Holy Hash Browns Batman!

Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner?  I DO!  I cannot eat eggs so I don't do anything like quiche, (much to my husband's chagrin I am sure), but I do do waffles, and I do do hash browns. :-)  

In fact, when I was in maybe 4th grade, my mom had to work, and I stayed with a teenage babysitter.  She loved my hash browns so much, that while I was supposed to be doing my homework at night, She had her friends coming over to try my hash browns for dinner instead.  This babysitter was in my home, and she got in big trouble for having her friends over and eating all of our food, but I can't blame my mom for that, or for getting mad that I was cooking for her, when I was supposed to be doing my homework.  No one was ever really sure why my hash browns were so good, but in a household that didn't cook with salt, adding just a dash made a difference!  

Fast forward 20 years or so, my hash-browns are still pretty amazing!  The ones I made last night were especially good if you like SPICE!

These hash browns are inspired by a bag of home fries that we bought for hash-browns when I was not cooking them on my own.  

My recipe this time deviated from the norm a little bit, but for the most part it is the same.  I start by washing and peeling potatoes.  Then I used to slice them by hand, but I have this handy dandy mandolin that slices them so much faster than I can.  I actually have started cutting them like short little french fries, and about the same thickeness as a Mcdonalds fry.  

Before I cook them though, I always cook some meat in the pan.  I usually take about 1/2 of a package of bacon, and use the kitchen sheers to cut it up into maybe on inch squares, and fry it.  I dump out most of the extra bacon grease, and use that try the potatoes in.  This time however, I had some pepperoni left over in my fridge that needed to be eaten, so I used that.  

The meat I did take the casing off, and chop it up by hand.  I have tried it in the slicer but the hard sausage is not quite hard enough for that!  After it is fried up, I drain it on a paper towel.  

Then I threw the potatoes in, and had to add maybe a tablespoon of oil, because the sausage did not render that much grease.  

While the potatoes were cooking and starting to get brown, I diced up 2 onions and 2 peppers.

  

Then I chopped a handful of jalapenos and four hot chili peppers very fine.  The 

Next, I thawed some garlic.  Maybe just over  a tablespoon.  

Once the potatoes started getting brown, and were almost done, I threw all of the other veggies in together.

Once the onions started getting white, I added in the leaves of about 8 stems of dried cilantro.  I took the leaves off the stems, because they get kinda stringy when they are not fresh.  

I stirred and mixed until the potatoes had some nice crusty spots, and the onions were done.  

Once it is done, you have just about every food group but dairy in one meal, and about equal parts fresh veggies to potatoes, so even though it is full of carbs, I have just as many onions and peppers in here as I have potatoes.  The diary comes with the service however.  You finely grate some cheddar cheese and sprinkle it on top.  

When we have it, sometimes we put salsa or sour cream on top too, but we did not have either one for this meal.  

Holy Hash Browns

5 potatoes medium sized

2 medium sized onions

2 peppers (whatever color you have)

1/4 cup spicy peppers

1 tablespoon worth of garlic

  cilantro to taste.

  Salt and Pepper to taste 

  Meat, I used half a sausage of pepperoni, but I usually use 1/2-1 package of bacon

  Grated cheddar cheese

Fry up your meat in a pan.  When it is done, remove and drain on a paper towel.  Wash, peel and slice potatoes in uniform shape and size.  Put them in the pan that had the meat in it, add more oil if necessary (drain some first in necessary).  There should be just enough oil to lightly coat the potatoes.  While the potatoes are cooking, keep an eye on them, and stir, scraping the bottom, but dice up onions, peppers, and spicy peppers.  Add 2-3 cloves of garlic, and once the potatoes start getting brown and crispy, and softer, add all the other veggies in.  When the onions start getting white, add the cilantro, and throw the meat back in to warm up.  If you are doing bacon, you might want to leave it off until you are ready to serve and just sprinkle it on top.  That way it retains it's crunchiness.     Put on a plate and sprinkle with grated cheddar or your favorite cheese!  

Pineapple Salsa

A few weeks ago, my husband had a school camp he had to work at.  He  did the same lessons two weeks in a row for different kids.  The first week, both of our moms were in Korea, and they went and helped him out.  They made tacos on Friday of that week.  Some of the flavors were new to the students and they were worried that it might be a little spicy, and asked for some solutions on something to add with a little sweetness to it.  I suggested Pineapple Salsa.  I had never made it before, but I have had it at places like Baja Fresh in the USA, and LOVED it.  I know people make salsa with fruit, but it is not something I have really ever considered.  I have not made salsa since college...no real reason, just lazy I think.  So, here is what I came up with for Jeremy's students to try on their tacos (with the help of Two Peas and Their Pod).

I use my food processor, which does not make the cut super pretty, but it makes the process fast and clean and in my tiny kitchen that is what I needed.

So I did not follow the directions exactly from the website I mentioned, I can't get all of the exact ingredients.  But I do my best with what I have, and honestly, I think it turns out fine.  This is my second time making it since making it or the students, and it was a huge hit!  My husband came home with a clean bowl.  

I processed 2 onions until they were all chopped, but not turned to mush.  They looked like this:

 I processed up 2 red bell peppers, and the pineapple to look about the same.

I threw them all in a bowl, and mixed. 

From what I have read, Pineapple is the only fruit that can be canned in 100% juice, and not go bad.  I always try to buy this kind of canned pineapple when I can, as the stuff is even light syrup is very sweet and adds a lot of un-natural sugar.  

This is the kind of pineapple I am able to find locally.

I processed each item individually, so the colors didn't mix too much.  With the two cans of pineapple I also threw in about 1/2 a cup of pickled jalapenos.  They are the only kind of jalapenos I can find in Korea!  I also added maybe 3 cloves of garlic.  I process large amounts of garlic at once, and throw them in the freezer, so I am never sure exactly how much I use.  I used maybe a table spoon, and a half.  I took the leaves off of maybe 10 dried cilantro stems (coriander) and mixed the leaves in with everything else.  

I also need to add a few table spoons of lime juice, however I forgot to buy it last night.  So my husband is going to pick some up after work, and add it.  I think you should let it marinade for at least 6 hours, for the best flavor.  

  

I am afraid for recipes, I don't really measure things as I could...but I will do my best to write out the exact recipes I did today (adding the lime juice):

Pineapple Salsa

3 small white onions

2 red peppers (when I have yellow, orange, or green I choose one of two different colors)

2 cans of pineapple (I can get rounds but if you want to get one can of chunks one can of crushed, you don't even need to process it)

1/2 cup of jalapinos 

Cilantro to taste

1/2 a cup of lime juice (more or less depending on what you like)

chop of the veggies either by hand or using a food processor.  If you process it, make sure to do each item seperatly so your onions do not turn red, and be careful to leave chunks, not pulverize the veggies to puree.  

Add cilantro and lime juice to taste, and let sit for several hours.  If the flavor is a little lacking, add just a tiny bit of salt to bring the flavors out.  

Bananalicious with Cream-cheese on top!

When I was a child, I always remember that when we had a banana or two that we could not eat on time, my mom would always bag it up, and throw it in the freezer.  It would turn totally black, and be forgotten about for several weeks or months.  Then my mom would pull out one of my favorite books.  The Joy of Cooking.  She had an early 20th century edition, and it was a very delicate book.  The cover was falling off, and the pages were falling out, making where all of her favorite recipes were.  At one point, I remember even memorizing the page number of the banana bread recipe, then taking just the page I needed out of the book, as it has long before left the binding where it found it's home.  Mom and I would bake together, bread, and muffins and we had a great time doing it together.  

Well, I am pretty sure my mom still has that book (it might be strange, but I hope to inherit a maybe one hundred year old, falling apart cook book someday), and I am half a world away, and trying to cook with 100% whole wheat.  I am not sure if that old Joy of Cooking recipe from so long ago would work right with stone milled whole wheat flour.  So, as I usually do, I went online and found myself a recipe. I found my recipe at Breadtopia: ) I had about 12 bananas on one bunch that were all going bad from the second I got them in the door of my house.  The store by me sells split and over ripe bananas like crazy.  So, I had to use them, and use them FAST.  They were turning black on their own, and didn't need any freezer help for that.  

Yesterday was a typhoon day.  There was no work or school because Korea had the strongest typhoon they had seen in a decade roll through.  It hardly hit our area, but we got the day off anyway.  So I decided since I had power, I was going to use up these bananas.  I actually made triple the recipe, so the bananas didn't go bad.  

Because my bananas were not ooey gooey and mushy, as I am used to for banana bread, and my hand mixer always throws more around my kitchen than it keeps in the bowl, I decided to mix all of my ingredients in my food processor.  It pretty much liquefied the banana, and it actually worked out really well.  I transferred the mixture into a bowl to add the flour, because there was not enough room in the processor bowl to keep mixing.

After it was all mixed, I poured the batter into a loaf pan.  One recipe worth of batter filled up one loaf pan pretty well.  

Then, this being the first thing I baked in my new oven, I kept my eye on it like a hawk.  I pulled it out a few times, and when a chopstick came out of the very center clean, I knew it was done.  And let me tell you, it was a beautiful thing!

  

This bread was not cool before it was cut and had butter smothered on top.  It definitely brought me back to when I was a little girl, and my mom and I were baking out of that old cook book together again.

I will admit, this first batch, I mixed up my baking soda and powder, and added the wrong one.  So, it did not rise quite like it should, but it still turned out amazing.  

The second and third batch I did together.  

I mixed it all in my food processor until I had to add the four, and transferred it to a bowl.  I wound up making 26 muffins 

After that, I made a quick cream cheese frosting by combining 16 oz of cream cheese to 1 stick of butter.  Once those were combined and creamy, I added two cups of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla.  

*Just a note on powdered sugar, if you don't have enough, put regular white sugar into a  coffee grinder for a few seconds, and voila!  perfect powdered sugar.  

Moist Whole Wheat Banana Bread Recipe and Instructions:

Be sure to use ultra ripe bananas for this. Their skins should be mottled black and they should feel soft to the touch. Using what you would normally consider to be ripe bananas will diminish the bread’s rich flavor.

½ cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter

½ cup (3 ¾ ounces) packed light or dark brown sugar

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ½ cups (~ 12 ounces) mashed ripe banana (3-4 medium to large bananas)

¼ cup (3 ounces) honey (I used sugar – works fine)

2 large eggs

2 cups (8 ounces) whole wheat flour, traditional or white whole wheat (I found that 2 cups was closer to 10 ounces – guess my whole wheat is heavy)

½ cups (2 ounces) chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees. Lightly grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.

Beat together the butter, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla in a medium bowl until smooth. Add the banana, honey and eggs, beating until smooth. Add the flour and nuts, stirring until smooth. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and let it rest at room temperature, uncovered for 10 minutes.

Bake the bread for 50 minutes. Lay a piece of foil gently across the top and bake until a cake tester (like a toothpick) inserted into the center comes out clean, 10 to 15 minutes more. Remove the bread from the oven and allow it to cool for 10 minutes before turning it out of the pan onto a rack to cool completely.

*I used Bob's Red Mill Flour in this recipe

and this really yummy vanilla that my mom was kind enough to send me from home

Chicken Piccata~My New Favorite!

So in my requests for food ideas on facebook, my friend Sarah suggested Chicken Piccata.  Okay, I have heard of it before, but never knew what in the heck it was.  I looked it up and decided to add it to my list.  I made the same broccoli that I made with my Cilantro Lemon Lime Chicken  recipe a few days ago.  This meal is so simple it blows me away, but it is packed with flavor, and really very good!

So, I pretty much followed the directions offered  on Simplerecipes.com.  

It starts with butterflying the chicken, so it is nice and thin, and it will cook quickly.  

Next I mixed together the breading.  I didn't measure anything, and I kinda improvised on my breading.  I put flour, thyme, powdered Parmesan cheese, garlic, salt, and pepper into the breading.  Then I mixed it all together.  I heated the pan, and added the oil and butter.  I fried the chicken, flipping it after about three minutes. After cooking all four pieces until they were golden brown on the outside, and cooked until done on the inside, I took them out of the pan, and put them on a plate in the boiler of the oven just to keep them crispy while I finished dinner.  

The sauce was beyond easy.  Just put 1/2 a cup of chicken broth, 1/4 cup of rinsed capers and a few table spoons of lemon juice into the already hot pan, and cook until reduced.  The flour from frying thickens the sauce in the pan and you cook it until it has reduced by half.  

At this point I put the sauce in a pitcher style measuring cup, and took the pan off the heat.  I replaced it with my grill pan on the stove top and turned on the fire to heat it up a bit.  Then I cut up some broccoli and put it in a dish with a lid.  I dumped in some oil, and a bunch of seasonings, espeically cayenne pepper, a little thyme, and a little garlic.  I put a lid on and shook like crazy until it was all well coated.

And Voila!

  Incredibly easy dinner!  This meal took maybe 20 minutes from start to finish, and was very light.  It packs a punch with the lemon juice in the sauce, and any extra pepper you may choose to add, but I swear, I have a new favorite way to cook chicken!  Thanks to my friend for recommending this preparation.  I love learning new things!

Dangerously Cheesy Mac and Cheese

Hi there,

So I asked on my facebook for people's favorite comfort foods...the food that takes you home, when you are feeling a little down in the dumps, or even a special food that just makes you feel the warm fuzzies.  I got several ideas of things to cook in the near future, but today I was excited. I got several suggestions of homemade mac and cheese, and one person said that she loved it with bacon over the top. Today I have a new oven, and I had to get it set up to use it!  This is my Dangerously Cheesy Mac and Cheese.  I stole some ideas from Emril, although didn't follow his directions exactly.

The first thing I did was cut up a package of Low Sodium Bacon from COSTCO.  After I let it thaw I used kitchen sheers to cut it in to small pieces and threw it into a frying pan.

I fried it until crispy, and took the meat out and set it aside.  I let the pan cool a bit, and poured out the grease.  This is part of the deviation from the original recipe, my next step was adding back four tablespoons of the grease into the pan (instead of butter), put it back on low heat, and added four tablespoons of flour.  

I whisked it together, and another of my variations was adding my almond milk instead of a dairy base like cream or milk.  I was surprised how quickly it thickened up.

I grated parmesan cheese, and threw it in (maybe 1/2 a cup), along with seasonings to taste.

I whisked them all together and set the bechamel sauce aka rue, to the side for the bit, once it was nice and thick and all the cheese was melted.  

Next I grated four types of cheese in my food processor and mixed them together in a bowl.  I used Parmesan, Medium Cheddar, Pepper Jack, and Provalone.

Next I set those aside, and boiled my organic pasta from COSTCO.  

After the pasta was cooked to aldente, I added in the bechamel sauce and some of the bacon and stirred until coated.  

I stired it all together, and put a layer of noodles in my pan, and the cheese mixture sprinkled on top.  then I put another layer of noodles, and another layer of cheese, and did that one more time.  I layered it like lasagna.  Looking like this when I was done.

Then it went in the oven for about 20-30 minutes.  It goes in until the top is nice and crunchy brown.  Mine came out just a little too soon, but it turned out looking like this:

   

I opened two cans of green beans and nooked them.  Then served... 

Doesn't that look incredible?  It tasted even better...

Honestly, I had enough pasta to fill another pan half way up, and enough cheese to put on top.  I only used half of the bechamel sauce though, and unfortunately didn't do anything with it.  

It is even good for lunch today.  

Okay, now back to healthier stuff...last night ooey gooey mac and cheese just sounded amazing!  <3