Pumpkin Cupcakes w/ Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Okay, so these are definitely not healthy, which is why I made them for Steve to take away to a group thing. Thus I only ended up eating 1. The Cupcake recipe comes from Martha Stewart.com and the frosting is from the internet.


Pumpkin Cupcakes Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg ( i was out of this and the allspice so I left them out)
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter (melted)
• 4 eggs beaten
• 1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease your cupcake pan or stick the little liners in it.














In a bowl mix together flower, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice.














Now the recipe says to mix the other stuff in a different bowl and then to add this mixture into it. I was out of clean bowls so this is what I do (Also saves you dish washing time). Make a well in the dry mixture so push all the dry ingredients out of the middle.

In center of dry ingredients add sugars, butter, and eggs. Whisk them together then stir in the dry ingredients.














Add the pumpkin and mix well.














I used my hand mixer just to make it nice and smooth.














Fill cupcake holders about 1/2 full and stick in the oven for 20-25 minutes.














Let cool completely before frosting.
















Cream Cheese Cinnamon Frosting Ingredients:

• 8 oz cream cheese - room temperature
• 1/4 cup butter - room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I used about 2 tsp. I found 1 tsp didn't really hold it's own against the cream cheese flavor)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
  

Cream together butter and cream cheese.














Again a hand mixer comes in well, or if you are lucky you have a stand mixer (and I am very jealous of you).














Add vanilla and cinnamon














Add powdered sugar

Now I wanted to make them look pretty so I went and bought a frosting tip and a thing. They were 99 cents are Micheal's. Then I made up my own pastry bag...Thanks Alton Brown!

Put tip on top of white thing (called a coupler I think).

Take a zip lock bag and cut a small hole in one corner.

Push tip through hole from inside the bag

Put the white screw on part around the tip on the outside of the bag to hold it together.














Put frosting in bag and have at it.















This will get very messy, my bag ripped so I had to make a new one. Maybe freezer bags would hold up better, I was using sandwich bags.

Enjoy!














Nutrition 1 cupcake with cream cheese frosting (recipe makes 24):
Calories: 279.8
Carbs: 37g
Fat: 13.9g
Protein: 3.1g

Mummas Meat Loaf

Tonight I decided to make up my mom's tasty meatloaf and some little sweet potatoes we found at the farmers market. We also had a little left over Swiss Chard that I needed to use up so that became our appetizer.


Swiss Chard & Garlic

Ingredients:














-Swiss Chard
-2tbsp Olive Oil
-Garlic

Heat up oil in pan on medium high. Throw in minced garlic.














While that's heating up cut up your swiss chard. You want to just cut the stalks off. Throw these in the pan and cook about 5 minutes on each side til brown and crispy.














Eat!














Things I learned: You do not need 2tbsp of olive oil. This is how much I used and maybe it was because I only used a couple of leaves, but they ended up a little oily (and more caloric than I would have liked). Next time if I cook the same amount I will probably use less oil and add more garlic, cause I love garlic :).

Meat Loaf

This is my moms famous meatloaf. (The only difference is I substituted ground beef for ground turkey to be a little more healthy)

Ingredients:














-1lbs ground turkey
-1 cup bread crumbs
-1 small onion
-1/2 green pepper
-Ketchup
-Garlic

Preheat your oven to 350 (Throw in your sweet potatoes if you are making those since they take longer to cook)

Cut up your onion and green pepper and mince your garlic.














In your mixing bowl mix the meat and bread crumbs together. My mom didn't give me measurements so I went with a cup of bread crumbs and it seemed to be a good amount.














Add the egg and mix that in. The easiest way to mix this stuff is to just stick your hands in it and have at it.














Add the garlic, pepper, onion, and some ketchup (about 1 tbsp) and mix. Throw that in a greased loaf pan.














Add some more ketchup on top.














Throw that in the oven for about 40 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees.
Enjoy!!





























Things I learned: Next time I will use more than one pound of turkey, again no measurements so I just kind of went with it. I think 2lbs would probably make a full loaf pan. Also I think next time I will line the pan in foil and make a little handle. It was difficult to get the meatloaf out without destroying it or having it upside down. Also I will maybe add some spices, like some basil or rosemary.

Nutrition: Swiss Chard
Calories: 161
Carbs: 9g
Fat: 14g
Protein: 4g

Nutrition: Meatloaf (1 slice, a pan makes 6 slices)
Calories: 203.5
Carbs: 16.4g
Fat: 7.1g
Protein: 18.3g

Nutrition: Sweet Potato w/ 1tsp brown sugar
Calories: 71
Carbs: 16g
Fat: 0g
Protein: 1g

Baked Chicken w/ Asparagus Pesto

Tonight's dinner used a recipe from Mike and Rachel's blog: Asparagus Pesto!

We served the pesto with baked chicken and a nice green salad. I'll leave the pesto instructions to Mike and Rachel, but here's how we did up the chicken!

First I had to skin the chicken breasts. Before:














After:














Then I set them on little squares of aluminum foil and sprayed them down with lemon.














Then throw whatever spices you may desire on them (I chose rosemary, thyme and basil).














Now wrap your little chicken up nice and tight. I prefer to double wrap them to prevent juice leaking etc.














Throw them in the oven at 400 degrees and cook for about 35 minutes.

Next make up a nice salad using whatever veggies you have at the moment (ours included spinach, tomatoes, and green peppers). I topped my salad with a little balsamic vinegar.

Serve it all up and enjoy!














Bonus pic of Steve grating Parmesan cheese for 6 hours ( Take this advice: buy pre-shredded Parmesan cheese, it is NOT worth the effort!)




















Nutrition Chicken ( 1 breast w/ no skin):
Calories: 260
Fat: 3g
Carbs: 0g
Protein: 54g

Nutrition Salad(118g w/ 1/2tbsp balsamic vinegar):
Calories: 23
Fat: 0g
Carbs: 5g
Protein: 1g

Nutrition Pesto(60g):
Calories: 183.3
Fat: 17.9g
Carbs: 3.1g
Protein: 4g

Roasted Pork Loin & Sweet Potatoes

We like to make pork loin on Sunday, it's a nice yummy sit down dinner and it just seems like a Sunday type food. It's also super easy and very good for you.

I found a little digital camera so the pictures might be poor BUT I can take lots of pictures. Yay!

So first take your sweet potatoes and stab them all over so they don't explode. Heat your oven up to 450 and throw them in there.














Next let's get the pork ready.

Throw your pork onto a baking sheet and cut some little slits on top.

I got nifty little prep bowls today that I am very excited so I used those. In my little bowl I threw in some rosemary, thyme, and basil.














Now rub this all over your pork and make sure you get it down into those slits you cut.














Next I minced up some garlic, i also got a new garlic press...woot! Rub that all over too.














Finish off the pork by putting some bay leaves on top and down into the slits. Throw that into the oven.














Let stuff cook for ROUGHLY an hour. This is a good time to have a meat thermometer. Make sure your pork is at 160 degrees. Check it often so you can pull it out as soon as it's done so you get a nice moist pork loin. You will know your sweet potatoes are done when they are nice and soft.

Serve your sweet potato with a little butter and brown sugar and I went for some applesauce to dip my pork into. Enjoy!


Nutrition Pork Loin (4.6 oz pork, includes 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce) : Calories: 237
Fat: 9g
Carbs: 14g
Protein: 24g

Nutrition Sweet Potato (includes 1 tsp butter and 1 tsp brown sugar): Calories: 213
Fat: 4g
Carbs: 41g
Protein: 4g

Spring = ASPARAGUS

Asparagus is one of the best vegetables ever! Not only is it insanely tasty and versatile, it's super healthy for you. Check it out ( and this website that Lizz showed me!) at whfoods.org.
While I was browsing around on this website I came across something they call Healthy Sauteing. Basically cook up your food without using oil or butter, instead you use chicken broth, so that's what I tried tonight!


Chicken Asparagus Stir Fry:
Ingredients

• 3 Chicken Breasts
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 bunch asparagus (fresh from the farmers market, yay!)
• some ginger
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 4 tbsp chicken broth

First I find it easier if you just cut everything up and put it in little prep dishes that way once you have stuff on the stove you're not running around trying to chop stuff etc. So cut up everything.
-A neat trick about peeling ginger that I saw on some PBS cooking show: Peel it with a spoon. Just scrape a spoon over the skin and voila.
-You can also mince or chop your garlic. I do both because minced is nice to mix into the other foods for flavor and such, but i also like to eat garlic so I like some bigger pieces in there.

Once everything is all chopped up put your broth in a pan and throw in the garlic and onion. Cook for a few minutes (about 3) til done. Add the chicken and ginger and cook until chicken is done. Then add the rest of your ingredients and cover.
Cook for about 5ish more minutes or until your asparagus is cooked to your liking!
This would be yummy served over some brown rice (which i actually made but i forgot to start it til the food was almost done...oops)

Speaking of rice I would like to take this moment to suggest that everyone go buy a rice cooker...there, life = easier.


Hooray a tasty healthy meal super fast.
(I have to eat good today cause I have a whopper of a dessert planned for Saturday :))

Nutrition Chicken Asparagus Stir Fry (1 serving = 6.6oz):
Calories: 231.4
Fat: 2.5g
Protein: 43.6g (!)
Carbs: 6.8g

Nutrition Brown Rice (1 cup):
Calories: 218.4
Fat: 1.6g
Protein: 4.5g
Carbs: 45.8g

Happy St. Pattys Day!

Today we made a yummy Irish meal. Beef Stew and Irish Soda bread.

The stew is pretty much your basic stew I'll list what we put in it but feel free to try different variations of veggies and such.

Beef Stew:
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1.5 lbs chuck roast (this is a good way to cook this kind of meat which is usually pretty cheap but can be tough. Stewing it makes it nice and tender though!)
2 tbsp flour
1 small onion
a few garlic cloves
1 can tomato paste
2 cups beef broth
12 oz of beer ( you want to use a stout or porter, we used Yuengling Porter)
4 cups sliced carrots
2 large potatoes



Heat oil in a big pot or dutch oven ( we just got a new dutch oven...yay!) Chop up your beef, coat it in flour and throw in the pot to brown. Remove the meat from the pot and add the onions til tender.

Throw everything back into the pot and let simmer over low heat for an hour. Stir occasionally.


Irish Soda Bread (Recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman):
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
4 cups flour
2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
butter

Mix dry ingredients together, add in milk. Stir til dough forms. Put it on a floured counter and knead for a few minutes til smooth and stretchy. I guess i'm a slow kneader cause the recipe says 3 minutes but I went for about 5.

Let sit on the counter for a few minutes while you preheat your oven to 375

Grease up your baking sheet with butter, throw the dough on the pan and stick in the oven for 45 minutes. In the case of all breads as far as i've found, take it out flip it over and tap it. If it sounds hollow you're golden!

Now enjoy your Irishy meal! huzzah

Nutrition Info Stew: Makes 8 Servings
Calories: 269
Carbs: 29.9g
Fat: 5.2g
Protein: 22g

Nutrition Info Soda Bread: 2 oz serving
Calories: 164
Carbs: 31.8g
Fat: 2.8g
Protein: 3.7g

Pizza Time!

So tonight is home-made tortilla pizzas. You could easily buy store bought tortillas and use those, but homemade ones taste sooo good and are super easy to make. The toppings are completely up to you too, but tonight we decided on roasted red pepper and eggplant with mozzarella cheese!

Tortilla Recipe ( I should probably credit sources eh?...Recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. If you don't have this book get it. )

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp butter or oil (I've used both and they both work equally well)
• 1/2 cup warm water

Mix together flour, salt and oil/butter. Slowly add the water while mixing. Once the dough is formed flour up your counter and your hands and knead it for a few minutes til it's smooth and stretchy. Cut it into 6 equal pieces and roll them out nice and thin.

Get your cast iron pan heating on medium heat (any skillet will work, but cast iron ones are especially nice, if you don't have one you should definetly go get one!) Once heated, throw the tortilla on there for a few minutes on each side til brown spots appear. yay you made tortillas!

For our pizzas we wanted egg plant and red pepper so we cut the eggplant up and left the pepper whole and threw it onto a baking sheet and into the oven for a few minutes because eggplant takes a while to cook.

When those are done load up your tortilla with some pizza sauce. We tossed the eggplant(50 grams) in a little olive oil(1 tsp) then put that and the peppers(67 grams) on. Covered it in mozzarella(30 grams) and oregano, into the oven for 15 minutes or so and voila!

Enjoy!

Nutrition Info on 1 Pizza
Calories: 390
Fat: 14
Carbs: 36
Protein: 12

Tasty Thai

First post! yay!
I know the title of this blog is lame. Give it time, we'll come up with something more witty. Anyways here is a blog of our fun food creations! hope you enjoy!

Starting off, here is a nice three course Thai dish that I put together. Enjoy!

Appetizer: Chicken Satay

Chicken Kabob Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
  
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
  
• juice from 1/2 lime
  

In a bowl add the vegetable oil, sesame oil, and lime juice. Mix it up.

Cut the chicken into nice little cubes. Add those to the bowl, mix it up, cover and chill in the fridge for an hour.

While that is chilling, put your skewers into some water so they don’t burn when you cook them.

1 hour later

Start your Satay sauce

Sauce Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 small onion
• 1 green chili
• 1 garlic clove
• ½ cup crunch peanut butter
• 6-8 tbsp of water
• ½ lime juice

Cut up your onion, chili, and garlic

Put your oil in a skillet over low heat. Throw in your chopped up veggies and sauté til soft.

Add your peanut butter, water, and lime juice and let simmer til the peanut butter is nice and soft and dip consistency.

If you need to, add more water. I started with 6 tbsp and then added 2 more.

While that is simmering drain your chicken cubes and put them on the skewers.

Put under a broiler for about 10 minutes turning frequently.

When cooked through take out and serve with warm dip. YUM!

Main Dish: Pork w/ Green Beans

Ingredients:

• 2tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 shallots
• 8oz pork fillet
• ½ tsp galangal
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 ½ cups chicken stock (no I don’t have any homemade right now :’( sorry)
• 4 tbsp chili sauce
• 4 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
• 8 oz green beans
• noodles to serve it on (optional)I am using Udon noodles

Chop up shallots, garlic, and pork.

Put oil in pan on medium low heat. Add shallots, garlic, pork, and galangal. Fry til the pork is nice and brown.

Add chicken stock, chili sauce, and peanut butter. Stir until peanut butter is nice and smooth.

Add green beans simmer for a bit. While this is simmering get your noodles going.

Serve!

Dessert: Peanut Butter Banana Crepes & Green Mint Chai

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cu ps flour
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 ¾ cup milk
• grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
• butter
• [*]3 bananas
• 4 tbsp corn syrup
• ¼ cup smooth peanut butter

Combine flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl.

Slowly add milk to make a smooth batter. Grate your lemon and stir in the rind.

Set the batter aside for a few minutes while we make the filling.

Put the peanut butter in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for a few seconds til melty. Stir in juice of lemon and corn syrup.

Chop up the three bananas and add them to the mixture. Stir it up so the bananas are nice and coated.

Before we make the crepes let’s get the tea ready. Put tea in pot and water on stove to boil. Yay.

Heat up pan and throw some butter on there. Once nice and hot pour some crepe batter in the pan swirl it around so it covers the whole pan and let cook. Flip let cook for a few more seconds.

Pour water into tea pot let steep .

Serve it up!