Lime Chicken Soft Tacos

The recipe for these lime chicken tacos has been a favorite of mine and my husband's for a while now. I found the original recipe on allrecipes.ca (big surprise) but I've modified it a little bit here and there to suit our tastes a little more. Here's what you need:
 2-3 chicken breasts (it makes enough for my husband and I and for leftovers for lunch the next day)
 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
 1/8 cup red wine vinegar
 juice from half a lime
 a little bit of lime zest
 1 teaspoon sugar
 1/2 teaspoon salt
 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
 1 teaspoon oregano
 3 cloves of garlic
 3-4 green onions, chopped
 small flour tortillas (I use the fajita size)
 any other toppings you want (lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese, avocados, salsa, etc.)

To start, cut your chicken into little bite size pieces. They're going to go into a taco shell so you don't want them to be too huge. Heat the oil up in a pan on medium high heat and cook the chicken pieces until their a nice golden color. This takes about 15-20 mins. While your chicken is cooking prep all your ingredients, like so...

I like to prep them this way ahead of time so that when the chicken is ready I'm not wasting any time getting all the flavors in there.

I like to get all of the liquids (lime juice and red wine vinegar) in first and cook the chicken for about a minute first before I add all of the other stuff (sugar, salt, pepper, garlic, green onions, oregano, lime zest).

Let everything simmer together until all of the liquid is absorbed, about 5-10 minutes. Once that's done, you're ready!

There you have it. I always make guacamole to serve on the tacos and I usually have lettuce but unfortunately our lettuce was not up to par this time. Oh well! I also used a corn tortilla here but I find them too dry sometimes so that's why I usually stick to flour tortillas. With this I served a Mexican type rice that I was not that excited about so I decided not to share it. ;) I sometimes serve corn bread with this which is just to die for, however it takes an hour in the oven so on a weeknight it's obviously not the quickest option. There's a good chance that recipe will show up on this blog at some point though because I love you all and must share it with you.
Okay, that's it for now! Weeknight posts will tend to be short, stay tuned this weekend for a long one, ha.

- A

Breakfast of Champions

Eggs Benedict, hash browns, and raspberry lemon smoothies

Over the May long weekend my husband had the great idea of having our parents over for brunch on the  Monday. We hadn't had them all over together since moving into our new place and thought breakfast would be a nice way to say thanks for all the help they've given us. I wanted to try making eggs Benedict. It's one of my favorite breakfasts but I'd never tried to make it before on my own. I served it with hash browns and fruit but Daryl, a guy I work with gave me the great idea of making a cheese and bacon scone type thing to serve with it. Unfortunately I couldn't find any recipes that I liked and didn't want to make up my own at this point, so I served it with hashbrowns instead however those cheese and bacon scones will make an appearance on this blog at some point.
Because I am someone who likes making everything from scratch and tries to avoid using packaged food at all costs I started looking for recipes for hollandaise sauce. The recipes all called for almost two dozen eggs and three cups of butter (I was making it for 6 people and wanted to make sure I had enough). So because my love for my family trumps all and because I didn't want to give them heart attacks because of all of the cholesterol, I used packaged hollandaise sauce instead and I must say, it was pretty good. This might be one exception to my "no packaged food" rule.
So anyway, here it is:
 - 12 eggs
 - 6 english muffins, cut in half, toasted and buttered
 - 12 slices of Canadian back bacon
 - 2 packages powdered hollandaise sauce
 - 1 cup of butter (for the hollandaise)
 - Butter for spreading on english muffins

My wonderful mother has this egg poacher that she brought along to make poaching the eggs a little more simple for me. My equally wonderful dad helped me with this and watched over the eggs while I was busy preparing everything else.

Look at how cute those things look! If any of you need ideas for what to get me for my birthday an egg poacher (or a nice food processor) would be it ;)

Voila. I also made hash browns using 2-3 tablespoons of butter and 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil heated up in a pan and about 3-4 cups worth of frozen hash browns. If I were as good as my grandma Elma I would have boiled potatoes the night before, let them cool in the fridge overnight and shredded them that morning. I like to cook my hash browns low and slow so I actually started those first. Once the butter was all melted I chucked the hash browns into a pan and added salt, pepper and Italian seasoning ( the Italian seasoning trick was something I learned from my BFF Whitney and her husband Ryan. Well more from Ryan I guess ;) but Whit can get the credit too).

I cook them until their a nice golden color like in the picture above and serve them as soon as they're done.
For the raspberry lemon smoothies (which were UNREAL) I followed a recipe I got off allrecipes.ca and just doubled it approximately. Here's the original: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/raspberry-lemon-smoothie/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=raspberry%20lemon%20smoothies&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page
And here's what I did:
 - 20ish small ice cubes
 - 1 large tub of Activia vanilla yogurt (sorry I can't remember the exact size)
 - 2 whole lemons, seeded (yep, rind and all)
 - 2 cups raspberries
I tasted it before I was supposed to put the honey in and I thought it tasted amazing without it so I didn't add honey. It was quite tart however I like it that way so if you find that it's too tart by all means add honey.

My blender filled to the max.

Action shot of the blending and my very white arm. Sorry everybody, I'm a redhead.

Eggs are plated and table it set. Happy breakfast everyone! If I can manage to get my hands on an egg poacher this would be something I would definitely make again.
Up next on food talk at five, one of our favorite meals, lime chicken tacos!

- A

Goat cheese, chorizo and pepperoni pizza

As some of you may know, my husband Brenden and I moved out of the big city about a month ago and back into the country where we belong. I love living back in the country and don't miss the city at all however if there's one thing our small town doesn't have it's take-out. We rarely had take-out when we lived in the city however one of our favorite things to order when it was a Friday night and we both didn't feel like cooking was the goat cheese and chorizo pizza from Panago. So I decided that instead of eating frozen costco pizza, I would try to recreate our favorite.
On a slightly related note, until about a month ago I had never made any sort of dough in my life. My excuse always was that there was never enough counter space in the apartment that we lived in before and that once we bought a house that had some counter space I would attempt to make dough. Well, we bought a house. With probably three to four times the counter space in my new kitchen. I had clearly ran out of excuses. I was talking to my friend Kelsey a while back and we both agreed that as Mennonite women we feel that we should know how to make dough. She said that I should try pizza dough first and she assured me that it was totally easy. I tried it using the recipe on a jar of Fleischmann's pizza yeast and it turned out great. My fears were conquered!
So here's how I made my goat cheese, chorizo and pepperoni pizza:
 - Double recipe of pizza dough from the back of a Fleischmann's pizza yeast jar
 - 1/2 - 3/4 cup pizza sauce
 - 12 slices chorizo
 - a bunch of pepperoni (vague, I know, but just use however much you want)
 - 2 cups shredded cheese (we used marble)
 - 1 package goat cheese
First, I made a double recipe of dough using the Fleischmann's recipe as it's enough to fit a large size baking sheet.

I pressed it into the pan and up the sides slightly to make the crust's edge.

Then with the help of my ridiculously good looking husband, we added the pizza sauce. Enough to coat the pizza crust nicely but not so much that our toppings would be swimming in it.

Toppings on! We did one thin layer of cheese right on top of the pizza sauce, then we added our chorizo (the only decent kind I could find was Spanish chorizo from Safeway), pepperoni, marble cheese and goat cheese on top. We stuck it in the oven at 425 degrees F for about 15 minutes, until the crust started to turn a nice golden brown color.

Finished product. Way better than Panago I might add.

And there ya have it!
Next on food talk at five - eggs benedict, hashbrowns and raspberry lemon smoothies!

- A

Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel Cookie Bars

So before I delve into this posts recipe, I just gotta say, I love Geoffrey Zakarian. For those of you who don't know who he is, he's currently an Iron Chef on Iron Chef: America (which is also my current favorite show). I watched Battle: Mint on Saturday and oh my word was that a good battle. Not only am I a huge fan of Geoffrey Zakarian because of his food and extreme talent in a kitchen, I'm a fan because he's so stoic in the kitchen and he knows exactly how good he is. I was talking to my friend about this the other day and she's not a fan because I think he can come off as a huge jerk, but I'm a huge fan anyway. Also, his sous chef on Iron Chef is Alex Guarnaschelli who is also completely amazing. I think my dream in life (at this point anyway) is to learn everything about cooking from Geoffrey and Alex and be best friends with Paula Deen and Giada de Laurentiis. Also I love Marcus Samuelsson, Bobby Flay and Jamie Oliver. I could name so many more cooks and chefs I love just on Food Network but I'll start with those as this post will soon start to not be about cooking at all.
Okay so props for this recipe completely go to the blog Two Peas & Their Pod. I found this recipe a while back, maybe even through the Stumble Upon App on my iPhone and these are the best cookie bars you will ever have in your life guaranteed. Ever. I mean it. They are so good. Here's the link: http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/chocolate-chip-salted-caramel-cookie-bars/
I followed the recipe pretty much exactly with the exception of not using an 11x7 pan, mostly because I don't have one that is exactly those measurements. The one I used is close enough I think. Also, 12 tablespoons of butter is actually just 3/4 cup. You're welcome.

Action shot of combining the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. I must say that I adore my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. She and I are in a long-term committed relationship and I wouldn't know what I would do without her.

Costco size bag of Chipits. They're one of my husband's favorite snacks but I'm hoping this bag will still last me a while.

Giada de Laurantiis is the one who taught me to use the paddle attachment on my mixer instead of the whisk attachment. Maybe most of you use your paddle attachment already but I just started about a year ago as my whisk just wasn't doing the job for things like cookie dough etc. Then one day I watched "Giada at home" and she made cookie dough using her paddle attachment on her mixer and from then on, that's what I have used with my mixer.

For the caramel center I used an entire 340 gram bag of caramel candies and unwrapped them all individually. When I microwaved them I did exactly as the recipe said and set two minutes on my microwave and stirred it every 20 seconds.

After the two minutes was up this is what it looked like but it's hot enough that if you just keep stirring it once it's out of the microwave that it will turn out like.....

...this. Creamy, smooth caramel goodness.

Here's a shot of the caramel on top of the first cookie dough layer. I don't have sea salt but I do use kosher salt in everything so that's what I used here. I had made these before and though you definitely don't want these bars to be too salty, I thought I didn't use enough the first time to really bring out the flavor of the caramel and that contrast of caramel and salt is just divine so I used a little more this time.

Ready to go in the oven.

Finished product. The thing with these cookie bars is that you have to let them cool off COMPLETELY before you cut into them because of the caramel in the middle. It was very hard for my husband to be that patient! If the caramel hasn't had a chance to cool and set before you cut them you will have a hot mess on your hands. Literally. I made these for my best friend Whitney and her husband Ryan on Saturday and I made them in the morning and put them in my cool unfinished basement so that when they came over they would be completely cooled off.

 Amazingness in cookie bar form. I told my husband today that I can't make these very often because of how good they are they just disappear. I'm sure you can guess where they disappear too and no we don't let our cats eat human food.

Well two posts for today is enough I think, plus The Bachelorette is almost on and I must make it to the T.V. on time!

- A

Pesto & Feta Turkey Burgers, Guacamole and Salad

One thing that my husband and I love to make is turkey burgers. I much prefer turkey burgers over regular beef burgers because turkey has much more of a mild flavor which makes it a wonderful medium to add a million different flavor combinations to. I still like a regular beef burger, don't get me wrong, I just find I can be more creative with turkey. Also turkey is not nearly as greasy as beef which is nice as well.
Anyway, one recipe we use quite often is for pesto & feta turkey burgers. I got the original recipe off of the All Recipes website however we've adjusted it a little to our liking. Here goes:

1 pound ground turkey
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
3 tablespoons basil pesto (I really like the Kirkland brand pesto you can get at Costco)
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Sprinkling of seasoning salt
I sometimes add some minced garlic like the original recipe calls for, it just depends on whether I think of it or not.

That's what it looked like all mixed up. We were going to barbecue the burgers but it was too windy for my husband to be able to light the barbecue so into the frying pan they went. I had forgotten how windy it is living in the country after living in the city for a few years!

We can usually get five good sized patties out of one recipe however you can always double it if you need to feed more people. 

If I have to cook our turkey burgers on the stove, I usually cook them on medium high heat for about 7 or so minutes on each side. I usually flip them a few times until they get the nice golden color like in the picture above. So yeah, I would estimate about 7 minutes each side.
Another thing I love to have with turkey burgers is guacamole which I use as a spread on the burger. I also add different things to guacamole depending on my mood but for this version it's very, VERY simple. Avocados and lime juice and salt to taste.

I cut my avocados in half, take the pit out and then cut in a criss cross pattern while still in the flesh, then I scoop it out into a bowl with a spoon. Having it cut up already makes for easy mashing.

And there it is. My best friend was telling me this weekend that leaving the pits in the bowl of guacamole will prevent the guacamole from turning brown. No kidding! I usually just added a lot of citrus to it to make it not turn brown so quickly, but I didn't think that could ever be avoided as just like an apple or a potato, if you leave it out in the open, the oxygen will make it turn brown. She heard this at a Mexican restaurant she went to recently as they left the pits in the bowl there and she had wondered why. So I looked it up as I was writing this and it turns out it only prevents the guacamole (or mashed avocados) that it is in direct contact with from turning brown. If the pit is touching it there is no oxygen getting at it therefore keeping the avocados a nice shade of green. There we have it, myth busted.
ANYway, here's the finished product of my dinner...

Not the best picture I know. I also really need a decent camera but since my husband and I just bought a house that needs lots of yard work my iPhone will just have to do for now. I'll have to Instagram this picture to see if I can make it brighter at some point. Sorry, sidebar. I served the turkey burger on a multi-grain flat bread thing that I got from Costco and some baby greens on the side as well as in the burger. Pretty good I'd say and it was quick. Great for a weeknight meal.
That's it for now!

xoxo
-A

Cooking Lesson with Jon!

Stuffed Feta and Roasted Tomato Chicken Breasts, Wild Rice, Salad and Garlic Toast

Okay I'm a little obsessed with blogging right now only because I've actually made some really great food lately that I want to share. Plus I never have time to blog during the week so multiple posts on weekends may be a frequent occurrence. Anyway, this past Wednesday I went over to my cousin Jon's new house and taught him how to make an awesome dinner. It's super easy and very tasty. Here's the recipe we adapted it from (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/feta-and-sun-dried-tomato-stuffed-chicken/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=feta%20sundried%20tomato%20chicken%20breasts&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page) however we did change a few things up, partly because we couldn't find the exact ingredients the recipe called for and because we wanted to make six chicken breasts as opposed to two. Here's our version:
6 chicken breasts
Juice from a whole lemon
3-4 tablespoons Greek seasoning
Zest from a whole lemon
100 grams feta cheese, crumbled (or half of a 200g container)
1/2 cup Roasted tomatoes (we couldn't find a jar of sun-dried tomatoes ANYWHERE at Sobey's so we had to improvise thanks to their olive bar).
1 tablespoon of the oil from the tomatoes.

I prepped the chicken breasts for Jon between sheets of plastic wrap and he pounded them nice and thin, about half an inch thick I would guess.

 While Jon was prepping the chicken breasts, I made the filling for them. I would guess that we ended up with 1.5ish cups of filling.

I would definitely add olives to this mixture next time. Olives make everything better. I would also maybe add something green, maybe parsley? Just for a nice bit of color. We made the marinade for the chicken (lemon juice, olive oil, lemon zest and Greek seasoning) and let the chicken breasts marinate for maybe 20 minutes. The recipe calls for longer time which I would do the next time, we were just antsy to get these things made!
Ready to go into the oven. I made one and Jon made the rest! I couldn't be more proud. We just added some filling to the middle of the chicken breast, folded them in half and secured with toothpicks.

Finished product. Oh boy were they tasty (I don't like the word yummy so you probably won't ever see it on this blog). The only thing I don't like about making stuffed chicken breasts of any sort is that you can't really brown them before you bake them to get that nice golden color so they end up looking a little colorless. Good thing the filling was so colorful.

The end result. Stuffed chicken breast, Uncle Ben's wild rice (yes again! It's that good), salad and garlic toast. All easy enough for my cousin Jonny to make on his own!
 
I still have so much I want to post, hopefully I'll get another one done this weekend, if not, stay tuned next week for more food talk!

- A

Mother's Day Dinner Continued... 

Barbecued Salmon, Wild Rice, Spinach Salad with Candied Almonds

So we didn't only eat Red Velvet Cheesecake on Mother's Day. I know, crazy right? My dad and I came up with a lovely meal of barbecued salmon, rice, and salad. If there's one thing that you should know about me it's that I RARELY make food out of a package box. There are very few exceptions and one of them is Uncle Ben's wild rice. Oh my word is that stuff good. Anyway, here's some pictures of the rest of our Mother's day meal....

The mid-afternoon drink. Gin and tonic. My mom cut slices of lemons and limes and then cut those into wedges and chucked them in the cup. My favorite.

Candied almonds I made for the salad. It was so easy even my dad was surprised. He kept saying, "really? that's it?" So here's my recipe: Sugar and nuts (whatever kind you want, I've done this with pecans and walnuts as well). That's it. I put the nuts in a small frying pan and pour the sugar over top. For about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of nuts I would use about 4 tablespoons of sugar. You're going to heat it up so that the sugar melts so try to envision how much you want the nuts to be coated when it's all done. Start heating up the nuts and sugar and stir it constantly. You really want to watch it as once the sugar starts melting it really gets going and there is a fine line between a nice caramel and burnt sugar. Once the sugar is all melted and the nuts are coated take it off heat immediately and put onto a plate/cookie sheet in as thin a layer as possible and let the nuts cool off completely. They may be stuck together in big clumps but once they're cooled you'll be able to separate them easily.

For the salmon marinade I used my mom's recipe and I'll try to remember the ingredients and amounts. My mom and I have similar cooking methods in that we just kind of throw stuff together. It may not be exactly the same each time but that's okay.
Salmon marinade:
      1/2 cup brown sugar
      4 tablespoons lemon juice
      8 tablespoons soy sauce
      4 green onions, chopped
      little bit of salt and pepper, to taste

I did learn quite a bit about cooking from my mom but I have also learned a lot from my dad and this past weekend he taught me how to properly barbecue salmon. I've always been afraid of that as fish falls apart so easy but the trick is to use a lot of sugar in the marinade so that it gets a nice crust on the barbecue. Huh. Who woulda thunk it was that easy?

In progress. Dad also slightly angled the salmon after cooking it for a few minutes so it would get a nice criss cross grill mark. Salmon is also something you don't want to leave alone, especially on a bbq as it doesn't take long to cook! Maybe 6-7 minutes per side, if that. Once the fish starts to flake easily, you know it's done.

Spinach and strawberry salad with feta cheese and candied almonds.

Finished meal. Barbecued salmon, Uncle Ben's wild rice, Spinach Salad and a cucumber dill sauce for the salmon. Also, I love white dishes.

Next time on Food Talk at Five, cooking dinner with my cousin Jon!

- A

Red Velvet Cheesecake

Last week sometime as my dad and I were planning the meal we would make for my mum on mother's day, I had a chat with my mum and asked her what kind of fabulous dessert she would like to have. She was just in California and though she didn't go to The Cheesecake Factory, she heard about this red velvet cheesecake they have there, so that's what she asked for. Ask and you shall receive. I got to it looking for recipes online for a red velvet cheesecake and basically all of the recipes I came across used the same method - make a red velvet cake, make a cheesecake, cut them in half and layer them. Sounds simple enough. The recipe I decided on was one I found at changeabletable.com (here's the link: http://changeabletable.com/Changeable_Table/Full_House%3A_Cooking_for_large_families/Entries/2009/12/6_Red_Velvet_Cheesecake.html). I followed the directions pretty much exactly. The one thing I would do differently though is once I have the cake layers on top of each other, I would do a crumb coat with the icing, let that sit in the fridge for a while so it sets and then do another thick layer of icing. That way the crumbs won't get mixed up in the outer layer of icing and the icing would actually stay on the cake. My kitchen was warm so as a result so was my icing which made the icing slide off the cake in some places. Anyway, here are some pictures of the process:

That color just blows my mind.

Finished red velvet cake. I didn't get a picture of my finished cheesecake (it didn't look quite as pretty). Another thing I would do differently is after I make the cheesecake, stick it in the freezer and then warm up a knife under warm water and cut through the middle. I used a serrated knife and it ended up kind of tearing up the top layer of my cheesecake. So, that layer went in the middle!

Action shot of icing being made. I made the two cakes the day before and the next day I assembled it and made the icing. Also, have I mentioned I love parchment paper? Because I really love parchment paper.

Layered cake, before the icing.

Finished product. Not quite as pretty as I imagined it would be, but pretty solid for a first effort! I added white chocolate shavings to the top and sides  as well once it was done.

I just love the way that looks.

Minus the crumbs in the icing, I think it looks pretty good. The consensus was that it tasted pretty good as well. There is definitely some room for improvement so someone else requesting this cake would only give me the chance to perfect it!

Well, there are more pictures of food I'd love to post from this weekend but this girl needs to make her husband a lunch and head to bed! Nighty Night.