Tag Archives: dinner

Jan 5 2013

How to Make Sweet Potato Fries

Posted on by
Follow Me on PinterestPin It

This really isn’t a recipe for sweet potato fries. Just a “How To” because the only ingredients I used were sweet potatoes and extra virgin olive oil. Sometimes you just really want to have something fried but don’t want to feel guilty about eating it afterwards. Maybe that’s just me; but here is an alternative to regular fries and using a fry daddy. It would be dangerous to my health, and I don’t have the counter space, to have a fryer because I love french fries and fried pickles! I’ll stick to the stove.

Sweet Potato Fries on the stove!

1. Scrub your potatoes! Veggies are pretty dirty in general, because they come from dirt and also you have no idea how many people have touched your food before you took it home. Ok rant over back to cooking.

2. I am not a big fan of skin so I peel it off. Sometimes I’ll leave a little skin on for a bit of a flavor change.

3. Chop it into fries! sweet potato fries

4. Put a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet. Heat it up on medium heat. sweet potato fries

5. Put in the heated skillet. Cook it for about 10 minutes moving the fries around on a pretty constant bases until desired crispiness.

Enjoy your sweet potato fries! I like to dip mine in ranch. sweet potato fries

Dec 22 2012
grilled cheese

Grilled Cheese BLT Recipe

Posted on by
Follow Me on PinterestPin It

Made a delicious grilled cheese this weekend. It’s my version of a kind of grilled cheese fancy BLT combo. I’m glad it was good too because I have a battle wound from it! But that’s not out of the ordinary for me. I’m a bit of a klutz. I burned my arm on the pan in my closet sized kitchen. Guess I needed more space to stand and watch the cheese melt on my sandwich. 🙂

awkward picture of the burn on my arm

awkward picture of the burn on my arm

Ingredients:

  • bread
  • butter
  • prosciutto
  • muenster cheese
  • tomato slices
  • arugula micro-greens
  1. I like to sear the prosciutto a bit first so it’s cooked. I treat it likes it’s bacon.
  2. Butter two slices of bread on one side.
  3. On medium heat, place a piece of bread, butter side on the pan.
  4. Next, place prosciutto, tomato slices, sprinkle the arugula over it and finally the cheese slice or slices, followed by the other piece of bread butter side up.
  5. Cook until butter on bottom of bread is a nice brown color, a few minutes
  6. Carefully, flip the sandwich and cook until that piece of bread is a nice brown color and the cheese has melted
  7. Enjoy!
grilled cheese

yum

The great thing about this is, it is so versatile. Many ingredients can be swapped for another. Grilled cheese is probably my favorite sandwich!

Dec 14 2012
ready

Simple Biscuit Recipe

Posted on by
Follow Me on PinterestPin It

I have this biscuit recipe because my husband requires bread at all meals. He doesn’t always get it but he’d prefer to have it. Here is my simple biscuit recipe I sometimes make him because it is easy and simple to make and it doesn’t take all day to make.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 5 Tbsp butter, cut into tiny pieces
  • 2-4 Tbsp honey, depending on how sweet you want them, I normally do 3
  • 3/4 cup milk, whole, buttermilk, 2% I’ve used all and prefer whole, they all change the taste a little bit

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400° and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
  2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and butter until it’s coarse
  3. In a small bowl, combine milk and honey
  4. Pour milk mixture into flour mixture and combine until all of the ingredients are no longer dry
  5. Put dough on a flour surface and kneed for a couple of minutes
  6. Roll dough into a log a couple of inches thick
  7. from log, cut 1.5-2 inch thick biscuits and place on cookie sheet

    biscuit recipe

    cut and ready to be baked

  8. Bake for 10-12 minutes
  9. Enjoy!

 

biscuit recipe

yum!

 

Dec 6 2012
chicken noodle soup

Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

Posted on by
Follow Me on PinterestPin It

Chicken noodle soup is a classic. Soup on a cold winter day or when I’m sick is very comforting to me. I love it for lunch and dinner. I just love it. I had almost everything I needed in the apartment to make it so I decided I needed to make it. I hope others will enjoy my version of this classic. I didn’t stray too far from the original. I just used the leftover cooked chicken I had instead of poaching it. Rotisserie chicken would be really tasty in this soup as well.

This is what I did.

Ingredients:

  • ~10 baby carrots chopped
  • ~3 green onions chopped
  • 2 large celery stalks chopped
  • 2 massive basil leaves, or 4 regular size ones
  • 1/4 onion chopped, I used a red onion because that’s what I had in my fridge
  • 2.5 cups of cooked chopped chicken
  • 2 cups uncooked noodles
  • 8 cups chicken broth
  • garlic powder
  • celery salt
  • oregano
  • black pepper
  • italian seasoning

Directions:

  1. In a large pot bring broth to a boil
  2. place noodles in broth and cook noodles
  3. In a skillet, medium-high heat, place a little oil and veggies and sauté till just tender
  4. Reduce heat to simmer on noodles and add veggies and chicken
  5. season to taste
  6. simmer ~ 30 minutes and stir occasionally
  7. Enjoy your chicken noodle soup!
chicken noodle soup

simmer and serve

Dec 4 2012

Mozzarella Cilantro Burger Recipe

Posted on by
Follow Me on PinterestPin It

One favorite in my apartment is burgers! Mozzarella Cilantro burgers! They were a favorite when we lived in a house too, when we had a real grill. Oh I do love a good grilled burger on a toasted bun.  The mozzarella cilantro burgers are delicious and usually we have the ingredients sitting in the fridge so it’s nice if we have a craving for a good burger we can make one that day.

Ingredients:

  • 1 lbs. ground beef, I use 80%/20% because it forms patties better than leaner ground beef. I usually cook them on my George Forman and that cooks a lot of the fat out them. 
  • 1 bag/2 cups of shredded mozzarella
  •  a couple handfuls of chopped cilantro
  • some ketchup
  • 1 egg

mozzarella cilantro burger

 

Directions:

1. put meat, mozzarella, egg and squeeze some ketchup into a bowl

2. chop cilantro and put into the bowl

mozzarella cilantro burger

 

3. get your hands messy and mix the ingredients together

4. then make patties, I have a little patty maker it’s handy but not necessary 

mozzarella cilantro burger

ready to be grilled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Grill them up, on a grill, on a George Foreman, in a skillet, or my new fave, in the broiler! For medium burgers on the broiler, use room temperature patties, colder ones take more time, broil for 7 minutes, flipping the patties at the 3 minute mark.

6. Enjoy the goodness of a mozzarella cilantro burger!

Nov 25 2012
cheese

Chili Recipe

Posted on by
Follow Me on PinterestPin It

We stayed home for Thanksgiving. It was nice weekend just the three of us and in the tradition of Thanksgiving, we needed to make something that would give us a lot of leftovers. I didn’t really want to tackle a turkey again so we went with chili. I say we because Joshua helped A LOT with this since I have never made chili before and we weren’t using a recipe. It turned out delicious! Here is our chili recipe.

Heres what we used:

  • 2 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes
  • 2 little cans of tomato paste
  •  1lbs. ground sirlion
  • 1lbs. ground mild italian sausage
  • 1/2 package of bacon
  • 2 poblano peppers, chopped
  • 1 red bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 can black beans, drained
  • 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
  • 1/4 of a garlic bulb chopped
  • 4 large basil leaves chopped
  • a lot of chili powder
  • a lot of oregano
  • black pepper
  • salt
  • powered mustard
  • celery salt
  • tarragon
  • some beer
  • cheese
  1.  put crushed tomatoes and tomato paste in a big pot, and put it on the stove to simmer
  2. I then cooked the meat in a skillet, I seasoned the sirloin with red and black pepper, salt and chili powder while it browned, then I cooked the sausage, followed with the bacon, and then put it all in the pot with the crushed tomatoes
  3. leaving a little bit of the bacon grease in the pan, I sautéed the peppers, onions, and garlic a little bit to get them to soften and sweeten just a bit but still leaving them with a crunch to them, and put it all in the pan
  4. add the basil to the chili and stir to combine it all
  5. add some beer, we used an ale, probably about 6oz, but it’s really up to the person making it, but too much, will make it runny
  6. then it was time to season the chili, which consisted of throwing a lot of spices in it and tasting it until we liked it
  7. we left it to simmer, covered, for a few hours, stirring occasionally
  8. when it was time to eat, we topped it with some shredded colby jack, but cheddar would be good on it too
yum

Chili!

It ended up having just a little bit of a kick to it, well in my opinion it did, but I don’t handle spicy food too well, but it was amazing! It was nice to eat chili on this chilly weekend. 🙂 It’s thick enough to make a chili dog, or what I did when it got a bit too spicy for me, scoop a cracker into it and eat it that way.
cheese

cheese!

Definitely had enough leftovers to last and some to even freeze for other chilly winter days!