Tortellini Spinach Artichoke

Mike loves Spinach Artichoke Dip.  This Spinach and Artichoke Tortellini recipe supposedly tastes like Spinach Artichoke Dip over pasta.  I wasn't very hungry, so I only tried a little bit of it.  I thought it tasted average, but Mike really liked it.  Above is the finished product, baked in the toaster oven!

It was pretty easy to make, but it's a pain to try to find a use for the rest of the canned artichoke.  Mike says it tastes fine without the artichoke anyway, so I might just make it with spinach next time.

Mike did try to make this a few days later, but did not realize we had artichoke and spinach, so he didn't use either of those.  He said it did not taste quite the same...

Below is the plate which Mike ate that night.

Monkey Bread

Here we come, walkin'

Down the street.

We get the funniest looks from

Ev'ry one we meet.

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

And people say we monkey around.

But we're too busy singing

To put anybody down.

We go wherever we want to,

do what we like to do

We don't have time to get restless,

There's always something new.

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

And people say we monkey around.

But we're too busy singing

To put anybody down.

We're just tryin' to be friendly,

Come and watch us sing and play,

We're the young gneration,

And we've got something to say.

Any time, Or anywhere,

Just look over your shoulder

Guess who'll be standing there

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

And people say we monkey around.

But we're too busy singing

To put anybody down.

[break]

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

And people say we monkey around.

But we're too busy singing

To put anybody down.

We're just tryin' to be friendly,

Come and watch us sing and play,

We're the young gneration,

And we've got something to say.

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

[repeat and fade]

[Extra verse:]

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees,

You never know where we'll be found.

so you'd better get ready,

We may be comin' to your town.

Mike: Kim decided to make some monkey bread. It did not mix well with our oven. We will leave it at that.

I didn't have a bundt cake pan, so I borrowed one from Michele.  She lent me one that had a removable center so that it would be easier to take out the finished product.  She told me that it had a removable center, but somehow I didn't realize that I needed to put something under the pan to catch drippings.

I considered it but I didn't see anything spill out when I had poured the sugar and butter mixture over the dough.

When I baked it, the sugar and butter dripped all over the bottom of my oven...  When I opened it to look at it, there was smoke coming out of the oven!

Although the bread was delicious that night, it wasn't as good the next day since it was a little on the hard side.  If I were to make this again, I would use a different pan and put something under it, but I would also only make it if I was going to a party where I knew many people would be present to consume it.

Chinese Chicken Broccoli

I love eating chicken, and broccoli is healthy.  I found this Chinese Chicken and Broccoli dish that I thought would be similar to Beef and Broccoli, but would be slightly healthier because it has chicken instead of beef.

Although the dish is quite good, it is quite salty and is a bit sweet.  I would definitely use less soy sauce next time, and maybe cut down on the sugar to make it a little healthier.

Here is the finished product again from another angle.  It was just that good!

Beef Stroganoff

I've made a number of recipes from ateaspoonofhappiness.com, and I've been pretty happy with the results of most of the recipes.  One issue I have with the recipes on this website is that the serving sizes are huge.  A recipe that says it "serves 4" would probably feed 4 sumo wrestlers with food leftover.

I made three quarters of half of this recipe, or  three eighths of the recipe.  I bought about three quarters of a pound of beef, and I wanted to use it all.  I also bought a 12 ounce package of noodles, so it worked out.  I also didn't have beef broth, so I used chicken bouillon instead.

I was pretty disappointed with the Beef Stroganoff recipe.  It was edible at times, but other times I had to force myself to finish it.  Although I will finish the leftovers, I won't be making this recipe again.  There was too much of an onion flavor in it.  There was no other seasoning on the beef.

Korean Short Ribs

I was at the grocery store, looking at the meat section and the section of meats that were on "Manager's Special" since they needed to be sold soon.  I found some think beef short ribs and wanted to try to make Korean Short Ribs.

Mike's co-worker had given him a recipe for Korean Short Ribs, but I have no idea where the recipe is.

I found a simple recipe for the ribs here.  I also broiled the ribs for 3-4 minutes on each side instead of grilling it.  I find that when other people try to grill it, the meat either comes out overdone or underdone, or burnt and one of the previous.

It was simple enough to broil them, though I probably should have left them in for 4-5 minutes on each side, since the middle was a little red.  It was also a little salty, but that may have been because the recipe called for 2 pounds of ribs, and I only had about 1 1/4 pounds of ribs.  I also used a tablespoon of brown sugar because I ran out of white sugar.  I don't think it made a difference taste wise.

Peach Oatmeal Muffins

I had some white peaches in the freezer from when our white peach tree was in season, and I had more white peaches than I could eat.  I figured that I would just use them for smoothies.  I was looking online and found a recipe for Peach Oatmeal Muffins.

It looked simple enough, and I figured that I could use the white peaches from the freezer.  As it turns out, Mike volunteered to make it.  Although the recipe calls for making this "by hand", Mike of course used his KitchenAid mixer.

I don't know why the recipe told him to make so much cinnamon sugar mix.  He tried to use as much cinnamon sugar recipe as possible on the muffins, so they came out a little sweet.  He still had quite a bit left over.

They were quite delicious and easy to make.  Mike even compared it to peach cobbler!  I think this recipe could be adapted to use pretty much any fruit.

When I printed this recipe out, it came out on two pages.  At first Mike asked me why I needed white sugar.  I told him to check the second page.  He also forgot to put the pecans in there because he didn't see it.

Grilled Shrimp Avocado

Although I like to eat avocados in such dishes as guacamole, taco salad and cheese burgers, I don't really know that many recipes that call for avocado.  During the avocado season, I like to buy a few avocados in the hopes of making a dish with them.  Unfortunately I don't usually get to remember what I will make, and end up rushing to try to find a recipe to use up the avocados.

I found the book Absolutely Avocados, which has many recipes involving avocados.  They have recipes for chocolate chip cookies, brownies and even ice cream made with avocado.

I particularly enjoyed this recipe for Grilled Shrimp Avocado where the avocado was mixed with Parmesan cheese and olive oil to make the sauce.  It tasted a little bit like shrimp scampi, but with less of a buttery/oily taste.  Although the recipe calls for using a food processor to make the sauce, my avocado was ripe enough that I just mashed it with a fork and mixed in all the ingredients with the fork.

Homemade Tortillas

When I was in Washington D.C. last time, I went to Chevy's. They had a stand in which they were freshly making their own tortillas. We took a shot at making our very own home-made tortillas as well. These are flour based, not corn. We then decided to make them as a snack to share in the form of quesadillas with just a simple shredded cheese mix as the filling. Quite yummy!

Naan and Amish Baked Chicken

I love friend chicken and have been trying to find ways to make fried chicken at home.  That being said, I really don't like to deep fry, so I prefer to find a recipe for baking the chicken.

This recipe for Amish Baked Chicken was simple, but the skin still came out quite crispy, though rather oily/fatty.  I was so used to eating/making boneless skinless chicken thighs that I had forgotten how fatty chicken thighs are when they have the skin on them.  Also, in this recipe, you are essentially using the fat from the skin to "bake/fry" the chicken.

I'm not sure what is Amish about this recipe, but neither did the person who wrote the recipe, so I don't feel bad.

The chicken came out a little bland, though very juicy.  I blame myself for this, not the recipe.  It calls for garlic powder, which I don't have.  I tried to look up conversions online, and in it 16 cloves of garlic is equal to 2 teaspoons of garlic powder.  I was not going to mince 16 cloves of garlic.  A, that sounds like a LOT of garlic, and although I like garlic, I don't like it that much.  B, that would be a lot of garlic to mince.  I'd also read online that although you can substitute real garlic for powdered garlic, this should not be done for dry rubs.

I ignored this sage advice and made the recipe anyway, but I put in only 4 cloves of minced garlic.  I also didn't put in any onion powder because I didn't have any of that either, and I didn't really want to put in dried onion flakes.  I felt that that would've overpowered the dish.

I plan to try this dish again, but with boneless skinless chicken thighs and the garlic and onion powder.

Rachel Ray's Mother's Risotto

I'd been looking through a number of Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Recipe books to see if there was anything I wanted to make.  I love risotto, and found a recipe called "My Mamma's Risotto" in Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals: Veggie Meals book.

I went to the grocery store and bought a bottle of white wine in order to make this recipe.  I know it calls for dry white wine, but  Noel recommend just using cheap white wine instead.  I looked for the cheapest white wine I could find, and bought a bottle instead of a box.

I thought it would have a "twist cap" since it was such a cheap bottle of white wine.  It wasn't until I opened the seal so that I could put the white wine in the risotto that I realized it had a cork, and I didn't have a corkscrew.  Since I was in the middle of making the dish, I couldn't go to the grocery store and buy one.

I tasted the dish before adding the Parmesan cheese and felt that it was rather bland.  It tasted much better after the Parmesan cheese was added.  Still, it didn't taste amazing, so I continue my search for a good risotto recipe.

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

Mike and I both love the Rosa sauce at Domenic's Italian Restaurant.  It's a tomato cream sauce that we have never been able to reproduce and we've never tasted any other sauce at any other restaurant that rivals that deliciousness.  This doesn't mean I've stopped trying to make this sauce at home.

I had bought a quart of heavy whipping cream to use in some recipe.  Unfortunately I don't remember which recipe I wanted to make this this.  As a result, I started looking at different websites to try to find a use for it.  I found this recipe for Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce, which looked amazing.

I only made a quarter of the recipe in case I didn't like it.  Plus, even if I did like it, what would I do with a pound and a half of pasta?  However, when I was calculating how much onion to put in, I actually put in the whole amount for the onions, not 1/4 of it.  I thought it seemed like a lot of onion for the amount of oil and butter that was present.  Luckily I realized my mistake before I had added anything else except the garlic.  I then put the onion/garlic mixture in a storage container and started again, this time only putting in 1/4 of the amount of onion identified in the recipe.

This recipe calls for sugar - to taste, salt and pepper - to taste, and Parmesan cheese - to taste.  How am I supposed to know how much of each to put in?

I also didn't have any fresh basil at the time, so I omitted that all together.  At first I didn't put any sugar, salt or pepper in at all.  It came out quite tart.  I then added some sugar, but then the sauce was too sweet (see what happens when a recipe doesn't tell you how much sugar to use?!)  I then added some garlic salt and some cheddar cheese since I had run out of Parmesan cheese.

I plan to make this recipe again, but to note how much of each ingredient I am actually using.

Lime "Fried" Chicken

I'd made the "Latin Style Fried Chicken" recipe from latin d'lite by Ingrid Hoffman once before, but I'd used lemon instead of lime since I didn't have limes and I didn't want to go to the grocery store.  I wasn't particularly fond of the results.  The dish wasn't bad, but it did taste quite "lemony".

Mike blamed this on the lemons.  He said that limes have a much lighter flavor and thought this recipe would have come out much better if I'd used limes.  I think I also used boneless skinless chicken thighs last time as well.

This time, I used limes, as per the recipe directions.  I also used chicken thighs that had bones and skin on them.  However, I did bake them instead of deep frying them, since baking chicken is slightly more healthy and I don't really like to deep fry.

Unfortunately, the chickens came out tasting very strongly of lime.  It wasn't bad, but it didn't taste at all like fried chicken.  It just tasted like lime chicken.  Luckily, I'd only made two pieces, though they were quite large chicken thighs.

Not My Favorite Macaroni and Cheese

I think I found this recipe when I was looking for ways to use up cottage cheese.  I only made half the recipe since I didn't want a lot of it in case I didn't like it.  There is more "other stuff/sauce" than actual pasta used in this recipe.

Mike thought the Mac and Cheese was ok.  Apparently he liked it a lot.  I thought it was terrible.  He thought the bread crumbs were a little over the top.  He claims they only put that on "fancy mac and cheese".  That's fine by me, one less step that I would have to do.  I told him that if I made this again, he would have to eat the whole thing since I really have no interest in eating it again.

I found Chuck's Favorite Mac and Cheese recipe on AllRecipes.  I don't think Chuck and I have the same taste in food because this was definitely not my favorite mac and cheese at all!

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

I bought heavy whipping cream to make some recipe.  Unfortunately I don't remember which recipe I wanted to make.  I have a quart of quart of heavy whipping cream and I'm trying to find recipes to make with it.  I guess I could make whipped cream, but I've never been much of a baker.

Mike has commented before that he likes tomato soup (I've never been a big fan of it), so I thought I would try this Creamy Tomato Basil Soup, which uses whipping cream and is a tomato soup.  I was pleasantly surprised by how it tasted.

I only made half the recipe since I didn't need know how it would turn out.  This still came out to be a lot of soup.  Additionally, it's a little on the salty side.  This is kind of my fault since I just put some salt in there.  The recipe says "salt and pepper to taste".  I hate how recipes say that.  Obviously I should reduce the amount of salt listed in your recipe if I don't like salty food.  I didn't put any Parmesan cheese in the soup.  Perhaps next time I would leave out the salt and just put the Parmesan cheese in at the end.  I also used a can of diced tomatoes from Costco instead of using crushed tomatoes.