Being Creative in the Kitchen

I know..haven't posted in forever...blah, blah, blah....oh well, I'm here now! :)

I've been trying some new things in the kitchen lately and I wanted to share a recipe I made up last night that turned out sooo good. Basically I was wanting to bake chicken in the oven. I like to do this every now and then with boneless breasts of chicken and I've used several items as breading, things like chips and crackers etc. Last night I didn't have any of my "normal" ingredients I would usually use, so I improvised, which for me is kinda new, LOL! Here is what I did...

I used a large handful of almonds, 2 handfuls of wheat thins, a large dash of parmesean grated cheese, onion powder, garlic powder, kosher salt and white pepper. I threw it all in my mini food processor and gave a big whirl. Yum! I then just dunk my chicken in a egg, then the breading and baked at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.

I also roasted some potatoes and veggies to go with. I used my deep dish baker from Pampered Chef, sliced up some unpeeled potatoes, carrots and broccoli (should have added an onion in hindsight). I added some olive oil and seasonings and popped them in the oven too. Sooo yummy!!

Tonight we are having a new item as well. I picked up some chicken sausage which I had no idea they even made until my sister mentioned it. I'm cooking that with spaghetti noodles and alfredo sauce. I was worried because I don't have the "normal" cheeses that you would think to use to make an alfredo so I googled (my hobby!) and found out I could use cream cheese!!! Wow! So my plan is to make my quick white sauce from my food storage (it uses powdered milk, flour, salt and water) and then add cream cheese, grated parmesean cheese and salt and pepper. I plan on it being FANTASTIC, but I'll let ya know for sure afterwards! I also baked up some french bread to go with...carb central right here, but I'm saving fat and calories with the sausage, right? LOL!

New Ideas to try! :)

It's been forever, I know.... My garden fizzled out since we have had record heat, unrelenting days of over 100 degrees for a couple months now! My garden just couldn't hang on. I did enjoy it while it lasted!

Since May I have been enjoying getting fresh produce from a co-op called www.bountifulbaskets.org. It has been great! I thought about opening a pick up site here locallly, but realized I just don't have the time to commit to it. If I have the time I drive about 30 minutes to the nearest pick up site and the produce is AMAZING!!!

Today, I picked up my normal basket, which included:
1 head of lettuce; 1 head of broccoli, 3 large ears of corn, 4 tomatoes, 14 plums, 3 pears, 5 nectarines, 1 lb. strawberries, 1 large back seedless black grapes, 1 cantaloupe and 7 bananas. In addition I decided to order their case of plums. It said it would have 10 variety of plums, 12 lbs. for $10.50. I got 12 lbs. of 4 different variety, but that's ok.

But, it's A LOT of plums, LOL! So I took to the internet and googled for different things to make with plums. Here are my ideas that I hope to be trying this week since the kids are back in school starting Monday. :)

Chinese Plum Sauce - I will cut this recipe in half and end up hopefully with about 2 cups, I hope that one of those cups will freeze well. It says I can put it on grilled chicken, yummmmm!

Plum Bread - this sounds like a possible breakfast item. It calls for vanilla yogurt and I still have some of my homemade vanilla yogurt needing to be used. A win win!

Freeze Plums for use later! - this is a great idea - wouldn't it be fun to pull out in the dead of winter?

I also saw an idea to grill them! I have tried a few fruits grilled and LOVE them - this one said to slice them, drizzle with honey and grill, yummm! :)

Ok, so the rest of what I don't cook or freeze or grill will just be eaten, we all like plums at this house. :)

I also always am looking for new baking ideas and of course with wheat! I'm always looking for healthy, easy and quick breakfast ideas and my husband has gotten bored lately with his oatmeal breakfast. So I went on the search for ideas and here are a couple I MUST try soon.

Whole Wheat Pita Bread - I like this recipe and will try it, but I prefer a different technique that didn't involve my oven. I will use my griddle with a cover and cook them in there. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Homemade English Muffins - Super excited about this! and then use these for these breakfast sandwiches!

I'm excited - I don't even care that it's over 100 outside, I'll be happily baking and cooking away in my kitchen next week! :) Yay! Although I am super excited about soup season that MUST be right around the corner....I hope! :)

2011 Garden Update May 5th

First harvest of the season!  I was watering my tomato plants and saw some bright red peaking threw and lo and behold, TWO gorgeous cherry tomatoes just waiting to be picked!  I saved one for my daughter who eats tomatoes like candy and one for my husband.  They both enjoyed them immensely!

I have pea pods!  I can’t believe it!  I am soo very excited for these to plum up so I can pick them.  I think it’s important with peas to get them in early and enjoy them before it gets too hot.  My peas in years past haven’t done well if I wait too long to plant.

Look at all the glorious tomatoes just waiting to ripen up.  I am very exited, especially since tomatoes are soo dang expensive right now!

My spinach and lettuce are coming along nicely as well which is exciting.  I’ve tried every every year with lettuce and I just haven’t had much success.  I am going to clip some baby leaves off the lettuce soon to see if that helps it to keep growing and producing.Cantaloupe is doing well, I just need to buy one more plant so it can cross pollinate.

Can you believe these potato plants?  I’m super excited to harvest these.  It has been a very fun experiment.  The only thing that hasn’t grown in the bins so far is the herbs.  I don’t think it has anything to do with the bins though.

So there you have it! That’s how my garden is growing in 2011.  I think it’s my most successful year so far!  I have been having several weeds in the garden area, so I’d love to do some sort of ground cover in years to come.  However, for limited time and money put into a garden, I think I’m reaping some great benefits so far!  Happy Gardening!

Bountiful Baskets Food Co-op

For information on the food co-op I'm talking about go here. Today I picked up some great produce from Bountiful Baskets Food co-op. I'm very excited. In my standard $15 basket this is what I got: 3 large onions 1 head romaine lettuce 2 bunches celery 1 bag carrots 1 head broccoli 2 6 oz. bags radishes 9 small Persian cucumbers 6 oranges 8 apples 6 mangos 3 lbs. strawberries I also ordered the tropical pack for $10.50 which included: 1 coconut 1 pineapple 1 starfruit 3 mangos 2 limes 2 lemons 1 bag fresh mint 2 vanilla beans I'm soo excited! I've been waiting all day to get home and google recipes to figure out what I'm gonna cook all week with my loot! :) Here are some of the things I've found. Asian Pork chops with mint Coconut mango chicken with black beans Braised Radishes Roasted Radishes Grilled Radishes I have two in my family that really enjoy salad. In fact one of my children will eat a salad in her lunch daily if I send it. I'll use the lettuce and carrots and maybe a few thinly sliced radishes for that. My husband loves to eat celery as a snack, either plain or dipped in cream cheese. The rest of the carrots I'll slice for the kids to snack on with dip. The fresh broccoli I'll either grill or steam for use as a side item at dinner. I gave one bag of radishes to my mom who really enjoys them and with the few left I might try one of the recipes I listed above. The persian cucumbers are a fun thing that I've never worked with before. I found this great recipe for a salad that would use some of my mint and radishes as well. This might be the best way to use it and something my husband would really enjoy. Cucumber salad with mint and feta The oranges, apples, mangos and strawberries will just get eaten up by my family throughout the week. I doubt any of it will stay around for long! :) I'm lucky that my husband has a lot of experience with coconuts and pineapples. He served a mission for our church and spent 2 years living in Jamaica. He would like to grate the coconut and I found the chicken recipe above that will use the coconut milk. The pineapple - we will wait for it to ripen some more and then grill it. Have you ever had grilled pineapple?!? It's sooo good! Try it! You can grill it as is, or add some cinnamon/sugar/honey on it. I started to look up recipes to use the starfruit, but it sounds like the starfruit is really yummy just cut up raw. I think we will just eat it for dessert some night after dinner. I can think of a bunch of different ways to use the vanilla beans, so we will see what I decided. The following recipes both sound super yummy: Vanilla bean sugar cookies French Vanilla bean ice cream I'm gonna be a happy cook for the next couple weeks, hopefully just in time to go get a new basket of goodies! :)

April 14th Garden Update

Wow! My garden is really pleasing me so far this spring!  It’s growing and growing and growing and I’m already seeing lots of harvest!!! Yay!!!  Check out the pictures!

This is one of my bell pepper plants, with a bloom already! Soo excited!

Solar Fire Tomato plant in my large bed on the corner.  See the tomato and all the blooms?!?!

I have lettuce and spinach, green beans and onions, all doing really well!

My second harvest green beans and extra onions!

My potato bins!!!! I can’t wait!Green beans on the left and peas on the right, all doing really well!

My tomato plants.  The only problem I think I’m having with my tomatoes it the one on the far left.  It got really bushy before growing up and while there are fruit and blooms on the plant they are all really small.  It’s a cherry tomato plant just like the one next to it.  We will see.My cantaloupe bin.  I’m only worried because there is only one plant coming up and with cantaloupe you need at least 2 plants to cross pollinate.  If I only get one plant to come up I guess I’ll have to go buy a plant to go with it.

So as you can see, my garden is growing very nicely!!  Unfortunately so are the weeds in my garden area, ugggg, I need to get on that!

OMG!! Yummy Chicken and Basil Recipe

I made THIS chicken recipe tonight and OMG!!!! It was sooo super yummy! I ate with my son before taking him to baseball practice and left the rest for my girls and husband. I was kinda hoping there was some leftover because I seriously would have eaten it when I got home, haha! However, I only found a little bit leftover which husband has neatly packed away for his lunch tomorrow. :) I decided kinda last minute that I wanted to make chicken tonight, so I pulled some out and defrosted it. I then went to water my garden (doing sooo great still) and I had a lot of basil I needed to harvest. I pulled off a bunch and then came inside to google basil and chicken recipes. I think I picked a winner! I will most definitely be making this A LOT more! My only note is to definitely use the lemon juice. I used fresh lemon juice and it was the perfect flavor with the basil and garlic. It really added a nice element. Great, great recipe! Let me know what you think if you try it.

2 Week Garden Update

 

My garden is only 2 weeks in and it’s doing FANTASTIC!  I’m sooo pleased so far!  Here is my update!

Here is a picture of one of my potato bins.  They are just starting to peek through so on Monday I plan on adding some more soil/compost on top to start my next layer. I think I’m most excited about these!

This is my 2X2 bed that I planted onions in half of it.  They are coming up and looking good.  I plan to plant the other half with my 2nd harvest green beans.  I will probably do that in the next couple days.  So far so good!

This is my main bed that I started out with a couple years ago.  I have green beans just coming up on the left hand side, my pepper plants are doing well and my onions are all coming up fine.  I even have SMALL plants coming up back in my lettuce and spinach area.  The bottom corner is a tomato plant that is also doing well so far.  I’m excited!

This is one of of my 4X1 beds and as you can see I already have green beans and peas poking through! Yay!!!

My other 4X1 bed has 3 tomato plants and a basil plant all doing very well!

I have yet to see anything poke through in my cantalope bin or herb bin, but it’s still pretty early for those.  I also have my 2X1 bed that will have 2nd harvest green beans planted in the next couple days as well.

So that’s the update.  My garden is growing, yay!!!