Update: Grilled Corn Salad

I've blogged about a corn salad. I love it. I've made it several, several times since but it wasn't until just today that I've made a few changes.

I make half the amount now. Duh. It was just way too much for two people.

AND I added an ingredient that we've discovered that Jim really loves. Cotija cheese. It's a salty, crumbly Mexican cheese that my big sister introduced us to. The recipe has always stated that Cotija or Feta cheese were optional. I guess I just chose to NOT include it. Silly me.

I hope it makes a huge difference! It is getting happy in the fridge for tomorrow's dinner. I go back to work and I'm making a few things ahead of time so I don't get overwhelmed by being a Super(Working)Mom.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pesto Turkey Burgers

 

MMMMMM pesto. It's really just a burger. Jazzed up with some pesto and grilled onions but it was nice to follow a recipe and learn from it. I really just need to get in my kitchen and throw my favorite foods into some ground turkey or beef and create!

This was good but I wish I had had some extra pesto to smear in each of the burgers. I didn't have enough for the recipe and the smearing.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Pesto Turkey Burgers.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Sweet and Sour Stir-Fried Chicken with Pineapple and Red Onions

How thrilling that this is a "Light" recipe! Especially when our other stand-by sweet and sour recipe is VERY heavy :)

We've made this twice. It passed my Dear Husband's taste test. The second time I made it I even decreased the sugar slightly and it was still good with him.

The sauce is easy to whip up, it includes pineapple (lovely), and it's "light". Yay!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Sweet and Sour Stir-Fried Chicken with Pineapple and Red Onions.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Bacon Ranch Potato Salad

I made this for the 4th of July. It is exactly what you think! Lots of green onion, chives, bacon, and potatoes in a creamy dressing. I did under-salt, as I tend to do, but that was easily remedied at the table.

How can you go wrong with bacon?

Click here for the stolen recipe for Bacon Ranch Potato Salad.

 

Posted with Blogsy

More Roasted Chickens

I'm still consulting my Kitchen Counter Cooking School book for roasted chicken ideas. It is just lovely to roast a chicken, feed my family a dinner, and then have leftovers for freezing. So many possibilities for cooked, cubed chicken.

Pesto-rama: slather chicken with 1/4 cup pesto. I used more. Roast as usual. 425 degrees, 1 hour for a 3 lb chicken. Allow 10 minutes for each half pound. Baste every half an hour.

Italian Herb Oil: 3 T olive oil, 2 tsp grated Parmesan cheese, 2 garlic cloves chopped, 2 T finely chopped herbs such as thyme, oregano, parsley or basil (or 2-3 tsp dried herbs)

I used a combination of thyme, oregano, and Italian parsley. The parsley was store-bought. I used fresh herbs from my pots!

 

I'm hoping to get my husband on board with these chickens when I go back to work in the fall. He works from home and it would be lovely if he could put a chicken in the oven at 4ish so I could just come home and do the sides!

Posted with Blogsy

My Day In (Food) Pictures

 

I made pesto. I had basil that was begging to be picked!

I froze some herbs. The mint goes in ice cube trays with water, but the rosemary, thyme, and oregano get frozen in either baggies or glass jars for cooking in the future.

Laundry soap. I know this isn't food related but I use my food processor! The food processor grates the Fels Naptha soap bar and then I grind it all together with the borax and baking soda to a fine powder. We use 1 T per load. I made four batches, each good for 40 washes. Pennies per load!

Part of James' lunch. When we were at LegoLand he didn't like his Uncrustable sandwich (those over-processed PB&J packaged sandwiches) even though I know he likes all the components of a PB&J. I decided to make my own using my mini pie crust press. These will be good for his lunch box!

Trail mix. I had coconut, peanuts, craisins, and chocolate chips that were from other recipes so I decided to just mix them with some almonds for a snack mix. Nothing fancy. No recipe needed.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies.

I made the rub for the pork shoulder roast. SO FRAGRANT! Pulled pork in the crockpot tomorrow!

And I tried a silly Pinterest idea. This was supposed to be better than Easy Mac! NOT. It was basically cooking a small amount of pasta in the microwave and then mixing in cheese and milk. It didn't even come close to Mac&Cheese. It was clumpy, hardened mess. I should know better than to believe stranger's recipes. I am sticking to my favorite bloggers!

 

It was a nice way to spend a cloudy, kinda rainy day as James was content with his Legos.

Posted with Blogsy

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

My husband has been making noises about wanting chocolate chip cookies. I hope he will be happy with these cookies, something **I** have been craving. Oatmeal. Yum. And craisins because I have a super sized bag from Sam's Club to use up some time soon. (I use a lot of craisins in my steel cut oatmeal but I'm uncomfortable with keeping this bag around TOO long.)

This recipe is just a recipe that I googled but she says that it's from the inside of the Quaker canister. I figured it would be a pretty basic, comfort-food type of recipe. Yup! Chewy oatmeal cookies with some sweetness and tart fruit. Deeeeeeelicious.

I made the mistake of calling them Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies to my son. He is a purist. Didn't want to try them because of the oatmeal. I even made two cookies without craisins so he wouldn't pick those out. He took one tiny bite and declared them "too crunchy". And they're not! He tasted one tiny bit of edge that was slightly crunchy. Silly kid.

I feel sad thinking he'll never try some of the sweets that I make!

I made half of a batch of cookies, which was about 18 cookies. This is less than the recipe states, so I figured I might have eaten a few cookies worth of dough! JK. I think I made them bigger than I was supposed to?

Click here for the stolen recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

My husband has been making noises about wanting chocolate chip cookies. I hope he will be happy with these cookies, something **I** have been craving. Oatmeal. Yum. And craisins because I have a super sized bag from Sam's Club to use up some time soon. (I use a lot of craisins in my steel cut oatmeal but I'm uncomfortable with keeping this bag around TOO long.)

This recipe is just a recipe that I googled but she says that it's from the inside of the Quaker canister. I figured it would be a pretty basic, comfort-food type of recipe. Yup! Chewy oatmeal cookies with some sweetness and tart fruit. Deeeeeeelicious.

I made the mistake of calling them Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies to my son. He is a purist. Didn't want to try them because of the oatmeal. I even made two cookies without craisins so he wouldn't pick those out. He took one tiny bite and declared them "too crunchy". And they're not! He tasted one tiny bit of edge that was slightly crunchy. Silly kid.

I feel sad thinking he'll never try some of the sweets that I make!

I made half of a batch of cookies, which was about 18 cookies. This is less than the recipe states, so I figured I might have eaten a few cookies worth of dough! JK. I think I made them bigger than I was supposed to?

Click here for the stolen recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Rainbow Cupcakes with rainbow candies!

I'm going to the 2nd annual Anoka GLBTQ Youth Pride event tomorrow! Last year I took rainbow cupcakes and they were well-received. This year I wanted to do rainbow cupcakes again but I had to mix it up a bit. A friend of mine sent me a link to this simple idea of using rainbow candy strips! So that's the only thing I did differently this year, added the rainbow strips (or "bacon") to the tops!

Rainbow cupcakes are time consuming but easy. I used regular white cake mixes to save time.

I hope they look like clouds and rainbows :) And I hope they survive the car trip tomorrow without toppling over!

My taste tester gave his stamp of approval! He ate two!

 

Posted with Blogsy