Trying Something New for the Next 6 Weeks......

I haven't cooked anything worthy of taking photos of in a couple of days, but I just wanted to write about my plans for 6 weeks. I'm going to be trying a new eating plan that involves a lot of lean meats and vegetables. Therefore, I'm going to be using recipes from those food groups mainly. I don't know how easy or hard it will be, but I know I LOVE mashed potatoes and rice so I hope I get to eat at least a little of that!

If I get some good results physically, I may even post some before and after photos! LOL

My Sweetie made burgers

Well this could be considered a little gourmet, maybe?

This is my first time eating a burger with anything other than lettuce, tomato, pickle and ketchup. These are turkey burgers pre-seasoned with diced tomato, bell pepper, and cheese from Jennie O.I'm not sure of my boyfriend's recipe, but I had spinach and melted pepper jack on my burger and it was too good! He had a spinach, ricotta cheese, and chopped onion mix, along with some fresh tomatoes and shredded cheese. The first picture is mine. The second is his plate.

Marinated Shrimp!!! So good!

I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com. It's called Grilled Marinated Shrimp. I don't have a true grill so I used an iron griddle. So, technically I used the marinade from this recipe but I couldn't follow the preparation instructions.......I really wanted to use my skewers because I have a huge pack of them that I'm just itching to use somewhere. Oh well! I followed instruction #1 and #3 from this recipe and the taste was unbelievable. I served it with rice and grilled yellow squash. Next time I may do more shrimp because it was all gone after dinner!

I finally purchased a fryer..............

....and I fried some chicken. I prefer baked chicken over fried, but I had been craving fried chicken alll last week so I caved in and bought a small fryer. It was only $26 + tax at Target.

I really didn't measure anything. I just combined some flour and seasonings and coated my cleaned chicken with it; coated with an egg and water mixture next; and, then coated with plain flour.

I then, filled the fryer with canola oil, turned the fryer up to about 360 degrees and let the oil heat up. I placed about 3 at a time in the oil and let it fry for about 20 minutes. Gosh, it came out goooooooood and flavorful! Oh yeah, I brined the chicken for about an hour before I began frying it. Finger-lickin' good, I tell ya!

One of my favorite desserts................

I really really "heart" that Maple Butter Blondie from Applebee's. It's so warm, light, and yummy with the butter sauce and vanilla ice cream. So instead of having to run out to Applebee's just to get this dessert, I decided to try my hand at baking it. The taste was right on the money. It tasted amazing, but there are a few adjustments I like to play around with on this recipe.

I used:
Blondie
1 cup Flour, 1 cup
1 tsp Baking powder
¼ tsp Salt
½ cup Sweet butter, softened
½ cup Granulated sugar, 1/2 cup
2/3 cup Packed light brown sugar, 2/3 cup
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 cup walnuts

Maple Butter Sauce
3/4 maple syrup (the real stuff, not the pancake syrup)
1/2 melted butter
3/4 brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla extract to the butter cream. Gradually add flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Stir in nuts.

Spread batter evenly into greased pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out "almost" clean. Let it cool completely

For Maple Butter Sauce, melt butter and syrup. Add brown sugar, stirring until dissolved.



NEXT TIME I MAY TRY:
The blondie at Applebee's is slightly more cakelike than the ones I made. I think that requires a little more egg in the batter. Also, I didn't use any baking soda and I think perhaps that helps it rise a little more.

My blondie is actually more of a caramel color than "blonde" so I'll try and work with the brown sugar/white sugar measurements and see what I come up with.

And lastly, for some reason the maple butter sauce I made isn't that creamy white like Applebee's. I think some white ingredient needs to be added to it but I can't figure it out yet.

Banananana Puddin'!

So, I used the Not Yo Mama's Banana Pudding by Paula Deen a couple of years ago and it was wonderfully flavored! I got a taste for it the other day and so I made it again. I went to the grocery store and bought all my ingredients, all the while getting very excited about my banana dessert I would soon be devouring. Paula uses chessmen cookies, but I just use the standard Nilla cookies. Do you know, when the cashier was ringing up my groceries, he held up my cookies and exclaimed, "Is somebody making banana pudding?"

I said, "Yep, i am!!"

And then he said, "What kind of banana pudding are you making?? Why do you have this instant pudding stuff? You supposed to make it from scratch like grandmaw used to make it."

Well at first I was about to shy away because honestly I was thinking in my head: 'i don't know how to make it from scratch'. LOL but then I decided to stand my ground because I remembered how well received my banana pudding was when I made it a few years ago. I told him that the pudding I was gonna make is the new age pudding and that it's OFF THE HOOK, FANTABULOUS! lol.

He laughed and he said he would take my word for it. Hee, hee. Well I followed Paula's recipe to the tee, the only thing I changed was that I used Nilla cookies. Someone I spoke to that also uses this recipe, has said that she's tried it with Chocolate chessman cookies (mmmmm!) and it was delicious! Anyway, here are some snap shots of my dessert! Enjoy!