Parmesan Garlic Broccoli Butter

A couple of years ago I found a Rachael Ray recipe for Green Goblin Bread that had a green butter made by adding spinach. Perfect for Halloween and my family really enjoyed it. We don't hide veggies from our kids but I love getting that extra boost of nutrition any way we can so I am always looking to add extra vegetables into our meals. So this week as I was deciding what to do with the veggies I had on hand, I decided to try this same butter concept but with broccoli.
I am going to share the exact recipe that I made...it seriously made a lot of butter so I would recommend cutting it in half. But if you decide to go full-bore, I will also share a couple of different ways we used the butter in this week's meals.

I started by chopping up 2 small heads of broccoli (the one pictured plus a slightly smaller one) and put the pieces into the food processor. Now I did this with raw broccoli which left the butter both smelling and tasting pretty strongly of broccoli. If you want a more subtle taste, maybe try steaming the broccoli first. Pulse up your broccoli until it is in teeny tiny bits:

From there I just added the rest of the ingredients on top of the broccoli - 2 sticks of butter (softened), 2 cloves of garlic (put them in raw but you could roast them first if you prefer that flavor), 1/2 cup grated Parmesan. Give it a good whirl until everything is nicely blended. Then you are ready to use it or cover and store it in the refrigerator.

Want some ideas how to use this? Here's what we had it on (all these pictures are before they were cooked, so hard to snap that after picture when trying to get dinner on the table for 4 hungry guys!):

Spread on homemade french bread slices and warmed in the oven

Cut up some potatoes for homestyle fries, melted the butter and tossed the potatoes in the butter before cooking at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes (this was my favorite!)

Hobo fish packets...if you do this, spread the butter on the fish first. It all melted and left a glob of broccolit bits on top of the zucchini.



I am sure you can come up with a dozen more creative ways to use this butter. If you try it out, let me know how it turns out! Enjoy~

See It, Pin It, Do It - Deep Cleaning

Now that I have planned out some family activities to make the most of our summer, I wanted to focus on doing some of the projects that are on my wish list {aka my Pinterest boards}. So I am creating a post series called See It, Pin It, Do It (cook it, create it, clean it...whatever is relevant) that will be inspired by the things I am pinning on Pinterest. Some will be copied exactly from the original idea and others will be inspired with my own twist on them. I will always link to the original blogger so that you can see the true inspiration and so that credit is given where due when possible. Hope that you will be inspired to Do It too!

I had planned to make my first post in this series a cute Family Rules project but I started it and it got tucked away so we are going to start off with some cleaning pins instead. Maybe not all that exciting but definitely practical and let's face it, as boring as they can be, practical posts have to happen too. So let's get down to business - I am going to show you 3 cleaning tips I pinned and then tested for myself.

I started with this post by One Good Thing on how to clean your top-load washing machine (she has a link for front-load instructions as well). Does it drive anyone else crazy to have to clean the appliances that are supposed to be cleaning stuff for you? It irks me everytime I think about it...but I digress. The truth is I don't know the last time I cleaned my washing machine so it was actually pretty grimy. No judging - I am doing this for you all so I am trusting you will turn a blind eye to the grossness. Capiche??

Click on the link above for exact instructions but the basics of this involves running two different loads, one with bleach and one with vinegar. The good news is that when all was said and done the inside of my washing machine was sparkling and looked like this:

I will say that I had to do a little scrubbing on the inside after the final rinse. There was a ring around the tub of the basin where the water had sat and there was still residue on the agitator but I used my handy dandy Magic Eraser and that was all gone in no time. To be fair, I think the problem had more to do with the fact that I didn't really have enough hot water for the vinegar load because our hot water tank needs to be drained (hard water build-up). Either way, I ended up with a clean washing machine so I am happy!

Since the washing machine project involved a lot of waiting time, I decided to tackle two other projects while I was at it. This pin came from Practically Functional and was actually something I have done in the past but wanted to pin for continued reference in the future. This is about as easy as it gets involving simply water and vinegar heated in a bowl for 5 minutes which helps loosen the gunk making it easier to wipe clean. The vinegar also helps with any smells that are lingering. If the vinegar smell bothers you, just add some lemon juice to the mixture. Again, the microwave while frequently used is rarely cleaned like it should be so this was a much needed project. Ready for the results?

I should just have entitled this post Projects Chrystal has Neglected for Far Too Long. My last project tackled today was no exception - the vents above the stove. Ick. Double Ick. This again came from One Good Thing (let me urge you to browse her site while you are there - tons of great tips!). When I pinned this particular tip I was excited about the idea of simply having to boil the vents with some baking soda to remove the grease. Unfortunately I didn't have a pot wide enough to do this so after reading some of the comments from her readers I got the idea to just do it in my sink. I filled it part way with warm water, put some baking soda on the vent and let it sit while I boiled some water on my stove top. I splashed a little vinegar over the baking soda to make it work it's magic (and this helps from getting a stale smell when you air dry something like this) and then poured the boiling water over the top of the vent. I used a scrub brush to really work the grease off and then did the other side. Repeated this with the second vent and then put them out in the sun to dry. A little more work than her method but came out super clean.

I would say these were all successes, wouldn't you? Makes me excited to try out some more of those pins I have been storing up...even the cleaning ones. In the meantime if you want to see which cleaning tips are catching my eye, you can follow my DIY Cleaning Board.