Tasty (or Not) Tuesday (Big Kids Help). Day 240

Well, I’ve pretty much missed a whole summer’s worth of posts on cooking.  I have NO air in my house.  Haven’t all summer long.  Needless to say it gets a bit hot when temps are in the mid-high ninetys.  Anyways.  I always seem to have an excuse, don’t I?

Ivy is having a girls night out with her Grandma tonight so it’s just me and the big kids.  Of course since it’s been forever since we did it they were both super excited and wanted to help.  To me, that always makes it more fun anyway so I was happy to have the help.

I’ve been craving mushrooms lately so I was in search of a good Portabello Sandwich recipe.  I finally found the perfect (and I do mean perfect) one.  It was absolutely delicious.  This recipe made about 6 sandwiches.

Portabello Mushroom Sandwich

Ingredients.

• 2 packs sliced portabello mushroom caps
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 1 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tbsp chopped rosemary
• 1-1/2 tsp steak seasoning
• medium sized onion, sliced
  
• 4 oz reduced fat swiss cheese
  
• 2 tomatoes, sliced
  
• 1 avocado, sliced thin
• baby spinach
• 6 buns

Directions.

1. In a large bowl, whisk together vinegar, soy sauce, oil, rosemary, and steak seasoning.
2. Place the mushroom caps in the bowl and toss with sauce, using a spoon to evenly coat.
3. Let stand at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes, turning a few times.
4. Add a touch of olive oil to a pan over medium heat.
5. When hot, place the mushrooms in the pan sided by side. 
6. Grill for 5 to 7 minutes on each side, or until tender
7. Brush with marinade frequently.
8. Top the mushrooms with cheese during the last minute of cooking.
9. While the mushrooms cook, grill the onions about 1 minute on each side
10. Grill the buns until toasted (We forgot this step and it was still super yummy).
11. To finish, place the spinach and grilled portabello mushrooms on the buns.
12. Top with the grilled onions, sliced tomato and avocado.

It’s been so long since the kids have helped me in the kitchen.  I have to admit… It was kinda nice…

 

 

 

Chef Ian says…

Was it easy?  No.  Everything was hard to cook and cut.  Was it quick? No.  It just wasn’t.  Was it tasty?  Very.  It was super good.  Let’s see what the taste testers had to say…

It was an absolutely delicious meal.  We hand cut potatoes and baked them for french fries as a side.  Perfect side dish.  Mommy screwed most of those up so they didn’t make it to the plate for pictures.  We will absolutely be fixing this meal again.  Soon!!

Tasty (or Not) Tuesday (The Kids Help). Day 182

I haven’t made a cooking post on my blog for quite some time, so thought it would be the perfect summer activity for the kids and I to take on today.  Since it is super hot and humid outside and we are living on natural air this summer I decided salads would be the perfect meal choice.  I’m lucky and my kids usually love salads, so they were completely on board.  We ended up with a super yummy smorgasbord of salads.  I don’t think any of us could decide which one we liked the most.  Added perk.  I think it is every mom’s dream that their kids like healthy food.  Look at all of this healthiness we made our recipes from tonight…

I decided it would be more fun to let Ian and Eve come up with their own salad recipe.  We had a lot of the veggies already at home as well as some of the other ingredients so it worked out great for this week.  I told them to choose 5 ingredients.  They could choose any veggies, and if they wanted to they could add cheese, meat or seeds to their salads.  They just had to keep it at 5 ingredients.  Ian needed two more ingredients in his to “fulfill his vision”, so I worked with him on that.  My salad ended up with 7 ingredients as well.

I wanted to come up with a fun name to encourage the kids to do the same, so I’m calling mine the Surf & Shroom Salad.  Ivy was a great little helper.  As every good chef knows, every great meal begins with clean hands…

Then it was such tough work pouring the can of corn into the bowl, I needed some help.  Ivy to the rescue.  She was so proud…

It looked beautiful so far, but something wasn’t right.

Thanks to Ivy, we figured it out.  It needed mixed up.

Finally, all done…

Here’s how I made mine:

Surf & Shroom Salad

Ingredients.

• arugula
• 1 lb peeled and deveined shrimp
• 8oz mushrooms
• 2 avocados
• 1 red pepper
• 1 onion
• 1 15.25oz can corn

Directions.

1. Chop mushrooms.
2. Sautee mushrooms and shrimp until shrimp is pink.
3. Remove from heat immediately.
4. Chill while preparing remaining ingredients.
5. Chop avocado, red pepper and onion.
6. Drain corn.
7. Mix all ingredients in large bowl.
8. Top with lemon dressing (Recipe below)
   

Lemon Garlic Dressing

Ingredients.

• 6 Tbsp olive oil
• 8 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp dill weed

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients

 

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Ian came up with a Pizza Salad.  His idea was make a salad that tasted as close to pizza as possible.  I LOVED his idea…

Pizza Salad  Serves 6-8

Ingredients.

• 1 green pepper
• 1 onion
• 3 tomatoes
• 5 oz spinach
• 8oz mushrooms
• bag shredded cheese
• 50 pepperoni slices

Directions.

1. Chop green pepper, onion, tomatoes and mushrooms.
2. Mix in a large bowl.
3. Chop spinach leaves (if desired).
4. Add them to the bowl and mix.
5. Cut pepperoni slices in half and stir them in.
6. Sprinkle desired amount of cheese onto salad after serving.

Ian decided to top his salad with ranch dressing.  There may have been a better fit to make it taste more like pizza, but nonetheless everyone loved the ranch and I loved the spiciness the pepperoni gave to the salad.  Different, but so good!

 

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Eve came up with Fourth of July salad.  The point of her salad was to make a fruit salad of red white and blue fruit.  I think the yogurt messed up the visual of the salad, but after tasting it we decided we didn’t care because it was sooo yum!

 

Fourth of July Salad.  Serves 6-8

Ingredients.

• 6oz blackberries
• 16oz strawberries
• 2lb watermelon (about 5-6 small slices)
• 2 apples
• 2 greek yogurt (Eve used vanilla coconut)

Directions.

1. Wash blackberries and strawberries.
2. Add blackberries to large bowl.
3. Chop strawberries and add to bowl.
4. Chop watermelon into cubes and add to bowl.
5. Peel and chop apples into cubes and add to bowl.
6. Stir in greek yogurt.

Leave it to Eve to choose a sweet salad.  She’s definitely my girl.  But, it worked out great because we had a desert.  Hers was delicious!

I usually do an interview, but there are too many chefs tonight.  Just let me wrap this up by saying I think this was one of our favorite cooking nights.  To me, this is one of my favorite ways to spend time with my kids.  It teaches them valuable skills for later on down the road and it is undivided time.  Just me and them.  We all had fun and most everyone loved everything.

The middle thumb is a little deceiving.  Ivy loved the Fourth of July salad (of course), but it was like pulling teeth to get her to choke down either of the others.  She picked out the avocado and shrimp from mine and cheese from Ian’s.  She says she just doesn’t like eating “flowers”.  Oh well…

 

Tasty (or Not) Tuesday (Ivy Helps) #15. Day 112

I thought I’d give Ivy a chance to help me cook tonight because well, what’s cuter than a 2 year old trying to help cook?  We’ll see how it goes.  I found this recipe that I thought would be perfect for Ivy’s first time cooking.  I decided to alter it a bit to more things that our family likes and based on what we had at home, but you could give either a try.  I would highly recommend using her bread recipe.  Ours turned out a lot different and smaller than hers looks.  Oopsie 🙂  Our recipe makes 5 (small) sandwiches.  We decided to pair it with good ol’ french fries.  I got the recipe for those here.  Most sane people might not attempt cooking dinner with a 2 year old, but I’m a lil’ crazy like that.  You can see our pictures and read more about how that went below.

Soup Can Sandwiches

Ingredients

• 2 cans refrigerated french bread loafs
• 2 avocados, peeled, pitted, and mashed
• 5 slices provolone cheese
• 5 slices Swiss cheese
• 8oz sliced deli turkey
• 2 tomatoes
• 1/2c ranch dressing
• 1 small bag shredded lettuce

Instructions

1. Split dough into 5 equal sections and knead into balls.
2. Rinse out 5 soup cans and spray with cooking spray.  *If you are worried about BPA, the link above includes a list of cans without BPA in the comments section.  Or you can just line with aluminum foil.
3. Place a dough ball in each soup can (it should take up about 1/3 – 1/2 of the can)
4. Cover with a kitchen cloth and let rise until bread starts to come out over the top of the can.
5. Preheat oven to 350-degrees.
6. Place the cans on a baking sheet and bake for appx. 20-25 minutes or until the top of the bread becomes golden brown.
7. Remove from oven and remove bread from cans. If the bread seems too doughy, place back on the baking sheet (not in the can) and bake another few minutes.
8. When bread has cooled a little, slice the “dome” off the top and hollow out the bread using your hand or a spoon.  Don’t hollow it out too much because you don’t want the sides to get too thin. If you need to, just hollow out a little bit and press the bread outward toward the sides to make the sides more sturdy.
9. Spread mashed avocado around the inside of each bread cylinder** and line with sliced cheeses.
10. Combine remaining ingredients in a large bowl and toss to coat evenly with dressing. Fill each bread cylinder with the mixture– pressing the mixture down a little bit to get a nice filling.
11. **If you aren’t going to eat the sandwich right away or if you are making them for lunchboxes, line with cheese first. Make sure you get good coverage all over the inside and especially the bottom so the bread doesn’t get soggy. ALSO, be sure to serve the dressing on the side (you don’t want the lettuce to get soggy either).

Ivy got to help rinse out the soup cans and did a fabulous job…

She also did great with the dough.  She liked how it felt squishy…

 

The avocados (or abblecabbles as Ivy calls them) is where we ran into trouble.  Ivy kept wanting to taste them and I had to keep rinsing the fork…

She loved pouring and mixing the sandwich mix…

Then, the hardest part… Waiting for everything to get all yummified…

Chef Ivy says…

Was it easy?  Yeah.  Cause.  Was it quick? No.  Cause it was messy.  Was it tasty?  Yeah.  Cause.  Let’s see what the taste testers had to say…

Excuse Eve’s goofy face.  She was warned.  My policy is make a goofy face and that’s what’s getting posted for the world to see.  She’ll hate it one day 😛  What a fun experience with Ivy.  We’ve never done anything quite like that before just she and I.  She was sooo proud of herself and was telling everyone to tell her thank you.  Haha.  The sandwiches were super yum.

Tasty (or Not) Tuesday. Day 28

My kids have been on a serious avocado kick lately.  All of them (even Ivy) loves them, so I thought it might be fun this week to find a very kid friendly recipe with avocado.  Also, with this cold weather one of my go-to cold weather dinners came to mind…grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  Can’t beat it for a cozy winter dinner, am I right?  Well, I found this fancy twist on a grilled cheese sandwich on Two Peas & Their Pod in which they incorporated none other than…avocado (or guacamole).  The guacamole is basically avocado with just a few other special ingredients mixed in.  I knew the kids would love it!

Here’s the skinny on making this yummy sandwich:

Guacamole Grilled Cheese Sandwich

To Make the Guacamole:

• 2 ripe avocados
• 1/2 small onion, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 small jalapeño, stems and seeds removed, minced (I left this out of my recipe to make it more kid-friendly)
  
• 2 tablespoons cilantro leaves, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice (left this out as well in an effort to cut costs since I didn’t have it on hand)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
• A dash of freshly grated black pepper
• 1 Roma tomato, chopped

Other Ingredients:

• 4 slices crusty white bread (Recipe Here)
  
• 4 slices Cheddar cheese (substituted for muenster cause we just like it better)
• Butter, for buttering bread

To make the guacamole, cut avocados in half. Remove seed. Scoop out avacado from the peel, put in a large bowl. Using a fork, mash the avocado. Add the onion, garlic, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice, salt and pepper. Stir until well combined. Add the chopped tomato and stir.

Heat a pan or griddle to medium-high heat. Spread desired amount of guacamole on both slices of bread then top with cheese. Butter outer slices of bread and grill on one side for about 2 minutes or until golden and crispy. Flip the sandwich and grill until golden brown. Make the other sandwich the same way and serve warm.

Was it easy?  Yes. Really just preparing the guacamole was the toughest part and it was pretty darn easy.  Was it quick?  Kinda average.  Of course I was cooking for 5 (My mom joined us for dinner) and I don’t have a griddle, so I could only do one sandwich at a time, but still overall very quick.  Was it tasty?  Absolutely delicious and not too heavy on the tummy either.  This recipe would be great in the summer time as well.  But enough about what I think.  Let’s see what the taste testers had to say…

This might be one of my favorite recipes yet.  So easy, yummy and light.  A nice new twist on an old favorite of ours!  Oh, and remember how I said it was perfect for cold weather?  Look what we got today…

SNOW!!!