Raise your hand if you grew up with a box of Bisquick in your pantry.  We used it for biscuits, pancakes and the popular Impossible pie.

Continue reading “Impossible Egg Muffins” »

When Easter is hopping around the corner the first food that comes to mind for me is always eggs.  More than any other food, eggs represent Easter.  Colorfully dyed eggs, plastic filled eggs, cheap shiny grass as a nest for them.  Eggs are a birth, a beginning so is Easter and so is Spring.

Continue reading “Meyer Lemon Eggs Benedict and Grilled Asparagus” »

The humble little bean, one of the cheapest and most musical foods you can buy. For years the only beans in my life were navy beans, green beans, chili beans, refried beans and the horrid lima bean (never liked them as you can tell). What child didn’t sing the praises of the bean?

Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot. The more you toot the better you feel so eat beans at every meal

My sister and I would roll with laughter after singing the little bean ditty, then we would make tooting noises of our own…immensely funny! Who am I kidding, I’ve never stopped singing that song, as a matter of fact I taught my children it (along with some others that probably shouldn’t be shared) and we would laugh and make tooting noises and laugh some more.

Continue reading “Mexican Black Bean Soup (sopa de frijoles negros)” »

It’s impossible for me to cook for less than an Army as evidenced by the inordinate amount of leftovers in my refrigerator.  No wonder I’ve become a master at re-inventing the leftover.  The problem is, my family is shrinking.  I’m not talking about “Honey I Shrank the Kids”, I mean my babies are all growing up and flying the coop.

McGyver and I have been making adjustments, downsizing and all that.  However, I seem to have problems downsizing my cooking.  With McGyver at work or doing Scouts and my Baby boy with a full schedule as teenagers tend to have, I’m finding myself eating alone more often than I used too.

I instinctively grabbed two eggs, then I put one back.  I could have had a huge deli style egg salad sandwich, although my family is shrinking, my waist is not until they get a targeted shrink ray I have to refrain from indulging.  Or I could have some leftover, but then my hubby would come home after a hard week at work and rummage through the fridge and  find it, then eat it and wash it down with a beer.  Needless to say that I don’t really want McGyver having beer and eggs at the same time (hopefully I don”t need to explain that one further).

Continue reading “Fancy Smancy Egg Salad-For One” »

We’ve certainly had an unusual winter this year, not much snow but a lot more grey days.  Deep dark depressing grey days.  Days that make you want to cuddle up on the couch with a good book or movie and some hot tea and not leave the house (or couch) at all.  It was one of those days when I was doing some reading, blog reading, when I ran across Lea Ann’s (from Cooking at the Ranch) Rocky Mountain Steak Salad.

Continue reading “Rocky Mountain Steak Salad” »

Yesterday I posted homemade gnocchi, the incredibly pillow like gnocchi that melts in your mouth and forces you to over eat because you can’t stop yourself but somehow you can’t seem to make your self feel guilty abut it because it’s so good gnocchi.  There is also a bonus, a bi-product of making the gnocchi is having leftover potato skins.

Continue reading “Loaded Potato Skins” »

I must warn you, if you like gnocchi that is purchased from the store do not ever make your own, ever, ever make your own.  I’m ruined, my life was easier when I picked up a pack of refrigerated gnocchi dropped in boiling water and almost like magic, it was ready.

Why did I think I want to make my own?  I can’t recall what was my motivation, I think it’s because I bought some truffle cheese and felt that a luxurious ingredient such as truffles deserved to be served with the finest of ingredients.  The problem is, I was right.  I will never buy a package of gnocchi in the store again, I probably won’t ever order it in a restaurant again for fear that it will not be the perfect pillows of potatoes that I made.

Continue reading “Gnocchi in Truffle Cheese Sauce” »

Today is the first day of Spring and I’m posting a pumpkin and applesauce recipe. First of all, those of you who know me, know that I’m either so far behind that I’m ahead or it’s my little rebel coming out, or in this case, the circumstances just led me to what would normally be suited to a recipe more suited to Fall.

While the rest of the world is starting to enjoy the promise of better weather, balmy days, lush green foliage and beautiful flowers I have this…

Continue reading “Pumpkin Applesauce and Season Confusion” »

Every month I get so excited about my next Secret Recipe Club assignment.  Secret what?  If you haven’t already heard about the club, it’s a club where bloggers are assigned another club member’s blog.  The idea is to cook one of their recipes and post on reveal day.  This is the brain child of Amanda from Amanda’s Cookin’, currently there are four groups.  I’m in Group C hosted by the wonderful (and patient) Angie of Big Bear’s Wife.

This month I got Rachel from The Avid Appetite.  First of all I have an avid affection for alliterations, so I think  the name of her blog is adorable (see how I did that)and so is Rachel.  After cruising through her blog and reading the ‘about me’ section, I decided that she should rename her blog to “The Adorable Avid Appetite”.  Rachel only got the cooking bug in the last few years, it took wanting to be a “kick ass” wife to get her in the kitchen.  She’s been blogging her experiences and from what I could tell I think she has definitely mastered the kitchen!

I had to choose a recipe but narrowing things done is always difficult.  Lucky for me, Rachel has a Weight Watchers section and since I half heartedly follow Weight Watcher’s I wanted to choose a recipe from there.  One of the toughest things to manage when counting calories is cooking something fast that isn’t junk food.  Rachel had posted a quick little recipe for a tortilla pizza cooked in a pan.

I recently bought a Cucina Pro tortilla maker/cooker and had not made tortillas yet (I’ve made Lefse with it) so I thought I’d make my own tortillas and have some on hand for whenever the tortilla pizza bug hit me.  Unfortunately my whole wheat tortillas did not turn out right.  I could wax poetic about all the failings but I’ll spare you.  I was able to salvage a few and made a Mexican tortilla pizza with taco sauce and Weight Watcher’s cheese mix.  Since I flubbed that one and decided it wasn’t worthy of me to share my experiment, I went back to her site; Rachel had just posted another recipe that caught my eye that included the Weight Watcher’s points.

Cheesy Chicken Tortilla Soup.  Soup lover, check.  Cheese lover, check. Mexican food lover, check.  Zombie run lover????  You’ll have to go to her post to find out what that’s all about.  I made a few changes to Rachel’s recipe to suit our families love of bold flavors and also because I didn’t have cooked chicken on hand.  My recipe includes using chicken breast, seasoning them and then cooking them at the beginning.

In addition to using the green bell pepper that Rachel’s recipe called for I used some of my newest favorite vegetable, the sweet mini peppers plus a jalapeno.  I set to chopping the peppers, chop, chop, push aside, new pepper, chop, chop push aside and so on, when I was done I had inadvertently made the shape of a pepper.  Just for kicks I stuck a pepper stem on top and took a picture.

I’m a lazy cook for sure, most of the time I like food bold and simple to prepare.  Lazy cooks are typically lazy when it come to clean-up also.  I clean as I go because I detest a giant mess at the end, that being said I minimalize the amount of dirty dishes I make.  One of the little tricks I use is by making an inverted lid a plate.  In this case I cooked the chicken and needed to set it aside for later.  Maybe not the most brilliant kitchen tip ever, or maybe it is for the other lazy cooks out there..

I used light butter versus margarine and fat free half and half. The only other changes were the addition of cumin and smoked paprika and I used blue corn tortilla chips and cilantro for garnish (none of which change the Points Plus value).  Very festive!

The soup was like a Mexican Party in my mouth. Creamy and crunchy, cheesy and spicy, hearty but not heavy.

Una Sopa Perfecta!

Thanks Rachel for a recipe that my family loved!  Please take some time and visit the adorable Avid Appetite.  If you’d like to see more Secret Recipe Club reveals follow the blog hop below.

I’d also like to say a special thanks to Jane of The Heritage Cook for babysitting Group C this week while Angie was off in sunny Florida for blogging stuff, THANKS JANE.

I’ve been a braisen fool the last month, our Daring Cooks Challenge this month inspired me to braise at least once a week.  I posted about the challenge yesterday and featured my favorite recipe Spice-Braised Leg of Lamb with Lemon Preserve.  But oh so close was the braised oxtail.

My mom used to make oxtail soup when I was growing, can you believe that silly me thought that it was oxtail?  Perhaps it was at one time, but today oxtail is simply beef tail.  It has a lot of cartridge and is kind of sinewy.  It’s a tough cut of meat, it probably got so tough from batting all the flies?  Braising is an ideal cooking method for tenderizing humble cuts of meat.  I have to complain a bit here…if oxtail is a poor cut of meat, why is it so expensive?  It is nearly $5.00 per pound and I live in cattle country!  I happened to get some on clearance, you know the frozen for quick sale section, at 50% off.  Evidently I wasn’t he only one who refused to pay $5.00 a pound for a fly swatter.

Continue reading “Penne con coda alla Vaccinara (Braised Oxtail and Penne) with Braised Baby Greens” »