Read Your Recipe!
I really like to work ahead. I make lists, cross items off said list, and think about the leftover items in the back of my mind until I finish them and cross them off. Sometimes, I’ll write things in my planner after I’ve already done them, just so I can cross them off. I bought my nieces’ and nephews’ Christmas presents in October. I’m not bragging, I know this makes me uncool. Also, this information has nothing to do with this supercute picture of Tessa, Cade and Lukas in their pjs, nor does the picture have to do with what I am about to tell you.
It was Monday afternoon. I had no fresh meat or vegetables. It was too late to thaw meat. Husband called and said he would be home at seven and was STARVING. Hmm. Pantry? If you have canned beans and tomatoes on hand, and you can always make a homemade dinner.
Alternate title could be “I didn’t know key lime pie was so easy to make”. And also, “I didn’t know that I am obsessed with key lime pie”. True, this is a rather tropical dessert, but my taste buds didn’t care as I dug into a second slice.
I came across this recipe, technically a quiche, and realized while reading through the ingredients list that I had almost all of the ingredients on hand. Quiche typically uses heavy cream and a whole lotta eggs, whereas this quiche’s filling used mainly low-fat ricotta cheese – definitely a much healthier take on a typically mega-calorie dish. I made my own crust (adding whole wheat flour), added bacon, and doubled the spinach. A sweet ricotta pie is one of my family’s favorites – what would a savory version be like? As yummy smells filled my house I got VERY excited to find out!
True story – when you buy “wheat” bread at the grocery store, all it’s saying is that it’s made from the wheat plant. That wheat is stripped and processed, yielding a flour made mostly from the white fluffy inside of a wheat kernel (called the endosperm). By removing the bran and the germ the flour becomes devoid of most nutrients. Look on the ingredients list – unless you read “whole” in the first three words, the product is not whole grain. Even store-bought whole wheat bread has several unpronounceable ingredients. Can we bypass those unknowns? You bet we can.
My daughter was just crazy over Santa, as you can tell in this heart-warmingly festive photo. As I forgot to take a picture of my catering job yesterday, I thought I’d share the scary Santa one! OK, holiday desserts for 20…
I played field hockey in college and our head trainer, Wendy, would bring her chocolate chip pumpkin bread for our away game bus trips. Wendy is the best – for all that she did for us (including the bread) but also because she is hilarious.This bread has haunted me for years now, as I’ve tried several recipes and haven’t yet captured that elusive, sumptuous flavor. I would hoard the bread, saving several pieces for later before passing the bag behind me. It was difficult to rationalize the extra calories when I rode the bench as a freshman, but by senior year I swear it was the chocolate pumpkin bread that got me through those tough games!
What’s red and green and not a Christmas cookie? This quinoa pilaf. Festive yet NOT made from two sticks of butter.
Easy cinnamon bread that contains YEAST! Yes, this is a hybrid of a quick bread (a bread leavened with chemical agents such as baking powder or baking soda) and a yeast bread (leavened with yeast, obvi). Yeast can sometimes seem scary, but yeast breads have become my absolute favorite thing to bake! Once you “get it”, it’s permanently “gotten” and you get to create results that make people say, wait, you MADE this bread? This particular bread makes your house smell AMAZING and if my family’s consumption of said bread can speak for anything, we ate the whole loaf in two days.