restaurant style salsa

somehow i have made it this far in my life without making a single pioneer woman recipe. something about how there are too many pictures. well that all changed on sunday when i made a wicked batch of salsa to accompany the oscar watching festivities. and let's just say if i was a member of the academy, this salsa would have swept titanic style. recipe here.
ps i had to make it in a blender because there is so much. not as great but still great.

vegetable lasagna

i have found that non meat lasagna falls into two categories: 1. no vegetables and basically a baked spaghetti casserole, and 2. 600 ingredients. it should not have surprised me then that as i was half way through making this recipe i realized i had made it before. it's pretty simple and has a lot of spinach in it. however, this time i made a lot more modifications. i cut the cheese and noodles in half and subbed out one spinach box for zucchini and mushroom. this was pretty good but next time i will add in carrots, onions, and fresh tomatoes. also i'd rather start with a simple tomato base and add in my own spices, instead of relying on store bought. never as good.
i could not figure out what to eat with this lasagna. salad? there's already a pound of spinach in there. garlic bread? you want to eat pasta and bread? i don't know.

better than birthday cake

you know how when you buy food and there's a recipe on the box and it's some random recipe that uses as much as possible of the product? well usually i'm not interested in cream of celery soaked chicken breasts, but in the case of hershey's cocoa, i'm interested. you couldn't possibly come up with a recipe that uses too much chocolate.

hershey's "perfectly chocolate" chocolate cake recipe here.
soo cook it in a 9x13, then poke holes in the cake while it's still warm and pour sweetened condensed milk and caramel over the top. enjoy immediately.

Silky Cauliflower Soup

i used yellow cauliflower for this soup, which is supposed to be way healthier than white? there is also purple? what? this soup was good. i recommend it if you happen upon a bunch of cauliflower as i did. you can only dip so much of it in ranch. recipe here.

Pasta with Fresh Artichokes

this was my first experience with getting artichoke hearts out of artichokes. it is really hard. there is much artichoke that goes to waste.

recipe here, and i watched like 10 videos on youtube about how to get the hearts out. difficult.