Irish Soda Bread - Altered...

Wake up in the morning and make bread at 8am on a Saturday?  Why not...  Have a few gatherings to attend today and don't want to show up empty handed...

I used Ina Garten's recipe... So I will spare you most of the details.

But since I can't just let a recipe be a recipe... Here were my alterations:

1 C raisins instead of currants
1/2 the flour I used was whole wheat
I used fresh grated orange zest
I threw in 2  tsp of caraway seeds for good measure
I split the dough into two smaller loafs

Delish...

   

Sunday Morning Update:  Makes phenomenal
french toast.

A Kale Salad to Remember

A little while back, I was taken out to a fancy pants dinner at Teddy & The Bully Bar.  It was a fantastic meal of small plates.  One standout was the kale salad.  The ingredients seemed simple and I decided I wanted to recreate it.  Theirs had pine nuts and currants.  I made mine with dried cherries and walnuts.  Anyways - inspired by that salad, here is what will now be a staple in my fridge.

Ingredients:
1 bunch kale
1-2 lemons
2-3 T olive oil
Salt, pepper, garlic powder
2 T dried cherries
1/4 C walnuts
Healthy sprinkle of Parmesan

Directions:
Wash and finely chop kale.  Place in bowl.  Squeeze juice of 1 or 2 lemons, add oil, and all other ingredients.  Toss well.  Eat!  One of my favorite things about kale is how hearty it is.  You can leave it dressed in the fridge and it is still good days later.  Add a bit more parm when you go to eat, and voila.  Ready made salad.  Add more protein and you have a meal.

"BBQ" Chicken Sammich

Step 1. Impulsively buy a whole chicken when you're grocery shopping.

Step 2.  A few days later, after you've already eaten dinner, oil it, salt and pepper it, and season it with whatever herbs you want.  Last night I used Tony Chachere's because who doesn't love cajun spice?

Step 3. Roast it.  Time/Temp of 425 for 90 minutes for a normal sized chicken.  Magically, this is the same amount of time it will take you to watch 'You've Got Mail.'

Step 4. Let chicken cool and rest.  Pick it a part and package it up for lunch during the week.  (I think later this week I'll use some for my delicious curried chicken salad.)

Step 5. When packing your lunch haphazardly at 7:55am, grab a portion of chicken and add 2T of your fave BBQ sauce to the same container.  (Also pack, spinach, sandwich thin, veggie sides, and a piece of fruit.)

Step 6. Noon - go to the cafe.  Toast bread.  Heat chicken for 60 seconds.  Make a sammich with spinach and "BBQ chicken."

Yum.

        

Cumin Seed Roasted Carrots

Today is off to a pretty good start.  I got a massage, did some pilates, and then cooked all the vegetables... one of the yummies created was cumin seed roasted carrots.  So simple and uses up your cumin seed, one of those spices you buy for one recipe and then sits on  your shelf for all eternity... until now.

Ingredients:
2 bunches whole carrots
healthy sprinkle of cumin seed ~ 1T
~ 2 T olive oil
salt and pepper

Directions:
Peel carrots and cut in spears.  Toss in all of the rest of the ingredients.  Roast at 425 for 30 minutes.  Enjoy!

Spiced, Sugared, Bourboned Pecans

Time stamp: 3:30 pm 12/28/13 - Full tin. 

This year has been a special Christmas.  It was my first year not at home in Atlanta.  We can blame the cute as a button-ness that is my new niece and the true blessing it is that my brother and his family are a mile away from me.  So, this year my parents came to Arlington for a Virginia Christmas.  And along with an SUV load of luggage and Christmas presents, my mom brought pecans.  Delicious, golden, soft, sweet pecans.  Her source?  The veterinarian's office of all places.  Don't ask.  Just find yourself some pecans to put in your face.  Preferably delicious ones.  

This recipe will last 5 adults about 6 hours or so.  And heaven forbid you let the tin go empty.  This was the third time tinkering with the recipe (ingredients as well as time and temp) and as the saying goes, third time's a charm.

Ingredients
1 egg white
1 T bourbon (you're only using 1T...  go ahead, grab the top shelf)
3 C pecan halves
1/2 C sugar
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves
1/2 t nutmeg
1/4 t  cayenne pepper (more if you're feeling ballsy)

Directions
Preheat oven to 300.  Beat egg white and bourbon in a large bowl.  Stir in pecans letting soak while you mix up the sweet spice mix.  Mix up the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl.  Toss in to the pecans stirring to coat.  Cover a cookie sheet in foil (for easy clean up).  And put nuts on cookie sheet being sure to have a single layer.  Bake for 25 minutes, stirring and monitoring often.  The first (still edible) fail/attempt on Christmas Day was a bit charred.  Happy to do all the dirty work, so you can just go straight to the winning recipe.  Enjoy!  

Time stamp: 8:45 pm 12/28/13 - Nearly gone.
Also, a giant 5 pound cupcake for hermano's birthday. 

Epically Doctored Up Artichoke Dip

I'm grateful to have a foodie friend, who also wanted to avoid malls on Black Friday.  We managed to motivate ourselves yesterday for a trip to a winery and a field trip to Wegman's on the way home to get fixings to make ourselves a nice dinner.  (And as I write this post devouring a wheat carrot muffin from their bakery, I wonder why my life doesn't include more Wegman's field trips.)

Anyways, last night we landed on some bone in pork loin, homemade applesauce, and bacon cabbage reheated in an iron skillet.  And a weight watchers lemon cream pie - (I've altered it some, so maybe I'll post that on a rainy day.)  A last minute addition to up the veggies was 3 artichokes.  They were a game changer.

Anyways, after our trip through the check out with 3 piles - yours, mine, and sharing the cost for dinner - we headed back to my apt to get cooking.  The artichoke dip, a complete last minute brain dump of what we should dip artichokes in when we both kind of abhor mayo, I decided to doctor the heck out of it and made one hell of a dip.  I'll do my best to recall the approximate measurements.  But I would just read through for ideas and generate your own proportions and mix of flavors.

Ingredients:
3 steamed artichokes ready for eating.
Awesome Doctored Artichoke Dip

Ingredients for Dip: (all approximate) 
2 heaping T light Hellman's Mayo
2 garlic cloves roughly chopped
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp of magic honey that is lime and cayenne infused
1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:
Puree in the immersion blender attachment.  Serve in ramekin.  Top with a sprinkle of paprika.  Devour with artichoke leaves.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Fro Yo aka Crack

Patience while it churns.

Go ahead and judge.  I might
make a hot water bath in
the sink to lick the frozen bowl. 

"Oh hey, is that fro yo in your hair?"  Why yes, maybe I was licking the bowl, beaters, and spoon over the sink...  I am truly not sure how this took so long for me to decide to create, since I've had this ice cream maker for 6 months now, but alas.  It was truly worth the wait.  My only complaint, if I had to make one, is that the cream cheese is clumpy because of my impatience to wait for it to warm to room temp.  But really, not a bad day if lumps of cream cheese in fro yo is your biggest complaint...

Ingredients:
1 block reduced fat cream cheese warmed to room temp
1 C fat free plain greek yogurt
1 C pumpkin puree
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 T pumpkin pie spice

Directions:
1. Mix everything.
2. Follow ice cream bowl instructions.  (ie: set up everything and turn it on stir setting before adding batter, and wait until it starts clicking.)

3. Save the majority in a container.
4.  Eat a little in a bowl, though you might need a straw when it's fresh.
5.  Lick the mixing bowl and spoons.  (Be careful your tongue doesn't freeze to the sides. I suggest a sink bath.) 

It's soupy and delicious
out of the ice cream maker.