Over the weekend, I experimented with a few healthy recipes and one of my favorites was a broccoli spread. First, I steamed a head of broccoli. In a sauté pan, I then put the broccoli with some grated yellow onion, a clove of garlic, a drizzle of olive oil, and a handful of edamame for just a very few minutes. Into the food processor the mixture went with a dash of salt and pepper. Perfect to use like a pesto – on pasta, pizza, bruschetta, or a great potato topper!
I loved bologna sandwiches as a child, so no wonder that I love this fancy grown up version by Sunny Anderson. It’s not something I’d want often, but during those random nostalgic moments, it’s a great one to keep in the recipe book. I skipped the chipotle mayo, but I’m sure that would be great too.
While the bologna was cooking, I also made some healthy sides to even out the fatty deli meat. Leaks, roasted tomatoes, and asparagus.
For the chipotle-mayonnaise spread: Combine the mayonnaise and chipotle pepper in a bowl, and blend until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use.
For the bologna: In a large pan on medium-high heat add the oil. Add the bologna chunks to the hot oil. Sauté while tossing to brown all sides, about 8 minutes. Add the onions and season lightly with a few grinds of pepper. Continue to toss while cooking until the onions are tender, about 5 minutes more. Stir in the mustard, and honey to coat, and then add the wine. Simmer while tossing until the wine bubbles and foams and is reduced to only a bit of sauce in the pan.
To assemble the sandwiches, slather chipotle mayonnaise on each slice of toasted bread and top equally with the bologna. To serve as a smaller bite, cut the toasted bread into 1/4ths and continue to top as directed.
Sunday night and I’m doing my week in a day cooking. In addition to making my dinners for the week, I also like to make a few items that are easy to-go items. This week I made chicken salad and egg salad.
I made the chicken salad a little different than normal and I really loved the outcome. Since it’s just me that will eat it – I used only 1 large chicken breast (or 4 tenders), but if making this recipe for more than one, I’d definitely suggest at least doubling up on the ingredients.
First, I poached the chicken in water with onion, garlic, bay leaves, celery, salt and pepper. Once cooked and just slightly cooled, I chopped it to a shredded texture.
Next I mixed the following ingredients:
So flavorful and creamy!! Delicious on crackers, a croissant, or just by itself. Also, perfect for a busy work week lunch.
Ripening and Keeping Bananas: Separate banana fingers from the “pack” when you get home from the grocery. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
Storing Cheese: Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
Peppers: Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
Cooking Ground Beef: Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
Creamy Scrambled Eggs: To make scrambled eggs or omelets rich and creamy, add a couple of spoonfulls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and beat.
Mint Brownies: For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.
Garlic Flavor: Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if you want a stronger taste of garlic.
Candy Bar Treat: Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yum!
Reheat Pizza: Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza.
Easy Deviled Eggs: Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.
Expanding Frosting: When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.
Reheating Refrigerated Bread: To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
Measuring Cups: Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
I’ve seen a multitude of lasagna recipes and decided to make one of my own! While it came out a little more casserole feeling than lasagna to me, it tasted great and I would highly recommend. Hope you enjoy!
Prep: preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease 13x9 pan.
Recipe / Ingredients:
TIP - You can either cook your chicken first (I poached my chicken, then shredded) and cook the onion separately OR you can cube chicken breast and cook with the onion.
If your chicken is already cooked… next cook onions and garlic until softened in a couple tablespoons of olive oil.
Once onions and garlic are cooked, add cooked chicken and the following ingredients to pot or large skillet.
Let simmer about 20 minutes until sauce thickens and flavors marry.
Separately, mix following ingredients in small bowl and set aside:
Now it’s time to start the layers!!
Final ingredients –
Spread 1/3 of the meat sauce on bottom of the pan, top with 1/3 of the cottage cheese mixture, shredded cheese and finally the corn tortillas (I cut them in half and used 4 rounds per layer). Repeat 2 more times but leave off the tortillas on the final layer and just end with the cheese.
Cover with tin foil and cook for 20 minutes. Uncover and cook 10 minutes more. Serve hot!
TIP: I like mine with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of cilantro.
I’ve always liked greens, and made them the “usual” way, slow cooked with broth, red pepper flake, garlic, and bacon / ham.
However, once I got started on green smoothies, it was clear to see greens could be used in a lot more ways than the way I’ve been making them.
Another way is by simply baking them into chips! Kale seems to work the best for this. Simply clean the greens, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake until crisp. Eat and enjoy while consuming minimal calories! Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like eating buttery movie popcorn, but the salty almost nutty flavor and crisp bite of the kale can definitely take the edge off salty cravings!
I always seem to have leftover potatoes, and I have to admit that I’m not the best when it comes to using leftovers. However, potatoes are a pretty easy one – even for me!
Some of my go-to options are making hash, using the potatoes to top a casserole like shepherd’s pie, or making potato pancakes.
This weekend, I had breakfast for dinner with a potato pancake, poached egg, and small side of pureed squash. Add a piece of toast to soak up any yolky goodness, and I’m a happy camper!
There’s nothing better on a cold snowy day than good old shepherd’s pie. My heritage is both Italian and Irish, but this Irish dish is not one that I had much at all growing up.
I love to make my beef stew part in a heavy cast iron pot, sautéed onions and garlic alongside carrots in the medley of beef, broth, and herbs. The one veggie I was missing is peas. What’s a shepherd’s pie without a little green? Since I was out of peas, but in need of green, I folded in some spinach to my mashed potatoes and baked to perfection. Sorry – no photos of the baked pie. It looked and smelled so good that I dug right in and forgot to take the final picture! You know that means it was tasty!
I’m sort of obsessed with the show “Chopped”. The show is a cooking challenge where chefs have to make meals including really random ingredients.
Well today I had my own “Chopped” experience when I looked in my fridge and couldn’t think of a thing to make out of the components (which included swiss chard, cranberries, pasta, wine and mushrooms).
Here’s what I made! Red and green greens (cranberry sauce with swiss chard greens) topped with mushroom ravioli in a wine sauce.
The greens…
The final plate…
While getting in the holiday mood, I recently splurged on a piece of Cheesecake Factory pumpkin cheesecake. It was so good! I had never tried it before, but I’m sure glad I did. I loved it so much that I decided to order a whole pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving. That is… until they told me the price – $50! You’ve go to be kidding.
I quickly decided to make one myself and this Philadelphia Cream Cheese recipe is the one to use. Honestly, so much better than even the Cheesecake Factory cheesecake! You’ve got to try it.
Here’s what you need:
Here’s what you do:
One thing I didn’t realize until the batter was already made… this recipe makes 2 cheesecakes!! It’s a great option to freeze of give one away, but it you won’t be doing that, make sure you cut this recipe in half.
I hope you enjoy this creamy, spicy, sweet dessert as much as I do!
You wouldn’t know it from my lack of food posting, but I’ve actually still been home-cooking quite a bit!
Prior to Thanksgiving, I was in the turkey mood, but didn’t want to spoil the upcoming turkey dinner. To make due, I changed up the original turkey dinner into little turkey meatloaves!
Here’s what I changed:
The rest I kept the same: chopped veggies (onion, garlic, carrots), egg, milk, oil, worcestershire, ketchup, salt and pepper.
Cook @ 375 degree oven until golden brown (about 40 mins).
Happy non-Thanksgiving turkey day!
Now that it’s football season, I’ve been playing with game-time food. One of the “fan favorites” is my twice baked potatoes. Potato skins is another favorite, but a bit less filling than the full-on twice baked potatoes.
Ingredients:
Scrub potatoes clean and pat dry. Prick potatoes with a fork and bake at 425 degree oven for about 50 minutes or until tender.
Slice the potatoes in half (lengthwise). Scoop the pulp out of each potato and add to separate bowl.
Mash the pulp with a potato masher or mixer. Add sour cream, garlic salt, pepper, bullion, and beat until smooth. Add milk if necessary until desired consistency. Season to taste with (table) salt.
Spoon mashed potato mixture back into the potato half shells, and top to liking with bacon, cheese, and (sea) salt.
Bake, uncovered, in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
Then eat and enjoy a great twist on a great classic!
Easy lemon chicken! I seasoned the pounded chicken breast first with salt and pepper, then dredged it in flour with lemon pepper chicken seasoning. Next I sautéed the breasts in a hot pan with butter and oil until lightly browned. Finally, I added the juice of 1 lemon and chicken broth the the sauté pan and cooked the chicken until done through.
For side items I had mushrooms cooked with herbs, herb mashed potatoes and acorn squash with butter and brown sugar. It was the perfect homey Fall dinner.
A random little dinner plate below, but I have to highlight one thing – grilled cornbread! It’s so good!
Have you ever made cornbread, but leftovers on day 2 or 3 just aren’t as good? Here’s your savior.
I made my cornbread in an iron skillet (from the stovetop to the stove), so step 1 for my grilled cornbread was to re-heat it slightly in the oven. Step 2 was to slice generously cover both sides with butter. Step 3 was to “grill” like you would a grilled cheese on a stovetop skillet. Let brown, flip, and it’s ready to eat.
Moist, melt in your mouth, crispy and smooth cornbread… where have you been all my life?
Leftover rice can be made into so many different “second round” dishes. I love putting it in soup, stir fry, and also – rice pudding!
I looked up a basic recipe from America’s Test Kitchen:
Bring water to a boil in large saucepan. Stir in rice and salt, cover and simmer on low heat stirring once or twice until the water is almost fully absorbed (15-20 mins).
Stir in the milk, half and half, and sugar. Increase heat to medium high and bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to maintain the simmer. Cook, uncovered and stirring frequently, until the mixture starts to thicken (30 mins). Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook, stirring every few minutes to prevent sticking or burning. Pudding should continue to thicken (15 mins).
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, raisins and cinnamon. Serve and enjoy.
Thin to thick! It takes a while, but is totally worth the wait!
Now – the big switch that I made was using sweetened condensed milk instead of the half and half (sometimes you’ve got to be resourceful!). Because of how sweet the condensed milk is, I shorted the sugar by at least half.
I also added a bit of almond extract at the end and topped with peaches. Oh so cozy and delicious!
