More food

I am almost caught up with chronicling my cooking, so I'll stop spamming you with food posts for a while. But first, I have to tell you about these amazing Butter-Pecan Sweet Potatoes. OMG so much yum! This is definitely up there in the top three of things I've made so far.

Modifications: I cut down the recipe like woah, since I am not eight people; I used dark brown instead of light brown sugar (is there really much of a difference?); and I used a red-and-black pepper blend instead of cayenne, which I didn't have. Still tasted like awesomesauce.

I also made this casserole dish, to use up the half a package of frozen spinach I had left over. Its official title is Spinach and Hot Ham Fake-Baked Pasta with a Crispy Top. Seriously? Only Rachael Ray could come up with a title like that. I didn't have any ham, hot or otherwise, so I just left it out. Also, FYI, she claims the recipe makes about four servings "among big eaters like me and my family." I don't know if her family has a lot of extraordinarily large people in it, or maybe a hollow leg runs in the family, but I cut the recipe in HALF and still got four decent-sized servings out of it.

I added some extra milk, though, since the mixture seemed rather dry with only 3/4 cup. Also, I've made bread crumb toppings before, so I know how they're supposed to look, and you need way more than 2 TB of olive oil for that amount of bread crumbs. Personally, I prefer to use butter instead of olive oil, but I followed the recipe this time, and the bread crumb/cheese mixture was basically dry. Didn't taste like I'd added anything at all, and sprinkling dry bread crumbs over a casserole isn't very appealing to me (it also makes a big damn mess when you try to serve it - the bread crumbs go everywhere).