I have pinned a ton of recipes from pinterest and one evening at about 4:30 I had no idea what I was going to fix for dinner. Then I remembered I had pinned this mini corn dog recipe a few weeks ago and I began scouring my pantry/fridge to make sure I had everything. It turned out I did and this is a super quick recipe so I HAD something for dinner! Also playing on the corn theme, I had Ryan grill some corn I had bought at the store. The girls loved it so this is definitely going down as a kid favorite recipe!
Mini Corn Dogs:
1 8.5 oz box of jiffy corn dog mix
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup of milk
1 tbsp honey
4 hot dogs cut into 5 pieces
1. Spray mini muffin pan with PAM. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Mix first 4 ingredients and let sit for 3-4 min. Slice hot dogs
3. Fill 20 mini with 1/2 tbsp of mix then top with hot dog. Cover the hot dog with remaining corn mix.
4. Bake in oven for 10-15 min until golden brown. Remove and allow to cool before removing from pan.
Gazpacho
I've been wanting to try making Gazpacho ever since I saw it made on a cooking show. I had never heard of it before, but it sounded like the perfect summer soup. It is served cold. A friend of ours had surgery earlier in the week and she is a home chef and food connoisseur, so I wanted to make her something light, but tasteful and summery. I searched for the perfect gazpacho recipe and found one that I thought would be really tasteful. It turned out it was super easy to make and you make it a day in advance so it had time to cure in the fridge. It was so good. Ryan was even skeptical of eating a 'cold tomato' soup, but he tried it and before I knew it his bowl was empty! The only thing I would do different is use heirloom tomatoes, but they were not available, so I used a couple of tomatoes from our garden and the rest were hot house tomatoes from the store. I also used a yellow onion instead of a purple because that is what I had. Here is the link to the recipe.
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| This is the beautiful picture taken by my friend. She is a much better food photographer than me, so I borrowed her picture she posted on FB. |
Whenever I'm making a meal for someone, I always have to include some kind of chocolate! I went ahead and made two pies because this was a first time for this particular recipe and I can't make a new recipe without trying it before I give it to someone else! This is another pinterest recipe I found titled Grandma's Chocolate Pie! The very name makes me recall memories of when I was little visiting my grandma! I thought since this was Grandma's recipe it must be tried and true! It turned out beautifully. The recipe didn't include a crust recipe and although I do have a favorite crust recipe, time was of the essence and I decided to use prepared freezer crust. The only adjustment I have to the recipe would be to use cream of tartar in the meringue topping. It doesn't call for it in the recipe and I think that is the key ingredient to keeping the meringue from separating. It was so delicious. I savored the velvety chocolate paired with the fluffy light meringue. It was heaven on a plate!
Creamy avocado pasta:
I was intrigued by this recipe on pinterest. One of the few pastas my husband will eat is fettuccine alfredo. Aside from the green color, it seemed to resemble fettuccine alfredo in its creamy texture, but at the same time be healthy and use one of his favorite vegetables, the avocado! My kids love pasta and usually this is where I can sneak in some veggies in their diets. So this sounded like the perfect recipe for me to try! It turned out my kids ate a few bites and then were not as enthused as I thought they would be, but my husband ate it and said it was good. It was a creamy texture just like fettuccine alfredo and didn't have an overpowering avocado taste. The roasted tomatoes were the perfect balance of tartness to the smooth avocado sauce. Since my husband ate his portion, that means it is going in the recipe index! The only thing the recipe called for and I didn't have were pine nuts. I liked it without them, but it would also be good with them. I also used linguine instead of fettuccine because that is what I had. I served it with a buttered slice of sourdough bread. I'm getting lazy so instead of typing out the whole recipe, here is another link to this recipe.
Bacon wrapped meatloaf with a sweet potato puree
Surprise! This is not a pinterest recipe! I did mention how I have been watching a lot more cooking shows. Most of the time they don't publish their recipes, but this particular one was featured on epicurious.com and I thought it sounded really good. It is from Hell's kitchen. Although, I don't care for the language in the show, they have some great recipes and it is funny to watch Gordon Ramsey get mad at the chefs! Here is your link.
This seems like a really detailed recipe, but once you start cooking it really flows nicely and it doesn't take that long. First you let the sweet potatoes boil and bake the bacon while you assemble the meatloaf. Then bake the meatloaf while you finish the sweet potato puree and apple cider jus and all three will finish at the same time for serving. I used ground beef instead of veal because 1. I think it is a waste to grind veal 2. It is extremely hard to find veal in these parts. Also, I enjoyed the apple cider jus, but Ryan said it could do without so maybe next time I will omit that. I thought the recipe called for a lot of odd pairings of spices, but I'm naive at this so my opinion isn't worth much, but they really worked together and it came out nicely in the meatloaf and sweet potato puree. The puree had a nice spicy bite combined with a smooth creamy texture. The bacon really balanced the meatloaf with the perfect smokey flavor. The only thing I would change is instead of using a muffin pan to cook the meatloaf, where all the juices drip to the bottom and the bacon doesn't crisp on the underside, I would use a roasting pan so the juices can drain away from the meatloaf and the bacon will finish crisping around the meatloaf. I like my bacon crispy, so that is my preference.
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| I know I need to work on my plating, but it tasted a lot better than is photographed! |
Look at you girl! You are quite the chef these days! You are trying some super fun recipes too!
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