Pancakes and Uglies

So, we have a tradition at our house. Every Friday night is either pancakes or pizza for dinner. I love both, but really... is anything better than breakfast for dinner? Never! Especially when you add eggs, hash browns, and maybe even some bacon! It's as good as IHOP!

Add a dab of butter... then let the syrup flow...

Mmm... sugary goodness...

They're good with berries or cinnamon apples on top too. But if you're like S.D., you'll go with plain butter and syrup every time.

Yum! I've tried a few different pancake recipes, but this is my favorite: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Good-Old-Fashioned-Pancakes/Detail.aspx . The only thing I substitute is the Ener-G egg replacer and vegan butter (staples at our house). They're very easy and super delicious!


Now for the Uglies...

The name of these is what drew me in... Uglies. Fitting isn't it? But I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. Seriously, they're really good! I'll definitely be making them again. It's just BBQ sauce mixed with ground beef, onion, and garlic powder. Then you dish that on top of biscuit dough that's been formed into cups in a muffin pan. It sounds a little weird, but they're yummy! And kid friendly too (what kid wouldn't want to eat something called "uglies"?).

p.s. Sweet Boy painted the background picture. I thought the Uglies needed something... umm... "beautiful" to complement their attractiveness. ;) But if that picture's not beautiful enough for you, take a look, at this one...

That's right, he's going to be an artist some day - can't you tell?

Here's the recipe for the Uglies and Biscuits (I make the biscuits since I haven't found a premade biscuit dough without milk). Just substitute vegan cheese in the Uglies and soy milk in the biscuits. Also, I recommend doing 1 1/2 recipes for the biscuits since the original only makes 6 and the Uglies will fill 8 muffin cups. And next time I will be doing mine in an oversized muffin tin so I can get more filling in the cups. Serve these with mashed potatoes and corn and you've got a great meal!

Uglies: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Uglies/Detail.aspx

Biscuits: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/JPs-Big-Daddy-Biscuits/Detail.aspx (Btw... these are the best biscuits!)

Enjoy!

The Ultimate Chicken Pot Pie

Hands down the best chicken pot pie I've ever had. I just can't say enough good things about it. It was super easy, it used up leftovers, and it was delicious! S.D., who doesn't even like chicken pot pie, said "It's really good!!! Definitely the best pot pie I've ever had!!!" Ok, so maybe he didn't say it with quite the enthusiasm that the "!"s suggest, but he did say it.


The crust is really what made it extra delicious: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pie-Crust-IV/Detail.aspx. I took a cooking class in college and one of the only things I remember is making a pie crust. The #1 trick is to handle it as little as possible when adding the water. I usually buy a Pillsbury refrigerated crust, but I don't know if I can go back after making this one. It only took me 5 minutes to do - definitely worth it!


Look at that pie... It looks so rustic! (haha... I love the word "rustic". It's makes something that is sloppy and thrown together at the last minute seem better than it really is)





Do you ever use the Tofutti cream cheese? Sweet Boy will eat it plain. I always put it on crackers or bagels for him, but he just licks off the cream cheese and leaves the rest behind. Of course, he also eats ketchup plain, so I guess cream cheese isn't that bad. Well, I added a little to the sauce to thicken it up a bit and it was a great addition.

Another wonderful thing about this recipe is that it's so easily adaptable. I divulged quite a bit from the original, but here it is: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Pot-Pie-IX/Detail.aspx. I think it would be good with whatever vegetables you have on hand. I happened to have some leftover carrots that I had cooked with butter and brown sugar - they were awesome in this! That recipe is below.

The Ultimate Chicken Pot Pie

1-1.5 c. cooked chicken (I had cooked a whole chicken in a crockpot earlier in the week and I used the leftovers)

1 c. cooked carrots (recipe for brown sugar carrots below)

1.5 c. frozen peas, thawed

1/3 c. vegan butter

1/3 c. flour

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1 T. dried onion flakes (I would have used a real onion had I had one)
1/4 t. celery seed

1 3/4 c. chicken broth

2/3 c. soy milk

seasoned salt and pepper to taste

1/4-1/3 c. Tofutti cream cheese

2 9-inch pie crusts (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pie-Crust-IV/Detail.aspx)

Preheat oven to 425 F. Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour. Add salt, pepper, onion flakes, and celery seed. Slowly whisk in chicken broth and milk. Stir over med-low heat until slightly thickened (mine had a hard time thickening much). Whisk in cream cheese until melted.

Put one pie crust in bottom of pie plate. Add chicken, carrots, and peas. Shake some pepper and seasoned salt over chicken mixture. Pour sauce over chicken mixture. Add top of crust (cut slits if not doing lattice top). Bake on next to lowest rack for 35-40 minutes. Spray top with cooking spray 5-10 minutes before finished cooking to get a golden color (take it out of the oven first before spraying - just seems like a good idea).

Brown Sugar Carrots

2 bags carrots

1 stick butter

1/2 # brown sugar

1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice (I forgot to add this, which is probably better since I used them for the pot pie. But usually I do and it's wonderful!)

Put carrots in large saucepan and cover with water. Boil until partially cooked (very slightly tender). Drain carrots. Melt butter, add brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice. Add carrots to sugar mixture and simmer until coated. (Don't feel like you have to make as much as this calls for. I usually just partially cook however many carrots I want and then cook them the rest of the way in a little brown sugar and butter.)

Carmelized Chicken and Cutting it up

Caramelized Baked Chicken... whether sweet or savory, if the recipe has the word "caramel" in it, I will make it. So obviously this was a must try. It was pretty good the night I made it... but it was especially good the next day reheated! All the flavors were able to meld together and the chicken had soaked up all the sauce... mmm... yes, much better the next day.

I think the highlight of the dinner was my culinary triumph of cutting up a whole chicken by myself! I know, it's pretty sad that it's taken me this long to try it - but when you have a bag of Tyson chicken breasts in the freezer, what need is there to cut up a whole chicken? The most I had done with a whole chicken was throw it in a crock pot and turn the button to low. But hey, that takes skill right? Ok fine, so not really, but that's why I love my crock pot!

Here's my chicken cutting station: two cutting boards (just in case things get out of hand), big knife, baking dish, and my "how-to" notes.

We're going in for surgery! I think Sweet Boy thought he was my assistant because he kept trying to hand me things during the process: food, toys, anything to help.

TahDahh! I did it! Not bad huh? I thought my pieces looked pretty good. I was definitely intimidated at first... but no more! It was actually pretty easy. One tip: next time I will sharpen my knife right before diving in because I think a sharper knife would have helped tremendously.

All I did for the chicken was pour the sauce over the top and bake it. Easy as pie. Or should I say, easy as cutting up a chicken!

Here's the recipe if you want to try it: Caramelized Baked Chicken. It calls for chicken wings, but obviously I did a whole chicken and it worked fine. Although, the breasts didn't caramelize as well as the dark meat for some reason. And like I said, it was definitely better the following day as leftovers with some white rice (or the coconut rice). The recipe states to bake at 375 F for 1 hour, but I baked it at 400 for about 35-45 minutes (I can't remember the exact time - so just watch it close). Also, bring the sauce to a boil on the stove top before pouring it over the chicken. That should help it caramelize.

Enjoy!

Stuffed Peppers

When I was a young teenager, I remember being at a friend's house and seeing her mom take out of the oven a big tray of stuffed peppers. All I could think at the time was "Gross! I'm glad I'm not eating over here tonight." Ah, how young and naive I was back then. Well, it's a good thing I grew out of that because stuffed peppers are delicious! Especially when they have a mountain of cheese melting down the sides. :)

The ingredients that make these stuffed peppers unique are the cauliflower and tomatoes. It calls for sun-dried tomatoes, which are quite tasty. I used stewed tomatoes this time because that's all I had, and they were very good as well. I also doubled the amount of cauliflower in the recipe - no reason besides I just like cauliflower.

It's so gross it's actually pretty, don't you think? This is the mixture of lean ground beef, cauliflower, tomatoes, seasonings, and vegan cheese. I made a few changes as usual. Instead of using an egg white I used ground flax and blended it in the food processor until it was the consistency of an egg white. That seemed to work well - and I hear flax is healthy too. It has to be with a name like "flax"! I also used lean ground beef instead of ground veal like the recipe calls for. One day I'll venture to see how different it is with veal, but for now I'm content with beef.

After the peppers are stuffed, you just stick them in the oven and TaDah!...

Four delicious little pepper cheese volcanoes. Sweet Boy ate his with ketchup... just like he eats everything. I liked mine plain, and S.D. ate his with some instant mashed potatoes. So give them a try - and don't worry if your kids think they look gross. I used to think so too.

Now, a word of warning: don't make these if you're in a hurry and you've given your grumpy son a popsicle to distract him.

Because you WILL step barefoot into a big puddle of popsicle juice. And your son WILL get out of his high chair with an amount of stickiness on his body that is near impossible to get off.

That tray is evidence of hands swishing back and forth several times in an attempt to spread the popsicle juice to all corners of the world. :)

This is why that night S.D. banned popsicles inside the house. (Haha... That will last maybe 2 days)

Stuffed Peppers

1 can stewed tomatoes

3/4 c. boiling water

3/4 lb. lean ground beef

1/2 c. chopped cauliflower

1 env. Italian dressing mix

1/4 t. crushed red pepper

1 T. ground flax seed

3 T. water

1 c. vegan cheese of choice, shredded

2 large bell peppers, halved, seeded

Preheat oven to 375 F. Drain and chop tomatoes. Blend flax seed and 3 T. water in food processor until thick (consistency of egg white). Mix tomatoes, beef, cauliflower, dressing mix, red pepper, flax seed, and half of cheese. Spoon into peppers. Pour boiling water in bottom of 8 or 9 inch square dish. Place peppers in dish and spray top of peppers with cooking spray. Cover loosely with foil and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Uncover, and bake an additional 15 minutes. Place leftover cheese on top of peppers during last 5 minutes of cooking and loosely cover with foil to melt.

Enjoy!

Coke Battered Fish 'n' Chips

Fish 'n' Chips... have I mentioned that S.D. is obsessed with England? If it's from England, he loves it. Jammie Dodgers, rugby jerseys, pint glasses (oddly enough we don't even drink) - the list goes on and on. So, as I was pondering how to do something new with tilapia, Fish and Chips seemed like a viable option. I've always wanted to try them, and I knew S.D. loves them - so why not? I did find however that practically all the recipes call for a bottle of beer in the batter. As I mentioned, we don't drink, so I tried to see what I had for a good substitute. As I opened the fridge door, the lone coke bottle in the middle of the shelf was staring me straight in the face. TaDahh!.........

I've been wondering what to do with this thing! I knew I would never find the right moment to pop the top and just drink it. Coke never sounds appealing - maybe if it was poured over 3 large scoops of vanilla ice cream in an icy cold mug... yeah that would've been good. Oh well, too late for that because I used it on the fish.

It's hard to say if the Coke added anything since I've never had another fish and chips to compare it to, but it was fun pretending that it did.

It's definitely not a meal for dieters since both the fish and the chips are fried. Seriously, I could feel my waistline widening with every bite. But it was totally worth it!

I only fry something about 2-3 times a year, so I'm definitely not a pro at it. In fact, after the chips were done I didn't turn down the burner and the oil got too hot while I was preparing the fish. You would think the fact that large quantities of smoke were rising from the oil would've been a clue. Hmm... apparently not. This was from my first batch of fish:

And I took that out of the oil about 15-30 seconds after dropping it in! Haha! Luckily the next batches were much better after I turned the heat down a bit.

I might have to make these again even though S.D. wants to ban all frying in our house. (I guess he couldn't take the smoke filled room and grease splattered on every surface within 5 ft. of the burner... go figure.) Sweet Boy ate this fish better than any fish I've made so far. I only had to bribe him with carrots a few times. Yes, you heard me right... carrots... he LOVES roasted carrots. I made them to go along with the fish and chips. I do believe he could live off of 3 things: roasted carrots, dairy-free ice cream, and ketchup. I'm not complaining though... carrots are a good favorite to have! But in spite of the carrot bribing, I'd definitely say the fish and chips were a success!

I used Paula Deen's Beer Battered Fish and Chips recipe. Obviously I changed the beer to coke, and I switched the order of the dredging. The recipe states to dip fish in the batter and then dredge in flour. I did the opposite and dredged in flour, then dipped in the batter. Some of the reviewers suggested that and it worked great! I would also recommend a tartar sauce to go with it. Sweet Boy and I were fine dipping in ketchup, but tartar sauce would have been the best I think.

Have fun frying!

Spinach Tuna Noodle Casserole

I LOVE this casserole. Of course, I love tuna and spinach - so I'm a little biased. But... Sweet Boy and S.D. loved this casserole and they're not biased at all! :) It's quick, it's creamy, it's easy - absolutely everything a casserole should be. And I like switching out different kinds of noodles. Sweet Boy likes these wagon wheels. I've also done elbow macaroni and those were great in this casserole as well.

I've been super busy this past week (hence the reason my posts have slowed down), and I didn't plan out our meals as well as I normally do. So it was nice to have something I could make with ingredients that I already had in the pantry.

One thing I always have is frozen spinach. I must have watched Pop-eye too much when I was little, because I LOVE spinach. I think it's one of my favorite vegetables. And the frozen brick is so convenient! Just pop it in the microwave and...


TaDahh... the spinach is all chopped and ready to go.


I know it looks a little radioactive here, but that is just because of the camera flash.

After stirring together the flour, vegan butter, and soy milk to make the sauce, throw in the spinach with some onions, garlic and tuna.


Mix with 8 oz of noodles, add some cheese and bread crumbs to the top and there you have it! A delicious and MEP free casserole.


Of course, you have to dot the top with vegan butter. That's what all the Food Network people do right? Well, minus the vegan part anyways.


Now, I accidentally layered it wrong. The original recipe calls for it to be like this - bread crumbs then cheese. But I think it should be cheese then bread crumbs. The bread crumbs don't have a chance to get crispy when layered like this. So next time hopefully I'll be paying more attention and do it so that the bread crumbs are on top.


I don't think I could survive without casseroles. They are one of those simple things that just make life easier. Meat and potatoes are easy to adapt to Sweet Boy's allergies. But casseroles have been challenging. I think that's why I love this casserole so much. We don't have casseroles too often anymore, and it's really been heart-breaking. They have such nostalgic value. It's interesting how something can be taken for granted for so long without noticing how truly special it is, until it's gone. I know you all probably think I've gone crazy talking about casseroles being heart-breaking and special. But hey, I'm a mom, and if I want to kiss those vegan chocolate chips, hug that box of Ener-G, or think this casserole is special, then by golly I will! :)

Enjoy!

Spinach Tuna Noodle Casserole

1/4 c. vegan butter

8 oz noodles of your choice

1/2 onion, chopped (I actually only had dried onion flakes on hand - used 1 T.)

1/2 t. celery seed

2 cloves garlic

1/4 c. all-purpose flour

2 c. soy milk

salt and pepper to taste

2 (6 oz) cans tuna

1 box frozen chopped spinach, thawed

3 T. bread crumbs

2 T. vegan butter

1 c. vegan cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 375 F. Cook noodles al dente according to package directions. Melt 1 T. butter in skillet over med heat. Add onion and garlic and cook for about 3 minutes. Take off heat and add celery seed, salt and pepper - set aside. Melt 3 T. butter in sauce pan and whisk in flour. Stir in milk slowly and heat until thickened and smooth (about 5 minutes). Add onion mixture, tuna, and noodles to sauce. Pour into greased casserole dish. Sprinkle with cheese, then bread crumbs. Dot with butter. Put into preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes.

Rhubarb Apple Crumble

Rhubarb makes me laugh. Not only is it a weird thing in general, but every time I say it - "rhubarb" - it comes out so country. Not just country, but deep south Paula Deen country! I love it. It's a vegetable used in dessert, it's bright pink, it's SOUR, and it has a funny name. What's not to love?

We went to Whole Foods the other day and S.D. had his heart set on Rhubarb Crumble. After a long search for rhubarb, we found out it wasn't in season. I've never seen him broken hearted over food, but he was. Lucky for him I happened to stumble upon some frozen rhubarb a few days later in the grocery store. Yay!

So here it is... Rhubarb Crumble! Actually, I'm not sure if it's a crumble or a crisp. I looked up online the deference between a crumble and a crisp. They seem quite similar, except a crumble is a British dessert and may not be as sweet. And since this didn't seem extremely sweet (unless of course you count all the ice cream we piled on top) I am going to call it a crumble.


The first time I made this I used only rhubarb. This time I decided to add some apples to it. One Granny Smith and one Gala. I'm not sure which I liked better. They were both delicious of course, but the plain rhubarb was slightly more sour.

The original recipe had a lot less fruit and more butter in the topping. I definitely like more fruit, and the reviews said all the butter made the topping too hard. So here is the adapted recipe:

Rhubarb Apple Crumble

16 oz. frozen rhubarb, defrosted

2 apples, peeled and chopped into 1 inch cubes

1/2 c. white sugar

1 1/2 T. flour

1/2 c. light brown sugar

1/2 c. quick cooking oats

3/4 c. flour

5 T. vegan butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Stir together first four ingredients and place in small casserole dish (mine was about 11"x7"x2.5"). Stir together brown sugar, oats, and remaining flour. Cut in butter to resemble coarse crumbs and sprinkle over top of rhubarb mixture. Bake in preheated oven 40 minutes or until browned on top and bubbly.