Scallops and rice

Last night, I made a very delicious dinner. I will go over it in 2 parts. First, the scallops. Well, let me backup a second. K and I really like a restaurant by us called the Bonefish Grill. The main reason we like it is for an appetizer they have called bang bang shrimp. A week or so ago, we found a copycat recipe for it, so we had to try it out. At the store, they were having a shrimp sale, so they were out, which is why we ended up with scallops instead. You cornstarch the scallops, and fry them. And then toss them in a sauce made from mayo, Thai sweet chili sauce and Sriracha. It turned out to be pretty close to the real recipe. I should have put more Sriracha, but it is easy to add more as we were eating.
The other part of our dinner was pineapple fried rice. I got this recipe off of another food blog I read called Almost Bourdain. I changed it a little, by replacing the chicken and prawns with tofu. It was good too. And, as a by-product, we have leftover pineapple now, since I didn't use it all! Oh and if you check out her link, I did not actually serve it in the pineapple like she did. I am not that fancy! Also I have no idea how to cut a pineapple without wrecking the outside.

Bulgur salad

I found this recipe on one of the food blogs that I read, The Skinny Gourmet. She credits the recipe to Cooking Light magazine. It was sort of an experiment for me, cause I didn't know if I would like it or not. Answer: I really liked it! It was super easy to make as well. It is just bulgar, chickpeas, carrots, almonds, cranberries, mint.... and had a dressing of lime, olive oil, cumin and coriander. It is meant to be eaten cold, but I liked it slightly warmed up. I have a food issue were I hate to eat cold food that my brain thinks should be hot. Like I can't eat leftovers straight from the fridge without heating them up first.
Oh, and another bonus of this dish is it looks really pretty!

Bread

This isn't a blog about something I made, but it did come out of my kitchen so it counts! K is in charge of making bread at our house. He managed to make a perfect loaf of ciabatta! It was fluffy, and holey on the inside, with a crusty crust. Way to go K!

Vegetable soup

We went for a couple of weeks where it was REALLY cold out. Not like, duh it is winter cold, but single digit high's cold. That means soup for dinner! The biggest success I had was this vegetable soup. I used adzuki beans, carrots, onions, green beans, celery, mushrooms, and tomatoes. The base was not-chicken broth, and the tomato juice that is in the cans of the tomatoes. I seasoned with mostly oregano, and some thyme. Basically, I threw it all in the pot and cooked it for, oh I don't know. Maybe 1-2 hours. However long it took to get the baby to sleep that night, really. MMMM it was so good, if I do say so myself!

Veggie lasagna

Lasagna is one of my secret recipes. I can make a killer one. The recipe is the same one that my mom and grandma used, and may go back farther than that, but I have no idea. Anyways, over the years, I have slightly changed it. First I used turkey instead of beef, once my husband and I quit the red meat. Now, while I still eat poultry, he doesn't, so I decided to make it veggie-style. I used a can of garbanzo beans, mushrooms, and broccoli. It wound up really good! The beans gave it an almost meaty taste so it didn't seem like anything was lacking. This will be made again

Breakfast deliciousness

Over the holidays, I was going crazy with treats and snacks and yummy stuff. One thing that I was doing every weekend for a few weeks was making a wonderful treat for breakfast. One week, it was pancakes. I tried to make them more healthful by using whole wheat flour. This may have been negated once I poured a gallon of syrup on top though...

Anyways. Another time I made cinnamon rolls. However, they ended up a slight disaster. They look nice, but after I frosted them and got plates for K and myself, I found they had magic middles. In the process of cooking them longer, it turned the frosting into a weird crunchy mess. We still ate them, of course, but they weren't as good as normal.

The third weekend was a real mess. I decided to make biscuits. In my rush to make them because I was already starving, I may have accidentally used baking soda instead of baking powder. It turns out this isn't a passable mistake. They ended up straight in the trash! That is why there is no picture. I guess I could have taken one of them in the can. Dang, missed opportunity

Christmas cookies

For Christmas this year, I was trying to be cheap. That meant most of my pals got a box of cookies as a present. I decided on 4 kinds: chocolate with peanut butter chips; oatmeal with white, milk and dark chocolate chips and cranberries; oreo-crusted bars with coconut, walnuts and mint and dark chocolate chips; and good ol' thumbprint cookies, with either apricot, strawberry or raspberry jam.



It ended up taking most of forever to make all of these, around working full time and having a baby who is attached to my hip. I got it them all done on time, and they were apparently a hit. K is still bugging me a month later to make more of the thumbprints.

I was totally overshadowed though, when my friend slash daycare provider gave me a box of her own cookies that totally put me to shame, ha! Check out these pretzels! They are just the cutest!

Sorry!

Wow! Oops. I didn't mean to not post anything for my 2 loyal readers to read for over a month! I blame it on cheap card readers that break a lot and trap my pictures on the camera. This problem is finally fixed though, so prepare to be bombarded with all the deliciousness from the holiday season!