Carrot Cake

Background: I am feeling like spring and so I want to post this wonderful carrot cake recipe. It is originally from one of my Mom's friends. This is what I made for Evan's first birthday party in July. It was the only non-fruit sweet he had ever had until we put one Froot Loop in each of his 10 Easter eggs this past week, which he inhaled when he figured out how to open the Easter eggs. Poor, deprived child.

Originally from: Mary Nadzum

Serves ~15
Approximate time, from prep to table: ~ 2 hours, including cooling time

Ingredients:
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking soda
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 Cups sugar
1 1/2 Cups canola oil
4 eggs

3 Cups grated carrots
(Optional: 1/2 Cup chopped pecans)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients, add oil, and blend. Add eggs one at a time (mixing in between). Add carrots and nuts. Blend well. Pour mixture into a 9x13 pan.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Although I have never made it, if you are feeling very Susie Homemaker, here is her homemade cream cheese frosting recipe:
8 oz cream cheese
1 box powdered sugar
1 stick butter
2 tsp vanilla
(Optional: 1 can coconut)
1/2 Cup chopped pecans

Beat thoroughly. (May make half of the recipe.)

Note/Tips: I just bought a cream cheese frosting when it was on sale and I thought the cake turned out wonderfully. Pour Evan didn't even get frosting, though, because it contained dairy. (Note little piece without cream cheese frosting above.) I hope that he grows out of his allergy so that he can indulge in the glory that is dairy!

Easter Egg Bread

Background: My mom made this bread a few times when I was little and I decided to make it myself this year. It was just as good as I remembered it! It is a wonderfully chewy bread. Grant said that it reminded him of Hawaiian bread. I altered the recipe slightly based on my mom's old recipe, which makes 4 times as much bread (which explains why she made it only a few times--imagine kneading 4 times as much dough at once!).

Originally from: my Mom, as well as here

Serves ~8 (one 1-lb loaf)
Approximate time, from prep to table: ~3 1/2 hours

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted and divided (plus up to 1 extra cup for kneading)
1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast (or 2 1/2 tsp)
2/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter (canola oil could also work)
2 eggs
Canola oil to coat bowl
5 whole eggs, uncooked, dyed if desired
Cooking spray
2 tablespoons butter, melted ( or 1 egg and 1 Tbsp milk)

Directions:
In a large bowl, combine 1 cup flour, sugar, salt and yeast; stir well. In a small bowl, sift 1 1/2 cups of flour for future use. Combine milk and butter (or canola oil) in a small saucepan (or dish for microwave if you want less pans to wash!); heat until milk is warm and butter is softened but not melted.

Gradually add the milk and butter (or canola oil) to the flour mixture; stirring constantly. Add two eggs and 1/2 cup flour; beat well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, dust it with flour and turn it out onto a heavily floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. You will need to add up to another 3/4 Cup of flour while kneading, so don't be shy with the flour!

Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into two equal size rounds; cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Roll each round into a long roll about 36 inches long and uniformly thick. Using the two long pieces of dough, form a loosely braided ring, leaving spaces for the five eggs. Seal the ends of the ring together and use your fingers to push the eggs down between the braids of dough.

Place loaf on a baking sheet, coated with cooking spray, and cover loosely with a damp towel. Place loaf in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 45 minutes. After about 30 minutes, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Brush risen loaf with melted butter (or egg and milk, whisked) and bake in preheated oven for about 25 minutes, or until golden and bread sounds hollow when tapped with hand. (Or you could experiment with a pizza stone that has been heating up for at least 25 minutes.)

Note/Tips: This bread is best when fresh out of the oven, but it keeps well if stored in an airtight container. I made this twice on Holy Saturday--one bread with five twists and one with 10 twists. I like the 10 twists better, with an egg in every other twist. Push the eggs deeply into the bread, as I had one egg roll out onto the pan during the baking! The eggs are supposed to hard boil with the bread, but I found that they barely soft-boiled (due to the drastically reduced amount of time needed from the above referenced recipe) and we did not eat them when they came out of the oven. I think that perhaps hard-boiling them beforehand would be best, but am not sure if they would then be over-cooked. I would just consider them a nice Easter decoration and discourage people from eating them. I don't think this bread should be stored in the refrigerator, so I would not recommend eating the hard-boiled eggs after a few hours, anyway. I also do not like that the color on my eggs chipped a little bit during the baking. I think that this is from the perspiration of the cooking eggs, so warm pre-boiled eggs might also solve this dilemma. I like the egg and milk coating best because I think it seals the bread better and the bread will dry out less (if it lasts more than one day, that is).

Veggie Pot Pie

Background: This is one of Grant's favorite dinners. If I mention we're having this for dinner, I usually get a "sweeeeeet" or "cha-ching." I've modified the recipe slightly to include more protein and more nutritious flour. If you're a meat-eater, I think that chicken would go well in this. Just increase the stock or water or milk to get the correct filling consistency.
Originally from: Skinny Bitch

Serves ~4
Approximate time, from prep to table: ~1:30
Crust Ingredients:1 Cup Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 Cup margarine/butter; sub vegan margarine as needed
2 Tbsp milk; sub unsweetened non-dairy milk as needed

Directions:Blend the flour and salt together in a small bowl. Add the margarine and mix by hand until mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add milk and knead until well combined and dough forms. Remove the dough, roll into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour prior to using. Prep below ingredients while dough is in refrigerator.
Filling Ingredients:1 small onion, chopped1 Tbsp olive oil
1-2 celery stalk, chopped (depending on how much you like celery)
1 large carrot, chopped
1 medium potato, finely chopped
1/3 Cup frozen peas
1/2 Cup red lentils
1 1/4 Cup vegetable stock (I use 1 tsp Better Than Bouillon and 1 1/4 Cup water)
1 1/2 tsp Mrs. Dash Garlic and Herb
2 Tbsp flour
1/2 Cup milk; sub unsweetened soy milk as needed

Preheat oven to 400F.

Lightly oil a deep dish 10 inch pie plate or an 8x8" baking dish (or even a casserole dish) and set aside.
In a large, deep saucepan over medium heat, saute the onions in oil until translucent. Add the celery and carrots; saute for an additional 2-3 minutes. Add the potatoes, peas, lentil, stock, and spices. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. Cover with lid and simmer for 4-8 minutes or until lentils are soft. (You should have a hard time seeing a particular lentil--they blend in rather well when ready. It is sort of like how a dry grain of rice is very defined while cooked rice almost seems out of focus...if that makes any sense at all.)

Stir in the flour and milk and simmer until sauce begins to thicken.

Transfer cooked vegetables to baking dish. Roll out dough and place evenly over top of vegetables and bake for 20 minutes, then broil for 1-3 minutes, until crust is lightly browned.

Note/Tips: I highly recommend the Whole Wheat Pastry Flour from Bob's Red Mill and using Mrs. Dash as a short cut for the below spices. All-Purpose (as in the above photo), Bread, or Whole Grain flour should work just as well. I usually roll the dough out between two pieces of saran wrap (re-using the one it had been wrapped up in) so that I don't have to wash my rolling pin or mess with the dough sticking.

*Can instead use: 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp sage, 1/4 tsp thyme, and 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper.

Coconut Bean Soup

Background: I met my friend Morgan in high school, where we pretty much had all the same science classes. Our friendship continued as we both decided to go to Michigan, do the whole pre-med thing, and major in Cell and Molecular Biology. We bonded over more than just science, though. We both enjoyed all things 80's, which lead to many great 80's parties (and once even an Early 90's party), sitting in coffee shops, procrastinating and food. Once, sometime during senior year, we decided that we were going to find one weird-sounding recipe to make per week, and turn the project into a cookbook. Our first recipe was for a Garbanzo Cake. We had to take the thin little skins off of about 1,000 garbanzos, and the cake wasn't really that good, but hey, it sounded weird. We printed the recipe, and even drew a picture of the cake decorated with pineapple slices, using Morgan's fat Crayola markers. Though clearly we were destined for greatness in cookbookery, this is where our project ended. We graduated, and my would-be coauthor went off to Kenya to be a Peace Corps Volunteer before going on to med school. In the meantime, I went to grad school, got married, and adopted a baby. When Morgan came back from Kenya about a year and a half ago, Jeff and I invited her over for dinner. Not only was I excited to see her again, but we also wanted to hear all about her post-Peace Corps travels around Ethiopia, since we would soon be travelling there ourselves. The night she came over was just a couple weeks before our trip, so it was a ridiculously busy time. Though I would never ask a dinner guest to bring the main course (my mother taught me better than that!), I quickly accepted Morgan's offer to bring over one of her favorite Kenyan dishes, Coconut Bean Soup. It sounds weird, and would have definitely make the cut for our cookbook. However, unlike the Garbanzo Cake, it is delicious. It's rich, hearty and nice and coconutty. Morgan described how to make it, and from her verbal instructions, after a few tries, I have a working recipe. Morgan adapted the recipe for American kitchens and ingredients, which basically means that we're allowed to use coconut milk instead of fresh coconut. This is good, because the one time I bought a fresh coconut, which had a blue ribbon tied around it proudly proclaiming "E-Z Open" or some such thing, was a disaster. It was far from easy to crack open. About an hour and a few dozen tools and kitchen utensils after I started working on it, I had shards of coconut covered in little bits of brown peel from the outside...totally not worth it. Despite her two years in Kenya, Morgan never mastered the coconut either. Whenever she wanted to eat coconut, or make coconut bean soup, she would take her coconut over to the neighbors' house, where their 7-year old daughter would deftly split open the coconut for her with a machete. Canned coconut milk is a wonderful thing. Due to our last-minute dinner plans (did I mention that Morgan and I are great procrastinators?), Morgan made this for us using canned beans, but when she gave me the recipe, she highly suggested that I use dried beans instead...it takes longer, but she was right, the results are definitely worth it. The beans actually cook in the coconut, which adds to the complexity of the dish and just makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. And perfect for nights like this, when the weather is far from Kenyan.

Originally from: Morgan's Kenyan friends

Serves ~4
Approximate time, from prep to table: ~1 day plus 2 1/2 hours (you need to soak the dried beans overnight)

Ingredients:
1 pound dried red kidney beans
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 Tablespoon curry powder
8 cups water
1 can coconut milk
salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:
The day before you're going to make the soup, rinse the beans and pick out any stones. Place beans in a large bowl, cover with cold water, and let soak overnight.

When you are ready to cook, drain the beans. Heat olive oil in a stockpot over medium heat. Add onion, bell pepper and carrot, and cook until they begin to soften, about 5-7 minutes. Add chopped tomato and curry powder, and stir for about a minute. Add beans, 8 cups of water, and half the coconut milk. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. At this point, the beans should be tender. Add the rest of the coconut milk, and salt and pepper. Using a potato masher or fork, mash about half the beans in the pot, to thicken up the soup. Simmer for another 1/2 hour, stirring occasionally.

Note/Tips:
-I usually serve this over rice, but it's also great with a good crusty bread.
-To make the shortcut canned bean version, just cook the vegetables as directed, then add a couple cans of beans, a can of coconut milk, and as much water as you need to get the consistency you want. Mash some of the beans, bring to a boil, and serve. I really recommend making this with dried beans at least once though...it's definitely worth it.
-This makes great leftovers...the flavors meld together more the longer they sit.
-I once did a google search the suggests that this recipe is actually originally Tanzanian. Not surprising that it would have found its way across the border into Kenya. I'm going to keep thinking of it as Kenyan, since that's where Morgan learned it, but feel free to call it Tanzanian, which may or may not be more accurate.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Background: I realize this is not a picture of pizza dough. But Karen requested that I post my pizza dough recipe, and that means writing a post that covers not only pizza dough, but also loaves of bread, baguettes, pita bread, naan, rolls, and all kinds of wonderful things. Because they all come from the same place, at least in my kitchen. To back up a little, we've had some culinary changes in our house over the last year or so. We had always eaten a relatively healthy diet, not a whole lot of processed foods, lots of veggies, etc. But then we had a revelation. We read "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan, and were in complete agreement with what he said (it also helped that my UM SPH Alumni Magazine released an issue stating the same things not long after)...which is that basically, for our physical health and for the environment, it is best to eat food (real food, because as he says, a lot of stuff in our grocery stores is not actually food, but rather edible foodlike substances), not too much of it (decrease portion sizes), and mostly plants. His rules for how to buy food include things like, "Don't buy things your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food", "Don't buy foods with more than five ingredients on the label", "Don't buy foods that contain ingredients you can't pronounce", etc. We're not total nazis about this: we do have some items in our fridge, like ketchup, which definitely don't fit into the rules. But for the most part, we try to stick to this plan. For us, this meant that we cut our meat consumption to one portion per week, started buying more from local farms, getting our milk from a local dairy, etc. It also meant making a lot more things from scratch, like bread. See, bread is supposed to have approximately four ingredients: water, flour, yeast and salt. Some breads, like challah, have eggs and some form of sugar. And then of course you can add all kinds of things like cheese and chocolate and raisins to your basic loaf. Most breads in grocery stores though, don't stop there. Even the "healthy" breads that say things like "12-grain" and taste like cardboard tend to have a lot of extras added in to make the loaf last a long time without molding or drying out. At first, we tried buying bread from the bakery. Plum Market, right down the street from us, sells all their leftover baguettes (Zingerman's!) for $1.25 after 8pm. This seemed like a good deal, but it didn't take us long to figure out that a baguette is just way to much for the three of us to eat before it gets too hard. So we started baking. We got a nice book from the libarary with pretty pictures and made some great breads. Not soft squishy breadmaker type breads, but pretty free-form loaves with great crackly crusts. Every weekend, during one of Juan Pablo's naps, Jeff and I would knead the dough, let it rise, shape it into loaves, and turn out a nice supply of bread for the coming week. We would have one loaf with dinner/breakfast the next day, and freeze the extras. However, this also got kind of old pretty quickly. It's a lot of work. And that's when I discovered "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. It caught my eye when I walked through the cookbook section at Border's one day, so I skimmed it, and then immediately placed it on hold at the library. It was everything I dreamed it would be. The process is simple: You mix together your ingredients (no kneading!), let them rise a couple hours, then store the dough in the fridge for up to two weeks, until you're ready to use it. When you're ready to bake, you pull off a piece of dough, shape it into a loaf, and let it rise about 40 minutes. Then you bake it for about 25 minutes, and you have fresh bread to eat. If you're making something flat like pita or naan, it's even faster. There are a few basic doughs that you can use to make a variety of different breads. The dough I use the most is the whole wheat dough...I use it for regular loaves and pizza dough mostly, but I've also used it to make baguettes, naan, pita, and cinnamon raisin bread in the past. The other great thing about this is that you can choose how big to make your loaves, so if you're making dinner for two, you can just make a little loaf or a couple of rolls, but if you're making dinner for a crowd, you can make a big loaf. Or lots of loaves. And today seems like an especially appropriate day for this post, because the authors' new book "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day" comes out today. It has more recipes using whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and I can't wait to get a copy.

Originally from: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

Makes~4 pounds of dough, so enough for either four pizza crusts, or four loaves of bread, or a combination, but you can easily halve the recipe if this is too much to use up in two weeks

Approximate time, from prep to table: ~To get the pizza dough ready to use, it takes about 2 hours and 1 minute...but two hours of that, the dough is just rising.

Ingredients:
3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour

Directions:
Mix all ingredients in a large container or bowl. Just mix, with a spoon, until they're blended...no need to knead. It should take about a minute or so.

Cover with a clean, dry towel, and let rise at room temperature for about two hours, until doubled. At this point, you can either use the dough, or store it, covered, in the refridgerator for up to two weeks. I just cover mine with plastic wrap...you don't want the cover to be air tight, or it could explode.

When you're ready to make a pizza, just pull off a one pound piece of dough from the mass in the bowl, and shape it into a ball (one pound of dough ends up being about the size of a grapefruit). Roll out the dough on a floured surface, top with the toppings of your choice, and bake as directed in your pizza recipe.

Note/Tips:

-If the dough is hard to roll out or keeps springing back, just let it sit for a few minutes to let the glutens relax.

-As I've mentioned, this dough can be used to make all kinds of great breads. See the book, or artisanbreadinfive.com for more information. I really recommend getting the book (I just checked it out from the library), because there's a lot of great stuff in there. I usually use this dough for pizza because it's what I typically have in the fridge, but the Olive Oil Dough make a more traditional pizza dough. Definitely worth checking out! And I promise the authors are not paying me to say all this great stuff about their book...though perhaps they should...

Blue Pizza

Background: I have a mild obsession with blue cheese. Not the dried-out flavorless crumbles that they sell for salads, but wedges of real, buttery, creamy pungent blue cheese, like gorgonzola or roquefort, or even maytag. I remember watching my parents eat blue cheese as a kid, and thinking that it was one scary cheese. I didn't know as much about food safety then as I do now, but I knew enough to know what mold looked like, and to me, that cheese did not look safe, despite my parents' reassurance that the mold was there on purpose. But once I got old enough to look past that and see what the big deal was about, it was love at first bite. I love the stuff- the smellier the better. Since we got married three years ago, Jeff and I have also developed a not-so-mild obsession with homemade pizza. It started out innocently enough- the refridgerated bags of pizza dough at Trader Joe's were only 99 cents, and who doesn't love food that's covered in melted cheese? We began having pizza about once a week, even making it on the grill in the summer. Now we're obsessed to the point where we only use homemade dough, and actually have a pizza peel and pizza stone, to obtain the best possible pie. Despite the fact that we have about a pizza per week, it's very rare that we have the same pizza twice. Our pizzas are as varied as the seasonal produce, and whatever combinations of cheeses I happen to have on hand. About a year ago though, I hit on a combination that was so good, it had to be repeated. I had a wedge of blue and some pizza dough, and decided to combine the two. I started playing the "What goes well with blue cheese?" game, throwing things on the pizza as I went. First were the red onions and spinach, followed by mushrooms and bacon. I spotted a few apples on the counter, and thought, "Apples go well with blue cheese!" Then I hesitated. Apples are fantastic with blue cheese, sure, but apples on a pizza? Then I remembered that California Pizza Kitchen has a pizza with pear on it. If they can put pear on their pizzas, why can't I put apples on mine? Hell, some people even put pineapple on their pizzas, a topping that I just cannot understand. So I threw some apple slices on there, and it turned out to be the perfect match. The sweetness of the apples is the perfect balance to the tanginess of the cheese- a great fall pizza, which is only really improved by a glass of dry white wine alongside. I've tweaked the recipe a bit since that first time- I don't put bacon on it anymore (several months ago we decided to cut our meat consumption down to one serving per week, so we rarely have bacon on hand anymore), and the mushrooms are an occasional thing...I usually walk right by the mushrooms at the grocery store without even realizing they're there...and once I think about it we're on the other side of the store and when you're shopping with a two-year-old, going all the way back is just not an option. But you're welcome to add bacon and/or mushrooms to the pizza- it's delicious either way. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most of you don't have a pizza peel and pizza stone, so I'll write out the cookie-sheet directions, and assume that anyone with a pizza stone knows how to use it and can adapt the recipe accordingly. Enjoy!

Originally from: this one's an Ani Pennings original

Serves ~4
Approximate time, from prep to table: ~45 minutes

Ingredients:
1 T. olive oil

1 medium red onion, sliced

1 bunch of fresh spinach (about 1 lb), or a 1lb bag of baby spinach
1 apple, any variety, sliced into 1/4-inch thick slices
8 oz. fresh mozarella, torn into small pieces

2-3 oz. wedge of nice blue cheese, such as gorgonzola, crumbled

1 lb. pizza dough, either homemade or store-bought

cornmeal to sprinkle on cookie sheet

extra olive oil for drizzling

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Heat 1 Tablespoon olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add red onion, and sautee until golden brown, about 10 minutes. In the meantime, cut the tough stems out of the spinach, and slice into 1/4-inch wide ribbons. Wash thoroughly, but do not dry- the water that clings to the spinach will help it wilt. When the onions are done, add spinach to skillet, one handful at a time, waiting until spinach is wilted before adding more. Once spinach is wilted, season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle cornmeal liberally over a rimless baking sheet. Roll pizza dough to 1/4 inch thickness, and place on baking sheet. Spread onion and spinach mixture evenly over pizza, leaving a 1-inch border. Top with apple slices, then blue cheese, then mozarella. Drizzle a little olive oil over the whole thing, and add a little freshly ground black pepper if you like.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the crust is golden brown on the bottom. Cut into pieces and serve immediately.

Note/Tips:

-If you want to add mushrooms to this, I suggest either crimini or assorted wild mushrooms. Clean and slice the mushrooms, and add to the skillet when the onions are almost done. Sautee for a couple minutes, then add spinach as directed.

-If you want to add bacon, just cook a couple slices in whatever way you like, then crumble over the top of the pizza just before baking.

-Try to have your toppings ready to go before you roll out the pizza dough. If the dough sits on the baking sheet for too long, it might sneak past the cornmeal and stick.

-When I make this (or any other pizza) for guests, I usually slice it into random sized and shaped pieces, and serve them on a platter. It just looks cool like this.

Lentil and Rice Casserole

Background: I really enjoy this casserole--it is so yummy! When people are over for dinner and I've told them that I'm making a lentil and rice casserole, they pretend to be interested while secretly wishing they had stopped at McDonalds on their way over. Then they eat it and want the recipe. :) It is great for when dinner is still a while away and I don't want to spend a lot of time making it! I always keep the ingredients around so that I can make it without running to the store. This is my go-to, lazy dinner.

Originally from: La Dolce Vegan? I changed it slightly to increase the protein.

Serves ~4-6
Approximate time, from prep to table: ~1:50 (for 1:30 of this, the casserole is in the oven--just stay within hearing distance of your oven's timer for stirring)

Ingredients:
1 Cup dried red lentils
1 Cup uncooked brown rice
1 large or 2 small onions, chopped
1 Tbsp Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Base
4 Cups water (or just substitute 4 cups of desired stock for the Base and water)
1 14-oz can crushed tomatoes, not drained (or diced--whatever is in your pantry will work)
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
3/4 Cup cheese (any kind will do--I like cheddar; substitute soy cheese as needed), grated

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees even before getting ingredients lined up.

In a large casserole dish or 9x13 pan (did I mention that this recipe is very laid back?), combine the lentils, rice, onions, stock, tomatoes, basil, and oregano. Cover with lid (or not) and bake for 1 1/2 hours, stirring every half hour. After the hour and a half, remove lid, sprinkle cheese on top of casserole, and broil for 1-3 minutes, until cheese has melted. (Keep an eye on it so that it doesn't burn!)

Note/Tips: I like to serve this with a side of green beans and baked sweet potatoes. I bake the sweet potatoes in my toaster oven while the casserole is taking up the oven. Just scrub and poke all over with a fork after putting the casserole in. Put them in the toaster oven and wait until the first stirring of the casserole. Then set it to 450F and bake for about an hour, until fork tender. Too good!