Fun Food Friday: Vegetarian

Welcome to the very first ever Fun Food Friday!!! Hosted by Alisha G.
My goal is to every Friday post at least one recipe from the week. I may post more than one or link to my flickr account with extra food goodies and recipes. Especially for ones that I don't come up with on my own. So for the first ever Fun Food Friday, I will be posting a super easy veggie salad, and vegetarian chili with cornbread and strawberry shortcake for dessert. This is sort of an entire meal. But these recipes are so simple and easy that I can post them all at once. I will keep the amount of photos to a minimum and keep the recipe with the photo for ease. SO! On with the food!

First up is my super simple easy, veggie salad.

Recipe:
Mine here has
1can drained and rinsed Black Beans
2c frozen(thawed) corn
1 whole seeded and chopped Green Bell Pepper
1c shredded carrot (from a bag because I am that lazy)
2c halved cherry tomatoes
and enough Fat Free Zesty Italian dressing to coat.

You could easily add more or less of  veggies take out what you don't like or add in things like diced red onion a bit of garlic, celery, black olives, etc etc. This salad is only limited to you imagination.


For my next recipe I give you my all in the pot Vegetarian Chili.

Recipe:
This chili has just about everything but the kitchen sink!
Using baby portabello mushrooms as the base you can build on this and add anything you like.
Mine has onion, carrot, green pepper, corn, 1can diced tomatoes and chillies,1 jar chunky salsa, chili powder mix(from the seasoning packet aisle), black beans, zucchini, lima beans, and tomato paste.

Add a little cheese and sour cream and you have a super filling meal! You can add any kind of veggie you like or don't like.











No chili is complete without cornbread! This is super simple!
Recipe:
I used Jiffy Mix and replaced the milk (I think it was) with vanilla rice milk. You could also use soy milk. This turned out amazing!

No dinner is totally complete without a delicious dessert! So how bout classic strawberry shortcake but lighter and with less calories? Simple easy angelfood cake from a mix to replace that shortcake or the biscuit.

And strawberries mashed with stevia! you can add as little or as much as you like to make this sweet. You could even use honey or agave. Or nothing at all!

Top it all off with some delicious light whipped cream (or you could make your own) for a delectable light dessert!




That's it for today's Vegetarian Fun Food Friday! Hope you enjoy your day!

Strawberry Break

We are going to take a quick break from gardening to do a little cooking. Here in Michigan our strawberries have finally come in! Whoo hoo! I purchased a flat of strawberries for $25 at the farmer's market. A flat is eight quarts, that is a lot of strawberries. I spent one evening cleaning and hulling half the flat to freeze so that we can thaw them when we get extra time to make jam. And since I was working I thought that we all deserved a little treat here at Four Rocks Homestead. After cleaning and hulling the strawberries I chopped them up for strawberry short cake. Look at their gorgeous ruby red color and they smelled so amazing. You could walk into our house and smell fresh strawberries it was incredible. After the chopping came the sugar just a quarter cup because these babies were already super sweet. Isn't my Pyrex bowl pretty? My mom gave me that but that is a story for another day. After the sugar the bowl gets some wrapping and then into the fridge over night. Really that is the hard part, knowing you have something so very yummy in the house that you can't eat right away. Then the filling for the short cakes. Normally I would just throw the strawberries on some biscuits but I really wanted to make an extra special treat for us. So I took one brick of softened cream cheese and one half cup of powdered sugar along with one tablespoon of orange extract and creamed them together. This is also set aside to rest overnight. The filling is a bit like cheese cake it just tastes better the next day (you know if there is any left over that long). The next day I cheated an bought biscuits because it was hot, humid and icky and I did not want to turn the oven on. A little of the yummy cheese spread, lots of the sweet strawberries and of course some whip cream that I had left in the fridge. Voila! A delicious summer treat for all!Recipe for filling

1 brick softened cream cheese
1/2 C. powdered sugar
1 TBSP orange extract
cream these ingredients together and let sit overnight. You can then smather some on biscuits or you could get all fancy and use a pastry bag and star tip to make your creation look gorjous! we're down and dirty at our house so smathering is right up our alley!
Happy cooking!