Cook-fest & bein’ real

For those of you that have been with me since the beginning when I started blogging in March of 2010, you may already know that I like to keep a clean house. If you are new around here, let me give you a couple of examples that highlight my ridiculousness. I color coordinate my closet, face the labels on all of my canned goods to the outside and have a system for almost everything.
We don’t have any kids, so it’s easy to do.
And thankfully, I married a man that is just as anal retentive as I am.
But, every once in awhile, I get a wild hair and get “my dirty” on.

This is how Cookfest began. I decided today would be the day to experiment, use up my garden’s harvest from the past couple of days, try out new recipes, and freeze a bunch of goodies for upcoming visitors.

 

The peels multiplied as I came up with more and more ideas to concoct.

 

I lined up my projects, pulling out ingredients to make sure I had everything on hand. I didn’t. But that’s never stopped me before. I decided to avoid the grocery store and improvise per usual.

 

For dinner, I wanted to try out a recipe for roasted sweet potato, carrots, onions and garbanzo beans.

 

There was some naughty cross-breeding going on in my garden which produced 2 mystery squash. Add those to a small pumpkin and I decided they would be the basis for my “Pumpkin-ish Pies”.

 

Zucchini Chocolate muffins were next on the list.

 

And my craving for Butternut Squash Soup was satisfied with the few small butternut found in the garden.

 

Pureed Squash was everywhere, pots were boiling over on the stove, dishes were piling up…

 

…every mixing bowl, spatula, measuring cup and appliance was being utilized, covered in some mixture of squash, vegie peel, cinnamon and flour concoction.

 

And my normal sidekick-Biceps-was rehearsing for a show. What’s a girl to do but keep cooking, keep piling up the dishes and wipe down the cabinets covered in bubbly squash juice from time to time.

 

Cookfest started at approximately 2pm and lasted until 8pm. It produced 2 pounds of meatloaf, two casserole dishes of roasted vegies, two pumpkin-ish pies, 4 dozen zucchini muffins, butternut squash soup, mystery squash puree for future soups or lasagna, one extremely dirty kitchen and one tuckered out but delighted Rebekah.
Cookfest was a messy success.