Missed Opportunities

Alright so I'm pretty mad at myself because i didn't have my camera with me at two very opportune moments to take pics of some good food today.

Early today my mom and I went to sams club and i was really craving a soft pretzel, and someone had told me that sams had pretty good ones, so i got one and oh man it was SOOOO GOOD! my favorite soft pretzels are from target and this one was very similar, I was very happy!

The second missed opportunity was at dinner, my dad decided to try out the restaurant/bar down our street called Nick's it recently came under new management and we have heard a lot of good things about it. It's pretty tight quarters but the food is good and the music was loud. Again sorry no picture but I'm sure we will be back!

I had a gyro with some nick's chips and it was delicious

Well as you can see i had to give you a picture of something so here was my dessert!

homemade chocolate chip ice cream, i say that because i put the chocolate chips in myself lol =]

Post Swim Meet Snack

Post swim meet snack!

we just got home from the swim meet around 11p.m. and i was STARVING! but nothing really sounded that great to me. Well like i have said before i LOVE breakfast so i decided to make myself a nice bowl of cereal! =]

Mmmm i just love raisin bran with granola and ice cold milk.

And no, raisin bran is not just for old people, everyone can use a little fiber in their diet lol

Frickin Chicken Chunks

Fricker's Frickin Chicken Chunks, Hot with some curly fries!

Not my favorite but it was alright.

Steak and Potatoes

Tonight was my papa's turn to cook, he made flank stake!

Yum it was so good, he caramelized some onions as well to top it and some baked potatoes to go along with it all!

There is not to much more to say, it was a pretty simple dinner but it was definitely delicious.

Tomorrow i am going out to dinner with some friends then having a girls night, so i probably wont be able to get those pics up tomorrow night. But don't worry my Latin class is having a party tomorrow so ill take pics of that and post it before dinner =]

It should be interesting.

This was really just something i threw together tonight because i was feeling a little sick and i really didn't feel like putting much thought into anything.

All i did was season up a few chicken breasts with some Italian herbs and then I pan seared them to a crispy golden brown.

I thinly sliced an onion and a green bell pepper, and i sauteed them until they were soft and sweet! If you couldn't tell already I love peppers and onion! I use them in so many of my recipes, its a little ridiculous.

Once the onions and peppers are all done i add the chicken to the pan and i poor some crushed tomatoes over everything. I let the chicken kind of stew in this for a while to let them cook thew the rest of the way. Towards the end I add some more herbs to the sauce, then I poor it all onto a platter and serve it family style!

Power Breakfast

Tonight neither of my parents were going to be home for dinner, and when that happens most of the time I just end up scavenging random left overs out of the fridge, and you don't want to see that lol.

So I planned ahead and took pics of my breakfast for you!

Ok so its not the most fascinating or appetizing looking breakfast but its good and a great energy booster. See this is no ordinary oatmeal, when i make my oatmeal in the morning I add an egg white just for a little extra protein. I also add some honey because as you see here it is lower sugar, yeah next time we should probably just get the normal sugar level kind haha.

Well that's it really nothing to special i promise better tomorrow!

Breakfast For Dinner

Tonight i made one of my all time favorite dinners,

BREAKFAST!

I have noticed lately that a lot of people don't really like breakfast, WHAT? that's just crazy to me, I absolutely LOVE breakfast, it's definitely my favorite meal of the day and having it for dinner makes it just that much better =]

I'm the pancake pro in my family you can ask anyone lol. Actually pancakes were the first thing I started cooking for my family, I guess once i mastered that I just figured I could cook anything? I'm not sure. Well any way as you know I can never leave a recipe alone so I started adding my "secret ingredients" to my pancakes and my family really liked them so I became the official pancake maker of the house lol. Now I know what your thinking, aren't you going to tell us your secret ingredients? Well I'm sorry I just can't do that because if I did they wouldn't be secret anymore now would they? Sorry =[

What I will tell you though is that pancakes are even more amazing when add stuff to them! I have tried all kinds of things such as the classic blueberries, nutella, peanut butter, bananas, and even bacon! yes that's right bacon, inside the pancakes, I totally recommend it =]

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Tonight i made my second delivery meal!

My dad requested chicken tortilla soup, so i decided i would just make a double batch and deliver half and keep the rest for us. Well my recipe makes a HUGE amount of soup to begin with and doubling it is just craziness. So i had to grab the biggest pot i had and let me tell you when it was all said and done that pot was filled to the brim!

I have made this soup a few times now and I've got it down pretty well, but for some reason tonight it was EXTREMELY spicy! I turns out that the canned chili corn that i normally use does not add the same amount of spice as the chili tomatoes i decided to use this time oops =/

Well any way i toned it down a little by adding some honey to turn it into a sweet heat and my dad told me adding a little salt would also kill some of the extra heat. It turned out pretty good in the end, it was a nice flavor with just a kick of heat in the back of the throat. I liked it, but next time i think ill go back to the chili corn.

Of course you have to have dessert!

My dad and i wanted some ice cream so I had to go on an ice cream run after dinner. You know you get a lot of odd looks when your by yourself and you order a milk shake, a hot fudge sundae and another scoop of ice cream!

Oh and btw that's mint chocolate chip, my absolute FAVORITE! =]

Huge Orange

Oh My God! Have you ever seen such a HUGE orange?

Its like the size of a grape fruit

I mean look at that peal, its like a quarter of an inch thick!

I don't know i guess this is normal for a naval orange but personally i think its just madness.

This post is beyond LAME this is just dumb but i can't help it i had a swim meet today (I only have 2 more then no more lame Saturday posts!) and we just got home around 10 o'clock and i didn't have my camera because well, cameras and water don't mix well and i would rather not take my chances =]

So anyway I'm sorry about this, i tried. When i got home i wasn't hungry, but i saw these oranges and they just looked really good and i knew i had to do a post, so there you go probably the lamest post ever but I'm tired and frustrated so don't complain lol

Appetizers

So like i said yesterday I'm starting a kind of mini catering business, and tonight i made my first delivery!

Well i kind of had a hectic time getting all of it done because i forgot that I had swim team pictures today at 4:30 and i told my moms friend that i would have her appetizers ready by 5. So between 2:45 (when i got home from school) until 4:15 i was cooking like a MAD WOMAN!

But i got it all done and i feel extremely accomplished now that its all done =]

So the appetizers i decided to make were...

Rose merry and garlic shrimp!

Mini frittatas, half Italian style with peppers and onions and the other half with asparagus tips.

and finally Stuffed Mushrooms! Yummmm

I also made a baked pasta dish for another customer but i threw it in the oven right before pictures and my mom got it out for me and ready to deliver so i didn't get any pictures.

But my mom thought it smelled Delicious and she wanted to steel some for her dinner if that tells you anything =]

Blackened Tilapia!

Tonight i quickly threw together dinner because i had to plan and prep for the dinners I'm making tomorrow night. Haha so my mom has decided to rent me out to her friends as a personal chef! I needed to raise some extra money for my trip to Florida and this turned out to be the perfect way.

So anyway for dinner tonight i made tilapia seasoned with blackening spices and garnished with lemon slices. I also made some green beans and bulgur to go along with the fish.

Ive been baking my fish lately because its a little healthier for my dad and its easy to just throw it in there and let it go.

well tomorrows post is going to be interesting because I'm doing my first delivery meal and i have to make dinner for a family, my family, and some appetizers for a party!

I'm pretty excited about it and i really hope they will enjoy my food as much as my family does.

Sorry its so short again but its getting late and i still have school tomorrow so check back tomorrow to see what i make! =]

Fried Chicken

Like I have said before i really like to eat and cook pretty healthy, but you know some times you just have to have some FRIED CHICKEN!

I'm really sorry these last few posts have been a bit lame but i haven't had a ton of time to spend cooking between school and swim practice. But i promise they will get better soon because swim team will be over soon and then I will have a lot more time to try new things!

Of course I had to have a salad! I can't eat a dinner that's completely BROWN, I had add some color and something a little healthy (it just makes me feel a little bit better haha its girl math!)

Flank Steak Fajitas

Tonight was my papa's turn to cook, he bought some flank steak the other night and he wanted to try making some fajitas! hey sometimes its nice to have a night off, and there are just somethings that my dad can make that i have yet to master so why mess up a good thing? =]

The flat top on our stove top is probably one of my favorite kitchen appliances that we have by far, its great for things like pancakes, burgers and any other kind of meat, because it creates a delicious crust on the outside that's just fantastic!

Now with flank stake you know, you have to cook it HOT and FAST or very LOW and SLOOOOOW, but we normally go for the fast version. My dad cranked the flat top to the max about 450-500 degrees and quickly seared the steak about 4min on each side, he added a little oil to the griddle once the steak was done and threw on the onions and peppers. The intense heat did good things to the veggies, pulling the sugars out and caramelizing them, Mmmm tasty stuff!

We sliced up the steak (across the grian of course) and assembled our fajitas, we gobbled nearly all of it up, so you know it must have been good!

Quick Bolognese Sauce

Pasta, who doesn't love pasta?

Well for me its one of my favorite things to cook! So tonight we had rigatoni with my homemade bolognese sauce. I love to make homemade pasta sauces, I just feel like it always tastes better when I make it myself.

Like most of the things i make there is no real recipe just experimentation and trial and error, I think i pretty much have it down now because during cross country season our team has pasta parties the night before each race, so i got a lot of practice making different sauces every week. Tonight i started my sauce off by softening some onion with garlic and red pepper flakes (I like it kind of spicy). Once the onions were soft i added some tomato paste and Italian sausage, when the sausage was all browned i deglazed the pan with some red wine and added a can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce. I let the sauce simmer a few minutes then added the herbs and let simmer another 9 min while the pasta cooked.

Well that's basically how i do it but i rarely do the same thing twice so each time I make pasta sauce I always have to switch it up a bit.

And the verdict is...both my parents loved it! well my mom thought it was a little to spicy but shes a wimp haha jk LOVE YOU MOM! =]

Perfect Parfait

Today was absolutely RIDICULOUS!

For the second time in a row i had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. for the second half of my swim meet, that lasted until 2 p.m. by the way. I was planning on going to sleep when i got home and resting for the remainder of the day, well that didn't happen! You see around noon i got a call from work telling me that i had to work tonight from 6-11... kill me now!

Well anyway that's my rant for the night and I'm sorry this post isn't to interesting because at this point I'm working on about 4-5 hours of sleep and I'm going down hill fast.

So lets get to the food...after the swim meet i came home and decided to make myself a tasty parfait! I make parfaits a lot for lunch but they never look this pretty when i take them to school. What i do is layer whatever yogurt i have (in this case wild berry) with crumbled up granola bar and whatever fruits i have at home obviously it I used a banana today but i also like to use frozen blueberry's or strawberry's (the reason I use frozen is because they keep my lunch cold at school they thaw perfectly by the time we go to lunch)

Well that's all i got because with work going so late dinner was some coffee and donuts! haha healthy i know

Another Saturday, another swim meet. Well this swim meet was at 7:00
this morning and like always i was starving when i got home so i decided to whip myself up a quick quesadilla! Yum

I found some red beans and rice that i had made a little earlier in the week so i heated that up and scrambled an egg into the mixture just to bind everything together and for a little more protein.

If you couldn't tell already I'm kind of a health nut when it comes to my cooking. So i put my filling into my whole wheat tortilla and then threw it back on the hot griddle to melt the cheese and to crisp up the tortilla. This is definitely one of my go to recipes for when i want something quick and easy to eat. It totally versatile as well, just through whatever leftovers you got in a pan with some egg and there you go, instant quesadilla

For dinner we had delicious herb roasted chicken!

Haha no i did not cook that, we picked it up at the store on our way home from church. Tonight i was off the hook because, for one we don't have much stuff in the house to cook for dinner right now and two i was extremely tired today from my swim meet and all i really wanted to do was go right to bed when we got home.

I did however cook some chili corn and baked potatoes to go along with the chicken.

Coffee Coffee Coffee!

Today was a pretty lazy day, I didn't have school because i finished all my exams yesterday, so for lunch i decided i should eat my leftovers from bd's, Mmmm it was delicious. Sorry for the repeat,i just wasn't feeling like making anything special and it was there so i couldn't waist it!

Well anyway dinner was nothing special either just good old Danatos Pizza. We had a family dinner and that's where we ALWAYS go so you will probably be seeing this a few more times in the future.

After dinner my friend and i went to this lovely coffee shop called Beans n Cream. I love this place so much, they have a small art gallery where they feature local artists and they also have open mic nights on Fridays and Saturdays! Its a great place to just hang and talk, oh and their coffee is GREAT!

Last time i went i got the turtle which consists of espresso with chocolate, caramel, and hazelnut!

Well this time i decided to try something new, Almond Joy anyone?

As you can see i enjoyed it...a lot hehe.

Peppers and Onions

Mmm tonight we had one of my very favorite dinners, Italian sausage with peppers and onions, YUM!
Well there is not much to say about it because that's all it is, sausages topped with peppers and onions, not rocket science but still delicious indeed!
So what I will do is take you through the process of making it.

First off i boil the sausage so that they cook all the way through without burning.

After boiling the sausages i brown them off in a pan to give them a little more color and to crisp up the outside.

While the sausages are cooking i saute the peppers and onions, that i thinly sliced, with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and some garlic!

While i was a my swim practice my dad decided to make some baked potato chips, very delicious and I think tastier and crunchier than any fried potato chip.

I toast the buns then spread them with marinara sauce and load them up with the sausage peppers and onions. I slice my sausage because it seams to be easier to eat that way and also you get a bit of sausage in every bite!