Browsing Tag

cooking

Food

The Ultimate Anti-Kid Food, But Yum

I have recently found my newest favorite show on Netflix: Mob Wives. I don’t know if it’s the mob theme, the Italian-Americans, or the drama. I would love to go shopping with these ladies, though. Seemingly unlimited funds and they get to eat out all the time. My dream life, but take out the murdering families and all. Also, I’d prefer just a hair less drama in my life.

Anyway, after I was watching a few episodes, I headed to the supermarket to continue my new veggie friendly menu. I ended up grabbing some brussel sprouts – yes, you heard that right – to have with dinner.

Preheat the oven to 350. I don’t usually cut the brussel sprouts in half, but it would probably cut down the cooking time. Toss the veggies in some olive oil, ground black pepper, salt, and garlic powder to coat. Bake for 35 minutes, or until cooked through. The outside will get a little crispy, and that’s probably the best part of this dish.

October 1, 2012 by Roni

Food, Savory

Easy Baked Onion Rings

Go healthy. That’s what I’ve been telling myself lately. At least until Halloween anyway. After Halloween I can start packing on sweaters and long pants, right?

These were fabulous. And so much healthier than dumping them in a vat of oil

Gather:
4C Italian bread crumbs
Egg whites
Onion, I use Vidalia cause they’re sweet
Garlic powder
Cayenne pepper
Flour

Preheat that oven to 400. On one plate, put some flour, in a bowl set aside the egg whites, and on another plate put the bread crumbs. I put garlic powder and cayenne pepper in the crumbs to give it more kick. You can put it to your liking, but I like to be able to see the cayenne, give it heat.

Flour the sliced onion rings, dip into egg whites, then bread in the crumbs. Place on a cookie sheet, I put some parchment paper down so I wouldn’t have to scrub the cookie sheet.

Pre-oven cooking.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until crispy. These were so good! and super easy.

September 27, 2012 by Roni

Food, Sweet

Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bites

So I was offered up the proposal to either go to the gym and work out, or stay at home, drink wine, and make dessert. Take one guess what I opted to do.

It tastes way better than it looks, I promise.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
2 pkgs. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened (I used one regular and one reduced fat package)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 325. (At this point, we opened a bottle of wine, best decision of the night). However, you should probably combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and 1/4 cup of sugar. Put 1/2 cup of the mixture on the side, press the rest into the bottom of the baking pan. I used a 9 x 13 inch pan (the beauty that I use to make my awesome lasagna.)

Making the crumby base.

Then we proceeded to mix in another bowl the following: softened cream cheese, rest of the sugar, flour, and vanilla extract. Add eggs one at a time, mix until smooth. We didn’t have an electric mixer, so it took a while. But the workout is worth it. Beat in the peanut butter and fold in the chocolate chips. Pour in baking dish, crumble the rest of the graham cracker mix on the top of the cream cheese mixture.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until set. Let cool, then refrigerate. Believe me, it was delicious. And let it cool, because we didn’t at first (because we were so eager to eat it), that it wasn’t as good as it was cool.

Yum!

Yum, yum!

I sprinkled a bit of sugar on top of the bars after I cut them. Gave them a bit of an extra bite.

September 25, 2012 by Roni

Food, Savory

Mini Lasagnas

Sometimes, I just don’t know what to do for dinner, especially when I’m cooking for one. The thought of making a huge pasta dish, meatloaf, anything in a crockpot, or something in the oven is usually a slightly depressing thought. That is also followed by the thought I might need pants with elastic for attempting to eat everything that is made when one creates a gourmet masterpiece for a party of eight. So I made myself a deal when I looked into the fridge and found myself with a pound of ground beef that needed to be used. I decided I needed to make a single serving meal and I was craving lasagna.

Mini Lasagnas

Ingredients:
Half a green pepper, diced
1/4 of an onion, diced
Pound of ground beef
Lasagna Noodles
1 jar of pasta sauce
1/4 c grated Parmesan
Any leftover shredded mozzarella you might have in the fridge (I happened to have a bit from when I made pizza the other day)
Olive Oil
Ground pepper, salt, garlic powder

I cooked the onion, green pepper, and spices in a bit of olive oil, all while trying to remind myself that I was only going to put about half the effort into this hair brained idea as I would a real lasagna. (There are way more steps and ingredients when I go all out and make it full-scale.) Once the veggies were cooked through (read the pepper and onion were soft). Then I added the ground beef and cooked that through.

Then I added the pasta sauce and cooked that down until it lost most of its watery-ness. There is nothing worse than making a lasagna and when you go to eat it, it just falls apart because the sauce is too saucy. Yes, sauce can be too saucy. Toss in the Parmesan cheese and cook down.

Did I mention you should probably be cooking up those lasagna noodles by now? Ok, well, get on that. Then when you pull them out, I cut them into quarters. Pulled out my cupcake pan. Yup, you heard me right, we’re taking baking equipment into the cooking kitchen.

Layers as follows:
noodle
meat/sauce mixture
noodle
meat/sauce mixture and a bit of mozzarella
noodle
little bit of meat/sauce mixture

Popped that into the oven at 350 for 20 minutes and ta-dah! dinner! Single serving size here we come!

Let them sit and it should look like this: