Egg Salad

I think it may be a warm weather thing. My husband and I were having a cup of coffee on Saturday at a local bakery/sandwich shoppe and on each of the tables was a little sign announcing their new springtime sandwich: Egg Salad. I love egg salad. My brother and I used to have egg salad all the time when we were little. So that little sign made me hungry for my own egg salad and that is what we had for dinner last night with some vegetables.

Egg Salad



















6 eggs
2 tbsp green olives, chopped
1 tbsp chives, finely chopped
1 tbsp dijon mustard
3 tbsp fat free mayonnaise
salt and pepper to taste

Place eggs in a medium size pot and cover with 1 inch of water. Place on the stove and turn heat to high. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn down to a simmer and cook for 1 minute. Turn off heat and cover the pot and let sit for 12 minutes. Drain hot water from the pot and fill with cold water. Drain and then fill with cold water again. This just keeps the eggs from cooking longer.

Peel shells from the eggs and smash up the hard boiled eggs with a fork. Mix all other ingredients in and refrigerate until cold. Serve on two pieces of wheat bread and enjoy!

PS...I just wanted to wish my husband a very happy 2nd wedding anniversary!

Meatloaf

The whole concept of meatloaf is pretty baffling. You take ground meat, form it into a football, and serve in slices or in a sandwich. Now, many of my blogging friends are vegetarian, but if you are not and if you have family members who are not, I have a meatloaf recipe that is super good. It is the first meatloaf I have made that I actually liked. It's tender with lots of flavor.

Meatloaf


















1 lb ground meat
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 bell pepper, finely diced
1 piece of bread, torn into dime size pieces
1/4 c ketchup
1/4 c dijon mustard
2 eggs
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
2 tsp basil, chopped
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp red chili flakes
1/2 c powdered parmesan cheese
1/4 c milk
salt and pepper to taste
6 pc turkey pepperoni

Mix all ingredients except for the pepperoni together with a spoon, making sure everything is distributed evenly. Put mixture into a greased baking dish. With hands, shape mixture into a loaf or whatever shape you would like. Place 6 pieces of pepperoni on top of the mixture. Fill baking dish with water until it reaches about an inch from the bottom. Bake covered in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for two hours.

Corn Casserole

Corn has always been one of my favorite vegetables...or is it a grain? Anyways, this particular dish was something my mother made every single Thanksgiving. It is so easy to make, if you can find the ingredients. It is a comfort food for sure, however, I took the recipe and tried to make it as low in calories as possible. Hope you try this one, it's a family favorite!

Baked Corn Casserole



















14 oz can of whole kernel corn (don't drain)
14 oz can of creamed corn
1 c fat free sour cream
2 eggs, beaten
1 stick butter, melted (I used the new I Can't Believe It's Not Butter stick)
8.5 oz box of corn muffin mix (I used Jiffy)
1 tsp sugar (I used Splenda)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together and pour into 9" by 13" greased baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour.

Tried & Tasted - Banana Pudding

This month's Tried & Tasted event is being hosted by Vaishali of Holy Cow! We are cooking from a blog I have never been too before, and that simply is the genius of this event. It introduces all of us in the cooking blogsphere to something that we may not be familiar with. This month, we were asked to look through the hundreds of recipes at Susan's FatFree Vegan Kitchen. She has so many wonderful recipes that are figure friendly, vegan, and tasty! That is a combination you don't see too often :)

After spending about an hour cruising Susan's blog, I decided on a dessert that reminded me of childhood weekends spent at my grandmother's. Without fail, we would always be served pudding after dinners. The flavor changed, but they were always so good. So, I decided to give Susan's Southern-Style Banana Pudding a try. Not only was it pleasing to the eye, it tasted wonderful!


















Thank you Zlamushka for creating such a wonderful event, thank you Vaishali for hosting this month, and thank you Susan for a wonderful recipe that will be Tried and Tasted again and again!

Turkey Pepperoni & Veggie Pizza

Since being on a diet, the one food I have been craving is Pizza. So yesterday, my husband and I spent some time in the kitchen and cooked up a pizza together. Although we didn't make our own dough (we used store bought dough), it turned out great!

Turkey Pepperoni & Veggie Pizza


















1 frozen pizza dough ball
1 c pizza sauce
1/4 c maggi hot & sweet
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp red chili flakes
3 tbsp sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
turkey pepperoni
bell peppers, diced
jalapenos
1 c asiago cheese, grated
fresh basil, finely chopped

Spray frozen dough with non-stick spray, cover with paper towel and let thaw for 2 to 4 hours. Once thawed, roll out the dough to the desired size. Spray with cooking spray (or brush with oil) and cover with plastic wrap to let settle for 15 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Sprinkle oregano onto dough, and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and let sit 5 minutes.

Mix pizza sauce, maggi, sun dried tomatoes, garlic powder, and chili flakes together. Spread sauce on baked pizza shell, leaving an inch at the edges. Layer pepperoni on top of the sauce. Layer diced peppers and jalapenos on top of the pepperoni. Sprinkle the asiago cheese on top of the peppers, and then sprinkle the chopped basil on top of the cheese. Bake for another 10 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

PS...yesterday afternoon, I was out window shopping and ran across a gourmet dog store. They had the neatest cookies that were specifically for dogs. I bought Winston a piece of pizza so he wouldn't feel left out while we ate ours :)

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

I have been seeing that a lot of my blogging friends make homemade ice creams and yogurts and sorbets WITHOUT an ice cream maker. I was very intrigued by this process, and although it seemed like a labor of love, I wanted to try it. The other day, I ran across a blog that I hadn't been to in a long time: Deeba's Passionate About Baking. Deeba is a wonderful baker and cook and her most recent post is a frozen yogurt made with an Indian Berry. After looking through her site, I found a recipe for Strawberry Frozen Yogurt and thought I would give it a try.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt
Adapted from Passionate about Baking



















1 lb frozen strawberries
2/3 c. sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
1 c. fat free Greek yogurt

Place the frozen strawberries in a strainer and run warm water over them. Let sit for 5 minutes. Add sugar to the strawberries and mix well. Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes and then mash strawberries with a masher until a puree has formed. Add lime juice and yogurt and stir well until smooth.

Place in the freezer. Every 30 minutes, take the mixture out and stir it until smooth. Each time it will be a little firmer. I did this 4 times until it was completely set. I found that the creamier the yogurt (Greek yogurt is very thick), the creamier the strawberry frozen yogurt will be.

Reminiscing - Green Beans

Usually when grocery shopping, I am often the sucker who gets swayed by sale signs and beautiful displays. Yesterday, when walking into the produce section of the grocery store, I was greeted by a wonderful green bean display and before I knew it, I was grabbing handfuls of beans and shoving them into the produce bag.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a rural part of northeast Ohio. We lived on a farm and right next to my maternal grandmother and my aunt and uncle. With the three families living right in a row, we had a huge pasture in the back for our animals (horses, cows, pigs, goats, etc.) and we also shared a pretty big garden, I am guessing it was 50 feet by 50 feet. My uncle was the person who usually got things started with tilling the ground. Then we all would take turns planting. Even as a child, I remember sitting there watching my uncle turn the earth and helped him plant the rows of vegetables and fruits.

When the plants would grow, my brother and I would get a quarter for every bushel of strawberries and green beans we picked. I remember vividly that my grandmother, mother, my aunt, and I would be going through the green beans picking away, and once done, would meet up at my grandmother's picnic table where we would combine our beans into one giant bowl. We all would sit there and snip off the ends, break the beans in half and separate them into three bowls: one for us, one for grandma, and one for my aunt and uncle. So while I stood in my kitchen, snipping the ends off the green beans I had bought at the store, I enjoyed reminiscing back to those days when I was young and things seemed so perfect and simple. I miss those days. I realize that things change, people come into our lives and people go out of our lives. But no matter what, I feel very blessed to have had the childhood I did, the family that I had then and the one that have now, and all the wonderful memories that go into making a lifetime.

With that said, here is what happened to those green beans after we were done snipping them on my grandmother's picnic table:

Green Beans




















1-2 lbs green beans (fresh or frozen)
1 medium onion, diced
vegetable stock, approx 2 cans or 1 box
1 1/2 tbsp of ham bouillon (use vegetable bouillon for vegetarian option)
2 tbsp bacon bits (there are vegan alternatives out there for this)
2 tbsp slivered almonds
1 tbsp pepper

Combine onions and green beans into greased pot and turn stove to medium. Once you hear the onions start to sizzle, add vegetable stock. The stock should cover the vegetables. Add bouillon, bacon bits, almonds, and pepper and cook covered over medium heat until the beans become soft. This could take anywhere from 15-20 minutes. Add salt if necessary, but usually the bouillon takes care of the sodium.