Thursday, August 16, 2012

SOS Mix.

So, I was in a club at Utah State where we were trying to raise awareness about Celiac/gluten-intolerance. One of the ladies at Utah State came in and spoke to us and shared her SOS mix with us. Essentially it's a thickener, but it also is a GREAT substitute for cream of "anything" soup. SOS stands for Soup and Sauce mix! I'll hit you with the recipe here. And I'll link you up to the booklet you can print it out which has the recipe for the mix as well as like a million recipes to use it in, and they're not all casseroles! Check out the ingredients... it's also very inexpensive. You'll probably only have to buy dry milk... unless everyone on earth but me keeps that in the pantry, because I sure don't. ha. It's gluten and fat free. And way healthier than canned cream of chicken soup (which I do LOVE by the way ha, I just can't eat it and am trying to be more healthy.)

2 c. powdered non-fat dry milk 
3/4 c. cornstarch
1/4 c. chicken bouillon
2 tbls. onion flakes
2 tsp. Italian seasoning

Mix. Keep in a sealed container or plastic bag. You do NOT need to refrigerate this. It makes about 9 cans worth of soup. 

To make cream of "somthing" soup: Mix 1/3 c. dry mix with 1 1/4 c. water. Microwave or cook on the stove until thickened. Use as you would soup. 

Here's the link to the booklet, I would highly recommend taking a look at it!

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Potato Bugs.

The idea for this came from Pinterest, like a lot of my ideas do. I've been wanting to make them for awhile. They were really yummy! Nothing too spectacular taste-wise, although it is kind of a mash up of a baked potato and home-made french fries. They are super pretty and I think they would make a great presentation to any company you're having over. I also thought of an awesome tip about 1/2 way through cutting them all, but was like ehh.. I'm already most of the way done I'll do it next time. The issue I had was that I'm not very good at being patient with food, crafts, etc. (People I've got all the time in the world, stuff NO!) So I kept accidentally cutting all the way through instead of leaving a nice little connection on the bottom. They still were yummy and cute. BUT if you're going to do this, find 2 things with similar heights (I would use 2 cutting boards) and place the potato between them and slice... the boards will keep you from going to the bottom, genius eh? I also love that you could do any flavor/toppings you want. And they look like potato bugs! And they're potatoes, so cute, yeah?

Here's what ya need:
adapted from SeaSaltWithFood
Potatoes, 1 per person
Olive oil (or butter if that's your thing)
kosher salt
any seasonings you want!

Preheat your oven to 425*. Wash your potatoes. Slice them up real thin, leaving the bottom 1/2 inch or so intact. Layer them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt, and seasonings. Bake for 40 minutes. We liked ours topped with cheese, bacon, sour cream, ranch, and/or katsup, respectively. Fancy, huh?

Creamy Enchilada Bake.

My family is not very adventurous when it comes to food. So growing up I thought enchiladas were sour cream based with big, soft flour tortillas, not chili(of choice)-based with corn tortillas. I love me some spicy enchiladas, anything spicy really... but I have always preferred flour tortillas with anything. I've been craving those gooey, creamy, smooth "creamy enchiladas." The problem is that I can't have flour tortillas :( and I was a bit lazy and not going to participate in the whole rolling up and making them look all pretty. So I layered them all in a pretty baking dish and called it good!

Here's the small recipe (like a 6"x6" round dish):
6-8 white corn tortillas
1 c. water with 2 tbls. hot sauce
1 chicken breast, diced
oil, as needed
salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste
1 can cream of chicken chicken soup
3/4 c. sour cream
1 small can green chilies, don't worry about draining them
1 1/2 or so cups of shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 425*. Heat up a sauce pan with a drizzle of oil.  Cut up your chicken into little pieces (I like mine a bit smaller than "bite-sized" since I want more than just chicken in each bite!). Season it with salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper if you like spice. While it's cooking mix together your soup, sour cream, and chilies. Then mix your water and hot sauce in a bowl, this is the key to yummy corn tortillas and not ones that absorb all your sauce and turn to glue. Place some of your sauce in the bottom of the pan. Then 2 or 3 tortillas (like a stack, so if you're using a big pan you'll need a bunch of tortillas), dunk them in the water/hot sauce and layer them. Chicken, cheese, sauce,  tortillas, chicken, cheese, tortilla, sauce, cheese! Lots of cheese. I also sprinkled on some more crushed red pepper, and a little cilantro. Then bake for about 20 minutes, until nice and bubbly. 


This is yummy and super gooey. I did 2 tortillas thick and think I'll do 3 or 4 next time for a bit more substance. I didn't even miss the flour tortillas! We had this with potato bugs, since I've been having rice like every meal lately ha. It wasn't very pretty though :/ that's why I didn't even try to take a picture of the  sliced up bake, because it was a nice little puddle of goo. In a good way! I think you could just double up this recipe with plenty of tortillas and do a 9"x13" dish that was thinner, or lots of layers!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Cashew Chicken

I was pleasantly surprised with this recipe. It seemed like it would be nothing special, ya know? Normal ingredients, no secret-super-special techniques or anything but it was definitely yummy, filled an Asian food craving and in a pretty darn healthy way and was SUPER quick. It only took me maybe 20 minutes, including prep, and everything. I scaled this down to two servings since it was just me (I do this a lot, I make 2 servings and eat one and put one the fridge for later). 



Here it is for 2 servings folks:
adapted from Six Sisters' Stuff
1 chicken breast
salt, pepper, & olive oil, as needed
1/4 c. soy sauce  
2 tbls. rice vinegar
2 tbls. katsup
1 tbls. brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. ginger powder
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/2 c. mixed nuts
1 green onion, chopped (optional)

Chop up chicken into bite-sized pieces. Dust with salt & pepper. Heat up a swirl of oil in a saucepan. Toss in your chicken and fry until mostly cooked. Mix up all your sauce ingredients (other than nuts) in a bowl. Once chicken is mostly done add in the sauce. Once chicken is cooked coarsely shred chicken. Toss in nuts, and green onions if desired. Serve over rice.
 

The original recipe called for flour before browning the chicken also but I eat gluten-free so I left it out and shredded up the chicken. I used the original amount of sauce which was for 2 lbs of chicken, I don't think there would be at all enough sauce. I think the amount was perfect so the chicken was nice and moist, and there was a bit left for rice. The original recipe also cooked it for 4 hours on low in a crockpot... to me there was zero need for that and I don't think there would be enough sauce at all for it not to burn up. Completely cooking the chicken took 2 or 3 minutes more than just browning it, and I was hungry! I also would definitely use just cashews next time, but I had a mix of cashews, almonds, and peanuts on hand so that's what I used. I think an awesome mix-up would also be to use chili sauce or Sriracha in place of the katsup. 


Here's a recipe using roughly 1 lb. of chicken / 8 servings-ish (hey, I know some of ya don't like math):
4 chicken breasts
salt, pepper, and oil as needed
1 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. rice vinegar
1/2 c. katsup
1/4 c. brown sugar
3-4 cloves garlic
1 tsp. ginger powder
1 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 1/2 c. cashews
3 green onions, chopped (optional)

Cut up chicken. Season with salt and pepper.  Heat up a nice swirl of oil. Fry chicken until mostly cooked. Stir together sauce except for nuts. Now if I'm shredding a lot of chicken I like use a kitchenaid mixer because it shreds it in like uhh .2 seconds. But if you're old school you can for sure just use 2 forks and go at it. If i was going to shred it in the kitchenaid I would cook it all the way shred it, while the sauce is heating up and then toss the shredded chicken back into the sauce. Then you toss in the nuts and green onion if desired. Serve over rice.
 

 

Holi in a Bowl!

So, I don't know if it's just a Utah thing but every spring at the Hindu Temple in Spanish Fork has a "Colors Festival" which is more commonly known as Holi. Essentially you all gather at the gorgeous temple and throw colored cornstarch at each other and all over while some awesome music/chants are played live. You also get to go through the temple. It's very fun!


Awesome, yeah?! So I saw something on Pinterest where they did the whole baking soda and vinegar thing out of plastic bottle but they put food coloring in, which seemed a million times more fun to me! One day me, 2 of my step brothers, and my sister were doing all sorts of weird things with vinegar and I had an AHA moment. We filled up big glass mixing bowls with baking soda (like a layer across the bottom) and then had small bowls with vinegar and different food colors in each one. We went ghetto style and just used straws to get vinegar on the end and drip it into the baking soda. Let me just say the 4 of us had fun for a solid 45 minutes.

It was really interesting how differently it looked when you poured a little in, or a bit more (by holding the top of the straw while its in the vinegar). The blue bowl on the bottom left was after we we're done playing we dumped all the colors into the bowl and then stirred parts and just played some more. The best part... it was really NOT messy. If you have a light colored table I would recommend investing in a dollar store table cloth for crafts and throw that down ( we are using food dye). We didn't have any trouble just wiping it off with what we usually clean the table with as soon as we were done. It was just small drips from moving the straw from the vinegar to the big bowl. 
 
If you are going to do this and maybe plan a bit in advance I would use some sort of little squirt bottles. Catchup style ones would be cool, but so would the little hair water bottles (ya know the ones that squirt like cleaner bottles from the travel section at Walmart or the dollar store?) Maybe do one or two of each?! 
 
If you try it, come back and tell me if you (or your kids ha) liked it, what you changed, etc. 

Healthy.

So I know thus far, I've had kind of weird scattered posts and haven't yet addressed why I'm doing this or what I think about the world and such. 

First off, I love to cook, bake, sew, can (although I've done very little since I don't have a pressure cooker yet), up-cycle, and do a lot of random things. So here I'll post things I create or upcycle, what I cook and bake, and some of the fun things I try to do with my family, friends, etc. 

One very important thing about me is that I believe in moderation and that helps reinforce my idea of health. I do NOT think it's healthy to eat spinach and almond milk every meal, if you do you will not enjoy it here. I also do NOT think eating the fewest calories and losing weight = being healthy. Being overweight is not healthy, duh. I definitely would like to lose a few pounds and try to make healthy steps and exercise to help accomplish that goal. One way I will not do it is by eating very few calories by eating "fake food". 

**The way I have decided upon my definition of health is by what makes me and my body feel good. I don't care if you disagree, and I don't want to fight about it. I do think my idea of health is best way to be healthy for just about everyone but I don't care if you do it or not.**

So here's my definition: health in terms of food is eating food! For example the recipe I posted yesterday (smothered tilapia) it has 7 ingredients. However, if I were to have to make an ingredient list like on the back of all the food we buy these days it would STILL have only 7 ingredients (maybe 8, there might some curing salt in the bacon). I took food that exists and made it into something else that's super tasty. Yeah, I know bacon is cured and such but if I bought pork belly I would have to do the same thing, which I wish I could! I've tried to start doing things for myself, it's just hard because financially and space-wise right now it's not an option to do EVERYTHING so I do what I can and try and make wise-choices on the things I can't do from scratch. I also know that bacon is not considered healthy. However, I know a couple slices of bacon makes my body feel much better than  10 calories of fake butter. 

This being said I don't always eat just "real food". I still eat normal people food. I also make a lot of normal people food because I live in a house with 9 other people (yeah, I know) ha. I try to eat as much real food as I can, as well as helping my family secretly start  eating healthy. Yeah, I eat store-bought bread sometimes... that's life.  



Another reason eating real has been so important for me is because I don't tolerate gluten. Mine isn't very bad at this time but I still feel WAY better when I don't eat it. You'll have lots of gluten free recipes here, as well as normal ones because I'm cooking for other people too.  It's a lot easier to know something doesn't have gluten in it if 1) I make it , 2) it naturally doesn't have gluten, and 3) if I don't have to read 7000 ingredients to decide. 

This is how I try and eat. I also try and exercise regularly. I also make sure that I only exercise when I enjoy it. This sounds very wrong to a lot of you I'm sure. BUT I currently enjoy working out. I also know it helps me be healthy. So if I am having a shit day and don't work out 1 day that week, to me it's way better than forcing myself to and starting to have negative feelings towards exercise.  

Monday, August 13, 2012

Dinosaur Eggs!

This was a WAY fun activity. It was pretty easy and since we made enough for a couple sets at once it was very little prep time for something my little brothers loved... and maybe I enjoyed myself too. I think it would be an awesome activity at a birthday party or something of that nature and I forgot to mention that it's SUPER cheap.

We called this babies "dinosaur eggs" because we hid cute little plastic dinosaurs in them. They do look more like poop than eggs though. ha. You could hide pretty much anything in them (I think plastic stuff would work best because it's not delicate or ruin-able). Yeah, I make up words. 

1 cup coffee grounds, used
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup sand
3/4 cup or so water
the stuff you want to hide (small toys, jewels, etc.)

Mix coffee, flour, salt, and sand. Then add water 1/4 cup at a time until a dough-like consistency. Form a little ball of the dough. Stick your stuff in it, and add more dough and/or form it into a ball so the whole toy is covered. (if you make it too big it won't dry forever). You can either let them sit out for a couple days (2 or 3) or you can put them in your oven on low (150-200* whatever is the lowest on your oven) and bake for 20 minutes or so until dry. 

Then break and enjoy! We used forks and knives to help us break them up. We made 10 or so "eggs" with this much and did it three different times. I think this would be just as fun for girls too, if they're not into dinosaurs and stuff I would think any of the cute party favors like rings and stuff would be awesome!

Smothered Tilapia... or Chicken!

Now, I will preface this by saying I usually make this recipe with chicken and not tilapia. The tilapia was yummy, but I think I prefer this dish with chicken (we didn't have any chicken and a store run was not on the agenda) and to have my fish dishes more fish like, ya know? If that makes sense, ha. So I'd recommend trying this dish with chicken! It is one of my favorite dishes and even though you have to do a few steps they are all super simple and make a phenomenal dish.

2 chicken breasts or tilapia filets
4 slices bacon, chopped
2 onions, sliced pretty small
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. shredded cheese
salt & pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350*. If using chicken breasts, I like to cut them into a bit smaller pieces so they cook faster. Place chicken (or tilapia) into an aluminum foil packet with a little olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Throw it in the oven and bake away. A whole breast will probably take 40-50 minutes to cook through, where 1/2 a breast should take 20-30 minutes, and tilipia will take 10 minutes if defrosted, or 20 minutes if frozen. While the protein of choice is cooking away, start frying up your chopped bacon. I like mine nice and crispy so I cook it until it's crisp. Then remove bacon from pan onto a paper towel (leave the grease in the pan). Throw the onion into the hot pan with the grease and start cooking. I don't cook them all the way caramelized just nice and tender. After about 10 minutes or so, I add in the brown sugar and stir it all good. Once the onions are coated and the brown sugar is dissolved. Layer your protein, onions, sprinkle some cheese, then your bacon. I like mine with rice and broccoli.