Shrimp Coconut Soup

This soup is quick and easy, and it is soooo good! Mia kept saying, "Mm...Mom, dis soup is ree good!" : ) The original recipe called for 3 Tablespoons of fish sauce (optional), but I thought that sounded like an awful lot of fish sauce. Having never actually used it before, I only used 1 teaspoon and I thought it was fine. The only other thing that I would change would be the addition of some rice noodles or other Asian noodles just to make the soup a little more hearty. But the flavor is great. This would probably even be good with chicken instead of shrimp, or another kind of mild fish, if for some odd reason you don't like shrimp. : )

Shrimp Coconut Soup

1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 1/2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled, tails removed
1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
2 tsp Thai green curry paste
3 cans chicken broth
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut milk
1 tsp fish sauce (optional)
2 to 3 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1 Tbsp brown sugar
Garnish: green onions, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, optional

Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add shrimp; stir fry 2 to 3 minutes or just until shrimp turn pink. Transfer shrimp to a plate. Add ginger, garlic, and bell pepper to pot, and saute 1 to 2 minutes or until tender. Stir in curry paste, broth, coconut milk and fish sauce. Add lime juice and brown sugar, and bring to a boil; reduce heat, and let simmer 5 minutes. Stir in shrimp. Garnish, if desired.
Serves 4

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Let me preface this by saying that I *really* dislike Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I just have never liked that recipe and as a result I tend to shy away from chocolate chip cookies except for my sour cream chocolate chip cookie recipe which still ranks as delicious. So I decided to give this a try (I found the recipe on Pinterest, which was pinned from kelseysappleaday.blogspot.com, which she adapted from Food Network Canada...) and they are seriously fantastic! Oh, and naturally I adapted it slightly too. The recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate chips - sick!! - so I used milk. You can use whatever kind of chip you like.

Best-Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

3/4 c. unsalted butter, softened

3/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. granulated sugar

1 egg

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 c. all purpose flour

2 tsp. cornstarch

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. milk chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy and light in color. Add egg and vanilla and blend in.

3. Mix in flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. Stir in chocolate chunks.

4. Using a standard-sized cookie scoop or tablespoon, drop dough onto a prepared baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until barely golden brown around the edges. (The tops will not brown, but do NOT cook longer than ten minutes.)

5. Let cool, on the sheet, on a wire rack for five minutes. Remove from baking sheet and let cool completely.

Makes approximately 3 dozen. Try not to eat them all.

Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Jeff was a little nervous when I told him there was no meat in these peppers, but he gave them 4 stars anyway when he tasted them. They were tasty!
I only used 1 large carrot, and the cooking time can be increased if you like the peppers really soft. This way they were still just a little crisp, which I like. The author of the recipe said that these freeze well, too. I'll have to give that a try.

Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

1 medium onion, finely chopped (1 cup)
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 ribs celery, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
1 Tbs. ground cumin
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 10-oz. pkg. frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
2 15-oz. cans diced tomatoes, drained, liquid reserved
1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can vegetable broth
3/4 cup quinoa
1-2 large carrots, grated
2 cups grated pepper Jack cheese, divided
4 large red bell peppers, halved lengthwise, ribs removed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and celery, and cook 5 minutes, or until soft. Add cumin and garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Stir in spinach and drained tomatoes. Cook 5 minutes, or until most of liquid has evaporated.2. Stir in black beans, quinoa, carrots, and vegetable broth. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 20 minutes, or until quinoa is tender. Stir in 1 cup cheese. Season with salt and pepper, if desired. Pour liquid from tomatoes into bottom of baking dish. Place peppers in baking dish and fill each bell pepper half with quinoa mixture. Sprinkle peppers with remaining cheese. Cover with foil, and bake 30-45. Uncover, bake 15 minutes more, or until cheese is browned. Let stand 5 minutes. Transfer stuffed peppers to serving plates, and drizzle each with pan juices before serving.

Serves 8

I found this recipe on pinterest. : )

Japanese Chicken Wings

These wings may not be the healthiest thing out there, but they sure are good! A lovely combination of tangy, sweet, buttery and crispy, we really enjoyed these.

Japanese Chicken Wings

3 pounds chicken wings
1 egg
1 C. flour
1 C. butter
3 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp water
1 C. sugar
1/2 C. white vinegar
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Dip each wing in egg and coat with flour.
Heat butter in a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Fry wings until deep brown. Place in a shallow roasting pan.
In a small bowl combine soy sauce, water, sugar, vinegar, garlic powder and salt.
Pour over wings.* Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 45 minutes, basting and turning wings with sauce often.

*I had more than 3 lbs of wings, so I doubled the sauce which wasn't actually necessary. Anyway, when you pour the sauce on the wings, make sure they're not sitting in a pool of sauce or they won't get very crispy. If you have a lot of sauce in the roasting pan, pour most of it back into the bowl and use it for basting.

Recipe slightly adapted from allrecipes.com

Pasta with Asparagus

We made this for dinner tonight and it was gooo-oood!

Pasta with Asparagus

8 oz cavatappi pasta

1 lb asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch-pieces

1 tsp minced garlic

3 Tbsp walnuts or pine nuts, toasted

2 oz diced pancetta

2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt

1/4 tsp ground black pepper (freshly ground is nice!)

1/4 C (1oz) crumbled Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Heat oven to 475. Cook pasta according to package directions; add asparagus to pan during last 3 minutes of cooking. Meanwhile, cook pancetta on jelly-roll pan and bake for 6 minutes or until crisp.

Drain pasta. Return to pan and sprinkle with garlic; toss well. In a small bowl, combine lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper, stirring with a whisk. Drizzle over pasta; toss well to coat. Sprinkle with nuts, pancetta and cheese.

Serves 4 (2 cup servings)

Recipe from Cooking Light magazine.

Cajun Pot Roast

We had this a few weeks ago and we both really liked it. Mia would've liked it more but she thought that it was a bit too spicy. The original recipe called for quick cooking tapioca but I didn't have any so I used regular barley, which worked great. I also sauteed the onions while browning the meat so that they wouldn't be so strong....for Jeff's sake. : )

Cajun Pot Roast

1 2-to 2-1/2 pound boneless beef chuck roast
2 to 3 teaspoons Cajun seasoning
1 Tbsp cooking oil
1 14-1/2 ounce can Mexican style stewed tomatoes, undrained
1 C. chopped onion
1 C. chopped celery
1/4 C. pearl barley
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Hot cooked rice

Trim fat from roast. Cut roast to fit in cooker, if necessary. Rub Cajun seasoning all over meat. In a large skillet brown meat on all sides in hot oil.
In a 3-1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker, combine tomatoes, onion, celery, barley and garlic. Place meat on top of vegetable mixture.
Cover and cook on low-heat for 10-12 hours or on high-heat for 5 to 6 hours.
Slice meat; serve with sauce over rice. Makes 6 servings.

Adapted from a recipe I printed a long time ago on bhg.com

Black Bean Chicken Burritos

I made these this afternoon to freeze for lunches - I'm always looking for something new for lunch! - and they were easy and I think they'll freeze well which means I can make a batch and not have to have the same thing all week but enjoy them at my leisure. I used my panini grill but if you don't have one you can cook these in a skillet and place a cast iron skillet on top of the burritos for 3 minutes on each side.

One more thought, this calls for 2 cups of shredded chicken so naturally I only used 1 cup but that left too much of the watery juice so if you only use 1 cup of chicken reduce by half the water, lime juice and seasonings. (You don't want your burritos to be watery.) Also if you use 1 cup of chicken you can use your whole can of black beans.

Black Bean Chicken Burritos

1/4 C water

2 Tbsp lime juice

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/8 tsp ground red pepper (or to taste - naturally I used way less and found it plenty spicy...)

2 C shredded chicken breast

3/4 C black beans, rinsed & drained

1/2 C salsa

4 flour tortillas

1/2 C finely shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Cooking spray

Sour cream, if desired

Bring the first 6 ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan. Stir in chicken.

Combine beans and salsa in a bowl. Add chicken mixture and stir to combine. Divide evenly between 4 tortillas. Top each with 2 tablespoons of cheese. Tuck ends in and roll up the tortillas.

Cook in panini grill for 3-5 minutes or until warmed through and nicely browned. Serve warm with sour cream.

Altered from a recipe in Cooking Light.

Baked Spaghetti

Jeremy and I both don't really care for chunks in our spaghetti so we really liked this recipe. It originally called for 1 lb ground beef, but I didn't think that sounded very good so I left that out. It's really quick to throw together too!

Baked Spaghetti

1 (16 oz) pkg spaghetti

1 jar (24 oz) spaghetti sauce (garlic and onion works well)

½ tsp seasoned salt

2 eggs

1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese

5 Tbsp butter, melted

2 cups (16 oz) cottage cheese

4 cups (16 oz) shredded mozzarella cheese

Cook spaghetti noodles according to package directions. Meanwhile, mix seasoned salt, eggs, Parmesan cheese and butter. Rinse cooked noodles in cold water to cool. Toss with egg mixture. Place half spaghetti in greased 9x13 pan. Top with ½ of the cottage cheese and then ½ of the spaghetti sauce. Top with 2 cups mozzarella. Repeat the layers. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Uncover and bake 15-20 minutes longer, or until cheese is melted and slightly crispy.

Slightly altered from Simple and Delicious

Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

I made this for dinner tonight and it was easy and tasty. It calls for snow peas but the store only had sugar snap peas and they worked just beautifully. I only put in 1 tsp of the hot sauce (which was perfect for me) and then put the bottle out for anyone (Dad) who wanted more in their soup.

Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

2 cans (14.5oz) chicken broth

1 1/2 C water

1 C shredded chicken (dark or light meat)

1 C shredded carrot (about 1 large carrot)

1 C snow peas, thinly sliced

1/4 tsp ginger

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp lime juice

1-2 tsp Asian hot sauce (such as Sriracha)

4 oz rice noodles

Cilantro leaves

In a large pot, bring chicken broth and water to a boil. Add chicken and simmer 3 minutes. Add carrots, snow peas and ginger; simmer 3 minutes. Stir in green onion, soy sauce, lime juice, and hot sauce.

Meanwhile, bring another pot of water to boil. Place rice noodles in hot water and remove from heat; allow to sit for 10 minutes or until softened. (Check the package first to see if they have different instructions for the type of noodle you found.)

Drain noodles and divide evenly between 4 soup bowls. Ladle soup into the bowls on top of the noodles. Scatter cilantro on top, if desired.

Altered slightly from a recipe found in Family Circle magazine.

Bacon!

Since it's Valentine's Day and so many people seem to be having a love affair with bacon lately, I thought I'd post a new way to cook bacon. Well, it's new to me anyway. I tried it for the first time this morning and I liked the results. The bacon wasn't all curled up, leaving you with chewy gross fatty parts. Instead, it all cooked up nice and crisp. Seriously, the whole piece! I even snapped a picture before it was all gobbled up!

Be warned, though, your house will get all smoky. (Mine always does when I cook bacon though...). I haven't tried it yet with turkey bacon for Chad, but I'll give that a try sometime I'm sure!

There are a couple different pan preparation choices. You could line a cookie sheet with foil. You can put a cooling rack on the cookie sheet and the bacon on top of that so the fat drips off. Or you can use the broiler pan that has the slits in it so the bacon fat drips through those. I opted for the broiler pan method because I really don't care how that pan looks.

So, here's the method.

1. Get your pan of choice ready. 
2. Put the bacon on. 
3. Put it in the oven. 
4. NOW turn the oven on to 400 degrees. (So the oven has not been preheated). 
5. Cook the bacon for 12 minutes or until it's as crisp as you like. (Mine took more like 17 minutes). 
6. Drain on a paper towel-lined tray. Voila!

Recipe from Old School - Self Reliance 101.

Lemon Scones

These scones are very moist and very delicious! The original recipe calls for Meyer lemons, which is probably even better, but they're also more expensive so I just used regular-joe lemons and it tasted great. It also mixed in a cup of diced strawberries, but Jeremy doesn't like fruit chunks so I just served sliced strawberries on the side. Yum!


Lemon Scones

from Goodlifeeats.com

For the scones:
4 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
Zest of 2 medium-large lemons
1 cup cold butter
2 large eggs
1/3 cup lemon juice - about 3 lemons
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Glaze:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Zest the lemons and combine with the sugar in a small bowl. Using your fingers, rub the sugar and zest together to combine. This will help release the oils and aroma of the lemons.

Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar (combined with zest), and salt. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse sand. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, lemon juice, buttermilk, and vanilla together.

Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture until the dough is moist, but do not over mix. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead a couple of times until the texture is more uniform and the dry bits have been incorporated.

Divide dough into two equal balls. Pat each ball into an 8 inch circle. Place each ball onto a greased cookie sheet. Score each circle with a knife into 6 wedges.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 15-20 (for small individual circle scones) or 30-40 minutes (for the 8 inch circles), or until done and very lightly golden. Allow the scones to cool completely.

Meanwhile, stir powdered sugar, milk, and lemon juice together. Drizzle over cooled scones.

Serve with sliced strawberries!

Seven Layer Tortilla Pie

Not beautiful to photograph but quite tasty!

2 (15 ounce) cans pinto beans, drained
1 cup salsa, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
7 flour tortillas
2 cups shredded reduced-fat cheddar cheese
1 cup salsa
1/2 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, mash pinto beans. Stir in 3/4 cup salsa and garlic.

In a separate bowl, mix together 1/4 cup salsa, cilantro, black beans and tomatoes.

Place 1 tortilla in a 9 inch round cake pan. Spread 3/4 cup pinto bean mixture over tortilla to within 1/2 inch of edge. Top with 1/4 cup cheese, and cover with another tortilla. Spread with 2/3 cup black bean mixture, and top with 1/4 cup cheese. Repeat layering twice. Cover with remaining tortilla, and spread with remaining pinto bean mixture and cheese.

Cover with foil, and bake in a preheated oven for about 40 minutes. Cut into wedges, and serve with salsa and sour cream.

Serves 6

Note: Carrie and I thought this would be a great way to use left over "Refrieds Without the Refry" beans and skip using the 2 cans of pinto beans.
Another note: Don't leave the cilantro out! It really adds wonderful flavor!

From allrecipes.com

Avocado Quesadillas with Black Beans and Cheddar

I've finally been trying some of the recipes from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious cookbook. One of them is the Avocado Spread in this recipe. She mentioned that her daughter has it in her quesadillas and that gave me the idea for these. You could add tomatoes, sour cream (Ava liked to eat these dipped in sour cream) or whatever else you wanted. We all loved them though!

Avocado Quesadillas with Black Beans and Cheddar

6 inch tortillas
avocado spread
refried black beans
shredded cheddar cheese

Avocado Spread:
1 cup pureed avocado
½ cup plain yogurt
1 Tbsp lowfat mayo
1 Tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder

Combine all ingredients for avocado spread until well mixed.

To assemble quesadillas, sprinkle cheddar on one half of the quesadilla (the half already down in the skillet). On the other half, spread about 3 Tbsp refried black beans, followed by about the same amount of avocado spread. Place face down on top of the cheese layer and cook over medium heat until cheese is melted and tortilla is golden brown.

Spicy Roasted Chickpeas

I have actually wanted to try making these for a few months but lost the recipe so I was glad to see it on Our Best Bites today. Normally I don't really like chickpeas, but when they're cooked this way they get crispy and highly munchable. My kids were even eating them. In fact Cameron took the bowl for himself and told me not to get his balls and that he's not going to let me have any. (Fine with me kiddo! You eat all the chickpeas you want since you're potty trained now! Ha ha!) He's keeping his water bottle nearby because they do have a little spice to them, but it must not bother him too much! You can alter the spiciness to your tastes. I used 1/8 tsp rather than 1/4 tsp of the cayenne.

The original recipe actually comes from a site called What's Gaby Cooking. I've included her original spices as a variation. (I haven't tried that combo yet).

Spicy Roasted Chickpeas
1 15-oz can chickpeas
1 1/2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. cumin

Preheat oven to 400. Drain and rinse chickpeas and pat dry with paper towels. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine the oil and spices. Toss the chickpeas in the spice mixture and spread the seasoned chickpeas over a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes and then use a spatula to stir the chickpeas around a bit. Return to the oven and cook for another 15-20 minutes or until browned (but not burned) and crispy. Allow to cool.

Spice Variation:
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. paprika