Mexican Breakfast Casserole

I made Mexican Breakfast Casserole for Bradley and I to eat for breakfast this week. It's a great breakfast idea for when you have company, or just want something to eat all week. It lasted us about 5 days. My only problem with the recipe was that I couldn't find turkey sausage anywhere. I ended up using just regular low fat sausage which still had plenty of fat. The recipe goes in the casserole dish in layers. 

Here's a pic of the top layer before I poured in the eggs:

You have to plan ahead because the dish marinates overnight

Here's a pic of the dish right out the oven:

And here's a side view of my serving:

I always forget to add the salt and pepper while I mixing together the recipe and end up having to add a lot before I eat. 

Sous chef gives this recipe 1 thumb up! He especially liked having a hot breakfast all week. I did too, definitely a luxury in this house. 

Chicken Salad with Orange Dijon Vinaigrette

This salad is so refreshing. I used some leftover chicken breast that we grilled on Memorial day so the prep and clean up were extremely easy. We actually had many of the ingredients already: chicken, grapes, pecans and all of the ingredients for the dressing. I don't think I've ever had Napa cabbage before using this cook book and I've decided that I love it! Its much thinner than cabbage so it's not as chewy. 

Doesn't it look delicious? 

I absolutely loved the orange dijon vinaigrette. I'm planning on using this instead of bottled salad dressing. Seriously you have to try it, page 37. 

Clean up was a cinch since I had already made the chicken. I just used a cutting board and a knife. Prep time was about 15 minutes. The cost is a little hard to calculate because I had the chicken in the freezer. Grapes are expensive right now and the napa cabbage was $3.50, but I have a ton leftover. 

Sous Chef says:

Sirloin Strips with Marsala Sauce

I was flipping through the cookbook looking for something with mushrooms because I have a coupon for mushrooms that I really wanted to use before it expires. That's how I found this recipe. It turns out that i had coupons for a nice little meal. 

A coupon for the meat and the mushrooms! and a little side salad as well. 

I love any recipe with baby portabella mushrooms which means that I loved this recipe. It took about 20 minutes total cook time. I used rice as a side and started it first so it would be done once the meat was done and they finished exactly the same time. Rice orzo is a must with this recipe because the gravy it makes is delicious.

There's a super close up for you. We enjoyed it with a pre-bagged ceaser salad and the meal was delicious. The recipe made 3 servings for us, so Bradley had the leftovers the next day for lunch. It was just as good. 

Sous chef gives this recipe: 1 thumb up!

Easy Edamame Salad

This recipe is going to be super easy once my tomato plants and herb garden start producing. Keep a bag of frozen shelled edamame in the freezer and the rest are ingredients I usually keep in stock in the fridge. 

This salad is light and refreshing. I could eat it alone for dinner, but Sous Chef needs a little more sustenance. I bought a huge thing of crumbled Feta cheese at Costco a few weeks ago and it seems no matter how much we eat, it never goes empty. 

It even looks summery!

I give it 2 thumbs up, Sous Chef gives it 1. I plan on making this many more times this summer.

Margarita Shrimp

I'm back!!!!

The kitchen is all set up and stocked with wonderful ingredients! I'm ready to start eating healthy again. 

We still don't have a reliable internet source, they said that will take up to 3 months, but that's a different story. So in the mean time there is a corner upstairs that get wireless from somewhere that occasionally works. 

We celebrated our two year anniversary last week! Our celebratory dinner was Margarita Shrimp and some white rice with cilantro and lime (that one isn't in the cookbook, but I thought it would go quite nicely with the shrimp). 

The recipe appears simple, but it was kind of like making a roux for gumbo. You have to stir in the flour with olive oil and watch out because it might burn, especially on a gas stove (which I'm super excited about, but still getting used to).

The spicy advice says you can substitute orange juice for orange liqueur, which I did because we didn't not have any. I also failed to notice the line that says to marinate for an hour so that wasn't done either, but it came out quite nice. 

Sous Chef says:

Delicious!

There really wasn't much clean up, I used one pot and a cutting board. 

I planted some cilantro seeds outside and will definitely make this again when they start growing. 

sorry for the absence

I didn't forget about you all. I had to take a temporary break from cooking. We're moving this weekend so the kitchen is packed away in boxes. It's frozen pizzas and Chinese take out for us this week.

Chili Con Carne

Well we went to Costco and bought 5 more pounds of lean ground beef, so I thought this recipe would be perfect as it calls for two pounds of ground sirloin. This was a very simple recipe. Most of the ingredients came from a can, otherwise they were spices that should be in your pantry.  The recipe has cocoa in it, which is unusual but somehow it works. The recipe makes 8 servings which means we ate it for four days. Very economical and not many dishes to clean since it all went into one pot. 

This recipe has 31g of protein which is quite impressive. 

Sous chef gave this recipe 1 thumb up!

Fresh Strawberry Pie

As noted in the previous post, I was elected to make dessert for Heath and Karen's BBQ last weekend. I thought I would make something chocolate for the chocolate lovers and something fruity for the non-chocolate lovers. Publix had their strawberries on sale last week so I made the Fresh Strawberry Pie. Publix always has the best strawberries from Florida at the beginning of the summer. I bought a ton of them. 

This pie was even easier than the last. You use an already made pie crust. The filling is a lemon gelatin mixture which holds everything together quite nicely. 

This is a picture of the gooey gelatin:

As you can tell it's really thick. 

Mix in the strawberries, pour it over the pie crust and refrigerate. Then you get this lovely looking piece of pie. It was great. Perfect for the summer. Jason loved it. He gave it two thumbs up, but everyone else was flocking towards the chocolate pie. 

Fudgy Brownie Pie

I have a little catching up to do. I made this fudgy brownie pie twice last week. Once for a BBQ at Heath and Karen's and it was so delicious I had to make it again for Mandy's 28th birthday (minus 2 ingredients: Dr. B doesn't do coffee and Mandy is allergic to nuts).

So we had it as it was meant to be at Heath and Karen's:

It's hard to tell from this picture, but there are three layers. The bottom layer is a brownie layer infused with coffee, and the middle layer is a pudding layer also infused with coffee. It's like an easy to bake tiramisu. It seriously took me about 30 minutes to make, includes cooking time. If you have the cookbook the recipe is page 65 and there is a picture...whi that ch is much better than mine. The brownie portion on the bottom is intended to be about half cooked, hard to do. 

Just FYI, it's much better with the coffee and the pecans. 

An aerial view - the red one is coming up next!

Needless to say, everyone including myself gave this two thumbs up!

P.S. I'm working on my picture taking skills

Ahi Tuna Tacos with Wasabi Cream and Mango Avacado Salsa

Hi Everyone!

We had a great summer-time dinner on this cold and rainy day in Nashville. It made me wish for sunshine even more. 

This recipe sounds really intimidating, but it actually took me about 20 minutes from start to finish. However, it certainly was not cheap, at least not this time of year. I actually cheated and used yellowfin tuna because that was all they had at Kroger...I'm not even sure what the difference is. I bought 2 tuna steaks frozen for $7. I cut them into little peices, placed them on a skillet with taco seasoning and olive oil and cooked for about 5 min. 

I was nervous because I've never cooked tuna before. It turned out pretty good, not as good as at a restaurant though. 

Next I made my Wasabi Cream Sauce. 

Who remembers our incident with the wasabi crab cakes? Well I was really careful to put just a tiny bit of wasabi paste this time, and it tasted much better. No sinus burning. 

I mixed it in the yogurt container so I didn't have to do extra dishes. 

Then the salsa. This part took the longest because of all of the chopping. Let me just say that I paid $2.25 for that avocado. I'm not sure why they're so expensive right now, but we won't be eating those for a while, so I told Bradley he better savor this one. 

This was the part that tasted like summer! Delicious!

I made a little assembly line and:

Sous chef gives them:

He was shy tonight.