Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Swanky Shrimps


I LOVE Shrimp! No need to beat around the bush. They are easy to cook, go well with everything, and my husband eats them up! Since tomorrow I was planning on pigging out with our guests on some mexican food, I wanted a light supper tonight. For me light in synonymous with fast!

I stock up on raw shrimp when it is on sale and freeze it. Last I checked I had like 5 pounds in my freezer so I thawed some out peeled them and decided to make a pasta dish...because I also love pasta! SO healthy I know!

Sara's Swanky Shrimps...& Pasta:
1lb raw, peeled and deveined shrimp (doesn't matter the size really, I happened to pull out smaller shrimp from the freezer), 1/2 stick of butter melted, 1/3 cup of white wine (i had some leftover yellow tail), 1/4 cup olive oil, 4 teaspoons minced garlic, 1.5 teaspoons italian seasoning (or whatever you want), salt and pepper to taste, and half a box of spaghetti (I prefer to use whole wheat just for added nutritional benefit), cooked.

Mix everything but the spaghetti in the bottom of a broiler pan and broil for approximately 4 minutes, or however long it takes until the shrimp are opaque and cooked through, toss in the spaghetti!

My husband and I completed our meal with a fresh from the garden salad and topped the pasta with Parmesan cheese. It was pretty delicious and left us full without being stuffed. I will certainly be playing with this recipe again!

We are totally pumped to entertain our guests tomorrow night! Not many of our friends have come over to our new apartment so it will be nice to cook for others. I hope I remember to take a picture of our mexican night!

Good luck and happy eating!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

bad blogger...i know i know

So I was doing so well updating each night with a new recipe or idea. But then I went on vacation, then I got a puppy, and well now I'm studying for the bar exam! So needless to say, creativity is not on the top of my list. However I don't stop eating just because I'm busy, so here's my food experiences.

Wednesday night we left for a family reunion in Branson, MO, which got me thinking about food that travels well, is easy to fix in our small kitchen of the cabin, and can feed our family of 6. My parents try to plan out our meals and food seal a lot of it.

For the first night my parents prepped one of my suggestions, chicken burritos. So here's how this recipe came about. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are super expensive but are amazing in everything so when I can't buy those I buy split chicken breasts because they are the same thing only require a little more work. So a few weeks ago they went on sale for like $.69/pound, so I bought about 20 pounds! YIKES! My father and I steamed the breasts shredded the meat and food sealed it into 1-2 lb bags. I use this for quick meals! It is amazing!

So I took one of these bags out of my freezer a few weeks ago and combine it with some cooked brown rice, a can of rinsed black beans, and a can of Progresso Enchilada soup. The soup can be really difficult to find in stores, if you can't find it you can get a Tortilla soup and a cheese soup and combine them. I filled burritos with this mix and it was AWESOME. My parents altered theres by not putting in the rice. I like rice because it is very filling and provides an additional whole grain.

Another great meal on my vacation was our big family meal. Pot-luck style only this year instead of the main course being bbq we did a mexican theme...and yum yum yum! I LOVE LOVE mexican food or pretty much anything that can be associated with latin themed food! There were so many dips, enchiladas, salsas, rices, and casseroles that were so amazing. Thursday I'm going to be testing out a Creamy Green Chicken Enchilada recipe for friends of our who are coming to dinner! So look forward to my recipes for it and my FAMOUS guacamole! Trust me you won't want to miss it!

Anyway, back to studying for tonight!

Good luck and happy eating!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

unCANny tomato soup


After last nights scrumptious homemade pizza, I still had some remaining tomatoes and basil. Since we are leaving for vacation tomorrow, I wanted to get good use of them. Also having a lot of bread that will likely get bad before we leave, nothing sounded more delicious than homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese! YUM!

I will admit I have historically been a canned soup consumer. Not that I haven't made some from scratch before, but I can't resist picking up a few cans each time I notice a sale! While every recipe I found used canned tomatoes I figured I'd get the best of both worlds by using canned soup and fresh tomatoes. Here is my recipe:
unCANny Tomato Basil Soup: 2 cans condensed tomato soup 2 cans of milk plus a dash 2 roma tomatoes chopped and unseeded small bunch of basil dash of seasonings: sea salt, fresh ground pepper, and italian seasoning blend teaspoon or so of minced garlic

Dumped in everything, heated through and then blended with an immersion blender. The only difference I made with mine is I added some other tomato flavored leftovers, a splash of leftover V8 spicy juice, and a wee bit of organic tomato sauce, I just needed to use those leftovers!

With a side of grilled cheese, this was a very satisfying meal! I only wish I had some crustier bread other than split-top wheat. Maybe a homemade sourdough grilled cheese next time?! YUM!

The husband even ate his whole bowl! So I know this works for us! Next time I'll probably not use canned soup, but I just had to get rid of what's left in my pantry.

As always,

Good Luck and Happy Eating!

Monday, July 6, 2009

When the moon hits your eye...


...like a big pizza pie that's amore!

I had been struggling to decide what recipe to start this blog with for the last few weeks. After many dishes not seeming quite amazing enough to be THE first dish, looking at a few roma tomatoes finally convinced me. PIZZA!

There is a little Italian in me and my husband and I do like our pizza, but its usually our go to meal when we are too lazy to cook and don't feel like fast food. These days pizza isn't the cheap meal it used to be, with frozen pizzas costing nearly as much as delivery...I figured I could do it for pretty cheap. So I sent the hubby to the grocery store for his topping selections and started kneading.

My first goal was to find a crust that didn't require overnight refrigeration. I don't mind doing things ahead of time, but when I want pizza, I don't want to wait until tomorrow! I researched several recipes and settled on one I found on a blog Fab Food Friday. Of course I doctored it to my specifications, so I'm only going to list my recipe:

Wheat Pizza Crust (after all we are Kansans): 1 cup warm water 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (I used bread machine yeast as it was all I had on hand) 1 teaspoon honey 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour 1 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup bread flour 1 tablespoon fine sea salt 2 tablespoon olive oil First mix the water, yeast and honey and leave set for 5 minutes. This is to give the yeast time to activate. Second I used my mixer to whisk the flours together while the yeast activated. Switching to my dough hook, added the yeast mixture and the salt and olive oil and mixed for 8 or 9 minutes. Finally, place the dough in a greased bowl in the turned off oven next to a bowl of boiling hot water and allow it to rise for 60 minutes.

I took this opportunity to cut up and prep all of our toppings. My meat-loving husband chose traditional sausage and pepperoni toppings, but I also chopped up some roma tomatoes, black olives and sliced up some fresh mozzarella cheese! YUM!

After a very LONG hour, I divided the dough into two pieces and kneaded for a few minutes before flattening. It was a little difficult for us to flatten the dough as it sprung back easily, we ultimately used a rolling pin.

After turning on the oven to 500 degrees, and getting the pizza stone nice and hot we topped our pizzas and cooked them for just under 10 minutes. Depending on how thick you have your crust it might not take that long! Just keep an eye on it.

My toppings and those pictured are: a brush of olive oil, sprinkle of Italian seasoning, some tomato sauce, sliced roma tomatoes, black olive slices, fresh basil, mozzarella slices, and a final sprinkle of Italian seasoning.

Needless to say one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten, and certainly the best that has come out of my oven! I will probably make up more pizza dough and package in individual ziplock bags so I don't have to wait for it to rise. If I come up with a different dough recipe I will post it. Otherwise, the wheat crust wasn't tough or dense, it was nice and light. Mixing the flours really aided that.

Good luck and happy eating!