Recipe #18 - Mango-Pineapple Sorbet

So once upon a time, I made Mango Coconut Smoothies as a part of this project (review found here).  Although they were delicious, I massacred the mangoes trying to get all the fruit off that evil pit.  In reading of my issues with this difficult, yet delicious fruit, my sweet friend Larina very kindly offered to help me cut a mango.  She didn't just offer; she even kindly followed up on her offer.  And being a smart woman, I called her when it came time to make this next recipe.

This next recipe is Mango-Pineapple Sorbet.  It is found on page 245 of the cookbook and online here.  (The online version is slightly different.  It calls for pineapple chunks, but the cookbook calls for crushed pineapple.)

This recipe calls for very few ingredients.

First you have to cut the mango.  Larina came over to my house to show my her crazy Jedi-cutting skills and made it looks so easy.  And guess what?!  It WAS easy.  (Not like I could have made it any harder than I did the first time.)  Thank you, Larina, for teaching me the art of cutting a mango.

Once the mango is peeled and cut, it gets pureed in the blender or food processer.

Then you just add lime juice and sugar and puree a bit longer.

Finally you stir in the crushed pineapple, and it is ready to go into the ice cream maker for 30 minutes.

Once the 30 minutes is up, it goes into the freezer to firm up.

When we had this for dessert tonight, my husband went crazy over it.  He says it goes on his list of favorite ice creams (although it is technically a sorbet) of all times.  Folks, he put this up there with Chocolate Peanut Butter from Haagen-Dazs.  Wow!

The only thing that I didn't like about it is that we had a really hard time getting to to form nicely on an ice cream cone.  It didn't want to stink to itself, but that's a very minor complaint.  It really is yummy!  Just serve it in a bowl.

Happy family and happy tummies!

Recipe #17 - Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches

Let me just tell you that my family has really been enjoying this little project of mine, especially my husband.  While today's dinner was cooking in the slow cooker, he and my son said, "Yummmmm!  French. Dip. Sandwiches."  over and over -- in unison.  It was quite amusing.  But after taking one bite of the sandwich, my husband said, "This project is the best thing you've ever done in our entire marriage."  Apparently, a way to a man's heart really in through his stomach.

I have actually made today's recipe before, and it's a family favorite.  It is also a perfect Sunday dinner for me.  We don't get home from church until after 5:00 on Sunday's, so to have something all cooked is just dreamy.  Today's dinner is Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches on page 134 or online here.

First you season and brown your roast.

Then you put it into the slow cooker with dry onion soup mix, water, and beef broth.

After it is cooked, you shred the meat.  It just falls apart though.  It is a beautiful thing.

I like to toast my bread and melt the cheese, so under the broiler it goes.

And dinner is served!  The juices from from the slow cooker make the perfect au jus sauce for dipping.

Everyone gobbled this up for dinner, and I was wife/mother of the year.

 

Side note:  I served the Spinach Mandarin Poppy Seed Salad (reviewed here) with the sandwiches tonight.  You may recall that my kids wouldn't touch the salad, but they did ask if they could pick the bacon out of it.  Well, my little one got smart tonight.  She actually asked for a serving of salad, much to my shock and delight.  But...then she just picked the bacon out of it.  Geez.  Smart little stinker!

Recipe #16 - Peanut Butter Banana Pudding Pops

One of my favorite treats as a kid was Jell-o Pudding Pops. The wonderful Bill Cosby was their spokesperson for a lot of years.  Check out this "vintage" commercial!

 

So when I saw this recipe for Pudding Pops, I decided we needed to try it ASAP.  In fact, it justified a second trip to the store when I got it in my mind to make it right now!  It is page 243 in the cookbook.

The ingredients are simple:

The instructions are just as simple.  You just blend until smooth.

Then you put them into popsicle molds.  The recipe says it makes 8 pops, but I think that my molds are little on the small side.  So it made 10 of mine...plus a little extra that I was forced to eat straight from the blender.

My kids were crazy excited for these to finally be frozen enough to eat.  They all loved them.  My husband thought they were just okay, but he doesn't like peanut butter banana sandwiches either.  (I know!  Can you imagine?!)

 

Wanna hear the best part?  I did the math (based on 10 pops) and these little guys only have 77 calories.  I'd like to try them again with skim milk and reduced fat peanut butter to see if they're still as yummy.  If they are, that makes them even better for you.  I love a healthy snack!

Recipe #15 - Glazed Pork Chops with Apricot-Ginger Sauce

My father works in the pork industry.  (In fact, he was named 2012 Master of the Pork Industry.  True story!)  Growing up, we ate pork often -- pork chops, pork roast, bacon, sausage, you name it!  Therefore, it is safe to assume that I enjoy pork.  So today's recipe sounded yummy.  I'm not sure why I haven't tried it up to this point!

It is Glazed Pork Chops with Apricot-Ginger Sauce.  It is on page 145 of the cookbook, but its not listed online.  (By the way, I did ask for permission to post their recipes if they don't have them listed online.  I haven't heard back yet, so cross your fingers!)  The recipe is listed as "quick and easy", but my initial thought was, "Man, it sure has a lot of instructions to be quick and easy."  Luckily, multiple steps did not equal a time consuming dinner.  It was on the table in 20 minutes or so.

It does have quite a few ingredients though:

I had some trouble finding the apricot-pineapple preserves, and by "some trouble" I mean that my Target didn't have it and I had to go to another store.  Ugh, hate that!  Smuckers actually makes this kind, and although Target carries Smuckers, they didn't carry this variety.  So off to Macey's I went.  I'm not a huge Macey's fan, but I did find what I needed there.

The first step is to season the pork chops, and then cook them for 3 minutes on each side.

Then you sent them aside, covered in foil to keep warm, and make the sauce in the same skillet.  I love one dish meals!  First you saute the ginger and garlic for just 30 seconds.

Then you add in the chicken broth that helps to pull all the delicious brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

Next you whisk in the preserves and bring the sauce to a simmer.  Once it is simmering, you return the pork chops to the pan.  They are cooked for another 2-3 minutes on each side.

And you're done!  It really was quick and easy.  We served this over brown rice, and my kids loved putting the sauce on their rice as well.

 
The recipe got two thumbs up from the entire family, including the 5 year-old who had 3 servings...well, 5 year-old sized servings...  Adding this one to the Make Again list. 

So while we were eating dinner, this conversation happened:

12 year-old:  Hey dad, don't you think we ought to tell the girls what kind of animal pork chops comes from?
Dad:  And why do you think this would be beneficial?
12 year-old: Um...so they can learn about the food cycle?  That animals become food?
Dad:  How about you just eat your dinner?
8 year-old:  Is a pork chop made of pig?
Me:  Yup, just like bacon or sausage.
5 year-old:  (Looks up to the "heavens")  THANK YOU, PIGS!!!

Recipe #14 - Oven-Roasted Broccoli

This recipe is probably my most repeated recipe from this cookbook.  It is easy, delicious and something I make often.  It is Oven-Roasted Broccoli.  It is on page 199 in the cookbook, but isn't online.  Boo!

In an attempt to keep my veggies healthy, I used to steam my broccoli.  And although that is yummy, its just basic broccoli.  It lacked...umph.  This recipe is the best broccoli I have ever tasted, and provided I have 20 minutes and an available oven to cook it, this is my new go-to option.

First you line a cookie sheet with foil.  (Easy clean-up!!)  Then you cut up your broccoli, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and paper.  That's it.  And it goes in the oven.

Once it comes out it is just a tad crispy and cooked to perfection.

You sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on top and its ready to serve.  I personally prefer it with freshly grated parmesan, but today Kraft grated parmesan had to do.

Now here's the big question: did my kids like it?  It is broccoli after all, folks.  My kids don't like broccoli, but because I make them eat it, they have learned to choke it down.  In fact, my husband told them once that eating broccoli helps you to fight off cancer (I have no idea if this is really true.)  So when my kids eat broccoli, they hold up the broccoli to their mouth, and in their best super hero voice, they say, "Die, Cancer!" and eat their broccoli.  They've been doing this for years.  Its quite amusing and apparently helps the broccoli go down a little easier.

But this broccoli recipe is a little different.  They still say, "Die, Cancer!" but two of the three actually enjoy the broccoli.  Yes, I said "enjoy".

Can't please them all when it comes to veggies, I guess.  Two out of three will just have to do.  Now go kill some cancer and make this recipe.

Recipe #13 - Grilled Stuffed Zucchini

My fantastic neighbors just keep hooking me up with fresh zucchini from their garden, which is great because I love it.  Due to the fact that I put on a huge musical production in April and we did some seriously fun traveling in May, my garden didn't get in this year.  In some ways it nice, but in others ways I miss it.  Zucchini is one of the things that I miss.

Today's recipe is Grilled Stuffed Zucchini found on page 194 or online here.  Honestly, it was a little more time consuming than I expected, but I thought it was worth it!

First you cut the zucchini in half and hollow out the center.

 
Next you rub olive oil on the zucchini and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  You set that aside while you prep the "stuffing".  I have actually made this recipe before (last summer) and I remember wishing that I had more stuffing.  Since my zucchini was a tiny bit on the bigger side, I decided to double the filling.

First you need Italian turkey sausage.  This is the kind I purchased:

You need one link of this kind, but since I doubled it I used two.  You remove the casing and brown the sausage.  Once that is done you add garlic, onion and diced zucchini.  It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I realized that I was supposed to use red onion.  Oops, I even bought one for this recipe.  Oh well, too late now!

When the onions are soft, you remove it from the heat and add a few more ingredients.

Now is when the zucchini hits the grill for the first time.  You grill it hollowed side down for 5 minutes.  Then you fill it will delicious goodness, top with cheese and bread crumbs, and grill for another 5-7 minutes.

And this is what the final product looks like:

We had it as a main course tonight, but it is intended to be a side dish.  However, I knew that my kids wouldn't like it enough for it to be main course worthy.  So they got mac and cheese with sausage in it, but they were required to at least taste the zucchini.  At the end of dinner, both of my girls' plates looked like this:

That's one lone bite of zucchini that had to be tried before they were allowed to leave the table.  I'm an evil mom.

My husband and I loved it though.  Ryan said that it was something he would expect to be served at a fancy restaurant.  He added it to his "make again" list.  My twelve year old actually really liked it and was bummed we didn't save him more.  But as for my girls...

...thinking they didn't like it so much...

Recipe #12 - Spinach Mandarin Poppy Seed Salad

I am a girl who really loves her salads, but I'm not found of the blah bagged lettuce mix plus a tomato option that many restaurants serve as a side salad.  When I am served one of these, I want to say, "Look, I know that you opened a bag of lettuce (with little carrot slices), grabbed a handful, and plopped a tomato slice on this.  This is not a $3.50 side salad.  Its bagged lettuce.  Where is the good stuff?!"

When a yummy salad recipe comes along, I hang onto to it, and this recipe is one of my new favorites.  You can't go wrong when the ingredients include bacon, mozzarella, avocado and mandarin oranges!  It is the Spinach Mandarin Poppy Seed Salad recipe found on page 76 of the cookbook and online here. 

There isn't a lot of prep work involved here.  I would suggest putting your bacon in the skillet to cook at the very beginning though.  That's the only thing that took some time.  Yes, I know that you can microwave bacon, but it just tastes better in the skillet (and so does my house).

Once your bacon is cooked, you basically just put all the ingredients in the bowl and toss.

 

I waited to add the dressing until the salad was on my plate.  I knew that we'd have leftovers, and when you already have dressing on it, salad gets all wilty and yucky.  I intend to eat this for lunch tomorrow too, so the dressing waited until it was plated.

Click here for the information on the dressing recipe I used, as suggested in the cookbook.

 

My husband's first comment was that this was a great "non-blah" salad.  It doesn't have any weird ingredients, but its not a basic garden salad.  It was perfect for a warm summer day, but I fully intend to eat this year round.  It would be great to serve company or bring to a potluck.

You may be wondering if my kids liked it.  Well my kids don't touch green salad.  Ever.  They did ask if they could pick the bacon out though.  And my oldest asked I would give him double dessert if he ate a small bowl of it.  First of all, we weren't having dessert, and second of all, I was grouchy and quickly answered, "No.  Eat it if you want, but we're not rewarding you for eating your dinner."  See, I'm grouchy.

After dinner, I disappeared into my room to finish reading my book and attempt to get my grouchies out.  Its too bad I didn't make dessert.  That probably would have helped my mood...

Recipe #11 - Poppy Seed Dressing

So before I even begin, I'll tell you that there's not much to say about this recipe other than its crazy fast, easy, and yummy.

Today I made Poppy Seed Dressing and Spinach Mandarin Poppy Seed Salad.  This is just the review for the dressing.  The salad review can be found here.  The dressing recipe is located on page 90 of the cookbook or online here.

Some of the ingredients are a little unexpected (like mustard -- yucky, but you can't taste it in there), but I happened to have everything on hand already.  Everything but the poppy seeds get mixed up in the blender.  You then pour the dressing into a serving or storage container.

At this point, you whisk in the poppy seeds.  (If you've never purchased poppy seeds, you can find them in the seasoning section.  I remember being unsure of where to even find them the first time I bought them.)

That's it, folks.  Dressing is ready.  Took longer to get the ingredients out than to make it.  Simple and yummy!

Recipe #10 - Thai Peanut Noodles

Do you ever have moments where you just want to slap yourself in the forehead and yell, "duh"?  Well, I had one of those moments today.  Actually, I had several, but just one related to this recipe.

Today's recipe is Thai Peanut Noodles, located on page 165 or online here.  I've never made this recipe, nor did I ever think it was one that my family would particularly enjoy.  I love Asian food, but fried rice is getting crazy-Asian with my family.  If its not basic, they don't like it.

This recipe definitely requires a trip to the store.  It has a ton of non-pantry staple foods in it.  Here is a picture of the ingredients I had ready to roll.

 

So my "duh" moment comes in at this point.  I have purchased Udon noodles many times.  I like to put them in my stir fry.  So when I saw Udon noodles in this recipe, I thought I knew what I was looking for.  Well, I was wrong.  Ugh, I hate saying that, but I was.  

Apparently there are two kinds of Udon noodles.  The first is the kind that I have always purchased.  They look like this:

 

The recipe calls for 8 oz. of Udon noodles.  This package was 7.4 oz.  I figured that was close enough.  Well, if I had been thinking about it, the recipe serves 4-6 people, and this is one serving of noodles.  Not sure how this is supposed to feed the entire family...

The other kind of Udon noodles, looks like this:

Eight ounces of these noodles are very different than eight ounces of mine... DUH!  But at 5:45 PM, its time to cook, not run to the store.  So I pressed on and started another pot to cook Ramen for my kids.

The sauce is pretty easy.  Its a little of this and little of that.  I would suggest really mincing your ginger well.  Mine was small, but it could have been smaller still.  Once you start mixing it up, it looks a little like this:

Yuck, right?  But it smooths out beautifully.  

This is a pretty fast dinner to prepare.  I'm not sure how long the noodles really take to cook...since I didn't do that correctly, but I would guess that this meal takes 20 minutes from start to finish.

We just served it up with lots of extra sauce tonight, and it was delicious.  My kids only got one bite, so I could get their thumbs up or down.  They all surprisingly liked it and were a little bummed that they got Ramen (one of their favorites) instead.  But once I broke out the chopsticks, all was well again.

We'll have to try this one again.  I have handwritten into my cookbook the word "dry" next to the Udon noodles in the ingredients list.  Lesson learned.

Recipe #9 - Apple Streusel Bars

The second recipe I made for our block party was Apple Streusel Bars.  These are on page 212 or online here.  I picked this recipe because I had apples that I had purchased to make Apple Crisp before I went on my crazy Our Best Bites cooking rampage.  The last thing we needed was a dessert on top of all the treats happening around here.  So the apples got re-purposed.

This recipe is a little more time consuming (but not hard) and needs to be prepared with plenty of time to cool.  I did not do this. Standby for details.

First you create the crust.  Someday I am going to buy myself a pastry blender for recipes like this, but in the meantime, I spent 10 years cutting the butter into the crumb mix.  Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only a tiny bit.  I seriously felt wrinkles forming while I cut.

Once the crumb mixture is completed, you stir in an egg that's been beaten.  Its makes the dough sort of sticky.  Then you pat two-thirds of the mixture into the bottom of the pan.  However, I misread the recipe and thought I needed 2/3 cup...

 

I tried for quite a while to figure out how in the world I was supposed to get 2/3 cup to fill the entire pan.  Thanks to my husband, who apparently reads better than I do, the problem got resolved by adding 2/3 the mixture...not 2/3 cup.

Next you peel, core and slice the apples.  Be sure to measure them out, because it took me 4 medium apples to get 4 cups, not 3 like the recipe suggests.  My apples must have been on the smaller side of medium.

Once they're cut, you mix them with the other ingredients for the filling and pour the apples on top of the crust.  Then you take the remaining 1/3 of the crumb mixture and put it on top of the apples and bake for 40 minutes.

 

Then your house starts smelling delightful, like yummy apple pie.  And 4o minutes later, you pull this baby out of the oven.

 

Then, I ran into my next problem.  There is a part in the recipe that clearly states to let the bars cool completely.  Then put on the glaze, and then you have to let that set.  Well...I had 90 minutes from the time that I pulled it out of the oven until I served it.  After 60 minutes, the bars were still very warm.  So into the refrigerator they went.

Then with 15 minutes to spare and the bars still a little warm, I whipped up the glaze and prayed that my freezer was feeling extra chilly today.  The recipe suggests to put the glaze into a ziplock bag and snipping a small part on the corner, so that you can drizzle the glaze over.  I've done this many, many times and its worked great.  This time was an epic fail.  

As I started to make beautiful zig zags across the bars with my glaze, the cheapie bag burst open at the part that you "zip" shut.  (Do you call that a zipper?  Cuz its not, but it is.)  So a massive blob exploded out the back and landed on the floor.  Dang it.  I zipped it back up and kept going...until it did it again.  Really?!  Really?!

The second time, the glaze just sort of burst out all over the bag and my hands, so I could save most of it.  I scrapped it back into the bag and back to work I went.  Well, that is until my nice little snip out of the corner burst open too.  AHHH!  Glaze everywhere all over my beautiful zig zags.  Lame. Lame. Lame.  The next step involved spreading the glaze evenly all over the bars and completely ignoring any thought of making it look pretty.  Curses.

And into the freezer it went.  If one thing could go right, it was that the glaze set up very quickly in the freezer.  (Note the frosted glass on my dish.  LOL)

Then I was able to cut these into bars and quickly get them to the party.

While I was silently vowing to never again purchase generic sandwich bags, I considered taking a picture of my glaze explosions.  However, I didn't for two reasons:

1.  I was already pressed for time.  Taking pictures would have required me to wash my hands, get my camera, etc.

2.  I was actually using my extra fridge/freezer that is in the garage.  So when I pulled the bars out the fridge, I set them on a box in my garage to glaze them.  When the massive explosion happened it was all over my garage floor and down the side of the box.  Hardly a photogentic setting.  In hindsight, there is a story to tell.  So I'm telling it, but I didn't take photos this time.  

Lessons learned:

1.  Read the recipe correctly.  Two-thirds cup does not equal two-thirds of the mixture.

2.  Give yourself enough time for things to cool so you're not in a rush. 

3.  Do not buy cheap sandwich bags if you plan to use them for things other than sandwiches.

4.  Take pictures of your mistakes.  You can decide later if you want to share them.

Four lesson in one recipe?  Yikes.  Well, at least they tasted delicious!!