Chicken with Cocout-Lime Peanut Sauce

This recipe was on my list of things to do this summer. Mine doesn’t look as good as the photo on the blog I found it on: Family Fresh Cooking: http://www.familyfreshcooking.com/2011/02/03/chicken-with-coconut-lime-peanut-sauce-recipe/

My sauce looks thicker and darker, and I didn’t put Asparagus into it because Chris doesn’t like asparagus.

The flavour of this dish is fantastic! It’s a definate ‘make-again’ my only concern about it is that it had a rather pasty texture to it, next time I would play around to try and fix that.

Chris and I enjoyed this dish while watching Due Date, which is a pretty funny movie I gotta say.

The sauce is easy to make, it’s an upgraded peanut sauce using lime and coconut milk. I used the extra coconut milk to make my rice, which is a nice touch (I usually do this when I make curry’s).

I think the recipe would have been better with the asparagus that it calls for, but it wasn’t bad without it so I can’t complain.

Stuffed Pizza Rolls

This is a recipe that was on my list of things to do this summer. I found it on Foodgawker, and it is from Chaos in the Kitchen

http://chaosinthekitchen.com/2008/10/party-food-pizza-in-a-bite/

They are little pull apart pizza balls: Well, should be pizza balls… I just put cheese in them because it was my first time making them.

Next time I will definately add more than just cheese to them, and I might keep them in the oven for 3 or 4 more minutes to get them a bit more golden on top.

 

I did not do a god job making them the same size either, which I will take more time to do next time, since some of the larger ones had unmelted cheese in the middles.

Chris and I had these on a weekend night, so we had been snacking all day and didn’t need an actual meal, but on a normal day these would be better for a lunch or appetizer for a party. Man, I can’t wait ’til I am old enough to throw dinner parties. At 20 (in 3 days) when I say I want to throw a dinner party I get odd looks from people.

Well, this post finishes May post-worthy meals. Now on to June…

Filet Mignon with Bacon Cream Sauce

 

Yup, it’s as good as it looks! Bacon, Cream, Steak… It explains itself.

I got the recipe from Allrecipes.com:

Ingredients

• 4 (4 ounce) beef tenderloin filets

• 1 teaspoon olive oil

• 3 slices bacon, chopped

• 1 tablespoon butter

• 4 shallots, diced

• 1/4 cup half-and-half cream

• salt and pepper to taste

 

Directions

1. Preheat an outdoor grill for medium-high heat, and lightly oil the grate.

2. Brush the filets with olive oil, and cook on the preheated grill to desired doneness (about 4 minutes per side for medium rare). An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read 130 degrees F (54 degrees C). Set the steaks aside on a platter tented with aluminum foil to rest.

3. While the steaks are resting, prepare the sauce: cook and stir the chopped bacon in a small saucepan over medium heat until the bacon pieces are crisp, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in the butter and shallots, and cook and stir until the shallots are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes more. Stir in the half-and-half, bring the mixture to a simmer over medium-low heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 8 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve over the steaks.

That’s copied right from the recipe page on Allrecipes.

It was REALLY REALLY good. I didn’t have actual Filet Mignon, just Beef Tenderloin steaks, but even still- Mmmmm!!!

I couldn’t get enough of the sauce, I cut the recipe in half because there is only Chris and I but next time I will make all of the sauce and put it on everything… EVERYTHING!

It’s that good.

I served the Steak and Bacon Cream Sauce with simple garlic-y mashed potatoes and steamed buttery veggies 🙂
I highly recommend this recipe- It’s easy, relatively quick, and worth every creamy bacony calorie!

 

I am off to Greece in a few days. Actually I turn 20 this Friday and leave for Greece on Sunday, so I am going to try to catch up with posts that way I have a blank slate, and no stock pile of post-worthy dinners.

Tequila Lime Grilled Pork & Mexican Green Rice

This is a recipe that was passed on to me from Chris’s mum. It is a pork tenderloin in a Tequila Lime BBQ sauce that Chris’s mum got at Sobey’s, and rice with cilantro, green onion, and jalepeno peppers. It was easy to make, and the pork was really good.

The rice, however, was not very good because Chris didn’t listen to me when I told him to cut the seeds out of the jalepeno peppers. Eating the rice was like eating fire- that is the closest comparison I can make.

Overall, I was not impressed with the meal because I ate my pork first and then got to the lava rice, which ruined it all for me, and I had no pork left to wash down the spicy jalepeno.

This here ^^ is my breakfast the next morning. I spread nutella and jam onto a wrap, than put a banana with the curved ends bitten off in the middle to wrap up. =D

Caramel Apple Cheesecake

Chris and I made this on a whim. We were relaxing at home after the May long weekend, and I was on Stumble Upon on my IPad, and stmbled upon a recipe for these Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars on the-girl-who-ate-everything.com. We didn’t make bars because we didn’t have the right sized pan, so we just made a normal cake.

Strangely enough, we had all of the ingredients on hand, which was great. Well, actually, most of the ingredients. We did not have any caramel, so I just whipped out my Paprika App and opened my caramel sauce recipe from one of the recent food network magazines. BTW when you add the milk to the melted sugar, add it slowly and carefully- don’t just dump it in like Chris did, it makes a huge mess of boiling hot lava sugar.

The cheesecake was yummy yummy. We had our first slices the day we made it while they were still hot and it was SO good. The next day we ate them cool, and it was still SO good 😉

I will definatly make this again, maybe when I have guests or go to my parents for a weekend.

 

 

Jalapeño Popper Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I did not make these. Chris did. I didn’t even get to try one, he ate them all while I was at work… but I did give him the idea, which I found on Allrecipes.com and told him to make them while I was at work.

Apparently they are DELICIOUS, the night after Chris made them I had to work again, and Chris chose to make more Jalapeno Popper Grilled Cheese instead of Steak… yeah, you read that correctly.

I can’t say that much more than that. What a blog 😉

 

Golden Baked Macaroni

I feel like I made this a year ago. But, I can remember it as though I had it 5 minutes ago- it was super delicious. It was actually on my list of things to do this summer. Foodgawker called it the adult version of a childhood favorite, I have not had enough Mac’n’Cheese to make such a bold statement, but it was yummy.

 

The recipe called for being topped with bread crumbs, but I never EVER have bread crumbs so true to Veronica fasion, I used crushed soda crackers. Om nom nom nom nom.

Chris and I both had seconds. I was hoping there would be left overs so that I could have a little after work, but by the time I got home it was all gone!!

This is a definate make again, and again, and again, and again, and again. ❤

and again.

 

Oh- I guess I should post the blog that it is from: http://elizabethsedibleexperience.blogspot.com/2008/11/turkey-day-troubles-installment-2.html

Cinnamon Bun Pancakes

Wow, it feels like forever ago that Chris and I made these. It wasn’t planned or anything, just one day Chris asked what I wanted for breakfast and the blog I had seen about these popped right into my head… and since we had all the ingredients on hand, we made them.

The blog I found them on: http://www.bigredkitchen.com/2010/06/cinnamon-roll-pancakes.html while stumbling, of course!

It didn’t take long to make, which is great for Saturday morning, and the clean up afterwards was minimal (unlike the caramel apple cheesecake we made last night!). We used the pre-made pancake, just-add-water-stuff, which cut a lot of time out as well. Putting the cinnamon mixture and icing mixture in plastic baggies over tumblers was an idea from the blog with the recipe, and I have used the techique for many things since- great idea!

This is a pancake on the griddle, they looked so pretty until it was time to flip…. flipping took a while to get used to, but eventually Chris mastered it.

These are the pancakes in the oven staying warm. You can see how the flipping improved as we went, some are mis-shappen mishaps, but the ones we did later on actually look good 🙂

Here is my finished plate, everything was good, I sliced up some strawberries and banana’s to go with the pancakes, and as we settled in to eat them I took a few bites then suddenly remembered- I hate pancakes!! I HATE them, hate hate hate pancakes! But… I ate my entire plate, surprisingly.

I won’t make them again any time soon, since I hate pancakes, but Chris really liked them, so they will be made again… and I have to admit the icing was yummy 🙂

That night, we didn’t really feel like cooking, but Chris made some chicken for us to eat, I was so proud of him, It was a bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh, and he lifted the skin to put in garlic and onions for a richer flavour, and cooked it in a honey sauce…. it was really good- I was shocked (not that it tasted good, I knew it would, but at his technique)! 

I love him! ❤

Pasta Pizza

This recipe was sent to me by Chris’s mom, who made it for her Niece’s and Nephew one night- who LOVED IT. It is a really cool way to do baked pasta, in a way that kid’s will enjoy.

Pasta is used to make a crust, then covered in a meat sauce, and topped with cheese. Yumm, Yumm.

It was easy to make, only took about 40 minutes, including baking the pasta crust.

Both Chris and I enjoyed it a lot. I did make one change to the recipe as adviced by Chris’s mom. She suggested adding a bit of tomato sauce to the meat mixture because when she made it the meat was a little dry, so that I did- and it was great. I had some left over marina in the fridge, so I added about 1/3 a cup to the mixture before pouring it over the noodle crust.

I was going to post the recipe, but for some reason my Paprika isn’t emailing it to me… once I figre out what is wrong, I will post the recipe!

DIY Bow Belt

Obviously this is not food, which means it must be something from my list of things to do this summer. I made this almost 2 weeks ago, and am just getting to posting it now… I am really behind on blogging for mulitple reasons, work, placement, a trip to visit home, and now (even though I am dieing from a sore throat) I have decided to try and catch up. One benefit to catching up, I didn;t make many cool meals or do anything worthy of being blogged so this should go pretty quickly.

Sooooo, the other week I made a bow belt from scratch. I got the instructions from ‘Momtastic: Canada”, which I found on craftgawker- foodgawker and craftgawker have become two of my favorite websites.

Want to make your own Bow Belt? Follow this link to find really clear easy-to-follow instructions: http://www.momtastic.com/home-and-living/features/113787-diy-bow-belt

This should have taken me 20 minutes max, but OH YEAH, I had to do it by hand because my sewing machine is not working right now…. so it took quite a bit longer than that. Also, doing it by hand meant that the sewing lines weren’t very straight, so the end product is not as clean and nice as I wanted it to be, but my my first time I’m proud of it,

I did something pretty silly while making the belt. I put the first snap on backwards, but didn’t realize until I was at this point^^ so I had to undo everything to flip the first clasp. THEN, after undoing it fixing the snap nad redoing it all, I put the second snap on the WRONG SIDE OF THE BELT! At this point, I was tired and sick of sewing by hand, so I went to bed. The next morning I redid the second clasp, put it on the right side, and finished the first piece of the belt.

The second and third pieces of the belt (which make the bow) took me about 30 minutes, would have been 5 minutes if I had a sewing machine, and the belt was finished!!

I have since taking these pictures, tightened the material that is the middle of the bow so it looks more defined. I haven’t had a chance to actually wear the belt, but it looks really cute in my closet 🙂 ❤