This Month...

It's official. I'm taking this month off. August has been so incredibly ridiculous that I've decided to just strike it from the record. So, in September, my posts will resume.

In the meantime, you should really check out my archives and reminisce about the good ol' days, when I was posting weekly. And check out this pic.

Ciao!

Custard Pie

I finally get to top off Pie Month! And what better than a Martha Stewart creation? Of course, my Custard Pie certainly isn't as pretty as hers. Check out her photo and the recipe here.

This isn't so much a pie as it is custard with pears. The hardest part of this recipe is slicing and arranging the pears. The rest of it consists of measuring a few things and mixing them all in a food processor. Tada! Done.

You wouldn't think you could mess up the pear-arranging...but I did. A lil bit. What I did was concentrate too many in the center so the dish wasn't as evenly baked as it should have been, and actually a little overbaked. But as far as the taste goes, you really can't mess that up. It was good--not too sweet--and I could definitely take this to a small get-together or potluck.

Polenta Pie with Cheese and Tomato Sauce

And meat.

It was brought to my attention that that I have already done an Italian vegetarian polenta dish. This didn't necessarily bother me, but in order to please my readership--and eatership!--I added ground beef to this very simple recipe. And I'm glad I did because it made it a little less boring.

This recipe doesn't involve any cooking, really. It's another "easy assembly" dishes. I did this on purpose. In case you didn't notice, last week, I made NO new recipe. I broke my resolution! But honestly last week was so busy and I was sick and blah blah more valid excuses spew forth. I wanted to make up for it by getting 2 blog posts in this week, but that's not going to happen, either. Hopefully next week I'll finish out this month's theme with a yummy dessert, and then get a brand new theme started as well. *fingers crossed*

So, I found the recipe for Polenta Pie with Cheese and Tomato Sauce here, using foodily.com. I wanted something simple and savory, and this fit the bill perfectly. I'm sure someone with more time/chops could create this from scratch; however, it called for prepared polenta and tomato sauce--I chose Tomato, Garlic and Basil--so I went with it! And in true ME style, fudged the recipe a bit when I added a pound of ground beef. All I did was brown the meat with some Italian seasoning, fresh ground pepper and a pinch of salt. Then I added the meat to the sauce. The only thing that was just a little off was the bake time--3 fewer minutes might not have burned the cheese as much.

This is something I would make again. It's perfect for a potluck. :^}