CEiMB - Shrimp Fried Rice

This week's CEiMB recipe, courtesy of Sarah at Sarah's Kitchen Adventures, is Shrimp Fried Rice. Now, I love shrimp and I love fried rice, so I was very excited to try this recipe out. Fried rice isn't difficult, but it does take some planning. It is crucial that the rice you use is not fresh. If you use fresh rice, it comes out wonky and doesn't taste like fried rice at all. Trust me, I've made that mistake before, so this time I cooked my rice the night before I planned on making this dish.

First, I cooked up the ginger, green onions, and shrimp in canola oil.

To that, I added the cabbage. I apparently missed the note to cut the cabbage into three inch pieces, so mine were a tad big. Oops. After the shrimp pinked up, I set all that to the side and heated up some toasted sesame oil in the pan. I then added the cold brown rice and fried it up. I added the shrimp/cabbage mixture to the rice along with some soy sauce.

Terrible picture, but the dish itself turned out very well! My husband asked where the peas and carrots were, so I will add those in next time.

CEiMB -- Four Cheese Baked Penne

This week's CEiMB recipe, hosted by Lindsey of 71 Cookbooks, is Four Cheese Baked Penne. I was torn about making this recipe. I love pasta and cheese, and especially love the two together in a baked pasta. However, I HATE cottage cheese. The consistency makes me shudder and feel ill. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I avoid cottage cheese at all costs. But I decided to put on my big girl pants and try it in this recipe. It was a good decision.

While I boiled the pasta, I chopped up my onion and garlic and combined the cheeses. I may or may not have said "Blech, you are so gross looking!" out loud when putting in the cottage cheese, but I got over it. Then it was time to take the pasta out of the pot and put the onions, then garlic, then tomatoes and herbs in. I didn't have rosemary, so I used some Italian seasoning blend. This may have been a bit too much oregano. After the sauce simmered for 10 minutes, back in went the pasta along with the cheese mixture. It was topped off with the remaining mozzarella and some parmesan. I noticed that Kraft shredded cheese is now smaller than 2 cups--they are only 1 3/4 cups now! In protest, I added in an extra 1/2 cup of mozzarella, which made the dish less healthy but eased the pain of paying the same amount for 1/4 cup less cheese.

I didn't snap a lot of pictures since I was focused on getting everything together, but here's a before picture.

And an after pic (but before serving).

I made this recipe on a weeknight, but next time I will save it for a weekend since it is a little time consuming. However, most of that time is waiting time and it's incredibly easy to make. Next time, I will also use fresh parsley or omit it entirely.

CEiMB -- Fettuccine with Creamy Red Pepper-Feta Sauce

I am a former feta hater. I hated the texture of it, the smell, and definitely the taste. That is, until I went to Greece in June for a few days and realized that feta can be good! Rich, creamy, and very much NOT like chalk. Since then, I've made more of an effort to try out different fetas to find some here that I like. So for this week's Craving Ellie in My Belly, I decided to try out her Fettuccine with Creamy Red Pepper-Feta Sauce.


The recipe was easier than I expected. While I chopped up the onion and garlic, I managed to convince my husband to drain and cut up the roasted red pepper and portion out the feta.




I quickly realized that my mini food processor was not going to cut it, so I decided to be "adventurous" and use handhold blender I usurped (okay, asked for and was given) from my parents. It was very easy to use and I didn't make a huge mess of my kitchen. Of course, I have no pictures of my blended success since at that point, the pasta was done and it was ready to serve!




I should mention that while the sauce was blending, I heated up some sundried tomato chicken sausage on the stove to throw into the pasta. Despite the unappetizing color of the sauce, it was a definite success. We had enough leftover to have for lunch at work the next day which is always a good thing.


I hope you all enjoyed this recipe as much as I did. I would definitely make this again, possibly exchanging the sausage for shrimp--not that it needed either.


Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 to 3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 (16-ounce) jar roasted red peppers, drained and chopped
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken stock or vegetable stock
1 cup crumbled feta cheese or a 6-ounce block
1 pound whole-wheat fettuccine
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves


Directions
Heat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Saute onion and garlic until soft, about 10 minutes. Add roasted peppers and saute until heated through. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Place mixture in the bowl of a food processor with stock and all but 2 tablespoons of the feta. Process until combined and smooth, about 30 seconds. Cook pasta according to package directions.Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta water. Toss pasta with sauce, adding pasta water by the tablespoon, if needed. Sauce should cling nicely to pasta. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Divide amongpasta bowls. Sprinkle with parsley and remaining feta cheese.

CEiMB -- Walnut and Dried Cherry Bars

Hello again! After quite a long absence, I am back. Not that I really went anywhere. Things were hectic at work and with the holidays, and I let the blog fall to the way side. But I am back and ready to cook, though I am considering a move to Word Press from Blogger. Stay tuned for more info.

This week's recipe for CEiMB, Walnut and Dried Cherry Bars is from Heide of Chez Zero. Like all of Ellie's recipes, this one fits in great with the whole "Eat better" resolution so many of us have. The ingredient list appeared intimidating at first, but the recipe was incredibly simple. I used my mini food processor to chop up my walnuts, which was fantastic. My grocery store only had untoasted wheat germ and I didn't feel like toasting it so I used it as is. I also didn't have dried cherries, but I did have cherry flavored Craisins so I used those.

The ingredient mixture is baked in a square baking dish, as seen below. The oats make it look like I just took a giant bowl of oatmeal and dumped it in a dish.

While the bars baked, I did dishes--by far, the most difficult part of the whole thing. When the baking time wound down, I cooked up the apricot preserves. I didn't realize that my "all fruit" jelly had actual fruit pieces. No matter, I still brushed the melted preserves on top of the hot baked energy bars.

I didn't snap a pic of the cut bars, but I am eating one as part of lunch right now--delicious! I will definitely be eating more of these, and will make them again with different dried fruit and preserves.

CEiMB -- Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta

Well, today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. For Craving Ellie in My Belly this week, we can choose any Ellie recipe we want. Since I'm sure there will be lots of delicious, heavy food at Thanksgiving, I decided to pick a light seafood dish--Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta from The Food You Crave (page 234). This dish is amazingly simple yet delicious and will definitely be a regular in my house.

Basically, you cook up some onion and garlic in olive oil, then add two cans of diced tomatoes until the mixture thickens. Throw in some shrimp, parsley, dill, salt, pepper, and feta, and put the whole thing in a 425 degree oven for 12 minutes. That's it!

I decided to serve the shrimp with brown rice, but it would also be great with pasta.

CEiMB -- Whole-Wheat Pasta Salad with Walnuts and Feta

This week's CEiMB recipe is whole-wheat pasta salad with walnuts and feta hosted Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table. I may not have taken many photos, but I loved it! While the pasta boiled, I chopped up spinach, onion, feta, as well as the sun dried tomatoes I added in. I set the mixture to the side while I toasted and chopped the walnuts before adding them to the party.

The dressing was incredibly easy to make, though I used olive oil rather than walnut oil. I doubled the amount of dressing and combined everything.

It was very tasty that evening, as well as for lunch the next day. The only thing I would change is using less onion. I used half of a small/medium red onion and it was overpowering--and I LOVE onions. I also added some dried cranberries to the lunch leftovers and it was delicious. I will definitely be making this dish again.

CEiMB -- Spaghetti Frittata

Growing up, one of my aunts would always make a spaghetti pie for holiday dinners. It always scared me, so I never tried it. When I saw this week's recipe for Spaghetti Frittata, hosted by Marthe at Culinary Delights, it reminded me of that spaghetti pie. I knew I had to make it and finally try it out!

Since the past few weeks at work have been hectic, this was a good recipe to make because it was so straightforward and uncomplicated. While I cooked the pasta, I chopped up my onion and set it to cook, then chopped up the spinach, sundried tomatoes, and garlic to add to the pan. After combining the pasta and sauce, I added that mixture to the veggies and cooked up. Finally, I added the eggs. The recipe calls for broiling the mixture after adding cheese, but I wasn't 100% sure that my pans could handle it so I put the oven temp up as high as I knew I could. It took a bit longer, but it seemed to work.

Pre-oven:

Post-oven:

I was scared it was going to be some weird eggy pasta "thing" but it was good! I wish I had added more salt and maybe some herbs for additional flavor, but my husband liked it as it was.

CEiMB--Apple Brown Betty

So this week was my pick for Craving Ellie in My Belly--Apple Brown Betty. Even better, I was able to make this recipe over the weekend with my mom since my parents were visiting! There was quite the selection of apples at the farmers market. Even though the recipe calls for Golden Delicious apples, I decided to use Nittany apples from the market--mostly because my husband went to Penn State and is a huge PSU football fan (if I had known how poorly the game was going to go later that day, I may have chosen differently!).

This recipe was quite easy to put together. The most difficult part was thinly slicing the apples, but even that became easy once I remembered I owned a mandoline slicer (that is why my cut up apples all look different). I added the apples, apple cider (also from the farmers market and crazy delicious), some of the brown sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon to a large pan to cook up.



I was concerned that the apples wouldn't fit in my pie dish, but they cooked down nicely and fit into my pie dish without any trouble.



Since I was enjoying time with my family, I didn't realize until it was too late that I did not have any bread at home. Luckily for me, I did have some panko bread crumbs! I combined those with melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon for the topping, and popped the whole thing into the oven.



After 30 minutes, the topping was a nice, golden brown. Dessert time!



My husband surprised us by picking up some low-fat vanilla ice cream to go with the Apple Brown Betty. It was a great combination, especially since it was a pretty warm evening.



The recipe makes a lot of servings, definitely more than six unless you have pretty big portion sizes. The four of us each had some, and I actually ate the Apple Brown Betty cold later on in the week. It is delicious cold as well, even without the ice cream!

You can find the recipe on the Food Network site for Ellie's Apple Brown Betty, as well as on page 241 of So Easy.

CEiMB: Baked French Toast

This week's CEiMB recipe was Blueberry Almond French Toast, hosted at Chez Zero. As you may gather from the post title, it's a baked French toast dish, and one where I left out two of the main ingredients--blueberries and almonds. Why would I do such a thing? Well, my husband doesn't care for almonds. Since raspberries were on sale, I swapped them out for blueberries. Sometimes, recipe tweaks are great. In this case, I should have stuck closer to the original.

Since there are only two of us, I sort of halved the recipe. I kept the bread, vanilla, and cinnamon amounts the same, but decreasing everything else.

Bread, meet egg/milk/etc. mixture

One thing I really liked about this recipe was that it was prepared the night before. It was especially helpful since I had quite a few loads of laundry to take care of the morning I made this.

After pouring the egg/milk/etc. mixture over the baguette pieces, I added some raspberries, covered the dish, and popped it in the fridge for the night.

The next morning, I put the French toast into the oven. Truthfully, I panicked that the cold glass dish would break apart in the hot oven, so I heated it up in the microwave at 30 second intervals to take the chill off. I wouldn't recommend it.

Since I was distracted by laundry (and thoughts of exploding glassware), I forgot to top my baked French toast with brown sugar until there were only about 15 minutes left.

I baked for about 50 minutes, then cut out some pieces to eat for breakfast.

It was okay. The raspberries' tartness was a bit overwhelming in the dish, so poor choice on my part there. I put in 1/3 cup of real maple syrup, but couldn't taste it at all. I'm not giving up on baked French toast just yet, but I may try making the actual recipes (blueberries, almonds and all) in the future.

CEiMB -- Baked Falafel Sandiwches

I've been a bad, bad blogger. No reason except that I've been reading up a storm and I just started to learn how to knit (I am horrible right now, but I love it). But I really have been cooking (and baking) away at home! I promise to catch up on posts very soon.

Now on to the food and my first Craving Ellie in My Belly post for September! This week's recipe was Baked Falafel Sandwiches and hosted by Elina of Healthy and Sane (healthy and sane, that is something I strive for). I was very excited to make this recipe because I love me some falafel. When I studied in Melbourne (in Australia, not Florida), my friends and I used to frequent kebab shops after a night at the bars. Since I was a vegetarian at the time, I stuck with falafel and it always brings back good memories.

Despite the number of ingredients, this recipe was quite easy to put together. It starts off with chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, cilantro, coriander, cumin, salt and olive oil in a food processor. I quickly learned that my mini food processor doesn't really cut it for things like this, but I made it work.

After combining the main ingredients in the food processor (20 seconds, I don't think so, Ellie!), time to make the falafel. The mixture was moist, but not super sticky so it was pretty easy to form 16 falafel balls and plop them onto a baking sheet sprayed with olive oil. I used my Misto olive oil sprayer to spray olive oil over the falafels rather than brushing them. Yeah lazy! Or efficient. Definitely efficient.

While those hung out in the oven for 40 minutes (turning halfway through), I worked the tahini sauce and "salad." I learned that tahini is not the cheapest ingredient out there, but I have a large container of it and I will find other ways to use it. The tahini sauce was very easy--tahini, lemon juice, and water stirred until mixed into desired sauce consistency.

The "salad" consisted of lettuce, seeded diced cucumber and tomato. Unfortunately, my tomatoes decided to grow Santa Claus like beards so I had to toss them. Ho Ho...not in my falafel sandwich, so I stuck with lettuce (I used a salad mix because I had it on hand) and cucumber.

To put the sandwiches together, I toasted pita pockets in the oven, split them, and filled with tahini sauce, salad, and falafel. That's it--so easy!

That picture doesn't really look like falafel, but I was too anxious to try it to take another one.

I made C2 stop eating for a moment to let me take a picture of his half-eaten falafel. He enjoyed it as much as I did, though we both thought the sandwiches were definitely filling. I'm hoping the falafel reheats well because we have enough leftover for dinner tomorrow as well.

CEiMB -- Mango Lassi

This week's CEiMB recipe was Mango Lassi. I was excited about this recipe for a few reasons. One, it looked pretty simple, which was perfect for a weeknight. Two, I love anything remotely like a fruit shake. I've been known to stare, and possibly drool, at the McDonald's strawberry banana smoothie ads. Mmmm smoothie. And three, I caught part of a segment on the Dr. Oz show about how to slow down aging and they discussed how mangoes were great for gum health. My gums could use some help, especially with a dentist appointment next week [shudder].

Since I was home alone, I decided to half the recipe. Other than that, I tried to follow the recipe as it was written (which you can find here). Ingredient #1 was--surprise--mango. I decided to peel the mango before cutting off as much fruit as I could around the pit. After choppin' up the mango, time for a ride in the blender. I pureed the mango on it's own first.

Hey, look, my blender matches my coffee maker!

Once the mango was pureed, I added in plain yogurt (vanilla might have been tasty as well), ice, and honey. Then it was time for more blending. However, my blender had other things in mind and stopped working--what a diva! Luckily, most of the ice was crushed and the mango lassi was pretty frothy.

Here's the final result:

You can see some of the bigger ice pieces floating around. Due to my blender malfunction, it wasn't mixed enough and I could taste the honey separately from the yogurt separately from the mango. I let it sit for a bit while watching an episode of "The Next Food Network Star" and it tasted MUCH better! I would definitely make it again, but I might try subbing in vanilla yogurt for the plain. And get a new blender.

CEiMB -- Chicken with Warm Tomato and Corn Salad

This is my first post as part of the "Craving Ellie in My Belly" blog group and I am very excited about it! Basically, there's a group of bloggers who cook up a different Ellie Krieger recipe each week and blog about it. For those who don't know, Ellie Krieger is a registered dietitian, cookbook author, and Food Network personality specializing in healthy, tasty food. I'm looking forward to cooking her recipes on a regular basis, especially since they will likely involve a lot of, you know, vegetables.

On to the food. This week's recipe was Chicken with Warm Tomato and Corn Salad from the book, So Easy: Luscious, Healthy Recipes for Every Meal of the Week. I halved the salad recipe since it was just C2 and I eating, and made it over the weekend on a very warm evening--just the right kind of night for a light meal. Even better, itdidn't involve much standing over a hot stove. The most time consuming part was chopping up the vegetables and even that didn't take very long.

First there were the tomatoes, then the corn. Okay, I didn't have to cut any corn since I used frozen kernels. The recipe also calls for scallions, but I forgot to buy them at the store. Whoops.

I then heated up a pan to cook up the chicken. I used boneless, skinless breast tenderloins. At least I think that's what they were called--thin, small pieces of chicken. The important thing is that they were little and cooked up crazy fast. Hooray quick food!

While the chicken cooked up, I managed to cut up some avocado, cilantro, and lime. Or, as I named them while cutting, the three green amigos.

After the chicken was done, I set it aside cooked up the tomato and corn along with some garlic. Just a few quick minutes later, dinner was ready! Don't worry, I didn't forget about the three green amigos. The warm tomato and corn salad was topped with chicken, which was then topped with the cilantro, avocado, and squeeze of lime juice.

Mmmm tasty

It was quite delicious. I should have seasoned the chicken a bit more with salt and pepper, and maybe a little something else (I'm not good enough at this yet to know exactly what would work). Even though I halved the tomato corn salad, I kept the full avocado amount because I really, really love avocado and hardly ever have it.