Roasted Asparagus and Mushrooms

This week's challenge is asparagus. I love asparagus! We usually eat it about once a week, and this is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to prepare it.

To start prepping your asparagus you need to either cut the ends of the stems off, or gently bend them until they break off on their own. I use the bend method.

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Lay the asparagus out in a single layer on a cooking sheet, then add mushroom slices if you like mushrooms. These were large, pre-sliced button mushrooms that called out to me in the grocery store.

Spray everything with a little olive oil, then sprinkle some salt, fresh ground pepper and a little coarse ground garlic on it.

 You can see that this garlic is a lot more coarse than regular garlic powder.

Roast in the oven for about 10-15 minutes.

I served this with roasted potatoes and grilled flank steak. Sometimes I will also add a little fresh lemon juice before cooking the asparagus, and other times I melt freshly grated Parmesan cheese on it during the last two minutes in the oven.

Summery Chicken Stew?

This week's challenge is "One Pot", so all week I was thinking "bean and ham soup" so that I could use the ham bone from our Easter dinner. Dad's lower digestive system has been pretty unhappy this week, so I figured bean soup would be a bad idea. Then I started thinking "chicken stew", but the weather suddenly decided to get nice and warm and all day I've been thinking "I don't want to make stew!". I'm going to give it a shot anyway, but I'll try to make it a little more summery. I'm making this up as I go along, so it may fail. Here goes...

Dice a few red skinned potatoes and toss them in a pot.

Next, slice and dice a little yellow onion.

Now add a little diced carrot and celery.

Cut up some broccoli and mince a little garlic, or a lot of garlic.

Add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, then about 3-ish cups of chicken broth. Mine is in ice cube form, so I don't really know how much is there.

Now put it over low heat to melt your chicken broth ice cubes. :)

Here comes the summery part...Add the juice and zest from a lemon. It will make the whole thing taste like sunshine. I hope. It's also a great way to find out if you have any teeny tiny cuts on your hands. I've also been holding onto the rind from some Parmesan for a while, so I'm tossing that in for extra flavor.

Next I diced a couple of chicken breasts and added them.

Now mix it all up, cover it and let it simmer on medium-low heat stirring once in a while. I also decided to add some fresh parsley from my garden. After a while you may want to turn it down to low. Let it simmer on low for a couple of hours. Serve with bread, fresh from the oven!

It doesn't look like anything special, but it sure was tasty!

Grilled cheese with brie, apples and bacon

Week 14 is sandwiches, so I figured I would make the sandwich I meant to make a few weeks ago for cheese week. I don't really think you all need a recipe, but here are the photos. It was a delicious sandwich!

Russian Apple Pie

Week 13: Russian. I made a Russian apple pie, which is really more like an apple cake. Maybe I'll post a recipe later. Maybe not. No more promises.