Chocolate- Peanut Butter Banana Bites

Kimberly,

As you've made clear in previous posts, I am very lazy. I like to make good tasting things with little effort and time. Also, because of sophomore 20, I am trying to eat better. In order to still have desert, I have gotten a little creative. Last night I made chocolate-peanut butter frozen banana bites. Putting them in the freezer makes the banana have a ice cream texture. It's delicious.

To make these, all you need is:
2 bananas
about 4.3 oz. of chocolate (I used 74% dark chocolate)
about 2 scoops of creamy peanut butter
small handful of chopped nuts or coconut (I put almonds in a food processor)

I'm sure you could wing the recipe and be fine but I'll tell you what I did so other people can make these. First I cut up the bananas. I cut each one into about 8 pieces. I melted all the chocolate on the stove over low to medium heat and then stirred in the peanut butter. We only had crunchy peanut butter so I have to also put this in the food processor. This is the only valid reason to choose creamy peanut butter over crunchy. Have your topping ready in a small bowl and a pan laid out near your wonderful smelling mess. Now you can roll each piece of banana in the chocolate- peanut butter mix using your hands. It will get messy, but it's the best way to cover them and to have chocolate fingers for later. Put the piece on the tray and sprinkle with your nuts/ coconut. After you finish all the pieces, put them in the freezer. I ate one of the warm ones and it was delicious. However, it's worth waiting for the bananas to freeze over night. I brought these to work, and they were consumed immediately.

Can I please buy you a hand held mixer as an early birthday present? I've mixed by hand and I never want to do it again. Unless you are going for very toned arms, let me get it when you come down. I can't wait to see you!

Catherine

Cherry-Almond Vanilla Cupcakes

Catherine,

You've had these before, but our internet friends need to be taught about these wonderfully majestic cupcakes. (Thanks to other Catherine for giving me this recipe.) Honestly, I follow this recipe exactly. I don't buy buttermilk; I take their advice: add 2 tsp vinegar to measuring cup and fill it up to 3/4 cup with milk. Now you probably want to know how I managed to make this recipe more difficult than it had to be (it happens every time). So, I don't have a mixer. No hand mixer and no stand mixer, so I tried to mix everything with a whisk. Don't try to mix this stuff by hand because it's a pain. If you want to make them for R, just do it at Dad's house and use the good mixer. 

I made these for my lab-mates because tomorrow is my last day of my six month stint there. It's been a wonderful experience, and they deserved a treat (in the very least). After all, food is the easiest way to convey any positive emotion.

See you soon and bon appétit!

Healthy Fish and Chips and How to Roast Stuff

Catherine,

You know when you feel lazy and you don't want to cook and you don't want to spend money and you don't want to clean AND (you picky pain) you want healthy food? My answer to this complicated conundrum: roasted vegetables! Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil, wash your favorite fresh veggie of the moment (drain), chop, throw on the baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, throw on some salt and pepper, toss it all, and bake at 400 F for 15-20 minutes. Your veggies will come out cooked, but not mushy; and your pan will come out clean (throw that foil away and put that sucker up!). I've tried this with squash and zucchini, green beans, and broccoli, all to great success. Watch out though, because the "leaves" on the "tree" of broccoli do get a little crunchy, but I'm okay with that.  Another healthy option: roasted fish! We bought this big bag of frozen tilapia (you can probably find it at Sam's for cheap), and you can do anything with it. Pick a seasoning (or two or five or Google ideas), foil a baking sheet, dry fish off, rub fish all over with a bit olive oil, put on pan, and sprinkle on the seasonings. Bake at 400 F for about 10-12 minutes. Now for the... COMBO MOVE. Start your roasted veggies and 10 minutes into the roasting, pull them out of the oven and put the fish down next to them. Pop it all back into the oven for 10ish more minutes. Now celebrate! You have fast, healthy food with virtually no clean up.

But, Catherine, this post isn't actually about roasted fish and veggies. It's about fish and chips. I used a combination of this Panko crusted tilapia recipe and this potato wedges recipe. I cut the tilapia recipe down to two servings and kept the potatoes plainer than suggested because my fish had lots of seasoning. I also didn't have Old Bay seasoning, so I used a generic Cajun mix in its place. The fish isn't fried, it's roasted along side the potatoes and Panko crumbs are used to add the crispy texture. Panko is a light and crisp Japanese bread crumb that goes equally well with chicken or vegetables (a certain Uncle of ours on the coast uses it often). Below is my method of madness... (Word of warning: I just wildly sprinkle a lot of seasonings on when I cook, so use your best judgement. Just remember, you can add more seasoning later, but it's hard to take it off.)

(Sorry, no picture. We ate it all.)

Panko-Crusted Tilapia and Potato Wedges

2 or 3 russet potatoes, each scrubbed and cut into 12 wedges
some olive oil
salt, pepper, and paprika to taste
2 tilapia fillets, fully defrosted
1 Tbs butter
5 drops lemon juice
1/3 cup Panko bread crumbs
scant 1/2 tsp Cajun seasoning
dash or two of garlic powder

1. Preheat oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with foil.
2. Place cut potato wedges in a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, add salt, pepper, and paprika, and toss to coat.
3. Spread potato wedges out on the baking sheet (leaving some free space on one end of sheet) skin down and cook for 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, melt butter in a bowl and add lemon juice. In a separate bowl, combine Panko, Cajun seasoning, and garlic powder.
5. After the potatoes have cooked 20 minutes, pull them out of the oven. Dry tilapia off, dip in butter mixture and then the dredge in bread crumbs. Place on baking sheet next to the potatoes, cover with excess bread crumb mixture, then bake for 10-12 minutes. Fish is done when it flakes when you pull at an edge with a fork.

Tips

- Pull any frozen meat or fish out of the freezer then night before you cook and place it in the refrigerator. This is the safest way to defrost anything that might spoil easily. Leaving meat or fish out on the counter or in a bath of warm water encourages bacterial growth.

- You can make your potato wedges look/taste fancier by tossing them with dried parsley and grated Parmesan cheese. Similarly, serve your fish with lemon wedges or slices for some added fancy.

- The cooking time for the potatoes is variable on how thickly you cut the wedges. My wedges didn't come out super crispy. Next time I'll cook them for 30 minutes before adding fish to the baking sheet.

- Feed this to dad.

- I sauteed some spinach on the stove-top to go with this. That's also super easy to do. Heat up olive oil in a pan over medium-high. Once hot, add a huge pile of spinach and stir constantly until the leaves are wilted. Feel free to sprinkle with salt, pepper, garlic salt, or whatever suits your fancy.

Spinach and Roasted Red Pepper Lasagna

Catherine,

Do you remember that super awesome lasagna we had in Montana? Well, I gave it a go today. I can never make something exactly to the recipe; I end up accidentally omitting an ingredient, adding extra ingredients, or swapping one out for another. This was no different today.

The lasagna I made is a combination of this lasagna recipe and this roasted red pepper recipe. First, what I screwed up and a tip. I forgot to put an egg in my cottage cheese layer. You really shouldn't skip this because it's the binder for the layer; I don't think the accidental omission changed the taste much - just the  cutability. Secondly, I didn't screw up the noodles per se, but I left them in the cooking water after they reached "al dente". They became a sticky mess, and I managed to lightly scald my fingers trying to separate them. Mom has a method to fix this (that I forgot about until I was elbow deep in noodles): add an extra half cup of red sauce so that the noodles can rehydrate while the dish bakes. This works quite well and eliminates a pot to clean, achy fingers, and the frustration of having a noodle beat you at your own game.  Secondly, we had two types of "Italian blends" of shredded cheese. The recipe calls just for Romano, mozzarella, and Parmesan, but who cares. Also, I didn't really measure the cheese super well while layering... I just sprinkled some and kept going.

I divided up separate times that you'll use an ingredient in the list because I have a tendency to throw everything in without looking at when I should do it....

Spinach and Roasted Red Pepper Lasagna

1 red bell pepper
1/2 tsp olive oil
12 lasagna noodles
2 Tbs olive oil
8 oz container sliced mushrooms
1 1/2 c onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, crushed, peeled, and minced
2 c fresh spinach, roughly chopped
3 c cottage cheese (equals one 24 oz container)
2/3 c Parmesan, grated
1 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp dried basil (I used 20 leaves of fresh basil, chopped)
1 egg
3 c mozzarella, shredded
3 c pasta sauce (this is without the extra half cup if you want to use dry noodles)
1 c Parmesan, grated


1) Preheat oven to 500 F.

2) Line baking sheet with foil. Wash bell pepper, dry, stab once with a fork, and cover in olive oil. Bake for 30 minutes, turning once half way through.

3) Remove pepper from oven and seal the foil into a pouch and let sit for 30 minutes. Then peel off charred skin, cut in half, remove seeds and stem, then roughly chop. Set aside.

4) Lower oven temperature to 350 F.

5) Option one: cook noodles according to package directions until al dente. Option two: Don't cook noodles, but don't forget to add an extra 1/2 cup sauce when layering the lasagna.

6) Heat olive oil in 10-12 inch pan over medium high heat. Once the skillet is hot, throw in the mushrooms, onion, and garlic. Cook until onion and mushroom have softened. Add the spinach and cook until wilted. Remove from heat. Stir in roasted red pepper. Drain any excess liquid.

7) Combine cottage cheese, Parmesan, salt, oregano, pepper, basil, and egg in a bowl. Stir in sauteed vegetables and stir well.

8) Layer into a greased 9 x 11 in Pyrex pan: (some red sauce first if you're not boiling the noodles) 4 noodles, 1/3 of cottage cheese mixture, 1 cup mozzarella, 1/3 cup Parmesan, and 1 cup pasta sauce (+ 1/3 cup if doing the no boil method). Repeat twice. Sprinkle any leftover Parmesan on top.

9) Cover pan with foil (seal really really well if you're doing no boil method) and bake 60 minutes. (I like to have foil under the pan in case anything boils out.) Take foil off and bake 10 more minutes or until cheese is melted. Let sit 15 minutes before serving.

Tips

It's rather important to wait until your sauteing oil is hot before adding the vegetables. If it's not, they'll just absorb the oil and won't saute up nicely. Meat also cooks up better in oil if you wait until it's hot. Actually, all things cook better in hot oil, so be patient and let it happen.

I used cottage cheese instead of ricotta cheese because it's cheaper. That's another Mom trick for ya.

"2 cups spinach, roughly chopped" was measured by semi-packing spinach into the measuring cup. Next time I'll use 4 cups for sure because it wilts down to such a small amount (and I actually like the taste of spinach). Also, I used curly spinach and removed the main stem....

When cutting herbs, like basil, there's a nice technique to make your life easier. Instead of painfully describing the process to you,  here's a quick video.

Next time, I'll probably add 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes for an added kick.

(Update: Supposedly, the add-an-extra-1/2 cup-pasta-sauce method wasn't the best? Needs some tweaking...)

A bit of background.

I moved out of state for graduate school, and younger sister stayed behind to do college stuff. So naturally, (for the first time ever?) we actually miss each other. What you'll find here is an exchange of food-stuff and craft-stuff: the things that keep us sane and our bellies happy.