Master Mix Salad

I, like many of my friends, have been on a salad kick recently.  This salad phase has somehow coincided with my discovery of several things that I used to hate but now like.  Namely Mushrooms and Avocado. I have been subjecting my husband to several throw together varieties of  salad slash burrito bowl slash stir fry.  Hence, Master Mix.  Throw in the basics, or just random crap and you'll have an amazing meal.  One that will last you an entire week, which is always a plus in my book.

My First Version of Master Mix Salad.

I sold this idea to Steve by telling him it would be "exactly like a Chipolte fajita bowl."  He bought it.  And while I didn't deliver on the exactly part, I sure tried.  Not only that but it was so amazing (in my opinion) that I am still trying to get Steve to eat the basic ingredients thrown together with a few different meat and veggie options.  I think he's growing weary, but I'm still loving this idea.  And since I cook, I win.  Also, he's only started growing weary after being served the same basic thing for three weeks.  A total win in my book.  Seriously, it was good.

Here goes.

• Saute some 
• peppers (I used green, and loved it.  Which is great because I'm normally an any-color-but-green kind of pepper gal)
• mushrooms
• black beans & kidney beans
• Garlic
• onion powder (or you could use real onion, but I don't like onions so I opted out)
• a splash or two of soy sauce
• olive oil
• and pretty much any seasoning that you want to get the flavor you told your husband you were trying for.
• Also, this is when I added in my Meat.  For the "Chipotle Fajita Bowl"I got out some hot sausage we already had cooked, diced it quite small, and threw it in the pan with everything else.  (I know that I keep saying Fajita Bowl, and then I put sausage in it, which takes out the Fajita part since I'm pretty sure that indicates chicken.  Maybe.  You could totally put chicken in it, I simply used sausage because that's what we had, and it was already cooked.  Also, when we actually go to Chipotle the only thing we ever get is a Fajita Bowl, so that's all I know to call it slash compare what I made it to.  Did that make sense?)
• Since everything is pretty much cooked you're just getting your veggies to the consistency you like them, and letting the flavors meld together, whilst heating everything.  So the Sauteing part should be fairly quick.
• Make some Rice (preferably in your amazing Rice Cooker.  I used to hate rice, because I couldn't make the dag gone stuff.  It never turned out right in the microwave, or the oven, or on the stove top.  I abhorred any recipe that called for rice.  Then Steve told me they had always had a rice cooker growing up.  I asked his parents for one as a Christmas gift a few years back and I couldn't be happier.  It is the easiest thing in the world and the rice comes out absolutely perfect every sitnkin' time.  It's magic.  You NEED one.  Seriously.  Unless I'm the only idiot out there that can't cook rice on the stove, in the oven, or in the microwave.  But I digress).
• Cut up some greens
• I loved, loved, loved simply shredded Romaine Hearts in this "salad."  Again, I was going for the Chipotle Fajita bowl, and I'm fairly certain they use something similar to shredded Romaine.
• You can also use any other lettuce you feel like, most recently we had ice berg and sweet butter greens, with just a few shreds of Romaine.  But then I was going for a more Salad-y creation that time.
• Make your plate.  Add in half and Avocado, smash everything together slash mix it all up on your plate, and you are ready to go!
• You could always add some salsa, sour cream, and/or cheese if you'd like.  We opted no to because we were trying to stay a bit on the healthier side.  I'm not sure how healthy this meal was, but it was amazing.

Like I said earlier, you can do anything you want with this Master Mix Salad.  Tonight I swapped out  kidney beans for butter beans.  Sausage for a white fish.  Added in some lemon juice and sage.  I cooked all my veggies and beans in a saute pan.  Then put the fish at the bottom of a metal baking pan and covered the fish with all of the veggies and beans.  I cooked it in the oven until the fish was done, and then assembled my Master Mix Salad according to my liking.  It was good stuff! 

Have fun cooking and eating and convincing your loved ones that this Master Mix is truly a delight.

CCC

A friend of mine just sent me a link, she said she thought of me when she read this article.  When I read it, I thought of HHH and you.  It's fun to see that small, crafty, operations are thriving.  Maybe we'll meet up at one of CCC's events, eh?  Or perhaps your lovely HHH gals will someday be vendors at said events.  Who knows?!?

Cleveland Craft Coalition

Mom's Sugar Cookies!!

My mom makes really awesome sugar cookies (at least to me, they are awesome). To be quite honest, when it comes to my mom’s sugar cookies – it isn’t so much about the cookies, as it is the love and fuzzy warmness I associate with them.

We always always always, make sugar cookies at Christmas time. We make trees and santas and snowmen, mittens, stars and candy canes. We have a ridiculous amount of Christmas cookie cutters – and every year we decide which special ones we will use. My mom typically does the baking and I do the decorating. I try to make every cookie unique – she thinks I’m crazy for this – but I love it. I even make little faces on each and every snowman.

These sugar cookies also make appearances at most major holidays. I remember coming downstairs on Valentine’s day and finding a plate of heart shaped cookies, opening care packages while I was away at school and finding a container full of pumpkins and ghosts for Halloween. We even made little wedding cake cookies for the favors for my bridal shower.

Most recently, I made pink ribbon sugar cookies for a co-worker of mine who has recently finished her breast cancer treatments. We had a surprise pink dessert bar for her at work.

So, I am going to share with you my mom’s sugar cookie recipe. However, as I’m typing this, I’m trying to decide if I’m going to add in all the little tips and tricks we’ve learned over the years, or if you should have to figure those out for yourselves, too.


Mom’s Sugar Cookies

Ingredients1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt


Directions
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth.
Beat in eggs and vanilla.
Stir in the flour (one cup at a time), baking powder, and salt.
Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
Roll out dough on floured surface (about ½ inch thick)
Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter.
Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.


The Icing
The icing is really simple. It is just your basic powdered sugar, vanilla and milk frosting. We usually color it. I can’t really tell you how much of what to use when – just fill a bowl with the powdered sugar, add a little vanilla and add milk (little by little) until you reach a desired consistency.

Alright, so I didn't give you all the tips and tricks, but I am quite certain that you'll figure it out all on your own. <3

Yummiest Salad Ever

Is yummiest a word?  If it isn't than it should be created to describe this salad.  I ate this recently at a friends house and while I have yet to make it myself, it was so good I've spent nights dreaming about it!

What makes up this scrumptious looking delight?  Well I'll tell you!

• 
  
  2 large Swiss chard leaves (fold and cut with kitchen scissors)
• 
  
  1 cup cooked quiona
• 
  
  cup of black beans
• 
  
  sliced cucumber
• 
  
  halved grape tomatoes
• 
  
  big bunch of cilantro (when I make this next time, I'll leave this out)
• 
  
  4 - 5 onion greens, chopped
• 
  
  halved olives (black or just green - I choose black!)

Drizzle the above with olive oil, balsalmic vinegar and a few drops of stevia.  Sprinkl with sea salt and pepper and ENJOY! 

And you will certainly enjoy this!  I was a bit apprenhensive because onion greens, cilantro and Swiss chard leaves would not go into my list of favorite vegetbales but combined with everything else, it was divine.  Tasted like a perfect summer day; yummy, crunchy, cold - just plain good!

My Basil Addiction

I have a new habit.  A new addiction.  Basil.  Ever since getting my two basil plants at the begining of Summer I cook just about everything with a few leaves of basil. 

Steve and I eat salad fairly regularly during the summer.  And we're pretty routine about what goes in them.  Plain, cheap iceberg lettuce mixed with a variety of fancy, slightly more expensive greens.  We like the taste of good greens, and our budget likes the cost of the cheap stuff, thus a compromise.  Roasted sunflower seeds, an oil based dressing.  And lastly cannellini beans (white beans, northern beans, whatever you prefer calling them).  We always, always, always saute our beans in olive oil, garlic, and some crushed red pepper.  That's our bean flavor base.  We add things here and there depending on our taste at the time.  A few days ago when I was getting all of our "salad stuff" out I walked to my porch and pinched off a few basil leaves.  I rinsed them and ripped them to pieces, throwing them into my saute pan with the beans, garlic, oil, and pepper.  Fantastic!

Steve laughed at me when he came walking in the door, he said the Basil plants looked ridiculous.  There were a few tall, bare stalks.  Why didn't I do the job properly, he wondered.  Guess what he did the next night whilst preparing dinner...that's right....he walked outside and simply plucked off a few leaves, leaving more barren stalks.  It's all fun and games until you're hard up for basil and getting scissors is just to complicated.

Another Reason to Love Etsy!

Not that I actually need another reason, but I have one!  Saturday evening I realized two things: 1: my baby was going to be 11 months old the next day, and 2: I had forgotten to order his birthday invitations. 

And it was at the second realization that the heart palpitations started.  Quickly, I logged into Snapfish and browsed through there birthday invitation selections and was sorely disappointed.  There was nothing there that said "Gabe" or "sheer cuteness."  So I looked at shutterfly and was equally diasppointed.

Then I decided to look at etsy and of course, I was pleasantly surprised.  There was a plethora of invitations and quickly I found an invitation that just screamed "Gabe's 1st Birthday!"  A few clicks, an email to the shop owner and less than 24 hours later I had a wonderful birthday invitation at my disposal. 

A few minutes at the store to print them off and I had a set of incredibly cute, personalized invitations for about $15.00.  I couldn't even print invitations from snapfish for that price let alone have a unique inviation in less than a day!

I have to say it; I just love Etsy!

Oh, you want to see the invitation?  Why sure!

I love you, Summer, but I'm ready for Autumn!

So I never want to be someone who wishes her life away: it's Monday, and you want it to be Friday.  It's winter, and you're yearning for spring. (that one, I think is unavoidable...especially with Cleveland winters!) Fall arrives, and you're looking forward to Christmas.  I try as best as I can to live in the moment and fully appreciate each day, and realize what a true gift it is to live it as a healthy, happy person with lots of loving people in my life.  All that being said...there comes a time with each season where I gleefully anticipate the next one and I want to put a lid on the current one.  As hard as I try, I can't avoid it!

So here we are, in August.  August is a hot, sweltering month.  Summer is winding down, but we still have a long way to to go.  At the beginning of August, we all start seeing advertisements for Back to School supplies.  When I was in school, I absolutely hated this time!  It was proof positive that the summer was winding down and I'd be back in school before I know it.  Worse yet, I'd be back in school in SEPTEMBER, which has always been my least favorite month of the year.  It's piping hot outside, but you're stuck in school.  The school year had just begun, too, so you had a lovely 9 months to look forward to before the next vacation.  In short, it was awful!

As an adult, I still pretty much dislike September.  You see, by around August, I start getting nostalgic for Fall.  Sweaters and jackets start showing up in stores, and though I know by the time March rolls around I will want to throw all of my sweaters onto a big pile and light the whole thing ablaze after wearing nothing BUT warm clothes for the past 5 months, I get excited when I see that fall is coming.  By September, I want to be wearing my fall clothes and enjoying apples and pumpkins and all the whimsy we associate with fall, but it is invariably 95 degrees out and I'm sweating while running after a classroom full of 2 and 3 year-olds on the playground.  Ick.  

I have a feeling my desire for fall will grow stronger this year because I'm already looking forward to it a very special component of it: cooking.  If you're like me, once it starts getting warm outside (and by that I mean once the temperature reaches the glorious 65 degree mark in Cleveland sometime around April or May) you spend most of your time cooking quick, light meals that are usually fired up on your grill.  And I love grilling.  I love summer food.  I love being out of the house as much as I can. I concede that nothing beats the taste of freshly grilled chicken or burgers.  But it's August now, and I miss cooking.

I miss stirring a big pot of beef stew, chili, or soup when there's a chill in the air and leaves are falling.  I long for the amazing smells of comfort food baking in my oven.  I return in thought to when I frequently have pots of homemade applesauce simmering on my stovetop.  And I think about those two glorious spices that, to me, signify fall and winter better than any other spices:  cinnamon and nutmeg.  Ahhh...I want my kitchen to start smelling like warm cinnamon again.  

But...if I were to try that now, I would alienate my husband, who would complain (rightfully so) that I'm trying to roast him.  It's hot enough as it is with our air conditioner on, and it gets unnecessarily hot when the oven is cranked up or the range is on full heat.  Even if I could stomach facing a hot kitchen on a hot day, who would really want to eat such hearty, heavy food in the middle of summer?  You never go over to someone's house in July or August and get served pot roast.  The very thought is appalling!  It's way too intense for summer.  And don't get me wrong, I love that.  Tomorrow I'm going over my in-law's house for ribs and corn on the cob...what's better than that?  

Still, I look forward to inviting people over for beef bourguignon or loaded baked potato soup.  I can't wait to throw a crusty loaf of bread on the table and encourage people to sop up their plates with it.  In short, bring on cooking season, baby!

And while I know it will be here before we know it (what does time do, if anything, but fly faster than we can ever believe?)  I decided to whip something up in the kitchen in the middle of the summer.  This particular recipe required both my stovetop AND my oven! 

Without further ado, let me tell you about Sicilian Lemon Chicken.

I got the recipe from Lake Erie Living magazine, and I figured it would be perfect to make right now.  Though it requires being pan-fried and baked, the overall dish is light and summery.  You think of lemon chicken, you think of summer.  The cook in me smiled in delight and charged out to the nearest grocery store to buy the items!!  Here is the recipe!

Sicilian Lemon Chicken

4 chicken breasts

Vegetable oil for frying

2 eggs

1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs

3 tablespoons milk

For lemon dressing:

4-5 lemons

1 tablespoon crushed garlic in olive oil

¼ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup Parmesan cheese

4 basil leaves, chopped

¼ teaspoon black pepper 

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together eggs and milk in a shallow bowl and set aside. Pour Italian bread crumbs into a shallow bowl and set those aside. In a small bowl squeeze lemons (remove all seeds). Add crushed garlic, vegetable oil, Parmesan cheese, chopped basil and black pepper and set aside.

Rinse and dry chicken breasts. Cut each piece horizontally into two and then fillet the half of chicken that is thicker into two pieces. When finished, you should have 3 pieces per breast. Pound chicken between sheets of plastic wrap.

Heat vegetable oil in sauté pan over medium heat. Dip chicken breasts into egg mixture and then into bread crumbs. Fry chicken until golden brown.

Place chicken into a roasting pan. Pour lemon sauce over all layers of chicken. Cover and bake for 20 minutes. Plate the chicken with lemon wedges and fresh parsley.

* This recipe can be made up to the point of baking and refrigerated the night before. Do not add the lemon sauce until you bake it. Remove from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking to allow it to rise to room temperature. 

I copied this recipe exactly as it was found on Lake Erie Living's website.  I made it recently, and it was perfect!  Better yet, I got my cooking fix: I chopped garlic and basil, squeezed the heck out of 5 lemons, filleted chicken breasts, and fried and baked.  Ahhh...I feel much better now.  Back to enjoying summer!

But first, please enjoy the photos of my lovely Sicilian Lemon Chicken!

Here are the three bowls needed for the lemon chicken. The one on the left is the egg and milk mixture you use to batter the chicken.  The middle is the breadcrumb mixture which then coats the egg-dipped chicken.  The third is the frankly amazing and tasty lemon sauce that you bake the chicken in!

Ahhh...the battered and pan-fried chicken cutlets.  Ready to be put in a baking dish and covered with the lemon sauce!

The finished lemon chicken! That's right...turn your head to the right and you'll see it.  For some reason, both this blogger program and my photo program think this is supposed to be in portrait instead of landscape.  No matter how many times I edit it and save it, it turns out this way! Bah! But hey, it's a photo of lovely lemon chicken, so I can get over it!  By the way, you'll notice that some of the chicken in my baking pan is more blackened than other pieces...to avoid this, simply de-glaze your pan inbetween the different batches you fry.  It will remove any residual bread crumbs and pan juices that create the blackened look.  We actually really like blackened chicken, so it isn't a problem for is.  And it accentuates the recipe rather than overpowers it, so it's not a big deal to us.  Your choice!