A relaxing yet productive Saturday goes out with a bang!

Today, my friend T2 came over. She got here at about 9:30 to work on Journey stuff for AWANA with me. I'm behind on my work towards my citation, and so is she. We made an agreement to keep each other accountable, and work together as much as we can on this. Unfortunately, this morning, I was dealing with not feeling great, and wasn't very involved. We did get some progress accomplished, though. :)

After T2 went home this afternoon, Robert and I seriously attacked the dining room mess. We're 90% through all the gifts, paperwork and my Etsy mess that engulfed the table previously. I fell that this is significant progress, since I also cleaned the guest bathroom today, as well as the coffee table. As far as my aforementioned goals for the week, most were pushed back, due to circumstances that came about unexpectedly this week. (Grandpa Crombie was in the hospital on Tuesday, I ended up having my nephews Isaac and Brenden for 4 hours on Wednesday which included AWANA, and closed out a 49-hour work week). But, I'm just happy and thankful for the work that was accomplished. As Michelle Duggar says, "At least there's a goal!"

After all that, I was pretty wiped out. Robert vowed to make the Carrot-Ginger Soup that I picked out from the Food Network magazine (to which we now subscribe!), and since we'd already done the meal-planning last Wednesday and purchased all the ingredients (with the last of the food budget for the month), it was all set to go. But our busy week prevented us from doing it sooner.

It turned out great! I decided that I felt badly that I hadn't contributed to the meal, even though I was working practically all evening on listing things on eBay, and maintaining previous listings.

So, I whipped up my Zucchini Parmigiana! It's a pretty quick little recipe, so it was no trouble, and paired nicely with the Carrot-Ginger soup!

We've both decided that since the soup has a very distinct consistency, and noted that instead of tofu (which neither of us care for, but the recipe calls for), we used Polenta, and could have used croutons or something like that as well. 

Here's me, enjoying this wonderful soup!

(If you look carefully, you can see the HUGE basket of thank-you cards to my right, and the incredible progress on the dining room behind me!)

As promised in previous blogs, I'm posting every recipe we try, and our thoughts on it. So here they are:

* This soup was GREAT, but takes longer than 30 minutes to prepare for. 

* We also used fresh carrots and our juicer, which made the job easier, and tastier.

* Shop ahead of time for this recipe; you can't always reach into the crisper for cilantro and ginger!

* We give this dish 4 stars, as we prepared it. Perhaps Emeril could do better. :) 

* The Zucchini Parmigiana was a perfect coupling to the dish. We give it 4 stars also. 

Recipes:

  

Kimi's Zucchini Parmigiana

Ingredients:

1 Zucchini 

1 Tbsp. butter (not margarine) 

1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Preheat conventional oven to broil. Slice zucchini to desired thickness. Carefully grease each slice with a tiny smattering of butter. (You don't want too much, because the Parmesan will slide off!) Place greased zucchini on tray. Sprinkle Parmesan over all. Place in oven for 5 minutes, or until golden-brown. Remove and place on plate. 

Food Network Magazine's Carrot-Ginger Soup with Polenta

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1-pound bag frozen chopped carrots, thawed
• 1 small onion, roughly chopped
• 1 2-to-3-inch piece ginger, peeled and grated
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 star anise pod or 1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
• 2 cups carrot juice
• 1 pound extra-firm tofu - We used Polenta! And we didn't need a full pound.
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• Torn fresh cilantro, for garnish (optional)

Directions

Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion and ginger and cook until the vegetables are just soft, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the star anise, carrot juice and 3 cups water, then cover and boil until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the tofu into 1-inch cubes. Mix the cornstarch and curry powder on a shallow plate and season with salt. Pat the tofu dry and roll it in the cornstarch mixture. Heat the remaining 6 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the tofu and fry, turning, until golden and crisp on all sides, about 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels and season with salt.

Discard the star anise. Transfer the soup to a blender and puree in batches, or puree directly in the pot with an immersion blender. Thin with water, if needed, and season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and top with the fried tofu. Garnish with cilantro, if desired.

As I began typing this blog, Robert came out of the kitchen and said, "I pureed this soup 8 times....ONE carrot left!" LOL! I told him it was a memory. He's just thrilled about my new camera! :)