yummiest banana bread

okay, okay, you got me.  i'm writing this post for mainly selfish reasons.  this is my very favorite banana bread recipe and i need to record it once and for all so that i won't have to keep bugging my aunt and cousins for it every time my bananas get brown.  i know that everyone seems to have a family favorite banana bread recipe, but if you're ever in the market to shop around for a new one, i think your search might just end here!  there's nothing particularly healthy about this version (although i do use the 50/50 white and wheat flour to make myself feel better), but it's also amazingly moist without being greasy.  yum!  

without further adieu, i give you aunt pat's most amazing banana bread...

1 2/3 c flour

1 t baking soda

1/2 c butter

1 c sugar

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

1 c mashed bananas (i usually use 3 over-ripe bananas, which is probably a little more than a cup)

1/2 c sour cream

preheat oven to 350.  cream butter, sugar, egg and vanilla in mixer.  mix in banana.  alternate adding baking soda/flour combination and sour cream.  bake 1 hr.

Bread + Cheese + Beer = YUM!

I had plans to make White Chicken Chili yesterday, and was extra excited to come across this recipe on Annie's Eats. It sounded like a perfect compliment to the chili, could be prepared in no time, and used ingredients I already had plenty of in my kitchen! We were very pleased with the way this bread came out. It smelled delicious while cooking, came out with a perfect crust all around, had a lovely cheesy/beery/carby flavor and texture, and was very hearty and filling. What a treat for a cold fall night!

Easy Cheesy Beer Bread
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
4 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar
12 oz. beer
2 tbsp. butter, melted

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease a 9×5” loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine flours, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and garlic powder. Whisk to combine well. Add cheese and whisk to combine. Slowly add beer to dry ingredients and stir lightly until just combined, and all ingredients are completely moistened. Place into a prepared loaf pan and pour melted butter over the top. Place in the oven and bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Spinach Fettucine Primavera (a.k.a. Rachael, You Tease!)

When my sister in law shared this recipe on her blog earlier in the week, I took a look at it and thought, "A ha! A tasty-looking, simple recipe, that might have a shot at actually being made in 30 minutes!!" It looked so incredibly simple that I was convinced I'd be able to tackle it in thirty minutes. I even saved making it for a night I knew I'd be staying late at work, because wouldn't it be fun to come home and just throw something quick and easy together? WRONG.

I set my timer for 30 minutes and went to work on this bad boy. 28 minutes later, I was still chopping things! Does Rachael have any idea how long it takes an amateur to prepare strips of zucchini and carrot using a vegetable peeler alone? NO! Do normal people have magical water boiling fairies that start boiling a huge pot full of water at just the right moment so that it is perfectly timed for when the vegggies and pasta need to go in? NO! Alas, I had to set my timer for two 30 minute sessions in order to complete this crazy recipe.

Nevertheless, this recipe was relatively simple and moderately delicious so I thought I'd share. I added an extra three cloves of garlic (a must in our house), sauteed the garlic and shallots with crushed red pepper flakes in the oil (another must) and added a drained can of diced tomatoes and a handful of chopped fresh basil for a little something extra. Although the wine reduction sauce smells amazing while cooking, I found the recipe in general to be a bit lacking in flavor. We did enjoy the way the curls of veggies blended in with the pasta, however, and I'm a big fan of a balanced one-bowl meal, so I have a feeling I might be giving this recipe another shot in the not-so-distant future. I already have my tivo set for 7 a.m. Sunday morning so I can see what exactly this wizard woman does to make this dish magically appear in 30 minutes!

Spinach Fettuccine Primavera
See this recipe on air Sunday Sep. 14 at 7:00 AM ET/PT.

Salt
1 pound spinach fettuccine (I used capellini because Trader Joe's didn't have any fettucine that appealed to me... I can see how spinach fettucine would add more flavor, so I'll give her that)
2 carrots, peeled
2 medium zucchini
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 shallots, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped (I used 5 cloves because 1 pound is an awful lot of pasta)
1 cup frozen green peas
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup vegetable or chicken stock Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus some to pass at table
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, a generous handful (I'm not a parsley fan, so I substituted basil)

Bring water for pasta to a boil. Salt the water add the pasta and cook to al dente, about 7 to 8 minutes. Use a vegetable peeler to make ribbons of carrot and zucchini. Keep the vegetables flat on counter and run the peeler the length of the vegetable. Drop the carrots and zucchini into the pasta water for the last 4 minutes of cooking time.

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat with extra-virgin olive oil and butter. Saute the shallots and garlic 3 to 4 minutes then add peas and heat through, 2 minutes, stir in wine, reduce for half a minute and stir in stock. Toss drained pasta and vegetables with the sauce, season with salt and pepper, and combine with cheese and parsley.

pancakes!

i am now in full LSAT studying/law school applying mode, and although 4 years have passed since i left college, i have apparently not lost my amazing talent for finding all sorts of cooking and cleaning projects to help me procrastinate from doing what's most important to my future. ::sigh:: on the brighter side, the good news is that mike and i will be eating awfully well and enjoying life in a sparkling clean apartment for the next few months!! :-)

tonight at 9 pm i decided it would be a good idea to make myself some healthy pancakes to take to work this week for breakfast, and make pancakes i did. i learned a few interesting cooking tricks along the way, so i thought i'd share.

Oatmeal Brown Sugar Pancakes
(look, Kira, you can enjoy oatmeal for breakfast without the mushy texture!)

1/2 c. plus 2 tbsp quick-cooking oats
1/2 c. whole flour
1/2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 c. buttermilk

in a small bowl, combine the oats, flours, baking soda, salt and sugar. in another small bowl, beat the egg, oil and buttermilk. stir into dry ingredients until just moistened. pour batter by 1/3 cupful onto a greased hot griddle. turn when bubbles form on top and cook until the second side is golden brown. makes approx 10 pancakes (which i'm not sure i agree with - my batch turned out maybe 7 or so)

and now for the cooking tricks!!

1.) apparently, if you don't have buttermilk, you can substitute by adding 1 tbsp. lemon juice to your regular milk and letting it sit for a few minutes. i was intrigued by this idea since i'm constantly buying buttermilk to use in small quantities and then the rest usually goes bad in my fridge. i tried this lemon juice trick in this pancake recipe, and while i didn't notice a particularly buttermilky flavor (man do these pancakes taste healthy!), i didn't notice a particularly yucky flavor either. i'm thinking i'll give the lemon juice a try in a few more recipes before making up my mind on whether this is a good idea.

2.) if you're like me and never able to use an open bag of brown sugar before it starts to dry up and become crusty, i can confirm that tossing a marshmallow into the bag after opening will keep the sugar nice and moist! hooray! i've heard that a piece of bread works too, but that kind of grosses me out.

better than MCL sauteed apples

I've never been to MCL, but from the way Kira describes it, I can imagine it would be a place where they might offer cinnamon-y apples as an option for dessert. I'm also imagining that their apples might resemble the usual institutional apple-pie filling type served at buffets, and that they'd be kinda thick in consistency and super sweet. Ick.

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a recipe for sauteed apples to use on top of a dutch pancake I was making. When I googled sauteed apples, this was the first recipe that came up (thank you, allrecipes.com!) and I'm so very glad it did! I absolutely loved the way these turned out in texture, in consistency and in flavor! They were so delicious and perfect that they even inspired me to wake up 15 min earlier every day so I could make oatmeal w/these apples and raisins. Impressive!

There's not much to this recipe, but if you're like me and haven't ever sauteed apples before, it's a great first-timer recipe. I had an idea of how sauteeing apples might go, but I would have never been able to guess the proportions of sugar/cinnamon/butter or the need to boil the apples toward the end to achieve the best texture!

Without further adieu, I give you allrecipes.com's recipe for sauteed apples...

1/4 cup butter
4 large tart apples - peeled, cored and sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 teaspoons cornstarch (I used flour because I couldn't find my cornstarch and it worked fine, you just have to make a roux with the butter and flour in order to cook the flour before the apples are added so that you don't end up with a flour-y taste)
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS
In a large skillet or saucepan, melt butter over medium heat; add apples. Cook, stirring constantly, until apples are almost tender, about 6 to 7 minutes.
Dissolve cornstarch in water; add to skillet. Stir in brown sugar and cinnamon. Boil for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and serve warm.

world's yummiest granola bars

My sister in law makes the yummiest granola bars EVER. I love this recipe because is super easy, fast and you get to play with the flavorings and textures!! I always seem to have the hardest time finding a store-bought brand that I like because if the texture is great, I'll hate the flavor combination, or vice versa. With these granola bars, you get to decide how crunchy, chewy, sweet, healthy or junky they'll turn out! Here's the base recipe, with notes on ways you can play around to get different results:

4 c quick oats (do not even THINK about using old fashioned oats. you will not be pleased with the outcome! you can, on the other hand, consider substituting a cup or two of a cereal... the finer the texture of the cereal, the better this works.)
1 1/2 c chopped whatever (nuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, chocolate...)
1/2 c firmly packed brown sugar (original recipe calls for 1 whole cup, but that was way too sweet for me since I'm almost always using chocolate or raisins in my chopped whatever)
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 melted butter/canola oil mix (you can play around with this as well, but I find that I like to melt a little less than 1/2 c butter in a glass measuring cup, then pour canola oil in until it reaches 3/4 c. more butter makes the bars have a richer taste, obviously)
1/2 c honey (if you pour in the butter/oil mix first and then reuse the same measuring cup for the honey, the honey will pour right out! much better than having to wait for hours for it to drip into the bowl)
1 tsp vanilla extract (don't worry, Kira, you can't taste a thing! ;-) )

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9x13 glass pan. Mix all of the above ingredients until incorporated and press into pan. Bake about 20 min until golden brown (longer baking will be crunchier, shorter baking will be chewier). Let cool completely before cutting. I usually wrap each individual granola bar in plastic wrap so they're convenient to store and stay fresher. Yum!!

Rosemary Chicken Saute

Yes...I am still eating healthy. Well, healthier. Surprised? Me too. Anyway, this is another modified healthy recipe and it's surprisingly tasty. I'm really proud of myself right now because I am growing a tiny herb garden in pots in my front courtyard and I was actually able to use fresh rosemary from my "garden" in this dish tonight! My mom used to make something like this only it was baked rather than sauteed and it was SO good...I asked her for the recipe awhile ago and she has no recollection of making it. I guess that's okay, because this recipe tastes almost as good as I remember hers - and I think the slight reduction in awesomeness is because this only has the teensiest bit of olive oil in it and no other fat. Snip yourself some fresh rosemary and enjoy!

ROSEMARY CHICKEN SAUTE
Weight Watchers Recipe - Modified by Kira (but still just as healthy!)
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

2 pounds red potatoes, quartered - I used red Yukon golds.
1 chicken breast (approx. 10oz) cut into thin strips
2 medium onions
1 T chopped fresh rosemary (be generous with this) plus extra sprigs for garnish
4 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1/2 t sugar

DIRECTIONS:

Boil potatoes in salted water for 5-6 minutes. Drain and set aside. In a nonstick skillet, saute chicken in 1/2 t olive oil until just cooked through. Set aside. Add another 1/2 t olive oil to the pan and add onions, sugar, garlic, and rosemary. Saute until onions are soft. Add potatoes and chicken to the skillet and heat through, adding salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with fresh rosemary to serve.

Super-quick and easy comfort food!

"Better Than MCL" Peanut Butter Pie

If you're from Indiana, you are probably familiar with MCL (or as my husband likes to call it, the MediCare Lounge). MCL is a regional chain of old-fashioned homestyle cooking cafeterias that caters primarily to the over-70 crowd. However, my husband and many of my friends here in Indiana absolutely LOVE MCL - they just get carryout. Anyway, I made this peanut butter pie for my boss as her birthday treat and she pronounced it "better than MCL!" Which is a serious compliment. It's also ridiculously easy. The only bad thing about this PB pie is that it is basically terrible for you. But...who cares when it is this delicious???

BETTER THAN MCL's PEANUT BUTTER PIE
Recipe from Allrecipes.com (Peanut Butter Pie XIX)

INGREDIENTS:

1 8oz package cream cheese, softened
3/4 C white sugar
1 1/2 C creamy peanut butter
2 8oz containers frozen whipped topping, thawed
Graham cracker pie crust
Chocolate syrup for drizzling (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Mix cream cheese and sugar with a hand mixer until creamy. Add peanut butter and blend until smooth. Add 1 container of whipped topping and mix using a spoon or spatula until the topping is completely blended into the peanut butter mixture.

Fill graham cracker crust with mixture and refrigerate for minimum 1 hour. If desired, layer chocolate syrup in between layers of peanut butter filling.

Drizzle chocolate syrup (optional) over the top of the pie. Layer as much of the 2nd container of whipped topping as you like on top and drizzle with more chocolate syrup. Refrigerate for at least another hour before serving.

YUM!

(don't ask me for the calorie/fat/etc information on this recipe. You do NOT want to know!)

Baked Won-Ton Wrapper Chips

To go along with my previous post, baked won-ton wrappers are an EXCELLENT alternative to tortilla chips which as we know are much worse for you than the cheese in which you dip them. Baking won-ton wrappers is super-easy and you can season them however you want! These are GREAT with the pico de gallo recipe that you can find on our humble little blog. :)

INGREDIENTS:

1 package of won-ton wrappers
Cooking spray
Whatever spices/salt/pepper you want

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 425. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray. Place won-ton wrappers on cookie sheet and bake for 2-3 minutes. Remove from oven, turn over, and spray with cooking spray. Season with spices or dried/fresh herbs of your choice. Return to oven for 4-5 minutes until they are bubbly and as crispy as you want them.

Serve with pico de gallo, other salsa, or just by themselves!

Grilled Chicken and Key Lime Salsa

I've taken a break from posting for awhile - mostly because I am now eating healthfully and so many of my previous recipes no longer qualify as something that I can eat on a regular basis. Sad, but true. However, this new healthy initiative has enabled me to find some truly delightful recipes that taste good and are much better for you. For example, this delicious grilled chicken with salsa. I was even surprised at how awesome the salsa was. In fact, I would recommend just making this salsa and eating it on chips. Or baked won-ton wrappers. Anyway, enjoy the party in your mouth!

GRILLED CHICKEN AND KEY LIME SALSA
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:
1/4 C Worcestershire sauce
3 T fresh lime juice from Key limes (or if you are lazy, from the plastic lime bottle)
3 medium oranges, sectioned, with pith and seeds removed
2 T scallions, chopped
1 T cilantro, chopped
1 pound uncooked boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 tsp chopped green chiles or more to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Combine Worcestershire sauce, 3 T of lime juice and chicken in a Ziploc bag. Refrigerate up to 4 hours.
2. Meanwhile, combine remaining ingredients in a medium-sized bowl to make salsa. Refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour.
3. Preheat grill or broiler. Grill or broil chicken until cooked through, about 4-5 minutes per side. Serve chicken with salsa.

Kira's Notes: No, I did not buy Key limes to juice for this recipe. Because I am (1) lazy and (2) cheap. And guess what? It tasted amazing with lime juice from the lime-shaped bottle. Also, I think I may have added more scallions and cilantro than the recipe called for. I also used cayenne pepper for heat in the salsa instead of the chopped green chiles because again, I am lazy. Marinating this for 3-4 hours would probably be perfect. I only had time to let mine marinate for an hour or so and it was good, but the flavor wasn't as good as it would have been with more time in the sauce and lime juice. I also cut up the orange slices into smaller chunks.

Smoky Sweet Potato Chicken Stoup

Rachael Ray always wins me back eventually. I just happened to catch an episode of 30-Minute Meals last Friday and she made Smoky Sweet Potato Chicken Stoup - it looked so amazing that I wanted to lick the TV. So I looked it up this week on foodnetwork.com and here we are! It looks kind of tricky because there are a lot of ingredients but it really isn't too hard to make. I still think that Rachael relies on her superhuman chopping and dicing abilities to get these recipes done in 30 minutes. However, us mere mortals will still be able to make this "stoup" in 45! I served this with pepperjack grilled cheese sandwiches...quesadillas would be fun too!

SMOKY SWEET POTATO CHICKEN STOUP
Rachael Ray, foodnetwork.com
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

2 T extra-virgin olive oil
2 medium carrots, peeled
2 ribs celery
1 large onion, peeled and halved
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1-2 chipotle chili in adobo sauce, finely chopped, plus a spoonful of sauce from the can
Salt and black pepper
1 t dry thyme
1 bay leaf
1 C dry white wine
5 C chicken stock
1 large sweet potato
3/4-1lb chicken tenders, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 scallions, white and green parts thinly sliced
1/4 C cilantro leaves, a generous handful, roughly chopped
1/2 C sour cream for garnish, optional

DIRECTIONS:

Heat a soup pot over medium-high heat with 2 T of extra-virgin olive oil, about 2 turns of the pan.

While soup pot heats, chop carrots in half lengthwise and then slice into thin half-moons. Add the carrots to the pot while it heats, stirring to coat the carrots in the oil. Chop and drop in celery and onion, chopping them as small as you can without driving yourself crazy. Add the garlic, chipotle, and adobo sauce and stir to combine. Season the veggies with salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaf. Cook the veggies together for 1 minute. Add the wine and reduce 1 minute. Add the stock to the pot, cover the pot, and raise the heat to high. Bring the stoup to a boil, remove the cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into quarters lengthwise, then thinly slice into bite size pieces, Add the cut chicken and sweet potatoes and simmer for 10 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are tender and chicken is cooked through. Turn the heat off, add scallions and cilantro. Serve each portion of stoup with a dollop of sour cream on top.

Extra-Special Spinach and Artichoke Dip

I can almost file this recipe under "failure," but it went okay the 2nd time around. Let me start at the beginning...

My original intent was to find Outback Steakhouse's Artichoke Dip recipe. Even though the internet is wonderful, it let me down big time and I couldn't find the recipe online anywhere.

I looked around for awhile and eventually found a recipe that sounded pretty amazing, mostly because it (1) contained Alfredo sauce and (2) did NOT contain copious amounts of mayonnaise. Don't get me wrong, I love mayonnaise under the right circumstances, but if I'm making a dip I really don't want to think about how when I'm eating it, I'm really just swallowing a gigantic blob of mayo on a chip.

In reading the reviews of the recipe I found, I noticed that some people said it was fun to use fresh spinach and also that if you followed the exact directions of the recipe, which said to "spread" ingredients in an 8x8 pan, the dip wouldn't turn out correctly. One reviewer said it was NECESSARY to put this dip into a food processor or a blender. So I chopped up a bunch of fresh spinach and threw the whole shebang into my food processor. As it blended, I started to get a very uneasy feeling. When the cream cheese had finally been blended, I was horrified to see that the dip looked alarmingly like that green jell-o fluff you can buy in the grocery store deli and I find to be absolutely disgusting. Or something pistachio-flavored. And I am supposed to bring this dip to a New Year's Eve party tomorrow night!

So my only choice was to drive to the grocery store at 9:20PM and pray that they weren't totally out of artichoke hearts so that I could have a re-do. THANKFULLY it turned out well the 2nd time. At least I think so, because I haven't baked it yet, but it's already better than the 1st time because it's a normal spinach/artichoke dip-y color. And it tastes good. The green one did too, but since people would be expecting it to taste like that green fluffy stuff...yeah. It's just better to make it again!

ARTICHOKE & SPINACH DIP - RESTAURANT STYLE
From allrecipes.com with modifications by Kira

Ingredients:

4 cloves garlic (I used 5)
1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 (14 ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1 (10 ounce) container Alfredo-style pasta sauce (Bertolli's is best)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (6-cheese Italian blend)
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened (I used the entire package)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Place garlic in a small baking dish. Bake in the preheated oven 20 to 30 minutes, until soft. Remove from heat. When cool enough to touch, squeeze softened garlic from skins.

In an 8x8 inch baking dish, spread the roasted garlic, spinach, artichoke hearts, Alfredo-style pasta sauce, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese and cream cheese.

Cover and bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until cheeses are melted and bubbly. Serve warm.

Kira's directions for step 3: Mix the cream cheese, the Alfredo sauce, and the roasted garlic until it's mostly blended. Squish the roasted garlic until it's fairly well blended with the rest. Add the shredded cheese and the Parmesan. Mix well. Then, add the artichoke hearts and the spinach and take care not to overmix. Place in baking dish and top with a little bit of grated Parmesan.

Green Bean Casserole for the 21st Century

My mom brought this recipe to Christmas and suggested that we give it a shot. It's one of those recipes that doesn't really tell you a whole lot about amounts and times and specific temperatures, which kind of wigged my mom out, but in the end it turned out to be very good! Luckily for her I'm 100% comfortable with a recipe that doesn't tell me anything. It combines that traditional comfort of the old-school green bean casserole but it adds some distinctly modern twists. No cream of mushroom soup, etc. Anyway, it's tasty and fairly easy...sounds like a holiday dinner winner to me! I added a little bit more structure to the recipe for this blog, so the version below is by no means verbatim from the source.


GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE
From Better Homes and Gardens

Ingredients:

2 lbs fresh green beans, cut into smallish pieces
6oz fresh button or Portobello mushrooms, sliced
1 sweet red pepper, diced
6oz of goat cheese or cream cheese (or combination of both)
1 large onion, thinly sliced in rings
Dry packaged breadcrumbs
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Directions:

Boil green beans for 3ish minutes and drain. Add green beans, mushrooms, and pepper to a 9x13 casserole dish. Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar and roast in 350 oven for 10-15 minutes. While green beans etc are roasting, sauté onions in olive oil until tender. Coat with breadcrumbs so they resemble onion rings. Remove green beans etc. from oven. Add goat cheese/cream cheese and mix well to coat. Add onions on top and return to oven for 8-10 minutes or until heated through. Turn on broiler for extra browning effect.

Cranberry Salsa

Although my rule is that I have to actually make something before posting, I am breaking that rule for this delightful cranberry salsa that my Aunt Joan made for Thanksgiving this year. I am GOING to make it, probably this week, but since the recipe is still in my wallet from Thanksgiving and I'm avoiding work, I will go ahead and post anyway! I have already shared this recipe with like 50 people - I actually passed it around at my YMCA Group Exercise training last week. Yikes!

This is awesome with tortilla chips and I think it would also be delightful paired with pork roast or potentially even baked chicken (depending).

CRANBERRY SALSA
From Joan Hill

Ingredients:
1 bag fresh cranberries
1 C sugar
1 C water
2 jalapenos, diced (seeds are optional, only if you want to bring the heat)
2 bunches green onions, sliced
1 t cumin
1 T lime juice
2 T diced cilantro

Directions:

Cook berries with sugar and water until skins pop. Add remaining. Mix it up until it looks like salsa. :)

UPDATE: I have now made this and I can say FOR SURE that it is ridiculously easy to make. And it's pretty! Enjoy.

I'm heeeeeeeeeere! :-)

Hello, faithful blog readers! It's funny how I stopped nagging Kira to post here every day once she invited me to become a co-poster. ;-) After three weeks, I have finally gotten so sick of eating out that I spent the evening cooking up a storm (pepper steak! soup! no-bake cookies! granola bars! zucchini muffins!) and I'd like to share one of the recipes with you.

I've been a major baby lately about the winter weather, and one of the ways I've been "coping" has been to eat soup for lunch and dinner. It's probably the least weird of my coping mechanisms, and doesn't usually get me the same kinds of looks as wearing a scarf all day at work or wearing a coat for an hour after I've gotten home does. Anyway, here is the recipe that served as the inspiration for the soup I made tonight:

Italian Wedding Soup Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis Show: Everyday Italian

Meatballs: 1 small onion, grated 1/3 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley 1 large egg 1 teaspoon minced garlic 1 teaspoon salt 1 slice fresh white bread, crust trimmed, bread torn into small pieces 1/2 cup grated Parmesan 8 ounces ground beef 8 ounces ground pork Freshly ground black pepper Soup: 12 cups low-sodium chicken broth 1 pound curly endive, coarsely chopped (1 pound of escarole would be a good substitution) 2 large eggs 2 tablespoon freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for garnish Salt and freshly ground black pepper To make the meatballs: Stir the first 6 ingredients in a large bowl to blend. Stir in the cheese, beef and pork. Using 1 1/2 teaspoons for each, shape the meat mixture into 1-inch-diameter meatballs. Place on a baking sheet. To make the soup: Bring the broth to a boil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the meatballs and curly endive and simmer until the meatballs are cooked through and the curly endive is tender, about 8 minutes. Whisk the eggs and cheese in a medium bowl to blend. Stir the soup in a circular motion. Gradually drizzle the egg mixture into the moving broth, stirring gently with a fork to form thin stands of egg, about 1 minute. Season the soup to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle the soup into bowls and serve. Finish soup with parmesan cheese if desired.

Thank you, Giada, that sounds delicious but time-consuming. Additionally, I have zero patience for making meatballs and even if I could find escarole or endive at our yucky grocery store, I would have no interest in ingesting either. Here is the recipe as I made it tonight:

2.5 boxes chicken stock
1 box frozen spinach
1 bunch parsley
2 eggs
2 tbs parsley
2 c dry egg noodles
2/3 pkg trader joe's mini meatballs
15 cranks of the pepper grinder

In a large stockpot, bring 10 cups of chicken stock and two cups of water to a boil. For me, using 12 full cups of store-bought chicken stock would be wayyyyyyyy too salty, so if I don't have any homemade chicken stock on hand (or am too lazy to thaw it), I add water. Once, it's boiling, reduce heat to medium and add everything else and cook for about 8-9 minutes, or until noodles and meatballs are cooked. Reduce heat and add the eggs beaten with parmesan, making sure to temper the eggs first by gradually adding about 1/2 cup of the hot broth to the eggs before drizzling the eggs into the soup. If you don't, you'll end up with scrambled egg chunks in your soup and this is not very appetizing. For me, serving with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese is a must!

Enjoye! :-)

Welcome, Lisa!

I am honored to announce that this blog now has TWO authors! The lovelye Lisa will be joining me in posting her favorite recipes for your viewing and cooking enjoyment. I can't wait to get my hands on some of Lisa's recipes...and you should be excited too! :)

Apple Crisp

I love apple crisp because it's the lazy baker's apple pie. Although I guess that with the advent of refrigerated Pillsbury pie crust apple pie has become pretty lazy too. Anyway, the thing that I love about apple crisp is the delicious salty-sweet crumbled topping. I have a tough time not eating a bunch of it before it's even baked actually...surprise surprise!

When I was a kid, my mom used to make this quite a bit during the fall. She'd make it in the afternoon, so I'd have some when I came home from school, and then we'd all eat some for dessert after dinner. If she put it into a 9x13 pan, there would usually be about half left. By the next afternoon, though, it would almost always be gone...mom couldn't stay away from it! Mom thinks that her mom, my Grandma Hill, cut this recipe out of a newspaper about 60 years ago. Well believe me...what was good 60 years ago is still good now.

APPLE CRISP
from Grandma Hill

Ingredients:

6 medium peeled and sliced apples (peeled is important...I forgot that once and this didn't turn out so well)
1/3-1/2 C sugar (to taste really)
1 t cinnamon
1 C water
6 T shortening (you can do 3 T butter, 3 T shortening if shortening totally disgusts you)
1/2 C packed brown sugar
1 C flour
1 t baking powder
smidge salt

Directions:

Simmer the apples, sugar, cinnamon, and water for 7-10 minutes. Mix the shortening, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt until crumbly. Pour apples into deep baking dish (I've used several different sizes...just as a rule, though, the smaller the dish the deeper it needs to be) and cover with crumbled mixture. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, until the apples are soft and the mixture underneath the crust is brown.

Quickest Chicken Stock

Ryan was so crushed when MCL didn't have Chicken and Noodles this afternoon that I said I'd make them for dinner. It's actually a lot more work than it sounds - luckily, though, most of the work is just sitting around and waiting. I thought I'd try Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything for a chicken stock recipe and I found this one for "quick" chicken stock. It's not as quick as pouring it out of a carton or anything, but I guess it's quicker than it could be. He does have a recipe for chicken stock that takes 3+ hours. Anyway, I gave this chicken stock a try and it's delicious.

QUICKEST CHICKEN STOCK
From How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

Ingredients:

1 whole (3-4 pound) chicken, rinsed and patted dry with paper towels
1 C roughly chopped onion (don't bother to peel it)
1 C chopped carrot
1/2 C roughly chopped celery
1 sprig fresh thyme or pinch dried thyme
1/2 bay leaf
Several sprigs fresh parsley
1 t salt, plus more if necessary
About 3 1/2 quarts (14 cups) water

Directions:

1. Cut up chicken if you like; it will speed cooking.
2. Combine all ingredients except water in a stockpot; add the water
3. Bring just about to a boil, then partially cover and adjust the heat so the mixture sends up a few bubbles at a time. Cook just until the chicken is done, 30-60 minutes.
4. Strain, pressing on the vegetables and meat to extract as much juice as possible. Taste and add salt if necessary.
5. Refrigerate, then skim any hardened fat from the surface. Refrigerate for 4-5 days (longer if you boil it every 3rd day, which will prevent spoiling) or freeze.

Pico de Gallo

This summer, desperate for a twist on my super-easy pico de gallo (4 ingredients, you know what they are) I started looking for a slightly different take on the traditional pico. But I didn't want it to be TOO different. None of that "made with basil" pico garbage. I ended up finding my recipe in a WONDERFUL cookbook by Mark Bittman - How to Cook Everything. He isn't kidding about the everything. If you need a reference cookbook, it's a great choice. I need a reference cookbook because anytime I go outside of my chicken comfort zone, I have no idea what I'm doing. Mark helps me through those trying times.

I served this pico for the first time at our annual 4th of July party. It was gone in about 3 minutes, so I'm guessing that meant it was good? Anyway, it's not too tough - although the chopping scallions part is rough on eyes - but the reward is worth the onion trauma! I wish I had a picture because this stuff is gorgeous. Maybe next time I make it I will take one - if I don't eat it all first.


PICO DE GALLO
from How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

Ingredients:

2 C cored, peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped tomatoes
1 C minced chopped scallions (preferred), onion, or a combination
1/2 t minced garlic
2 T freshly squeezed lime juice
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 stemmed and minced jalapeno or hot red chiles, or to taste, or cayenne or crushed red pepper flakes to taste
1/2 C minced fresh cilantro leaves

Directions:

1. Combine first six ingredients, then taste and see whether you want to add more salt, pepper, or chiles. Stir in about half of the cilantro, then set aside for 1 hour, or cover and refrigerate for up to 1 day.
2. Taste and adjust seasoning, garnish with remaining cilantro, and serve.

Kira's Notes:

I used Roma tomatoes - I like them better. I would also go with the scallions - it sucks to chop them all up but don't worry, it's totally worth it in the end! I go a little longer on the garlic than Mark indicates. The first time I made this I think I used not jalapenos. But it was still very tasty...basically, you just can't screw up this pico. So throw in whatever you like.

Butternut Squash Gratin

Since it has FINALLY gotten cold outside - well, not 90 degrees anyway - I'm thinking fall and yummy casserole-type things...like this super-dee-duper-delightful butternut squash gratin! This isn't the easiest recipe in the world, lots and lots of chopping and dicing, and as you might guess with a quick glance down the recipe it isn't fast either. I'm betting that Rachael Ray has a recipe out there for butternut squash gratin in 30 minutes...because she is a compulsive liar...but if you ever stumble upon it, DO NOT BELIEVE HER, THIS DELICIOUSNESS CANNOT BE RECREATED IN 30 MINUTES and DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME TRYING!!!! So yes, this takes awhile, but it's great for a holiday dinner or even just any night when you have the time. My mom and I made it last year for Christmas dinner and I believe it will be making a repeat appearance! :)

BUTTERNUT SQUASH GRATIN

Ingredients:

1/4 C unsalted butter
4 C thinly sliced onions (about 1 lb)
2 1/2 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 t sugar
1/2 t ground black pepper
3/4 C chicken stock (low sodium preferred)
2 C fresh breadcrumbs from soft bread
2 C (packed) sharp white cheddar, grated
1 1/2 T chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 t dried thyme

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 13x9x2 baking dish. Melt butter in a large skillet, saute onions until light golden in color (about 8 minutes). Add squash and saute 4 additional minutes. Sprinkle sugar, salt and pepper over squash and onions. Saute until onions and squash carmelize. Spread mixture in prepared dish. Pour chicken stock over mixture. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 40 minutes. **This can be done 1 day ahead - if you do that, reheat in 350 oven for 10 minutes before proceeding.**

Increase oven temperature to 400. Mix remaining ingredients together (hello, cheese!) and sprinkle over squash and onions. Bake uncovered until top is golden-brown and crisp, about 30 minutes. You can always turn on the broiler for a few if you aren't getting the top quite as golden as you would like.

Suddenly, everyone loves squash! :)