Food Friday - Zebra Bread and Pasta Salad

The other day, I made bread from my favorite recipe (Crusty White Bread) in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day... what I didn't expect however, was to pick up the POWDERED SUGAR from the cabinet instead of the flour when it came time to cloak it...

Well, I eventually figured out what I'd done (and used real flour too), but it was too late... I went with a "well... lets see how this works" attitude, and discovered that powdered sugar (probably sugar in general) doesn't really appreciate 450* steam...  but the bread tasted fine (kind of like kabob's... you can TASTE the char, but it doesn't bother you?). Hubby said he even LIKED it! However... I've named it "Zebra Bread"... because, well... see for yourself!

 And for dinner last night, I made Balsamic Tomato Mozzarella Spinach Chicken Pasta Salad. I should PROBABLY work on the name of it... but it was pretty yummy!

I have NO measurements at ALL for this... BUT, the ingredients are...

Mini Bow Ties (or any pasta that makes you happy)
Cherry Tomatoes cut in half
Spinach, ripped and wilted on the hot bow ties
Mozzarella Balls (I got the tiniest ones so there would be more bites with cheese :-P)
Chunked, leftover Rotisserie Chicken (from those $6.00 ones at the store?)
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Salt
Pepper

I know... there were a bunch of "surprise ingredients" in there, lol. It really should be left to sit for a while to let all the flavors meld, and I think next time, I'd roast the tomatoes first too. But it was a delicious summer meal that you can eat cold, and even use as a side-dish at a picnic (it's still yummy without the chicken too, by the way).

An alternative dressing to the "balsamic vinaigrette" is Italian Dressing. My preggers-ness didn't want it TOO flavorful yesterday, so I went with the balsamic (I really didn't add much) but I did "try" both 0:-P I'm sure hubby would have liked it better with the Italian (or more balsamic).

I served it with some "fake garlic bread" too... a few slices of the "zebra bread" doused with olive oil (and rubbed together, cause I'm weird like that) and a shake of garlic powder and dried basil. MMMMM MMMM good.

-Betsy

Food Friday - Mine, and where you SHOULD be looking.

Friday. I'm supposed to deliver some yummy-ness or something.

Except this week, I ate this (or tried to at least)

Pizza from the local shop, frozen, and reheated in the microwave with some cucumbers and dip as a "veggie". Bean likes pizza. Bean doesn't like dill dip apparently.

And the next night I ate popcorn and gingerale. Yes, I ate 2 bowls of stove-popped popcorn and 2 cans of gingerale as dinner. Dessert was 2 slices of American cheese.

Knowing this, I pass on Fidelio's recipe of the week, which she graciously posted on a Thursday, so I could schedule this post. ;)  No-Bake Key Lime Cheesecake.

-Betsy

Food Friday - Snapple

So since being preggers, I've found I can't make it all the way through the grocery store without something to eat and drink... and of all places, the grocery store seems the oddest to "bring your own food". SO, I've been treating myself with those little-kid individual boxes of goldfish (if a Toddler can eat it, a pregnant woman can in my mind) and a Raspberry Snapple. The thing is, as soon as I finish a Snapple, I want MORE... so I decided I should see if I could make something similar at home (as I could PROBABLY drink it by the gallon).

SO, here is what I made today, although I may make additional tweaks in the future.

Ingredients:
8 Cups Water
1 Green Tea teabag
1 Black Tea teabag
2tbsp Lemon Juice
1/4 cup Sugar
1 tbsp Raspberry sauce (like for coffee - often in the coffee isle even)

Directions: boil 8 cups water, then remove from heat and put in 2 teabags (1 green tea and 1 black tea). Let sit for at least 2 hours. It can sit as long as you want though, no worries. I let mine sit overnight.

Take the teabags out (don't squeeze them!) and add the sugar. It'll take a bit to mix if the liquid isn't hot still, but it WILL mix. Then add 2 tbsp lemon juice and 1 tbsp raspberry sauce, stir and cool.

Personally, I found it a little weak and a little sweet, so next time I'll  use 2 teabags of each and keep everything else the same... if it's still too sweet, I'll reduce my sugar, BUT, it might just need to be colder as colder things don't taste AS sweet as room temp or warm things. Interesting tidbit, yea?

Do YOU have a favorite flavor of iced tea? In looking stuff up, it appears that all snapple is made of the same base, and flavor is just added... so make your ::insert flavor here:: tea the same way, but replace the raspberry with a different flavored sauce!

Don't forget the lemon juice though ;)

-Betsy

I missed Thing Thursday. Food Friday instead

Oops! I missed Thing Thursday!! I even had stuff I could have posted. My new, super comfy skirt... or the (not so exciting) black out curtains. Or the guest-room black out curtains that still haven't been hung... even though we have people sleeping in that room tomorrow. 

I think I'll stick with having skipped Thing Thursday and instead do a really lame Food Friday. Because I discovered something recently...

Peanut Butter/Nutella Sandwiches? Are delicious. You should make one. And since Nutella is apparently just as healthy as peanut butter... it can TOTALLY be considered healthy. At least... that's what I'm going with.

(not my picture, click for source link)

-Betsy

Food Friday - Mac and Cheese?

I apologize. I tried out a new recipe this week, which was a big hit... and never took a picture of it. And I even had the opportunity, since there were leftovers! But looking back at the food photos I have of recipes I haven't posted... they're not that exciting. So I'm going to hammer on and post this Mac and Cheese recipe I found on the internets with this instead:

I quartered the original recipe for the two of us, but it would be MUCH easier to make only halved... so here's the halved recipe (with my tweaks). The reviews of the recipe had said to double the sauce... so this is the doubled sauce measurements:

Baked Mac and Cheese - serves 8-10
8 oz Elbow Macaroni (half a box generally)
1/2 cup evaporated milk (one tiny can will work)
2 eggs
8 oz sour cream (comes that way in the small container :-P)
1 tsp seasoned salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1.5 cup shredded cheddar (I used colby and it was still yummy)
1/4 cup parmesan
(1/2 tbsp butter, melted) - I didn't use butter and it was still delicious.

1. Cook pasta according to package - al dente. Strain pasta and cool off pot slightly with cold water.
2. Mix milk, eggs, sour cream, season salt & pepper in cooled pasta pot (saves dishes!)
3. return pasta to pot, and add (or grate in) cheese (not the parmesean). FOLD IN the cheese to the pasta and milk mixture. Try stirring with figure 8's and don't expect the cheese to melt. DO NOT ADD HEAT. Once the cheese and milk and pasta are all mixed together, put it in a small glass dish. I used our round, straight walled pyrex.
4. Sprinkle the top with the parmesan, and if you want... drizzle the melted butter on top (it might make the parmesan crispier?)
5. Bake at 350* for 30 minutes or until the milk mixture thickens.


We all know by now (and if you don't, you will) that I don't measure well, and by well, I mean at all :-P. So I didn't really measure the cheese... I grated about... 4-6 oz in though probably? And then sprinkled a... bunch? of parmesan on top.

This mac and cheese could totally suffice as a meal. I never understood Mac and Cheese as dinner before... but I'd always imagined Kraft. This stuff was delicious, and I totally didn't have room for all my chicken 0:-P

-Betsy

Food Friday - Shrimp Scampi

Fortunately, today's actual dinner hasn't been posted on my blog before (I'm not really sure how... oh, wait, yes I do... I didn't have a picture before...). Tonight we are having Shrimp Scampi!! This is a favorite of ours, and especially mine, because it was the first birthday dinner Hubby ever cooked for me. I knew he wanted to do something special, but I also knew that a "complicated" dinner was making him nervous. Shrimp scampi seems all sorts of fancy, but really... it's very simple! (AND - the reason it's an extra favorite of mine, is Hubby didn't know how to cook it, so he bought Joy of Cooking for the recipe... and  my birthday present :-P... and I LOVE that cookbook!)

So, here it is. Joy of Cooking style:
Combine in a large skillet:
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbsp minced garlic
Cook, stirring occasionally, over very low heat until the garlic is golden, about 10 minutes; do not rush it. Increase the heat to medium-high and add
1 1/2 to 2 lbs large or extra-large shrimp, peeled and deveined (as long as it's the right weight, you could totally go smaller on the shrimp)
Cook until the shrimp turn pink on the bottom, and turn them over. Add
1/4 cup minced parsley (less if dried)
(1 tsp minced garlic) - optional
Cook until the shrimp are firm and pink, about five minutes total. Sprinkle with
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Minced parsley

Now... that's not now it gets made regularly here, because we totally add chardonnay, and don't use parsley.  Of course, we generally don't MEASURE either... so... that's that. Ours is more of a
coat the bottom of a pan with oil and brown up at LEAST a tsp of minced garlic (from the jar), add a splash of chardonnay and lemon juice and simmer. Add about a dozen and a half extra large shrimp (for the two of us), cook until pink throughout. Meanwhile, boil up some spaghetti and when ready, combine. Serve with a sprinkle of parsley if we remember that step and Parmesan cheese (from the jar)

Enjoy!

-Betsy

Food Friday

By special request (an old one, but still)... today's Food Friday is an alcoholic beverage :-D.

I made this for a party the other day, and it's a classic "punch" at the in-laws Christmas party!

Scarlet O'Hara's!

(sorry, SO not my picture. Click on it to go to the original page)

These are super easy:

1 can frozen limeaid concentrate
1 can (from the limeaid) of Southern Comfort
3 cans cranberry juice
Add ice, serve. :)

To make ONE glass,
1 shot SoCo
ice
fill with cranberry juice
splash some lime juice in there


It's pretty yummy... but I like cranberry with lime anyway :)
-Betsy

P.S. APRIL FOOLS!!

Not really... this really is yummy :)

Food Friday - Double Mint

So I've recently started attempting to keep track of what I'm eating. Except I'm also finding at the end of a "good" day, I'll say: I have 300 calories left! COOKIES! :-P... so I might as well share the recipe that's keeping me from NOT eating that extra 300 calories :-P

 I had these mint chocolate chips (from Hershey's) because I thought they were cool (and they were on sale). And they've been sitting in my cabinet for quite some time. So Hubby and I decided we should make chocolate chocolate chip cookies with them... but we're BOTH fans of CHEWY cookies... so the experiment started. And I will tell you, that it did not have the intended outcome... but WHO CARES?!? these are delicious!

I had a recipe from a friend that kept cookies chewy with pudding... and I'd read that margerine keeps cookies chewy... so I decided to employ both. It MIGHT have been a little extra chewy-ness, because as you can see... the cookies are more... ball shaped, than flat. In fact, while they puffed up a bit, they didn't really CHANGE SHAPE like normal cookies do when you bake them (they get all melt-y usually, right?!). These don't really spread, which is actually kind of nice, because you can fit a TON onto your cookie sheet this way :) And they ARE delicious!

So here's my recipe: an original something Betsy, lol.


Preheat oven to 350* and get 2 bowls and 2 cookie sheets

Mix in one bowl:
2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup cocoa
1 3.4 oz instant chocolate pudding powder

Mix in second bowl:
1 stick softened butter
1 stick softened margarine
cream butters, and then mix in
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
then mix in
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla

Add dry ingredients until well mixed, then add
a whole bag of mint chips :-D (You COULD use regular chips I GUESS)

Then using one of those nifty cookie scoops that's like a mini ice cream scoop, put dough on un-greased cookie sheet and cook for 10-12 minutes. Less is definitely more here... but more is still yummy:)

Enjoy!! (Warm or cool, or a week old. All still delicious.)


-Betsy

Cake for Two!!

When I made those mushrooms a while back, it was a fabulous kitchen day, and it included cake. Cake by Our Best Bites. I've blogged this recipe before...  in this post.  It's so yummy and there's so little clean up!

I third-ed the recipe to fit PERFECTLY in my extra-large stone coffee cup (oven safe, oh yea.)

And once it was finished (from the toaster oven ;-P), hubby and I realized it needed ice cream. And Special Dark Hershey's syrup.

So about 20 minutes later, we had nice soft peppermint ice cream and chocolaty goodness. Each in our own bowls... cause we're only so good at sharing.

Ice cream: 1/2 pint whipping cream, 1/2 pint 2% milk, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tsp mint extract mixed together, and then frozen up in our ice cream maker. YUMMMMM!

-Betsy

Food Friday's

So as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've given up being lazy for lent. But not all kinds of lazy... because there is one particular form of lazy I'm very proud of. It's called "I don't feel like going to the store, so instead... I'll make it from scratch" lazy. Google is a MAJOR contributor to making this kind of lazy possible, and Google... yesterday? You ROCKED.

I had planned on making my old neighbor Summer's super easy Poppy Seed Chicken since I had some munchin variety family coming in for dinner after a long day of driving (it's great, cause you can make it ahead, and then finish it off in the oven after innumerable traffic delays).

There was only one problem. I didn't have any condensed cream of chicken soup. Whoops. SO, with chicken already boiling on the stove... I Googled "Cream of Chicken Soup" and found... THIS RECIPE! It's not JUST cream of chicken soup... it's CONDENSED cream of chicken soup! (thank you Tammie!) AND, it only took 10 minutes. AND, I had *almost* all the ingredients. I WAS missing poultry seasoning, but I Googled and found this, which I modified anyway. Needless to say, the soup was super easy to make, tasted good, has 0% fat (good, cause this dish originally had a bit of un-goodness in it) and was ready before the chicken was done. INCLUDING Googling time.

By now, you're probably thinking "ok Betsy, where's the recipe and/or pictures of this thing? remember? Picture-a-post at least? You promised." Ok, ok. This dish isn't very... attractive, Believe me, I've tried... but it IS yummy.

I made a few modifications this time. Obviously, the soup was from scratch, but I used 1 stick of margerine instead of the 1.5 sticks of butter (which I couldn't bear to use last time either). As for the soup, there were modifications there too... I halved it, since this is just about the only thing I use cream of chicken soup for... and you need a crowd for this recipe. So... my version WAS

3/4 cup water
1 boullion cube
light 1/4 tsp onion powder
light 1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp seasoned salt
1/8 tsp parsley
1/8 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp majoram
Pinch of pepper
pinch of cloves
a couple cranks of the salt mill
3/4 cup milk (divided)
6 tbsp flour

all the goodness except 1/2 the milk and the flour went into a pot to boil, the remaining milk and flour were mixed together (wow was it thick!) some soup was added to temper, it was added BACK into the remaining soup, and mixed till thick (quickly). Then I strained it into the pan of chicken (cause I knew there were flour lumps), added another sprinkle of parsley, thyme, marjoram, garlic, onion & seasoned salt before mixing it all up with the chicken and topping with the crumb mixture.

Mmmmm Mmmmm good.  I might not make this with the CAN anymore!

-Betsy