Buffalo Cauliflower

I want buffalo chicken all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  However, I eat meatless at least two days a week.  One of my biggest temptations on my meatless days is buffalo wings. 

Over the last few months, I've been really interested in these cauliflower recipes I see all over.  My roommate and I have tried cauliflower pizza crust.  We make cauliflower rice all the time.  I decided I needed to try buffalo cauliflower on my meatless but wing obsessed days.

Several recipes that I looked at seemed beautiful.  The cauliflower was lightly battered before it was baked and tossed in buffalo sauce.  However, I was much to lazy to do that.  Instead, I used a recipe that simplified things.  Gal on a mission really did that with her Healthy Buffalo Cauliflower Bites.  I did some modifications to my recipe though.


Buffalo Cauliflower

1/3 head cauliflower
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon Hot Shot pepper blend
2 tablespoons wing sauce

First, cut about 1/3 of a cauliflower, wash it, and leave it in a strainer to drain.

Next,  line a pan with foil and spray it liberally with cooking spray.

Arrange the cauliflower in a single layer on the pan and sprinkle the seasons (minus the wing sauce) on top.  This is completely to taste. Adjust as you will.

Bake the cauliflower at approximately 400 degrees Fahrenheit until the florets begin to brown.  I used my toaster oven, since this is really a single serving/small batch.

Remove the cauliflower from the pan, and lightly toss in the buffalo sauce.

Return to the pan and bake for another 5-7 minutes.

I ate these with Kraft Buffalo Cheddar mac and cheese.  I wanted all the buffalo.

Goat Cheese and Cherry Sweet Potato

I saw a recipe on Pinterest (because isn't that always how this starts?) for  very yummy looking sweet potato.  Sweet potatoes with goat cheese, honey, and roasted grapes from the Wicked Noodle.  Yummy, right?  Then, I somehow had some left over honey goat cheese and I knew what I had to do.

Goat Cheese and Cherry Sweet Potato

1 small or medium sweet potato
1 ounce (approximately) of honey goat cheese
1/2 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon dried tart cherries
Dash of cinnamon

This was a really simple recipe and it worked great on my meatless day with the Quorn goat cheese and cranberry chick'n cutlet. 

Bake the sweet potato at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until soft.  The time this takes depends greatly on the size and shape of your potato.

Cut the potato open and sprinkle it with honey and cinnamon. These amounts are negotiable.  They are really both to taste.  You can also put some butter on at this point, but it seems unnecessary with the goat cheese.  Work the honey and cinnamon into the potato with a fork.

Crumble the goat cheese on top and return to the oven until the cheese melts (ish...goat cheese holds it shape well, but it gets warm.  That is what you are looking for.)

Take the potato out of the oven and add the cherries. 

Serve and enjoy :-)

Erin's Berry Trail Mix

My dissertation director gave me a giant jar of almonds and an almost two pound bag of dried blueberries.  It made me super happy, but now I have a giant jar of almonds and an almost two pound bag of dried blueberries.

I was super excited, but I didn't quite know what to do with them.  I decided to make trail mix for the road (that didn't last that long).

Erin's Berry Trail Mix
1 cup dry roasted, unsalted almonds
1/3 cup dried blueberries
1/3 cup dried tart cherries
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup white chocolate chips

This is a super simple recipe.  I just tossed everything in a tupperware container and shook it up.  However, I did not pay attention to what size of container I used.  Don't make my mistake.  You need room to shake it up.

Almonds in the bottom of a container.

All the fruit goes on top.

Then the white chocolate chocolate chips go on top of that.  As you can see, this is full to the very top.  The lid fit, but it had no room to shake the ingredients together.

New, improved, bigger container.

I ate all of this in two days.  I had very little help.  Since it was so good, I made more for friends to take on their road trip.

Obviously there are issues with this (dried fruit and almonds= tons of calories, dried fruit and white chocolate chips=tons of sugar).  However, I think it is better than cookies and candy bars. Probably.  It certainly tastes very good :-)

Turkey Taco Rice

I've been eating way too much junk food lately, and a lot of high fat foods, including a lot of beef.  For my Texan friends, eating all beef is not a problem at all, but I try to avoid it as the daughter of a man with heart disease. I'd like to avoid that, thanks. I needed to do something to try to control my bad habits, so I bought some ground turkey (extra lean!).

When I brought it home, I had no idea what to do with it. I thought about turkey burgers, but I wasn't in the mood.   I considered tacos, but I didn't really feel like it (messy).  Then, inspiration hit.  Taco Rice. I'd bought the taco rice packet and eaten it on a meatless day a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't particularly impressed. I could do better, I was sure.  And I did!

Turkey Taco Rice for One

1/4 pound extra lean ground turkey
1/2 cup vegetable stock (reduced sodium if you can swing it)
1/3 can fire roasted tomatoes
1/3 packet reduced sodium taco seasoning (or your own seasoning mix) 
1/2 cup minute brown rice

1/3 cup fire roasted corn (I bought a mix with black beans and peppers in it)
2 tablespoons reduced 

The construction is super easy. 

1.)  Brown the ground turkey.

 

2.)  Add the stock, tomatoes, and taco seasoning.
3.)  Bring to a boil.  My pan was super hot (stupid electric stove!), so the stock pretty much boiled when it hit the pan.

3.)  Add the rice. Cover.  I added water here because my stock pretty much boiled off.

4.)  Halfway through the cooking time (7 minutes for my rice), add the frozen corn.

5.)  After the rice is done, sprinkle the cheese on top. You can also add cilantro and sour cream here, if you'd like. I added Tony Packo's Sweet Hot Jalapenos (the best thing ever invented, I am pretty sure).

6.) Enjoy!

It was so much better than the packaged stuff and it was so filling.  The beans in the corn mix helped, I'm sure.

Because sometimes you need spaghetti and meatballs

Sometimes you need spaghetti and meatballs.  You just really do.  It is a very rare occasion for me, but it happens.  I actually can't remember the last time I had spaghetti and meatballs.  I usually use turkey Italian sausage or eat spaghetti on a meatless day so it must be without meat.  However, today I wanted meatballs.

Luckily, when I made burgers for my birthday, ground beef was on sale (yay! savings!), so I bought two pounds, used 1/2 a pound and froze the rest.  I might not have had meatballs in the freezer, but I could make them easily enough.

Really, all I did for this was make the meatballs. The rest was store bought.  I used spinach pasta from Whole Foods (so good) and Classico Sweet Basil Marinara sauce.  I love all the Classico products.  I use their pesto and their pizza sauce as well.

Cheesy Meatballs

1/4 pound 93/7 ground beef
1 tablespoon breadcrumbs or crushed crackers
Garlic powder
Italian seasoning

1/2 tablespoon egg beaters
1/2+ tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon cheese



Step one is pretty easy.  Throw the meat (thawed) into a bowl.  Put the breadcrumbs or crushed crackers and seasoning on top.  I went a little crazy with the garlic and Italian seasoning because I was using cracker crumbs and not seasoned bread crumbs.  Season it to taste.

Mix all of that together by hand.  Sorry folks, but it really needs to be by hand.  Then add the egg beaters and milk.  Mix it again to see the texture because you may need a bit more milk.  You want it moist so it will form a ball.  Then add the cheese and mix again.  BY HAND. 

Roll them into balls.  I like little mini meatballs, mainly because they cook faster, but also because they are cute.  Mini=cute.  You know it does.

While these are sitting, I put my water on to make my pasta.

Then I fried the meatballs in a pan.  I like them to have a nice crust on them.

I fried them on as many sides as I could.  Crust.  You can see that they have a little pink in them still.  That is fine, because you are going to boil them in your sauce anyway.

I added my jarred sauce and water.  If I had any red wine, I would have added that instead.  However, since I knew I was going to be boiling this for a while, I knew I needed extra moisture or I would have no sauce left.

I also put a lid on the pan so that the meatballs would steam a bit.  The difficult part here is to know when the meatballs are done.  I wasn't very even with the meatball size, so I ended up pulling the largest couple first and cutting them in half.  You have to take them out of the pan or they just fall into the sauce again.  It took about 15ish minutes.  Of course, it depends on the size of the meatballs.  you can also bake these in the sauce, but that will take a long time and I have no patience at all.

I served it topped with more of the six cheese blend that I had put in the meatballs.  It was a good cold weather comfort food meal :-)

Mini BBQ burgers on a pretzel bun

I am a little sad.  I had such hopes for grilling these burgers, but the temperature dropped twenty degrees in an hour and it got SUPER windy.  Thanks, Lubbock!

However, I had my George Foreman grill, which is an okay replacement.  No, it doesn't give it the grilled flavor, but it isn't too bad.  I love that mine has removable plates.  It makes clean up 1000x easier.

This is really a variation of the turkey burgers I posted in May.  I just really wanted beef this time.

Mini BBQ Burgers on pretzel buns

1/2 lb 93/7ground beef
1/4 cup crushed crackers (I used Texas Firecrackers because they are awesome.)
1/2 an egg, beaten (or, as I used 1 1/2 tablespoons egg beaters)
2 tablespoons milk
seasoning to taste (I used garlic powder, onion powder, red and black pepper, a dash of cayenne and salt)
4 Sister Schubert's pretzel buns (baked according to directions)

Toppings

2 tablespoons Tony Packo's BBQ sauce (or whatever sauce you like)
1 slice cheddar jack cheese
1 tablespoon french fried onions
4 dill pickle slices

The construction of these burgers is really simple.

First, mix all the ingredients (minus the buns) together.  I used my hands, because it mixes more easily that way. 

Next, form them into four small burger patties.  If you are using a George Foreman, make them into meatballs instead.  The grill will flatten them. 

Cook them until they are well done (these include egg, so it is better to be safe).  It took my burgers about 10 minutes, but it will depend on the thickness and the temperature.  I didn't really preheat the grill, so it may take less time. 

Cut the pretzel buns in half and put the burger on the bottom.  Add the cheese, BBQ sauce, and fried onions to the top.  Add the pickles to the other side. 

I served my burgers with sweet potato fries and a small salad with thousand island dressing.  It was a lovely, lovely dinner.  Luckily, I have left overs too :-)

Happy Valentine's Day!

My blog went to the back burner (if you will excuse the cooking humor) over the summer because I was focusing on my qualifying exams.  In the fall, I actually took (and passed) those exams.  I've been recovering.  However, I'm feeling pretty good now that I have half a horrible, almost complete draft of one chapter of my dissertation turned in.

In celebration, my food blog is returning!  Yay!  And on Valentine's Day too.

To me, Valentine's Day has always been about more than just romantic love.  It probably comes from my parents always celebrating Valentine's Day with me and my sister.  It was never just about them.  So, I like to celebrate in a variety of ways.  Spending time with friends.  Sending out gifts to family and friends (I made cookies this year---that is a long story that will not be featured here).

This year, I decided to start the day with some heart shaped donuts.  I'd bought a heart shaped donut pan on clearance and I just HAVE to use it.  I was going to make cake batter donuts with red velvet cake mix (using It's Always Autumn's recipe here). Perfect for Valentine's Day, right?

However, I had a sad, brown banana waiting to be transformed, so I looked for a banana donut recipe on Pinterest (where else?)  I found this one from Get Me Cooking.  I modified it a little, mainly because I wanted some peanut butter flavor in there.

Banana Donuts with Peanut Butter and Chocolate

1 small, ripe banana, mashed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon greek yogurt
1 tablespoon Light Smart Balance, melted
3 tablespoons Egg Beaters
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup PB2, powdered peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

1.)  Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.  Spray donut pan with non-stick spray.
2.) Mix banana, sugar, and greek yogurt in a small bowl.

3.) Add melted butter, egg beaters (you can also just use an egg), and vanilla and mix well.

4.) Stir in dry ingredients until just combined.

5.) Fold in mini chocolate chips.

6.)  Using a pastry bag or a ziplock bag with the corner cut off, fill the donut pan until about 3/4 full (I overfilled a little so I got 10 donuts instead of 12).

7.) Bake 12-15 minutes.

After I took them out of the pan, I drizzled them with melted chocolate chips and put Valentine's Day sprinkles on them.  They were quite the perfect breakfast with my coffee. 

Yum.  My sister got me the owl mug for Valentine's Day last year.  It is the perfect accompaniment for the donuts!