Double Chocolate Banana Muffins and the Food For Plastic KIDZ Challenge

Ben over at What's Cooking is hosting a Food for Plastic (Kidz) Challenge. Noooo, not plastic kids! Silly...hehe. Tupperware!

What's it all about, you ask? April is Children's Month at Tupperware, and to celebrate, they're donating $1 from the sale of certain items to the Boy's and Girl's Club. What a great cause! Tupperware has a lot of kid's items on sale for 30-50% off, as well. To see them, go take a look at Ben's Tupperware store. Check out those awesome lunch boxes--get a head start on back to school shopping (really, it'll be here before you know it! I'll duck now so you can throw your shoes at me.), and cross one of those off your list!

What is a Food for Plastic Challenge? Well, let me tell you! Ben sells Tupperware, so he hosts these themed challenges. You submit a recipe to the challenge, and they get voted on. The winner usually wins some Tupperware. Pretty cool, right? This one is food for kids. Something you enjoyed as a child, or something your kids love today--you get the idea. Oh, and Ben's blog is packed full of amazing recipes and tons of info, so get your butt over there check it out. Please. :)

My entry is Double Chocolate Banana Muffins. My kids absolutely love these, and really, unless you hate chocolate and/or banana, you'll love them, too. Moist, chocolatey, banana-ey--mmmm! And a tip: you can pop a cooled muffin in the microwave for 30 seconds and get the chocolate chips all melty again. Grab your glass of milk and you're all set for a chocolate break.

Muffins are usually easy to make and these are no exception. You'll have them in the oven in no time. I usually have to set some bananas aside (that means HIDE them from my four monkeys...I mean...kids) to ripen up if I want to make these. I got this recipe years ago in some e newsletter.

Double Chocolate Banana Muffins

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup baking cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/3 cups mashed ripe banana
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine the first six ingredients.
2. In a small bowl, combine bananas, oil and egg.
3. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. The batter is quite thick, but keep folding it gently, making sure to get the batter on the bottom of the bowl, and it'll all come together.
4. Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Fill greased or paper lined muffin cups three fourths full.
6. Bake at 350 deg F for 20-25 minutes or until muffins test done.

My husband was watching me scoop the batter into the pans, and he suggested I sprinkle some walnuts on top of some of them. Nice addition, and those seemed to be "overlooked" by the kids. So finally, we got to enjoy some, too, and didn't have to fight for a measly crumb, hehe. Oh! An ice cream scoop is a great way to get your muffins all the same size, and makes scooping the batter in the pans really easy.

This feed contains copyrighted photos and text from Elle's New England Kitchen.
If you are not reading this material in a feeds aggregator, by e-mail subscription,
or through BlogBurst, the site you are viewing may be guilty of copyright infringement.
Please contact ellenekitchen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thai Chicken Saute and a Six Word Memoir

Do you guys make grocery lists, or do you just have a general idea what you want to make and fly by the seats of your pants? I always have a list. I plan our weekly menus and head off to the store to restock and pick up whatever new goodies that intrigue me. Sometimes, I see something so interesting (which could sometimes translate to "on sale" hehe) that I'll pick it up and plan a meal around it. Good things can happen that way. Sometimes. ;)

This recipe for Thai Chicken Saute was a planned, on the list meal. But I decided to do it at the last minute. I had to head to the store, but I had no list made. Panic! So I quickly scanned my e mail inbox to see what interesting recipes I'd received in the past week. This wasn't one of them, but I was led to it by another, not very memorable one. No clue what it was. See? Uninteresting, it was. (I sound like Yoda saying that, don't I? hahaha!!) Let me take a minute and snap of my Yoda-like trance....

Ok! Anyway, I found this on MyRecipes.com, which includes recipes from Cooking Light, Southern Living, and Sunset, to name a few. This one is from Cooking Light, and you can see the original here.

It's so quick and easy to make! I love that. Who wouldn't? You can have this on the table in less time than it would take to get take out. It's delicious, too. I used brown rice and didn't use bottled minced garlic, because, eeeewww. It takes one minute to chop fresh garlic!

Tip: To get the smell of garlic off your hands, run your hands under cold tap water, no soap. And do it right after you handle the garlic, don't handle anything else before you rinse your hands. Works like a charm! Then you don't have to use bottled garlic, lol. (Tip from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, by Judy Rodgers)

A word on the Sriracha in the recipe--it's SO delicious. But it's hot! I cut the amount of Sriracha in half, and it was just right. If you haven't seen it, it looks like this:
And it's gooood. It's hot, but it adds flavor, too, not just heat. I can get it in my regular grocery store, so I'm guessing it's not hard to find. You can read a little about it here. If you can't find it, use another hot sauce instead.

Thai Chicken Sauté

From Cooking Light

Ingredients

1 (3 1/2-ounce) bag boil-in-bag rice (I used regular brown rice)
1 1/2 pounds chicken breast tenders
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon fish sauce
4 teaspoons canola oil, divided
1 cup sliced onion
2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic (I used about 4 cloves garlic, minced)
1 teaspoon bottled ground fresh ginger (such as Spice World)
1/2 cup light coconut milk
2 tablespoons Sriracha (hot chile sauce, such as Huy Fong)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
4 lime wedges
Preparation
Cook rice according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Keep warm.

Toss chicken with cornstarch and fish sauce.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
Add chicken to pan; sauté 5 minutes.
Remove chicken from pan.
Heat remaining 1 teaspoon oil in pan.
Add onion, garlic, and ginger to pan; sauté 1 minute.
Return chicken to pan; cook 1 minute or until done.
Stir in coconut milk, Sriracha, sugar, and juice; cook 45 seconds or until thoroughly heated.
Sprinkle each serving with 1 1/2 teaspoons cilantro.
Serve chicken mixture over rice with lime wedges.

I cooked the onions for about 5 minutes, because my husband doesn't like crunchy onions in his cooked food. They've got to be tender, lol. But they were still good. I'm definitely making this one again! It's got three important things going for it--quick, easy and delicious.

Six Word Memoir

The Irreplaceable and Irresistible Pixie over at You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato tagged me for a Six Word memoir. It's basically just six words that describe yourself. She's such a sweetheart, that Pixie, and she has a fabulous blog, so please go check it out!

So, six words to describe me...

1) Loyal
2) Level headed
3) Sweet
4) Stubborn
5) Bratty
6) Funny

I'm sure my friends and family could all give you different words about me, but they're not writing this blog, I am! hahaha!

I LOVE Pixie's idea for tagging 6 more bloggers, so I'm copying her.

**********

Pixie says:

"Oh 'fortunate' selected Bloggers, it's really up to you if you wish to play along! I believe the entire purpose of this is to introduce bloggers to each other; to build the wonderful Food Community that exists. So feel free to write your memoir or not, the choice is entirely yours but honestly, I'd much rather prefer if you took just about 5 minutes to visit at least one of the mentioned blogs that you have yet been to, have a quick browse and say hello."
***********

So I'm going to tag six blogs that you may not have seen yet. Three of them I read regularly, and three I chose randomly from the Foodie Blogroll, and I'm going to add them to my reader. I hope that you guys that are reading this will check them out and leave them a nice comment. It's still so thrilling to me that you guys actually read my blog and leave nice comments! I'm continually amazed at how supportive the food blogging community is. I'm still so new to this, but everyone has been great, and it would be nice to look at some blogs we may not have seen yet.

Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post.
4. Tag five (umm or 6 or 7 or) more blogs with links.
5. Remember to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

I'm tagging:

Lauren at Parsnips Aplenty
Farida at Farida's Azerbaijani Cookbook
Lori at Made Healthier
Wendy at Home Sweet Home
Holly at Old Recipe Detective
Sarah at Homemade

So please go check them out and let's show them the same support that you all have given me. Thanks!

PS--I can't figure out why the bottom half of this post has gone all funky with the text. Please excuse it. Maybe Yoda typed it...

This feed contains copyrighted photos and text from Elle's New England Kitchen.
If you are not reading this material in a feeds aggregator, by e-mail subscription,
or through BlogBurst, the site you are viewing may be guilty of copyright infringement.
Please contact ellenekitchen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Random ThursdayThoughts...Parm Crusted Chicken, One (the song), and that Chimichurri Sauce is begging to be poured on everything.

Where to start today? I guess with the food, since that's what we're here for. :) Two nights ago, we had Parmesan Crusted Chicken with Greens and Lemon Vinaigrette. It's one of our favorites, another tried and true. The recipe is from Ina Garten. I love her recipes! I've never had one fail, and her stuff ranges from "pull out all the stops for guests" to "let's have a bowl of soup, salad and bread for dinner." You can look at the books of hers that I have in my Amazon shop.

It's really simple, too! And you can feel good serving it to guests--it's special enough for company. The chicken is dipped in flour, then egg, then a combination of bread crumbs and fresh grated parm. Try to grate the parm finely, because you want it to stick to the chicken, and mix well with the bread crumbs. The vinaigrette takes maybe two minutes to whip up, and is tossed with the greens at the last second. Then the cool, tangy greens are piled over the warm chicken. The tastes and textures all come together for a delicious dinner.

You can also see it on Canarygirl's blog. Her photos are awesome! And her food, omg, her food is the best! Want to torture yourself with some good food porn? Go check out her site--you won't be sorry!

Parmesan Crusted Chicken and Lemon Vinaigrette with Fresh Greens
Ina uses arugula, but this is good with any mixed greens or even spinach, as we usually have it.
This serves 6, but usually boneless chicken comes in packs with 3 half breasts (it's like the hot dog/hot dog bun ratio--wtf!),
and I fillet them rather than pounding them out, and I still end up with 6 pieces--good for
leftovers. Less work, faster cooking time, and it doesn't dry out.
Side note on filleting:
I always fillet chicken breasts. They cook faster, so they don't have time to dry out.
Well, I suppose they could, if you really try to overcook them, but
they only need a few minutes per side. If they're thin, 2-3 minutes per
side is good, and if they're thicker, like the kind you get from "new
and improved" mutant-sized chickens, they take about 5-6 minutes per
side. And it's so easy to fillet them, too! Just put your chicken on a
cutting board, get a good sharp fillet knife, and place your palm over
the chicken breast, like the way you're supposed to cut a bagel but no
one ever does? "Hello? 911? Bagel emergency! But please stop off first
and get me a new bagel...I seem to have ruined this one..." So you've
put your palm over the top, and then you slice the breast horizontally
from the thick end of the breast, to the thin one. See? Easy, and
injury free!
Back to the recipe!
1/2 lb    fresh arugula (3 large bunches) OR greens of your choice
1/4 cup    fresh squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)
1/2 cup     olive oil
1/2 tsp    kosher salt
1/4 tsp    fresh ground black pepper
1/4 lb    chunk of parmesan
6    boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup    flour
1 tsp    kosher salt
1/2 tsp    fresh ground pepper
2    extra large eggs
1 1/4 cup    seasoned bread crumbs
1/2 cup    freshly grated parm cheese
1 Tbs    butter
2-3 Tbs    olive oil
Wash and dry your greens.
In a small bowl, whisk the lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper.
Set aside to toss with greens right before serving.
That couldn't be any easier, right?  Now on to the chicken...
_____________________________________________
Parmesan Crusted Chicken
Pound the chicken, or fillet it like I mentioned above. (this is really
important for fast cooking and juicy chicken.)
Combine flour, salt and pepper on a plate.
In a bowl, beat the eggs with 1 tbsp water.
On a second plate, combine the bread crumbs and parm.

Dredge the chicken in the flour, dip in the egg, and then dredge in the
crumb/parm mixture, pressing lightly.
Heat the butter and olive oil in a large skillet. Cook the chicken for 3-4
minutes on one side, depending on thickness, then turn and do the same (3-4
minutes) on second side until no longer pink and nicely golden brown.
Toss the salad greens with enough vinaigrette to coat them, add more if you
like.
Place chicken on dinner plate, then place a mound of salad over each chicken
breast. Shave some parm with a vegetable peeler over the greens and serve immediately.

Up Next--One, the song...

I'm a kid of the 80's. Yep, the big hair, the funky colors, the music, the movies...I loved it all. I still love U2! They've been around almost forever, haven't they? They have great lyrics, amazing songs...they are just timeless. Anyway, their song "One." Great song, right? Did you ever hear Mary J. Blige cover it? I saw her do it live on some show. Gave me goosebumps. Really! It's on her album The Breakthrough. I didn't even know they did a version of it together! And where did I first hear it? Are you ready?

In the grocery store! hahaha!! My grocery store plays the best music! Except when they try to sneak an Ashlee Simpson song in to cause my ears to bleed. ugh.

I urge you, no--I'm telling all of you to go to whatever music service you use and download the song. Right now. You won't regret it. The Amazon clip is so short. I'm listening to it right now and getting goosebumps again, hehe. SO good. And how gorgeous is Mary?

And finally, Zen's Freaking Chimichurri Sauce...

I posted about it here.

And you can see it on his site, too. Check out his blog! Great food, and funny stories. He's very entertaining!

The sauce...it's addictive. Two nights ago, we had the parm crusted chicken, right? Delicious as is, but I happened to have some more chimichurri in the fridge, because we've been having it on pork chops, too, which we have at least once a week (use the same rub that you use on the steak). I was thinking I'd put some it on my chicken, and my husband comes in and says "HEY! Let's put some chimichurri on the chicken!" We are of one mind, I'm telling you. Except when it comes to 70's cop movies. Blech. He can have them. I'll read instead., hehe.

The chicken went from delicious to sublime! This is one recipe I'll have in rotation all the time. The rub and chimichurri sauce are made from simple, everyday ingredients that you can easily get, at any time. I can't wait to start grilling so we can put it on more stuff! Thanks, Zen! muac!

Hey, I just checked! It's 62° (about 16 C, i think?) --we're having a heatwave, hehe!

This feed contains copyrighted photos and text from Elle's New England Kitchen.
If you are not reading this material in a feeds aggregator, by e-mail subscription,
or through BlogBurst, the site you are viewing may be guilty of copyright infringement.
Please contact ellenekitchen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Elevating the Lemon Bar to New Heights...Let's Make it Lime!

Aren't they pretty? There's just something about limes. Don't get me wrong, lemons are nice, too. But limes always seemed more exotic to me--I have no idea why. Could it be that as a kid, my mom hardly ever used real lemons or limes around the house? We had...you know it!...the plastic lemon and lime that was full of juice. Occasionally, real lemons made an appearance, but the only place I saw limes was in the grocery store.

When I started cooking on my own, one of the first things I did was to start using the real things. My mom was a fantastic cook, but she took shortcuts, like a lot of people do. And if that's your thing, hey, that's perfectly fine with me. But once you taste what fresh squeezed juice and freshly grated zest can do for your recipes, the difference is amazing.

Lemon bars are one of my all time favorites. So is Beat This, by Ann Hodgman. And let's not forget Beat That, her follow up. I love these two books. Not only are there lots of great recipes, but Ann's writing style is hilarious. They should be read cover to cover, because her humor even shows up in the recipes themselves. Back to the bars--even though in her book they're called Lemon Squares, there's not one bit of lemon in them. The idea is to make them more tart and really showcase the citrus in them. So you use limes instead--along with the fresh squeezed juice, there's lime zest in the crust and in the filling.

I've made these a few times, and they never disappoint. Lots of lime filled goodness on a wonderful almond shortbread crust. There's almond paste in the crust, and it adds such nice flavor and interest to the bars. I could eat that almond paste right out of the tube, and I've got about 1/2 cup left, if anyone's got any recipe suggestions to save me from eating the rest of it as is. Oh, she suggests using citrus salt for the salt in the filling, for that extra "pucker-up" factor. I still can't find any. I did find a lime salt from Morton's, and used that. Someday I hope to actually find some of the stuff, lol.

Oh, one more thing! Six limes gave me exactly 1/2 cup of juice. And even though I didn't need the zest from six limes, I zested them all anyway. I keep the extra in the freezer for zest emergencies. Hey, don't laugh! It could happen. And when it does, you'll wish you had zest in your freezer, too. ;)

Lime Bars

  Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 cup chilled butter, cut into 1/2 inch slices
2 Tbs sugar
1-2 Tbs almond paste
2 tsp grated lime rind
1 pinch salt
Filling
1 cup sugar, stirred together with
4 tsp cornstarch
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
2 large eggs
1 Tbs grated lime rind
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp citric salt aka citric acid (optional)
confectioners' sugar, for dusting the top
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375° and butter an 8" square pan.
2. Place all crust ingredients in a food processor and process until the mix
just begins to form a ball.
3. Pat the mixture in the pan and bake for 15-20 minutes, or pale golden.
4. Turn the oven down to 350°.
5. Wipe out the food processor with a paper towel and add all the filling
ingredients into the bowl.
6. Process until smooth, about 1 minute.
7. Pour into the crust and bake for 20 minutes.
8. Cool, chill well.
9. Sprinkle with a light dusting of confectioner's sugar.
10. Cut into squares.  Store in fridge.

This feed contains copyrighted photos and text from Elle's New England Kitchen.
If you are not reading this material in a feeds aggregator, by e-mail subscription,
or through BlogBurst, the site you are viewing may be guilty of copyright infringement.
Please contact ellenekitchen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Tried, Tested and True Event--Spaghetti and Meatballs

This is my first participation in a food blog event! It's Tried, Tested and True, and it's hosted by Giz and Psychgrad over at Equal Opportunity Kitchen. It's their first time hosting an event like this, and you've still got time of you want to join--submissions are due by April 14th. And don't we all have at least a few tried and true recipes? They also have a great blog, so you should check it out anyway.

So I decided to submit spaghetti and meatballs, because who doesn't like that? We all love this one. Well, except my 2 youngest boys, they only want butter and parm on their noodles. Sigh. If they only knew what they were missing!

I first got these recipes, I don't know, 4 or 5 years ago, from Allie. Her sister Bethany is one of my best friends. Allie got the recipe from their dad, and he got it from a little old Italian woman. Still with me? Good! It's the best pasta sauce and meatballs I've ever had. In fact, I gave up my old tried and true for this one. I've played with the sauce over the years and changed it a little, but the original is fabulous as is. The meatballs cook in the sauce, so they're tender and moist. Perfect. I haven't dared mess with the meatballs, because we love them so much (except that I use ground turkey instead of beef).

I'll post my version of the sauce, and you can see the original here. Oh, I also use different amounts for the sauce, because I increase it to have leftovers, and this freezes really well. I can give the measurements for these two recipes for 10, 15, or 20 servings, if anyone's interested. This makes the greatest meatball subs--add some provolone and get the bun all toasty...I'm SO glad I have some in the fridge for lunch, hehe.

One more thing...if you make your meatballs a little on the smaller side, you can cut cooking time to about 2 hours or so. And when you drop the meatballs in the sauce, don't stir for about 1/2 an hour, to give them time to set up. You can take the back of a wooden spoon and gently dunk them so they're under the sauce.

Italian Tomato Sauce (15 servings)
3    (28 ounces) cans tomato puree   (if you can't find puree, which I can't lately, use crushed instead)
1 1/2    (28 ounces) cans crushed tomatoes
3/8 can    tomato paste
splash of red wine
3    cloves garlic
1 1/2    small onion, diced
pinch of ground cloves
1/2 Tbs    basil
1/2 Tbs    kosher salt
3/8 tsp    fresh ground pepper
3 Tbs    sugar
3 Tbs    extra virgin olive oil
6 Tbs    grated parmesan cheese
1 In a large pot over medium low heat, sauté onion and garlic in olive oil until soft.
2 Add tomatoes to the pot.
3 Add all ingredients (including any meatballs or sausage you want to add) to
pot and simmer for 3 hours.


And the meatball recipe.  These measurements are for 20 servings, but I like to make a huge batch so
I can freeze some for later.
Italian Meatballs (20 servings)
2 lb    ground beef (I always use ground turkey!)
2    egg
1/2 cup    milk
1 cup    breadcrumbs
1 tsp    salt
2 tsp    oregano
2 Tbs    fresh parsley
1 tsp    garlic powder
1 tsp    fresh ground pepper
1/2 cup    grated parmesan cheese
1 Mix all ingredients in a large bowl by hand.
2 Roll meatballs to about the size of a golf ball.
3 Drop raw meatballs into the pot of sauce.
4 Simmer for about 3 hours, or until a tested meatball is done.

So make sure you go and check out the other Tried, Tested and True on April 14th!

This feed contains copyrighted photos and text from Elle's New England Kitchen.
If you are not reading this material in a feeds aggregator, by e-mail subscription,
or through BlogBurst, the site you are viewing may be guilty of copyright infringement.
Please contact ellenekitchen (at) gmail (dot) com.