Muffins

I think I may have mentioned before that while I can cook like crazy, I never really baked until relatively recently. I think when I was pregnant is when it really started, because all I wanted to eat were baked goodies. Now I have added muffins to my repertoire. I was inspired by an episode of "America's Test Kitchen". They have yet to fail me on perfect recipes. These muffins were no exception. Perfect!
They have a few tricks. One is to use buttermilk. Another is to make a sugar and lemon zest topping to put on the muffin tops before baking, which gives them a super good, crystalline wonderfulness. The main trick though, is to make a condensed fruit jelly to mix in to the batter, besides just having the whole blueberries. You cook down some blueberries and a little sugar and then swirl it into the batter once you have that poured into the muffin pan. This makes for the best muffins we have ever tasted!
On my second go-around (we don't want to waste the excess buttermilk!) I found that I didn't have enough blueberries left to make both the jelly part, and have the whole ones in the batter. So I made the jelly out of raspberries instead, and still used blueberries for the whole fruit. This set was even better than the first!
We have enough buttermilk left for one more set of muffins, and I am definitely making the mixed berry version again. Good job Test Kitchen!

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