Best granola ever.  Recipe here from Orangette / Food52 / Early Bird Foods.

Today was a big cooking day for us:  Roasted Carrot Soup and Alice Waters' Ratatouille.

We cooked pizza this weekend on the Big Green Egg my parents gave us and the pizza stone Michael's mom and stepdad gave us for Christmas!  It was fabulous.  The pictures above are our first attempt - handmade pizza dough, tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, red pepper, mushrooms, broccoli, onion, and goat cheese.

The image above is our second attempt - handmade pizza dough, tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, red pepper, mushrooms, olives, onion, and goat cheese.  On this round, Michael was able to get the Egg hotter than the first time (around 650 degF!), resulting in the crust being very crisp on the bottom and pleasantly crunchy on the edges.  It was the best pizza I've ever eaten.

I've recently had the unsettling experience of finding a recipe I love and then forgetting where I found the recipe.  This happens less often when the valued recipe came out of a cookbook I own, but Michael and I are more frequently using recipes found online.  In my experience with lost online recipes, they're not easily found.

So, it's in this spirit that I'm listing a number of recipes I've recently found online, cooked at home, and thoroughly enjoyed:

Soba with Peanut-Citrus Sauce
This recipe is simple and rewarding.  I tried it while Michael was out of town; he doesn't enjoy nut sauces very much.

Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpeas, and Ricotta
Michael thought this was forgettable, I thought it was awesome.

Baked Mac and Cheese with Vegetables
This has quickly become a staple in our house because it's easy to make ahead and tasty.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Ginger
I've made this recipe twice - once overcooked and once undercooked.  Despite the fact that I haven't gotten it right yet, I think the banana/chocolate/ginger combination is a definite winner.

Alea's Eggplant Pizza Bites
This recipe is pictured above and doesn't really need a recipe - it's really more of just a good idea.  We served them with pesto on pasta and salad (made with basil and tomatoes straight from our garden)!

I'm eager to try the following recipes sometime soon:

Roasted Vegetable Enchiladas
We've been eating almost exclusively vegetarian lately but have yet to find a really great vegetarian enchilada recipe.  This recipe looks promising!

Simple Summer Peach Cake
Michael frequently has to deal with the repercussions following my insistence on making desserts with complex recipes.  This one looks really straightforward.

We made the mistake of selecting the book on CD version of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as listening material for our road trip out West.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great book with a timely message, but it's a little dry for maintaining alertness in the wee morning hours.  In retrospect, we should have done something more along the lines of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  

However, we checked out Barbara Kingsolver's website when we got back to Alabama, and found this fun and tasty recipe!  I highly recommend trying it although I'll warn you about selecting the right type of sweet potatoes:  be sure the get the traditional, orange sweet sweet potato.  We made the mistake of selecting a purple super starchy sweet potato the second time we made the recipe, and it turned out very heavy and not as satisfying.

This goat cheese and swiss chard pasta casserole with fresh swiss chard from our garden was really tasty and simple - although I must admit that Michael made it while I did other things.  We also bought this giant can of San Marzano tomatoes from Costco, so our cooking this week has had a common theme as we try to use them up!

We've been trying a number of new and fun recipes recently; I recommend the following, both from Orangette:

Braised Onion Sauce

Peach Crumble (substituted peaches for the plumbs the recipe calls for)

The dogs were really interested in the oddly shaped strawberry Michael found when he was preparing for brunch on Sunday.

Sunday evening cookout!

We had friends over a couple weeks ago and made slow roasted lamb and moroccan vegetable stew from Neil Roake's fun cookbook Shiny Happy People.  The food was fabulous and the book is really fun to look through!  I recommend you check it out if you have the opportunity.  

Work was cancelled for the second day in a row!  We took advantage of the change in scenery by spending some time in the yard - it's amazing how different the house looks in the snow.

We also went for a hike in the Land Trust.  This photo of Michael and the pups was taken on the Waterline Trail right before we ran into a guy trail running in shorts - whoa!  He said he was training for Mountain Mist, so he's clearly not one to be dissuaded by a little snow!

Michael does most of the cooking, and tonight's dinner was especially good.  Purple sweet potato (I'm sure there's a proper name, but I don't remember what it is) and salad with homemade dressing.  So simple, so tasty!