Crispy Tofu Triangles with Veggies in Peanut Sauce

This is a completely successful leftover make over :) Using leftovers from our Opening Ceremony Chinese inspired feast, this meal quickly came together, and I think I liked it better than the original meal! I used the leftover tofu triangles and leftover sesame 'lo mein' noodles, made my favorite peanut sauce, and added it to some freshly sauteed peppers and zucchini and summer squash, since that's what I had in the fridge.

Here is my favorite peanut sauce, it is slightly modified from a recipe I found on allrecipes a few years ago. At that point I was trying many different peanut sauce variations trying to recreate a sauce served at tiny Thai restaurant, this one was the most similar and satisified our craving.

Best Peanut Sauce

1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter (smooth works just as well, and you can garnish with chopped peanuts if desired)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon white sugar (I do not use this, it really doesn't need any extra sugar if you are using "regular" peanut butter)
2 drops hot pepper sauce (I used more like 5 drops of tabasco)
1 clove garlic, minced (I use garlic powder)
1/2 cup water

I also add a splash of seasoned rice vinegar before whisking all together. That's it, super easy and delicious, and ingredients that are always in the pantry!

Look at those lightly sauteed -- still kind of crisp because that's how I like 'em -- veggies swimming in peanut sauce, probably one of my favorite meals!

I just love this sauce and hadn't used it in a while so making this dish with leftovers was a real treat! I have a feeling I will be on an Asian inspired food kick for a while :)

Black and White Banana Loafies -- Tuesdays with Dorie

The recipe of the week was Black and White Banana Loaf, chosen by Ashlee of A Year In The Kitchen . I was planning to use my 8 by 4 loaf pan for Dorie's lucious Banana Loaf but at the last minute I decided not to and went foraging through the attic for my mini loaf pan. I haven't used it in a couple of years even though I love the little baby loaves it produces, and thought my kids would really enjoy the little loafies, and they sure did! I will have to use this pan more often :) My changes to the recipe were to use two bananas, replace the milk with buttermilk, and use 3.5 ounces of chocolate. I also used 1 tsp rum extract instead of rum. Why? Because I had some to use up on my lazy susan of extracts and flavorings, and I did not have rum.

We are frequent banana bread consumers in this household, I almost always buy two bunches of bananas at a time, and hope that a couple don't get eaten so we can whip up some banana bread. My husband loves banana bread, just banana though, no chocolate, no nuts, nothing fun. I love it with just about anything and everything, I think my favorite banana bread ever was a "tropical" banana bread which had pineapple, coconut, macadamia nuts, and chopped up maraschino cherries along with the yummy nanas (or ninas, as my children used to call them). Yum, yum!

This recipe came together easily, I used buttermilk instead of milk because we had some in the fridge to use up and I think buttermilk makes just about every baked good taste better than just using milk. Banana bread is no exception, I love the ultra moistness it gives with just a little tang.

As I was reading the TWD website post on this recipe I noticed a few people had trouble with a crispy exterior and an underdone almost gummy middle, after they baked the full time in a loaf pan. For me, using the mini loaf pan, I had to kind of guess and check with the timing. They tested done, looked done, and were pretty much done but I did have a little almost underdone feeling in the middle of my little loafies. At first I thought I must have messed up with the baking time since I didn't have anything to really go by, but when I read others had this issue I thought that maybe it had something to do with the recipe? I don't know honestly, but you know, I actually like my middle a little soft and gooey like that, is that so wrong? Now I'm not talking "underdone" I'm talking so so so moist that it fakes you into thinking for a second it's underdone, and those who did not actually bake these might think they are underdone, but they are really just super moist. Yeah, I like that :) While this is considered a recipe flaw to some, I actually like it, and in this recipe, in addition to my guessing on baking times my supermoist middles could have also been caused by the fact that I used buttermilk instead of milk, used half an ounce more chocolate, and also used half an extra banana. So I'm not going to fault Dorie's recipe one bit on my end, and even if I had stuck to the recipe 110% and still had the supermoist middles, I would have LOVED them hehehe.

Underdone? Nah, just super moist, and yeah, I did test them with my OXO cake tester, of course. And I know that sounds like the most unnecessary thing to buy but I had been using thin bamboo skewers as cake testers and tossing them so really, buying the OXO cake tester was good for the environment. I try to help out when I can.

This recipe is a for sure 'make again' for us. The kiddos loved them! I might play around with the chocolate type, try to add an element of peanut butter for a "triple" flavored loaf (or baby loafies), and I will leave out the rum because it just didn't do anything for me in this recipe, and I do like rum flavor even though I don't drink it a lot, but it just isn't working for me flavor wise with this, maybe it is in there to "sophisticate" the homey banana loaf? I don't know, but in our house, nina bread needs no sophistication, just a quick spread of butter, and a tall glass of milk :)

Pineapple Pepper Pizza

When our very sweet 90 year old neighbor brought us some green peppers from his garden the other day they begged to become pizza toppings. Green peppers used to be on my 'do not like' list, I had tried them here and there and just didn't enjoy them, then, when I was pregnant with my son I started craving green peppers! I suddenly loved them, couldn't get enough, ate them raw, in stir fries, and even ordered them as a pizza topping for the first time in my life. Isn't it crazy what those pregnancy hormones can do? I'm happy to report that my taste for green peppers has remained long after the birth of my first son, and now I enjoy them all the time.

The kids and I were planning a pizza night, and knowing they were a little wary of peppers on pizza I decided to pair them with something I knew they would love, pineapple! I'd never had that combination on a pizza before and was surprised it turned out as well as it did. We all loved our new pizza creation, the pineapple giving some sweetness and the peppers giving some crunch and bite, just perfect with lots of freshly shredded mozzarella and paremsan. The fresh from the garden green peppers made this pizza over the top delicious!

For the crust I used this recipe from allrecipes:
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon dry milk powder
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
(I always add a shake of pizza seasoning, this time I used Chef Paul Prudhomme's Pizza & Pasta Magic Hot & Sweet Seasoning Blend, which I love, we also have the Herbal Pizza & Pasta Magic, they are both great)

Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough cycle; press Start.
Remove dough from pan after rise cycle and use for your favorite pizza recipe.



It is one of two favorite pizza crust recipes I have, I use this one a lot because the ingredients are always on hand in my house and it's easily doubled to make two big cookie sheet sized pizzas. I'm always trying new crust recipes but this one I know will produce a crispy outside, soft inside, perfectly chewy crust. Before toppings and cheese I added homemade red wine pizza sauce, a recipe I'm still perfecting and love so much, I really like pizza sauce in general and this one is just delicious! The pineapple was half an 8 ounce can of crushed pineapple, drained.

Mexican Dinner

We love Mexican style food, it is one of my favorite meals to prepare and my picky husband even enjoys it, yay! This week Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies chose Mexican as our country to visit with our tastebuds for My Kitchen My World.

We have had a really busy week and I wasn't able to do the huge Mexican meal I wanted and try a bunch of new recipes, sorry :( Homemade tortillas and churros were in the plan but never got accomplished, but I promise, I will try them soon, and let you all know how they turned out.

Please excuse my boring photography of this food, even though the pictures aren't the greatest the food was delicious!

This is a simple Mexican rice recipe adapted from allrecipes.com. I know some people love their rice chock full of veggies like onions and peppers, but we like our rice plain, just nicely seasoned, so the flavor doesn't take over other dishes. In this recipe you sautee 1 cup of rice with 2 tbsp oil until it's slightly crisped and puffy, add 1/2 cup tomato sauce, 1 can vegetable broth, and some garlic and onion powder, from there you can add any other Mexican spices or seasoning blend to taste. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer until the rice is thoroughly cooked but not mushy about 15-18 minutes. Perfect Mexican rice! All ready to be stuffed into a tortilla or eaten as a side dish. If you wanted to make this rice a 'meal' add a can of rinsed drained black beans, some corn, tomatoes, peppers, etc. and then you have a substantial filling for burritos or just to be served as it.

This is probably my worst picture but the taste is beyond compare. These are the main filling for my pepper mushroom fajitas, pop these perfectly seasoned veggies in a tortilla, top with lettuce, queso fresco, and a touch of sour cream and you have a fajita rivaling anything you can get in a restaurant. In fact, after being served unsatisfactory "veggie fajitas" on numerous restaurant trip I came up with this recipe using things I liked about restaurant style fajitas and leaving off what I didn't. I just need some of those little cast iron fajita serving skillets, they are on my 'want' list of kitchen stuff :)


Another bad pic of good food, these are another dish I created after having some at a restaurant. Mexican roasted potatoes, pretty simple, cube potatoes, toss them with some olive oil, spice them up with a Mexican seasoning blend, and roast at 400 for about 50 minutes until tender and crispy on the outside. Now when I first saw these I thought roasted potatoes weren't really "Mexican" I still have no clue, but they are delicious, and a great side for a fiesta of a meal!


Lastly here are some baked 'smothered' burritos! These contain beans, corn, and chopped tomatoes, all sauteed together and seasoned, then rolled into flour tortillas. In the bottom of my glass baking dish I have a thin layer of taco/enchilada sauce. Some people like their burritos floating in sauce, which is fine but I prefer mine a little less saucy before baking that way the tortillas don't get mushy. I would rather top mine with extra sauce *after* baking.


Top your burritos with more sauce after you put them seam side down in the baking dish, not a lot, but don't be too skimpy either, you want to have most of the burrito covered in a thin layer with a little extra on the sides. Then top with cheese, use whatever cheese you'd like but if possible add a little mozzarella to your cheese of choice, here I used extra sharp cheddar, some pepper jack, along with a bit of mozzarella. The mozzarella really gives the cheese a nice 'melty' consistency, I know it doesn't sound like it would add a lot but there is an extra dimension when you add a touch of mozzarella, it just adds depth, or something, just try it, trust me :) After the cheese I add some black olives, bake at 375 for about 30 minutes, after that I always broil the top just for a second to get the cheese golden brown, YUM! Serve with all of your favorite toppings, guacamole, chopped tomatoes, shredded lettuce, extra cheese and taco/enchilada sauce, mmmmm! This is one of my favorite meals ever and you can personalize it by adding any kind of filling, cheese, toppings, etc. it is a family favorite for sure, you could even add different fillings to each burrito per the tastes of your picky eaters and bake them all together, just remember which burrito is yours :)

Coeur a la Creme -- Barefoot Bloggers

This is Barefoot Blogger's July bonus recipe, chosen by Becke of Columbus Foodie. I know, I know, I say this all the time, but I was really excited to try this recipe! This recipe got me more excited than most, because first of all I had never even heard of Coeur a la Creme (heart of cream) and I love trying new things, and secondly, I got to by a new kitchen 'toy' for this recipe, a traditional 'coeur a la creme' mold! I actually got two molds, a large one and a small one, for a quite a steal on amazon.com.

Ina Garten's Coeur a la Creme with Raspberry and Grand Marnier Sauce

• 12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2 1/2 cups cold heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I left out because all I had was dried and I thought it would through off the texture)
• Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean (I also left this out because I couldn't find any in time :( )
• Raspberry and Grand Marnier Sauce, recipe follows
• 2 half-pints fresh raspberries

Place the cream cheese and confectioners' sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high speed for 2 minutes. Scrape down the beater and bowl with a rubber spatula and change the beater for the whisk attachment. With the mixer on low speed, add the heavy cream, vanilla, lemon zest, and vanilla bean seeds and beat on high speed until the mixture is very thick, like whipped cream.

Line a 7-inch sieve with cheesecloth or paper towels so the ends drape over the sides and suspend it over a bowl, making sure that there is space between the bottom of the sieve and the bottom of the bowl for the liquid to drain. Pour the cream mixture into the cheesecloth, fold the ends over the top, and refrigerate overnight.

To serve, discard the liquid, unmold the cream onto a plate, and drizzle Raspberry and Grand Marnier Sauce around the base. Serve with raspberries and extra sauce.

Raspberry and Grand Marnier Sauce:

• 1 half-pint fresh raspberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup seedless raspberry jam
• 2 tablespoons orange-flavored liqueur --recommended: Grand Marnier -- (I skipped this, I was going to buy some especially for the recipe but we aren't big drinkers and the smallest bottle I could find was $40 and didn't want to spend that on something we would probably not use...)

Place raspberries, sugar, and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 4 minutes. Pour the cooked raspberries, the jam, and orange liqueur into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade and process until smooth. Chill.

Ina's recipe was super easy and took minutes to whip together. This was probably one of the simplest things I've ever made! Better yet, it was beautiful and delicious, what a winning recipe, thanks so much for introducing me to Coeur a la Creme Ina and Becke :)

coeur a la YUM!

My family enjoyed this with raspberry sauce for dessert, rarely do we find a dessert that we all will eat more than one bite of, my husband was wary though, since it contains cream cheese and he hates cream cheese, he only could handle a couple of tastes; said it was too sweet and you could taste the cream cheese, which I totally disagree with but oh-well. He did like the raspberry sauce though, go figure!

Cinnamon Sugar Plum Galette -- Tuesdays with Dorie

Michelle from Michelle in Colorado Springs selected Summer Fruit Galette for this edition of TWD. I was very excited to try this recipe -- gee, feels like I say that at the start of every post but I really am excited about trying all of these new recipes! Anyway, this was my first ever galette, I've heard of them and had them in restaurants but never made my own. I wasn't really sure which 'summer fruit' to pick and bought "red" and "black" plums and also apricots but ended up just using the plums.

I'm not sure if I read this in Dorie's book or some other cookbook but I remember somewhere a galette being referred to as a 'free style' pie and that's exactly what my galette looked like, it was not round at all, mainly because I didn't want to handle the crust too much and figured there was no real reason to worry about the shape.

Everything came together nicely, I used some raspberry jam, and wish I hadn't. It was almost too tart, I think strawberry or maybe that ginger jam Dorie was talking about would have been better.

When I was ready to put the sugar dusting on before baking I spotted my little tub of cinnamon sugar and thought, why not? I love cinnamon sugar on just about anything, peaches, pancakes, applesauce, toast... so I sprinkled that around the crust and also some on the fruit. I wish I would have macerated the plums in sugar for a while, they were too tart and my galette was not sweet enough. Oh-well. Overall the recipe is great, just make sure your fruit is sweet or you add some extra sugar or honey...this is such a rustic dessert that I would love to try with apples and a caramel drizzle in the fall, YUM!

Oops almost forgot the custard, I was planning on trying it even though I hate eggy stuff (which you might remember if you read my chocolate pudding post) -- but in the end I just left it off. Would it have given my plums the sweetness that they were lacking? Maybe, but I just couldn't get over the part where Dorie says 'it shouldn't jiggle' sorry but that made me sick to my stomach. I really wanted to branch out and try all sorts of new things, and you know what, I plan to, but with this galette it felt like I would be ruining something I might love (fruit galette) by adding that custard, and I didn't want to take that risk. You know what I should have done is made a mini galette on the side and tried the custard in there, maybe next time!

Perfection Pound Cake -- Tuesdays with Dorie Make-up Recipe

No it's not Tuesday, but here's a TWD recipe for ya! I really want to catch up with everyone who was in TWD from the start. I'm giving myself the luxury of going at my own pace and order for these make-up recipes, and decided to start with Perfection Pound Cake, from pages 222 and 223 of Baking From My Home To Yours, by Dorie Greenspan -- originally selected to be the recipe for Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008.

I love pound cake and was excited to try this recipe. I have a bit of a confession, back when I was pregnant with my first child I craved pound cake like crazy! Homemade pound cake, not any of that Sara Lee stuff. I baked at least 10 pound cakes (note the *at least*) during my pregnancy. The baby in my belly who was referred to as "mommy's little cupcake" soon became "mommy's little poundcake" thanks to my husband. I tried so many different recipes and fell in love with buttermilk pound cake, no recipe in particular, I still don't have the one pound cake recipe I will always use, but if the ingredients contain buttermilk I know I'll probably enjoy the supermoist heavy yet tender crumb with a touch of tang it tends to produce.

Anyway, back to Perfection Pound Cake, the name is kind of tough to live up to. It was delicious pound cake, can't find anything wrong with it, especially liked it with Dorie's suggestion of butter and jam, great with strawberries as well. It was not quite as moist as I prefer mine but I like mine really moist... Perfect? Not too sure, that's a stretch, at least for me, especially since I've made so many super yummy pound cakes and things taste differently when you are pregnant and something satisfies a craving, I doubt another pound cake will taste as good as those I made when pregnant with my sweet little Poundcake :)