Sometimes We Only Use Two Ingredients for Dessert

In our house we like dessert.  I am so glad I married someone who also has a bit of a sweet tooth!  We enjoy all sorts of desserts.  We love fruity ones like the these no sugar added mango fruit roll-ups, fruit crumbles like this one, and, of course, we love chocolate.  I have to hide open bags of chocolate chips or else they will "disappear" before we use them in a recipe!  

Sunday evening we realized we did not have any dessert options other than chocolate covered popcorn (it is delicious!) until....Jeffy remembered we had brownie mix and pumpkin purée!  Luckily, pumpkin is a fruit, so we are technically still eating a fruity dessert with chocolate!!!!  It's the best of both worlds!  (Cue Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus....)  It does mean that my butternut squash soup is technically a fruit soup....but we are not going to dwell on that!

We started making this after being inspired by a Pinterest pin using only those two ingredients to make delicious brownies.  The original recipe also has a frosting, but that makes the somewhat healthy (hey, pumpkin has lots of nutritional benefits!) brownies seem completely indulgent.

To make these tasty brownies you preheat your oven to 350, prepare a baking dish (we are stuck with 8x8 glass containers because an old roommate used to cook pork shoulder in MY brownie tray....the nerve!) with cooking spray (we use a coconut oil one!), and stir the two ingredients together.

Yes, you literally add a can of pumpkin purée to a box of brownie mix and stir.

After mixing, your creation will look nice and glossy, like this:

One of the nicest things about this recipe is that you do not feel slightly guilty at all for eating the batter because there are no eggs!

Jeffy likes the delicious batter!

You bake in your baking dish for 35 minutes at 350.  Test the brownies by sticking in and removing a toothpick.  If a lot of cake comes off, then you should allow them to cook a little longer.  We used a Family Size box at 350 degrees and it took about 45 minutes to cook through and create the delicious brownie you see below.  It is not perfectly smooth and crumbly on top like a traditional brownie because it is essentially a different product.  It's a slightly healthier one! 

The finished product!

We cleaned out that 8x8 dish of brownies in only three days....they're that good!

Here is the "recipe" for this simple concoction! 

Two Ingredient Pumpkin Brownies

Ingredients:

- Can of pumpkin purée (recipes always remind you to use purée and not pie filling, so here is my reminder to you!)

- Box of brownie mix (we used a Family Size box for thick brownies and so we can eat more batter)

- Cooking spray (we use coconut oil spray) or butter 

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  In a large bowl, mix together the brownie mix and entire can of pumpkin purée so it is all incorporated and seems glossy.  (TASTE IT BECAUSE IT IS SAFE!  NO EGGS IN THIS MIX!)

3.  Prepare your baking dish with cooking spray or butter.  

4.  Bake for 35 minutes and test with a toothpick.  If it is clean-ish, remove and let cool for a minute.  If it is not clean, bake for a few minutes longer.  Ours took 45 minutes in an 8x8 baking dish because we make them thicker using a Family Size box.

5.  Remember, these are not traditional brownies.  They will appear glossy on top throughout the few days they last in your house.  It is ok!  Keep eating them!

6.  Enjoy!

Sometimes I Make 100% Natural Desserts (Without Sugar!)!

One of my favorite things in a dessert is fruit.  Don't get me wrong - I am an adult and female, so I do love dark chocolate, but there is something fun about making a sweet treat using fruit.  I made this easy apple galette a few times last fall:

I had three people in mind making the 100% fruit, nothing added mango fruit roll-ups - me (part of the joy of cooking to me is making something relatively healthy that I will enjoy), Jeffy (it is also fun to cook for adorable husbands who can take treats easily with them while biking!), and, of course, my Lisa-buddy who loves her fruit and veggies and anything that seems like a special treat!

I made it the evening I also cooked this butternut squash soup.  Apparently orange food was all the rage that day, even though it took so long to make the treat that Jeffy did not get to try it until the next day!

This recipe is literally nothing but the actual fruit "fruit roll-up".  I used mangoes because I love them and I was able to find three fantastic ones at Trader Joe's.  Once you have acquired the delicious looking mangoes, you have to somehow get out the actual fruit.  Yes, the traditional method of cutting the fruit close to the pit into halves and then scoring it with a knife not quite through the skin and finally popping out the fruit into lovely cubes is fantastic when one wants to snack on some mango (I just enjoyed some before writing this post, but sadly little Lisa was suspicious of this fruit she had enjoyed just one week ago in a different form!).  However, if you want to use as much of the fruit as possible and you do not need lovely cubes because you a puréeing it in the blender/food processor anyway, I suggest using a peeler and then cutting it into bigger chunks like below.

Peeling the skin from the mango ensures you get more fruit and saves you several knife strokes!  (Pardon the terrible manicure, I am going this weekend, I promise!)

My lovely larger and non-uniform mango chunks prior to blending. 

Once you have peeled, sliced, and tossed your mangoes into the blender....BLEND IT!

The three mangoes I used yielded about four cups of sweet, delicious, NATURAL purée.

After blending, you want to spread the purée on one or two parchment paper (or SilPat) covered cookie sheets with a rim on them so the purée stays contained.  The purée should only be about 1/8 to 1/4" thick.  I spread it evenly using a spoon, but if you have an offset spatula, that would work best.    Then you pop them into the oven at the very low temperature of 175 degrees.  My oven knob does not even have any numbers below 200, so I started by pre-heating it at 200, then reducing it slightly.  What you are actually doing to the fruit is dehydrating it, not cooking it.  Of course, if you have a fancy dehydrator, then this could be done in that I bet....but this is for regular folks with tiny kitchens!  You cook it long and low for about four hours (mine was slightly thicker, so I recommend checking at three hours to see if it is done), checking it every so often to make sure it is dehydrating and not cooking through, until it becomes glossy and sticky to the touch like one of those less-than-natural concoctions they sell in stores.

It will look something like this:

Dehydration complete!

After it is done dehydrating, you use a spatula to lift the fruit leather from the parchment paper and place it onto a fresh piece of parchment paper.  Using a pair of clean kitchen scissors, cut the whole thing, paper and all, into even strips.

Place onto fresh parchment paper and cut into strips about 1 to 1-1/2" thick.

The next step is actually rolling the treats into fun roll-ups!  I made mine thick and probably could have used a second cookie sheet (our oven is very small, so our cookie sheets are small, so this may not be the case for you with the deluxe ovens out there) to make a few more treats.

The completed roll-ups look like this:

Neat-ishly rolled for consumption!

After my success with the butternut squash soup sharing with little Lisa, we shared a mango fruit roll-up and she loved it!

"It's de-wish-us!"

So I batted a thousand with the orange food that day....felt pretty awesome!


Below is the super simple recipe - remember you have to dedicate a few hours of dehydrating time, so make sure you do not attempt to start this at 7 in the evening on a weeknight!  I plan on attempting this over the weekend using strawberries!

No Sugar Added Mango Fruit Rolls/Fruit Leather

Ingredients:
-Three large mangoes 

Directions:
1.  Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees or to 200 and reduce to just below 200 if your oven knob only goes to 200 like mine!
2.  Peel and slice mangoes getting as much of the fruit as possible.  
3.  Place fruit in blender and purée until smooth.
4.  Prepare a rimmed baking sheet (or two) with parchment paper or a SilPat.  
5.  Spread the purée on the baking sheet(s) to about 1/8" thick using a spoon, offset spatula, or any other tool you have to make it pretty smooth.  
6.  Place the baking sheet(s) in the oven for three to four hours, checking on it periodically to ensure the fruit is dehydrating and not cooking. 
7.  When the fruit is tacky to the touch, remove it from the oven and use a spatula to take it off the fruit leather.  Place it on a new piece of parchment paper.
8.  Use scissors to cut the paper and fruit together into strips, then gently roll them!
9.  Enjoy!

Sometimes I Make Toddler Approved Food!/I WANT SOUP!

I literally have the best "job" in the world.  I get to hang out with my niece (she turns two in less than two weeks!) all day long.  We go to the park, the craft store, the Children's Museum of Manhattan, the train, Starbucks (known to the little one as "BUDDAFALAIE COOKIE!"/that's "butterfly cookie" for those of you not fluent in toddler-ese), story time (Bank Street Bookstore has daily story time and then even have once a week with a fantastic singing story time - check out some of their songs here!), and we cannot wait for it to be a little warmer for more outside time!  The little one also enjoys making up her own songs, singing the ABC Song, identifying colors, shapes, and letters, having epic dance parties, and generally having an awesome time!

My little buddy, Lisa, really loves natural foods.  We share an orange every day (alright, so she kind of hogs it - "MORE PEEZ"- but you get the idea) and she loves carrots, broccoli, cantaloupe, apples, and....you get the idea.  She also loves soup.  I think she might be a soup-a-tarian.  She is incredibly sweet and calm 99% of the time, but one of the demands she sometimes has is her, "I WANT SOUP!" chant.  It is too cute and at least she is asking for something nutritious, so this is an easy toddler demand to fill.  I made an Italian Spinach Orzo Soup for her once and she really enjoyed it (I plan on making that a blog post soon!), so when I decided to make one of our favorites, I brought it to share with the adorable kiddo the next day.

The recipe is probably the simplest soup recipe ever with only six ingredients plus salt!  It is a butternut squash recipe and I know it is toward the very end of the squash season, but we love it so much I had to make it one last time before we can no longer find squash at our beloved Trader Joe's!  We used pre-cut butternut squash because that is all that is left in the stores, but I do love making it in the fall and throughout the winter with whole squash and roasting the seeds covered in a bit of salt in the oven for a great snack.  You also need some onion, green apples (I love using Granny Smith because they add a tiny tart punch to the flavor), chicken broth, rosemary, and bread.  When I lived in Virginia I used to go for the twofer of a delicious rosemary bread for even more of a flavor punch, but I have not found a great substitute for my Kroger bread (I have not really looked hard because I am positive I could find some in the city).  One time I even made this with gluten free bread for my gluten intolerant friend and it still tasted delicious!

When you combine all these ingredients in the pot it kind of looks like a really weird combination....

Everything in the pot!

Not to worry, though, because you bring it to a boil, aggressively season it, and either use a spoon to smash the chunks of apple and squash against the side to incorporate it into the soup or you could use the blender.  We like our soup with a bit more body, so we just manually smash it.

Eventually, your soup will look like this:

Voila!  It cooks down to look like this!

We normally make a sandwich on the side of our soup (or delicious crostini), so we utilize our old friend Jorgé/George Foreman.  Our panini sandwiches are made using any delicious bread (I used a multigrain Anadama bread from Trader Joe's - the origin story at the bottom of the Wiki entry is pretty funny!), some deli meat, and deli-sliced cheese.  If you drizzle a little olive oil on both sides of the bread before placing the sandwich into Jorgé or a fancy-schmancy panini press if you have space for single-function kitchen tools, cook until the cheese is melted, cut in half, then you can have a tasty looking meal like ours!  You could totally make your panini sandwiches with veggies or whatever else you like, we just tend to have a little protein on the side of our hearty vegetable soups!

The finished product complete with grilled panini!

Back to the toddler approval part.  I brought it the next day to share with Lisa unsure whether or not she would be into this particular soup (she does love the color orange, so it had that going for it!).  I got the best approval ever - she started stealing from my bowl when she finished hers!

"I like it!"

Here is the recipe (happy hunting for butternut squash!):

Butternut Squash Soup

(Serves somewhere in the ballpark of a small army/10 - 12)

Ingredients:

- 2 - 20 oz packages of pre-cut butternut squash or 3 pounds of butternut squashes, peeled and seeded

- 2 onions, chopped (I chopped my own onions this time!)

- 4 or 5 slices of bread (I have used rosemary bread, white bread, whole wheat bread, even multigrain or gluten free bread - it all works)

- 4 green apples (I prefer Granny Smith), peeled and roughly chopped

- 2 - 32 oz boxes of chicken broth (I use low sodium because I like to control the salt myself)

- 2-3 tbsp Rosemary (we used dried, but fresh would be great, too), crumbled in your hand or chopped

- salt

Directions:

1.  Chop the onion and start cooking it down in a large pot over medium-low heat while you prepare other ingredients.

2.  Drop the squash, apples, and broth into the pot and raise the heat to high.

3.  Tear the bread into small pieces and drop that into the pot.  

4.  Season the mixture with salt and some of the rosemary (I like to add it several times over the course of the cooking time).  Bring to a boil and turn the temperature down slightly.  

5.  Allow the soup to continue at a low boil and stir every few minutes.  Continue adding seasoning every few times you stir. 

6.  As the ingredients soften, begin smashing them against the side of the pot with a sturdy spoon or against the bottom with potato masher.  Do this gently as the soup is very hot and can hurt if you get splashed!

7.  If you prefer velvety soup, ladle some into the blender, blend it, return it to the pot, and repeat until you blend it all.  

8.  Serve on the side of sandwiches or salad.

9.  Enjoy!  

Sometimes (Alright, Most of the Time) We Lighten Up a Recipe

Ever get completely ready for something, then check your email once you walk out the door and realize that your event was cancelled?  Well that happened to me Sunday afternoon with my soccer game, so we made a grocery list instead!  I mean, I was already wearing my shinguards and socks and only needed to put on my cleats and pre-wrap headband (a must for the wispy hairs!).  We brainstormed a few great meals for the week and headed into battle - I mean the Upper West Side Trader Joe's on a Sunday afternoon in the city.

Trader Joe's (TJ's) at peak times is hectic.  There are times when there is a line waiting to get into the grocery store as if it were a night club.  In spite of this, we love it.  You do perfect the art of shopping there over time and it really is best if you go in pairs.  We embarked on our adventure mid-afternoon, me still wearing all my soccer gear except for the shinguards, Jeffy not wearing a jacket with 20+ mile per hour winds - the usual.  We had a mostly successful trip except the Jewish flatbread we normally use for pizzas was sold out, so we had to improvise with naan.  We survived.  No worries.

The first recipe of the week I wanted to share was our Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta with Broccoli and Chicken.  Instead of a super heavy recipe using a whole stick of butter, a cup of heavy cream, and two whole cups of grated Parmesan like this delicious looking one by The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, we used cauliflower, skim milk, and less than half that amount of Parmesan.  I love cooking with cauliflower because it takes on flavors so well and who would not want to enjoy a vegetable "prized by the court of King Louis XIV"?  Maybe France would have been in better shape if the court shared some of the health benefits of cauliflower with the Third Estate instead of building the amazing, but entirely too extravagant Palace of Versailles, perhaps that little French Revolution thing (you could learn more about here....on my class website from last year!) would not have been quite so bloody.  It would have probably still happened, but sharing healthy veggies would have been a kind gesture.

Alright, back to the actual cooking.  This recipe seems very involved, but it really is not at all.  You start by either cooking the cauliflower in some salted water (salt adds flavor!) or steaming it until you can pierce it with a fork easily.  While that is cooking, you season some grilled chicken and toss it on the grill/Jorgé (our trusty George Foreman), then cut it into bite sized pieces like this:

Jeffy did a nice job grillin' and choppin' the chicken!

Once the chicken is underway, you boil a pot of some more very salted water to cook the pasta in and steam or cook the chopped broccoli in lightly salted water.  When the cauliflower is cooked, you blend it/food process it with a little salt, pepper, two tablespoons (six less than the heavier recipe!) of butter, milk (skim works!), and 3/4 cup shredded Parmesan (instead of two full cups).  Briefly cook this purée with a chopped shallot and combine the sauce with the pasta!

Our combined pasta and sauce mix looked like this:

Combined pasta and sauce, pardon the messy stove!

Top it with chicken, broccoli, and a few more pieces of Parmesan and you have a deliciously filling meal that is less than half the calories of the original recipe!  Our final product looked like this:

We used the sauce and chicken for two nights worth of food and cooked brown rice spaghetti as our pasta of choice on night two with some asparagus (we had eaten the broccoli already on its own by the second cooking!).

Here is the recipe:

Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta with Chicken and Broccoli

(Serves 12 - 16 depending on how much pasta you eat!  We used this for two separate nights worth of meals!  You can easily halve the ingredients if you want just one night.)

Ingredients:

- 3 packages (12 ounces each) cauliflower, or about two medium heads of cauliflower, roughly chopped (going in blender anyway)

- 2 tbsp butter (we always use salted because we like it for our popcorn!)
- 3/4 cup milk (we used skim)
- 3/4 cup shredded or grated Parmesan (we used shredded - it's going into a blender!), plus more to top with
- shallot, chopped

- 3 large chicken breasts

- 2 tbsp olive oil

- 2-3 large stalks of broccoli, chopped

- 2 packages of pasta - we used Gemelli on night one and brown rice spaghetti on night two, but any pasta that holds sauce a little works

- salt

- pepper

Directions:

1.  Begin by either steaming the cauliflower or cooking it in salted boiling water until it can be pierced easily by a fork.  

2.  While the cauliflower is steaming, season both sides of the chicken breasts with olive oil, salt, and pepper and grill until cooked through.  Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and set aside.  

3.  Cook the pasta in heavily salted water to package directions minus one minute of cook time.  Drain and keep about one cup of pasta water for later.  Return the pasta back to the pot.  

4.  Cook the chopped broccoli in lightly salted water or steam it until it can be easily pierced by a fork.  Set aside.  

5.  Into a blender or a food processor, scoop in the cauliflower with a slotted spoon.  Add salt, pepper, butter, milk, and shredded Parmesan.  Blend well.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.  

6.  While you are blending the cauliflower, chop the shallot and cook it in a non-stick skillet with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper about two minutes.  

7.  Combine and cook the cauliflower purée with the cooked shallot over medium heat for one to two minutes.  Then add this mixture to the pasta and stir well.  If the sauce is too thick, this is when you will want to add that good starchy pasta water in small amounts to help the sauce stick to the pasta and to make it even more tasty.  

8.  Finally, plate by scooping pasta into a bowl or onto a dish, then top with a handful of chopped chicken and broccoli and a few pieces of shredded Parmesan on top.

9.  Enjoy!  

Sometimes We Make Pancakes on Sunday!

Long ago in a fairytale world called Lexington, Virginia, I used to walk to 11 AM church service at the Lexington Presbyterian Church and make banana pancakes for brunch before heading to Charlottesville for soccer and ice hockey.  Things are a little different now in the big city and I do not make it to church as often as I would like to (my fault entirely), but I still love to make pancakes on Sunday!  This week's version is healthy (very low in added sugar!) and delicious!

We tend to cook with what we have on hand most Sunday mornings (except when we make delicious Poached Eggs on Avocado Toast), so we used whole wheat flour, rolled oats, pumpkin puree, unsweetened apple sauce instead of oil, and chocolate chips to make....WHOLE WHEAT PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP OAT PANCAKES!  (Yeah, it's a mouthful to say, but a delicious mouthful to eat!)

You may ask why we are still cooking with pumpkin in March and may sound like a good question to you, but I return with why should we limit our love of pumpkin to the fall?  Yes, we cook a ton of pumpkin and squash recipes all fall and winter long like everyone else.  We also used to love the pumpkin spice latte (I got one with way too much syrup and I could feel diabetes creeping into my veins, so I tossed it).  We made this delicious pumpkin spice cake inside of an actual pumpkin:

The recipe was by Katie Lee on The Kitchen (another one of our faves) and is here:

Mini Pumpkin Cakes

We topped it with maple syrup and it was soooooooo delicious!


Alright, back to my actual recipe.  Since we love cooking and we cook a lot of pumpkin-related items, we should have a bottle of pumpkin pie spice, right?  NO!  It is much more fun to make your own spice mix and then you can use the other spices in future recipes!  Through the magic of Google and simple math (not so simple using Common Core math, but that would be an entirely new blog with a lot of anger from most people!), I found a more accurate ratio for my spices than my normal "dash of this, dash of that, did I add all the spices I needed to?"

Enough gibber-jabber, here is are some glorious pictures of my creation (Jeffy helped with the mixing and the eating for this recipe!):

The mixture looked like this - it is thicker than your average pancake!

Four cooking at once! 

Jeffy performing a taste test.  Approved!

My food photography skills are still not improving....

Here is the recipe:

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oat Pancakes

(Yields 12 pancakes)

Ingredients:

- 1 cup whole wheat flour

- 1/2 cup rolled oats

- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 1 3/4 to 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice*

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1/4 cup sugar 

- 1/2 cup chocolate chips

- 2 eggs

- 1 cup (about 2/3 can) pumpkin puree 

- 2 tbsp unsweetened apple sauce

- 1/2 to 3/4 cup milk (we used skim because that's what we had!)

        * Recipe for 1 3/4 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice:

          - 1 tsp ground cinnamon

          - 1/4 tsp ground ginger 

          - 1/4 tsp nutmeg

          - 1/8 tsp ground all spice 

          - 1/8 tsp ground cloves 

Directions:

1.  In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients (from flour through chocolate chips).  Whisk together to ensure distribution of spices.  

2.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones.  I added 1/2 cup of milk originally, but added a little more because it was just a little too thick.  If you want to add more apple sauce for a little more fiber, you only need 1/2 cup of milk.  Making pancakes is about creating a batter where it's slightly runny but these are not like regular pancakes because the addition of oatmeal and delicious pumpkin makes them a little thicker.  Moral:  Add 1/2 cup of milk, then add more to thin it if desired.

3.  Mix to combine ingredients, but do not over mix (the batter gets too tough).  

4.  Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat (or a griddle).  When you splash a few drops of water onto the pan and they bubble, that's when you know it is ready. 

5.  Scoop equal portions (approximately 3 tablespoons) of mix using a spoon or ice cream scoop onto your heated surface.  When pancake surface begins to show bubbles, flip them and cook for a minute or so more.  Put your cooked pancakes on a plate and repeat with the rest of your mixture.

6.  Enjoy!  

Sometimes We Cook on Friday!

Friday is the toughest day for teachers because the exhaustion of the entire week hits hard on Friday around 5PM.  I was really smart and always had a quiz on Friday followed by an independent extra-credit activity so my students knew what to expect and would be calm-ish, cool-ish, and collected-ish.  Jeffy teaches middle school and has adopted my weekly schedule for the most part, so he tries to do a quiz on Friday as well, but he teaches at a charter school, which means longer hours.  He wakes up a little before 6AM, bikes to work, teaches from 8 until 4 (most days he goes three hours straight until 11AM, which takes a lot out of you with sixth graders!), then bikes around Central Park or over to New Jersey to relax a bit after the stress of the day.  It is a long day.  On Friday he normally ends up in bed before 9PM, so we tend to make leftovers.

Not this week!  We cooked a "simple weeknight meal" that we saw Daphne Oz make on The Chew.  Her recipe called for boneless, skinless chicken thighs, but don't ya know there was a run on those last weekend at Trader Joe's?  We used a family pack of bone-in split breasts and drumsticks with skin.  We could have skinned them ourselves and you can certainly do that yourself if you want to make it leaner, but we do not eat much fat during the day anyway other than healthy fats like Jeffy's copious consumption of peanut butter sandwiches or bagels, so we can splurge on the delicious skin.

So, we used bone-in split breasts and drumsticks, then we chopped carrots, fennel, onion, red onion (we had it leftover from our burger night, so why not use it?), and washed teeny-tiny potatoes (that is what the label says at Trader Joe's and they are delicious even if they are slightly smaller than fingerling potatoes, so we did not slice them in half).  We put most of the veggies in a large glass bowl and tossed them in some olive oil and the fennel fronds.  We actually could not fit all of the veggies in one glass bowl, so I dumped them onto prepared cookie sheets (aluminum foil means less dishes....) and put the rest of the veggies in the bowl for their olive oil bath.  We placed the chicken in the center of the cookie sheets (we have a rather small oven - I had to measure it when I was shopping for cookie sheets! - so both cookie sheets was a must for this recipe), spread the veggies around the side, then drizzled more olive oil on the veggies and rubbed some onto the chicken.  We salted, peppered, and sprinkled a little garlic powder over the entire concoction.  We also added the zest and juice of a whole lemon and, at the last minute we realized we had some leftover fresh rosemary and tossed that on top!  We put it all in at 400 degrees and cooked it for 55 minutes.  It took a little longer than the recipe calls for because we used the bone-in meat instead.

It looked like this:

While we were scarfing this delicious, fresh meal down on a Friday night (!), we realized it would take even less time to assemble if you prepared the veggies ahead of time.  If you chop your veggies the day you buy them and put them in Ziploc baggies or Tupperware in the fridge, you could have this meal prepped in two minutes and on the table in an hour!  It only took us a few minutes to chop as it was, so it was really simple anyway!

The recipe (remember, we used bone-in chicken, so we had to extend the cooking time, and we added carrots and rosemary) is here:

Daphne Oz's Sheet Pan Chicken and Veggies - The Chew


We definitely plan on using this recipe often because it was so simple and so delicious (as long as you use enough salt and pepper!)!

Sometimes We Want Something Super Simple

We did not get a chance to cook again until Wednesday because we had some leftovers and I am taking ballet twice a week at The Joffrey School of Ballet!  (Do not worry, I am still terrible, but it is a lot of fun!  We practiced walking across the floor gracefully and....well, let's just say it will take some more work!)

Back to Wednesday's dinner.  We had planned on going to the gym after work, but it was so beautiful out that we could not pass up a chance to go running in 60 degree weather!!!!  We both wore short sleeves and pants that were not full-length!  It was another super long run of a whole two miles, but at least I am finally getting back out there after a week out of the gym due to that oh so lovely stomach virus.

We ran along the Hudson River in Riverside Park again:

Nope, the snow isn't completely gone yet!

After our run we wanted something quick and healthy, so we ever-so-slightly adapted a recipe we had seen on The Chew by Clinton Kelly.  It is a pea-sto (that is not a typo).  You take frozen peas, thaw them, then use them as the base for a pesto-like creation.  Jeffy was really excited about this one, but I had my doubts.

To make the pea-sto you take your thawed frozen peas and either toss them in a food processor or a blender.  Again, our kitchen is tiny, so when we were deciding what to have in our New York kitchen we had to think about which appliances and utensils had the most uses.  We own a food processor (THANK YOU KERRY AND ANGELO) we got from our wedding, but it is waiting for our move to the suburbs, so we use a blender for a lot of things even when a food processor would be easier.  We have a Ninja (THANK YOU LIBBY) that we love, so we used it as usual.

Alright, sorry for the rambling.  Back to the actual cooking process.  Into the Ninja go the peas (we used a whole 16 ounce package even though the recipe says 10 ounces - as non-beginner cooks and generally smart people we like to do the simple math and manipulate recipes to the amount we have on hand), four garlic cloves (we did not bother chopping them, just a quick rough slice because it is going in the blender anyway!), lemon zest, the juice of the whole lemon, and our special ingredient of the week - ginger!  I grated about 1/3" fresh ginger into the blender.  We added salt and pepper (again, salt brings out the flavor in whatever you are making, so use it not so sparingly anymore!), and drizzled in a few tablespoons of olive oil.  We blended it and continued to drizzle in the olive oil until the pea-sto comes together into a nice pesto-like consistency.

We made store-bought gnocchi from Trader Joe's (two to three minutes cooking time!) while the pea-sto was blending, so the entire meal took a total of less than ten minutes!  We mixed the pea-sto with the gnocchi and topped it with crushed red pepper and it looked like this:

It is not my neatest "plating" job, but I really just wanted to eat it, so let's just call it "rustic" because that is what people claim things are when they actually look a little messy!

Using the 16 ounce package of peas means we have lots leftover to use for an appetizer on crostini or for another easy pasta night!

The recipe (remember, we followed it all except we added some fresh grated ginger and we do not have any Parmigiano-Reggiano this week) is here:

Clinton Kelly's Pea-Sto - The Chew


Hope you enjoy using the recipe as-is or adapting it with your own flair like we did!

Sometimes We Have a Cook-In Because the Snow is FINALLY MELTING!

A bit late doing my second post about our Sunday cooking (we made this Poached Egg on Avocado Toast for breakfast), but here it is!

So the temperatures reached above freezing this past weekend AND STAYED ABOVE FREEZING!  The snow is melting!  My niece and I were able to go to the playground this week and actually enjoy it because it was warm enough!  Jeffy (the hubby) and I were also physically able (after being laid out on the couch for days with the worst stomach virus ever) to go on a (very short) run!

Here's a picture of Jeffy taken just before 6pm on our run along the Hudson River in Riverside Park with the sun still out on Sunday (hooray for Daylight Savings Time!):

We were basically in the best mood ever after running outdoors with the sun still out, so we made AMAZING ginger turkey burgers with baked sweet potato fries and a blueberry crisp for dessert!

What follows is too much writing, lots of mediocre pictures, and the delicious recipes we created/adapted.  Hope the two of you who read this enjoy!





I do not eat red meat, so when we make burgers, we either make turkey or chicken.  We normally buy two packages and mix a super lean package (99% fat free) with another one with a little more fat.  We also love a finely diced sweet onion mixed in for a bit more moisture and flavor.  I am TERRIBLE at cutting up onions - I can get the job done, it just takes forever - so that tends to be Jeffy's job and he does it superbly every time!  Into the burger we also added some BBQ sauce for extra flavoring and we used a Sriracha BBQ Sauce from Trader Joe's (our store of choice most weeks because it is on the way home from the gym).  What made the burger extra special was about an inch of grated fresh ginger.  The mix of the slightly hot BBQ sauce with the bright pop of the ginger is DELICIOUS!  We will definitely be adding ginger to future burgers!  We decided to cook these using the stainless steel saute pan in a tiny bit of olive oil and I just smushed out a little extra fat using the spatula when I flipped them.

Here is a picture of half of the burger mixture (I had already put burgers in the pan because we were HUNGRY after that 1.6 mile run....told you it was short!):

Here is a shot of the burgers cooking....so delicious....:

While the burgers cooked we baked sweet potato (potatoe if you remember Dan Quayle....) fries using the simplest preparation ever.  We just cleaned the 'taters, cut them, marinated them in a light coating of olive oil, and a good sprinkling of salt*.

*I know I am not supposed to put the note right here, but it is just so gosh darn important that I have to write it now and if you have bothered reading this far, you should know this!  SALT IS NOT THE ENEMY!  Salt is your friend.  It brings out flavors.  I know lots of people watch their sodium intake and the best way to do it is to be in control of what you are actually eating.  We do not eat many processed foods (so I do eat the occasional packet of Ramen, but I do not add the whole flavor packet) at all because we cook 90% of what we consume from fresh ingredients**.  So, back to the point.  Add salt while you cook.  It is delicious and really highlights the natural flavors in what you cook.  When you have to add it after something has cooked it is kind of a failure.
**Again, I understand this should be later, but it was too funny not to note that that statistic excludes the copious amounts of bagels Jeffy eats....

Ok, back to the regular writing.  Here are the scrumptious sweet potato fries being mixed in a clean bowl with the light coating of olive oil and salt:

Then we spread them on a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil (we hate doing extra dishes!):

We baked these for almost an hour at 350 degrees.  The time varies depending on your desired thickness of the fries.  Just check on them after about 30 minutes and every ten minutes after that until you are happy!  We cook by feel/taste rather than explicit directions with most of what we make.

When the fries were finished we toasted the ciabatta rolls (drizzled with a little olive oil) under the broiler for two or three minutes until they looked this delicious:

(Okay, so my pictures are not great and there is definitely a big shadow on this one....I blame Jeffy because he took it!)

While the rolls were toasting I cooked a little chopped red onion to top the burger and then we assembled them with a bit of BBQ sauce on the bottom roll, topped with the burger, and onions on top.  We did not feel like buying lettuce and tomato (I hate cold tomato most of the time anyway) to top, but you obviously can add whatever you want!

This was a super simple delicious meal straight from our teeny tiny kitchen and it looked like this:

We were extremely excited to both have our appetites back after that stomach virus, so we made a homemade dessert as well.  Alright, I made dessert and Jeffy enjoyed some couch-sitting time (as well as picture taking).  The blueberry crisp is a pretty simple recipe (I am posting all recipes below....) I adapted from an apple crisp I made this fall after we went apple picking, but we were basically out of butter (we love air-popped popcorn with butter), so we used sunflower oil as our binding fat instead.  I had to do that making the apple crisp once as well, so I knew it worked!

Here is a shot of the blueberry preparation of a little bit of flour (we used whole wheat because that is what we have), some lemon juice, and a little sugar:

After baking it looked like this:

And, finally, we ate it!

I will probably (hopefully) come up with a neater way to post a recipe in the future, but this is my third blog post and first real original recipe post, so give me the teeniest bit of a break!

                    Ginger Turkey Burgers

(Serves four or eight depending on appetites....we normally eat two servings each - don't judge us too harshly!)

Ingredients:

- Ciabatta rolls (or whatever you like to transport your burger to your mouth - we sometimes go bunless) 

-2 pounds ground turkey (we like one 99% fat free and the other with a little more fat)

- 1 sweet onion, diced (Jeffy's job)

- 2 tbsp BBQ sauce (we used Sriracha BBQ Sauce from Trader Joe's)

- 4 cloves garlic, grated

- 1" grated fresh ginger (you could use powdered ginger, but it won't have the punch we loved so much)

- 1 tbsp ground cumin

- 1 tbsp olive oil in burger mix, a little more for the saute pan

- 1 tsp cayenne pepper 

- salt and pepper to taste (do not skimp on salt!)

- 1 red onion, chopped, to top

Directions:

1.  In a large bowl, combine the turkey, sweet onion, BBQ sauce, garlic, ginger, cumin, olive oil, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper.  Mix well with hands.  Form into patties (we made eight from the two pounds of ground turkey).

2.  Heat a small drizzle of olive oil (about two turns of the pan) in a stainless steel saute pan on medium/medium-high, then place the burgers down.  Give them enough room to cook - we needed to do two "shifts" for our eight patties.  Use a spatula to smush a little bit of fat out if you would like.  Flip after about five minutes and cook on the other side for about four more minutes.

3.  In a non-stick skillet, saute red onion with a tiny bit of olive oil and some salt.  

4.  Slice ciabatta rolls in half, drizzle with olive oil and place under the broiler for two or three minutes until just toasted. 

5.  Assemble burger with desired fixings and top with red onion.

6.  Enjoy!

Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients:

- Sweet potatoes (as many as you want - we used six medium sized potatoes for eight servings)

- olive oil

- salt

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Chop sweet potatoes into desired size fries.  Ours were about 1/4" to 1/2" thick and 2-3" long.  

3.  In a large bowl, drizzle a light coating of olive oil and sprinkle with salt to your taste.

4.  Spread fries out on a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil (for easy clean up).  

5.  Bake for 30 minutes, then check on fries until they reach your desired doneness.  Ours took just under an hour.  

6.  Enjoy!

Blueberry Crisp (in 8"x8" baking dish)

Ingredients for blueberry layer:

- blueberries (we used 24 ounces)

- 2 tbsp lemon juice

- 2 tbsp flour (we used whole wheat, but AP is ok, too!)

- 2 tbsp sugar

Ingredients for topping:

- 3/4 to 1 cup oats (quick cook or rolled)

- 3/4 cup flour (again, we used whole wheat)

- 1 tsp salt

- pecans or walnuts, chopped (ideally 1/2 cup)

- 8 tbsp butter, cold and diced into cubes - OR - sunflower oil ~ 3 tbsp

- 3/4 cup brown sugar

- dash (1/8 tsp) nutmeg 

- dash (1/8 tsp) ginger

- 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  In your baking dish, combine ingredients for the blueberry layer.  Make sure to coat blueberries by mixing gently with hands.  

3.  In a medium bowl, combine dry topping ingredients (ie everything except for the butter or oil).  Whisk together (or use your hands).  

4.  Slowly add the butter into the dry ingredients while mixing with hands until it sticks to itself a bit.  If using sunflower oil, drizzle it in while mixing with your hands and continue to mix until it comes together.  

5.  Spread the topping over the blueberry layer in the baking dish and bake for 35-40 minutes.

6.  Enjoy!  

Alright, so there are the recipes!  Let me know if you try one or all of them (or only two if you are weird and do not enjoy dessert....)!  

Sometimes We Use Amazing Recipes We Saw on TV

Last week Jeffy brought home a terrible stomach virus and missed the entire week of school.  We got home from an amazing mini-vacay weekend for my birthday to my favorite president of all time - Franklin Delano Roosevelt!!!! - and he got sick later that evening after an awesome job driving home in falling snow the whole way back.  Two days later I got sick.  It was terrible.  This is the kind of thing you would not even wish on your worst enemy if you had one.

The one bonus was that we got to catch up on everything we DVR'd from The Chew to CBS Sunday Morning to Food Network's The Kitchen.  Yes.  We watch a lot of food television.  One of the episodes of The Chew we watched from our sickbed couch had an amazing Michael Symon recipe for poached eggs on avocado toast.

I tried to poach an egg once before.  It was ok, but I overcooked it a little so when I split it accidentally lifting it to my plate, it did not ooze that "liquid gold" as Symon likes to call it.  When we watched this segment we were intrigued and decided that we would try it instead of pancakes Sunday morning.

The secret to poaching the egg is to stir the water before dropping the egg into it, thus creating the egg's very own whirlpool.  This allowed for the proteins around the yolk to set up closer to the yolk than my overcooked, wannabe attempt at poaching.  That whirlpool, man.  It works!  We were super proud!  We poached two eggs each!

What made the dish especially delicious aside from our victory over the poaching technique was the capers added to the avocado mash.  It adds a little bite that the dish needs and made it oh so tastey!  We did not even need all the mash from a whole avocado for our two egg toasts each, but we ended up eating all the avocado because those capers made it addicting!

The recipe (we followed it all except for the Parmigiano-Reggiano topping and we used a multigrain baguette - it had more surface area!) is here:

Michael Symon's Poached Egg on Avocado Toast - The Chew

Here is a picture of one of my pieces of toast:

We cooked some of our own recipes later in the day....blog post coming soon!:)

Sometimes We Cook A Lot (A Little Bit About Me/Us)

My husband has wanted me to start a blog for a while.  I finally decided to listen to him.  We cook together (and watch cooking television) a lot.  We also keep pretty busy in New York City playing sports and spending time with friends and family.  

I taught high school social studies in a public school in the Bronx and Jeffy (the hubby) currently teaches middle school (bless him!) social studies in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan.

Our cooking inspiration comes from The Food Network and ABC's The Chew as well as many, many pins on Pinterest!  I want to share the recipes we come up with on our own as we get better at cooking as well as those we adapt from our favorite shows and blogs.  

I am looking forward to sharing with you what we cook in our teeny, tiny kitchen!

We got married on June 30, 2013!