recipe | Lamppostings

October 7, 2014
by Melissa Leave a comment

Tasty Tuesday – Cauliflower Fried Rice

This is one of my favorite, fairly recent finds. I’ve made it enough times now that I no longer use a recipe and I’ve adapted it so that it’s quick and easy, using whatever I happen to have in my fridge at the time.

To start, I use any suitable vegetables I happen to have on hand – in this case, I used carrots and onions, but you can use bell peppers, zucchini (courgettes), cabbage, celery – pretty much whatever takes your fancy. I put a bit of coconut oil and sesame oil in a wok and get the vegetables softening and caramelizing. While that’s happening I take some cauliflower and put it through the grater option on my food processor – just enough to “rice” it.

Once the vegetables are softened, I add the cauliflower to the wok. Then I start with flavors – again, you can throw in anything you have on hand. I tend to use soy sauce, some fish sauce and sometimes a bit of hoisin sauce if I want it a bit sweeter. Mix it all together, cook over medium high heat until the cauliflower has soaked up all the flavors and become tender and you’re done! Easy peasy!

I served it here with some tilapia. So tasty and good for you.

January 14, 2014
by Melissa 4 Comments

Tasty Tuesday – Ham and Corn Soup

Over the holiday season I stocked up on a couple of hams when they were super cheap – 99 cents a pound? Yes, please. That means that when I cook one up, we’ll pretty much be eating off of it for a week. We had the ham when I first cooked it and then we had breakfast a couple of times and then I made some ham and corn soup. I found this recipe on Pinterest.

I made a few changes to the recipe and wasn’t very careful in following exact measurements. I also used a slow cooker so it was cooking all day long. I think this recipe would be great if you cooked it on the stove in a short amount of time, but I love the depth of flavor that comes from all day cooking. I used onion instead of green pepper. I didn’t use parsley, simply because I didn’t have any and I only used canned corn.

I got a Ninja cooking system for Christmas and I love it. One of my least favorite things about crock pot cooking is having to brown meat or vegetables in a pan on the stove and then transfer it to the crock pot. With the Ninja, I can do it all in one pot. Love it! It also claims on the box that I will rule the kitchen – I’ve always wanted to try out this royalty thing.

I garnished my soup with a bit of shredded cheese, some French fried onions and some green onions. It was so tasty and comforting and satisfying. Yummo!

I served biscuits with the soup and we made homemade butter as a family. It’s so easy. We put some heavy cream in a jar and just shook it until it goes past the whipped cream stage and suddenly, you have butter and buttermilk. I drained the buttermilk, rinsed the butter a bit and added some salt. It was lovely.

On New Year’s Eve, I made the mistake of trying to make butter using only full fat milk. I looked it up on the interwebs and they said you could use regular milk. I shook and shook and shook and we never got any butter. I shook that jar for hours! I also had the worst sore muscle pain I have ever had, it was awful. Nearly crying awful, pain meds not touching it awful. So we’re going to stick with heavy cream from now on when we want to make butter. Of course, as my husband said, we can always just use the stick of butter that is in the fridge.

November 12, 2013
by Melissa 1 Comment

Tasty Tuesday – Coconut Chicken Soup

I tried this recipe last week and it was delightful! It is full of creamy flavor, but still light. My husband and I loved it. Jude thought it was ok and Zane would only have the broth.I used this recipe that I found on Pinterest. I altered it a bit. I didn’t use garlic or chilis – I’m not a big fan of garlic and I wanted to make it tame enough that the boys would eat it. Jude likes spicy stuff in small quantities, but I need to not go crazy with it. I also added some red, yellow and orange diced peppers and some green onion on top to garnish.It was also super simple to make which is always great for midweek meals. I’ll definitely be making this again.What Autumn recipes are you cooking up?

June 4, 2013
by Melissa Leave a comment

Tasty Tuesday – Pad Thai Hack

I do love me some pad thai. So yummy. If you do it properly it can take quite a bit of time and effort so I was super excited when I came across this recipe for a pad thai cheat.

It uses ramen noodles and things that I generally keep in the pantry. I also added fresh bean sprouts.

My husband and I loved it – so good and so simple. We couldn’t get the boys into it as much though which was a bit sad. Sigh. Still though, I highly recommend this as a quick and easy meal.

October 18, 2011
by Melissa Leave a comment

Tasty Tuesday – October 12-18, 2011

It’s Tasty Tuesday! Here’s a round-up of new recipes I tried this week.

OK, so I’ve never made rice krispy treats. How did this happen? The situation was rectified this week though. Jude & I made the treats & they were good. Super simple recipe:

Rice Krispy Treats

5 c. Rice Krispies
1/4 c. butter
7 oz. jar marshmallow creme

Melt butter in 3 quart saucepan. Add marshmallow creme and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until marshmallow creme and butter are well blended. Remove from heat. Add Rice Krispies and stir until well coated with mixture.
Press warm marshmallow treat mixture lightly into a buttered 13 x 9 inch pan. Cut into squares when cool. Yield 24 (2 inch) squares.

We added some Fall/Halloween sprinkles & used mini muffin tins to form the treats. So easy & so yummy! This definitely won’t be the last time we make these.

I’m a big fan of Sausage Balls so when I came across this recipe on Pinterest, I knew I had to give it a try. The addition of cream cheese? Genius!

I was also looking for something quick & easy that the boys would enjoy. I found this recipe on a packet of crescent rolls. I am so excited that Safeway is carrying nitrate-free hot dogs now – they taste great.

Crescent Roll Hot Dogs

INGREDIENTS:

8 hot dogs
4 slices (3/4 oz each) American cheese, each cut into 6 strips
1 can (8 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated crescent dinner rolls

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 375°F. Slit hot dogs to within 1/2 inch of ends; insert 3 strips of cheese into each slit.
Separate dough into triangles. Wrap dough triangle around each hot dog. Place on ungreased cookie sheet, cheese side up.
Bake at 375°F. for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

I used grated cheese & it worked great.

Finally, I made a crustless quiche for breakfast today. Actually, it will be breakfast for the rest of the week! Again, an easy recipe with lots of options.

quick quiche

4 oz light cream cheese, softened
8 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 cooked bacon
1 cup frozen broccoli, chopped (thawed and squeeze out excess moisture)
10 oz frozen spinach, chopped (thawed and squeeze out excess moisture)
5 fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 1/2 cups cheese of your choice

blend cream cheese, eggs and milk together well (there will still be some chunks of cream cheese) stir in remaining ingredients. pout into two greased quiche or pie pans. bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes.

I basically had none of those ingredients on hand so I used spinach & ham. Turned out great!

July 12, 2011
by Melissa Leave a comment

Challenge #3 – Thai Chicken Curry in Coconut Milk

I fixed Thai Chicken Curry tonight & it was yummy. I made a couple of changes & will tweak it a bit more next time. I added some sweetener to it as I felt it needed something. I would also use more than a teaspoon of curry paste next time – it didn’t have much kick to it. We all enjoyed it though & Jude even commented on how good the sauce was. I also added green onions at the end.

Thai Chicken Curry in Coconut

To find out more about this challenge, click here.

June 28, 2011
by Melissa Leave a comment

Challenge 3 – Trout Navarra-Style & 30 Days of Creativity – Day 28

I made this recipe using steelhead trout I got at Costco. I thought it would be more like a white meat fish, but it seemed a lot like salmon. It was a super simple recipe, but it was basically fish with bacon – not saying that’s a bad thing, but it seemed very simple. I actually added capers right at the end, mostly because one of my sons loves capers & the last time I cooked fish it didn’t have capers & he was sad. We all loved the fish & I really liked the smoky, saltiness of the bacon with the fish.

For more details of this challenge, click here.

Lamppostings

Finding and creating adventures in everyday life.

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