Birthday Dinner

My fiancé’s birthday was earlier this month and to celebrate, I made him a special birthday dinner with dishes I knew he would love:

Bacon and Steak Spinach Salad
Whole Wheat Baguette
Fontina Mac and Cheese
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie a la Mode

I’ll give the recap on the main meal today and follow-up with a second post on the dessert tomorrow.

Since I was trying out some new recipes I wanted the sides to be fairly easy and simple. I bought the whole wheat baguette from the grocery store bakery and threw together a pretty easy salad. My fiancé is getting a little tired of my spinach obsession, so his salad was not entirely spinach; I mixed in some lettuce for his version. But I thought the spinach was a great complement to the steak so I didn’t take it out completely. I used leftover bacon from BLTs I made earlier in the week and I actually even took a shortcut on the steak.

I knew that I might run behind if I tried to make steak on top of everything else and since steak wasn’t the main focus I decided it would be okay to buy steak that was salad ready. I actually bought a steak burrito at Qdoba for lunch and asked for the steak on the side; already cooked and cut up, bueno! I put the steak in the fridge until that night and then when I was ready I warmed it up in the microwave and then sprinkled it onto the salads. It worked great and I’m so happy I decided to go that route.

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Bacon and Steak Spinach Salad

½ bag (approximately) ready to eat spinach
2 lettuce leaves (washed and torn into bite size pieces)
½ carrot (washed and peeled)
½ tomato
6 slices of cucumber
2 slices bacon
1 container of steak from a Qdoba burrito with steak on the side J
Salad dressing of your choice (I went with Creamy Balsamic Vinaigrette and my fiancé went with ranch).

Place the spinach and lettuce into two bowls.

Use a peeler to shave off long strips of carrot. Slice the tomato and cucumber into bit size pieces. Place the carrots, tomato and cucumber on top of the greens.

Break up the bacon into tiny pieces. Sprinkle bacon and steak over the tops of salad.

Serve with your choice of dressing.
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One of my fiancé’s favorites is mac and cheese, but I wanted to do something a little more special than the usual homemade mac and cheese recipe. I found the perfect solution on Annie’s Eats; Fontina Mac and Cheese. Annie’s family also loves mac and cheese very much so she’s always coming up with new ways to put a spin on the classic dish.

I love Annie’s Eats…it’s one of my favorite food blogs. I have a very long list of her recipes that I’m anxious to try. You definitely need to visit her site if you have not already, it’s great.

Click here for the link to her site.

Click here for the link to her Fontina Mac and Cheese recipe.

Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the Fontina Mac and Cheese plated, but Annie's web site has a gorgeous picture.

It turned out great. The only comment I would add is that the Fontina cheese is very soft which made grating it a little tricky…but that was likely due to my tiny little grater but next time I will probably stick it in the freezer for a bit before grating. It was well worth the effort though.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the star of the show…Strawberry Rhubarb Pie!

Dinner with a Tropical Twist

A while back I asked the fiancé to go through a few of my cookbooks and mark recipes that he thought sounded good. One of them was Mango Chipotle Pot Roast from Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Slow Cooker Recipes. It is a gluten-free recipe which would made it perfect for dinner Friday night since my parents were coming over.

I also remembered a recipe I’d wanted to try from an old Whole Foods magazine; Pan de Coco (Coconut Bread). I thought the coconut would go well with the mango and thus started a meal inspired by a semi-tropical theme.

Mandarin Orange Spinach Salad
Pan de Coco (Coconut Bread)
Mango Chipotle Pot Roast
Brown Rice (to go with the pot roast and because not everyone could have the rolls since they definitely were not gluten-free)
Hawaiian Crispies (for dessert)

Details, reviews, pictures, thoughts and recipes are listed below if any of the above menu items catch your interest.

Clearly I’m still infatuated with spinach, I’m not sure this would even qualify as a recipe since it’s so incredibly simple, but it was very good.

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Mandarin Orange Spinach Salad

Spinach
Mandarin oranges
Sliced almonds
Poppy seed dressing

Place spinach in bowl(s), top with mandarin oranges, sliced almonds and poppy seed dressing.
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Aside from the Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls, I’ve never made any type of bread/dinner roll. It actually wasn’t that hard at all. The majority of the time is spent waiting on the dough to rise. The rolls turned out very well. They didn’t taste as coconut-y as I thought they would, it was more a hint of coconut, they were still good though.

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Pan de Coco (Coconut Bread)

From Whole Foods magazine March/April 2009
The recipe is also online and can be found here: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/2253

I would note that I did two things different from the recipe. One, I used Light Coconut Milk; it worked fine, but I wonder if regular coconut milk would have provided a stronger coconut flavor to the rolls. Two, I used sweetened coconut because I couldn’t find unsweetened.
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The pot roast was pretty good and pretty simple since everything went into the crock pot in the morning and just cooked all day. I will say though, I’m not a fan of recipes that have you place hot vegetables and juices into the blender. As the recipe instructed, I covered the blender with a towel but it still exploded hot liquid all over my arm and the kitchen.

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Mango Chipotle Pot Roast

If you like slow cooker recipes, check out Sandra’s book.
Make according to recipe in book; serve with brown rice.
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Since everything else was a bit tropical I wanted to keep the theme going for dessert, so I went over to Tasty Kitchen and searched for some recipes. Actually, originally I was going to try to spice up the rice that went with the pot roast so I entered rice into the search field and Hawaiian Crispies was one of the results.

If you haven’t checked out Tasty Kitchen you definitely should, it’s a lot of fun. It’s not just an online resource with TONS of recipes, but it’s also a community of people that enjoy cooking and sharing. If you sign-up, let me know and I’ll add you to my friend list. I made a few minor adjustments to the recipe (noted below) and it turned out great; my mom LOVED them.

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Hawaiian Crispies

The recipe can be found here. Although, I did make a couple of changes to the version I made Friday night.

First, I halved the recipe. Second, I added a little bit of coconut milk in with the melted butter and marshmallow mixture, not a lot, I’d guess maybe about a teaspoon at most. Third, I didn’t cover the top completely with candy melts, I thought that might be a little too much sweetness, so I just drizzled some on top and then topped with shredded coconut.
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Hope you enjoy!

Spicy Spinach Scrambled Egg Wrap

Wednesday night I went into the kitchen with the intention of making an egg sandwich for dinner (my dad makes very good egg sandwiches, much better than mine). I planned to just put spinach on the sandwich, because as I mentioned, I'm currently obsessed.

As I was getting all the ingredients ready to go, I decided to try something a little different. Here's the result:

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Spicy Spinach Scrambled Egg Wrap

2 eggs
salt
pepper
packet of red pepper flakes (the small packets that come with pizza delivery)
low fat shredded cheese (a generous pinch or two)
handful of spinach
diced tomatoes

tortilla

In a small bowl combine eggs, salt and pepper to taste, and red pepper flakes and beat with a fork. Then mix in the shredded cheese and spinach. Place in a non-stick skillet and cook like plain scrambled eggs (the spinach will wilt down). Once cooked, place into tortilla, top with diced tomatoes and enjoy!

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Sorry, I didn't get a picture. But I promise it was good and fairly healthy. It could probably work as a breakfast option as well.

Spinach

I've been a little obsessed with spinach lately...I can't get enough and I've probably had spinach once a day (or at least once every two days) for the last couple of weeks.

I love strawberry spinach salad and make it at home fairly often (spinach, sliced strawberries, sliced almonds, poppyseed dressing, and you can add chicken if you want a heartier salad)...very yummy.

A few weeks ago I tried the spinach salad at Spicy Pickle. I LOVE Spicy Pickle, my favorite sandwich is the Roma, you have to try it! Anyway, their spinach salad consists of spinach, walnuts, diced green apples, blue cheese crumbles and apple cider vinaigrette. Also very yummy and I usually don't like blue cheese.

I've been getting spinach on sandwiches at Subway and putting it on sandwiches I make at home.

I even threw it into my dinner creation Wednesday night (more on that later) and asked for spinach in my pasta tonight at Macaroni Grill.

If you have any good spinach recipes, please let me know.

At least it's a healthy ;) Right?

Valentine's Day Dinner

It was a lovely Valentine’s Day.

Beautiful roses from my fiancé.

Every year my fiancé and I trade off who gets to plan Valentine’s Day. Neither of us really likes going out on Valentine’s Day (everything is so crowded and expensive), so we spend the evening at one of our homes and enjoy a nice relaxing dinner.

This year was my turn!

For dinner I made Stuffed Shells with a spinach cheese filling and served it with salad and chopped garlic bread of course.

Top View

Side View

For the stuffed shells I modified a recipe from one of my cookbooks. I adjusted amounts of ingredients and added in some additional seasoning to the cheese and spinach filling to make it similar (but not exactly the same as) Noni's lasagna filling. I did, however, use a canned sauce as the recipe suggested because we had some other things going on earlier in the day that prevented me from having enough time to make the family sauce. Plus, I finally found a canned sauce that is actually pretty good and has a fresh taste…Muir Glen Organic Italian Herb Pasta Sauce.

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Spinach-Stuffed Shells

24 dried jumbo pasta shells
1 12-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
3 eggs
4 cups shredded Italian cheese blend (16 oz)
2 ¼ cups ricotta cheese
2 25.5 oz jars pasta sauce
black pepper (to your preference, about ¾ teaspoon is a good start)
dried parsley (to your preference, about ½ teaspoon is a good start)

Cook jumbo pasta shells according to package directions or slightly less than package directions. Drain pasta and rinse with cold water; drain again.

While pasta is cooking or after draining pasta, drain thawed spinach very well.

Preheat oven to 350F. In a bowl, prepare filling by mixing spinach, eggs, 3 ½ cups of shredded Italian cheese blend, ricotta cheese, a pinch or more of dried parsley and ground black pepper to your personal preference.

Spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling into each shell and place shells in a 13x9 baking dish. Pour sauce over shells.
Cover with foil and bake for about 40 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle remaining ½ cup of shredded Italian cheese blend on top and place back in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Let stand before serving.

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For dessert I made a Caramel Walnut Tart and served it warm with vanilla bean ice cream.

This dough was actually the second half of the dough I made for the fruit tart. I wrapped it up in plastic wrap and put it in a freezer bag and placed it in the freezer. I took it out a day or so before I needed it and let it thaw out in the fridge.

The caramel was made from scratch, with honey! It’s the first time I’ve made homemade caramel and it was yummy.

I’ll post this recipe later along with the recipe for the fruit tart.