School Woods First Birthday

Another weekend of a lot of cooking, and no pictures again.

Last Friday was School Woods first birthday, and I did a spread of appetizers and sweets. People seemed quite impressed with the sushi salad in zucchini cups - it was Mollie Katzen's scattered sushi salad, from Still Life With Menu, stuffed into thick slices of zucchini - it was funny to try to select the BIG zucchini, instead of small - that I hollowed out a little and blanched in really salty water - they were a little hard to eat, but they tasted great, and looked like a good joke on sushi.

On Saturday, I made leftover veggies from the party into Ovens of Brittany cream of vegetable soup - we ate it with leftover breads & breadsticks when we got home from watching Ratatouille.

On Sunday, I might've cooked the most of all, more using up party leftovers, feeding John and some of his friends, and dealing with all, or most of the squash I had in the basement, and the vegetables I got in my CSA box. I made:

• veggie stock to use up carrot & celery sticks - I had stored the sticks in a bucket of water, and when I was trying to caramelize the veggies, one minute they seemed so wet; I thought "is this going to work?" but pretty soon the water boiled off and I ended up with a good smelling - and tasting - stock


• fried potatoes and bacon


• roasted poblanos and bell peppers to freeze


• deep dish pizza with sausage and peppers, and whole-wheat crust pizza with broccoli, bleu cheese, red onions, and home made slow-roasted tomatoes


• a big batch of tomato sauce for pizza


• butternut squash pureé (for pies and baking and whatever) and cubes of roasted squash (for pizza topping and quiche)