A week for creativity

Woo, seems like it's been years since I posted on here! This week I had a couple of occasions to make new (to me) dishes. Tuesday, I fixed a corn casserole for a friend's family. It was pretty much the standard corn casserole recipe, so I shan't post it. If you would like to see it, let me know in the comment section, and I'll put it up. When I took the casserole to the house, there was no one there, so I had to leave it on the back stoop. I asked another friend later if they had found the casserole I left (as well as the dish of green beans and salad that someone else left). I was assured that they had, and that they thought the corn casserole was very good.

Wednesday, I made my first veggie appetizer pizza. Again, this was a standard recipe, so I'll omit posting it with the same suggestion: if you want the recipe, let me know. I took that to our Friendship program in Lexington, for the mothers of the babies we babysit every Thursday as well as all the other international wives who show up. It disappeared, so I guess it was okay, too.

After I finished the pizza, I baked a cake. (Thursday was my birthday.) It was an extremely simple recipe--a box of spice cake mix and a 16-oz can of pumpkin puree. That's it. Mix those two ingredients, put in a greased 9x13 pan, and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 23-25 minutes. That recipe can also be baked in muffin pans, for a baking time of 20 minutes. It looked pretty messy, but it tastes pretty good.

Now, for my best recipe of the week (in my opinion). Today David and I are watching the SEC conference on TV, and lunchtime sneaked up on us. I knew I had an extra bag of raw mixed vegetables left from the pizza on Wednesday, and I needed to use them up. I also knew I had ramen noodles. The result of combining those two ingredients was terrific.

Ingredients
bag of mixed veggies from the produce department (broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots)
2 pkgs of beef-flavored ramen noodles

Rinse the veggies in a colander. Place them in some sort of microwave safe dish that has a lid (or a way to cover). Add a scant 1/4 cup of water. Cover and microwave for two minutes. Drain.

Bring a quart of water to boil in a 4-quart saucepan or small dutch oven. When the water is boiling, add the seasoning packets from the ramen noodles and stir. Then add the noodles; stir to separate. Finally, add the vegetables. Stir again. When the pot starts to boil again, cover and cook for two minutes.

That's it, folks! Easy, cheap, and with the vegetables, reasonably nutritious. David says we could always add meat if we wanted to do so--that would be a good use for the leftover chicken or ham or whatever you might have in the ice box.