Fake, Real, Canned and Yummy

Sunday after church, Ryan wasn't hungry so I made boca burgers for me with fresh lettuce, a little tangy ketchup and CSA tomatoes on top of 100 calorie buns. For those wondering, this is the fake.....not real meat but sure tasted like it. The real is next....

This is the real-we had some plans on Sunday evening for Labor Day but they ended up canceled and we ended up with steaks...oh, what to do, what to do. I say make juicy steak and mashed potatoes with gravy. Yes and Yes-they were instant and I do know how to make real, but was worn out so instant it was. Definitely as delicious as it looks! We don't get them often, but Ryan wanted them and we hadn't had them in awhile so.....

Now, onto the canned. This is my yummy CSA tomatoes and ppers with onions, some spices and garlic that I cut and mixed to make fresh tomato sauce. We'll see how it turns out soon. This was my first attempt at canning, so hopefully it works out!

Thanks to some inspiration from my sister Jenna, I decided to attempt canning grape juice. I'm not sure if I have the right kind of grapes so we'll just wait and see in a little while to see how it turns out. Of course I put my spin on it and used splenda instead of sugar for healthier purposes. What's that? Of course, I'll tell you how it is when I open it!

This is my final product of my spaghetti sauce-fresh and canned....looks so yummy. There may be some spaghetti and meatballs in our future!

Ok, now this was one of my flops recently. I got this recipe from a cookbook and thought it sounded good. Granted, I used different veggies than it called for but thought it would still be good since I didn't change the sauce that covered it all. We kinda liked it but wish it would've had more flavor to it-rather bland. That and we kept picking out the eggplant cubes from it. We didn't like this version of eggplant so I'll keep attempting to see what we do like.

I decided today, that I wanted to use our CSA carrots from last week to make some form of breakfast item. After searching through every cookbook, all I could come up with was carrot cake. Which is good and all but I wanted something a little different. This "different" came in the form of fresh grated carrots, pumpkin, spices, a little flax seed (but don't tell Ryan), and some quick oats sprinkled on top to make pumpkin carrot breakfast bars!

My two main ingredients, ready to use their flavors for good!

My pumpkin carrot cake breakfast bars-ready for the oven! I'll have pictures and maybe an empty pan to show later....we'll see. I don't think this will be going to Ryan's work-I think it'll mostly be for me. Especially if/when he finds out that it's got the flax seed-he says I mess things up with that but hey, I like it!

Well, that's it for this post. Off to the gym we go then home to sample a little of my breakfast bars... a little pre-breakfast testing, just to be sure! Make sure you check back soon for more yummy flavors!