Green Olive Pizza

Howdy! I made pizza, with the help of my 8 year old sister. We first made the dough, let it rise for about 45 minutes, then rolled it out and had it bake in the oven for about 15 minutes so that the dough wouldn't be soggy. We then took it out, put the tomato sauce and cheese on it, and topped it off with some delicious green olives. Green olives are my favorite pizza topping. We also stuffed the crust with some cheese. Next time if I make stuffed crust pizza, I will add more stuffing into the crust because you almost couldn't tell that there was cheese in the crust.

The pizza came out good imho. 3 cups of flour went into the dough - I used two cups bread flour and one cup whole wheat flour. The crust was soft, but the pizza wasn't the same without a pizza stone.

Schnitzel

Oh hello there. I made schnitzel!!11!!!shiftone111!!! Schnitzel is Jewish for fried boneless skinless breaded chicken breasts. To prepare this dish, cut the chicken into thin slices, as long as possible. Then, pound the chicken with a chicken hammer with a piece of plastic wrap on top of the chicken so that the chicken doesn't go flying everywhere. Then, put the chicken into a bowl with two eggs, some soy sauce and some honey. I mix everything around such that the chicken is well coated. The chicken goes into the refrigerator to rest for around 15 minutes. During that time I fill a frying pan with at most 1/4 inch of canola oil and place that on the stove to warm up. Then I just dip the chicken in some bread crumbs and fry that puppy up (yeah I'm lame).

You have to be careful not to burn the chicken. I made this chicken twice last week and the first batch was perfect but the last batches were always burnt. This time I managed not to burn any of the pieces.. for the most part.

My little sister who doesn't eat anything had seven whole pieces of this chicken! And she made sure to tell me every time she took one.

Lasagna with Spinach and Broccoli

Why hello. I made lasagna and copied my mom by adding broccoli in it as well. I bought frozen broccoli florets, defrosted them, got the water out of them, and chopped them up. I personally enjoy the broccoli in there. This is probably one of my better lasagnas. It also looked pretty nice coming out of the oven because I took the aluminum foil off of the lasagna about halfway into the baking process, giving it time to turn golden. This lasagna wasn't as watery as usual, although still a little too watery.

Kitchenaid!

Yaaaay I got a Kitchenaid stand mixer for my birthday. It is one sexy beast.

Hurray for New Cookbooks!

Yeah no one cares but I do. I got 2 cookbooks in the mail today! I am very excited about them. Yaaaaay :D

Quinoa, Almond and Chocolate Chip Muffins

I was very intrigued by this recipe because of the fact that it uses cooked quinoa in a muffin. The recipe did not call for chocolate chips but I felt that they were necessary. I got this recipe from my roommate's cookbook... so this is a vegan recipe! The only notable difference is that there is no egg. I guess vegans use ground flax seeds instead. I also got to grind some almonds for this recipe (in, of course, a food processor). To cut to the chase, these are pretty good. It seems like they fall apart easily though. I'm still trying to make a muffin that has that crisp texture on the top of it, without using a pound of butter. I will continue to search.

Apple Tart Kinda Thing...

I wanted to make a pie. Actually I wanted to make a fruit tart but that started to get complicated. So I decided to go with an apple pie. Then I wanted to make it vegan. Things just got more and more complicated. Anyway, this is what happened. I made the crust out of roasted ground almonds, flour, canola oil, and a little soy milk. For the filling, it's just apples, applesauce, sugar and lemon juice. Not a lot going on here. This is a little dry and unexciting. I'll have to do better in the future. I did get to use my new shiny tart pan though.

Oatmeal Cookies 2.0

I tried making a healthier version of the oatmeal cookies. I added flax seeds and bulgar wheat. I decided not to use butter as an experiment, and to use oil instead. The result is that I can't tell the difference and butter is overrated. I added dried cranberries (in addition to the raisins and chocolate chips). That turned out to be a bad idea. The dried cranberries are too tart for this cookie imho tbh. Also, I was told that the flax seeds were cooked too long and thus impenetrable OH HO HO HO. Anyhow, if I make these again, I won't add the dried cranberries, and I'll rethink this flax seed pickle.

Butternut Squash Risotto

I bought a humongous butternut squash from Trader Joe's for $1 and finally today I used it. I made this butternut squash risotto and I used the remains of the squash in butternut squash soup. The risotto was alright, it has brown rice, vegetable broth, onion, garlic, butternut squash and Parmesan cheese in it. I used brown rice instead of that rice you're supposed to use for risotto because I think brown rice is better for you. The down side to that is that is doesn't get as creamy. This took forever to make. I don't see myself making it again anytime soon. Or any butternut squash dish for that matter - it just takes too long to deal with the squash! Oh yes, and I also made the soup which is quite delicious if I do say so myself.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

If I had to describe these in one word I'd say "eh". They were ok, nothing special. I was looking for a cookie to make that didn't involve a pound of butter. These were the best I could find at the time. These are the ingredients: rolled oats, brown sugar, whole wheat flour, honey, salt, baking powder, butter (3 TBSP), one egg, raisins and chocolate chips.

Challah Atcha Boy

Hello, I made challah dough and then stuffed it with dark chocolate chips and rolled it up and cooked it in a loaf pan. It was basically a loaf of bread with a hole of chocolate in the middle. IMHO (in my humble opinion) it was good. First I had an end piece and that wasn't that good because there wasn't as much chocolate. But then when I got a piece towards the middle, it was pretty amazing. Next time I am going to try to spread out the chocolate more because you end up dipping the non chocolately pieces into the chocolatey part. The dough was pretty good, I think next time I'll add some more sugar. It was sweet but not sweet enough iykwis (if you know what i'm saying). The flour is actually white whole wheat flour and it was good. That ees all.

Blueberry Muffins

This was my first time making blueberry muffins. I'm pretty happy with how they came out. It is the same recipe as the chocolate chip muffins recipe - except using blueberries. I didn't make that butter topping for these ones though - all I did was sprinkle a little sugar and cinnamon on the top of each muffin. I used white whole wheat flour, which doesn't taste too bad! Unfortunately I forgot to put flax seeds in these muffins. I used frozen blueberries because fresh ones are too expensive right now. I think they came out great. They do have a slightly weird taste though - think I may have added too much baking powder. Overall I'm happy with these muffins.

Butternut Squash Soup

I've always wanted to make this soup, but it was recently inspired by the New Moon Club at UCSD. I first baked the butternut squash whole, until it was fairly tender. I did this so that I didn't have to suffer while attempting to cut it - and it worked! I cut it into cubes and peeled off the skin. I sauteed 2 small onions and then added the cubed squash, as well as some water. I let that cook for a while, added salt and pepper and pureed it with my immersion blender. It came out very good - although it would have been better with some cream. I don't intend to put cream in it in the future though, it's good as it is.

Plants I'm Growing

I am attempting to grow plants. In particular, I'm trying to grow spearmint, rosemary, basil, and 2 different types of flowers. So far it is going ok - I am trying to get down how often to water them and how much. I don't want to over water them because I hear that that's an easy way to kill your plants. So for now I just look at the spearmint and if it's looking a little dead then I water it and it looks good the next day. We'll see if these guys will survive the harsh San Diego winter...

Chocolate Chip Muffins

These muffins came out very good! For once I didn't try to make them super healthy - and just tried to make them good. The recipe didn't even have that much fat - 1/3 cup oil for 8 muffins. Could be worse. Well it also had 3/4 cup of sugar. Whatever they're bad for you but they're good! I put a ton of dark chocolate chips in them which made them especially good. I also put some flax seeds in them which I thought just added to them - I enjoyed them in there. The topping didn't come out perfect - it's a mix of butter, brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Overall I would call the recipe a success.

Pizza

Hi, I made pizza. I used Trader Joe's herb pizza dough, some nice mozzarella, Trader Joe's pizza sauce, mushrooms and green olives. The pizza didn't turn out well - first of all the dough wasn't cooked enough. I even put the dough in the oven first for about 10 or 15 minutes but I guess it wasn't enough. Secondly, it turned out a little watery. I think it was from the green olives, even though I tried to strain them. Oh well, next time I'll try to do better!

I bought gooseberries!! I thought they'd be good but they are just sour and weird! I've never had them before though so I wanted to try them. Oh well, as I always say, NOW I KNOW!!!

I made broccoli cheddar soup, as promised! :D I think it came out pretty good! My mom yelled at me a little for not measuring things out exactly, or following the recipe, but it still came out good! It has onions, a little flour, milk, chicken stock, broccoli and cheddar cheese. I put a lot of cheese, maybe that's why it tastes so good!

Sweet Potatoes

Disclaimer: I know this looks gross I don't know what I was thinking.

I rode my awesome new bike to the supermarket in search of something for dinner. I couldn't find anything that I was satisfied with, so I just got some sweet potatoes. I baked them for about an hour. They were bland and unsatisfying. I don't know why I got sweet potatoes. I should start making good food. I want to make broccoli cheddar soup because I had some today at work and it was delicious!

Fruit Plate

No, I didn't grow the fruit or anything, but the picture is so cute so I decided to make a post about it. The kiwi was a little under-ripe in my opinion. The mango was delicious, and so were the blueberries. Overall this fruit was tasty!

Cabbage Salad

This salad is amazing! My cousin taught me how to make it and it's sooooo good. It consists of green cabbage, toasted slivered almonds, toasted peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, and a dressing. All the dressing is is equal parts of soy sauce, vinegar (I used balsamic), olive oil, and honey. The nuts gave the salad a nice crunch, and the dressing just makes it soooo delicious. Plus cabbage was on sale at Henry's so the cabbage cost me about 30 cents. In other words this is a cheap salad. This is definitely one of my favorite salads.

Baked Breaded Chicken Breast with Lemon Sauce and Baked French Fries

I first hammered the chicken and then cut it up into strips. I probably should have cut the chicken into strips and then hammered it. Anyway, then I soaked the strips in egg and coated them with whole wheat Italian style bread crumbs. Then, I baked them. In the meantime in a saucepan I cooked some fresh lemon juice, a little sugar, and some curry powder. After about 15 minutes I took the chicken out of the oven, drizzled the strips with some of the sauce, and then put them back in the oven to bake another 5 minutes. I personally don't really like the lemon. I was hoping that the chicken would be more crispy, but I probably had to have drizzled the chicken with some oil. So then I must ask the question, is the crispiness worth the extra fat?

I found this recipe online for "baked crispy fries". I used a mixture of sweet potatoes and regular russet potatoes for the fries. I coated them with a little olive oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper before I baked them. The fries came out nice and soft, and definitely not dry which is good. However, they weren't really that crispy. Maybe I should have used more oil but I even used more oil than the recipe called for. The fries were still good though.

Curry

I made a curry. It is definitely in no way my favorite. The major ingredients in this dish were chicken, lemon, garlic, curry powder, onion, zucchini, tomatoes, peas, and yogurt. My main goal is to make really good curry that's creamy and low fat. I know, creamy and low fat contradict each other, but it's still my goal. The next picture is of the yogurt and peas that went into the yogurt.

Strawberry Jam

I saw a simple recipe online so I decided to try to make strawberry jam. All I did was mash a large amount of strawberries and then cook them in a saucepan with some sugar and lemon juice. The jam is definitely not thick at all. I was hoping it would solidify a little more in the refrigerator but it didn't really. The taste is really great, it's just the consistency that isn't very good.

Baked Salmon and Yam Mashed Potatoes

Boris actually made the salmon, but I supervised! It had some lemon, paprika, and thyme. The mashed potatoes had a combination of yams and regular russet potatoes in it. I also added some butter, salt and pepper as usual. The salmon was very good, but the mashed potatoes were alright, nothing special. I like regular mashed potatoes better, I don't think the sweetness goes well in it.

Tune casserole and salad

Why hello there. I made tuna casserole and a salad! Inside the tuna casserole was whole wheat pasta, tuna, cheddar cheese, cream of chicken soup (healthy style!), and some secret spices. As for the salad, it was just spinach, tomato, and cucumber with some organic ranch-like (but not quite) dressing. It was pretty good!

Chocolate Chip Muffins

I made chocolate chip muffins last week. They were ok. I tried to make them a little more healthy by using some whole wheat pastry flour but I don't think that tastes very good. You could definitely taste some earthiness in them. I need a new recipe for these things. I think I'm going to try Alton Brown's recipe next from his baking book. I added sugar on the top of the muffins but I think it just made them look weird. Here is a picture of putting chocolate chips on the tops of the muffins as an attempt for the muffins to be like the Henry's ones. (It failed.)

Chili con Turkey

Hello, I made chili with turkey today with my friend who is a boy. It was good. I think it could have used better seasoning but the ingredients were really good. It had ground turkey, kidney beans, a can of diced tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, green bell pepper, and a jalapeño. The spices that were used were chili powder, cumin, a little paprika just for fun, and salt and pepper. Here is one application of the chili:

Tofu Pie...

Yes, I made tofu pie. Actually this was last quarter. I saw this recipe on some food blog and it looked good. The filling consists of tofu, spinach, onion, and some other non dairy stuff. I don't know why I thought that this would be good. It wasn't. It tasted like tofu blended with spinach and stuff. It looks like it's good because it looks like it's some sort of cheese with spinach thing but it's not. I think I threw most of it out. Moral of the story: look at the ingredients of a recipe and think about whether it would be good or not, THEN make it :p Here's the before picture:

Lasagna - Part 3

Hello, I made lasagna again. I don't think I'll make it for a while though, believe it or not but I'm sick of it. This time I added green olives to it. I think they were really nice in the lasagna. Again, I just used ricotta, some feta cheese, tomato sauce, spinach, fried onion, fresh basil, and cheese. I bought this weird shredded mozzarella cheese from ralph's that came with an herb seasoning pack. (It was the only shredded cheese on sale.) That's why the cheese has green specks. I think it was actually pretty good. At first I was hesitant about it.

The lasagna was good. I was a little stingy on the amount of pasta I put in. I only put two layers of pasta in it, and they weren't even completely covered because I ran out of pasta and didn't want to boil more. But I don't think that you could even tell that there wasn't that much pasta.

Next time I make lasagna, I plan on not boiling the pasta before hand. The lasagna again came out a little watery and I think that this extra moisture could be used to cook the noodles. (It wasn't that watery, again I soaked up as much as I could.) Plus my mom doesn't boil hers and it comes out fine. The following is the before picture:

Honey Soy Chicken - with Pineapple!

Hi, I made honey soy chicken again. This time I actually bought the canned pineapple and made it with it. I thought it would make the dish a whole lot better but it didn't really. I don't really know what to say, the dish just wasn't really that good. It was hard to get the proportions right as I don't even know what they should be. If I ever make this again, I will try marinating the chicken for a few hours or overnight in equal parts of honey and soy. Maybe this will help. I haven't been marinating the chicken because I haven't had the chance, but maybe it will make a difference.

Good Sandwich

Here are the ingredients of the sandwich:
1. Romaine lettuce
2. Tomatoes
3. Pickles
4. Olives
5. Tuna
6. Hummus

Tuna is optional, I figured I might as well get some protein. It's very delicious. The bread is also delicious. My favorite bread is Oroweat Whole Wheat bread, and that's what this is. It's just so delicious! Ok there's another brand that makes really good bread but I forgot the name. My favorite is a tie between those. I've been making this sandwich to take to school this week. Monday and Tuesday I put tuna in - half a can each day, and then I am going to stop putting tuna in the rest of the week. You know, they say too much tuna is bad, one can a week is the most you should eat. Anyhow, that is all.

Lemon and Rosemary Chicken

I wanted to eat chicken and I had nothing special to make with it. So, I made lemon rosemary chicken. It was an experiment.... and I doubt I'll ever make this again. Basically I just let the chicken sit in some lemon juice and rosemary and then just fried it. It did taste lemony but still it was very bland and boring.

Brownies!

Ok, I'm not going to lie, these brownies were made from a mix. But the picture that my boyfriend took came out so amazing so I had to make a post! Oh, and in case you were wondering, the brownies came out excellent :)

Stir-fry with Peanut Sauce and Chicken

The peanut sauce came out kind of gross. I found some recipe online for peanut sauce because that's my favorite stir-fry sauce. So I put peanut butter (the kind that just has peanuts and salt in it), low fat coconut milk, soy sauce and I think water. I think that the coconut milk is what threw it off. It just had a weird taste that I didn't really like. Some recipes called for chicken stock instead of or in addition to the coconut milk but I didn't have any so I made it without. Next time I'll probably just use that instead of the coconut milk. The stir-fry is with frozen stir-fry vegetables from Costco and boneless and skinless chicken breasts cut up into bite size pieces. Nevertheless, the stir-fry was pretty good, but I will definitely not make the sauce again without modifying it.

Chicken Soup

I made this with celery, carrots, onion, zuchinni, garlic, egg noodles, parsley and boneless and skinless chicken thighs. I though thighs would work well since they're more fatty but apparently you're not supposed to use boneless chicken in chicken soup because that's where all of the flavor comes from. I also used organic chicken stock from Trader Joe's (since it's the same price as non organic chicken stock...). It came out good, I think next time I'll use chicken with bones. This soup is not how I'd like it to be though, I'll probably have to do more research on chicken soup before I make it again.

Grapefruit!

Ok, I know, I didn't cook the grapefruit, but I couldn't resist an entry! The grapefruit is so pretty, and it was surprisingly good. I usually don't like how bitter and difficult to eat grapefruit are but this time it was pretty sweet and I cut it nicely! Oh, and these babies were 6 for $1 at Henry's.. pretty good price! And they're big.

Bling Bling Does Lasagna... Again

Well, I decided to make lasagna again since it came out good last time and it's convenient to have around to eat for dinner and it lasts a while (a little less than a week). This time what I did differently is I remembered to add the egg, I put 2 eggs in it, and I added my left over feta cheese. I don't know how much of a difference these items made, but the lasagna was good. It actually came out watery in the beginning and I was very worried, but then I used a paper towel and soaked up as much as I could and now it's fine. Oh, I also decided to buy a block of cheese instead of shredded cheese to save a dollar so the cheese came out a little funky on top. This is the before picture:

Barley and Lentil Soup

I had a bunch of barley and a bunch of lentils so I decided to make this soup. I just fried onions, added some garlic, added a can of diced tomatoes (undrained), fresh chopped basil, rosemary, and then the barley and lentils. It came out really nice. It's just a nice hearty soup.

Artichokes!

I love artichokes, and they were really cheap last week. 4 large artichokes for a dollar!! That's unheard of. Anyhow, all I do is boil them in salted water, for about 45 minutes to an hour. I like my artichokes really soft, so when you get to the heart, it just melts in your mouth. It's delicious!! I bought 7 and I only have 1 left. I don't eat the artichokes with anything like mayonnaise, I just eat them plain and they're great!