Macaroni and Cheese

Major headache. Need to study for this week. I want macaroni and cheese.

Tried a new recipe from Elizabeth's Edible Blog
Here's the original link

Recipe:
8oz box of elbow macaroni
3 1/2 cups of cheddar cheese
2 cups of milk
1/4 cup of flour
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
Breadcrumbs(I used Italian)
2 melted tablespoons of butter

Cook macaroni to al dente, still a bit hard since it'll cook even longer in the oven
In a seal able cup combine milk, flour, onion powder and garlic salt in a container. Shake them all up together until everything is well combined.
In a bowl mix milk, cheese and cooked macaroni.
Pour mix into a 13x9 greased baking pan.
Sprinkle breadcrumbs over macaroni, pour melted butter over pan.
Bake at 350F for 40-45 minutes. Macaroni should be golden when cooked.

Pot Roast

Once again checked the Publix ad to pick out my dinner menu. Today I'm attempting my first ever Pot Roast!!! Woooohooooo! I suppose you can't go wrong with a staple American meal for dinner.
After using the web to find a good recipe none of them fit exactly what I was looking for so it looks like I'll be making my own recipe. Still debating the use of slow cooker to stove/oven method. *Decided on oven.

Here are the ingredients:
-2.25 lbs of chuck roast
-10 ish peeled boiler onions
-6 or 7 carrots chopped thickly
-5 celery stalks chopped into large chunks
-8 oz baby bella mushrooms
-4 gloves garlic
-2 teaspoons of sugar
-3 bay leaf
-salt
-pepper
-flour
-thyme
-rosemary
-1 1/2 cups beef stock/broth
-1 cup cooking wine
- water
-olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 350F and make sure to place rack with enough space for your pot.

2. Coat meat in flour, salt and pepper. Coat bottom of your pot(if you have a dutch oven use that) with olive oil brown meat on all sides, then remove from pan.

3. Add and cook vegetables until brown, if needed add a bit of broth to keep brown bits from burning. Add sugar and garlic cook until fragrant about 30 seconds.

4. Place meat back into pot, over a slight layer of vegetables. Add beef stock/wine and remove brown bits from bottom, add meat and spices. Add enough liquid to almost cover the roast adding water if needed.

5. Cover pot with foil, and put into oven. Turn roast ever 30 mins, cooking for a total of 4 hours. Once roast is tender and starts to fall apart, remove from pot with vegetables and keep under a foil tent.

6. Strain out spices and thicken the sauce (if needed) on the stove top. Either use some cornstarch or a beurre manie. For cornstarch place a small amount in a bowl and dilute with cold water or liquid from roast (this prevents clumping). For the beurre manie use about 2 tablespoons of softened butter and mix with 2 tablespoons of flour. Make this into a paste. Then add to the remaining liquid in pot, let boil, sauce should thicken to an almost gravy.

7. Serve roast, vegetables and gravy with mashed potatoes.

8. Tell your friends how amazing this recipe was :p

If using a slow cooker:
1. Brown meat as stated previously, and vegetables (adds extra flavor).

2. Place half the vegetables at the bottom of the slow cooker. Place meat on top, add second half of vegetables.

3. Add 1 cup of beef broth, 1 cup of cooking wine and all spices.

4. Set on Low for 8 to 10 hours, or high 3 to 4. Once meat is tender and vegetables cooked through it's ready to eat. Remove roast and vegetables, if needed strain liquid to remove spices.

5. Place liquid back into slow cooker, set on high. In a small bowl add cornstarch, add liquid to the bowl and mix until well incorporated, add new cornstarch liquid to the slow cooker(this way it won't clump). Or you can make a beurre manie (2 tablespoons of softened butter with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed together into a paste). Add thickening agent to slow cooker, let liquid get to a boil. Once thicken ladle over your roast and vegetables.

6. Serve with mashed potatoes.

Peanut butter, banana, chocolate chip cookies...

We bought bananas at our last trip to Publix, they sat there for a week waiting to be consumed until eventually it was baking time for them. I usually make muffins with them but this time I wanted to try something new.
Peanut putter, banana and chocolate...
I scoured the internet for some ideas and eventually found a couple concepts to work off of but none of them were to my liking so here's my recipe

½ cup softened butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white

1 ½ cups peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoons honey

3 mashed bananas

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400F. Using a grease aluminum foil covered cookie sheet. 

In a bowl mix butter and sugars until blended. Add peanut butter, egg, vanilla, honey, mix together. Mash bananas and add to bowl and mix. 

Sift flour and baking soda into wet mix. Add chocolate chips to the batter.

Drop tablespoons unto cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 mins or until toothpick come out clean.

Let cool and enjoy with lactose free milk (or the regular stuff)

Lazy Post for Pork and Potatoes

Busy week. Went home for my first visit to the Florida State Fair. A little chaotic but an overall pleasant experience.

Here's a quick dinner we picked up from Publix.
Rosemary-maple pork tenderloin recipe










Quite delicious, even better the next day. Strained the sauce, added a little cornstarch and cooked until it thickened up.

Those little potatoes were delicious and probably my new favorites.

We served out dinner with some green beans in a box, next time I'll probably just steam some fresh ones.

Home for the weekend- Nectarine and blueberry coffee cake

Mom found this recipe at this blog
She really loves this blog, looks like I'll be giving it a look through soon. The store's peaches were only okie dokie, so we went with nectarines.

Here's our non gluten free version of it:
1 1/2 cups All-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
2 fresh nectarines sliced thin

Topping:
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp soft butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp flour

Mix dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl mix sour cream, eggs and vanilla. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients.  Mix until smooth. Pour into a buttered pie pan. Place nectarines and blueberries over. Mix topping ingredients until paste like. Place in a 350F oven. Bake for 40 mins, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Holla at your Challah Bread

3/4 cup warm water (or milk)

1 large egg

3 tbs margarine, cut up in little pieces

3 cups bread flour or all-purpose

4 tablespoons sugar

1 1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 egg

Add ingredients to bread machine. Spray pan, take out bread once done. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes. Braid bread or make into simple loaf. Baked on bottom 1/3 of oven at 375 F for 25 mins. Bread should be slightly brown and sound hollow when tapped.

To find out how to braid your Challah bread click here

Everybody loves pizza :)

Here's a bread machine recipe for pizza

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar (can substitute white sugar)
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
* optional variety of spices (Rosemary, Italian seasoning, oregano, etc)

Throw it all your bread machine
Preheat oven to 425 F


-Layer a baking sheet with aluminium foil
-Spray with olive oil or cornmeal
-Cover with good stuff- aka tomato sauce, mozzarella, mushrooms, bacon, etc
-Brush crust with olive oil, or other spices (garlic powder is a good one)
-Bake for 15 to 20 mins, until golden brown and cheese melted thoroughly!
-Eat and enjoy :)

Blackened Catfish with Butter Potatoes

Catfish was on sale this week at Publix.     Sale item = what's for dinner this week!
We also found a bottle of blackened seasoning in our cupboard. So dinner was born. Blackened catfish!
I'd hear terrible stories of smoke taking over the room so I figured an oven bake would be safer.
Definitely will be making it again :)

Recipe:
- 2 fillets of catfish
- 2 tbs of melted butter
- Blackened seasoning
- Olive oil spray

- 24 oz bag of small honey gold potatoes

- 3 tbs water

- 2 tbs butter

- salt

- pepper

Preheat oven to 450 F. Line two baking sheet with aluminium foil. Spray both pans down with olive oil. Cut potatoes in half, place in microwave safe bowl with 3 tbs of water. Cover potatoes and microwave about 7-8 mins or until tender to fork. Drain water out of potatoes, add butter and salt and pepper. Mix potatoes until well covered, place on one of baking sheet.
Rinse catfish fillets, pat dry with paper towels. Baste catfish fillets with butter, sprinkle blackened seasoning to preference. I covered both fillets they were pretty packed with seasoning (fyi pretty darn spicy). Place fillets on aluminum foil, spray with olive oil or a dollop of butter. In our case both :p

Place both baking sheets in oven bake 11-15 minutes. Check that fish is flaky with a fork. Check the thickest part of the fish to be sure. Potatoes should be slightly golden. Serve with salad, green beans, broccoli, veggie medley, etc.