Sesame Pasta Chicken Salad

This one's from my friend Ashley. I'm not sure where she got it... probably All Recipes. 

I tried a similar one of these the other day and I like Ashley's so much better even though it calls for some ingredients that I only use for this salad, they keep well in the fridge or cupboard. 

Sesame Pasta Chicken Salad

1/3 c sesame seeds

16 oz bow tie pasta

3/4 c veg. oil

1/2 c light soy sauce

1/2 c rice vinegar

1 and 1/2 tsp sesame oil

1/4 c sugar

3/4 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp black pepper

chicken (torn up into small pieces)

1/2 c cilantro

1/2 c green onion

carrots and celery cut into small cubes

Add first 9 ingredients together to mix and put in some sort of jar, or salad dressing server. I reused a jelly container that you squeeze out. It works great! And Mix or shake. 

Then pour over the rest of the ingredients. 

This recipe can be made the day before an event with the sauce on it and it only gets better and more flavorful the longer it sits. This recipe is simply delicious goodness.

Rating: 8
Carbs: Just try to measure out the noodles. Everything else is pretty much free (maybe add 5 grams for the sugar dressing).

Mac and Cheese - The Ultimate Comfort Food

This recipe is not an experiment... unless you count my attempts at memorizing more of my favorite recipes. This one is so easy I've done it. No need for the recipe folder anymore with this delicious stand-by. I bring this dish to friends who have recently had babies, mom's who are worn out from checking their daughter's blood sugar all night and are feeling sick, and to my mom's house when she is watching all the kids and has better things to do than cook...

I got this recipe from my friend Teri a long time ago. People rave about it. It's made at least every two weeks around here.

Homemade Mac and Cheese:

3 cups of dry Macaroni noodles
6 TBSP butter
6 TBSP of flour (white or whole wheat)
4 cups of milk
4 cups of shredded cheese... I use a mixture of Mozzarella and Cheddar.
Salt and Pepper

Boil the noodles (I use whole wheat) until soft and drain.



Meanwhile in another pot (or it works really well in a cast iron dutch oven) melt butter.

Stir in flour.

Then add  milk and heat until the mixture thickens up. You will need to stir frequently.

When thickened, remove from the heat and stir in cheese.



Add salt and pepper to taste and stir the sauce into the noodles.

Bake at 350 for 35 min. If you use the dutch oven, just put the whole thing from the range into the oven. It turns out so golden and wonderful.

You can bake it like this with just cheese and noodles, but I will frequently put cut up ham or bacon in there too. It's SO GOOD! Some day I'll add the final picture. It looks so pretty too.

The little people and the big guy always snarf it and I haven't had them rate this, but they would all probably say 9-10.

Rating: 9.5
Carbs: 25 grams per 1 cup cooked

I'm Never Buying Hamburger Buns Again

I found this recipe on a new site I've been following since I met her at a mutual friend's party. She has a fun and diverse blog called dreadlock girl.

I decided to try this recipe out for the first time on my whole Bible study. I made a triple batch and fully expected I might ruin it and have to go buy buns for the end of the year party... But I didn't!!

Everyone loved them! They consistently rated it a 9 or 10 out of 10. Sooo I will be making these again for sure! I didn't use them for hamburgers though. We sliced them in half and put chicken salad inside. SO YUMMY!

Anyway, here was my attempt:

I bit off a little more than I could chew and was trying to cook homemade Mac-n-Cheese while uploading pictures to my computer at the same time. Next time I'll work in phases... because I took longer than the 5 min it takes for the yeast to become fluffy... and it overflowed! But not before I got a picture of it :)

 We have a lot of people in our group and many of them are little :) so I divided one of the 3 batches into 16. I don't have a "dough scraper" so I used a butter knife. I think it worked ok... I was trying to be gentle when forming it into balls because I think they say the more a dough is handled, the tougher it becomes. I don't know...

Anyway, I made some with the egg topping that the recipe calls for and some with a melted butter topping.  I think I'll go with the butter. I also didn't use sesame seeds. I also don't have parchment paper, so I used wax paper and probably won't do that again. It stinks in there! My Silpat pan liners were awesome (as usual).

Both turned out really well... except the egg one had bits of fried egg around the bottom of each roll from where it dripped down. Maybe I need to get one of those paintbrusher things for food too...

Here is the recipe from her site (I inserted my own pics from some of the steps):

Light Brioche Buns (for Hamburgers and Much More)


Time: 1 hour, plus 2 to 4 hours’ rising

3 tablespoons warm milk
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs
3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened.

1. In a glass measuring cup, combine 1 cup warm water, the milk, yeast and sugar. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, beat 1 egg.

2. In a large bowl, whisk flours with salt. Add butter and rub into flour between your fingers, making crumbs. Using a dough scraper, stir in yeast mixture and beaten egg until a dough forms. Scrape dough onto clean, unfloured counter and knead, scooping dough up, slapping it on counter and turning it, until smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes.

Almost done...

Done :)

 3. Shape dough into a ball and return it to bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.

 4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using dough scraper, divide dough into 8 equal parts. Gently roll each into a ball and arrange 2 to 3 inches apart on baking sheet. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let buns rise in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours.

 5. Set a large shallow pan of water on oven floor. Preheat oven to 400 degrees with rack in center. Beat remaining egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush some on top of buns. Bake, turning sheet halfway through baking, until tops are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Yield: 8 buns.

Notes: For a very quick one-hour rise put the rising dough in your oven (make sure it is off) and pour the boiling water from the last step of the recipe into a shallow pan on a lower rack (if you have two racks in your oven). Then close the oven quickly and let the dough rise in this sort of greenhouse and you will not need to wait very long for it to double. Then your water is already in there for the last step. I do this for all my bread now since one of my favoirite friends told me this oven greenhouse trick.


Rating: 9.5
Carbs: 25 grams per 1/16th, 51g per 1/8th

Thanks Bethany! This one's a winner! Maybe I'll make them again today :)

Update: 7-9-11 I keep making these and they are soooo good. A couple of times they have been too sticky to knead, so I just add a little flour and that does the trick. Also I have experimented with different amounts of whole wheat bread flour. It didn't rise as well... but I may not have given it enough time. Anyway, I found that with 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of white, it was pretty healthy and still tasted really soft and good.

Here are a few more things we have done with them:

They taste good just by themselves or with butter and jam on them.

They are awesome with Barbequed Chicken from the slow cooker!

And tonight we finally tried a good old hamburger. SO GOOD! It was nice and hot outside today so I just set them in the sun to rise and it took about half the time. Yum.

Parmesan Chicken Tenders

I tried a new chicken dish that we will definitely be making again. This chicken was so good it got this reaction from Cambria:

Cambria! The kid who rates all of our new experiments a 2 or lower... She ate the whole thing and asked for seconds... and she rated it a 24 :)

I found this recipe in the Barefoot Contessa Family Style Book I got from the library:

Parmesan Chicken Sticks:

1.5 lbs skinless boneless chicken breasts (3-4)-(I used a bunch of chicken tenders instead)
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 extra large eggs
1 cup seasoned bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Unsalted butter
Bamboo skewers (6-10 inches long) or ice cream sticks (I skipped this part)

Slice chicken breasts on a cutting board diagonally into four or five strips.

Combine the flour, salt, and pepper on a dinner plate. Beat the eggs with 1 tbsp of water on a second plate. Combine the bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese on a third plate. Dredge the chicken breasts on both sides in the flour misture, then dip both sides into the egg mixture and roll in the bread-crumb mixture, pressing lightly to coat.

Heat 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large saute pan and cook the chicken strips on medium-low heat for about 3 minutes per side, until cooked just through. (I found that it took a little hotter or longer than this to achieve the crispy golden effect). Don't crowd the pan. Add more butter and oil and cook the rest of the chicken breasts. Serve each strip on a skewer or stick.

Yum! It was so good. This pic doesn't look so hot because I forgot to take a picture of it until they were half eaten and roughed up a bit...

Cliff rated it his first 10. The other kids and I rated it an average of 8.5.

Carbohydrates: 5-10g per piece

Calories: (I don't know yet...)

A Frittata Minus the Eggs?

I needed to use up the rest of the Gruyere cheese and I had all the other ingredients as well. It was looking like we'd have a yummy Frittata for dinner. Only I didn't have all the ingredients. I didn't have any eggs.

I had just researched egg substitutes for the waffles that morning (I used apple sauce). It worked well. But while I was looking up possible substitutions I noticed tofu was on the list of replacements. We don't eat tofu. We aren't vegetarians or vegans... but I did pick up 2 boxes at the store last time I was there to add it to my weird ingredient list.

I served it to the kids. They rated it a 5 or so. I rated it a 7. I made it on a day that Cliff worked late, so when he came home and started to snarf it, I didn't tell him what was in it until his plate was empty. When I told him it was tofu, he said, "Yuck! It's just wrong to eat tofu!" To which I said, "But you liked it." He had to agree and went back for seconds :)

 It's fun learning substitutions. I also learned that you can substitute ground flax seed for eggs in certain dishes. I think I'll start a substitution section too. I tend to need that info a lot.

Tuna Salad

I got this one off of a blog (Mckmama) She just throws stuff together, so I probably made it slightly differently than her. We have already made this twice now Cliff loves it so much! It's relatively healthy too.

Mix together: 

Tuna and mayo

then add (all finely diced): 

tomatoes

cucumbers

onion

green pepper

then mix it in with the tuna and mayo and add:

corn

chopped cilantro

sea salt

You can serve it over lettuce, have it plain, put it in a tortilla as a wrap, or eat it on french bread. 

 Rating: 9 (It's really good!)

Calories: It depends on how much mayo you like...

Carbohydrates: < 5 grams depending on how much corn you like. This is virtually a "free food!!!" When you have a Type 1 Diabetic in your family, yummy recipes like this are a must.

We'll definitely be having this regularly.... especially on hot summer days :)

Curry Chicken Salad

I had a delicious curry chicken salad sandwich from a little restaurant at the base of the Golden Gate bridge last year. I have been wanting to attempt to make one of my own ever since...

I tried this recipe:

2 pounds chicken
olive oil
kosher salt
pepper
1.5 mayo
1/3 cup white wine
1/4 cup chutney
3 TBSP curry powder
1 cup diced celery
1/4 cup chopped scallions
1/4 cup raisins
1 cup whole roasted cashews

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put chicken on a pan and rub skin with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 35-40 min, until chicken is just cooked. Cut chicken into small/medium pieces.

For the dressing, combine mayo, wine, chutney, curry, and 1.5 tsp of salt into a bowl of a food processor (I used a blender, because I don't have a food processor). Blend till smooth.

Combine all ingredients. Add celery, scallions, and raisins. Refrigerate for a few hours to allow flavors to blend. Then add cachews.

I served it on sliced of the No Knead Bread.

I really enjoyed it, but it did have too much curry. Next time I'll only put 1.5 TBSP of it. I'm a big fan of chicken salad and I LOVE cashews, so I rated it higher than the rest of the family.

My rating: 6
My family's rating: Average 3
Calories: 3,487 in the whole thing
Carbohydrates: 222 in the whole thing.

No Knead Bread

We have another keeper! Thank goodness! I was starting to get discouraged. I made this recipe with whole wheat flour because it's healthier to have the whole grains. It took a little planning but it was so worth it. The only problem I keep running into is that I really should double things for a bigger family. So I will make two of these next time. The other thing I am finding is that there are a lot of recipes that call for dutch ovens. I'm so glad I was given one.

Here is the recipe:

3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. yeast
1 3/4 tsp salt
1 2/3 cups water

Combine flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and stir until blended. Dough will be very sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 16 hours.

Place dough on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle the dough with flour and fold the dough onto itself twice. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 15 min.

Then flour your fingers and dough just enough to keep it from sticking. Then quickly shape dough into a ball. Sprinkle a cotton towel with plenty of flour and add the ball. Put the dough seam side down and let rise for 2 hours. Dough should be twice its size and will spring back when poked.

30 min. before dough is done, put the dutch oven (cast iron) into the oven and preheat to 450 degrees.

Put the dough ball in seam side up in the pan. Try to not push on the dough.

Then put the lid on and bake for 30 min.

Uncover and bake another 15 to 30 min to brown the top. Then transfer the whole pot to a wire rack to cool for another 10 min. Use potholder to turn the pot and slide the bread out.

Yum!

We sliced it up and served it with some curry chicken salad. I'll share that recipe next...

Rating: 8
Calories: 1220 in the whole thing.
Carbohydrates: 261 "

Goat Cheese Polenta with Ribs

Today I made Polenta for the first time. It was super easy and didn't take long at all.

The ribs on the other hand were very time consuming... I had planned on making them before church and then letting them simmer in the dutch oven while we were gone, but Cambria got some sort of rash... so Cliff said he'd stay home and do them.

Two Main Dishes in a row for him! I'm starting to feel like he should be the one doing this experiment... I'm glad he's into it, because it took a long time, required lots of chopping and preparation, and then turned out to be AWFUL!!!!

We had never eaten ribs before so I'm not sure if this is what one should expect... but they were not great. For one thing, there wasn't much meat. Secondly they were cooked in bacon (polenta) fat and oil which made them really greasy. We don't do much fat and grease.

The ribs were rated separately due to the extreme dislike of the Polenta. The average score of the ribs was a 5. No one hated it, but no one would be heart broken if they never saw it again.

The average score of the Polenta was a different story.... a 2. Cliff's quote was "I would rather barf than eat it." He practically vomited it out after his first bite. I made sure to document their reactions:

I don't know if our family is not cultured enough, or if it's because we don't like goat cheese (I'm going to try Polenta again without it), or maybe we are just such healthy eaters we can't handle greasy food. All I know is I'm going to have to search for a new rib recipe and a side to serve it with. I have a huge package of pork ribs in the freezer, so we will have them again sometime soon...

Any suggestions?

Carbs for the Polenta are 21g in 1/2 Cup. The ribs are (virtually) a free food. I'm not doing the calories because we won't be making it like this again.

I was pretty discouraged that it didn't turn out because I had such high hopes, but Cliff reminded me that this is an experiment and if every recipe turned out wonderful just like the cooking blogs, it wouldn't be real... He's so encouraging! Except when he's threatening to vomit out the food I made... :)

Our backup plan was baby watermelon... It made everyone much happier 

and they greatly enjoyed the fruit while cursing the Polenta...

Dutch Oven Lasagna Attempt #1

Last week I decided to pull out the dutch oven. I scrubbed it with soap, and then followed the instructions for seasoning the pan. Once all the rust was off I put it in the oven and just as it got too hot to hold I put olive oil all over it (a thin coat). Then I put it back in the oven to cook upside down for an hour with the windows open (it's pretty stinky!) After repeating the process 3 times, I figured it was ready.

Lasagna was the first dish. I used another recipe from Allrecipes. It claims it is the "World's Best."

I started it and then realized with all the seasoning of the pan I had run out of time to actually cook it... because I wanted to scrapbook with my neighbor. It takes 3 hours! Cliff volunteered and I accepted :) So while he was slaving away, I was chatting it up and relaxing kid-free. I'm spoiled I know. Anyway, he was not into photographing much of the cooking stuff, so this is all I got out of him:

Yes. He's just that dramatic...

The only thing he did differently was to put spiral noodles in instead of lasagna noodles. I turned out to be more of a lasagna soup... It could have probably used twice the amount of noodles and been pretty good. We all rated it an average of 6, but we'll have to think pretty long and hard about whether or not we want to make this again. It took so long!

There were about 20 grams of carbohydrate per 1 cup serving, but that would change if we ended up adding more noodles.

World's Best Lasagna

Rated: Submitted By: Johnchandler Photo By: Heather Prep Time: 30 Minutes Cook Time: 2 Hours 30 Minutes Ready In: 3 Hours 15 Minutes Servings: 12

"Filling and satisfying lasagna with sausage, ground beef and three types of cheese."

Ingredients:

1 pound sweet Italian sausage 3/4 pound lean ground beef 1/2 cup minced onion 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes 2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste 2 (6.5 ounce) cans canned tomato sauce 1/2 cup water 2 tablespoons white sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil leaves 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning 1 tablespoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 12 lasagna noodles 16 ounces ricotta cheese 1 egg 1/2 teaspoon salt 3/4 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1.	In a Dutch oven, cook sausage, ground beef, onion, and garlic over medium heat until well browned. Stir in crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and water. Season with sugar, basil, fennel seeds, Italian seasoning, 1 tablespoon salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons parsley. Simmer, covered, for about 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.
2.	Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook lasagna noodles in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain noodles, and rinse with cold water. In a mixing bowl, combine ricotta cheese with egg, remaining parsley, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
3.	Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
4.	To assemble, spread 1 1/2 cups of meat sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Arrange 6 noodles lengthwise over meat sauce. Spread with one half of the ricotta cheese mixture. Top with a third of mozzarella cheese slices. Spoon 1 1/2 cups meat sauce over mozzarella, and sprinkle with 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Repeat layers, and top with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil: to prevent sticking, either spray foil with cooking spray, or make sure the foil does not touch the cheese.
5.	Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes. Remove foil, and bake an additional 25 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Potato Basil Frittata with Gruyere

I have more cheeses than ever in my fridge! Here is what I'm working with... and believe me, I will use every last bit of these because most of them are so expensive!

Yesterday was Gruyere.

I used a recipe from the Barefoot Contessa's Family Style cookbook.  She must not cook for many people, because this recipe barely fed my family of 6. I will double it next time for sure... then we'll have leftovers!

This dish takes a little planning (for a breakfast), so it took me a while to get my act together for an early prep breakfast. I got started before anyone woke up with potato calculating, peeling and chopping. By the time I had them frying...

 Cambria woke up and wanted to help :)

Once the potatoes were fried it was no big deal at all. The only things I did differently, were not adding as much basil as the recipe called for (because I didn't want to completely kill our sweet little basil plant that we've miraculously kept alive for months...)

and I didn't have a pan (yet) that could work on both the range and go in the oven. So I just heated up a pyrex pan and put everything in over the potatoes.

It worked great!

The family rated it at an average of 7-8. I would have added more cheese (I LOVE CHEESE!) but Cliff said that would be a critical error, so I guess I'll keep it the same next time even though Cambria liked it only this much...

We are definitely keeping this dish and it will probably make it's camping debut this summer with the cast iron dutch oven I recently got from a friend.

 This will be even more fun with the dutch oven liners I just learned about! Easy cleanup + really good + healthy = good camping dish.