Quick Italian Spinach Pie

Ooooo! This was so yummy!

I'm a few days behind on posting because we had this on "Meatless Monday", but I still wanted to put it up. I was browsing around on the web for budget-friendly meals and came across this one. Brandon was a little skeptical about the fact that there was no meat involved, but he came around. If you'd like to try it too, visit the Kraft Recipes site. Just follow the instructions and enjoy!

P.S. Make sure you squeeze most of the moisture out of your spinach. I didn't and I think that's why it was a little watery right out of the oven. Still set up pretty well though.

A few new items

Short post today! We've been sick, sick, sick. Therefore, the culinary adventures have been a little more limited. At least I still cooked a little!

Homemade Beef Stroganoff









Homemade sausage & green pepper pizza - Yummo!

A Sucker for Pictures

So it was the ad's fault. I wasn't really interested in making anything for dinner tonight - long day, wasn't into cooking, etc. Then I saw an ad for the Olive Garden with this great looking pasta with a garlic butter sauce on it and my stomach said it simply wouldn't tolerate anything else. I set to work when I got home to give it a shot and it wasn't too shabby. I'll try my best to recreate the recipe here since I have a tendency to toss things in. :) Served it up with some grilled tilapia fillets and peas. Mmmmm.

Creamy Garlic Sauce
1 T minced garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
2 t parsley
2 T flour
1 cup milk
Lemon juice (squeezed from 1/4 lemon)
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3 T parmesan cheese

1. Saute garlic and parsley in the olive oil for 2 minutes.
2. Add flour and stir until it becomes smooth and bubbly, about 1 minute.
3. Add milk and stir constantly, over medium heat until sauce thickens.
4. Squeeze in juice from 1/4 lemon (about 1 T), salt, pepper , and parmesan.
5. Combine with pasta and serve.

I learned a trick recently about pasta sauce. If you mix in a 1/4 cup or so of the starchy water that the pasta was cooked in, the sauce will stick to your pasta rather than just run off onto the plate. It really works!

I also baked up some carrot cupcakes last night and frosted them with the required cream cheese frosting. Nothing from scratch here folks - consult the baking aisle at your local supermarket!

No recipes needed

Just good ol' meat and potatoes tonight! A little Farmland marinated pork loin, some sweet potatoes (yes, that's real butter) and broccoli. No experimentation or cookbook required, but sometimes the basics are just darn good!

Cooking Binge

Tonight was a busy night! I had a couple of experiments that I wanted to try and finally a hassle-free night to do it.

First up - hot cocoa mix! Now I've been on this kick lately to find ways to make convenience foods from scratch and see if they are as good and more economical. We go through a lot of hot cocoa at our house - it's like our coffee - so I thought it would be a good one to try. As best I can tell it was really good, but it's sort of hard to say when you burn your tongue. Guess I'll have to try another cup tomorrow and wait a little longer for the taste test. The other cool thing about making your own is that you can alter the flavors and calorie content. The recipes I found suggest using different types of coffee creamer (french vanilla, hazelnut, etc) or adding things like cinnamon and chili powder. I think I'll keep tweaking, but I haven't worked out the cost factor yet - powdered milk is surprisingly expensive! Here's the recipe I used, but I halved it until I knew whether I liked it or not.

For dinner tonight I made Easy Italian Meatloaf. It was a great recipe from my Kraft Food & Family magazine. (Minor vent - this used to be a great free resource, but now they charge you $14 per year for it. Might be a different story if it wasn't just virtually a book of ads for Kraft products. Guess we'll see if it goes back free when no one subscribes.) The issues are available online though, so I can share the recipe with you! I really liked this nice twist on traditional meatloaf and the only change I made was to substitute half the ground beef with ground turkey for a healthier final product. It also makes a pretty big loaf, but you can't really half it without having half a can of diced tomatoes and half a box of stuffing left. Meatloaf sandwiches baby!

Last but not least was another experiment in saving some moolah - homemade granola. I love this stuff on yogurt and was going through boxes and boxes of Kashi for like $5 per box. I decided it was time to see if I could make something I liked and then customize it based on what's available for dried fruit and such. Tonight I tried rolled oats, steel cut oats, almonds, and a wonderful concoction of maple syrup, brown sugar, honey, cinnamon and vanilla. Then I added a few bits of banana chips (very good addition!) It smelled like those stands in the mall where they roast the nuts and sort of tastes like them too. I like it, but think there's room for improvement!

I forgot the Mexican Skillet Lasagna!

Oh no! I forgot to post about a really great recipe that turned out just like I expected and even looked like the picture! If you like Mexican food and Italian, you'll like this. I was a little skeptical about mixing taco seasoning in with the spaghetti sauce, but it yielded an interesting mix of flavors that we really enjoyed. In fact, I didn't get to eat much of it because Brandon liked it so much!

I found the recipe in my January issue of the Cooking Club magazine, but you can find it here.

Mmmmm. Chicken Pot Pie.

It's cold and snowy outside - still - and I needed comfort food. And so began an adventure in chicken pot pie. I invited Brandon's parents over to share with us and it was wonderful! I had intended to use puff pastry on the top, but it turns out the box I had in the freezer was a year past it's expiration date and hard as a rock. So I ended up making a pastry from scratch instead. Remarkably this wasn't awful and turned out really good! Someday I'm gonna figure out how to make pie crust for real!

Two weekends - same snack

I found this yummy recipe for Crispy Smore Treats in my Pampered Chef Casual Cooking cookbook (there's lots of good stuff in here - I totally recommend it!) They flew off the plate at our adoption group and a double batch flew off the plate at a Super Bowl party. I'd like to say that I had no part in consuming them, but in truth I think I sort of lost count . . .

I'm going to write the directions to reflect how I prepared them because it worked just great and made it easy, easy, easy!

Crispy Smore Treats
Prep Time: 10 min Cook time: 5 min Cool Time: 30 min

2 1/2 cups cocoa-flavored sweetened rice cereal
6 whole (about 5 x 2-inch) graham crackers, coarsely chopped
3 T butter or margarine
2 T packed brown sugar
3 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows, divided
3/4 cup milk chocolate morsels

1. Place lid on bottom of Scalloped Bread Tube; spray with non-stick cooking spray. Place graham crackers in a gallon-sized ziploc bag and crush into course chunks. Add cereal to bag.

2. In a large, microwave-safe bowl, melt butter with brown sugar - stirring occasionally. Add 2 1/2 cups marshmallows and return to microwave for approximately 1 minute until marshmallows are swelled and melting. Remove from microwave and stir until smooth.

3. Add cereal to marshmallow mixture and stir until well coated. Stir in remaining 1 cup marshmallows.

4. Using a large ice cream scoop (with trigger action) or spoon coated with non-stick cooking spray, immediately place a few scoops of mixture into bread tube. As you fill tube, make sure to pack the mixture. Cool completely.

5. Push mixture out of tube onto cutting board. Using a serrated bread knife, but crosswise into 1/2-inch slices.

6. Microwave chocolate morsels in a small bowl, uncovered, on HIGH one minute, stirring every 15 seconds, until chocolate is melted and smooth. Pour into a small resealable food storage bag. Twist top of bag and secure. Cut a small tip off corner of bag. Decorate treats with chocolate, let stand until set.

Yields 16 treats

If you don't have the Pampered Chef bread tube, I think you could also press this mixture into a 9 x 9 pan and then drizzle chocolate on top before or after cutting. But the bread tube is just so fun!!! I need to get another one though because I don't often bake one loaf or batch of goodies. Enjoy!

Crispy-Topped Herbed Fish Fillets

Tonight, the adventure is Crispy-Topped Herbed Fish Fillets and I have chosen tilapia because it's one of my favorites. It's a mild-flavored, white fish that holds up to what I throw at it and tends to work well with all sorts of toppings and cooking methods. Since cooking fish is intimidating in the first place, that's no small feat!

I have to admit that I wasn't impressed with the breading of the final product, but perhaps it was because I was in a hurry and didn't much follow the recipe! (Hmmmm) I did not make fresh bread crumbs and instead used seasoned ones I had in the cabinet. I would follow the recipe in the future and make sure the crumbs weren't as finely ground as the ones I had.

I also didn't do step 2, which I would guess now is crucial to the finished product. I simply mixed the ingredients together and pressed on top of the fish. Let's just say it didn't yield the photo finish I was hoping for . . . .

Recipe link from Cooking Club of America (Yes, I am an offical card holding member!)

In the beginning, there was tilapia

I've found that so many of my Facebook friends have found both interest and humor in my occasional culinary posts and I've decided to try out a blog devoted to one of my great passions. Cooking.

But really for me it's not just about cooking - it's about how to create art on a plate; about establishing a reputation as a "good cook"; trying new things; saving our family money while we eat well; and so much more. (As well as how to do all this and maintain my lifetime membership status at Weight Watchers!)

If I can post a link to the recipe and give the author their dues I will do so. Otherwise, I will try to share mine with you. Then I will tell you how I didn't do what they said to do and even try to provide a nice picture of what the finished product looked like without the help of a food stylist. So here we go! I'll see if I can update enough that someone will read this thing!!!