Happy Fourth of July...cookies are on the grill!

When I was younger (teenage years), I was part of the Teen Advisory Board (TAB) at the local library. Along with planning really fun events for local teens, we had some pretty fun hang-outs and projects that we did ourselves! And with every fun event you need awesome food. (I remember we overhauled the space for the teen reading/hang-out/computer room and made it awesome---bean bags, a jean couch, a bench, lights!) My Mom used to make Hamburger Cookie Sandwiches a lot for TAB...in fact, when I started this blog, my friend Kara (who directed the teen advisory board) asked about the cookie sandwiches.


In honor of the celebrated birth of our country, I figured it was appropriate to bring out the big guns, er, hamburgers, and make these cuties once again.

Simple:

1 box Nilla wafers (I use reduced fat)
1 box Keebler Grasshopper cookies
1 tube red icing (thick kind)
1 tube green icing (thick kind)
1 tube yellow icing (thick kind)
Honey
Sesame seeds



To make 12:

1) Take 12 nicely rounded (not chipped) Nilla wafers and line the edges with the green icing so that the icing sort of "sloppily" hangs off the side.
2) Take 6 other nicely rounded (not chipped) Nilla wafers and do the same with the yellow icing.
3) Take 6 totally other nicely rounded (not chipped) Nilla wafers and do the same with the red icing.
4) Now, take 12 Grasshopper cookies and place them (right side up) on the Nilla wafers with the green icing.
6) Flip the yellow and green cookies on top---now you have 12 cookies.
7) With your finger, place a small smear of honey on the top of each cookie...about the size of a pencil eraser.
8) Now, drop a few sesame seeds onto the honey and.... dum dum dum...Hamburger Cookies!

Bon appetit!

Red, red...food

When I ask Dan what he wants for dinner, he either does not know, or wants the mini-meatloaves.

Most often, I take the "I don't know" as my cue to pick a main and go ahead. However, sometimes I decide "the guy likes the 'loaves, let 'em eat loaves." So, I went ahead and made mini-meatloaves again and included a new side dish.

Shells with Corn and Tomato is loosely inspired by the what we dubbed 'adult mac 'n' cheese' in France. No, full frontal nudity or male rear nudity (can you believe 'male rear nudity' is now used when describing the ratings of a movie?!), it was large shells (the stuffing kind)smothered with about four kinds of French cheese. My dinner was a winner. And in France, anything smothered in cheese has to be good. Except lima beans.

I followed the package directions for the shells, then added cooked green beans and cooked corn. I mixed in tomato sauce which I seasoned and voila---veggies and pasta.

The stats:

1 c cooked shells
1/2 c corn
1/2 c green beans
1 c tomato sauce mixed with (1/2 tbsp garlic powder, 1/4 tbsp onion powder, 1 tbsp parsley, 1/2 tbsp basil)




For starters we had a Balsamic Tomato and Raspberry Salad. With salads, I enjoy combining vegetables and fruit. I think the sweet and tart/salty tastes together really are nice to have on the same plate. This is really easy, and if you feel creative, you can sculpt your tomato however you like. I used about 1/2 tomato per person, sliced it up, poured 1.5 tbsp balsamic vinegar over the tomato, topped with basil and added a few fresh raspberries!



Bon appetit!

Pineapple Chili

I am seriously behind on my blogging. However, I want to give each recipe its "time in the spotlight" after being posted. Not that I have a ton of readers, or anything, but yeah, that is my rational. Although, sometimes I think it would be better to just catch-up and post what I have so I can stop being behind!

Oh well, this past weekend my parents came into town for their anniversary Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!. We had a really nice celebration which included hilariousness at the Baltimore Comedy Factory as well as two nice and yummy dinners! On Sunday, Daniel and I went to his camp Mega-Reunion! Boy, it was fun! We made arts and crafts, took a tour of the camp, and ate too much red meat :::sigh:::

When we went to Greetings and Readings to purchase a few cards, we were lucky to try a sample of a delicious cookie recipe from a local cookbook author and owner of a dessert company! How fun must her job be! When asked if I bake, I smiled and mentioned my blog. She said she would check it out, how exciting! Please check out her website!

So, one of our favorite recipes is my Old Fashioned Chili and while Daniel requests it quite often, I remind him that for the sake of my blog, we can only have it when I am making a new recipe for a side-dish. But then, I thought...I should change the recipe up a bit!

And voila, Pineapple Turkey Chili was born! I did change the recipe a bit. I basically started the same: I cooked 1 lb of lean ground turkey meat in a skillet. In a stock pot, I combined one can of diced tomatoes and 1 can dark (low sodium) kidney beans. The place where I changed the taste was in the sauce! I added about 1/2 tbsp cinnamon and 1 tsp ginger. I then added about 1/2 can (8 oz) of drained pineapple.

We like this change in taste! It wasn't too sweet at all, but the sweetness of the pineapple when bitten into gave a nice, refreshing burst of flavor.


Bon appetit!

Crock Pot: Attempt Une

As one of our wedding presents, we received a very creative (and very useful!) gift from neighbors that I've known since I was little--Di, Jeff, and Dylan. In fact, we've known each other since my cartoon watching days, as in our guest book, Dylan referenced when we used to watch Rugrats. I loved that show! Is it still on?

Our gift was a crock pot and a slow cooker cookbook with, get this...more than400 recipes!. I could finish my blog challenge just with this cookbook!

My first recipe with the crock pot was Lemon-Lime Chili Chicken as always, email me for the recipe---my name @gmail.com.

I chose to cook on the "high" setting rather than slow cooking the chicken all day. This was truly delicious! The chicken did not dry out, and the "sauce" was delicious, healthy and definitely you could taste hints of lemon, lime and the chili powder. Daniel loved the zucchini because it came out soft in the middle, crisp along the peel and it really soaked up the "sauce"---er, broth.

I am really excited to continue to experiment with the crock pot. There are so many recipes to try, even desserts.

Bon appetit!

Watermelon salad

We all like to eat out, admit it. The food sometimes tastes better, you don't have a mess to clean up, BUT you don't know exactly what the ingredients are.

Sometimes, I like to try to re-create a dish that I've eaten at a restaurant. This way, I am able to control the portion size and the ingredients.

For Dan's Dad's birthday, we enjoyed dinner at a Linwood's. Rather than go with a traditional salad, I ordered the watermelon and feta salad. I didn't know what to expect---I picture field greens with a little bit of watermelon and feta being presented to me...well, I was wrong.

I did my best to create a Watermelon Salad for Dan and me. (Since this was a meat meal, I forwent the feta.)

I simply cut triangular chunks of watermelon about 2.5inches by 1 inch and arranged in some artistic fashion---really you could place one large chunk of watermelon on a plate and it would taste the same, its all about how you want it to look.

Next, I sprinkled some mint on top and arranged slices of sweet vidalia onion around the watermelon. I drizzle the watermelon formation with balsamic vinegar. For a garnish, and to add a very sweet element, I cut red grapes in half and arranged around the plate.

And honestly, doesn't it feel good to make something yourself that you've had at a restaurant? Yep, yep it does!

Shabbat Shalom......HEY!

For our first Shabbos together, I decided that this was diningroom material and bought flowers, champagne and made a homemade dinner!

First we had matzoh ball soup, and yes, I know I could have easily ripped open a box of soup and ball mix (OR! Opened a jar!) and made the soup, but I took the blog-road and made homemade matzoh balls from the recipe on the matzoh meal container and made my own broth.

Matzoh Balls. From this recipe, I was able to make about seven medium-sized matzoh balls. Remember! They balls expand when you cook them! Disclaimer: I almost fell out of my chair when reading this recipe online---fat=oil ;-)


My Dad tells the story of his first Shabbos as a married couple with my Mom. They didn't take into account the expanding nature of matzoh balls and ended up with about 1 lb-each matzoh balls!

For my broth, I started with a Telma chicken bouillon cube.

The package calls for 1 cube to 2 cups of boiling water---however, I added 4 c water to 1 cube and then added my own spices. Of course, experiment for your tastes, but I used:

1/2 tbsp garlic powder
1/4 tbsp onion powder
1/4 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp chopped onion
2 guilty pinches of salt

I then added about four carrots cut into about three pieces. I let the carrots soften a bit, then remove. I added the matzoh balls and allowed to cook in the soup for about 30 minutes before removing and placing in the 'fridge in a dish. (If you allow the matzoh balls to just hang out in the pot, they soak up all of the broth and become soggy.

Just before serving, I added everything back to the soup and let warm!

You can also add sliced onion to the soup.

For our main course, we enjoyed My Gram's Roasted Chicken.

Remember that time that I made a chicken and the neck flopped out at me? Well, this cooking adventure created similar circumstances, albeit much different.

In the freezer, I had a small chicken and decided that a roast WHOLE chicken might be nice for Shabbos---although, this was a lot of poultry for two people. So there I go...I cut off the wrapper and then take over to the sink to rinse off. This might be too much, but for those medical professionals out there, the visual I had upon turning the chicken into the sink was much the same as a birth. Without going into too much detail, you get my drink.

Anyhow! I nicely rinsed off the chicken, inside and out. I cut the skin off from the top and rinse again.

I then decided to place the chicken in the roaster (I just used a large Pyrex). As I place the chicken in, it acts like a guy during Sunday football---it spread its wings and laid back and relaxed! Since I didnt have string to tie the thighs together, I just let it go. I seasoned the entire chicken, inside and out, with garlic powder and onion powder, rosemary and paprika.

I filled the bottom of the pan with water---just enough to fill the bottom and go about 1/2-1 inch up the side of the pan. I covered the chicken and baked at 350F for 30 minutes.

I then uncovered and added: sliced carrots and potatoes to the water in the bottom. While uncovered, I baked for another 1 hour. When the 1 hour is up, squirt ketchup (I did a kind of zig-zag pattern) on top of the chicken and bake for another 15 minutes or so. Of course, check the chicken to make sure it is done since every oven is different!

So good...and the ketchup, everyone thinks its weird to hear about, then they change their minds when they taste it!



Bon appetit!

Ketchup

No, I didn't make homemade ketchup (that would be an interesting venture!) it is what I need to do!

Daniel and I returned from our dream-like European honeymoon! We visited London and Paris! We had a magical time in both cities. We enjoyed visiting so many places and eating such delicious food! We even were thinking about taking a course at Le Cordon Bleu (ahh, so wonderful), but decided to leave the culinary adventures up to the professionals!


Before we left, I made another dairy Shavuos dinner. I used a recipe for Homemade Noodle to make the shell for a Spinach and Cottage Cheese Blintz. Originally, I had hope to make ravioli, but the "pockets" didn't close well enough to allow me to boil them without a pot of exploded ravioli, so I baked the pockets and had blintzes!

The noodle recipe was easy to follow---I just opted out of adding the sea salt. Since I don't have a pasta machine to make actually ravioli pockets, I enlisted my hands and a knife, but I think I stuffed too much filling into each. It didn't matter, the filling was seeping out of the edges, so I decided to bake instead.

Voila---we had blintzes! Daniel ate all of his, as did I with mine. They were good!

For the filling, for the two of us:

1 c chopped spinach
1 c fat-free cottage cheese
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
Mix together, add to(or in) pasta

That night we also had Toasted Bread and Butter Pudding. This was delicious, unhealthy yes, but delicious! I absolutely adore bread pudding, so the occasion of making homemade called for the purchase of my first loaf pan---in yellow, of course, to match my ceramic pie baking thing (you can't really call it a tin, can you?)


Although I didn't get the aesthetics of the pointed bread like in the picture from epicurious, the rounded braids of the challah slices gave my bread pudding a nice look! But who cares what it looks like when you have sweet, mushy and delicious bread pudding!

I say...make this!!!



The next night was rather fishy! We had Chilantro-Chipotle Tilapia. Warning: When a recipe calls for "chopped canned chipotles in adobo" and your multi-cultural Wegman's does not sell the stuff, do not substitute with Chipotle salsa paste. Daniel said it was fine, but I think he has an iron tongue, or something.

The cilantro gave the fish a wonderful taste, and I am sure the correct chipotle would have been wonderful, too, but MILD! This fish dish that I served must have had a Scoville rating of at least 9 million!

Like I said, I'd be willing to give this a second try provided that I find the right chipotle sauce! I was first excited that the chipotle salsa that I purchased came from Mexico complete with Mexican Kosher certification! We're expanding our horizons!

Our side-dish that night was eggcellente! With our fire-tilapia, we enjoyed Apple Shallot Stuffing. Another recipe from epicurious.com was a great success. This was sweet, yet had just enough tang from the shallots and lemon zest.

Remember, back in the day, I talked about organizing my recipes so I do not waste ingredients? I mean, until we have our octuplets, its just the two of us having dinner. So, I used the rest of the challah from the night before and made this stuffing. Well, truthfully, I made the stuffing the night before and saved it until this night.



The Four Questions:
1)Remember when I was a vegetarian and upon jumping off of the veggie bandwagon, the last thing I held onto not eating (does that make sense?) was red meat?
2) Remember my qualm with not serving salty food?
3) Remember how I don't cook red meat at home?
4) Remember how Daniel wants me to cook red meat at home?

It was Bison Burgers for dinner! These were good, but a) were salty and b) fatty (although the package said lean).

I seasoned the meat with garlic powder, onion powder, and Worcestershire sauce. Since bison is a typically tough, lean meat, it was so hard to stir in the spices and sauce!!!

I made large burgers and served with a slice of fresh tomato on top!

Bon appetit!