Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers

I came across this recipe and it sounded not only super easy, but quite tasty as well so I figured I would test it out! Let me tell you, it is very hard to mess up and it is absolutely delicious!!  Here is the original recipe from Spark people: recipe.

Ingredients

2 green bell peppers
8 slices of mozzarella cheese
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup diced mushrooms (I used button)
100 grams of Roast Beef sandwich meat (yes, plain ol' sandwich meat)
2 Tbs of unsalted butter or margarine
3 cloves garlic

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 400. Slice peppers in half lengthwise, remove ribs and seeds. Spray with PAM and roast in oven for 15 minutes.

2)Saute mushrooms and onions over medium heat with butter. Saute until onions and mushroom are nice and caramelized. About 15 minutes.

3) Cut up the roast beef into small pieces and add to the skillet with the minced garlic. (I find if you put the garlic in with the onions and mushrooms, it ends up overcooking). Let it cook for a few minutes. 

4) Line the peppers with mozzarella and stuff with the roast beef mixture. 

5) Broil for 1-2 minutes until the cheese becomes deliciously bubbly! 

6) ENJOY!!!!

Baked Spaghetti

Hello hello!

A few people were asking for the recipe of my baked spaghetti, so I figured I would just make a blog post about it especially since I haven't made a post in quite a while!

I got the recipe off of the rhodes bread website, but I have never heard of rhodes bread so I tweaked the recipe a bit.

Ingredients

• 1 package of crescent rolls
• 6 oz spaghetti, cooked
• 1 cup thick spaghetti sauce
• 8 oz mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2 –inch cubes (I used shredded cheese)
• 1 egg white
• Parmesan cheese
• Parsley flakes
• Pinch of garlic powder

1) First and foremost cook the spaghetti as per the directions on the packages, or if you wanted to get really fancy...you could make your own spaghetti noodles! Maybe next weekend I will feel a bit more adventurous, but tonight I had a hungry pregnant woman so I used packaged spaghetti.

2) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

3) Drain spaghetti and mix in spaghetti sauce in with the spaghetti.  I turned off the element and put the spaghetti back on the stove so it could warm the sauce up a bit.  

4) Spray a cookie sheet with non-stick spray OR coat with butter. 

5) Roll out crescent roll dough on cookie sheet while making sure the seems are joined.

6) Put the spaghetti in the middle of the dough.

7) Add cheese and cut slits along the dough.  To wrap it, start from one side and alternate folding left over right.  It is simliar to braiding hair, except with two parts instead of three. 

8) Brush with an egg white, sprinkle parmesan, parsley and garlic powder. 

9) I put it in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. 

10) Remove from oven, let cool and stuff your face!!

Note: There are a number of things you can do with this recipe.  I think the next time I make it, I am going to add Italian sausage and mushrooms to the sauce.  Super easy to get creative with this recipe! 

If crescent rolls are not available to you, any sort of puff pastry would work too! 

Cheesy Garlic Bread Sticks

Apparently I was good this year because I got a stand mixer for Christmas!  I decided to take it for a spin last night (see what I did there?) and make this recipe I found on Pinterest called Cheesy Garlic Bread Sticks.  It started out great, but then when it came time to put the things into the oven I realised that my new cookie sheet didn't fit.  I then tried to transfer it onto a different cookie sheet, but it ended up turning into a log as opposed to sticks.

Here is the recipe for the bread sticks starting with the dough (taken from Lauren's Latest):

Basic Pizza Dough
yield: 2-12 inch pizzas, approximately 1 lb. of dough

Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey {or sugar}
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive or canola oil
3 cups bread flour {give or take 1/2 cup…depending on the heat & humidity}

Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, preferably that of a stand mixer, stir yeast and honey into warm water. Sit for 5-10 minutes or until bubbles form and mixture starts to foam. This tells you that the yeast is alive and kicking. Pour in salt, oil and half the flour and mix.

Once that flour is incorporated, start adding flour in bit by bit until you get the pizza dough to the consistency you want: slightly tacky, but when you touch it it doesn’t stick to your hands.

Once you reach this stage, turn the mixer on high to knead for 6 minutes. Turn a timer on and walk away! Resist the temptation to stop earlier than 6 minutes! That seems to be the magical number. It should look something like this when it’s done!

The dough should be smooth and easy to work with. And the bowl should be clean!

Lightly grease the bowl & the dough so it doesn’t dry out, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise 1-2 hours. That’s it!

Cheesy Garlic Bread Sticks
yield: 1- 12 inch pie

Ingredients:
1/2 recipe Fail-Proof Pizza Dough
2 tablespoons softened salted butter
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese {use the real stuff!}
1/4 pound grated mozzarella cheese
{salt & pepper, if desired}

Directions:
Preheat oven to 500 degrees with pizza stone inside. 

Mix butter and garlic in a small bowl and set aside.

Spread pizza dough out into a 12-inch circle on parchment paper. (I just used a regular cookie sheet)

Spread the butter and garlic mixture over dough and top with parmesan and mozzarella cheeses. Top with a light sprinkling of salt and pepper, if desired. 

Bake 9-10 minutes or until bubbly and golden. Remove from oven and cool 1-2 minutes before cutting. Serve hot, with marinara.

The shape it was supposed to be.  This was prior to transferring it to the other cookie sheet.

After it came out of the over.  It actually tasted as good as it looks!

Monday Monday

Meatless Monday, Meatless Monday, MEATLESS MONDAY!!

So alas it is Monday, which means that it is meatless Monday!  Last night I made some Butternut Squash Soup.  

2 small butternut squash
3 yellow potatoes
2 ambrosia apples
2 generous tablespoons of curry powder
5 cups of chicken broth

• Peel and cube the butternut squash, potatoes and apples.
• Heat up chicken stock
• Put all ingredients in chicken broth
• I let everything simmer for about an hour. 
• Once cooked, I blended the soup in my blender.

I don't think I realised how much soup this would make because I seriously ended up with a lot!  I wont go hungry for at least a month haha!  Good thing it turned out pretty good!  Before I enjoyed a bowl I added some plain yogurt!

No mess chocolate fudge

Since the holiday season is fast approaching, I decided to do some "baking" tonight.  I call it "baking" because there was actually no baking involved.  I got the recipe from my Mum and she makes it pretty much every year during the holidays!  The only issue I have with the recipe itself is that it is in mL and mg as opposed to cups.  No big deal, just meant I had to actually read the packages.

Here is the recipe:

NO MESS CHOCOLATE FUDGE

350 grams chocolate chips

300 ml can sweetened condensed milk

300 ml icing sugar

5 ml vanilla

pinch of salt

125 ml chopped nuts (optional)

paper cups

1. Put all the ingredients in a glass or plastic bowl.
2. Stir them together till they are well mixed.
3. Put the bowl with the fudge mixture into microwave, on high for 2 min.
4. Take the bowl out of the microwave and stir the mixture again, till it’s really smooth.
5. Spoon the fudge mixture into baking cups.
6. Put the baking cups on a cookie sheet and then put the cookie sheet in the fridge.
7. Chill the fudge for 1 - 2 hours, till it’s firm. 

I added more chocolate chips after I finished mixing and I added skor toffee bits! Turned out pretty darn well if you ask me :)

 

9 Days

So I've been gluten-free for nine days now and I don't feel all that different than I did when I started this   lifestyle change.  I haven't had any gas and I have only been bloated a few times, but I guess I was expecting something more "A-HA!" as Oprah would say.  I think what I'll do is go all the way to 30 days and re-evaluate.  If after 30 days I notice a change in my overall health, then I'll stick with it!  What I may do is after the 30 days I may turn to just baking my own bread as opposed to buying any bread from stores that way I know that there are not any sort of fillers in what I'm eating.  I'll admit it, I miss my gourmet sandwiches with homemade pesto and roasted tomatoes and I miss BLTs.  I tried to make gluten-free bread on the weekend and it turned into a brick.  Like, I could throw it at someone and the 'bread' would probably knock them out.  Good for walking through a sketchy part of town, not good for eating.  Tonight for dinner I had some chicken salad after I got home from my run.

Chicken Salad

• can of chicken, in water (drained)
• cup of yogurt
• half a cup of celery
• a few stalks of green onions cuts up
• half a cup of grapes
• a generous tablespoon of curry powder
• handful of walnuts

Mix and enjoy.  I love the contrast of the grapes and the curry! Tasty tasty!

A Change of Lifestyle

Hello bloggersphere!

About two weeks ago I decided that I would completely cut wheat from my diet.  What prompted this change in lifestyle was reading the book Wheat Belly.  The book is rather insightful and it really opened my eyes to how bad wheat is for our bodies and health.  I have suffered from gastroesophageal reflux disease for a little over three years now and after reading about how wheat gluten is really hard on your gastrointestinal tract, I decided that cutting wheat from my daily diet would be the best decision for me. I have been wheat-gluten free for five days now and I am feeling pretty great.  My cravings for all things wheat are slowly subsiding and I'm feeling better than I have in months.

It is definitely a complete lifestyle change.  This is due to the fact that there is wheat in everything.  It requires you to be more conscious of what you are putting into your body and putting a bit more preparation into meals.  It is honestly not as hard as I thought it would be, which definitely is making it easier to stick to it!

The past week I've been looking up different recipes and getting inspiration from different blogs.  Tonight I'm going to make some homemade sloppy joes with homemade bread! I'll post pictures and the results tomorrow!

Anyways, check out the book Wheat Belly.  If anything, it gets you thinking critically about the food you are consuming.  

Risotto

Hello hello!

I know, I’ve practically fallen off the face of the earth…but alas, life happens.

On Saturday I made some tasty risotto! I used the traditional method and I added some roasted garlic.  It was pretty tasty.  I added extra parmesan cheese because there is no way that ¼ of a cup could ever be enough (yum cheese!!!).  The recipe called for white wine and I certainly didn’t want to use any of my good Riesling wine from my wine club so I used a bottle of chardonnay which I also got from my wine club (shout out to Palatine Hills) and it ended up working out quite well.  I think next time I make this recipe I will add some mushrooms to it to add a bit more flare to it, but other than that it was great. 

One of the crappy things about risotto is the fact that there is a 15 min “deliciousness” window and if you try and consume it outside of that window you end up eating this gross blob of starch.  So you ask yourself, why the heck would I make risotto if I can’t have it as leftovers??? Because you can fry it and make delicious risotto hashbrowns with it!! I made the hashbrowns as part of my dinner last night and it kind of reminded me of the hash browns I used to eat when I was a kind….then I proceeded to watch Halloween kids movies haha! I just put a little bit of safflower oil in a medium hot pan, made little patties with the leftover risotto and fried those puppies till they were golden like Pony Boy in the Outsiders….cheesy literary reference.

Anyways, I'm off to watch The Walking Dead and am frantically cleaning my apartment, sounds like a good evening to me!

Martha's steak and potatoes

So I must say that this little $5 Everyday Food magazine was one of the best purchases.  I came across this delightful steak and potatoes recipe that was quite tasty!

Garlic!!! YUM

Added rosemary and Worcestershire sauce.   

Added some delicious, delicious steak rounds to the marinade and let the steaks sit in the fridge for about two hours.  I think next time I'll marinate it overnight just to make it juicier!  

Boiled some potatoes to help reduce the baking time.

Pan-seared the beef till it was perfectly cooked!

Baked the potatoes with some blue cheese sprinkled on top along with some salt and pepper.  The blue cheese melted nicely on the potatoes, super delicious!! Thanks Martha Stewart for another winner!!

Peanut Butter Protein Balls

So I've been meaning to make this post for some time now, but of course I get sidetracked! I got this recipe from the dude and I was slightly unsure oh how this recipe would turn out when I first received the recipe.

 Firstly, I had no idea what the heck this PB2 is.  It is actually powdered penut butter and it tastes like the peanut butter in Reese Cups (deeelish).  I haven't seen PB2 in Canada, but I'm sure the Bulk Barn or a store similar to the Bulk Barn will sell powdered peanut butter.  If not, I'm sure a health foods store will!  Instead of regular oats I used steel cut oats, Jillian Michaels (LOVE HER) is a big advocate of steel-cut oats so I figured I would use them instead!! Steel-cut oats are more nutty tasting than regular oats and look kind of crushed peanuts! 

Once I rolled and squished the mixture into balls, I put it in the freezer and were ready to eat in approximately an hour.  I must say I was skeptical of this recipe, but it is actually delicious!  They kind of remind me of my mum's peanut butter balls (which she hasn't made in FOREVER, by the way!), but are much healthier!

Stuffed Tomatoes

Its Monday again, which means it is Meatless Monday!  For Meatless Monday I did stuffed tomatoes and I quite fancied them! Again, thanks Miss Stewart!

First I scooped out the insides of four fair-sized hot house tomatoes.  Shopping for tomatoes at the grocery store makes me miss when my parents used to grow their own tomatoes.  Their tomatoes were sooo juicy and tasty!

In a hot skillet I put green onions and corn....how corny! (I know, that was a terrible joke!)

Wash and drained black beans and added mozzarella cheese to the beans. 

Added some chilly peppers to the corn and green onions (THANKS DENISE :) )

The tomatoes all ready to be stuffed!

Added the corn to the beans and added some salt and pepper with bread crumbs. 

Stuffed the crapped out of the tomatoes!

With the leftover tomato insides, I put it on thick cut bread and then added some salt and pepper to it.  I put it in the oven with the tomatoes as they were cooking. 

Et voila! I think I overstuffed them just a bit, but they tasted absolutely fantastic! 

How the bread looked when it came out of the oven!! Sooo tasty! 

That's Meatless Monday for this week! Next blog post will be about these protein balls I made on the weekend!!

Rice and Bean Burritos

Hello hello, I know I have been lacking severely in the area of blog posts lately!  On a side note, apparently America's Most Wanted is still on T.V.  I know, I was super surprised too when I discovered that tonight!  

Last week I decided to make another Martha creation, rice and bean burritos!!

How cool are these clouds? Photo taken by yours truly...me!

So to start I chopped a white onion and put it in a hot skillet that had a bit of safflower oil.  I have noticed that safflower oil does not have a strong flavour to it, so I'm starting to use it a lot more in my cooking.

 I boiled about a cup of vegetable broth, took it off the heat and then added about a cup of rice to the boiled broth.  I didn't have any rice but instant or else I would have used brown rice.  I really didn't feel like going to the store - was definitely having a sweat pants and baggy hoodie kind of day.

I coarsely chopped a jalapeño pepper (thanks Denise!!!).  Since I'm not a big fan of spicy, I removed the ribs and seeds of the pepper.  

Of course there has to be garlic! So I chopped up two cloves of garlic. 

I added the pepper and garlic to the onions in the skillet. 

Two tablespoons of tomato paste was added to the onion, pepper and garlic mixture. 

I added about a third of a cup of water, a can of baby corn and a can of black beans (I rinsed them first before I added the beans to the mixture). 

After the rice was fully cooked, it joined in on the party too! 

I put a bit of cheese on a tortilla shell and then added the rice/bean mixture.

I somehow thought it would be a great idea to put the burritos under the broiler to crisp them up a bit.  Yep, they got crispy thats for sure!  I got side tracked by some ridiculous reality show and they ended up looking like Snooki after she goes tanning.  Regardless of the char on the burritos, they actually tasted really good!  I froze the leftovers (the recipe made 6 large burritos) and I bring them for my lunch. 

Poor Little Blog

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog lately!  I made some stuffed tomatoes last week which I have been meaning to post about, but alas I keep getting sidetracked...I know, excuses excuses!  This past weekend I had salmon for the first time in a while and it tasted absolutely delicious.  I was pretty impressed.  It was seared in a pan and served over some vegetable rice.  Soo tasty!  I am not a fish person in the least so I was pretty surprised when I actually liked it!!  I totally forgot to take pictures and afterwards I even commented "darn, I should have taken pictures because that was delicious!" Anyways,  later this week I will post about the stuffed tomatoes!

Mill Street Brew Pub

Tonight I went out for dinner with some colleagues from work to the Mill Street Brew Pub.  It was utterly delicious!  I had heard great things from different people that Mill Street was delicious and my goodness were they ever right!  The Pub is located in an old mill, which has stone walls and has an enormous amount of charm.  There are patios on the right and left sides of the restaurant, which would have been stellar had it not been rain.  Ah well, c'est la vie!  The waitress, Christine I believe her name was, was an absolute delight and handled my questioning of the menu flawlessly!

Not only did the restaurant have an awesome vibe, but Mill Street Brew Pub also has a wicked spread of food!  I ordered the chicken club sandwich, which had chicken, tomatoes, bacon and some sort of aioli on it.  The sandwich came on multigrain bread.  Quite tasty!  The sandwich comes with fries, but I'm not big on fries so I decided on the spinach strawberry goat cheese salad instead.  The salad also had red onions and a vinaigrette which complemented the salad perfectly.  I'm not sure which I liked better, the salad or the sandwich!  Both were near perfection.  The meal came with a pickle and some coleslaw.  The coleslaw was nothing special, but then again I'm not a huge coleslaw fan.  It was an excellent meal and I am very happy that I went on this outing with my colleagues. 

Popcorn Topper

So Martha to the rescue again!  I found this popcorn topper recipe in the September issue of Everyday Food for 'cheesy garlic' popcorn.  I made it last night and it was absolutely delicious!

Recipe is as follows:

1 tablespoon of parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Drizzle some form of vegetable oil over the popcorn.  I used safflower oil because I heard it has some health benefits and is rumoured to 'melt' belly fat, so hey why not???

Then, toss the popcorn with the popcorn topper mix.

The only thing I would do differently for next time is that I would double the recipe so that there would be more of a pronounced flavour.  Very delicious though!

Thanks Ms. Stewart!

Meatless Monday

So for Meatless Monday this week I made a portobello, broccoli and red pepper open-faced sandwich.  OH MY GOODNESS WAS IT EVER DELICIOUS!!!  I got the recipe from my favourite criminal, Martha Stewart.  I never realised that she has some absolutely delicious recipes on her website and in her monthly publication of "Everyday Food."  Needless to say, I am a little bit impressed.  I was curious at the cost per serving (one serving being one open-faced sandwich) and it worked out to about $2.55 a serving! Hello ridiculous! Thats cheaper than the cheapest sub at subway...not to mention ten times more delicious! I started out by cutting the broccoli, portobello mushrooms and red peppers. 

 I tossed the broccoli with safflower oil (Dr. Oz says that safflower oil has the potential to cut belly fat, so hey I'll give it a shot) and salt & pepper.  I then put the broccoli under the broiler for 4 minutes.

I then added the portobello mushrooms and red peppers with the broccoli and let the veggies cook under the broiler for 9 minutes. I tossed them twice as they were cooking and the veggies turned out perfectly!

This is how the veggies looked when they came out of the oven....om nom nom!

I 'painted' two thick slices of bread with mayonaise that I had mixed garlic (YUM) into.

The assembly process begins!

I added gouda cheese on top of the open-faced sandwiches and then put it under the broiler for 2 minutes, which was the perfect amount of time because any longer and it would have been absolutely charred.

Absolutely delicious! Soo good!

Stay tuned for Meatless Monday next week! I'm thinking burritos...be excited!!! Cheers for now.