Vegetable Kabobs

Kabobs are a fun way to eat dinner- fun to make too! You can choose any vegetables you like, even add meat or seafood if you wish, and have fun threading them on the skewers.

What I love about this recipe is that it can be made year-round, either on a grill or baked in the oven. To serve, simply place the kabobs over rice, couscous, or orzo.

Ingredients:

olive oil
salt and pepper
garlic powder
oregano
half an onion (any kind), cut in pieces
grape tomatoes
small white mushrooms
1/2 a green pepper, cut in pieces
1/2 a red pepper, cut in pieces
soy meatballs- 3 per skewer

1.) Preheat your oven to 450.

2.) Grease a baking dish.

3.) Thread cut vegetables and soy meatballs onto the skewers, putting a mushroom at both ends to hold everything in place.

4.) Once the skewers are complete, place in the baking dish, then sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano.

5.) Bake for 25 minutes, turning the skewers once, or until vegetables are tender. Serve immediately.

Balsamic Chicken with Baby Spinach

This was a very tasty and unique way to cook chicken. I wasn't sure how balsamic vinegar would taste with all the ingredients, but it added a nice sweetness to this dish. This is a great weeknight meal as it's quick and easy, and healthy too!

I used Israeli couscous, which I found helped soak up the extra liquid nicely and tasted delicious.

You can find this recipe here.

Peanut Chicken with Cabbage Slaw

One of my favorite magazines is Everyday Food. I have a bunch of them as I inherited my grandma's copies, and had my own subscription for a year while I was in college. It's a fun foodie magazine- lots of colorful pictures, meal plans, shopping lists, and basic information, such as how to cook a basic meatloaf.

In many of these magazines, there is a section called Cooking for One. Now, while I cook for two, if I want to eat meat, it is cooking for one. Hence, today's recipe. It's a fresh take on Chinese/Asian, and I loved the cabbage slaw- the perfect accompaniment to the chicken.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast half (about 6 ounces)
coarse salt and ground pepper
4 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 cup shredded cabbage
2 scallions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 small carrot, shredded
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon smooth peanut butter
1 teaspoon reduced-sodium soy sauce

1.) In a small skillet, heat vegetable oil over medium. Season chicken with salt and pepper; cook until browned and opaque throughout, about 6 minutes per side.

2.) Meanwhile, make slaw: In a medium bowl, whisk 3 teaspoons vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil. Add cabbage, scallions, carrot, and ginger; toss to combine. Set aside.

3.) Make sauce: In a small bowl, stir together peanut butter, soy sauce, and remaining teaspoon vinegar; if necessary, thin with water.

4.) Mound slaw on a serving plate. Thinly slice chicken crosswise on the diagonal. Place alongside slaw; spoon a little sauce on the plate, and serve remaining sauce on the side.

*I add some cut up peanuts to my sauce for an extra crunch.

Hoisin Tofu and Almonds

Another tofu recipe! This one is similar to ones I've made before, but uses lots of hoisin (as the title indicates) and has the crunchy addition of almonds. I found this recipe on a vegetarian blog, which I will now be frequenting quite often, veggienumnum.com

This was a good dish, but I would bake the tofu first. Normally that is what I do, but I thought I'd try it again in a pan, and it just proves to be too soft and mushy, often breaking apart and not staying in chunks. It also didn't get as crispy as I had hoped. So from now on- bake that tofu!

Ingredients:

10 1/2 oz. firm tofu
1 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 red and 1 green bell pepper, sliced
5 shallots, sliced
5 1/4 oz. button mushrooms, sliced
1 garlic clove, diced
2 1/2 oz. almonds

Sauce-

1 T cornstarch
1 T soy sauce
1 T hoisin sauce

Batter-

1 egg white
1 teaspoon salt
1 T cornstarch
1 T hoisin sauce


1.) Cut the tofu into chunks and soak in the stock for 30 minutes. Strain, reserving the stock, and drain the tofu well on paper towels.

2.) To make the sauce, blend the cornstarch with the reserved stock, hoisin sauce, and soy sauce in a medium pot. Bring the sauce to a boil, stir, until it turns dark in color and has thickened; 4-5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

3.) To make the batter, lightly whisk the egg white, then mix in the cornstarch, salt and hoisin sauce to form a light batter. Toss the drained tofu in the batter to coat well.

4.) In a large frying pan, add oil and fry tofu til crisp and golden. Drain the tofu. Add the veggies and fry. Add the tofu and toss til heated through. Add the sauce and combine well. Finally, add almonds.

*You can serve this as is, or over rice or noodles.

Glazed Lemon Bundt Cake

One of my very first blog posts was sharing the recipe for a delicious lemon tart, a tart that I made for dinner guests who ended up getting sick and canceling.

This beautiful bundt cake was made for those same dinner guests- who months later, after lots of scheduling for both of us, finally made it to our apartment for a meal. I didn't want to make the exact same dessert, but went with the same flavor: lemon!

This recipe comes from allrecipes.com, and is absolutely delicious. I just cannot get enough of lemon, and this cake not only has the lemon zest (which you can see beautifully speckled in each slice), but also uses the juice to create a sweet glaze that oozes over the top, and spills down the sides.

Ingredients:

Cake-

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon extract
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 T grated lemon peel

Glaze-

1/4 cup lemon juice
1 T water
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
3/4 cup sugar


1.) In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the extracts.

2.) Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add this to the creamed mixture, alternately with milk. Stir in the lemon peel.

3.) Pour the batter into a greased and floured bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 60-70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert the cake onto a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes longer.

4.) Place the rack on waxed paper. Combine the glaze ingredients and drizzle over the warm cake. Cool completely before serving.

*Serves 12.

Asparagus Stir Fry

I've been wanting to try this recipe from 101 Cookbooks.com.blog for quite some time. It combines one of my favorite (but for some reason rarely eaten) vegetables, asparagus, with tofu. It has an Asian flair, lots of spice, and intense flavor. Definitely will make again!

Ingredients:

a couple big pinches of fine grain sea salt
toasted sesame oil
8 oz. extra-firm tofu, cut into slices pencil thick
4 green onions, thinly sliced
scant 1 T freshly grated ginger (peeled)
1/2 t. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 a bunch of asparagus, trimmed, cut in 1 inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 big handful toasted cashews, chopped a bit
a few handfuls of spinach, kale, or chard
zest and juice of 1 lime
2 T hoisin sauce
1 small handful each of fresh slivered mint and fresh slivered basil

1.) Have all the ingredients prepped. Heat a splash of sesame oil in a large pan, or well-seasoned wok over medium-high heat. Alternately, you can do this in a large nonstick dry pan. When hot, add tofu and cook until golden, a few minutes. Remove tofu from pan and set aside.

2.) Add another (generous) splash of oil to the pan, and as soon as it's hot, add onions, ginger, red pepper flakes, asparagus, and salt. Stir fry for a minute, then add garlic, cashews, and spinach/kale/chard. Stir fry another minute, until the spinach wilts. Return the tofu to the pan. Stir in the lime zest and juice, and the hoisin sauce. Cook for 10-20 seconds, stirring all the while. Remove from the heat, and stir in the mint and basil.


*I made a few changes to this recipe:

-I baked the tofu to get it crispy. I did this by wrapping the tofu in paper towels and putting it between two plates to get as much liquid out as possible. I then sliced it into strips and put it on a baking sheet. I baked it for 30 minutes at 375, turning the pieces halfway through the baking time. Once they had cooled a bit, I then diced them and had them ready to add to the recipe.

-I used almonds instead of cashews, and skipped the mint and used dried basil.


This was a delicious recipe. As I said earlier, it is spicy. Next time, I will for sure cut back on the red pepper flakes, probably just 1/8 teaspoon. Otherwise, this was a nice change from our typical meals- and very healthy!

Buttermilk Biscuits

Second buttermilk recipe. Biscuits seemed like a good choice- unfortunately, I am not yet sure what I will serve them with, so they are currently in the freezer.

This is another Joy of Cooking recipe.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoons salt (I used 1/2 teaspoon)

1.) Whisk the above ingredients together in a large bowl.

2.) Drop into the bowl 5 to 6 tablespoons of cold, unsalted butter, cut in small pieces. (I used 5 tablespoons.) You then need to cut the butter into the dough- if you don't have a pastry blender, like me, you can use a fork to mash the butter around the flour. You need to get the mixture to become crumbly (Joy of Cooking says it will resemble breadcrumbs, with the largest pieces pea-sized.)

3.) Add 3/4 cup buttermilk and stir good.

4.) Gather the dough into a ball and knead it gently against the sides and bottom of the bowl 5 to 10 times, turning and pressing any loose pieces into the dough each time until they adhere and the bowl is fairly clean.

5.) Put the dough on a floured surface and roll out to 1/2 inch thick. You can then make round biscuits using either a round cutter or the top of a glass, or made square biscuits by rolling the dough into a rectangle and cutting it into squares. (I made round biscuits using a glass.)

6.) Put the biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet, brush the tops with melted butter or milk to make them brown (optional), and stick them in a 450 degree oven for 10-12 minutes. (I did for 12 minutes.)

7.) Let the biscuits cool a bit. Serve them hot.