Super Healthy Sweet Spinach Salad

If I could only buy five items at the grocery store to feed my family off of for a week, fresh baby spinach would be on the list. I can do about a million things with this stuff, and it is so healthy for you. I especially like it's high calcium content since I am dairy free these days due to baby Ari's milk protein allergy. I splurged a little on G baby's birthday weekend at my Dad's house because he made homemade ice cream, and sure enough...Ari has a slight rash and a little bit of blood in her stool again. The good news is now I have confirmation that dairy is definitely the culprit, the bad news is now I feel like a super-asshole for giving her a rash!

Anyways, the good news about this salad is that it's very versatile if you have to substitute some ingredients.
More on that later though.

Ingredients:

1/2 bag baby spinach (can use regular)

1 avocado

1 vidalia onion

5-8 strawberries

1 small package walnuts (or pecans or pine nuts)

Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette (or other sweet vinaigrette dressing)

You can pretty much use any nuts for this recipe, I actually feel that pecans would be even better, but I went for walnuts because they are lower in both price and fat content. You can also omit the avocado if you don't like them or just want to save money, but they do add a lot of nutrition to this salad, so I definitely recommend you put one in there!

 First, saute the onions and nuts until the onions are translucent and start to caramelize. I sauteed mine in margarine.

Chop up your strawberries and avocados into bite-size pieces.

       Pile it all together and top with some vinaigrette dressing! I went light on the dressing because between the strawberries and caramelized onions, there's already a lot of flavor to this salad.
The overall taste of this salad is sweet and nutty, you don't even realize how much spinach you are eating!
Enjoy!

xoxo,

L

Impress the man in your life with (easy) chicken-fried steak!

This is one of those meals that looks/sounds way more complicated than it is. I was scared to try it. Frying anything always seems to be a long, arduous process (not to mention messy!) and I have never before made gravy from scratch. But unless the the man in your life is a health nut (because let's be honest, this isn't the most diet-friendly meal out there), I promise he will be impressed with this! I found it extremely delicious myself...so much so that I sneaked into the kitchen around 9 last night to eat a little bit of leftovers.

You will need:

3-4 cubed steaks

1 sleeve saltine crackers, crushed

1 cup flour, divided into 3/4 cup and 1/4 cup

3 1/2 cups milk, divided into 1/2 cup and 3 cups

oil, for frying

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon red pepper (crushed or ground will work)

salt

pepper

1/4 teaspoon paprika

Instructions

1. First, pour about 1/2 to 1 inch of oil in your frying pan (do NOT use a nonstick) and heat it up on medium heat. The sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper on your steaks and set them aside for now.

2. Crush the beejesus out of your crackers. You really want them to be as close to a powder as you can get them, to ensure that they'll stick to your steaks. I found it was helpful to crush them some in the original cracker sleeve, pour them into a plastic baggie, and then crush them with the end of a screwdriver, lol (we don't have fancy kitchen tools at my house!).

3. Mix cracker crumbs, 3/4 cup flour, red pepper, baking powder, paprika, and about 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and about 1/2 teaspoon salt together. Mix in bowl but then pour on a plate to make it easier to coat your steaks.

4. Mix 1/2 cup milk and your egg together in a bowl. Then Dredge your steaks in the DRY mixture first. Then dredge in the milk and egg, and then BACK to the Dry mixture again. Don't be afraid to push the dry mixture in a bit to make sure you get a great coating.

5. Gently place your steaks in the heated oil and fry for about 3-4 minutes on EACH side. Remove, and place on foil-lined pan and keep warm in oven (I had my oven set at about 250 degrees).

                                             There's my steaks, looking all sexy in the oven!!

Now for the gravy!


Drain MOST of the oil out of the pan that you fried your steaks in. You want about 1-2 Tablespoons of oil left, and any cooked parts of steak/coating that were left behind when you removed your steaks. You won't really be able to measure the oil (since it will be extremely hot) so you kinda just have to eyeball it.
Mine looked like this:

Okay, now Whisk together 3 cups of milk, 1/4 cup flour, and about 1 teaspoon of pepper and salt, each. I just whisked mine together in the cup I measured my milk in. (Less clean-up!)

Okay, now pour that in with your drippings. Constantly stirring, cook it at medium-high for about 10 minutes.

I served my gravy over the steak, and also made some mashed potatoes. It was super-good!

And on a completely unrelated note, here is what the G baby looks like after he gets in my mousse!

At least he knows where to put it I guess?

XoXo,

L

Mama Beamon's Homemade Banana Pudding

There are probably a zillion recipes out there for banana pudding. After reviewing some of them, this is what I came up with when my grandfather-in-law requested banana pudding for his birthday last year. When his birthday rolled around again this September...of course he wanted a repeat.

Ingredients:

1 large box instant vanilla pudding

Three ripe bananas

1 1/2 cups cold milk (sorry forgot to include it in the picture)

3/4 box mini nilla wafers

2 cups heavy cream

1 can sweetened condensed milk (do not look at the nutrition information...I repeat, do NOT look at the nutrition information)

1/2 cup lemon juice

Okay, first and foremost, you are going to want to put a metal/glass/ceramic (whatever ya got) bowl in the freezer to chill. You are later going to use this to whip your heavy cream, and a chilled bowl helps.

Slice your bananas and soak them in lemon juice while you prepare the rest of the pudding. This helps stop the bananas from turning a nasty brown color. I find it doesn't stop them completely...but it helps.

Now you are going to mix your milk, condensed milk, and pudding mix in a large bowl. 

Now get your chilled bowl out of the freezer and whip those 2 cups of heavy cream until it's thick and fluffy. Just make sure if your peaks start getting really firm that you stop-or it will turn into a butter-like consistency which is not good for mixing.

                                 This is my cream after I stopped whipping it.

Now fold the cream into the pudding mixture.

When you get it all mixed together, put about 1/3 of the mixture in the bottom of a large bowl and top with a layer of mini wafers and then bananas.

                                                                     (This is my first layer)

Now put more pudding/cream mix on top of this repeat. Repeat one more time until you are finished!

I like this recipe because it's easy, pretty quick, and makes thick and delicious banana pudding that's not overpoweringly banana-y. 

Enjoy!

XoXo,

L

Cheap, Easy, and Delish: Homemade Philly Cheesesteak

I only do my grocery shopping once a week. It stresses me out. Literally, one out of every four dreams I have is a grocery shopping related nightmare. I wish I was making that up.

I feel like going once a week saves me money, because the SHOCK of how much it costs to feed a family of three for a whole week makes me keep my grocery spending in line. However, I do cook 7 nights a week (closest McDonald's is twenty minutes down the road, lol!) although sometimes one of those nights is a cheat meal, such as frozen pizza. 

To keep my costs down, I will try almost anything to come up with a meal that doesn't involve spending 6 bucks on a package of ground beef or chicken breasts. Here is one that I came up with on a whim last week and it was a huge hit! 

Homemade Philly Cheesesteak

Ingredients:

-Some sort of bread or buns. I used onion-poppy ciabatta bread. 

-A pack of Roast Beef. I used Oscar Meyer brand.

-Sliced mozzarella or provolone cheese

-1 onion (sliced or chopped)

-1 green bell pepper (sliced or chopped)

-salt and pepper

-minced garlic (or garlic powder)

-Worcestershire sauce

FIRST, preheat your oven to 400 degrees and make sure you have a rack close to the top of your oven.

 First you want to put your veggies in a skillet with a little butter and saute them. This is when you want to add your garlic. I didn't measure mine, but took a picture so you could see the relative amount I used. (That's a really skinny knife)

After your veggies are nice and sauteed, they should look like this. Now, add your beef. Mix it around and let it mix with the juices. Add salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce (a few bottle shakes).

After it's heated through, pile it on your bread!

Add the slices of cheese and bake for about 8 minutes on top rack. You want your cheese to brown a little.

               Leave the top slice of bread off, so your cheese can get nice and bubbly. Plus, crunchy bread is hard to eat.

Just top it with the top of the bread and enjoy!!

XoXo,

L

Broccoli Chicken Braid

Here is one of my favorite recipes-one I got from my mother. It's tasty and looks really elegant-so it's perfect for when you have company or any special occasion.

Ingredients:


2 rolls of croissants
1 red pepper
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 head of broccoli
1 medium sized onion
1.5 lbs cooked chicken, cubed
1 small teaspoon dill weed
1/4 t. minced garlic
1/2 cup mayo (or for healthier version, try plain greek yogurt)
salt and pepper
lemon juice

Your first step is going to be to dice all of your veggies, as small as possible. I used a food processor to save time, but you can definitely do it by hand.

Next, add some salt and pepper, dill, garlic, mayonnaise, cheese, and squeeze in some lemon juice. Mix together well.

Here you can kind of eyeball it to see if you need more mayo. To be honest, I never measure ingredients, but in the ingredient list I tried to give it my best guess. You want the consistency of the mix to be moist but you shouldn't have as much mayonnaise in it as say, tuna or chicken salad.

Next, roll out your cans of croissants on to a baking sheet as seen in the picture below. I used two baking sheets, one for each can.

Press the seams together, then cut a slash every inch or so on both sides.

                                                           Spread your mix out evenly.

  Fold the one inch pieces over each other, alternating sides. This creates your 'braid'.

                                                      Keep going until you reach the end!

Bake in a oven preheated to 375 degrees for about twenty minutes, or until golden brown.

YUM!!!

XoXo,

L


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