Skinny yogurt banana bread - Oven or Instant Pot

If you are looking for a moist banana bread, look no further! This might be a light recipe but don't let that fool you into thinking it is anything short of delicious. It makes a good breakfast or a nice dessert.

Adding Greek yogurt not only helps to make this bread extra moist, it adds protein and doesn't give you the sour taste that using sour cream would.

It's also a great way to use up bananas that are past their prime. You can use bananas that have been frozen but you need to thaw them first. I usually zap them in the microwave for 15-20 seconds and they are thawed enough to mash them up

You can make this in your oven or Instant Pot electric pressure cooker. I first made this in my Instant Pot because we had finished the loaf I had made in the oven and I was craving more but my loaf pan was in the dishwasher which was running. It's nice to have options!

Ingredients ready to go

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of butter, softened
2 large eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 of unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 cup of low fat, plain Greek yogurt
3 overripe bananas
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
cooking spray

If you want a little different variety you can try adding 1 tsp of cinnamon or 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder.

Cooking equipment:
Electric mixer
For baking in the oven you need a loaf baking pan or for the Instant Pot a 7" round cake pan. I use a 3" deep Fat Daddio pan in my 6 quart Instant Pot.

Oven directions:

Batter all mixed up

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mash up bananas in large mixing bowl using a potato masher or large fork. Add all ingredients to mixing bowl and beat on med-low speed until all are fully incorporated, about 3-5 minutes. You may need to use a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl to get the flour fully mixed in.

Grease the loaf pan with cooking spray and pour in the batter. Bake for 55-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the top is lightly browned. Allow to cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

Instant Pot directions:

Place 1 cup of water into the bottom of your Instant Pot. 

Mash up bananas in large mixing bowl using a potato masher or large fork. Add all ingredients to mixing bowl and beat on med-low speed until all are fully incorporated, about 3-5 minutes. You may need to use a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl to get the flour fully mixed in.

In the Instant Pot

Grease the 7" round cake pan with cooking spray and pour in the batter. Cover the cake pan with foil and using your trivet, lower it into your Instant Pot. Put your lid on and seal the vent. Press

the cake setting and set for 55 minutes. If you don't have a cake setting you can use high pressure. When the cooking cycle completes, quick release the pressure. Allow to cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

I calculated this recipe at 150 calories per slice (recipe makes 10 slices) compared to a whopping 420 calories for a slice of Starbucks' banana bread. Wow!

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Banana muffins - 2 points on Weight Watchers

I think I am definitely baking more since starting Weight Watchers! I was holding off before because I was gaining weight and the baked goods were so unhealthy. Now that I'm on the "reasonably healthy baked goods that fit in to my food plan" train, there seems to be no stopping me!

Plus, if I want baked goods now, I have to make them myself it seems like. 

If you have checked out my other Weight Watchers friendly baked goods recipes (pumpkin muffin recipe, blueberry lemon cake recipe), you will notice that I don't use artificial sugars, instead they are only lightly sweetened and rely on fruit and a little brown sugar to get the sweet taste. These banana muffins follow the same plan.

You can use over-ripe bananas from the freezer in this recipe. I used one from the freezer and one from my counter. If you are using frozen ones, thaw them out first. You can microwave them a little it you don't have time to wait for them to thaw (15-20 seconds).

I have also used almond extract in these muffins to give them a nutty flavor without using high-point nuts in the recipe. You can use vanilla extract if you prefer but they won't have the nutty taste.

Ingredients:
2 medium, very ripe bananas
1 cup self-rising flour
1 egg
1/3 cup unpacked brown sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

You will also need:
Cupcake liners, I suggest silicone liners when cooking without oil.
Cupcake pan 
Hand mixer, I use my kitchen aid hand mixer.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 12 cupcake pan with liners. In a large mixing bowl, put all ingredients in the bowl and beat with the hand mixer until well mixed. Take care to ensure the bananas are mashed up and mixed in well.  If you have a good hand mixer, you don't need to mash the bananas in advance.

Fill each liner 3/4 full, diving the batter among the 12 liners.

Bake at 350 degrees for 14-16 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the muffin comes out clean.

The recipe makes 12 banana muffins, that are 2 points each on Weight Watchers Freestyle.

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase from one of these links this blog may receive a small commission, thank you for your support. This blog is not affiliated with Weight Watchers in any way. Points were calculated in May 2018 using the WW freestyle program.

Southern Brunswick stew in the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker

I was first introduced to this hearty southern staple when I first went to North Carolina with DH, before we ever moved here. It was hearty and filling and perfect for winter. It also seemed the perfect dish for the Instant Pot! The IP really shines when making soups and stews.

This dish relies on two pressure cook cycles, first to cook the meat and then to cook the stew. For this reason it's not a 10 minute soup but still much quicker in your instant pot that the traditional process.
Ingredients:
~1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs (I would err on the side of less or it can be quite meaty)
~1 pound beef stew meat (in cubes, I would err on the side of less or it can be quite meaty)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp chopped garlic (I use this kind in the jar)
1/2 a small onion, diced
1 small bell pepper,diced (green is fine, I used yellow because that's what I had)
1 bay leaf
14.5oz  of chicken broth
14.5oz can of fire roasted tomatoes
12oz package of frozen corn
12oz package of frozen lima beans
3 tablespoons Corn starch

Pour 1 cup of water into the bottom of your instant pot and put your trivet in the pot. Place your chicken thighs and stew meat on the of the trivet. Season the meat with the salt and pepper. Put your IP on manual pressure cook, high for 8 minutes. During this cooking cycle, you can dice your onions and pepper. Make sure the valve is closed. Quick release (QPR) the pressure. Remove the meat from your pot leaving the liquid at the bottom. Set the IP on saute, high to keep it warm for the next cycle.

Meat on the trivet ready to cook

Put the onions and garlic in the pot and allow to cook a few minutes. Then add the bay leaf, chicken broth, tomatoes, corn, pepper and lima beans ingredients to the pot. While your onions and garlic are cooking shred your chicken and stew meat. After it's shredded, add your meat to the pot and start the second pressure cooking cycle. Put the IP on manual, high for 10 minutes. Make sure your valve is closed. . When the cooking time is finished, allow the pressure to naturally release for 2-3 minutes and then you can QPR the remaining pressure.

Everything in the pot ready to do the second cook cycle

If the stew is not thick enough, take 1 cup of broth from the pot and whisk with 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and add it to the pot. Allow to simmer on saute mode, high until it reaches desired thickness.

Cooked! Isn't it nice that my bay leaf came to the top? Easy to find!

Makes approximately 6 servings, total prep and cook time is an hour and 15 minutes. It's not the fastest meal you can make in your IP but most of the time is for it to cook, very little active prep time.

If you liked this stew, check out this round up of other soups you can make in your IP.

Time to eat!

Mini peanut butter cheesecakes

These mini cheesecakes whip up in no time and are delicious. They bake much faster than a full sized cheesecake and since they're small, you can eat two without guilt!

Ingredients:

2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3   eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups of creamy peanut butter
24 Oreos
cupcake liners
muffin pans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put cupcake liners into a muffin tin for 24 mini-cheesecakes. Put an Oreo in the bottom of each liner (for the crust). Beat all of the other ingredients in a large mixing bowl and put about a 1/4 cup of filling in each cupcake liner until it's full. Bake in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool and chill for 3 hours prior to serving.

You can also top them with whipped cream if you like!

Simple (non-authentic) pork wonton soup

Wonton packed soup!

If you haven’t visited your local Asian market, you really need to check it out! Though I sometimes find it a little overwhelming since I don’t know what 90% of the things they sell are for, let alone how to use them (packages are often not in English) if you look around a little you can find some really great stuff that is easy to use even if you don’t speak Chinese/Korean/Japanese J

My favorite aisle is the frozen dumpling aisle. In part because I know what they are and how to cook them but mostly because there are SO many different kinds of dumplings. I buy different ones every time I go there (hint: we never like the shrimp dumplings). However, I always make sure I pick up some pork wontons for making soup.

Full disclosure: my wonton soup is really, really not authentic. I have no idea how they make it in Asian restaurants but this tastes good.

This is an easy recipe and as such it’s not an exact science, I usually just throw it together and have put together the rough directions to share. If you aren’t a “throw it together” type of cook, power through, I promise you can do this one too.

Ingredients:

1lb mild Italian Sausage (I use turkey sometimes and pork sometimes)

3 stalks diced celery

Optional: additional diced veggies if you are feeling healthy! Options include onions, bell peppers, zucchini and mushrooms

1 cube bullion (chicken or veggie is fine)

1 tb garlic

1 tb onion powder (you might omit if adding onions)

Fresh ground pepper to taste

3 TB soy sauce

1 tb white vinegar

Water

A few splashes of fish sauce

Directions:

Remove sausage from casings and crumble in the bottom of a large soup pot (I use a 5 qt cast iron Dutch oven). Cook the sausage on med-high heat, crumbling it as it cooks (you might need to add a small bit of oil if the sausage is very lean). When the sausage is 50% cooked, add the diced celery and any additional veggies you’d like and all the spices. When the sausage is fully cooked, pour enough water in to fully cover the contents of the pot. Add the bouillon cube, soy sauce, vinegar and fish sauce. Boil 5-10 minutes.

Add your wontons and additional water so the contents are still covered and boil another 10-15 minutes until the wontons are fully cooked.

Makes approx. 8 bowl-sized servings of soup

Enjoy!

Pad See Ewe - the best EVER Thai dish

If you have ever eaten take out with me, you know that I have a strong preference for Asian food, both Thai and Chinese. Normally, I don't see the appeal in getting take out that I could make myself at home and my common refrain is "yeah, but that is just as sandwich."

I used to get Thai almost weekly with one of my friends. When I lived in DC, I also had the "Pad See Ewe Summer" where myself and a few other Pad See Ewe (PSE) enthusiasts went to many, many Thai restaurants in the District to see which one made the best PSE.

This delectable dish, goes by many different spellings - Pad Si Ew & Pad See Ewe being the most common. If you haven't tried it yet, RUN do not WALK to your nearest Thai restaurant. When you are totally hooked, come back here and we will try to make it at home together.

A word of warning, PSE noodles are the great white whale of ingredients. At least they have been for me, I have literally gone to 3-4 Asian groceries and had an unsuccessful Amazon search before I finally found them at a massive Asian Market called Li Ming's in Durham, NC, that I had been meaning to visit for the last year, for the express purpose of finding PSE noodles. Now that I know they have have them I will definitely be back.

Li Ming's also carries what is definitely the largest selection of soy sauce I have ever seen. I am not even nearly culturally equipped enough to shop at this store; I can only identify uses for about a 1/2 of the items they carry.

But the point is, if you cannot find the fresh flat rice noodles, you can substitute dried rice noodles. Sometimes, you gotta make it work.

My weekly Thai food eating friend, sent me a PSE recipe she made a few weeks ago which spurred on my desire to go to Li Ming's. I like to have "saucy" and "eggy" PSE, so I made a few alterations, I have put the recipe I used below with my alterations.

PSE

• 1 head broccoli, chopped
• 3 tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce
• 2 eggs
• 1 lb Fresh Flat Rice Noodles
• 2 cloves chopped garlic
• 6 tablespoons regular Soy Sauce
• 2 tablespoon sugar  
• 1/2 lb, your protein of choice, sliced thin or extra veggies
• 2 tablespoon olive or other cooking oil

If your fresh flat rice noodles are not pre-cut, cut them into strips of 1 inch wide. Chop your broccoli (Chinese or regular) into pieces. Heat a wok or large skillet to high heat and then add 2 tablespoons of oil. Drop in the chopped garlic and stir. Add your protein and saute to cook. While your protein cooks, mix your soy sauces and sugar together in a bowl on the side. When your protein is almost fully cooked, add your sliced rice noodles and pour you sauce over it, stir it together.

Push your noodles to the side, clearing a space to drop in your eggs. Put the eggs into the open space and scramble them until fully cooked, then mix them in with the noodles. Add broccoli and stir together. Let it heat in the pan for a few minutes to cook the broccoli and give yourself a little char on the noodles. PSE is not normally spicy, but if you want a little kick, add some cayenne pepper now.

The verdict:
Even with increasing the amount of sauce, I still felt it could have been saucier, so I'll need to work on that. I think this sauce isn't quite right also, it's good and it's close but it's not perfect. I might need a little fish sauce or oyster sauce, or something. I'm not quite sure yet, I'll keep trying! I also, did not include this in my recipe but I made mine vegetarian, so I added some cabbage and bean sprouts I had. Normally, I like my PSE with chicken but the veggies were good too! They soaked up the sauce nicely.

It was also surprisingly quick to make! I will definitely be making this again and keep fine tuning the sauce as I go.

Butter nut flavored whipped cream!

I have tried a new whipped cream flavor and I had to share because it is the BEST one thus far.

For my birthday I had a Harry Potter themed costume party (yes, I'm that friend) and I of course made butter beer and as a result I had some butter extract hanging around the kitchen. If you recall, I really, really like making fresh whipped cream with my whipped cream gizmo. I was mixing up some cream and the butter extract was there so I put it in. Wow is it good.

Butter whipped cream
1 pint of heavy cream
3-5 Tb of Agave syrup (or 3-5 Tb of powdered sugar)
1 tsp of butter flavor extract

The extract gives it a nice off-white color that I found made it look more delicious. Does that sound weird? Well try it and see what you think.

This was an excellent "basic" whipped cream, almost like plain vanilla and can be used with a variety of other flavors. I was mostly eating in on berries and oranges and BF was putting it in his morning coffee. I expect this to be the new standard at our house instead of vanilla.

Nutella Speckulas Cheesecake

Bf and I were supposed to go to a friend's place for dinner this week, so I made a cheesecake. Then it was cancelled, so oh well, we'll just eat the whole thing!

A few years back I was experimenting with nutella cookies, this time I wanted to make a nutella cheesecake. One of the really great things about cheesecake is you can add about a cup of anything and give it a different flavor without messing up the baking science too much. Experiment!

When I went to the grocery store, I was excited to see Speckulas cookies! If your not familiar with speckulas, they're a spiced German/Dutch cookie commonly eaten in the fall and around Christmas time. They are very thin and normally shaped like windmills.  My boyfriend has been steadily working his way through the leftover cookies for the last few days.

If you're trying to find speckulas, I found mine at Aldi but you can also try World Market or Trader Joe's, I have seen them at both. If it's not fall you might have a hard time, in which case you can use a graham cracker crust or try shortbread!

If you have a basic cheesecake recipe you like, you can use it and just mix in 1 cup of nutella. If you cannot find speckulas Or if you need a little more direction you can follow my recipe here:

Crust:
25 speckulas cookies (about 1 cup crumbs)
1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
1 tablespoon sugar (optional - I think the cookies already have enough, you might taste one first)

Filling:
2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3   eggs
1 heaping cup nutella
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place speckulas cookies in a zip bag. Crush into fine crumbs using rolling pin. Combine crumbs, butter and sugar (optional); mix well. Press crumb mixture onto bottom of springform pan . Bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven to cool.

Meanwhile, place cream cheese in large mixing bowl with sugar, flour, eggs, and vanilla or almond; beat until smooth. Pour batter over slightly cooled crust. Return to oven. Bake 50-55 minutes until center is just set.

Remove from oven. Cool 20 minutes and carefully run sharp knife around edges of cheesecake. Allow to cool and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Enjoy!

fried "rice" quinoa

Over the past two years, quinoa has quickly become one of my favorite grains! If you haven't tried this super food yet, you are seriously missing out! Don't let the funny name intimidate you! It has a slightly nutty flavor in my opinion but you can use it basically as a substitute for rice.

It's definitely pricier than rice, if you have a Trader Joe's nearby I have found them to have the most competitive prices for quinoa.

Quinoa made like fried rice has become a favorite meal for boyfriend and I, especially during the busy work week. It's gluten free and can be made as a vegetarian main dish or as a side dish.

Quinoa fried "rice" as a side for ginger chicken

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa
Chicken or vegetable bouillon (use vegetable to make it vegetarian)
1 Tb of olive oil 
1 Tb of minced garlic
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1-2 large eggs

for sauce:
2 Tb of soy sauce
1 Tb of Teriyaki sauce
1 Tb of sesame oil (can substitute olive oil)

Directions:
Rinse quinoa in a mesh strainer. Cook quinoa in bouillon, refer to package directions for the amount of liquid needed to cook 1 cup of quinoa, typically 2 cups of liquid. Allow quinoa to cool, this step can be completed the day before.

Heat 1 Tb of olive oil in a a large skillet, add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add peas and celery and cook for 2-3 minutes or until they are about half of your desired tenderness. If you are using frozen peas, you might need to cook slightly longer than 3 minutes. Add in carrots, mixing them with the other vegetables.

Add cooked quinoa to the skillet and mix with vegetables for a few minutes allowing the quinoa to heat up. While the quinoa is warming, mix all of the sauce ingredients together in small bowl. When the quinoa is warm, pour the sauce over the top and stir all ingredients together.

Push the quinoa and vegetables to one side of the pan, making a small pocket of empty space. Crack eggs in the small pocket of empty space and scramble them a few minutes until cooked fully. Note this can be done in a separate pan if you don't have enough room. When the eggs are fully cooked, mix them in with the quinoa and vegetables thoroughly. Serve hot.

Servings: 2 main dish or 4-5 as a side dish

Whipped cream explosion!

For my birthday last year, I asked for a whipped cream dispenser. What can I say? I'm a woman with limited interests and these days they primarily consist of food and sewing.

It started when I saw the one Boyfriend's parents have a few months beforehand, before then I had really only seen them at like Starbucks and it did not occur to me that this was something people had in their own kitchens. And it was amazing. You fill it with cream, snap in the little nitrous cartridge, shake it and bingo! Fresh whipped cream.

Yes, I know it's not that hard to make the old fashioned way. Be honest, how often do you do it? That's what I thought. Plus after the Thanksgiving when I made it alone with a whisk, not a mixer, I have become lazier than normal.

Since getting my new gizmo, there has kinda been fresh whipped cream on every dessert. And not just plain, flavored. Some of my best experiments are below. You can make this the "old-fashioned" way if you don't have the gizmo :-) or you can buy the gizmo from amazon for $30-100. I have this one from Amazon.

All of the recipes I have below call for Agave syrup because I have found it mixes in easily when using the dispenser, you can substitute 3-5 Tb of powdered sugar. The cream will keep in the dispenser for at least 3-4 days, I suspect up to a week but we always use it all before then.

Plain
1 pint of heavy cream
3-5 Tb of Agave syrup (really, I do three good squeezes of the bottle)
1 tsp of vanilla

Orange dream (I served this with at New York Style cheesecake)
1 pint of heavy cream
3-5 Tb of Agave syrup
1 tsp of orange extract*

*Do NOT use orange juice, the citric acid in the juice will curdle your cream.

Chocolate cream (I served this with a raspberry swirl cheesecake)
1 pint of heavy cream
2-3 Tb of Agave syrup (Or 2 squeezes of the bottle)
3-5 Tb of Chocolate syrup (Or 3 good squeezes of the bottle)

I also made a chocolate with coco powder that was more a subtle chocolate, too subtle for my taste, but if you want something less chocolatey (I can't imagine why!), you could use 4 Tb of coco powder.

Peppermint (excellent on a chocolate cheesecake or in coffee)
1 pint of heavy cream
3-5 Tb of Agave syrup
1 tsp of peppermint extract

Almond milk quiche

My boyfriend introduced me to almond milk last year and I have to say, this stuff is amazing (see my post on making pudding with almond milk here). Almond milk is great for anyone who doesn't use enough milk to use it before it spoils. Almond milk will last unrefrigerated for months as long as you haven't opened it, so it's great to keep on hand for cooking. It will keep in the fridge for a few weeks after it's opened (I think the box says 10 days but we've kept it much longer without a problem).

For the most part, you can substitute almond milk for cow's milk in recipes but sometimes, it will change the taste of what you are making or the chemistry of using milk is important, so you have to be careful and maybe give it a trial run before you serve it at a dinner party or something. There are also lots of different types of almond milk - sweetened, unsweetened, vanilla - which you'll want to take into consideration when buying some to keep on hand. There are problems with this at my house because I will use a small amount for cooking and would prefer the unsweetened, unflavored but the person who ends up finishing it has different preferences when it comes to using it in coffee or on cereal...these are the issues of small household management.

Keeping this in mind, I wanted to make a quiche. Normally, I would use light cream (or maybe heavy mixed with a little milk, depending what was in the fridge) but this requires the purchase of dairy products, ergo advance planning. After a little online research, it seemed like making quiche with almond milk was possible so a I gave it a whirl, doing what I normally do but using almond milk instead (see my post about my first time making quiche (the standard cream way), a bacon-cheddar quiche here) .

This quiche turned out fluffy and delicious! If I hadn't told you I made it with almond milk, you never know the difference. Not only do I not have to make a trip to the store for cream, using almond milk instead of cream is much healthier. Enjoy!

To make a quiche with almond milk:
1 cup almond milk to every 4 eggs, ideally you want an unsweetened and plain (not vanilla) almond milk but I actually used a vanilla flavored one and we could not taste the difference.

The quiche shown above used:
9in pie plate
1 pre-made crust
5 eggs
1 1/4 cups almond milk
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 cup lightly sauteed mixed pepper strips (originally frozen)
6 strips chopped bacon
1 Tb Trader Joe's 21 seasoning salute (or other seasoning you like on eggs)
1/2 Tb of garlic salt (I was trying to counteract the vanilla flavor)

Baked 28 minutes at 350 degrees.
Update: Many people have commented that theirs takes much longer to cook. I have never had to bake one more than 35 minutes but there might be variation depending on your oven. I originally made this recipe with my electric oven at my previous house and it may have run hot, my current gas oven takes 33-35 minutes to bake at 350 degrees.

Different quiche recipes will call for different numbers of eggs, amounts of milk but honestly you will probably have to adjust depending on the depth of your pie plate and how much cheese/toppings you put in. It's pretty hard to screw up, don't be afraid because it has a fancy French name!


Update: after this worked the first time, I've made a bunch of quiches with almond milk. It's a great week night dinner for us. However, I tried coconut milk recently, because it was all we had and I expected it would work the same and it did not. The quiche was very rubbery and I won't be trying it again.

If you are looking for a Paleo option, try this frittata recipe.

This post contains some affiliate links to demonstrate the products used. If you purchase from this link I will receive a small commission.

Bacon quiche

Why have I never made a quiche before? Don't let it's French nature make you think it's complicated.

I made a fritata a while back and I thought that quiche would be more or less the same just with a crust. No, no, no. This quiche was amazing, much better than a fritata. It was one of those times I was glad to live alone, so no one was around to see how much I ate.

I adapted a bacon quiche recipe because frankly, I wasn't willing to purchase two different milk products. What am I going to with all the leftover half and half and cream? Also, I'm just saying half and half is part cream and part milk, am I wrong here? So the simpler much Lacey version is below, so this might not be super authentic but I assure you, it was delicious.

Lacey's easy bacon quiche

1 frozen pie crust, 9" deep dish, thawed
5 eggs
1/2 pint light cream (aka 1 cup but the package at the store says a 1/2 pint)
2 Tb flour
8 strips of bacon, cooked, crumbled
1 cup shredded cheddar
1 cup shredded swiss
1 Tb of Tradder Joe's 21 seasoning salute *this is great in eggs but if you don't have a TJs around, you can substitute another seasoning blend
dash salt
dash pepper


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs and cream thoroughly. Mix in flour, cheeses, bacon and seasonings. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until center of quiche is firm.
EDIT: I have recently moved and thus have a new oven. It bakes this same quiche in 25-30 minutes,  you definitely want to check the time the first time you make a quiche in your oven.

I cannon stress enough how good this quiche was. It does take quite a while to bake all the way through, mine was in the oven at least 45 minutes, so be prepared for that. Also, the pie crust will be really full, I spilled it all down the cabinet, my dog had a great morning licking it up while I was putting the quiche in the oven. The (very limited) leftovers are going to work for lunch tomorrow. Now, go be fancy and make yourself a quiche!

One strange thing that happened, possibly because it was so full, the crust popped right out of the plate! I've never seen that happen!

Scallops in white wine sauce

My infatuation with Asian cooking did not seem to last long, I'm back to the Mediterranean! Though, I am still planning on giving Pad See Ewe at try (even though everything I've read says you need a commercial gas oven to make it taste right) and something with peanut sauce.

Anyway I randomly bought some bay scallops (ie the little ones) a while back. In the US it seems we eat a lot more jumbo scallops, normally grilled, but in Italy they would show up in the delicious seafood medley pasta dishes with very light wine or butter sauces. Heaven? Heaven.

I thought, I could do this. I make mussels in a wine sauce, why not some scallops? Earlier that day, I was looking at my garden, specifically the rosemary and it seemed like it might just go nicely in this sauce. Plus the parsley at the grocery store was looking pretty sad that day.

Ingredients
Bay scallops, 8 oz
linguini, 6oz (~1/2 box)
2 cups white wine
5 Tb of butter, separated
3-4 sprigs of fresh rosemary (remove leaves from stem)
1 tomato, diced
Garlic, to taste
Salt to taste

Heat 1 Tb of butter in a large sauce pan on med-high to high heat. When the pan is hot and the butter melted add the scallops and sear for 1-2 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

In the same pan, add the remaining butter and the wine. Stir occasionally until the butter is melted and add the tomatoes, rosemary leaves, garlic and salt. Simmer on med-high heat and reduce the sauce for about 20-25 minutes or until it reaches desired thickness (should reduce by about half).

When the sauce has been reducing for approximately 10 minutes, begin preparing pasta according to the package directions (ie start boiling water around this time or the sauce won't be reduced enough). When the pasta is al dente, drain it and put in the sauce pan with the wine sauce and add the scallops. Toss the pasta and scallops in the sauce and allow to simmer for 1-3 minutes (this will give the pasta a nice flavor and heat up the scallops a bit). Serve immediately. Makes two adult-sized servings.

In the photo you will notice I had a bunch of scallops, I actually made this with a 16 oz package and the ratio was just too much, so I scaled it back.

Also, you don't want leftovers from this dish - it just won't be that great the second time around, mostly because re-heating will over cook your scallops and make them chewy. They cook very quickly - don't over do it, really a minute or maximum two is plenty.

One final note, this sauce is a basic wine-butter sauce and almost exactly like this one for mussels - try it on both pasta and mussels and expand your repertoire!

Enjoy!

Butternut squash soup - perfect winter dinner

Butternut squash soup might be the easiest soup to make in the world. Alright, it does make a few more dishes than I'm normally on board with but it might just be worth it. This soup has some wonderful fall flavors with apple, nutmeg and cinnamon.

I had a stray squash in the fridge, which I really needed to use and I was getting ready to head out of town but what to make? I was just getting over a cold, so it was feeling like a soup kind of day. Soup seems to be the standard thing to make with butternut squash, so since I'd never done it, the time seemed ripe! Pun totally intended.

I started browsing some recipes and they all seemed pretty similar, differing a little in their spice pallet but the gist was - cut up squash and boil in chicken broth before pureeing with whatever else you decide to put in there with it. This is what I came up with:

1 medium butternut squash
1 apple (I used 1.5 small gala apples)
2 cubes of chicken bullion
3 oz cream cheese
dash of nutmeg
dash of cinnamon
dash of salt

Equipment: food processor or blender

Cube the squash (tip) and core and dice the apples. Place squash and apples in large sauce pan with bullion and just enough water to cover the contents. Boil for 20 minutes or until squash is tender. Spoon cooked squash mixture into food processor with a sloted spoon, add cream cheese, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and  blend until smooth. If you would like a thinner soup, add cooking liquid and blend until soup reaches desired consistency.  Makes 3 large bowls.

Be careful not to be too heavy handed with the spices, I put a dash because I think even a 1/2 tsp will be too much.

I will definitely be making this again and again all winter long, this soup was tasty. It does make some dishes, mostly because of the food processor but it's worth it. How else can you make a delicious soup in under 30 minutes? Also, it's ridiculously healthy and low in calories.

Peanut Butter & Nutella cookies

My contribution to the office holiday party this year was none other than peanut butter and nutella cookies. If you don't know what nutella is, you should. Just go buy some, you'll love it, I promise.

This all started when I saw a recipe somewhere for peanut butter and nutella cookies but they were no-bake and frankly, did not look too tasty. This got the idea in my head. What could possibly go better? So I got to thinking, nutella is not so different from peanut butter, why couldn't I just make peanut butter cookies and sub-out some peanut butter for nutella? No reason I could think of, so that is exactly what I did.

You can probably do this with any peanut butter cookie recipe but this one from Simply Recipes makes a fairly small batch - a plus for us single ladies.

1/2 cup sugar *and additional to roll dough balls
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup nutella
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix ingredients together to form dough. Roll dough into small balls, roll in  additional white sugar and place on greased cookie sheet. Using a fork, press into each ball twice, making a cross-hatch design. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.

They will look a little darker than typical peanut butter cookies, so watch that they don't burn.

While these were tasty, I feel like the peanut butter and nutella flavors competed a little bit with each other. In the next round, I might make all nutella cookies and see how that turns out.

Twice baked butternut mousse

It's officially fall. I'm buying butternut squash and thinking about recipes for pumpkin...though canned pumpkin is still in short supply. Come on harvest! Aside from the food, I'm not ready for the cold weather, but I digress.

My mom makes an excellent twice baked potato. So I was thinking, why not try a twice baked butternut squash? Yummy.

Ingredients

1 butternut squash (I think mine was 2lbs)

8 oz cream cheese (spreadable)

1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs

salt

pepper

Equipment

Hand mixer

Slice squash in half, remove seeds and fibers. Place in a pan with 1/4 inch of water in the bottom, season squash lightly with salt and pepper, cover with aluminum foil and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or until squash is tender. Allow cooked squash to cool, and remove cooked flesh from peel and place in medium size mixing bowl. Using hand mixer, blend cream cheese with squash. Put squash mixture in baking dish and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake at 350 for an additional 20-25 minutes.

This turned our pretty well considering I kinda winged it, though I had my doubts at times. It was very rich and had a creamy texture. I might work with it a little more and try to get the consistency to be a bit more firm like a twice baked potato, maybe I need to bake it longer the second time or less the first time, I'm not sure. I'll be honest, after mixing the squash with cream cheese it kinda looked like baby food...so a little firmer of a texture would be an improvement!

Cinnamon scones

This time around I made a sweet scone. Cinnamon scones seemed like they would be tasty, so I started with my basic scone recipe (see below) that I used for the cheddar & thyme scones I made a while back. I'm still shocked how easy scones are to make!

Basic recipe

2 cups flour
1 Tb sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg

Cinnamon editions

2 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 Tb of sugar

Cooking Equipment

Pastry blender

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon in a large bowl. Blend butter in using either a pastry blender (or fork) until well blended and a mixture of course crumbs forms. Stir in milk and lightly beaten egg. A slightly moist, crumbly dough will form. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface and form in a round, flat mound. Place on a greased cookie sheet and cut into 8 wedges. Separate the wedges and bake for 15-20 minute or until lightly browned.

The cinnamon scones were pretty tasty, however, I think that I should have added more sugar. The scones weren't quite sweet enough and therefore slightly lacking in flavor. I might add a little more cinnamon the next time also. Keep this in mind if you use this more 'savory' basic recipe but want to make a sweeter scone. Happy baking.

Cheddar & thyme scones

This week, I continued my exploration of bread-products by making scones. I had never made scones before and I was surprised how easy they were. I made them on a weeknight! I'm not even sure they count as bread now that I've made them, since it was so easy!

I looked for a basic "savory" scone recipe that I could play around with, I think the basic recipe could be made with just about any flavorings, though if I was making a sweet scone, I might skip some or all of the sugar.

This recipe for Fresh Herb Scones was the starting point. My recipe for Cheddar & Thyme Scones is below.

Basic recipe

2 cups flour
1 Tb sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg

Cheddar & Thyme additions

3/4 cup shredded, sharp cheddar cheese
2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp garlic

Cooking Equipment

Pastry blender

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, thyme and garlic in a large bowl. Blend butter in using either a pastry blender (or fork) until well blended and a mixture of course crumbs forms. Stir in milk, lightly beaten egg and cheese. A slightly moist, crumbly dough will form. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface and form in a round, flat mound. Place on a greased cookie sheet and cute into 8 wedges. Separate the wedges and bake for 15-20 minute or until lightly browned.

My whole apartment smelled like thyme, in a nice way. If I make this again I might scale back the amount of thyme I use because it was a little strong but otherwise they were tasty.

Spinach & Broccoli Lasagna

I learned how to make lasagna by watching my mom in the kitchen and it's one of my favorite things to make. It's easy, tastes good leftover (better even sometimes) and you can freeze it. Don't be intimidated by all the layers, it comes together in a snap, most of the time required is to bake the dish. I tend to be impatient when baking lasagna, especially if it's a week night and I'm hungry. The longer you can hold out, the better it tastes, so try to be patient.

Note that the ingredient quantities can be adjusted to make a smaller or larger lasagna. The amounts I list below will make a small lasagna about 6 servings (ie not too much for one person to eat over a few days), I use this IKEA pan when I make lasagna for myself. If you want to make a larger version appropriate for a standard 9X13 pan, you should roughly double what I have listed below.

Ingredients

1 small container of ricotta (I think the small ones are around 10oz but I can't remember)
2 cups shredded Italian cheese (you can use Mozzarella, but a blend of several Italian cheeses is best)
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups fresh spinach
1 1/2 cups chopped broccoli
4-6 pre-cooked lasagna noodles
26oz jar of spaghetti sauce
Garlic (to taste)
Italian Seasoning (to taste)
Black pepper (to taste)

Mix the egg and all the seasonings in with the ricotta in a medium size bowl. Grease a small (approx 11X7) baking pan. Put a small amount of pasta sauce (approx 1/3 cup) in the bottom of the pan, this helps prevent the noodles from burning on. On top of the sauce, layer ingredients in the following order noodles, ricotta, veggies, shredded cheese, sauce and starting over with noodles again, repeating until you run out of ingredients or reach the top of the pan. You should end with noodles topped with shredded cheese on the top. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 for 30-60 minutes, removing the foil for the last 10-15 minutes.

As I said above, I'm impatient when waiting for lasagna. It must bake long enough for the cheese to melt but it will taste much better if baked for a full hour. Sometimes I make the double size and put single lunch portions in the freezer and pull them out to take to work when I'm in a rush or don't have anything else handy.

Taste: A
Cost: B+ (no meat!)
Waste: A+

Dusted off the crock pot - squash casserole

Friday morning I awoke bleary-eyed and late. I had neglected to set my alarm the night before. I also had a 9am meeting. Not a good day to get up late.

Furthermore, I had slow cooking aspirations for that day (well the day before I did not so much at 7:30). I had been browsing around the archives of A Year of Slow Cooking to see what gem I could pluck from Stephanie's blog. Since any recipe I've tried from somewhere else have all failed, ok there were only a few attempts but still.

I dusted off my crock pot - literally, it sits out on my counter and it's been so long since I used it, I had to wash it off first. And I began chopping squash to make a kind of crock pot casserole. Did I have time for this? No. I looked at the clock when almost done and had to toss in the rest of the ingredients and run out the door, puffy eyed and makeup-less for work (this was after I got bits of frozen spinach all over my kitchen). So beware, if you're doing this in the morning, it will take 20 minutes of prep-time!

Cheesy Squash Casserole (inspired by no-noodle lasagna)
2-3 yellow squash
15 oz (small container) of ricotta cheese
??? oz jar of pasta sauce
1.5 cups Shredded Italian blend cheese
4 slices provolone cheese
2 cups froze spinach, thawed
Italian seasoning
Garlic

I had intended to mix an egg and the seasoning in with the ricotta, which I do when I make lasagna but when I took the eggs, I've been meaning to use (for a while...) out of the fridge the sell by date was July 31st (and I did not have time).

Layer the ingredients in your crock pot (mine is 5 quarts), starting with sauce on the bottom, squash, ricotta (I smeared this on the squash before I put it in), sprinkle of spinach, seasoning, cheese slice and shredded cheese, until you reach the top or run out of ingredients. Rinse the pasta sauce jar with a small amount of water and pour it in before the final topping of shredded cheese.

See why this took 20 minutes? Well, really I should have thawed my spinach and chopped the squash the night before.

So was my mad dash out of the apartment worth it when dinner time rolled around? It's lovely to walk into the house to dinner. However, do NOT make this if you will not be home in eight hours. By the time my commute time was factored in it was cooking for close to ten hours...not good. I ate it for dinner and it was ok, I think it would be better if it hadn't cooked so long. Also, next time I need to check my eggs. Mixing it with the ricotta help it to have a less chunky texture, it just cooks much nicer. I ended up eating it for dinner that night but when I went to reheat some of it, it was not good and I threw the rest away. The added cooking from reheating was just too much. Finally, I think fresh spinach would be the way to go, might have been worth a trip to the store.