Tag Archives: Recipe

Homemade Granola

The inspiration behind making my own homemade granola: spotting a $1.99 bag of coconut flakes in Trader Joe’s this weekend. First of all, do you know how delicious coconut flakes are all on their own? The second these were spotted, my friend Stevie told me how they would be perfect in granola. What a brilliant friend I have!
So I bought a bag and was told that Sunny Anderson’s granola was a fantastic recipe to go off of. But, if I’m going to make some homemade granola, I’m going to make it with the ingredients I love most. Inspired by Sunny’s recipe, I took the base of her granola and molded into my own personal Happy Trails granola combo.

homemade granola recipe

Here’s how I made it:

  1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
  2. On the stove, heat up 1/4 cup vegetable oil + 1/2 cup maple syrup (the good stuff, folks. no Aunt Jemima crap) + 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Whisk these 3 ingredients together just until they start to bubble. Remove from stove and let cool
  3. In a mixing bowl, stir together 3 cups rolled oats + 1/4 dark brown sugar + a pinch or two of salt +1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  4. Once cooled, pour the vegetable oil/maple syrup/cinnamon combo over top of the mixing bowl ingredients. Be sure to mix these well.
  5. In a small bowl whisk together 2 egg whites and pour over top of the other ingredients. Mix all ingredients well.
  6. Spread the granola out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper
  7. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and flip the oats. Repeat this 4 times. This will take a total of 40 minutes.
  8. Remove granola from the oven and let the ingredients cool.
  9. Once cooled, add 1/2 cup of dried cranberries + 1/4 cup coconut flakes to the mixture.

If you want more flavor — here are a few other fabulous ingredient ideas: dried banana chips, dried mango (for a summer-time granola), slivered almonds instead of walnuts, sunflower seeds, pistachios, and honey. And if you have a massive sweet tooth — throw in some chocolate chunks!

This granola on top of just regular plain yogurt is to-die-for! But of course it tastes fabulous on raspberry yogurt too!

Blueberry Mojito Recipe

As promised, folks, I have the most incredible mojito recipe to share!

blueberry mojito recipe
Over my holiday I was surprised with a last minute trip to Hawaii. For the past few years, I have vacationed with my boyfriend to very fun, relaxing beachy locations; and every beach trip we have been on I am typically the one enjoying an ice-cold brewski and he’s sitting next to me slurping on a pina colada (wait, did I mention they are always virgins?). This year, he discovered a new drink that not only had him hooked, but me as well! And, I have to give full credit here to the bartender at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea for this recipe — he managed to create a mojito so unbelievably amazing he must have had so many recipe requests the Four Seasons had special recipe cards printed for him to share with the guests! Created by Danny McCauley, his “Serenity Mojito” (I call it the Blueberry Mojito) seriously hits the spot on a hot day! The icy beverage has the perfect mix of flavor — from the cooling sensation of the muddled mint leaves to the sweetness of the fresh blueberries — this mixed drink is guaranteed to keep people drinking (responsibly, of course)!

Okay, so I’ll cut to the chase… see below for the recipe!

Ingredients/Directions Combined:

  • Fresh Mint Leaves (6-7 each)
  • Fresh Blueberries (8-10 each)

Muddle these ingredients together (then add to the glass).

Fill a glass with crushed ice.

  • Add 1.5 oz. of Blueberry Fris Vodka to the glass
  • Add 1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice
  • Fill the glass with soda water
  • Shake the combination thoroughly

A Classic Country-Style Dinner

There’s something about the foods that I get to eat when I go home. Leaving a city and going to the country-side, it doesn’t just mean you can go pick corn yourself from the farm down the road, but it also means… MORE COUNTER SPACE! After living in a city with practically no apartment/living space and then returning home to a house with a kitchen practically the size of your first apartment — you know you’re going to have a field day cooking! I sure have.

Within the past few days, I have made multiple batches of cookies, specifically homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, loads of homemade popcorn spiced up with either truffle salt or dry ranch dip (try it, it’s fabulous!), homemade pizza (a Rasi family specialty), and tonight was one of my favorites… I made an outstanding lemon, garlic chicken with creamed corn. Not only was this recipe a cinch, it also involved very few ingredients that are also basic and easy to find in any grocery store!

Pulled directly from the one, the only, Food Network Magazine, the directions are made by professionals and need no alterations, I promise you! The simplicity of the creamed corn recipe will have me making it many more times even when I am cooking other dishes that may not be chicken. Take a look at the recipe for the chicken and the corn. The only addition I would make is to add more salt and pepper at the end once the corn has been cooked. It will add the perfect seasoning to the plate. Also, I paired this dish with a full-bodied red wine. Try it, you’ll be happy!

I laughed while making this because my mother was with me and said, “how long do you think this will take to cook?” I told her the directions said about 40 minutes total. She laughed and said that that is never the case and it always ends up taking longer. Everyone knows that I am a true believer and supporter in the entire Food Network brand, yes it’s because I am a fan… But it’s also because I actually have experience working in the FNM offices and I know that everyone there does everything to make the recipe the best it can ever be! So, follow directions to the T. And if you find something you’d prefer to change, do it the second time you make the dish! The chefs writing these recipes have experience — they are not college graduates that cooked up Ramen noodles one too many times… They are trained culinary experts that want everyone to say “YUM” when they take a bite out of their own personal culinary creation.

Recipe: Homemade Whipped Cream

It’s almost that time of year where strawberries will be back in season! I’m already finding beautiful strawberries for an inexpensive price at Trader Joe’s!

I’ll typically eat strawberries by itself, but yesterday I wanted to spice it up a bit and add some whipped cream. When a friend told me how easy it is to make whipped cream from scratch I figured I’d give it a shot rather than buy it at the store.

This recipe for whipped cream is so easy — even someone who may consider themselves a horrible cook can pull this one off!

how to make whipped cream from scratch

So here’s the scoop:

1. Put 1 cup heavy cream, 3 tablespoons sugar, and 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract into an electric mixer.
2. Whip ingredients together on medium speed until you can form soft peaks (meaning the peaks are able to bend over at the top when you remove the whisk from the electric mixer).
3. Scoop into a bowl, and serve with strawberries (or any other dessert you’d like to pair it with).

It’s seriously that easy! It’s Whipped Cream 1-2-3! My favorite part (besides that it’s so easy to make) is that the flavor is a 100 times better than the fake stuff at the store! The flavors are real, the texture is soft, fluffy, and of course creamy at the same time!

Recipe: Artichoke Cheese Bread

I feel like food inspiration is every where these days! And especially since I started using Pinterest I feel like I am surrounded by foodies that know what good food really is.

I was inspired by this recipe I saw pinned on a food board on the Pinterest website and I figured I’d give it a go. I had almost all of the ingredients (I needed to pick up a can of artichokes and some fresh french baguettes) and it seemed like putting together the breaded appetizer would be fairly easy.

draining artichokes

So first thing is first… I needed to crack open the can of artichokes. Gag. Have you ever taken a whiff of canned artichokes — again, gag. I love the taste of artichokes but I was practically dry heaving over the smell when they were drained from the can. (I react the same way when I am opening a can of gorgonzola beans.) Note: this is why I am not the one in culinary school, I’ll leave that up to my good friend Stef.

After getting past draining the artichokes, everything was a breeze. For a serving of 4, here’s what the recipe called for:

2 whole grain french baguettes
1/4 cup olive oil
1 14-ounce can of artichokes in water or brine, drained and chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cups freshly grated parmesan cheese
1/3 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup seasoned panko bread crumbs
fresh parsley for garnish

I decided I’d leave the panko bread crumbs out but you’re welcome to keep them in. After draining and rinsing the artichokes, here’s what the instructions said to do:

Cut the baguettes in half lengthwise and brush with the olive oil. Equally distribute the minced garlic and chopped artichoke hearts. Top each with a good handful of cheese, about 1/3 cup each. Sprinkle on a few breadcrumbs. Bake for 8 minutes, then heat the broiler and broil for 2 minutes, or until cheese is golden brown. Garnish with chopped parsley.

I love the flavor of the cheese, garlic, and artichokes. But here’s what I think should be noted for the recipe… Be sure to keep the spread pretty thin, I might have order done it by piling on the ingredients. The flavors were fantastic, but I could hardly take a bite without making a mess! If you can master that (which is no big deal), then these will make for a perfect appetizer or side dish for an Italian meal!

Mexican-Style Puff Pastry

An exotic idea for a puff pastry recipe came to me when I saw a photo on Tumblr of a puff pastry stuffed with salsa, cream cheese, and avocado.

I love avocados… maybe a little too much. I could half the avocado, put a bit of fresh ground pepper and salt on top and spoon it out and eat it.

So, when I saw this idea I decided to run with it.

I quickly realized that I had all of the ingredients already in my refrigerator and freezer. I took out the puff pastry dough, grabbed an avocado, fresh Whole Foods salsa, and low-fat cream cheese. Once the puff pastry was ready to go I cut out 3.5 inch squares of dough, cut a piece of cream cheese a little smaller than my thumb and then I placed that on the middle of the dough. Then I took a table spoon out to scoop avocado out — used a table spoon or two for each piece and there was no need to mash it up either! Then I put about a tablespoon of fresh salsa around the avocado. I folded the dough over so the shape became a triangle. Finally, I used a fork to press down the sides so the dough would stick together and none of the ingredients would fall out.

With the oven already preheated to 375 degrees, I popped those babies in the oven for about 10-12 minutes.

When I took them out of the oven, I let them cool for a few minutes before eating. This was the first time I ever had an avocado heated up! All of the flavors reminded me of a mexican dinner but this time I got all the flavors stuffed into an insanely crispy, buttery, flakey puff pastry!

The colors inside the appetizer reminds me of a fiesta — and would be perfect to serve at a chic outdoor grill-night in the middle of summer!

mexican style puff pastry

With four ingredients, no seasoning, no mixing, no chopping, and within 20 minutes … I was able to create something so tasty! No need for dipping sauce either! The cream cheese provides a sweet and savory texture and flavor, and the salsa adds all of the spices you need!

Give it a try — I’m sure you’ll be just as surprised as I was when I sunk my teeth into this newly discovered dish!

Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have been on one heck of a Ree Drummond kick lately! This chef is a fairly new addition to the Food Network channel and I am loving her show every Saturday morning. There’s something about homemade food, cooked in the middle of nowhere, that’s whipped up on a ranch filled with cowboys. Anything that’s homemade, homestyle, and baked with love I’m sure tastes fantastic.

The other week I made Ree’s Spinach and Mushroom Quesadillas — and since then I have managed to pass this recipe along to all of my coworkers and a number of friends. All have cooked-up the recipe and they loved it!

I was totally infatuated with Ree’s episode the other week where she baked Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies. Here’s what I loved about it: she adds an ingredient that I never knew could be added to a cookie recipe — malted milk, while the cookies bake they end up spreading out and baking flat because of this special ingredient, and you have the choice of making the cookie crunchy or chewy. Since I prefer my cookies to be crunchy, yet so many prefer them to be chewy, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and make half the batch my preferred way and the other half the way my friends would enjoy it.

Since I recently got a KitchenAid mixer for Christmas, I knew baking these cookies would be easy. But, I realized quickly that I owned only a few ingredients. Since I now have a mixer, I knew it was time for me to buy basic ingredients — like flour, sugar, etc. So off to the store I went.

When I got home from Trader Joe’s I put all of the ingredients I would need on the counter. They include: unsalted butter, brown sugar, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, flour, baking soda, baking soda, salt, malted milk powder, and milk chocolate chips. (And just like Ree, I figured I would take a photo for you.)

While the oven preheated to 375 degrees, I added the room temperature unsalted butter to the mixer, gave it a bit of a stir and combined it with 3/4 cups brown sugar and 3/4 cups sugar. Once the three ingredients were mixed together and became fluffy in consistency I added the 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to the mixture. With the mixer still on, I added 1/2 cup malted milk powder. While the ingredients were mixing, I sifted together the following: 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and 1 1/4 teaspoon salt. With the KitchenAid mixer on low, I added the ingredients to the bowl. Once all of the ingredients were combined, the chocolate chips were gently stirred in. By this time the oven was preheated and ready to go!

I placed small scoops of the cookie dough onto the cookie sheet. Plenty of space between the cookies was needed since the cookies become flat when they bake and they end up taking double the space on the sheet compared to the stereotypical chocolate chip cookie. I baked for 12 minutes for my crispy cookies and 10 minutes for my chewy cookies.

I couldn’t get over how easy it was to make cookies from scratch! Well, it was easy after I lugged home all of the heavy ingredients from the grocery store.

For the rest of the weekend I couldn’t stop indulging in the cookies I had made. I loved that my crispy cookies were crispy on the outside but still had a soft chewy texture on the inside.

There’s nothing like baking home made chocolate chip cookies and making your entire apartment building hallway smell like cookie dough. I’m sure I made my neighbors very jealous!

Grilled Cheese with Lemon Pesto

There are so many things that I miss about the warm summer months… one thing is the food. I can never get enough of the cheap in season fruits and veggies that are sold at various grocery stores and farmer’s markets. One of my favorite herbs that is really only in season in the summer time is basil. I can do so many fabulous things with basil! I actually make a killer pesto! My pesto ingredients include: pine nuts, basil, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and parmigiano reggiano cheese. This week I was able to snag a nice sized container of pesto for $3 (I felt like I won the lotto, kind of). But my excitement still hasn’t died down from the thrill of finding this fresh basil. The other night I decided to make some pesto and for kicks I threw into my recipe a bit of lemon zest. The lemon zest actually added a sweet/sour kick to the sauce.

Now that I have a basic pesto made and put into an air tight container to keep it from spoiling, I have so many things I am looking forward to cooking up over the next week or so. There are so many things you can use pesto in/on: bruschetta, caprese salad, grilled cheese, pasta, salads, gnocchi, ravioli, and it even makes a fabulous marinade for chicken! The best part about pesto is, just a little bit of the sauce goes a long way. Seriously, never use too much pesto on something because 1. you don’t want to waste your cherished pesto, and 2. the flavors will be very overwhelming.

My boyfriend claims he doesn’t like pesto. But, recently I decided to sneak some into an appetizer I made for us. Instead of using basil leaves on a simple yet delicious caprese salad — I used pesto. I swear, the pinenuts do so much for pesto and it does so much for the flavors in a caprese salad made of bufala mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, and pesto sauce. So, I snuck it in on him and he loved it! I actually never told him that I used pesto and when pesto came up in a conversation over dinner with some friends he had to say to everyone “I hate pesto” and I looked at him and said, but you’ve eaten it before and you never complained. He turned right to me and said “WHEN!?” and “WHERE!?” … I am such a sneaky girlfriend.

So after making this lemon pesto at 10:30 at night, I had to eat some of it! But how? I didn’t want to cook up an entire dish of pasta, I just wanted a near-midnight snack. So, I lightly buttered some bread on one side of each slice (lightly buttered people, we don’t want to get type 2 diabetes like poor ol’ Paula Deen), put them on a skillet, but a very light layer of pesto on one side of one of the slices, laid down some very basic american cheese, and toasted up a grilled cheese. The resulted flavors were spectacular! It was such a fabulous savory snack I have had in so long!

fun grilled cheese recipes

A Lemon Pesto Grilled Cheese Sandwich, made in 15 minutes or less!

It’s really true, just a bit of pesto goes a long way!

Note: when making grilled cheese, as I said above only use a little bit of butter to butter one side of each slice of bread (the side that goes on the pan). I have found that butter really is better to use than olive oil because you want that crispy breaded texture and you want your cheese to melt inside. I have found that if I spray my bread with a bit of olive oil, my bread turns that perfect golden brown way too fast and the bread burns before the cheese melts.

how to make a grilled cheese

Perfect golden brown grilled cheese bread.

Cooking Eggs, Creatively

I’m a major fan of the “Egg in a Hole” sort of breakfast dish. Why is this so darn tasty? I have no clue. Why is it so darn appealing? Well, an egg in a hole is just so adorable!

I couldn’t help but get a little creative with my egg cooking the other week — so I gave it a shot to cook up an egg not in a hole of bread, rather in the a slice of pepper. Obviously, the larger the pepper, the better! My biggest tips: be sure to cut the pepper nice and thick, other wise when you crack the egg and pour it into the pepper it will spill over the top if the pepper isn’t tall enough. Also, be sure to slice the pepper evenly because if it isn’t then the egg can also spill from the bottom. It’s also a good idea to let the pepper start to cook first so it has a solid bottom.

After cooking my egg in a pepper (with a pinch of salt and pepper to season), I placed it on top of a piece of simple toast. I sprinkled 1/2 teaspoon of parm cheese over top and then ate!

So simple, yet so delish! You have to love these simple, silly ideas! I believe I received my inspiration from a Tumblr photo I saw months ago. I’m now trying to think of other ideas for breakfast… What else can you cook an egg in?

a fun way to cook an egg

Campbell’s Green Bean Casserole

Green Bean CasseroleA traditional Thanksgiving staple is the classic green bean casserole. A Thanksgiving dinner table would be incomplete with out it and luckily it is probably the easiest thing to make. This year, I spent the holiday in Chicago with my boyfriend and his family. My boyfriend’s sister can cook but she isn’t extraordinarily kitchen savvy so I gave her a lot of credit when she wanted to make Campbell’s Green Bean Casserole all by herself. She pulled the recipe out of a People Magazine issue that had an advertisement for the classic dish on an advertisement. I watched her make and bake the entire dish! You can either use the frozen green beans or you can use the fresh ones. I watched as my boyfriend’s sister washed and chopped up some fresh green beans — she ran into some difficulty when reading the recipe because the recipe called for 4 cups cooked green beans. How on earth do you measure 4 cups of cooked green beans? So, she guessed — luckily she did a good job. After steaming the fresh beans she mixed in a separate bowl the milk, soy sauce, cream of mushroom soup, and two thirds cup onions. She then poured the mix over the green beans, tossed it all up and added some more of the crunch onions to the top, she then put it in the oven. It came out gorgeous!

I managed to have a few bites of this before dinner and I was so proud of her! It came out so tasty! And the flavors were much better with the use of fresh green beans instead of the easy to use frozen green beans. The texture was crunchy, but of course cooked enough. When she reheated the dish later, she added some extra onions on the top so they would be nice and crunchy.

I don’t know why we don’t make Green Bean Casseroles more often, year-round. It’s such an easy dish to put together and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like it. Here’s the recipe from the Campbell’s website:

    Ingredients:

  • 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell’s® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup (Regular, 98% Fat Free or Healthy Request®)
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  • Dash ground black pepper
  • 4 cups cooked cut green beans
  • 1 1/3 cups French’s® French Fried Onions
    Directions:

  • stir the soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper, beans and 2/3 cup onions in a 1 1/2-quart casserole.
  • Bake at 350°F. for 25 minutes or until the bean mixture is hot and bubbling. Stir the bean mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining onions.
  • Bake for 5 minutes or until the onions are golden brown.