and I pulsed that up. I didn't have any fresh herbs and I wanted a bright flavour to add; I remembered seeing on "guys grocery game" someone made a "pealafal" and so I totally stole that idea by adding frozen peas.

I dumped that into a bowl and added in all the dry ingredients as per the recipe.

At this point I was so happy to have a recipe; I would of never thought of adding baking powder. I think this was a very important component to allow them to be texturly appealing.

I ended up adding in an extra 1/2 cup of flour. I chilled this in the fridge for an hour.

Once this was chilled I used a small icecream scoop and shallow fried the falafal balls; flattening them after the one side was seared. I transferred these to a lined cookie sheet and baked them at 375F for 30 minutes.

While they were baking I got all of the garnish organized.  I Thinly sliced tomato, red onion and cucumber; I mixed this together and set this aside. I got out the whole wheat pita bread, tzakiki and hummus. 

Once the falafals were ready I assembled my pita.

And there you have it! I was so impressed that it actually turned out and I was even more ecstatic that there was a lot left over to freeze for another day. That's my kind of cooking; some for now and some for later!

Ok now it's bedtime!

Update: This was perfect for date night and it took about 5 minutes to assemble!

Homemade pizza; inspired by Thai peanut satay

I picked up Aubrey from school and had the van packed and ready to head to grandmas. 

I decided to make homemade pizzas and take everything over to my parents to assemble them and bake them there. 

I was coming to the end of my groceries so I was doing some creative meal planning. Pizza dough is easy to whip up and you can throw pretty much anything on it, top it with cheese and bake! I was also craving Thai food so this is what I came up with.

I rolled out my pizza dough and started the assembly process.

I brushed the dough with homemade peanut satay sauce and topped that with leftover chick peas and thinly sliced cabbage and carrot.

To allow the meat portion of the meal to stretch further I had deboned the chicken thighs, cubed them up, coated them with a little cornstarch and seasoning and baked on 375 for 35 minutes. I then tossed the chicken with a couple tablespoons of the peanut sauce and then baked for an additional 10 minutes. I cooled this and then chopped it up into bite size pieces.

I added this to the pizzas and topped with cheese; I had two packages of herb and garlic mozerella cheese on hand and it was actually perfect. 

I baked these at 400 for 20 minutes and served them with an Asian style coleslaw salad.

I topped the pizzas with chopped peanuts and sesame seeds for a bit of crunch.

It was pretty delicious; I think I heard someone say; "you should well this"!  I will definitly make this again on purpose and not just when I have no more groceries! 

Happy grocery shopping day tomorrow; Its a nice feeling to fill an empty fridge. 

Hermits; a Pinterest recipe

Fall has arrived and with that comes autum flavours; nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice... the list goes on. Liam has been wanting cookies and since he loves raisins this cookie recipe came to mind. I got this off of Pinterest and minus the icing it looked great.

Chef Aubrey wanted to be incharge of the cookies so I let her take the reigns. We creamed the butter, sugar and eggs together.

I mixed up all of the dry ingredients as per the recipe and after adding vanilla she added the dry ingredients in.

Liam wanted to help!

I added all the garnish to a bowl. We doubled the recipe and so I basically wanted 3 cups of garnish. We did 1/2cup raisins, 1/2cup Craisins, 1cup unsweetened coconut and 1 cup of chocolate chips. I mixed this up and she added it in.

After a good mix it was ready.

She insisted on scooping them herself. She did a great job and after one pan was in the oven she was done. No problem I scooped the rest. This double batch made about 5 dozen.

Chef Aubrey had the first taste test.

Delicious!

This dolly is so sweet. I am so proud of her!