Loving root veggies and roasted kale

It's finally turned colder here which means I can get back into the kitchen and start using the oven to my hearts delight :)  That entails breaking out the bread puddings (yum!).  Also soups, been making a lot of those recently including a very delicious french onion soup tonight.  I've also been craving root veggies, parsnips, carrots and I keep thinking I need to add more squash to the mix as well.  I'm actually aiming at trying to stretch a buck and bulking more meals out with a bit less meat and more veggies, dunno if it will help the food bills or not but hey it's worth a try.

Monday night I kind of made my own recipe up.  It was based on Rachael Ray's mulled cider beef, but I added some other veggies including cabbage and butternut squash, I basted all of that with cider with mulling spices in it and put it all in the clay pot, served along side of course mashed sweet potatoes.  I've also suddenly become obsessed with roasted kale which is just delicious, drizzle of olive oil a little salt and you are good to go in a 350 oven for 20 minutes.

I've also been cutting down on television, three days so far and the only thing that has been on was Monday night football.  I watch a little during the girls nap and we turn it on after they have gone to bed.  I confess it's a challenge specially on wet days tomorrow is going to be interesting.  However I have been getting out more taking the girls for walks, we even went to the state park today, as all three of us are currently snotty messes I'm keeping us away from the general public and going to wide open spaces where we won't run into too many people.  So far it's working a treat, shame we had to miss the play group this morning, but I just don't think it fair on us spreading our germs.