Ginger Flair: food

Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

September 25, 2012

Recipe: Taco Pasta

Hola! So last night I made this taco pasta from Plain Chicken - just with a few changes. Basically, I was trying to make it healthier/less calories, and well whatever I figured I'd share what I did. The mister gave it two thumbs up [which is rare from him on pasta/hamburger helper like dishes]!

A maybe healthier Taco Pasta, but maybe not ha!

1 lb ground turkey
8 oz pasta shells
1 green onion, chopped (or more depending on your tastes!)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
1 cup of salsa (use a bean one for more protein!)
1 packet low sodium taco seasoning (really, you could probably get buy on half a packet!)
3 oz of fat free cream cheese (or neufchatel cheese, both have less cals than regular!)
1/2 cup of light sour cream
Shredded cheese for topping (even better would be to skip this, but I still used it!)

1. Get your water boiling and cook pasta. When you drain it, save 1/4 cup of the pasta water.
2. While pasta is going brown your turkey.
3. Once the turkey is nearly done add your onion. Cook meat through, add the garlic and saute.
4. Next, mix in the salsa and the taco seasoning. Simmer for about 5 min.
5. Now mix in your cream cheese, sour cream, pasta and pasta water. Keep stirring until the cream cheese is melted and the sauce is well blended.

Top with a bit of shredded cheese and some salsa if desired. Serve and enjoy! :)

September 10, 2012

Recipe: Strawberry Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Today I'm going to share a recipe with you, but it's not just any recipe - it's a family recipe! I have been compiling recipes to make a Family Cookbook and I decided to make a couple of them and get some yummy photos for the book. As far as I know this isn't some *secret* recipe (it appears pretty standard, but is fantastic), so I figure I'd share it with you.

Strawberry Rhubarb Coffee Cake

You Need:

For the filling...

3 cups of rhubarb (I used frozen, but def use fresh if you have it!)

16 oz. frozen strawberries, thawed

2 Tbsp. of lemon juice

1 cup of sugar

1/3 cup of corn starch

For the cake...

3 cups of flour

1 cup of sugar

1 tsp. of baking powder

1 tsp. of baking soda

1 cup of butter

1 cup of buttermilk

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

For crumb mix

3/4 cup of sugar

1/2 cup of flour

1/4 cup of butter

You Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350F & grease a 9x13 pan.

2. Cook the fruit in a pot, covered for 5 min. Then add lemon juice.

3. In a separate bowl mix sugar and cornstarch together. Add to fruit mixture.

4. Cook 3-5 minutes more until sauce is thick, let it cool.

5. Start the cake batter, mix all the dry ingredients together then cut in the butter.

6. Beat the milk, eggs and vanilla together. Add to the dry mixture, stir to moisten.

7. Spread 1/2 of batter into the pan and then spread cooled filling over batter. Spoon the remaining batter in small mounds over the filling.

8. Combine crumb mixture until fine and sprinkle on top.

9. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.

....and enjoy with a hot cup of coffee (or something else if you don't like coffee, ha)!

September 6, 2012

Holiday Weekend...in photos! :)

Oh. my. gosh.

Where did all my free time go? Out the window apparently. Anyway, I had a crazy, busy, fun Labor Day weekend, did you? We headed up to Chicago for the Iowa/NIU game and it was AWESOME. I’m obviously a Hawkeyes fan. :) Okay, so photos!

This hotel was way too fancy for us....tv in the bathroom mirror, lol.

We rented bikes and mine was named Kyle.

Brian’s was named Eliza!

view from hotel room!

just a walk to dinner

Brian tried the oysters, I did not...I think they look like giant boogers. :P

This on the other hand was amazing!

I’m not sure when a bucket of booze is a good idea, but definitely not the night before a busy day!

Brian’s niece is a freshman and made the Hawkeye Marching Band!

train ride home

Meet Mimi. I fed her. Yea, no big deal. HA, yea right! Lemme tell you, THAT was awesome! :)

my little bro’s bday dinner, ha! he turned 18!!

Hope you all had a great holiday weekend as well!

xo, kassie

March 26, 2012

Hunger Games Date Night :)

I'm sure by now you've at least heard of The Hunger Games. It's a great book and has now been made into a movie. I enjoyed the movie, but I will say the book was definitely better. That's usually how it goes. :) Anyway, okay, remember before how I posted on a Pizzeria date night...well after that Brian did a Medieval date night {it was awesome!}, so it was back to me. Since we were going to see The Hunger Games movie on Friday, I thought...why not make it our themed date night for the month! Yes, yes, I am a huge nerd, but it was fun and the food turned out awesome! :)

Obviously, decorations are an important part of our themed date nights. :P A large part of the Hunger Games takes place in the forest, so I tried to recreate that...in a sort of abstract way.

The single white rose is symbolic for one of the characters, President Snow.

The main character, Katniss Everdeen, sort of gets nick-named "The Girl On Fire"...hence my light decoration. :)

Next, the food! Each item was chosen specifically and directly relates to the book. I got these recipes from other bloggers and websites, so click the links for the recipes!

The Appetizers

Prim's Basil & Goat Cheese wraps that she left for Katniss before the Reaping.

Peeta's {burnt} Raisin & Nut bread that he gave to Katniss when they were younger and her family was starving.

Drink Special

The Cinna - This is not a drink but rather based on a character. It has vodka, balsamic vinegar, sugar and strawberries. Sounds weird, but I liked it! Brian did not...lol.

Main Course

Katniss' lunch with Cinna - Chicken in orange sauce, over rice. Pea's and onions and biscuits {that are supposed to be flower shaped, but I wasn't that ambitious!}

Dessert

Last but not least, Peeta's Apple & Goat Cheese Tart. I've never had a tart before, but this thing is delish!! I'll definitely be making this again!

After all this crazy goodness we headed to the movie,which again I will say was good not great. I had really high expectations, which was silly. I just felt the movie was geared toward the teenie boppers, who by the way would not shut the heck up during the movie. Grr. Anyway, I still think the movie is good enough to warrant a theater viewing!

Have a good Monday!

February 17, 2012

Recipe: Turkey Cucumber Rollups

I really need to be better about sharing my cooking and crafting adventures. Sometimes I just forget to take pictures, or I remember the pictures, but never get around to posting them! This is a super easy recipe that I found from Rachel Ray. <--so yea, this her genius, not mine. It’s so simple, but so yummy. AND HEALTHY.

You Need:

Tortillas {I get the La Tortilla High Fiber kind}

Cream Cheese, low fat {or get the neufatel cheese like me!}

Cucumber

Sliced Turkey

You Do:

1. Chop up your cucumber. How small is up to you. I chopped up half a large cucumber and it made 5 tortillas.

2. Mix the chopped cucumber and cream cheese together. I used about 4 oz of the cheese, but the amounts on the recipe are obviously forgiving. Just use as much or as little cucumber and/or cheese to get the consistency and taste to your liking.

3. Spread cucumber cheese mixture onto a tortilla, use about a spoonful or 2.

4. Layer the turkey on top of it all and then roll it up!

Super easy and super yummy! My favorite kind of recipe.

P.s. These are super quick to make and easy for lunch! In fact, I made, took photos and ate these, all over my lunch break! :D

February 1, 2012

Recipe: Baked Potato Soup {freezer meal}

Baked Potato Soup

{freezer meal!}

Image Source

{I accidentally deleted my photos...and ate the soup.}

What you need:

3-4 large baked potatoes

1.5 Tbs butter

2 cloves of garlic, minced

¼ cup of celery, diced

1.5 Tbs flour

1 cup low sodium chicken stock

2 cups skim milk

Dash of Pepper

Bacon Bits

Shredded Cheese

What you do:

1. Peel and chop up potatoes.

2. In a large saucepan heat butter over medium heat until melted. Add celery and garlic to the saucepan and saute for about 3 minutes. Lower the heat so you don’t brown your veggies!

3. Add flour to the pan and stir in and cook for 2 minutes. Make sure to scrape the pan and get any of the mixture that may have settled.

4. Whisk in the stock and add diced potatoes

5. Then slowly add the milk. Once milk is added do not boil! Stir occasionally.

6. Cook soup over medium/low heat for 20 minutes.

At this point you can either eat your soup or freeze it. Or do what I did, eat one bowl and freeze the rest. This recipe should make about 7-8 servings. I freeze mine in single serving containers, so the in the morning I put it in the fridge and it’s thawed out for lunch. So easy, and it’s only 259 calories!

Oh! When you do eat it...sprinkle on some bacon bits, cheese and pepper to taste! Sooo good!

xoxo, Kassie

January 17, 2012

Pizzeria Date Night

Hola blog world! I feel like I sort of dropped off the blogosphere planet the last few days! I had yesterday off {government job perk!} and it felt like it was still the weekend, so I completely forgot to blog. I remembered about 9 pm, but then I decided it could wait!

Anyway, this weekend Brian and I started a new thing...date night! I wasn’t planning on it becoming a “thing”, but we decided we would do a special date night in once a month and take turns with the hosting responsibilities. I thought I'd share in case anyone was looking for a cute and simple date idea, I know I always am!

We had talked about making our own pizza before, so I decided to do a Pizzeria Date Night! Here are some yummy pictures from the evening, I unfortunately didn’t get pictures of the pizza. We were just having too much fun and I forgot! He basically made a Supreme pizza on his half and I made a chicken and broccoli alfredo pizza, very good!

Ambiance is everything! I even made us a little sign! lol Don’t forget music too! I opened Pandora and played a station based on “That’s Amore” by Dean Martin, it was perfect pizzeria music!

This is the most amazing garlic bread ever! I just bought a tube of Pilbury’s Italian bread, cooked it for half of the time {about 15-20 min}, then I pulled it out of the oven to cool. While it’s cooling, brush on a homemade garlic oil/butter {just melted butter, a bit of oil, italian seasonings, and a lot of minced garlic}. Once it’s cooled, slice into the bread and stuff the slices with more of the garlic butter and lots of cheese, we used mozzarella and parmesan. Then bake it for the rest of the time. It was AMAZING!

Like I said, I don’t have a final picture, but here are all our fixin’s! We had alfredo and regular sauce as well as two different meats, cheeses and lots of veggies! We used pizza crust out of a tube and brushed it with the left over garlic butter, again so yummy!

I kind of forgot dessert until the last minute. Brian's favorite is tiramisu, but I just didn't have the time. So, instead I made this quick dessert based on tiramisu. In a bowl, crumble up some Nilla wafers, pour a little bit of coffee over them, top that with vanilla yogurt and some whipped creme, then sprinkle some cocoa powder over it. Top it off with a couple more Nilla wafers! I think it was pretty yummy, not really tiramisu, but still good. :)

All in all, Pizzeria Date Night was a major success! Brian was already planning for his turn...he mentioned something about a Medieval theme? Sounds like fun! :)

January 4, 2012

Recipes Online!

Sorry, I don’t have a recipe for you today! Mainly because I was out of town and haven’t had time to cook. I have a couple old recipes I thought about posting, but to be completely honest I couldn’t find the photos!

So, instead I thought I’d share some of my favorite recipe sites with you. They are quite popular sites, so you’ve probably heard of some of them, but I’ll share why I like them so much.

FoodFit.com

I just recently found this one while I was looking for a good “healthy” recipe site. The two sites below offer healthy recipes, but they don’t focus on it, this one does. It has plenty of recipes and lots of good tips on eating healthy. I also like the refine options on the Search bar.

Kraftfoods.com

Can’t really go wrong with Kraft, can you? This website has TONS of great recipes. It’s user friendly and offers a “Recipe Box” to members {it’s free!} to save your favorite recipes in. They also have this cool feature that allows you to search for recipes by certain ingredients you have on hand. I’m not going to lie, the amazingly yummy photos help make this one of my favorite sites. I also really love how they have themed pages or menus for special events and holidays. Great for throwing a party!

Allrecipes.com

This is probably my all time favorite recipe site. The only negative...there may be TOO many recipes, if that’s possible. You have endless options, literally. I also really enjoy reading the reviews and the custom version of recipes to see what others did to tweak it. The “recipe box” on this site is far superior to Kraft’s {sorry Kraft!}. It’s much easier to sort things and it allows you to add “web links” to recipes or articles on other sites. They have a free and a paid membership. I’m on the free and it’s fantastic, although the paid has some cool features {like a menu planner} that might be worth checking out!