Smoky Deviled Eggs with Greek Yogurt

I love Greek Yogurt, so when I saw this recipe on The Kitchn, I knew I had to try it! I have to say, they turned out okay, not the best, but honestly, it's not because of the recipe its because I substituted regular paprika for smoked paprika, which is probably a no-no. I think that caused things to turn out not as well as I had hoped, but that's okay, they were still decent. I love sun dried tomatoes, so I think I added a bit more.

3.5 stars out of 5.

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Recipe from here.

Smoky Deviled Eggs with Greek Yogurt
makes 12

6 eggs, hard boiled and peeled
1 cup Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1/4 cup oil

Slice the eggs in half and scoop out the yolks into a bowl. Set the whites aside. Smash the yolks with the back of a fork. Add 1/2 cup Greek yogurt and stir until well combined. Add the remaining yogurt 1 tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistency. (I like mine very creamy, so I used the whole cup.)

Mix in the sun-dried tomatoes, smoked paprika and salt.

In a small saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Test the oil with a slice of shallot – when it instantly sizzles, it's ready. Add the shallot slices to the pan and cook until they turn golden brown. Using a slotted spoon, remove them from the pan and place on a paper towel. While they're still hot, sprinkle lightly with salt.

Using a small spoon, fill each egg white with a generous amount of filling.

If serving immediately, top each one with a frizzled shallot. Or, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Top with shallots right before serving. Best if eaten within a few hours.

Double Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies

Another item I made for the Relay for Life bake sale and forgot to take pictures of, oops! Hehe, oh well! I used to love getting the Eating Well magazine because it had pretty good recipes (they looked good anyway) and it had a lot of interesting facts and tips in it. Of course, part of the allure was that I got it for free at work...oh well. Some of the comments said they omitted the extra canola oil altogether and it turned out great, but I think that would make a more cakey cookie. If you're all for that, hey great, more power to you, but I wanted something with the consistency not synonymous with "low-fat." I think this cookie meets that because it's really not quite low fat. It has a cup of peanut butter in it, but it's all natural peanut butter so you can feel a little bit better about eating these. I followed the instructions and used the chunky peanut butter, but honestly, I didn't really like the taste of the peanuts in it, I liked the crunchiness it afforded, but not the taste of the peanuts. I think it's because I like my peanuts salted and roasted--which, well, that would defeat the healthy part of that, wouldn't it? These turned out pretty decently, but they're definitely not super sweet but they do taste rich. I like the use of the turbinado sugar. Btw, just so you know, the measurement for the turbinado sugar at the end seemed too much to me. I really don't think you need that much. 4 out of 5 stars/Easy to make and I would make them again.
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Below from here



Makes: 3 dozen cookies

Total Time: 1 1/2 hours

Ingredients

• 1 cup chunky natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons low-fat plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup trans-fat-free peanut butter chips, such as Sunspire
• 1/4 cup turbinado sugar (see Note)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Beat peanut butter, oil, brown sugar and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until the sugars are blended. Beat in eggs, yogurt and vanilla until combined.
3. Whisk flour, cocoa, oats, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture until blended. (It will be sticky.) Stir in chocolate and peanut butter chips.
4. Using a small cookie scoop or slightly rounded tablespoons of dough, place cookies 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
5. Dip the bottom of a glass in water and then in turbinado sugar. Use the sugared glass to flatten the cookies slightly, leaving a thin layer of sugar on top, rewetting the glass as needed.
6. Bake the cookies in batches until they are just set and the tops appear cracked, 8 to 10 minutes. (Do not overbake or they will be dry.) Cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Tips & Notes

• Make Ahead Tip: Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 3 months.

• Ingredient Note: Turbinado sugar is steam-cleaned raw cane sugar. It’s coarse-grained and light brown in color, with a slight molasses flavor. Find it in the natural-foods section of large supermarkets or at natural-foods stores.

Nutrition

Per cookie: 115 calories; 6 g fat (1 g sat, 1 g mono); 12 mg cholesterol; 13 g carbohydrates; 3 g protein; 1 g fiber; 102 mg sodium; 33 mg potassium.

Healthy Apple Cobbler

Alright, yet another recipe I made awhile ago...sorry for the delay. I wanted to try this because there's no butter and no sugar and it still turned out really quite good. The recipe below uses berries, but I used apple instead, and it still turned out quite good.

So, I kinda cheated because I took a tbsp of butter, cut it into tiny little pieces and then stuck it all over the topping for baking. This worked well, but was completely unnecessary. Also, one thing that I didn't like so much about this recipe is, the topping wasn't enough for the amount of fruit it asks for and it didn't specify which size pan to use. So I used like an 8" x 8"--gosh, I hope that's right. Here I am criticizing them about not including pan size and I'm too lazy to get up off my butt and go look at the size dimensions of the pan in the kitchen. :) I also doubled the amount of topping cuz let's face it, that's the best part. I used little organic fuji apples and they turned out quite well. I imagine the tartness of granny smith would work well too. Overall, I think this is a great healthy, non-chocolate, budget friendly dessert that's super quick and easy! I was lucky enough to be at Fresh 'n Easy earlier in the day and the bag of organic apples was on clearance because a few were bruised and what not. One man's trash...With the apples, it reminded me a little of apple pie---who doesn't like apple pie??

I served this plain, but it would no doubt be awesome served warm with ice cream. Yummy!! It smells delicious when cooking.

4 out of 5 stars! So many attributes--quick, delicious, cheap, and healthy!

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Recipe below from here.
Ingredients

• 3 cups Mixed Berries Or Any Fruit, Fresh Or Frozen
• ¼ cups Plus 1 Tablespoon Whole Wheat Flour
• ½ cups Honey, Divided
• ½ cups Rolled Oats
• ¼ cups Chopped Walnuts
• 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
• ½ teaspoons Ginger
• ¼ teaspoons Nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon Canola Oil

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Spray an 8″ x 8″ baking pan with cooking spray and set aside. In a large bowl, toss fruit and 1 tablespoon flour together. Add 1/4 cup honey (reserve the remaining 1/4 cup of honey for topping) and use your fingers to thoroughly combine ingredients. If using frozen berries, the honey may cause them to bunch together, so you’ll have to pick them apart by hand. Pour fruit mixture into the baking pan.

In a medium bowl, mix remaining flour, oats, walnuts, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg until combined. Add remaining honey and canola oil. Use your fingers to thoroughly combine the ingredients. Sprinkle the flour and oat mixture evenly over the fruit.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until fruit is bubbly and the topping is browned and crisp. Let cool for 20 minutes. Serve plain or top each serving with vanilla yogurt.

Homemade Hummus Recipe

Good grief, I suck at this posting business. It's the pictures of recipes that I want to post that always slow me down. I would love to show you glossy, beautifully posed picture after picture that I've taken, but since I'm too cheap to get a cardreader, it's always an ordeal to upload pictures. So what happens? I upload pictures like once a month and who suffers? You. The nice people who take time out of their busy lives to visit this ridiculous blog. THANK YOU.

So, since we're talking about homemade lovely tahini recipes from the previous post, I thought I would post a homemade hummus recipe straight from one of my favorite foodie websites TheKitchn. (No, I did not take that picture either...sigh). Enjoy and thanks for your patience!!

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Ingredients

1 15-oz can of chickpeas, drained
1/2 of a fresh lemon, juiced
1 small clove of garlic, minced finely
2 tbsp. olive oil
3 tbsp. tahini. Note: if you don't want to buy premade tahini, here is an easy tutorial on how to make your own tahini.
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sumac

Tools
A food processor or blender

Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients except the sumac.

2. Blend until smooth. If it is a little dry, just add a little more lemon juice or olive oil, a teaspoon at a time, until you have the desired consistency. Add more salt and pepper if you like.

3. Scrape out the hummus in a serving bowl and sprinkle the sumac on top.

4. Serve with raw veggies, or spread on some pita bread.

Other Hummus Variations:

• Try drizzling a little pomegranate molasses on top.

• Add two to three tablespoons of harissa for a little kick.

• Blend in 1 cup of roasted vegetables such as eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, and garlic for a roasted vegetable hummus.

• For olive hummus, fold in 3/4 cup of chopped green or black olives.

• Nutty hummus is good! Try adding some lightly toasted walnuts or pine nuts.

• For a lemony hummus, add 1/4 cup of chopped preserved lemons.

Homemade Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips

Yes, it's been forever. Sorry! I kept saying I would post up a bunch more recipes, but then I got really busy and went away this weekend so it turned into zero time to post or even bake for that matter. Thanks for your patience! Back to cooking...

Wow, I've been saying I'd post this for so long now I don't even remember what song I listened to when I made this. I think I was listening to the Sookie Stackhouse book on CD.

Anyway, this recipe is super easy and it's so nice that you have more control over the foods in your life. I made these with organic white wheat and corn tortillas I bought at Trader Joe's. One thing's for sure, these are better for you and have no preservatives because I left a few tortillas and they went bad within the week when I left them out. The weather was pretty cool that week too.

I changed the recipe by adding in some nutmeg along with the cinnamon and sugar. Actually, to be honest, I think I added too much, so I'll have to dial that down next time. The baking time is off too. I just baked it til the chips started to curl. I felt like that was a better indicator.

These turned out delicious and really were quite easy. Oh! And Today, I have my own pics! So all the pictures below were from my point and shoot. Enjoy!



The package of delicious tortillas I used, cut into slices.


The finished product in all its glory! Yum!

4 out of 5 stars!

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Recipe from here.

Ingredients

• 10-12 flour tortillas
• vegetable oil (or spray)
• spices

Directions

1. Cut tortillas into 8 wedges.
2. Brush or spray baking sheet with oil.
3. Arrange tortilla wedges in a single layer on the baking sheet and brush or spray lightly with oil.
4. Sprinkle with seasonings: salt or seasoned salt, chili powder, cinnamon sugar, etc.
5. Bake at 325 until crisp and lightly browned, approximately 10 minutes.

Low Fat Spinach Artichoke Dip

*UPDATED 3/29/10*

Sorry for the ugly picture. I hate using flash, but it was necessary this time around. It looks a lot less runny than the recipe's picture because I used more cream cheese. At least...I think that's why. :)

*END*
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Recipe Song: Dead and Gone, audiobook by Charlaine Harris.

As part of my crazy cooking Thursday last week (I made this, the momofuku cookies from yesterday's post, as well as something else I'll post about later), I made this lovely spinach artichoke dip. Yea, the picture below isn't so appetizing, but I haven't uploaded any of my pictures from my lovely cooking last week, so you'll have to contend with that. Sorry! Muahaha.

Anyway, I had an interesting issue with this recipe. As you notice, it calls for low fat and fat free cream cheese. Well, after going to a few different grocery stores, none of which carries fat free cream cheese, I found out that hey, there's no fat free cream cheese. So I used all 1/3 less fat cream cheese and stupidly, none of those packages comes in a 6 ounce size, which angered me to say the least. It reminded me of the nonsensical way hot dogs and buns are sold. I don't eat cream cheese at home, so I just figured I'd use both blocks of cream cheese, regardless of what the recipe said.

Dang, I'm glad I wasn't baking. Cuz that wouldn't fly if I were.

So, the deal with adding more cream cheese is that I must now in turn add more of other things like sour cream and mozzarella and then---yea, I didn't. I think that was one downfall of the finished product. It was cream cheese taste heavy. So that was unfortunate. However, when it was all heated up thoroughly, it was really quite delicious. The dip is so creamy you'd never know you were missing so much fat, except that there is no unappetizing layer of oil sitting on top.

Another thing, I actually tore up the spinach and pulled all out the stems of every leaf. Huge waste of time. Next time I think I'll lightly chiffonade the spinach so I don't waste so much time hand tearing. This recipe makes a lot, so if there's only a few of you, think about cutting it in half or so.

Overall, delicious. Add some pita, chips, or bread and you're good to go.

4 out of 5 stars.

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Below from here.

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

- makes about 10 servings of about 1/2 cup each -

Adapted from Cooking Light.

Ingredients

10-ounce bag fresh spinach
6 ounces (3/4 block) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened
6 ounces (3/4 block) fat-free cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup fat-free sour cream
1 1/2 cups part-skim mozzarella, shredded
1 (14-ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 garlic cloves, crushed (not minced)
6 tablespoons shredded parmesan cheese, divided

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Tear spinach into bite-size pieces, removing any thick stems. Rinse in a colander, leaving a little water on the leaves. In a large nonstick skillet or Dutch oven, sauté the spinach over medium heat until wilted. Drain in the colander, pushing a little of the extra water out.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cream cheeses with a potato masher. Add sour cream and mash more. Add spinach, mozzarella, artichokes, pepper, garlic, and 2 tablespoons of the parmesan. Stir everything until thoroughly combined.

4. Pour mixture into a 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup of Parmesan on top. Bake 30 minutes, or until parmesan is melted dip is all bubbly. Remove from oven and give it a minute or two to cool down. Serve with baked tortilla chips to applause.

I made this for a potluck to send a friend off. We needed something healthier and greener. Overall, this is good, but I think I just got confused/messed up on some aspects. First off, I didn't research what a "bunch" of scallions meant, and I didn't really measure the parsley, which was a big mistake. I also don't have a zester or a microplane, so I made do with a smaller grater when zesting the lemon. Oooh--I also don't have white wine vinegar so I combined 1c. vinegar + 1c. white wine. Let me tell you, it doesn't produce the same effects, lol! After some research online, it is confirmed...can't substitute those for each other, they're quite different. Hilarious.

Additionally, either I'm ridiculously slow or else this recipe took a heck of a lot longer than 15 minutes prep time. It took me about 2 hours, start to finish to make this dish. Getting the scorched skin off the bell peppers after I roasted them over my gas stove is time consuming.

Either way, I put too much parsley in, and apparently not enough lemon juice. Instead of whisking the dressing together, I found shaking it in a tupperware much more effective. Also, because I had to make this ahead of time, I had to have it cold and not warm. I think that makes a big difference.

The salad was good. Made more according to the directions, it would have been much better.

3.5 out of 5 stars, probably closer to 4.5 out of 5 stars if I had followed the recipe more closely. :)

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below taken from here.

Warm Vegetable Salad

Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis

Prep Time:15 min

Cook Time: 25 min

Level: Intermediate

Serves: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

• 2 whole red peppers
• 1 1/2 pound assorted red and white new potatoes
• 3/4 pounds green beans, trimmed and halved
• 1 bunch scallions, sliced
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons chopped oregano leaves
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Preheat the broiler. Place the red peppers on a foil lined baking sheet.

Place the red peppers under the boiler. Turning every 2 to 3 minutes cook the peppers until the skin is blistered, about 8 to 9 minutes total. Place the blistered peppers in a plastic bag. Seal the bag and allow the peppers to sit for 10 minutes to allow the skin to separate and to let cool.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the potatoes and cook until tender, about 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the potatoes to a cutting board. Add the green beans to the pot. Cook the green beans until tender, about 3 minutes. Remove the green beans to a large bowl. Slice the potatoes in half while still warm and combine them with the green beans in the large bowl. Remove the peppers from the plastic bag. Peel off the skin from the peppers. Slice the pepper flesh into wide strips and remove the seeds and veins. Place them in the bowl with the potatoes. Add the scallions, parsley, and garlic

and toss to combine.

In a small bowl combine the oregano, lemon juice and zest, and white wine vinegar. Whisk in the olive oil. Stir in the salt and pepper. Toss the warm vegetables with the herb vinaigrette. Serve immediately