Thai Beef Tips

Teriyaki Chicken and Sweet Pea Risotto

Tacos

Shrimp Alfredo

Shrimp Cocktail

Sesame Rice

Fried Green Beans

Chipotle Macaroni and Cheese

Sushi - Avacado Roll

Sushi - Avacado Roll

I made sushi tonight. I was limited to only avacado rolls because our crab meat was spoiled. Edison had his usual "empty roll" (rice wrapped in nori with nothing else in it). I also experimented with a "dessert" type roll - peanut butter and Nutella. It was "interesting" and I kind of liked it. Of course, Nutella could make shoe leather taste yummy!

Thai Coconut Rice with Mango

Thai Coconut Rice with Mango

DELIGHTFUL! This dessert was perfect! Made with sweetened condensed milk, coconut rice and chopped mango and ginger. It was very sweet and filling. We are sure this will be a great "shot-glass" dessert with a couple of gingersnaps alongside.

Chicken and Shrimp Pad Thai with Steamed Pork Dumplings

Chicken and Shrimp Pad Thai with Steamed Pork Dumplings

Great as usual. Pad Thai is one of our favorite types of "stir fry". This recipe also needs a bit more sauce but it's really good with the julliened carrots, zucchini and yellow squash. This time we pared it with steamed pork dumplings which were good but either need to be fried, or we need to switch to a dumpling dough, rather than won ton wrappers. The wrappers get really hard on the edges and are difficult to eat. But tasty when we dipped them into Thai sweet hot sauce.

Spaghetti & Meatballs with Crustini

Spaghetti & Meatballs with Crustini
This meal was so delicious. The only change we would make is to increase the sauce by about 50%. The meatballs are turkey (shhh... don't tell anyone, they're good for you!) But you'd never know. They are better than any meatballs I've ever had. Oh, we also thought we would seed the chipotle pepper before dicing it next time. The sauce has a little too much heat for general public consumption. The crustini are just like giant crutons, with garlic oil, salt and pepper. We served this with a zucchini casserole that was pretty good.

Corned Beef Hash & Eggs

Corned Beef Hash & Eggs

We made corned beef has from scratch. Well that's probably an overstatement. At least it wasn't from the blue "Hormel" can :-) We used canned potatoes (just for the ease of "morning" cooking) and bought cooked corned beef from the deli. Sliced it all up and stir-fried it in some butter. Just a little ;-) Here are Edi's over-easy eggs. Everyone else had scrambled. English muffins and zucchini bread rounded out the brunch.

Ribeye with Mushroom Ragout, Smashed Potatoes & Zucchini

Ribeye with Mushroom Ragout, Smashed Potatoes & Zucchini

The Zucchini was also from our garden. It's a good thing that we like zucchini because we've got LOTS. The potatoes were basic (well if you call a whole stick of butter and cream *basic* :-) ). Now on to the main dish... yum-o! Double Yum-o! The steaks were marinated in worchestershire, salt pepper and crushed garlic for about an hour. The mushroom ragout was portobello mushrooms, tomatoes in a delicious herb cream sauce. I'm salivating just thinking bout how yummy this was. We went for ice cream at Rick's after. We definitely need to consider partnering with them!

Corn Chowder & Bacon Corn Muffins

Corn Chowder, Bacon Corn Muffins & Fresh Greenbeans

First let me say, these greenbeans were good enough to eat raw! They came from our garden and were perfectly delicious. Edison & Erin helped by trimming the edges and they did a smashing good job! Corn Chowder is one of my favorite soups. I enjoy it from Mimi's in Fresno, CA and this Pampered Chef recipe (which we doctored up a bit to call it "ours") is pretty close to the taste at Mimi's. The bacon corn muffins came from Rachael Ray's August magazine. They had bits of carmelized onions in them and with the bacon and corn, the flavor was out of this world!

Peanut Butter Pancakes

Peanut Butter Pancakes

We made these scrumptious pancakes last weekend. Steven is the pancake king, so you'd have to ask him for the exact recipe, but all I know is that they included peanut butter in the batter (we usually choose natural pb) and they tasted cake for breakfast! Complete with a sauce that Varrin and I used to make for ice cream, now we've learned it goes great with these pancakes too. It's simply pb, mixed with pancake syrup. You have to use a lot of syrup to get the right consistancy, so I'd suggest skipping the expensive maple syrup and going for el-cheapo store brand syrup. We coupled these with a (leftover) meatloaf scramble. Just crumbled up our left over meatloaf into eggs and there you have it! Possibly good brunch items!

Mini Lemon Cheesecake

Mini Lemon Cheesecake
These were so easy and so yummy. A basic no-bake cheesecake recipe (cream cheese, sugar and lemon curd), chill in the fridge and once set, spread on some whipped cream. We topped ours with a mini lemon wedge candy. The photo with the Ready-Whip can is to show you how "mini" these desserts really were. Perfect individual size, but not "mini" enough to have 2 :-)!

Caprese Salad

Caprese Salad

While this picture is cute, it isn't quite complete. I snapped the picture before I put on the balsamic reduction or salt and pepper. Truth be known. The balsamic was not reducing quick enough (for my taste :-) ) and I was getting frustrated so I snapped this pretty picture. Then Steve kicked up the heat for me on the reduction and it turned out perfectly in the end. Caprese salad is a traditional Italian salad with tomato, fresh mozzerella and basil. It is the color of the flag of Italy which is really fun! I have had it many ways, with balsamic, on a crustini, with just olive oil and salt and pepper. So, I'm not sure what the traditional method of serving this is, but last night's was a tasty version.

Carbonera & Crustini

Carbonera & Crustini

This was another great dinner. Steve and I timed ourselves on this one, and figured it took us about 30 minutes to make. Which means, we're getting better, but still need practice to get our speed down for "club kitchen" cooking. I made the Caprese Salad (entry following) and the crustini and Steve made the pasta. This pasta dish has been a tasty favorite of ours for a long while. Sometimes you'll see "Carbonera" called "Bacon and Eggs Pasta". It's made with Pancetta (Italian bacon) and eggs (plus other goodies like parmesan cheese and a touch of red pepper flakes). The only problem is that it is usually quite oily and rich, so he decided to try to cut some of the fat this time. We used center cut bacon (rather than the Pancetta which is extra fatty) and cut the oil down too. It was just as yummy, if not more-so. The crustini was a garlic demi bagette that I cut into small slices and brushed with garlic oil, salt and pepper. It was tasty. Crustini is often used interchangably in Italian cuisine with "crouton". They're just bigger versions of what we think of as a crouton. So they're big croutons or small slices of garlic bread. However you want to look at it! :-)

Chocolate Hazelnut Banana Crepes

Chocolate Hazelnut Banana Crepes

Oh my gooness, where these ever delicious! They were like having dessert for breakfast. We served them with some eggs to cut the sweetness. They were decadent and rich and would be great for brunch at the club! Basically, we used Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) and bananas inside and then rolled up these perfectly created crepes (thanks Steve), topped them with more Nutella, powdered sugar, whipped cream and a sprig of mint. Sinfully wonderful!

Italian Meatloaf Sandwich & Sweet Potato Fries

Italian Meatloaf Sandwich & Sweet Potato Fries

I have trouble finding a meatloaf that I really like, but this one is better than mine! It was tremendous and easy to make - ground turkey (dark meat preferred), sun dried tomatoes and parsley (with the other "meatloaf" ingredients - bread crumbs, egg, salt, pepper and milk). The trick is to lay out pancetta (Italian bacon) on parchment paper, put the meatloaf in the middle and wrap the paper (and pancetta) up around the loaf. Bake it and dig in! Yum-o... thank you Giada LeLaurenttis! She served her sandwich with baked sweet potato fries and they were yummy too! We made 5 different dipping sauces to try out to see what would go best with the fries (L-R): roasted red pepper aioli, spicy apricot, curry pumpkin sauce, honey mustard and spicy mustard aioli. All were delicious in their own way, and would be useful for different things, but for these fries, both Steve and I numbered our favorites #1 = spicy mustard, #2 = honey mustard and #3 roasted red pepper aioli. The apricot will be great with coconut shrimp. It was a goooooood food night :-)

Chinese Pork Lettuce Wrap

Chinese Pork Lettuce Wrap

Erin and I enjoyed these for dinner tonight. Edison enjoyed the pork, but didn't want his in a lettuce wrap. Basically, I sauteed some shredded carrots and shredded cabbage in a pan with sesame oil. I added in the leftover pork (the Chinese pork we used for the pork buns), a bit of soy sauce and hoisin sauce and sauteed for another few minutes. Piled it up on a piece of red-leaf lettuce then just roll and eat! I think we could put 2 of these on a plate and have a nice little appetizer. 4 on a plate with some fried rice could be a meal. They were really tasty (you can't go wrong with a little hoisin sauce).

Iceberg Wedge Salad

Iceberg Wedge Salad

This is one of my favorite salads, I usually order it whenever I see it on the menu. I especially like 99's version and pretty much modeled this after theirs. I started by putting a little puddle of blue cheese dressing on the plate and then topped that with a basic wedge of iceberg lettuce, sprinkled that with bacon, tomatoes** and crumbled blue cheese. I considered adding diced avacado, but then forgot. An additional drizzle of blue cheese on top and there you have it. **SHHH - I was out of tomatoes, so I used roasted red peppers instead. I wanted to color to be there in the picture :-) It wasn't a perfect substitution taste wise, so I'd stick with the tomatoes if we serve it at the club.

Firecracker Enchiladas & Zucchini Oven Fries

Firecracker Enchiladas & Zucchini Oven Fries

Another great Rachael Ray recipe. These are even better than her original chicken enchiladas which we really enjoy. So, what makes these so yummy? More cheese and better cheese... mmmmm-meunster! The receipe calls for 3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and we were afraid that would be too spicy, but we went for it anyway! Removing the seeds seem to really cut the heat. We also soaked the tortillas in the enchilada sauce which was just tasty and made the tortillas easier to work with. We served the enchilads with zucchini oven fries. Not Rach's best recipe. They were actually kind of soggy. We also made pineapple salsa and chipotle sour cream. We didn't have any chipotle powder, so we used 1 Tbsp. of adobo sauce for 8 oz. sour cream. We got the original idea from Margaritas Restaurant. Dinner was delightful.

Spicy Peanut Noodles - Take 3

Spicy Peanut Noodles - Take 3

Well folks, we have it! A winner! We've made the modifications we mentioned in our last peanut noodle post and voila! They are very tasty. We especially liked the natural peanut butter and the tahini (sesame paste). The only thing we'd do differently now is work to preserve the creamy texture. They get a little dry and sticky the longer they sit. One idea we had was to only cook the sauce long enough to incorporate the oils. Another trial run is in order :-)

Cake Pallet

Cake Pallet

This is an idea that Steve came up with. Mini-cakes with different frostings. Then it evolved into using an artist pallet to serve it. The finishing touch (for kids' orders) would be to use an artist brush to apply the frosting. The kids (and adults) had tons of fun "painting" and eating our creations. We found these artist pallets at Michaels for $0.99 each but think that a better alternative would be to use a completely flat pallet, rather than these with groves and wells in them. This was a fun project for all! :-)

Chinese Pork Buns & Fried Rice

Chinese Pork Buns & Fried Rice

We started by making chinese barbeque pork in the crockpot. That, in and of itself, was really tasty. But we made a traditional Chinese dish called "Pork Buns". We all enjoy them even the kids. They asked for 2nd (and 3rds). This receipe was especially fun, because we got to use a bamboo steamer, which Edi had never seen used before. The fried rice is a Rachael Ray recipe that is PERFECT, down to the deep fried egg! Delish!

Spicy Peanut Noodles - Take 2

Spicy Peanut Noodles - Take 2

No picture, too hungry! :-) For lunch today, we tried "take 2" of the peanut noodle recipe Angel sent. We used 1 Tbsp. sesame oil to toss the noodles (to keep them from sticking while waiting for the sauce to reduce) and we cut the red pepper flakes from 2 Tbsp. to 1-1/4 Tbsp. Still too overpowering. Some things we'd like to try for "take 3": cut the red pepper flakes back to 2 tsp. (2/3 Tbsp.), use natural peanut butter (to cut a little of the sweetness) and add 2 Tbsp. sesame paste (to add another layer of flavor). We'll let you know how they come out.

Zucchini Bread

Zucchini Bread

I adore when a much enjoyed recipe is passed on and on and on. And I adore even more knowing where it came from. This recipe was given to me from Steve, who got it from his mom, who it was passed on to from a neighbor. It's so delicious. It is loaded with pecans, golden raisins and pineapple, and of course, "good for you" zucchini! This was my 2nd attempt and last time I learned (the hard way) that my oven needed more cooking time than suggested. I gave them another 25% and that was just perfect!

Zucchini

Help! Zucchini overload!!

Actually, I really enjoy zucchini. I just put a double batch (4 loaves) of zucchini bread in the oven and turned around to find the pile seems to still be growing! haha. Can anyone help me out with some of your favorite zucchini recipes? By the way, Steven, we're making zucchini for dinner this weekend. Does it feel like you're a kid living at home again? :-)

Potato and Apple Gratin

Potato and Apple Gratin

Unfortunately, we were so hungry by the time this made it's way to the table that we forgot to take a picture. It was sure delicious. It was a layered french dish of potatoes, granny smith apples, sharp cheddar, cream and thyme. We served it with scrambled eggs and over easy eggs which helped cut the richness a bit. Boy was it tasty and will make a fine addition to a brunch menu.

Chicken Cordon Bleu w/Rootbeer Carrots

Chicken Cordon Bleu w/Rootbeer Carrots

This was a good meal. The rootbeer carrots are something I tried for Thanksgiving this past year and they were a hit! This time, I cooked them on too high of heat and the sauce got really gooey and thick. On my way to sleep (yeah, I know, talk about obsessing :-) ) I thought about just taking the spices and rootbeer and boiling them in a large pot of water. That way, they get the flavor, but are not so sickening sweet and a little less overpowering. The chicken cordon bleu came from the "20 Minute Meal" cookbook. It was tasty, but I thought it needed some sort of sauce. Maybe a light swish cheese sauce. I haven't tried it yet, but I think these will go well on a sandwich too!

Double Apple Turnovers

Double Apple Turnovers

These were easy, the recipe coming from a “Cooking with Kids” cookbook. They used phyllo dough and mostly apple-butter for sweetener (hence the “double apple”). We thought these were tasty, but not our favorite and would like to try another apple dessert again soon. Maybe an apple crisp.

Thai Coconut Rice

Thai Coconut Rice

This was a recipe from Robin Miller (foodnetwork.com). We used Jasmine rice which smells heavenly. We toasted coconut and sprinkled it on top. You could also mix it in. Delish!

Thai Beef and Mango

Thai Style Beef and Mango

This was so delicious! Perhaps one of the tastiest dishes we've cooked lately (at least IMO). This was from the “20 Minute Meals” cookbook. We marinated a sirloin in a soy, garlic oil, salt and cracked pepper marinade. We broiled it to “medium-rare” and then sliced it thinly. Plated it with sliced mangos and a drizzle of the marinade (which we heated on the stove). We served this with Thai Coconut rice (following).

Potato Salads

All-American Potato Salad
Curry Sweet Potato Salad
Loaded Baked Potato Salad
Red Potato Salad

The first 3 were good, the 2nd two were excellent. The last was bland and uninteresting. We loved the Curry Sweet Potato salad which was made with a curry yogurt sauce, toasted almonds and raisins. It was unique. The Loaded Baked Potato was enjoyable and a good “every-day" potato salad.

Wings

Dash of Beer Wings
Hot Wings
Bourbon Street Wings
Joe's Wings

The first 3 were good in different ways. We liked the Dash of Beer (sweet and a little spicy) and Hot Wings (mildly hot) best. Bourbon Street (very saucy and sweet) were more “novelty”. The “Joe's” sauce was from a jar and it was unimpressive.

Cuban Sandwich w/Fried Plantains

Cuban Sandwich w/Fried Plantains

Thank you Rachael Ray! These fried plantains were great. We found that if we use the mandolin to slice them, we don't need to smash them down before frying. Hot out of the fryer, just sprinkle with a little salt and they are perfect. Don't use green plantains (not ripe) or black plantains (too ripe). They are perfect when they are yellow with black spots, but use them right away because they ripen really fast after that. We used Rachael Ray's pork tenderloin recipe, but built the sandwich from previous “cuban sandwich” tasting experience.

Spicy Peanut Noodles

Spicy Peanut Noodles

This recipe was from a “20 Minute Meals” cookbook. We were afraid this cookbook may be a bust because these noodles were very bland. We have since found recipes that work well and are tasty from this cookbook, thankfully. We also though the noodles were too thin (used Chinese Egg noodles, as instructed). We have since tried another recipe (Chris found online and he and Angel altered it a bit) that was perfectly delicious. We took a Japanese turn with it and used Udon noodles, which are thicker and stand up to the sauce well. Was a little too spicy, so next time, we'll decrease the heat by about 30%.

Devil's Food Cake

Devil's Food Cake

This recipe came from foodnetwork.com (no specific chef). It was rich, delicious, and went especially well with strawberries. This cake is a little on the expensive side. It had an awesome dark chocolate icing, which, per slice, cost $1.00 to create. It may very well be worth it though. It was sooooo yummy! We'd like to try another cake in the near future, one with a molten fudge center. Mmmmmm!

Chicken and Smoked Sausage Jambalaya

Chicken and Smoked Sausage Jambalaya

This slow-cooker jambalaya recipe came from

www.realcajunredipes.com. As a substitute for the green bell peppers, we used 4 different colors of bells. They all taste the same, but add some great color. It was the perfect jambalaya consistancy and got better every day we re-heated it for leftovers.

Cajun Corn Fritters

Cajun Corn Fritters

This recipe was from a website called www.realcajunrecipes.com. They are pretty good, although a little doughy - almost like beignets (deep fried French doughnuts). We used a sweet hot sauce for dipping and served them as a compliment to a jambalaya.

Spicy Orange Chicken Lo Mein w/Crab Rangoons

Spicy Orange Chicken Lo Mein w/Crab Rangoons

You would never guess that this lo mein recipe (Ellie Kreiger, foodnetwork.com) is good for you! It's low fat and low in cholesterol, not to mention that it's really tasty. The fried crab rangoons are *not* low fat, are very high in cholesterol and mega calories! Although we fried them in peanut oil, deep fried is deep fried. Honestly, though, they were yum-o!

Chicken Orzo Soup

Chicken Orzo Soup

Recipe we altered a bit, from Pampered Chef. Cooking orzo as ordered will be key for this recipe as the orzo got mushy from sitting in the soup too long. The feta cheese as a garnish was a really tasty addition.

Japanese Inspired Smoked Turkey Sandwich

Japanese Inspired Smoked Turkey Sandwich

This is a re-creation from the restaurant "Teaism" in Washington, DC. What makes this “Japanese inspired”? Wasabi mayo, thinly sliced cucumbers and nori (seaweed) instead of lettuce. It tasted like sushi on wheat bread and our version was pretty close to the original, with one exception. Our wasabi was old and had very little punch.

Porc Pulled Pork

Porc Pulled Pork

Variation on a country rib recipe by Sanda Lee (foodnetwork.com). We made this for the Porc Fest cook-off and tied for 3rd place! Using pork terderloin makes this recipe particularly tasty. The sauce is thin, rather than a traditional saucy pulled pork bbq. We have a recipe for that style of pulled pork, too. We'll plan to try it in the near future.