What's for Dinner, Thurs., Nov. 2, 2023

[NJCher]

Easy Butternut Squash Soup. I'm using home grown roasted squash and this vegetable broth I made from the American Heart Association's "Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook." I made the broth last night and it took 5 hours in the slow cooker.

Their recipe is loaded up with flavor ingredients to keep the amount of salt down--this broth had 4 cloves of garlic, thyme, and 4 dried bay leaves, just for starters. Three whole cloves, too.

I'll be curious to see how much of a flavor effect this has on the soup. The recipe is from Taste of Home's web site.

I roasted maple-flavored pork sausages to go with the soup and will have them in a wrap with spicy brown mustard. Bought some new sauerkraut, too, which I'll touch up with fennel seed.

Peach-pineapple kombucha.

Dessert: red pear with Greek yogurt and diced ginger crystals. Dark Chinese tea.

[Yonnie3]

1. Freezer Pizza

Pepperoni thin crust to be exact. It was OK, but not very special. It was a brand I didn't recognize.

[Marthe48]

2. I've never been so glad to have leftovers

I worked in my booth from 3-6, and planned to cook something with burger and mushrooms. On the way home, I remembered the curried chicken vegetable soup. Dinner sooner rather than later!

[Emile]

3. Barbecue stromboli sandwich.

[mike_c]

4. ordering out, cold cut sandwiches

We had a tiring day and neither of us feels like cooking this evening, so we've ordered from a local sandwich shop we like.

[progree]

5. Fried pork and rice, cabbage, celery, onions,

I made my Mom's pork fried rice recipe. I used the Instant Pot to make the rice. Very good but a lot of work -- her recipe specifies sauteeing the "greens" (cabbage + celery), then remove from skillet and sautee the pork, then remove from skillet and sautee the onions, then remove from skillet and sautee the mushrooms.

Then put it all together in a skillet and heat it up good,

then mix in the rice and heat the mixture if necessary.

I can see now why I haven't made that it decades besides being really good.

Rice -

The rice was cooked in an Instant Pot -- I did brown rice manually (i.e. not using any program button). 15 minutes of cook time plus 5 minutes of sitting while pressure is released naturally followed by quick release. 28 minutes total time from pressing the Start Button to the quick release (the preheat phase was only 8 minutes).

I did 1.25 cups water and 1.25 cups rice (despite my manual's admonition to use a minimum of 1.5 cups of water to pressure cook anything)

https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/instant-pot-brown-rice/

[Retrograde]

6. We both have colds

(not Covid though) so it was “rummage in the freezer” night - eggplant curry and tadka dal over rice