Milkies

Milkies = Milk + Cookies

A friend of mine passed along a recipe for lactation cookies.  They are supposed to increase your milk production.  I swear after I ate them I felt like I was producing more but it could have just been my brain being tricked.  Here's a link to the recipe.  I am just posting the pics but they are super easy to make and super delicious.  Enjoy!  There's no breast milk in the cookies I just added the breast milk for wow factor, like WOW look at all that breast milk.  

It's bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S . . . bread

Now that V is a stay at home dad (I kid, he works from home) he spends a lot of time baking. We had a surplus of bananas so he decided to make banana nut bread. It was so easy! I just watched and took photos. Recipe below. Enjoy!

Ingredients

4 smashed bananas 

1/3 cup melted butter

1 cup sugar

1 beaten egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup of walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees 

With a wooden spoon mix butter into mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl

Mix in the sugar, egg and vanilla

Mix in baking soda and salt 

Mix in flour
Add Walnuts

Pour mixture in baking pan

Bake for 1 hour 

Cool on rack 

Remove from pan and serve

Pesto Pizza

Here's a yummy recipe for pesto pizza! A classmate gave me the recipe years ago. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
Pizza dough
Pesto sauce
Sun dried tomatoes
Banana peppers
Feta cheese
Mozzarella
Spinach
Tomato
Onion

1. Roll out pizza dough on baking sheet
2. Spread the pesto evenly
3. Add mozzarella
4. Add spinach
5. Add toppings: banana peppers, sun dried tomatoes and feta cheese.
6. Add tomato and onion
7. Bake as instructed on pizza dough packaging. Usually 15-20 minutes.
Voila!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving!! Well, not in Canada.  Canadian Thanksgiving was in October. The pilgrims were thankful for harvest and the Canadian explorers were thankful for surviving the voyage from England to Canada.  I'm not an expert on Canadian traditions.  I read it in Wikipedia.

This year I'm grateful for a lot of things. I'm grateful for the lessons learned this year.  I'm grateful for my wonderful family and friends. I'm grateful for the very best husband. I'm grateful for having the opportunity to follow my dreams. I'm grateful for all the new people in my life that bring me happiness like my little friend N, who I met this year and bonded with in Morocco.  I'm extremely grateful for this life I'm living with all the good and the bad it's my life and I feel very blessed.

Also, I'm grateful to be one of the editor's picks of the day on bloggers.com! Thanks everyone!

If you plan on shopping tomorrow don't forget to check out the Black Friday website so you can formulate a game plan or you can wait like me and shop on Cyber Monday.   For all you fashionistas Cusp.com has an additional 20% off sale items today and if you're into fancy furniture Horchow has up to 40% off on their website.

What are you grateful for?

                         

I was watching the Thanksgiving day parade on CBS this morning and here's a super easy, last minute apple pie recipe.  In case you're in charge of dessert here goes . . .

I copied this recipe directly from the Pillsbury website . . . it's the same one CBS used.  It received great reviews!

Perfect Apple pie recipe

Crust

1

box Pillsbury® refrigerated pie crusts, softened as directed on box

Filling*

6

cups thinly sliced, peeled apples (6 medium)

3/4

cup sugar

2

tablespoons all-purpose flour

3/4

teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4

teaspoon salt

1/8

teaspoon ground nutmeg

1

tablespoon lemon juice

1. Heat oven to 425°F. Place 1 pie crust in ungreased 9-inch glass pie plate. Press firmly against side and bottom.
2. In large bowl, gently mix filling ingredients; spoon into crust-lined pie plate. Top with second crust. Wrap excess top crust under bottom crust edge, pressing edges together to seal; flute. Cut slits or shapes in several places in top crust.
3. Bake 40 to 45 minutes or until apples are tender and crust is golden brown. Cover edge of crust with 2- to 3-inch wide strips of foil after first 15 to 20 minutes of baking to prevent excessive browning. Cool on cooling rack at least 2 hours before serving.

*Two cans (21 oz each) apple pie filling can be substituted for the filling.

Caramel-Pecan Apple Pie: Immediately after removing pie from oven, drizzle with 1/3 cup caramel ice cream topping. Sprinkle with 2 to 4 tablespoons chopped pecans.

My co-worker raves about his leftover turkey soup. He's given me the recipe so many times but I have yet to make it and I misplaced it so here's one I found from the food network to make tomorrow.  Next day Turkey soup.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

Give me s'more

I haven't posted a recipe in a while so here goes!

I was recently in Tampa for a week and I stayed with my wonderful friend Z and her sister, N. May I just say that N is amazing. She takes care of her home and her cutie little girl and she is super creative so she makes a lot of art projects. She recently made her own lamp shade!

She is one of the best cooks and she's only 29. Anyway, she bakes a lot too and while we were there she made us s'more cupcakes. Delish! I told her I wanted to make some so she gave me the condensed "semi-homemade" version . . . Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Graham crackers
Chocolate cake mix
Butter (or butter substitute)
Semi sweet chocolate chips (the kind you can melt)
Kraft jet puffed/marshmallow cream
Cupcake liners
Eggs n oil for the cake mix

Pre-heat the oven at 350 degrees

1. Put the graham crackers in a ziplock bag (about 4-6 crackers per 12 cupcakes).
2. Smash them up.
3. Melt 4 tbsp of butter in the microwave for about 10-20 seconds.
4. Mix the butter into the graham crackers work it in with your hands if you have to.
5. Line the cupcake tin with the liners.
6. Place about half a tbsp of graham crackers (or more if you'd like) on the bottom of each cupcake.
7. Bake crust for about 15 mins
8. Take it out once golden brown.
9. Mix cake batter.  Follow instructions on package.  Pour the batter over the graham crackers ( fill the cupcake tin about 75% full with the batter.)
10. Bake for about 15-20 mins or until done. (Mine were done in 15)
11. Once the cupcakes are done let them cool
12. Melt about 1 cup of chocolate chips in the microwave (now be careful here if you have never done it before chocolate is super sensitive). Microwave it for 30 seconds at 50% heat *
13. After 30 seconds take out of microwave and stir. If not ready keep melting at 10 second intervals.
14. Take a fork and carve a little hole in the middle of the cupcakes.
15. With a spoon or a piping bag pour the melted chocolate in the middle
*Alternative step* or to make it super easy just bake the chocolate chips in the middle of the cupcakes.
16. Spread the marshmallow spread over the cupcake
17. Drizzle melted chocolate and crushed graham crackers over cupcakes.

* Check the chocolate chips because they won't look melted.  You have to stir them. 

Done!

And now the pics . . . .

 

 

Come to my bar!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love watermelon and cucumber. Yummy! I've been known to ask bartenders for any drink involving a cucumber. Especially during the summer. It's so refreshing. The Alisar at co co sala in DC, the Katsuya fresh at Katsuya (Houston, LA, SoBe) and The Sake Garden at Zentan DC are all delicious and all involve cucumber. Last summer sweetgreen had a ginger/cucumber limeade and it was delish! We are going out in DC tomorrow for a friend's birthday.  Our nights in DC usually end the next  morning so today we decided to stay in.  I decided to make my own watermelon and cucumber drink so I googled: watermelon cucumber based cocktails. BAM! Martha Stewart. I found the perfect recipe. Here's the gist. Blend the cucumber. Blend the watermelon. Strain them and mix with 2 squeezed limes, honey and vodka. Here's a link to the actual recipe. Enjoy!

 http://www.marthastewart.com/319455/watermelon-cucumber-cooler?czone=holiday/sixty-days-of-summer/recipes-ideas&center=276964&gallery=274797&slide=184569

My MESS!!! 

Top Chef . . . Kind of

Did you know that even though shrimp is high in cholesterol due to it's low fat content it actually improves your LDL to HDL ratio?  Unless you deep fry it or cook it with pasta then obviously you're consuming fat from something other than the shrimp.  Ok, that's all I got on shrimp.  Our friends came to visit us over Memorial Day weekend and we decided to have a little competition.  Who makes the best shrimp cocktail? Me or JB? When I say shrimp cocktail I mean mexican shrimp cocktail which is not just cocktail sauce and cold shrimp.  The judges, our respective significant others were blindfolded and had 3 blind tastings.  We each received a score of 2 out of 3 so in the end it was a tie.  Maybe you should be the tie breaker.  Here are both of the recipes.  Try them out and you be the judge!

This recipe serves 4.  Ideally served cold.

Ingredients

1 Tomato

1 Onion

1 Avocado

2 Jalapeno or Serrano pepper

1.5 lbs Giant Shrimp (Fresh not frozen)

Cilantro

Sauce #1 (My sauce)                        Sauce #2 (JBs)

8 oz of ketchup                                 8 oz cocktail sauce

4 oz Goya hot sauce                                   1 oz Tabasco sauce

1/2 cup of water                                1 clove garlic

oregano to taste

Directions

Clean and boil shrimp for 10 minutes

While shrimp is boiling dice the tomato, onion, avocado, cilantro and the jalapeno.

Make the sauce (I mostly do it to taste adding more if I need to)

Add all ingredients together.  Chill for at least 30 minutes.  Voila! Done.  Serve with Saltines.
To be honest everything is done to taste.  These are rough estimates but you can start with a 2:1 ratio for the sauce ingredients (ketchup and hot sauce).  

OOTD: Leifsdottir yellow top.  Audrey High waisted coral shorts.  BCBG  belt

O.K.

Have I mentioned V is Greek?  Our kids will be Greexican.  There is so much culture for them to learn and absorb. I can't wait! I've had the pleasure of vacationing in Greece and I love it! Athens, Mykonos, Nafplion, Crete, Ketakolon and Santorini. All amazing.  And of course I've been to Mexico and I love it.  One of my favorite things about Greeks is how proud they are of their culture just like Mexicans. Have you seen the movie "My Big fat Greek Wedding"? You know how the dad is always telling everyone every word is derived from the Greek language? Well, when we were in Athens V's uncle tells me: "you know the word "OK" originates from the Greek phrase Ola Kala". Which translates into everything will be all right. Which makes perfect sense even though no one can say for sure where OK originates from. I for one will accept V's uncle's explanation because all the other OK assumptions sound lame!  Back in the late 1800's when the railroads were being built across the U.S.many of the Greek railroad workers were asked if everything was fine.  They would respond back with "ola kala" and of course became an acronym "ok".  If text messaging existed back then I'm sure they would have claimed they invented acronyms. In homage to our Greek heritage I decided to make V's favorite Greek dessert, Kataifi.  I was so nervous but in the end it turned out delicious.  I purchased all the ingredients at the local grocery store except the Kataifi filo dough, which I purchased from the Greek grocery store.  Whole Foods carries it sometimes as well.  If you'd like to test your baking skills here's a link for a simple recipe on how to create this delicious dessert!

http://www.ultimate-guide-to-greek-food.com/kataifi.html

Final product

Filling

Kataifi filo dough

Making the syrup

Soaking in syrup

Almatini

Did I ever tell you my secret passion for mixology? Well, now you know. Sometimes I pretend I'm a bartender and make drinks for V. I wanted to hire a bartender for his birthday party but he vetoed the proposal so it was up to me to conjure all the drinks.  I came up with the best drink.  Ever.  Maybe not ever but it's still pretty good.  I am not sure if I invented the drink per say as I am sure there's one out there that's very similar but for the purpose of this blog post I'll say I invented it.  I have called it an Almatini because well, I am slightly narcissistic.  The recipe is quite simple.  It involves mixing (chilled) peach vodka, with simply lemonade's mango lemonade and a dash of pineapple juice.  Just a dash of pineapple or else the pineapple takes over.  The taste resembles that of a lychee martini and it is sweet so if you don't like sweet don't try it.  I garnished mine with blue berries because I like blueberries but mango or any other fruit will work too.  Enjoy a luxury cocktail at home without paying a fortune at the bar or have at your next gathering.  Maybe I did invent it because I can't imagine a bar carrying mango lemonade.  Frozen is really yummy too just blend it with ice the same way you would make a smoothie.

Watching the lbs.

As many of you know I've been on a quest for physical fitness that I believe will help me keep a sound body and mind.  :).  It is so hard to find tasty, healthy recipes that are fast and easy to make.  I usually get home around 8 PM and the last thing I want to do is cook an elaborate dinner.  My hubby and I have gotten used to cooking together now.  It's fun.  I know, when did I become the domestic type? Anyway, I'd like to share a recipe that is tasty, healthy and easy to make: garlic, marinated tilapia.  We buy our fish fresh so everyday V stops by the grocery store to buy fish or chicken.  I'm avoiding beef, remember?  The recipe is very straight forward.  While you preheat the oven to 400 degrees you can make the marinade.  The actual recipe involves 1 tablespoon of butter but we substituted it with light butter.
Marinade
1 tablespoon of  light butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of parsley flakes
1 teaspoon of garlic salt
1/2 a squeezed lemon

Melt butter in micro wave for 9 seconds, then mix all the ingredients above together.
Spray baking dish with PAM.
Rinse tilapia fillet under cold water.
Pour marinade over fillets and sprinkle a bit of cayenne pepper and salt.  Bake for 13 minutes. Then broil for 3 minutes (optional if you like it a bit crispy).  If not bake for 15 minutes.
DONE! :)

Our sides included a garden salad and steamed veggies.  V always makes our dressings.  Here's a simple recipe for his vinaigrette: Mix olive oil, red wine vinegar, oregano flakes, salt and pepper.  That's it! Pretty simple right?