The Daily Grind of a Work @ Home Mom...

When a wonton is not just a wonton: lasagna cupcakes

I'm either really hungry lately or just really into creating food because I can't stop thinking about what I'm going to make next. Maybe it's both but either way, in my next life I think I'd like to be a chef. Seriously. So yesterday, in honor of the Superbowl Sunday, I made lasagna cupcakes and a bunch of other stuff, but I need to share this recipe because it was SO good.

Lasagna Cupcakes:

You'll need:

• small container of ricotta cheese
• grated parmesan
• grated mozzarella
• 24 wonton wrappers
• 1 store-bought tomato sauce
• 1/3lb ground turkey
• store-bought pesto (optional)
• cupcake tins for 12 cupcakes

First, brown the ground turkey, and season it with chili pepper and garlic powder (or whatever you have). Remove and set aside. Spray cupcake tins with cooking spray and line with wonton wrapper. Sprinkle with grated parm, drop a small amount of ricotta (I use part-skim), and cover it with a layer of tomato sauce and add grated moz. If you have simple kids (like I do!), cover with another wonton wrapper and add another layer, ending with grated moz. Otherwise, add cooked ground turkey over the ricotta and add a touch of pesto before the tomato sauce. Repeat.

 

Adult Version

 

 

Kid Version

 

I put them in the oven on 350 for about 15 minutes (keep on eye on them), and they looked like this:

And finally:

 

Dinner

 

 It was fantastic. They looked intricate and pretty but so simple to make.  Great the next day too. Enjoy!

Slow-cooked lemony chicken

So after many, many months of (over) using my credit card to buy stuff for my new house, I had accumulated zillions of "points" that could be used toward zillions of items, gift cards, and pretty much anything under the sun. Usually, I put my points toward gas cards, the occasional Bloomies gift card (hey, a girl's got needs!) and cash cards, but recently I got myself a slow-cooker. And while I've not yet become BF's with it, I am definitely trying.

So far it's been all shredded bbq quicken all the time (add chicken breasts to pot, cover in whatever bbq sauce you have and cook away) but this weekend I got a bit more adventurous and made up a recipe for lemony chicken.

Here's what I used:

• two chicken breasts, four legs (only way I can get the kids to eat this stuff)
• half a yellow onion
• two lemons
• cup chicken broth
• lemon dill rub (Whole Foods brand)
• EVOO
• half package Good Seasons salad dressing
• tbsp capers (optional)

While I didn't do much measuring, I started out by tossing the chicken with a bit of evoo and putting some of the lemon dill rub on it. I put it under the broiler for a while so we wouldn't be eating albino chicken (gross). After the broiler, I layered the bottom of the crock pot with very, super thinly sliced onions, covered that with thinly sliced lemons, and added the chicken.

I set all that aside and made a sauce of about 1/4cup of evoo, the Good Seasons, the juice from half a lemon, and about half a cup of chicken broth. I poured that over the chicken, added a few more lemon slices and set it for four hours to cook. I added some whole organic carrots for the last hour to serve next to the chicken on the plate.

It was awesome. I mean, I could have made this in the oven (see recipe below for a variation on this), but the chicken would not have come out so tender. It almost fell off the bone. And there was almost no heavy lifting at all. 

Obviously I forgot to take an after picture but the pre-cooking pic is pretty indicative of what it looked like.

Too bad I can't share the smell that permeated my house - that was half of the experience.

 

K, so I cooked.

But before I cooked, I moved. During Hurricane Sandy. With two kids. And lots of stuff.

But that's ancient history and now I have an awesome new kitchen with granite and killer counter space and a brand-new Bosch oven (you may or may not recall that my previous oven was in its ninth life), and lots of cooking prowess and even the desire - but not much time. So a dear friend of mine thought to send me a house-warming gift  - a fab new book from Williams-Sonoma that has quick healthy meals.

So I made one and it looked like this:

No, I swear. It did. 

I know it's almost Thanksgiving and most of you are all turkey and mashed potatoes, but if you get the urge to unclog those arteries and eat something healthy, here it is:

• 4 pieces of chicken breast
• 8 ozs cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1.5tsp balsamic
• 2.5tsps EVOO
• sea salt to taste
• fresh pepper to taste
• lemon, 1, cut into 8 think slices
• lots of fresh sage

Preheat oven to 375, spray baking dish with olive oil spray.Place chicken in dish, arrange tomatoes around it, Drizzle chicken & toms with olive oil and balsamic, sprinkle with s&p.

Add lemon slices to chicken, two slices on each, and add sage (no stems). Finish with another drizzle of EVOO and bake for about 30mins.

Happy cooking!

Fiesta Carmelita

Every so often, I come across a recipe on the internets that speaks to me.  It doesn't happen often, but a few months ago I fell on these crazy looking Carmelita's on Pinterest (courtesy of Lulu the Baker). Everything about them appealed to me.  The drippy caramel, the melted chocolate, and the fact that all this was sandwiched inside of an oatmeal crust - just thinking about it makes me... hungry. But one cannot subscribe to healthy eating and to a world where Carmelita's are a regular occurrence so I tucked the recipe into that little spot in my brain that I reserve for naughty stuff and went on my way. Then, the perfect event reared its head - we were invited to a Mother's Day BBQ and I was tasked with dessert!  So I cracked open that naughty nook and got to work.  And now, I share with you, the sickest dessert in the history of desserts - I even added a little party to the name for affect - the Fiesta Carmelita.

Ingredients:

• 2 bags of chewy Werthers caramels
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 sticks of butter (I never said they were healthy!)
• 1.5 cups brown sugar, packed
• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups old-fashioned or rolled oats
• 2tsp's baking soda
• 1 bag of chocolate chips

While I amended some of the ingredients a bit, I followed Lulu's instructions to the t:

"Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda. Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crust. Pour caramel mixture over chocolate chips. Crumble remaining oatmeal mixture over caramel. Return to oven and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.

*A stint in the fridge will help them cool off if you're pinched for time. They shouldn't be served cold, but all of that molten caramel takes a long time to cool down. They should be stored and served at room temperature."

Yield - A 9x13 pan of perfection.

Happy Mother's Day!

 

Nutella-filled half-moon shaped spring roll thingys

I know.  Sounds crazy.  But I've been bit by the Pinterest bug and I've become obsessed with amazingly delicious-looking food pictures and I came across this from Recipe Girl:

So, ours didn't look like that; we made our sort of flat, like half-moon shaped simply because we (my girls and I) were more interested in teasing our taste buds rather than our eyeballs (but aren't the heart shapes beautiful?).  So we bought a package of Nasoya egg roll wrappers, a jar of nutella and got to work.

We literally smeared a tablespoon or two of the hazelnut chocolate spread inside of each egg roll wrapper, wet the edges to seal it in half, and tossed it in the frying pan with about a quarter inch of canola oil and, dare I say it, fried until brown.  That's it.  Obviously they were devoured quicker than I could photograph them but the pics above are far more aesthetically pleasing than ours looked. 

Next time we are feeling crazy, we'll tackle these babies, courtesy of The Apron Gal:

Oh, and stay tuned for my latest weight loss update. :)

Four Ingredient Cookies

I received an email from my mom the other day. It wasn't a fwd: fwd: fwd: fwd about the deadly lead in lipstick or how the plastic cups in my home are going to come alive during the night and kill us all. Nope - it was a recipe for cookies, with just four ingredients. And it looked so strange that I had to try it. So yesterday, during one of my computer breaks, I made these:

Four Ingredient Cookies

• 3 egg whites, mixed (not beaten)
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup coconut
• 1.5 cup Craisins

Bake at 400 for 10 minutes.

My mom's recipe called for Heath or Skor bar instead of coconut but I had none in the house so I improvised. Here's what we got:

They were TOTALLY delicious and without all the added stuff we usually use to make cookies, not horribly unhealthy either. So there you have it. Now we're going to work them off running around in the sprinkler.

Health(ier) No-Egg Double Chocolate Cupcakes

Yesterday was a gray day in Boston.  We slept-in a bit and with every passing Spongebob, our idea of heading to the Museum of Science were dashed more and more, until there was nothing left.  So we did what any mom and daughters would do - we baked!  However, in keeping with my mindful indulgences theme, (at least for them, (am I the only mom who is more respectful of what goes into her kids bodies than what goes into her own?  Didn't think so.) I wanted to bake something delicious (read: chocolate) but still relatively healthy.  Oh, and I was out of eggs.  So I dusted off my old stand-by (thanks, Norene!), and found a recipe for No-Egg Double Chocolate Cupcakes.  We made an adjustment or two, but the recipe ended up like this:

No-Egg Double Chocolate Cupcakes

• 1.5 c flour (I used .5 c whole wheat flour)
• 1 c sugar
• 1/3 c unsweetened cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp canola oil
• 2 tbsp applesauce
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 c orange juice
• 1/2 c coffee (or water)
• 1/4 c chocolate chips (or not. but we did.)

Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray (we used cupcake liners).  Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Mix well.  Add wet ingredients except chocolate chips.  Mix until smooth and blended.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Don't over mix or cupcakes will be tough.

Pour batter into the muffin tins.  Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until done.  Cool completely.  You can sprinkle with icing sugar or ice with store bought icing (but keep in mind this will increase calories and fat).

Yield: 12 cupcakes. These freeze well and recipe can be doubled.

183 calories per cupcake, 5 g fat (or 166 cals and 3.9 g fat without chocolate chips).

 Enjoy!

 

 

 

Butternut Squash Soup from NYC's The Lion

My Canadian status notwithstanding, I love Thanksgiving.  The cooking part began in 2008, when I decided that my American kids were starting to be old enough to know the difference, and the traditions started to mold themselves last year, when my oldest let me know that we'd need to buy a "big fat turkey".  And this year, though we're traveling a few hours south to a friend's house to join them  in their traditions, I just couldn't resist jumping in and cooking something festive, if not just to enjoy any old night.  So when I saw a recipe in last week's People for butternut squash soup that looked amazing, I cut it out and made it.

It was DEE-LICIOUS.  Not too time-consuming and really, just so tasty.  I told my kids it was pumpkin soup, figuring they'd be more likely to eat something that they could relate to (butternut squash?), and it worked.

Check it out:

The Lion's Butternut Squash Soup

• 5 tbsp butter
• 6 cups cubed butternut squash (check the frozen aisle - it's the cheapest way besides actually cooking a whole squash - MESS!)
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 Granny Smith Apples, cubed, peeled, cored
• 5 cups water (I used about 4.5)
• 1 cup apple cider
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp dried sage
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 2/3 cup heavy cream (I used light cream - gotta watch that waistline!)
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg for garnish (I omitted)

Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. 

Saute squash and brown sugar, stirring occasionally, until slightly softened, about 15 minutes.  Add apples, water, cider, salt, cinnamon, sage and cloves and bring to boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer until apples are tender, 30 minutes.  Cool slightly.

Working in batches, puree soup in blender (I left a little bit of chunk, for effect).  Return soup to pan, add cream.

The Lion's recipe calls for a topping of 1 tbsp of sour cream and a dusting of nutmeg but I omitted these ingredients and just got down with my soup.  It was delicious, froze perfectly, and is hearty and perfect on a chilly fall day.

 
 

Lobster Salad Sandwich on Cape-Cod Cranberry-Walnut Bread topped with Avocado & Tomato Salsa (Phew!)

When asked by the Hass Avocado folks to come up with a recipe that combines Hass Avocados with a local Boston flavor, immediately I got a craving for something lobster-y topped with something avocado-y.  So rather than intricately map out a creation using the delicious (and nutritious!!) fruit (did you even know Avocado is a fruit!), I went with something that sounded AMAZING to me, both in taste and texture.  And amazing it is.

Introducing....

Lobster Salad Sandwich on Cape-Cod Cranberry-Walnut Bread topped with Avocado & Tomato Salsa 

Ingredients:

• Meat from 1 1/4lb lobster, chilled
• 2tsp's finely chopped shallot
• 1tbsp lemon juice
• 1/4tsp sea salt
• 2tbsp's EVOO
• Loaf of cranberry-walnut bread or 2 large cranberry-walnut rolls (from Cape-Cod's bogs or just your local bakery :)
• 1 ripe Hass avocado 
• 1 medium tomato

Instructions:

• Chop the lobster into small pieces, leaving claw meat slightly larger.  
• In a small bowl, combine shallot, lemon juice, and sea salt.  Add oil in a slow stream.  Whisk together and let stand 15 minutes.
• Slice the avocado into bite-sized cubes.
• Chop the tomato into small pieces and combine with the avocado.
• Pour 3/4 of the lemon juice and EVOO dressing over the lobster meat, tossing gently.  Cover all pieces. 
• Pour the balance of the mixture over the avocado and tomato salsa.
• Prepare enough cranberry-walnut bread for two large sandwiches, or slice rolls.
• Scoop lobster meat onto the bread or roll. 
• Layer the avocado & tomato salsa over the lobster meat, even allowing some to spill over onto the plate.
• Serve the second piece of bread next to the open-faced sandwich.

What's so good about this recipe?  What isn't!  The combination of succulent New England lobster with the creamy, and healthy, Hass avocados (and everything else in there) is just mouth-watering. 

ENJOY!

  I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Mexican Hass Avocado Importers Association. Mom Central also sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Awesome Broccoli & Spinach Lasagna

Lasagna can be boring.  Not only can it be boring, veggie lasagna is sometimes dry.  I actually love to serve lasagna, since it's easy to feed a group, and it's typically a crowd pleaser for adults and kids.  So I've spent a bunch of time perfecting this broccoli and spinach lasagna by including a few atypical ingredients.  Let me know what you think:

Ingredients:  

• 1 box of no-cook lasagna noodles (I can't tell the difference, can you?)
• 1 15oz container of ricotta cheese
• 1/2 of container of 15oz cottage cheese, small curd
• 1 egg
• 1 10oz package of chopped frozen spinach, thawed
• 1 10oz package of frozen broccoli florets, thawed
• 1 7oz container of pesto
• 1 3lb jar of tomato sauce (Prego is VERY tasty)
• 1 8oz bag of shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Combine ricotta and cottage cheese in a medium bowl.  Add the egg and mix it in.  In another bowl, combine the thawed veggies and douse in the pesto. 

Prepare a 9 x 13 glass baking dish.  Spread a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the dish, then begin layering noodles, cheese, then the veggies.  Repeat until you have three layers, finish with noodles with thin layer of sauce and cover the top with mozzarella cheese.  Bake on 350 until brown or about 40 minutes.  Let it settle for about five minutes, then serve.  Can be made in advance, and frozen.  

Yield: 8 servings

Note: You can make this dish lower fat by using 2% cottage cheese, light ricotta, and part-skim mozzarella.