Tag: cooking

Recipe Roundup

Almost Forgotten Food

LSiehLeave a comment

I keep forgetting to take pictures of our dinners! They haven’t been super exciting lately, so maybe that’s why. We’re both back in the office as well, so they are later than usual. I’m normally really hungry when dinner time rolls around (Ha! Pun intended!) Last week, while playing Scattergories with a client, almost all of my words were food related, for example. 😁

I do have a few pictures of things we’ve eaten though. We had quesadillas with turkey taco meat one night. We’ve discovered all our garden salsa is super spicy. I am trying to find a mild recipe to make some more. The cheese and tortilla helped calm it down some.

I made a hash of sorts with potatoes, chicken andouille sausage, garden zukes, peppers, mushrooms, and onions all fried up together. It was simple and yummy. I believe I used garlic and some paprika based seasoning blend on it.

Pot roast made an appearance. It was quite good, although we both like it better from the stovetop than the crockpot. But crockpot was what I had time for that day, so that’s what it turned out to be.

While picking peppers, I discovered that I had planted some Swiss chard seeds near the peppers and they got covered up by the monster squash plants. So I sautéd them up with some garden tomatoes, garlic, and some spinach and arugula salad mix. It was served alongside ocean creature themed mac and cheese, as we’d been doing far too many adult responsibilities that day. 😆 I couldn’t find my breadcrumbs, so used crushed up Ritz crackers instead. It was yummy!

We had leftover noodles from spaghetti earlier in the week that we fried (Forgot the pictures, but it wasn’t pretty. Too runny from the freezer.) I made some veggies to go over it and we looked up a recipe for a basic Chinese white sauce. We also had store bought egg rolls because I loathe making egg rolls. The noodles didn’t work as well because they were too thick, but it was good to use up the leftovers for once!

We had this Mexican Chicken with Cheese Sauce from the blog Every Day Made Fresh, but I cheated and used a Spanish Rice packaged side. It was actually really good! I would definitely make this again. Here’s the recipe: https://www.everydaymadefresh.com/mexican-chicken-with-cheese-sauce/

And we had tacos one night, that I don’t have a picture of, but on the weekend we had enchiladas, which I do have the picture of.

We had fruit and I had veggies as a side, but they weren’t on the plate, obviously. These were also super spicy, but tamed with the sauce so didn’t make us cry as much. We had our friends over with their Norwegian exchange student and he also enjoyed the enchiladas. I had been going to make ham and cheese Stromboli and a pesto and cheese Stromboli, but when I opened up the ham, it had suspicious spots on it. So we had pesto cheese bread, salad, and some of us had enchiladas too. I served the cardamom sugar cookies again and they were a hit!

I shall leave you tonight with a picture of my actually organized snack/lunch drawer at work, because I was impressed I got all of this to fit! Ignore the pharmacy in the top. 😳 Isn’t it a thing of beauty?

I hope it inspires your own snack drawer! Have a great day!

Canning and Preserving · Recipe Roundup

Because I Can…

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There’s probably a cheesier canning joke to use instead of that one, but I couldn’t think of it at the time. Feel free to add some to my comments to make us all laugh. Or sigh with resignation at the terrible puns. Either way would be fun! 😉

I was feeling the canning urge last week and this weekend, so I thought I should probably do something about it. I picked up a big box of tomatoes from the local farm store today and have made it through about half. I did have some nice garden tomatoes to add into all the batches of tomato products. Tomorrow I’m planning to make some pasta and pizza sauce and maybe some crushed tomatoes too. These are two of the beefsteak tomatoes that grew this year.

Most of the tomatoes I used for salsa had the small and medium tomatoes in them, so I had to supplement with store tomatoes too. I used a Fresh Preserving/Ball book recipe for Jalapeño Salsa. I don’t have a link for the recipe, as it doesn’t appear to be online. This second salsa recipe is though- Fire Roasted Salsa from The Hungry Bluebird: https://thehungrybluebird.com/fire-roasted-salsa-canning-recipe/

I was able to use all garden jalapeño peppers for both salsas! It always makes me happy. They are super spicy though, so it will be interesting to see how they age. I plan to make another slightly more mild salsa with calmer peppers too, as we do have friends who do not enjoy breathing fire. 😆

I also made squash pickles from Southern Living: Small Jars, Big Flavors, with some help from the neighbors’ garden. I texted to ask her if she had any extra zucchini, as I think the ants ate our plants and she said “You never need an invitation to the garden!” I’m going to bring her a pint of them in thanks! My yellow squash made a surprise recovery, so I was able to use some of our garden squash too. Here are the jalapeño salsa and the squash pickles all canned up!

Both salsas made one extra jar that wasn’t full enough to can, so our fridge is full of homemade salsa. I’m thinking I’ll make some enchiladas or something to use it up. Oh! Or crockpot Salsa chicken one night! It’s super simple, you throw chicken breasts in the crockpot, throw some broth and salsa on top and cook for a while until they shred easily. It’s really good in tacos or even just over rice.

I also made jams and marveled at how long the tomato products take compared to the jams. I think I made three jams in the time it took to make one batch of salsa and the canning part of the squash pickles. They sat for a few hours in an ice bowl with salt to brine first.

For jams, I made a Strawberry Rhubarb, and a Cinnamon Rhubarb. The Strawberry Rhubarb is on the right, cinnamon is on the left.

Both jams used garden rhubarb! I used the Ball book recipe for the Strawberry Rhubarb and this recipe for the cinnamon. https://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/canning-101-rhubarb-cinnamon-jam-recipe/

They may have been a tiny bit more processed than they should have been, as they are a pretty thick jam. I’m hoping I didn’t accidentally make rhubarb candy instead of jam in the canned jars. I was lucky enough to have a little over half a jar left of each and have tried both in yogurt. They taste delicious!

The Spiced Peach jam is the same blog as the Rhubarb Cinnamon. https://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/home-canning-spiced-peach-jam-recipe/

Technically my version is Spiced Stone Fruit, as I had a bag of peaches and nectarines in the freezer and added two pluots and a plum that had gone soft. I was on a mission to use up all my freezer fruit this year. It tastes like the best peach pie ever, so I’m excited to use it for breakfasts. Sadly, this did not give me a fridge jar, so I’ll have to use up some more of the rhubarb before I open it. It will be featured in the LOTR Culinary Journey this year for sure! I’m thinking little peach tartlets. Mmmm…

I don’t have a picture yet of the other two things I’ve canned, but they were this Fire-roasted Salsa from Hungry Bluebird mentioned above, and a Roasted Garlic Pizza Sauce from my Taste of Home Canning magazine. It’s delicious! It made a lot more than it said it would and I forgot to add the lemon to it, so we’re going to have to eat it quick. It does have acid from the tomatoes, wine, and salt in it, so I think it will be okay in the short term. If I get nervous, I can always reprocess or freeze it for longer storage.

Piggy has taken to sitting on the kitchen rug by the back door in hopes that I’ll let her play outside while I’m canning. Unfortunately, her idea of “playing” is eating the really bitter apples from the apple tree and making herself sick, so we’re not really letting her out unsupervised. I wish that the apples would be good ones. They have gotten bigger this year, but are still horrible. I think we need to get an arborist to tell us how to fix it. It’s very productive still, so if we could get the apples to be edible, that would be wonderful!

Anyway, that is the start of my canning. I still have berries to make into syrup, a small bag of apricots, and half a box of tomatoes, plus a rather lot of peppers. I see more salsa and maybe some canned crushed tomatoes in my future. Jams too, of course, and some berry lemonade concentrate. We don’t have a lot planned for the next couple weekends and then in October, it will be time to make more applesauce.

I’ll leave you with a picture of my motivational canning towel. Have a great night!

Recipe Roundup

Forgotten Food!

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Not in the “bad, now kinda fuzzy, what exactly was this?!” Kinda way though. Ha! This is more in the “I know I took pictures, but maybe not all the time” way. I’ve fallen back on some simpler fare lately, sandwiches, soups, and freezer things. Apparently our AC was worse than we thought and it’s been hard to want to cook. Now that everything is getting repaired, I can hopefully start cooking again.

I am looking forward to soup season! I was promoted at work to a Clinical Director position and it comes with a slight increase in hours to manage the program development and such, so now three days a week, I will be working until 8. I see more crockpot dinners or having the Husband prep more for us in our future. This summer has been definitely more fun than last year, but I am definitely looking forward to fall. It’s my favorite season! I do come down heavier on the apple cider side of the autumn spice war though, than pumpkin spice.

Anyway, here’s some food pictures of things we’ve had recently. I’ll try to note if I used a recipe, but more than likely it’s a me made thing, or didn’t need a recipe at all.

We’ve had a lot of Chinese food lately. I made Scallion Pancakes and wanted to devour them all on the spot. I used the recipe from thekitchn. https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-scallion-pancakes-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-107405

Woks of Life has two recipes for them, a shortcut method and a longer one, but I was in a hurry and didn’t have the ingredients. I’m sure their recipes are delicious too. These are super flaky and delicious! Definitely season liberally though! They are technically laminated, I think, because you fold them and roll them out that way, but the only oil is on the inside of them.

We had hot pot too. I will admit to some silliness as we probably said “Hot Pot!” To each other in weird voices all night. It was tasty, especially with the store egg rolls. I just used beef broth, carrots, green onions, mushrooms, soy sauce, white pepper, and 5 spice powder. We had super thin shaved beef too that I had found at the store.

I don’t remember what we had along side the chicken dumpling extravaganza, but these were yummy. I think they changed the dough recipe, or we normally get a different kind for the wrappers, because they didn’t steam well and were kind of gummy. They only had wrappers that specifically stated they were vegan at the store and we must get egg ones normally, I’m guessing. We really need to go to the actual Chinese grocery store and stock up on authentic ones. I can make the wrappers, but it’s very tedious. We fried some as well. They were delicious!

We had corned beef and veggies, followed up by corned beef hash the next night. I forgot to get a picture of the hash, but it was also yummy. We probably had fruit with this. I thought briefly about making soda bread, but we had this on one of the nights our AC was being replaced and I didn’t want to heat the house more than I had to. I actually put it on high in the crockpot for 6 hours and it came out super tender. I used an awful lot of broth in the pot too though and that helped.

Since it’s been so hot, we’ve been making Chef Salads a lot. This has garden greens, tomatoes, and beans in it. Also, fancy cheese, turkey lunchmeat, and pecans. I would show you a picture of the Husband’s but it is absolutely covered in ranch most of the time. Mine are always much prettier!

I had really good peach and nectarine luck until this last time, when they all molded from the inside while remaining hard. Ugh! These peaches were great though! I made fancy chocolate waffles as well. They were good. I just used the regular waffle recipe and switched out some of the flour for regular cocoa powder.

I made these cheesecake bars for K’s tie dye birthday party! It’s so 90’s bowling alley! It’s a lemon cheesecake with an oreo crust. The crust didn’t work as well as it should have. I really needed to use the food processor, but didn’t feel like pulling it out. As a result, the crust was too thick and hard. The cheesecake tasted good though! The recipe was on the box of the cream cheese, so I don’t have it written down. I would definitely make these again!

These fancy melt sammies were really, really satisfying. I sautéed some onions and mushrooms and used turkey with provolone on a hoagie roll. The Husband had pastrami and roast beef on his. They really hit the spot the day we had them and were super quick. We had them again with the rest of the shaved beef from the hot pot as well. I will admit that I’m glad the Husband requested we get a toaster oven.

The Husband actually made these Asian seasoned pork chops all by himself! I only provided supervision. He pan fried them and used soy, sesame, garlic, and white pepper. I had a lentil curry which was most assuredly not photogenic, so I spared you all the picture. We were both pleased with our meals!

We had grilled boneless rib eyes tonight with grilled zucchini (for me) and cilantro rice with homemade pico.

I used a southwest seasoning blend- Arizona Dreaming, on the steak and the Husband did an excellent job grilling everything.

You can’t really see it, but there is a brownie under the ice cream! I had ordered some strawberries which were not in good condition at all, so I ended up chopping them up for shortcake. Being out of milk to make biscuits though, I made brownies instead. Best idea ever!

And last, but certainly not least, I’ll leave you with my avocado toast with garden tomatoes. i thought maybe I’d reached peak Millennial status, as I was eating avocado toast while waiting for house repairs to be finished with my dog. But my older brother, who is a more Elder Millennial, told me that I had a way to go yet, as there were no fermented items, “ironic text or decorative mustaches.” 😂

Regardless of peak status, it was delicious and I’ll you with that. I hope you have some delicious food planned this week!

Recipe Roundup

Foodie Fun

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Hello! We’ve had some food adventures lately. Slowly, I seem to be getting excited about cooking again which has helped. One thing we did try while in our slump was one of the meal kit services. We tried Hello Fresh and were sadly, not super happy with the quality. The end results were good, but some of our ingredients came spoiled or moldy, so I had to replace them. We only tried two meals because I was annoyed and cancelled before the end of the trial. Probably should have waited on that, but I didn’t feel it was worth it if things weren’t actually going to be fresh.

This was a Korean beef dish with stir fried veggies over rice. It was pretty tasty! I would make this one again, although I would double the amount of sauce, as it was pretty dry. The Husband liked it too.

The second one was this Crispy Ranch Chicken with Ranch potatoes. It was supposed to have green beans with it, but they came spoiled, so I subbed our own carrots. We liked it, although thought the crust could have been a little more flavorful.

It was a fun experiment and we may try again with a different company. Some of our issues with it were the amount of plastic waste that came with it. It also doesn’t allow you to make mistakes at all, because everything is pre-packaged.

I made these Strawberry Birthday Cake cookies a while ago for Mother’s Day. We had the inlaws over for dinner and these were dessert. They were the second recipe I’ve tried from Procrastibaking. Everyone enjoyed them, although I found the buttercream a little too sweet. The Husband thought they were pretty good, but didn’t like the texture from the dried strawberries. Next time, I might blend them down to a powder and try that.

We had this recipe for baked Chicken and gnocchi for dinner. I subbed swiss chard for spinach. It was pretty good, although the sauce separated and wasn’t as appetizing as the picture in the recipe. https://thecollegehousewife.com/creamy-chicken-gnocchi-bake

We had turkey and dumplings too and it was yummy. We would eat this again. I did use canned biscuits as I was in a rush. I cannot find the recipe I used unfortunately.

We were going to have tacos one Tuesday, but wanted something slightly different, so I made shrimp fajitas instead. We served them with homemade pico to which I added some chopped red onion. Both were delicious.

Pancakes for dinner are my favorite “too tired for recipes“ option. We ate them with homemade syrup from our friends’ sugarbush. Yum!

Grilled cheese and chips were my go to meal when the Husband was away on business. Simple and delicious.

I’ll have more exciting vegetarian meals to share in a later post. I was good about trying new things for meals while he was gone, at least the first week. The second week was mainly easy stuff.

I’ve been doing some more experimenting with some homemade bitters which has been exciting and has made me feel fancy. Canning season is starting up again too. I’ve got more rhubarb growing waiting to be made into new recipes! My tomatoes are growing slowly, but I’m hoping some will be ready soon.

I hope these pictures made you hungry!

Recipe Roundup

Delicious Foods

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Well, hello! I’ve been cooking more than sewing, so you’re getting another food post. These are in a very mixed up order though.

First up, we may as well start with dessert! Easter dessert to be precise. I made a new recipe of Key Lime Pie Bars from this recipe: https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/key-lime-pie-bars/

They were very yummy! My MIL made brownies as well, so we had a little sliver of each. This bad picture is from later in the week when I realized I hadn’t gotten a picture yet. 🙂 I would make these again for sure!

After getting an unexpected ham in our grocery order on top of this ham, which we had ordered from another grocery order, I decided we obviously needed to eat some of it. We had glazed ham, rosemary roasted potatoes, and roasted carrots. The carrots may look slightly burnt, but they were certainly not. Now, what to do with the 10 or more pounds of ham in the freezer…

I made a fancy drink too. This is a grapefruit, elderflower, and gin drink. My Star Trek drink group had mentioned that it was National Gin and Tonic day and I wanted to join in the fun. It was fun! The pink color is all natural and it had a very interesting combo of flavors from the bitter tonic and grapefruit. I will definitely make this again. https://theforkedspoon.com/elderflower-grapefruit-gin-tonics/

This is one of the things I did with the leftover ham. Here’s the recipe. https://iwashyoudry.com/cheesy-leftover-ham-and-rice-casserole/

We didn’t have condensed cheese soups, so I used one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom. It made a lot of casserole and I got super tired of it after the second day. It was a little bland and salty at the same time. The Husband liked it though!

Speaking of the Husband, he had pork one night while I had curry.

We had lime cilantro chicken with pico and cilantro rice as well. It’s always good and relatively quick. I chopped everything for the pico using the food processor this time. I like it better that way, but the Husband prefers the bigger hand chopped pieces. I had a tendonitis flare while trying to finish a big sewing project, so the food processor was the way to go this time. It’s always a hit.

This potato soup was the Husband’s serving. I thought he did an excellent job with the bacon bits. I didn’t eat the bacon myself as it didn’t treat me right last time. Boo! This was good and I was able to use up potatoes that were terrible when roasted, but softened really well in soup form.

These were turkey lettuce wraps. Nothing super special, but very refreshing, light, and scrumptious.

We had mushroom cream sauce pasta and I added broccoli to mine. The Husband really doesn’t like green things sometimes. Piggy likes broccoli though! It was a nice quick and easy meal.

And last but not least, a warm, comforting bowl of oatmeal. I always forget I can make oatmeal and that I like it. This bowl was topped with brown sugar, butter, pecans, and a golden raisin and dried berries mix.

So there you have it! I haven’t been cooking much this past week because the Husband has been away on business and I’ve enjoyed eating sandwiches with sides. I’ve acquired a few more cookbooks lately, so really need to pick my next one to focus on. For now, I’ll say goodnight!

Recipe Roundup

Scrumptious Saturday

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Well, hello! I’m way behind on food posts lately. I’m taking a new med and it’s unfortunately dropping my appetite way down, so has made it hard to want to eat and cook. The Husband has suggested several new angles for food posts, so maybe I will try some of those soon.

My Mom sent me this book for my birthday too and it’s lovely! I’m excited to try some of the recipes in it. It’s got some fun facts about procrastination and other funny things too. I’ll have to use it as my next cookbook to review.

Speaking of my birthday, we had take out from the very fancy winery that we went to a long time ago. The Husband had a breaded chicken dish with fancy mashed potatoes and I had a chicken and veggie risotto. We also each had a bittersweet chocolate truffle. I ended up finishing the Husband’s truffle the next day, as he thought it was too dark for him. We shared an order of chicken potstickers and it came with pretzel bread. It was a delicious dinner and I didn’t have to cook for three days after!

I got two mini ice cream cakes from Coldstone too and they were ridiculously cute! I had a devil’s food cake layer topped with chocolate ice cream with peanut butter and fudge sauces, as well as Reese’s cups. The Husband had a devil’s food and Oreo cake with M&Ms and chocolate chips mixed in. They both had chocolate ganache as a topping as well. Yum!

I made a Trader Joe’s run the day before my birthday, as it’s conveniently located next to the Coldstone. I picked up these croissants and fancy coconut yogurt for my birthday breakfast. One has chocolate and the other has almond filling. They were so good! They also had Kibbe and falafel in the freezer section, but apparently I didn’t take a picture of my birthday lunch.

I did take a picture of the Balela salad, shawarma chicken, and naan I had a few days later. It was also quite delicious and I would get it again!

We haven’t just had decadent restaurant food though! Below is pasta with homemade arugula and herb pesto from the freezer. Always a delicious choice!

We had an appetizer night. I made steamed chicken dumplings, homemade fried crab rangoon, and we had store bought mini chicken egg rolls.

I used the rest of the crab to make crab stuffed mushrooms the next night. We had the leftover dumpling meat as meatballs! I stir fried bok choy and peppers in a sauce too.

We’ve had mac and cheese too. This time it was stovetop shells and cheese. Cooked carrots and fresh green beans rounded out the dinner. There may have been fruit as well.

We’ve had some interesting meals and some comfort foods lately. I’m gearing up for jam and gardening, so stay tuned for a garden plan post soon! Tomorrow is one of my planting days! I’d better go make sure my seedlings are marked before I play “Guess what I planted in this spot?” With my garden. Wish me luck!

Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

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We seem to have gotten some of our food mojo back and I’m remembering to make simpler things for my longer days. We’ve had a couple of take out meals too.

I’ve even made fancy breakfasts! We had homemade hash browns, bacon, eggs, and homemade cinnamon bread from the farm store. We learned two things after this meal. 1- Bacon might be out for me. I felt super sick later that day. 2- Don’t put the frosted bread in the toaster oven without a tray otherwise it will catch on fire… The breakfast was still tasty though.

Technically, I think I ate these ableskiver for dinner, but they are breakfast food. I didn’t try to fill them this time and used fresh buttermilk and they were much better than my last attempt. The jam is plum cardamom.

These muffins got a little more brown than I expected, but they weren’t over baked. I used this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/banana-muffins/comment-page-8/

I subbed some of the flour for pumpkin seed protein powder and added mini chocolate chips and sliced almonds. I would make them again.

I made myself an oat smoothie bowl too, but it doesn’t look very photogenic, so I won’t share it. It was pretty good though and included frozen and fresh berries, ground oats, pumpkin seed protein powder, and yogurt. Probably a little of whatever juice we had in the fridge too.

We had some fancy desserts. This one sounded like it might be ok, but it turned out to be not as pleasant as I thought it should be. It’s a 2 ingredient chocolate mousse pudding. You don’t really even need a recipe, as you just replace the milk called for in the instant pudding recipe with heavy cream and go from there.

It felt kind of greasy and was super rich. I don’t think I’d make this again. The Husband didn’t like it either.

We just had Oreo pudding, which was much better.

We of course, had fancy pies for Pi Day. I made quiche in the morning, apple hand pies for lunch, Chicken Cottage Pie, and Oreo Pudding pie for dinner.

Here are the links:

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/quiche-recipe/

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/apple-hand-pies/

https://thehealthyfoodie.com/chicken-cottage-pie/

I can’t find the exact recipe I used for the Oreo pie, but this one, also from Sally’s Baking Addiction looks similar. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/cookies-cream-pie/

We had turkey Italian Sausage pasta one night for a quick dinner.

These were accidentally super spicy beef enchiladas. No recipe, I just cooked the beef with onions, salsa, and garlic, added some store enchilada sauce, wrapped them up and baked them for about 20 minutes.

Apparently the chili powder I used is very hot, plus the enchilada sauce was medium hot, and the salsa was our Fire Roasted salsa, which we hadn’t tried yet. 😳 Lots of liquids were consumed and we both had ice cream for dessert. Take it from me, always taste your salsa!

Now that I’ve made myself hungry again, some salsa sounds good. I think I’ll go sample some more!

Recipe Roundup · Uncategorized

Deliciousness

LSieh2 Comments

Well, it was winter briefly! Now it’s spring again and I have no idea what next week will be like. My food tastes are all over the place too. I told the Husband yesterday that I was just so tired of cooking, even though I’m not doing too much more cooking than usual. I think I’m just burning out on all of our regular meals.

I made this really pretty shrimp and veggie stir fry to cheer us both up. It was good and we had jasmine rice with it, as I forgot to have us make rice in the rice cooker. It was quicker. Plus, we are still not done with that weird parboiled rice and I really didn’t want to eat it. 😬

I made these rainbow crepes for Valentine’s Day brunch. I discovered I should get some more food coloring. All I have are red and blue. I did make whipped cream and a berry compote to go with them.

We had our default pizza, although it was more fun because I used a fancy Italian blend flour from Janie’s Mill.

My older brother sent us a four pack of fancy flours for Christmas and I was inspired to try some more. I need to move them downstairs though, as you are supposed to keep them cold. They are a whole grain product and keep better that way. I have to play with them some more and post about it.

The pizza was good. We had our usual ham, mushroom, and onion toppings.

This was supposed to be a garlic knot from this recipe: https://www.ihearteating.com/30-minute-garlic-knots/?epik=dj0yJnU9OEI3TDVkeUY2WjV4ZkZjcUxialBld1ZmT0ZHZ1A5blImcD0wJm49Zmt1cnZDRFZYX2pudTREN1I0OHdvdyZ0PUFBQUFBR0FWNnRj

They didn’t stay tied, as you can see, but tasted good. We had spaghetti with them.

Another quick meal was cheeseburgers. I used the pepper palace spice blend, so it was spicy.

I tried this recipe for baked gnocchi and learned that for the most part, you can leave the gnocchi uncooked and it will cook in the sauce. Not the prettiest dish, but yummy! I omitted the meat and used homemade sauce. https://damndelicious.net/2020/05/16/weeknight-baked-gnocchi/

I’ll leave you with a classic comfort food- chicken potpie over noodles. It was warm and delicious and helped use up leftover chicken.

I hope you’re having good food! We’re trying to do some more interesting meals again and actually meal plan. Wish us luck!

Recipe Roundup

Lunar New Year and Blood Orange Dishes

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Believe me, I’m just as shocked as you are that it’s already February! Lunar New Year snuck up on me again. We did celebrate by having baked beef buns made from leftover Crockpot Mongolian Beef. I added a side of stir fried Brussels sprouts and bok choy and the Husband had chicken wonton soup as his side. The veggies were too green.

The buns were really, really good! I used the dough recipe from the Woks of Life, but substituted the leftover beef cooked down in the cooking liquid for the filling. I added chicken stock and rice wine to give it a little more moisture for the buns. Also, some extra shallots and garlic. Here’s the bun recipe: https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-bu ns-cha-siu-bao/

Here’s the original Six Sister’s recipe for the Mongolian Beef:https://www.sixsistersstuff.com/recipe/slow-cooker-mongolian-beef/

I also made traditional almond cookies from The Foods Of China and it worked out much better than the first time I made them. They are addicting and I may hoard them like a cookie dragon.

I’ve been actually using my blood oranges this year for Lunar New Year inspired foods. Oranges are considered lucky, as is the color red, and I feel like we could definitely use some extra luck this year. A note, you may be able to find blood oranges as “Raspberry Oranges.” A friend of mine got some and I think they just rebranded them.

So far, I’ve made both sweet and savory items with them for a couple of different meals. I used them in this Winter Citrus Salad with Avocado.

It’s really not a thing you need a recipe for. Even the dressing was just blood orange juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. I added iceberg, romaine, cucumbers, red peppers, carrots, crispy jalepenos, cheese, sliced almonds, and avocado to mine. It was very refreshing. I think It would be excellent with arugula too, but I didn’t have any on hand. I’m ordering some in our next grocery order though, so will probably make this for work one day.

I also made overnight oats topped with blood oranges. Recipe is here: https://www.themothercooker.com/blog/three-ways-with-blood-oranges

I would also like to try the donuts in that link as well, but haven’t made them yet and am running out of oranges. I’m not super fond of these. I have to add a lot of sweeter and heat them to get past the texture and at that point, I may as well just make regular oatmeal.

I was very fond of these Blood Orange Coconut muffins though, although I wish the glaze had been pinker.

They were quite delicious! I subbed pumpkin protein powder for a quarter cup of the flour to give them an added boost. The recipe is here: https://brownedbutterblondie.com/blood-orange-coconut-muffins/

I also made dark chocolate chunk orange scones, but ate them before taking a picture. I also apparently forgot to actually save the recipe I used… I do have one that I am intending to try as it uses Spelt flour and I have some that my older brother gave me for Christmas to try.

This Blood Orange Rosewater Mocktail was interesting. I think I would reduce the rosewater by half next time. It was a bit over powering. I did use ginger ale instead of sparkling water, as it was what I had open.

Probably my favorite two recipes were the Blood Orange Amaretto Sour and the Orange Cardamom Cake.

Isn’t it so pretty? The Husband actually had one with me, but he couldn’t finish his. He doesn’t drink often and this was pretty stiff even after I dropped the booze by two ounces. I thought it was lovely! Not overly sweet like they sometimes are, but not super tart either. Also, it’s just amaretto, lemon, and orange juice over ice. One of the simplest recipes I found so far.

Now the cake. Oh My Gosh. This was so dreamy and delicious. Extremely aromatic from the orange and especially the cardamom. The glaze wasn’t as thick as the recipe, so it didn’t look as pretty but it made up for it in taste. I think my eyes crossed when it came out of the oven because it smelled so good. I brought it into work and you could smell it every time you walked by it. Torture, sure, but such delicious torture! It got rave reviews from my coworkers too. I brought a whole cake minus a piece to work and brought back half a cake.

Do yourself a favor and make this cake, even if you don’t have blood oranges. You can thank me later. Recipe is here: http://thesweetandsimplekitchen.com/blood-orange-cardamom-cake/

Here are a few more of the recipes I didn’t get to try yet. Hopefully I can make a few more of them before I can’t find blood oranges anymore.

https://itsnotcomplicatedrecipes.com/blood-orange-curd/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=pinterest&utm_campaign=tailwind_tribes&utm_content=tribes&utm_term=1124164928_54906702_403476

https://foodnessgracious.com/blood-orange-loaf-cake/

https://www.thekitchenmccabe.com/2015/01/08/coconut-rice-pudding-w-blood-orange-lime-vanilla-sugar/

https://www.craving4more.com/blood-orange-coconut-ginger-soup/

http://userealbutter.com/2019/03/12/blood-orange-sorbet-recipe/

https://www.baranbakery.com/dark-chocolate-blood-orange-cake

I’ll leave you with a picture of a spring roll wrapped Piggy. Someone gets a little cold during naps. 🙂 May your new year be full of peace, luck, prosperity, and joy!