Hummus and Cucumber Quick Tip

Just a quick tip post, I went to a holiday party, and the hostess served cucumber spears with hummus. I loved the combination of the cucumber with the hummus. I don't know why I never thought of doing this before. I served the same at Christmas dinner, and it was a hit. 

Now to learn to make my own hummus recipe! That will have to be a project for the near future. 

End of Summer Tomato & Zucchini with Shrimp Bake

It's an end of summer tradition, all the tomatoes in the garden decide to become ripe at once. So I've been eating a lot of tomatoes and zucchini. I was looking for a new recipe and had some frozen shrimp in the refrigerator. A quick internet search brought up a few recipes so I combined them here and there, substituted for a cheese I prefer, added the garlic because I'm a garlic fiend, and gave it a shot. I have to say it turned out really tasty!

Here's what I did:

•  Diced one zucchini and 8 tomatoes into approx. 1 inch chunks and combined them in a large bowl.
• Sprinkled them with cayenne pepper, minced garlic and salt and stirred them all up. 
• Rubbed a baking pan with butter and poured the mixture into it. 
• Covered the pan with foil and baked at 350 for 30 minutes. 

• While the  mixture was cooking I thawed frozen shrimp under cool water and peeled it. 
• Took the pan out of the oven and heated the oven to 400 degrees while I mixed in the shrimp to the zucchini and tomato mix. 
• Covered the dish with monterey jack cheese and put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes. 
• After 30 minutes I turned off the oven and uncovered the pan letting it stay in for another few minutes until the cheese had a nice brown, but not burnt.

Thoughts for next time:
I might try to leave the pan uncovered after adding the shrimp next time because it came out with a lot of liquid. This might be partly because I had used very ripe, juicy tomatoes from the garden.
But overall results.... YUMM!

Tuna Noodle Casserole

This was a lunchtime quick cook for me. The recipe was super easy, but after skimming the reviews I made a few changes to it to ensure some more flavor since I tend to enjoy my food more seasoned.

I found the recipe at All Recipes.com which is one of the sites I come across a lot when I'm searching around for some dinner (or in this case lunchtime) ideas.

In the reviews, someone suggested doubling the sauce portion (the milk, butter, flour) as well as the tuna (two cans instead of one), which I did. I also combined a few ingredients from another recipe I'd come across while searching for a tuna casserole recipe (thyme and onion powder just to taste - I really should learn to measure if I want to blog). The recipe also called for cheddar cheese which I didn't have handy, so I put a bit of Parmesan cheese in instead.

After I'd mixed all the ingredients and poured it into the casserole dish, I topped the dish with a bit more Parmesan and some plain bread crumbs.

Quick Tip: I put bread crumbs in a seasoning shaker (a small plastic one like parsley, oregano and most herbs come in). This helps me spread the bread crumbs more easily over the entire dish.

I then cooked the casserole at 350F for 30 minutes as the recipe said, but then turned on the broiler for another 5 minutes to brown up the bread crumbs a bit more.

I have to say, it turned out delicious. This is definitely a recipe I would like to make again, and one I'll consider approved for company. The only change I would make next time would be to use less peas or substitute frozen peas for canned. I'm just not a huge fan of canned peas though, so I'm a bit biased.

While not a fancy meal, this casserole was incredibly tasty and very easy to whip up in less than an hour.  If you'd like to try it, the link is below or can be found on allrecipes.com under "Tuna Noodle Casserole I".
Recipe Link

Here are a few pictures of the final dish: