Vegetarian Rice Stir Fry

I know a lot of people think Asian cuisine is really bad for you . . . and depending on where you get it from, a lot of it probably is. However, if you make it yourself at home, you are in total control over what goes into your food. Not adding meat makes it that much better for you, plus using fresh vegetables and a LIGHT soy sauce.


(Side note: eating the right meat in moderation is NOT bad for you! Try to avoid red meats and stick to white meats like chicken and turkey. Most fish is also extremely good for you. The key is to try to limit your meat intake to once per day at the most.)

Looks just as good if not better than the Chinese take out place on the corner, right? Here's how to do it. The photos were taken for a recipe for 2, but the instructions I'm giving will be to feed 4. (6 if you take smaller portions.) In other words, don't be confused when your pan seems to have more in it than the photos show!

 First things first is to get the rice cooking. It's surprising how many people don't know how to cook rice properly, but I promise it's so simple. Just assume a 1/2 cup of rice for each person being served and then 1 cup of water for each person being served. So, 1 part rice to 2 parts water. For this recipe, since we're feeding 4 people, use 2 cups of rice and 4 cups of water. Put the rice and water in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Once it's boiling, reduce it to the lowest heat setting, cover, and let simmer until all the water is gone. (Should take between 15-20 minutes). While you're waiting on the rice, you can take care of everything else.

 Like I said, fresh is the key to any healthy meal. Dice up half an onion and then finely chop two cloves of garlic. (For reference, garlic is very, very good for your heart! Awful for your breath, though.) You'll also want a diced bell pepper - red, yellow, or green would be fine. In my house, we buy peppers in bulk, dice them, and then freeze them. It's almost as good as fresh and they keep for months!

 Put some olive oil in a large skillet set over medium low heat. After about a minute, toss in the onions and peppers. (NOT the garlic, yet!) You really just want to make the onions and peppers sweat a bit and start to cook.

 To keep with our fresh theme, chop up some fresh broccoli. Green beans or sugar snap peas also make a great addition. (Remember, the greener your food, the better it is for you!) For 4 people, you'll need around 2 cups of chopped broccoli and a heavy handful of green beans or sugar snap peas. Add these veggies into your pan after the onions and peppers have cooked for about 2-3 minutes. To ensure the vegetables cook through, cover your pan and leave it alone for at least 5 minutes.

 While you're waiting on your vegetable medley, you can decide on what spices you'd like to use. Salt and pepper are always a must in every dish (but go easy on the salt, as soy sauce is already fairly salty). Sesame seed is also an Asian classic. I also chose to give mine a little kick with my favorite Zesty Apple Rub from the amazing Pepper Palace. Go ahead and sprinkle in your spices to taste after you've let your veggies cook for five minutes. This is where you'll want to add the garlic you chopped earlier, too.

 Once your veggies and rice are both fully cooked, add the rice into your veggie skillet. Stir it all around to mix everything up, then add in several dashes of light soy sauce. How much is really up to you - just remember that a little goes a long way. Put in a few dashes and stir it in. Give it a taste. If it needs more, add some more and try again. Just remember you can't take it out once you've put it in!

Usually for me, "enough" soy sauce is when my rice has turned a deep golden brown color. Dish it up, serve it to your family, and enjoy a healthy Asian dinner tonight!

The MOST Amazing Potato Wedges

Potato Wedges... they're like french fries, only thousands of times better. They're french fries on crack, the epitome of sliced potato side dishes, and dare I say... starchy spiced heaven on a plate. I think the only potato creation better than potato wedges are bacon-and-cheese stuffed potato skins. (Most unfortunately, those gorge potato skins are also REALLY unhealthy, and we don't want that!)

The greatest thing (I think) I about the potato wedges I'm about to show you how to make is that they actually aren't all THAT bad for you (as hefty servings of starch go, anyway). The secret? They're baked (not fried!) and only lightly coated in super-good-for-you olive oil instead of submerged in gallons of melted lard.

Ready? Set? Go. In 30-40 minutes (depending on how skilled you are with a cutting knife and how fast your oven preheats) these beauties can be all yours. (Or, if you're feeling generous, shared with the family.)

 First things first, get your oven preheating to 400 degrees F. Then, grab some potatoes (how many and what kind is really up to you - usually guessing about 1 medium potato per person served is accurate. Also, I used red potatoes, which are a bit sweeter and more dense, but you can use golden, too!) Leave the skin ON and cut them into wedges (you should get 8 wedges per potato, give or take!)

Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil (it makes clean up so much easier!) and drizzle some olive oil on it (a few tablespoons or so.) Take a basting brush and spread the oil evenly over the surface so you ensure that all the potatoes will have a thin bed of oil!

 Lay your potato wedges on the sheet, taking care that all of them have the skin on the side and NOT resting on the foil. (You want to make sure the flesh of the potato is on the foil so they cook properly!) Brush each potato wedge with olive oil. You shouldn't need a lot - just enough for a really light coat.

Now it's time for what is always my favorite part, the spices. A few sprinkles of salt and pepper are a must. I also added the earthy spice of rosemary, and kicked up the heat with some red pepper flakes (those babies are strong, so use sparingly!!) and another phenomenal spice from the Pepper Palace which they are famous for - their Chop House Seasoning. (Check out their website by clicking on their name above, and look back at my recipe for family-style chicken pot pie to see how I used their sweet Zesty Apple Rub.) I can't even describe how wonderful Chop House is. It's got a lot of kick and spice without being "hot" and can be used on - quite literally - just about anything you cook.

Once your wedges have a nice coating of spices, it's time to pop them in the oven! About 25 minutes at 400 degrees should be perfect.

Once they're done, the spiced side should look just about the same as it did before, and the other side should be crispier and golden brown.

The finished wedges look and taste amazing! Let them cool for a few minutes before serving, and try them with ketchup or any other of your favorite dipping sauces.

A Healthier Cookie That Tastes Good! (no, really!)

If you love food, I'm sure many of you have heard of the show on Food Network called "Chopped." I'm addicted to that show because, well, I'm addicted to food, and I love creating new and different things in the kitchen.

Feel free to skip the following paragraph if you either know about Chopped or honestly do not care about the basis of the show...

For those who don't know, Chopped features four successful, real-world chefs in a show with three rounds. (Appetizer, Dinner, Dessert.) At the beginning of each round, the chefs are each given an identical basket with 3-4 "mystery" ingredients that the average person would say "really don't go together." The chefs are challenged to create a culinary masterpiece fitting the category of the round within a specific time frame. At the end of each, the chefs give their plates to three judges, and the judges decide on one of them to be "chopped" from the competition. Process of elimination means that the appetizer round features 4 chefs, the dinner round 3 chefs, and the dessert round 2 chefs. Whoever remains at the end of the dessert round is the winner, and wins $10,000.

Anyway, the appetizer round on the show I saw today featured turkey breast, cucumbers, and graham crackers. Two of the chefs decided to crush their graham crackers and use them as breading for the turkey to pan-fry it. I thought this was absolutely genius and as soon as the show was over set off to the kitchen to make some of my own.

As it turned out, we had graham crackers, but not turkey. Or chicken. Or really any meat at all that isn't currently reserved for the playoff football game tomorrow. (Go Ravens!)

Disappointed, I nearly gave up... until suddenly it struck me. I could use graham crackers to make a cookie. And not only that, because of the natural sweetness contained in graham crackers, I could use them in place of some of the sugar contained in a cookie, and make it healthier... and heck, while I'm at it, I thought, scanning the kitchen and spotting a bran cereal resting among the rest of the cereal bags housed on top of the fridge, I could add bran cereal to really up the health factor!

So here they are, folks... my version of a healthy cookie. Serve them to your kids and I can guarantee they won't even know the difference!

Because this was a complete experiment I made the batch small, so this recipe should make about 25-30 cookies. Feel free to start small like I did to test them out on the family, and if they're a hit, double it next time!

Start off by preheating the oven to 375 degrees F. Then, begin with the following:

1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Stir these to combine them in a small bowl and set aside for a few minutes while you deal with the wet ingredients...

1 1/2 sticks of butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Plop these all into a larger mixing bowl. Now for the fun part...

3 graham crackers (3 of the kind separated into 4 sections, so 12 sections total)
A good handful of any bran cereal (I used the flakes from raisin bran)

Toss these into a food processor and blend until they are crumbs. It should amount to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup. Once they are crushed, add them into the bowl with the butter and sugar and blend on a medium speed until the butter has creamed into the sugar. Now...

1 egg

Add an egg and beat in until creamy.Then grab your flour mixture, add half of it into the larger bowl, and stir it in (carefully - don't want flour going everywhere!) until it's blended it. Then do the same with the remaining flour mixture. Once a nice dough has formed, it's time for the add-ins...

1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts

I used chocolate and walnuts, but you can use anything you prefer, as long as it adds up to 1 cup total! I think raisins would probably be good with these, or any other kind of nut. Just remember the goal is to keep it healthy! Walnuts are one of the better-for-you nuts and bittersweet chocolate doesn't contain nearly as much sugar as milk chocolate. Anyhow. Carefully fold in the mix-ins until they are well distributed throughout the dough.

Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden.

Let me know how they turn out for you and how your family likes them!

Family Size Chicken Pie

 

Ah, the classic favorite. Chicken pot pie... now available in family size! Always wondered how grandma made it? Well, this might not be exactly what she did, but moms everywhere (or at least mine) say it tastes just like home.

First off, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grab a 13x9 glass baking dish. (It'll also fit in 9x9 and be a bit thicker, if that's what you'd prefer.) Lightly spray the bottom of the pan with cooking spray, then give a rough chop to a small onion.

Take two moderately sized carrots (the real ones, not baby carrots) and slice them up. If you slice them like I did here (about 1/4 inch) they'll have just a little crunch to them when they're cooked. If you like your carrots more tender, slice them thinner. (Boyfriend likes his crunchy, mom likes hers tender . . . so it was very hard to please my taste testers.)

Dig through your freezer until you find a bag of frozen peas. Pour out about a cup of them into a small bowl.

Put a skillet over low heat and add all those yummy vegetables to it. Drizzle them with olive oil (a light coating is all they need) and stir them up until they're mixed together . . .

. . . Then cover those suckers up so they steam while they simmer! (They'll cook up faster and more evenly.)










Ah, good ol' Campbell's . . . get a can of Cream of Chicken and empty it into a small saucepan over low heat.


(If you don't have cream of chicken, cream of celery or cream of mushroom would work also.)

Fill the (now empty) can with milk (yes, milk, not water. It's not "cream" of anything if you mix it with water, it's a watered down mess) and add that to your saucepan with the condensed soup.

It will look pretty nasty, but just keep stirring it.

Eventually, it will look like this. Once it's all creamy and combined, set it aside and turn off the heat.

 Take 4 chicken tenders (or 2 chicken breasts) and chop them into bite sized pieces.

* * REMEMBER: always use a plastic or glass cutting board for meat - never wooden! We don't need anyone dying of salmonella they picked up off of rotten bacteria that assimilated into your porous wood.





Once all your chicken is cut up, add it into your veggie concoction. Go ahead and put the lid in the sink, you won't need it for the chicken. Keep an eye on the skillet, stirring it every so often, for about 3-5 minutes until the chicken is mostly cooked.

 Now comes the fun part - seasoning! Pot pie has always been done with the simple seasoning of salt and pepper (if you want to go gourmet, use coarse salt and fresh ground pepper.) However, I chose to add some extra flavor and spice by using the Zesty Apple Rub from the Pepper Palace. If you're into different and unusual spices, check them out here.




Dash on your spices to taste - a few sprinkles of salt, 5-10 grinds of pepper, a few dashes of the apple rub... whatever suits you!

Take half of your cream of chicken soup and pour it into the bottom of the pan so it covers the whole bottom with a thin layer.

 Add in your mostly-cooked-veggies-and-chicken on top - take care to make sure everything is evenly distributed! The peas tend to like to wait until the end to fall out, little buggers.







Pour the rest of your soup on top in an even layer.

Get a pack of 8 "flaky" biscuits. (I learned my lesson and got the name brand this time.) Once you've completed the daunting task of getting the things out of their spiral death package, peel apart each biscuit by the little layers - this might take some work, but you'll get the hang of it! Each biscuit should easily separate into 3 layers.

 Lay the layers on top of the veggies and chicken, overlapping each other. Work each one in your hands a little to stretch it out a bit before placing it down. You should only use 4 biscuits (12 individual layers) for a 13x9 pan, so throw the rest on a small cookie sheet and put them in the oven with your chicken pie! (They'll be done in 15-20 minutes.)

25 minutes or so after you've put it in the oven (and 5-10 minutes after you remove your leftover biscuits) it will be done! Take it out and enjoy. :-)

(My mother stole a serving before I could snap a picture, so forgive the missing corner.)

Honey Nut Cream Cheese

The products you see in the photo above are all you need to make the most delicious cream cheese you've ever tasted. I don't care if honey nut cream cheese isn't even your flavor of choice to top your bagel with... (mine is strawberry...) I promise this recipe will change your mind.

You see, I believe cream cheese, like so many other foods, is just one of those things that was meant to have things added into it. Like... vanilla ice cream, pasta, or yogurt. They're all good by themselves, but adding the right ingredients just makes them magical.

So, here's how to create some downright magical cream cheese.

Start off with a small handful of your favorite type of nut. I chose pecans, but walnuts, almonds, or even peanuts would work, too. Grab a REALLY SHARP knife and chop them up into tiny little pieces. (If you're lazy, you can also toss them into a food processor and pulse them a few times.)

Into your mixing bowl, add the following things:

+ 8oz of softened cream cheese
+ 2 tablespoons (ish) of honey
+ 2 tablespoons (ish) of brown sugar
+ 1 teaspoon (ish) of vanilla
+ A few dashes of cinnamon
+ The itty bitty pieces of nuts you chopped up a minute ago

I know I'm getting real scientific with my measurements in this one but that's because it's really all just to your taste... I didn't really measure, just guessed and threw it all in and hoped for the best.

Blend. Start off on low speed but eventually crank it up to medium-high. You want to make sure everything is mixed in well.
 

You may need to stop a time or two and scrape off the beater to make sure it's all mixing evenly.

Once everything is nicely incorporated, scrape off the sides of the bowl and give the cream cheese a final stir with your utensil of choice.

Grab a bagel. Toast it. Slather it with your newest genius creation. (I include this step because it will, inevitably, happen. It is impossible to make this and NOT enjoy it immediately.)

Store the rest in an airtight container and place it in its new happy home in the fridge. If you don't want to share, you may have to cover it with another food item that no one will be moving any time soon or menacing notes telling of the demise of whoever steals it.

The Easiest Chicken Pasta Ever

Whether you need to feed just yourself or your whole family, try out this recipe and watch how fast it becomes a staple when planning weekly meals! Everyone loves Italian-style food and this dish is so good your family will be wondering if you cheated and brought home Olive Garden take-out!

Start off by filling a large sauce pan 2/3 full of water and putting it on the stove over high heat. Salt the water with a hefty amount of coarsely ground salt - this will add a salty flavor to the pasta without having to add extra.

You can add a bit of olive oil too. Just a teaspoon or two will do - it will keep the pasta from sticking together while it cooks. Now, while you wait for that water to boil, you can take care of the rest of your prep...

Grab a small-medium onion and finely chop it. Set them aside in a small dish. You can use more or less onion based on your taste - this amount for this recipe serving 6 will give a distinct onion taste without being too overpowering.

Get 2-3 large cloves of garlic. Peel and mince them. Set that aside in the same dish as the onion. If you don't have fresh garlic on hand, you can also use the pre-minced kind that you can buy in a jar from the grocery store. (Use 2 teaspoons or so.) Personally, there's nothing more satisfying to me than crushing a clove under my knife, peeling it, and chopping the sticky delicious substance myself - but maybe I'm just crazy?

Did I mention you may not want to kiss anyone after this meal?

Get a stick of butter (Yes, real butter. Yes, a whole stick. It's feeding 6 people - in reality it's really no more than you'd put on your pancakes or french toast.) and chop it into small cubes - about 1/2 inch or so. Set the cubed butter aside in a separate dish.

 

Take 6 thawed chicken tenders (cheaper and smaller than chicken breasts) and cut each one into bite-sized pieces. (They cook much faster if you chop them before cutting them!)

And never, ever, EVER cut raw meat on the same cutting board or with the same knife that you plan on using later for a non-meat item! I saved the meat for last to avoid this potentially very serious health hazard!

Put a medium-large frying pan over low heat and coat the bottom in a thin layer of olive oil (adds a touch of flavor and keeps the food from sticking or burning!) Extra virgin olive oil is really the only oil you should ever cook with - ever - but if your household is too cheap to carry olive oil or simply hates the taste, canola or vegetable oil will also suffice.

While you're letting that oil heat up a little, your water should be boiling by now, so add a whole box of your favorite pasta. I chose linguine but you can use whatever you like! Make sure the water is at a "rolling boil" when you add the pasta (them bubbles should be fierce!). Turn the heat down to medium after you've added the pasta - it will still be hot enough to keep the water boiling.

 Keep an eye on the clock - nine minutes after you've put the pasta in the water, it should be done at about the al dente texture.


While you were doing all that, your oil was slowly warming up and should now be toasty enough to rapidly cook your chicken pieces. Carefully drop them into the pan - the oil may spatter, so watch your hands and eyes! If you get oil on your hands, rinse them for about a minute under really cold water. If it gets in your eyes, flush them out for a few minutes with clean (NOT TAP) water.

Provided your hands and eyes are intact and you didn't get any oil on them, you should be able to keep an eye on the chicken, move it around in the pan, and make sure all the pieces are being evenly cooked. After a few minutes, when they're white on all sides, add the onion and garlic you put aside earlier.

Stir it around so everything is evenly distributed on the pan and stir it fairly consistently. If you keep your pan on a medium-low heat, everything should cook evenly in good time.

You were watching the clock, right? Once that nine-minute mark hits, drain your pasta over the sink. (Watch out for steam - it can burn if you're too close!) Don't turn off your burner - keep it on low and as soon as you empty the pasta out of the saucepan, put it right back on the burner.

Once you've let your pasta drain for a few moments, toss it right back in the saucepan. Add the butter you put aside earlier, and stir it into the pasta until it's completely melted. Try not to have a heart attack at how much butter is being used. I promise - it's really not so bad.

Once the butter is COMPLETELY melted (that's really important!) add about 3/4 cup of parmesean cheese - the finely shredded kind that comes in the plastic container you get in the grocery store is totally fine. It's (mostly) legit cheese and it melts a lot faster and more easily. Anyway, add the cheese and, again, stir it in until it's melted!

Now comes the good part! Your chicken, onion, and garlic concoction should still be simmering away quietly on the burner next door... give it a final stir to make sure it's all cooked through, then turn off the burner and empty the contents of the pan into your butter-and-cheese-coated-pasta-filled sauce pan. Stir it all up until it's evenly distributed.

Turn off the burner under the saucepan once everything is all mixed together and serve! You might want to dish it out individually so your family doesn't take more than their fair share - this pasta is so good they may try and dish out the whole pot for themselves! ;-)