Recipes Take Two!

Well, work starts on Tuesday of this week, so I guess my summer vacation is drawing to a close. I started classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights a few weeks ago, but I've really enjoyed my time off. One of the things I've done is start cooking on the nights when I'm at home. During the school year, most of our dinners came from a bag (yeesh!) and the flavors got very boring. Now, it's summer, and produce is more affordable! I'm trying to make tasty food that will be easy to make during the school year and summer. I did one post about some recipes I've tried out (here), but here's a few things I've tried recently!

 

1. This was Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken and okra. I got the idea for the food from here, and I think it turned out pretty well! And there's no replacing real, homegrown okra, but this okra tasted pretty good too! You can take the girl out of the south, but you can't take the south out of the girl ;) Overall, successful. Blake really liked the chicken, though it wasn't my absolute favorite. It was different than what we normally ate though, so that's always a plus!

2. Tonight, I made this meal! I got the idea from a recipe place online, but I basically made it up myself. I marinaded the chicken in a teriyaki sauce with some spices added in for a few hours. Then I baked the chicken on the skillet (what is the proper verb? baked? grilled? eh...) and placed it on top of a fresh salad I made! The bread is fresh, sourdough garlic bread from the artisan bread section of Safeway (I had a coupon and got the whole loaf for 99 cents!). Yummy, yummy meal!

3. This one is a little harder to see, but I made these little cookie desserts from scratch (well, except that, as Carl Sagan said, if I want to make it from scratch, I must first create the universe [seriously, please check out this amazing song!]). I mixed quick oats, smushed bananas, slices of strawberries, some soy milk, cinnamon, and a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Then I rolled them out into balls and added a honey glaze. I baked them at 325 degrees in the oven for about 15 minutes, and they are delicious! The strawberries are a little tart and the honey/chocolate is sweet.

4. This meal wasn't my greatest success... I think it needs something else. Any suggestions would be appreciated! I was reading this blog written by a woman who makes almost all her food instead of buying cans or packages, and she had a blog post where she talked about making her own spaghetti sauce. All of the pictures looked so good that I thought I'd give it a try. I added about a cup of flour, milk, a cup of mozzarella cheese, spinach, some baby 'bella mushrooms, and tomatoes. I put in some spices (some cayenne pepper, oregano, Italian spices, pepper) and served it over spaghetti noodles but afterwards it still needed quite a bit of salt to make it tasty.

The roll on the side was better! I followed this recipe for 'Chicken Puffs' but I called them Chicken Rolls because I think Puffs sound gross haha. They were tasty! They are kind of supposed to be appetizers. I had two for lunch though today :)

So that's my recent food experiments! Blake is definitely the cook between the two of us, but he said the food's been good! I'm definitely learning a lot about putting a meal together, so that's a good start! Today, I made some extra grilled chicken (minus the teriyaki marinade) for Blake to snack on throughout the week. He really likes leftovers, so I made food just for leftovers! I also made a Mediterranean Pasta with bread crumbs, Italian dressing, grilled chicken, and tomatoes at the beginning of last week. Blake and I have been dipping into it whenever we want a quick snack.

Well, I start work this week, so if you're tired of reading about food, don't worry... there probably won't be anymore pictures or recipes!
--Catie