pumpkin carving alternative

There are so many creative ideas out there as alternatives to carving pumpkins. I've never been good at actually carving pumpkins. I always end up with a normal looking jack-o-lantern or trying to get creative and having it fall apart before Halloween.

 

This year I decided to try something creative against my better judgment. For once, my [limited] creativity worked out.

bbq veggie burgers

I'm not a fan of frozen, processed foods. The only thing currently in my freezer is frozen fruit and some popsicles from when I got my wisdom teeth removed (don't ask how long ago that was...). I think there might be some frozen hotdogs and chicken patties, but again, don't ask how old those are. Trash day is tomorrow and I might finally get rid of them. I normally forget because I rarely even open the freezer; this is a reminder to myself to go through the freezer when I get home!

 

Anyway, onto the real reason for this post, because it's not to remind me to clean out my freezer. A couple of weeks ago, Eric and I tried out hand at making veggie burgers. It actually turned out pretty well. I think they probably should have baked a little longer so that they weren't as gooey inside but live and learn.

 

sweet pepper pasta w. kale

In my last blog post about the kale chips, I said that the whole reason we made kale chips was because we had leftover kale that we didn't want to go to waste. This recipe here is the reason we bought the kale in the first place. I originally found the recipe here, on All Recipes. We changed out the yellow pepper the recipe called for with green pepper and used a lot more kale that the recipe called for so it was super packed. Below is the recipe as we prepared it with our changes.

 

kale chips

We had some leftover kale from a pasta salad we made earlier in the week and didn't want it to go bad, so we decided to try our hand at kale chips.

 

stir fry stuffed peppers

Our meal planning kind of went by the wayside this week... One day we didn't feel like cooking so we just had leftovers. This left us a day off with meals so we decided to improvise and boy am I glad we did. We ended up with these delicious stir fry stuffed peppers.