Angie's Key Lime Pie

This weekend, I had the joy of enjoying other people's cooking and staying mostly out of the kitchen (with the exception of a major baby food making session!). This recipe is compliments of my aunt, Angie. I'm telling you, I never really cared for key lime pie, but this one I could eat the whole thing by myself! It's light, fluffy, and super refreshing on a hot summer night. (P.S. What happened to the weather last night, summer arrived quite suddenly!)

Angie’s Key Lime Pie

INGREDIENTS

Crust:
1 stick butter
1 ½ c fine graham cracker crumbs (1 package of 16 squares)
¼ tsp cinnamon

Filling:
3 yolks
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
¼ tsp cream of tartar
½ -2/3 c key lime juice

Topping:
1 cup whipping cream (heavy)
2 Tbsp sugar
Lime peel
Splash vanilla



DIRECTIONS
Heat oven to 350 degrees

CRUST: Melt butter. Add graham cracker crumbs and cinnamon. Stir until coated. Press into bottom of pie plate. Bake 12 minutes. Remove Crust, set aside and turn down oven to 325 degrees.

FILLING
Beat egg yolks with tartar (3 minutes). Add sweetened condensed milk and ½ to 2/3 cup Key Lime juice (depends on personal preference for tartness. Mix well. Pour into crust. Bake 325 degrees. 15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow pie to cool. Refrigerate.

TOPPING: Beat cream, vanilla and sugar until stiff. Spread or drop teaspoons onto pie. Top with grated lime peel.

Mini Meatball Calzones

My food photography on this one is particularly bad. I'm going to let the notes below speak for themselves :)

Mini Meatball Calzones

Ingredients:
-1 10-oz box of frozen spinach, defrosted and wrung of excess water
-1 lb. ground beef, turkey, or chicken
-chopped onion
-minced or chopped garlic
-2 large eggs
-3/4c. breadcrumbs
-2 c. shredded motz
-salt and pepper
-refrigerated pizza dough
-marinara for dipping

In a bowl, mix together:
EVERYTHING except 1 of the eggs and the marinara. Roll the mixture into meatballs.

Then:
Split your pizza dough into 3" squares or circles.
Place 1 meatball inside each piece of dough and wrap dough around the meatball.
Place mini calzones on a baking sheet and bake at 425 for 15 minutes.
Serve with warmed marinara for dipping.

NOTE: This is a great one for the kids. You can pack all kinds of good stuff into the meat mixture (don't feel limited to what's listed above) and they gobble them up because they are "dippable".

Not-Fried Ice Cream

This delicious treat is a perfect summer dessert, especially after mexican meals! We're taking them to share at our neighborhood dinner tomorrow night. A healthier alternative to the original!

Not-Fried Ice Cream

Ingredients:
-1/2 gal. vanilla ice cream
-1 box of cornflakes, crumbled in food processor
-cinnamon to taste (we like a lot!)
-1 stick of butter, melted

1. Use an ice cream scoop to make 16-24 balls of ice cream (prepare yourself, your hands will hurt a bit during this part, it's SO cold!!). Place the balls on a cookie sheet and then in the freezer to harden.

2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix cornflakes, butter, and cinnamon. Spread on a baking sheet and bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes, or until crisp.

3. Once cereal mixture is COMPLETELY cool, roll your ice cream balls in the mixture, pressing down so the mixture will stick to the ice cream. Once rolled, place your ice cream balls back in the freezer for at least 1 hour to harden (the longer the better, I like to let mine set overnight).

4. Serve with a spoon! Ole!

Shrimp Quesadillas

Once again, you should feel liberal freedom to toss in whatever strikes you or is sitting on your counter. Don't feel constricted to following this recipe to the letter. You really can't go wrong with a quesadilla. These are often coined as "toss it in" or "clean out the fridge" nights at our house!

Shrimp Quesadillas

1. Saute shrimp (deveined and tails removed) and mushrooms in a bit of olive oil.

2. Toast tortillas over a warm griddle, pan, or grill.

3. Top one tortilla with shrimp/mushrooms, chopped avocado, chopped green onion, colby jack cheese.

4. Place another toasted tortilla on top and let sit until contents are warmed through and cheese is melted.

5. Carefully slide quesadilla onto a plate and cut into quarters (I find using a pizza cutter works best for this job!).

6. Serve with salsa, guacamole, sour cream, or whatever you like!

Tomato Toast

I have been cooking this week, but I haven't been so good about posting. Sorry! I'm going to drop two good one's right now and I should have two more for you tomorrow. Thanks for sticking with me!

This particular one I post not so much as a recipe for you to follow (although you certainly could do that) but mostly as inspiration for you to get creative in your own kitchen. On Wednesday of this week, I had planned to make a spinach pasta but when the babe came down with a high fever (again) my time was limited and I didn't have time to make the pasta. This is what I threw together instead... loving coined by my preschooler as "tomato toast."

Tomato Toast

1. Cut baguette into thin slices and lay them out on a cookie sheet. I used leftovers from the french toast I made earlier this week.

2. Spread pesto on each piece of toast. (I can't wait for my basil to come up so this can be homemade!!)

3. Sprinkle, chopped tomatoes (or sundried would totally work, too), shredded motz or parm, and pancetta.

4. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes until cheese is melted and tomatoes are warmed through.

5. Serve along side a green salad.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

If you make the rice ahead of time, this meal is a super easy one-pot wonder!

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Ingredients:
-1 can (20oz) pineapple in juice, drained; 1/2 c. juice reserved
-2 Tbsp. white vinegar
-2 Tbsp. soy sauce
-4 tsp. cornstarch
-1 Tbs. ketchup
-A bit of grated ginger (or 1-2 cubes of this great product)
-1 lb. chicken (breasts or thighs will work), cut into bite-sized pieces
-sugar snap peas or red pepper, or both :)

Make the sauce:
Mix pineapple juice, vinegar, soy sauce, 2 tsp. cornstarch, the ketchup and ginger.

Prep the chicken:
Toss chicken with 2 tsp. cornstarch, salt, and pepper.

Put it all together:
-Heat a bit of oil in a skillet and brown the chicken. Once brown, set aside on a plate.
-In the same pan, cook the bell pepper/snap peas, stirring, until crisp-tender.
-Stir in chicken and pineapple with the veggies.
-Stir in pineapple juice mixture into the chicken mixture and cook until sauce is thickened and chicken is cooked through.
-Serve over rice!

Baked French Toast Cups

My parents were in town visiting this weekend and I scored a great deal on some yummy organic berries at Costco so I decided it was a prime opportunity to try out a new french toast recipe. What I like best about it is the fun presentation of individual serving sizes.

Baked French Toast Cups

Ingredients:
-6 eggs
-1 1/2 c. milk
-6 Tbs. maple syrup
-1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
-1 tsp. cinnamon
-pinch of salt
-4 c. cubed bread
-2 Tbs. melted butter
-a bit of sugar

1. Whisk eggs, milk, syrup, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt together.
2. Toss bread with melted butter, then divide between muffin cups.
3. Pour egg mixture over bread; let sit while you preheat the oven.
4. Preheat oven to 350.
5. Sprinkle each cup with sugar.
6. Bake for 20-40 minutes (depending on how big your muffin cups are).

Serve with berries and maple syrup.

Just a thought: I am definitely going to try this with cut up apples in this fall - yummo!

Italian Mac n Cheese

This is a variation on my preschooler's favorite dish, traditional homemade mac n cheese. Honestly, it was a spur-of-the-moment, throw-it-together kind of dinner that just happened to turn out great!

Italian Mac n Cheese

Prep:
-Boil noodles to al dente.
-Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together in a 9x 13 baking dish:
-noodles
-pesto
-sun dried tomatoes
-shredded chicken (rotisserie or crock pot cooked)
-shredded motz (I just put a little in, about 3/4 c.)
-Top with bread crumbs.

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until top is crispy.

Vamping

I'm a student of the theater. Specifically, I'm trained as a stage manager. During a show, "vamping" (the repeating of a short musical phrase) is what you tell the orchestra to do when a scene shift or transition is taking longer than expected so that the audience is not left to sit in uncomfortable silence. Basically, it's a stalling mechanism. And this, my friends, is is the perfect analogy for my life during the past few weeks. I've been stuck somewhere between winter and spring; between having an infant and having a baby in full motion; between structure and disorganization; between connectivity and isolation; between sickness and health.

I had to include the picture of my living room from yesterday. I literally laughed out loud when I came down the stairs yesterday morning; I knew the carpet cleaners were coming and the furniture was therefore all stored in one room (after all, it looked like that when I went to bed the night before), but the irony of the parallel between this room and my life in general struck me funny :)

All that to say such "vamping" has forced me into a mode of efficiency and bare bones productivity that hasn't left much room for creativity in the kitchen. I've been doing a lot of my super simple (and not too interesting) meals, ala spaghetti and meatballs or repeating some of my favorite go to meals already posted on this blog. Nothing much worth posting. I did have one success, Italian Mac n Cheese, that was a hit I will post asap.

So.... as I anticipate moving out of this "vamping" season, what am I dreaming about:

1. Popsicles! I made one simple batch of homemade 'sicles last summer and after reading a feature on some creative recipes in RR's latest magazine, I'm exploding with inspiration and excitement about this yummy (and can be healthy!) treat for warmer weather. I've been seriously contemplating which molds I will invest in - clearly a big decision :)

2. CSA! That's Community Supported Agriculture if anyone is confused at this point. We are members of the Harmony Valley Farms CSA and deliveries of our beautiful, fresh, local, exotic, and hyper-organic fruits and veggies start June 1! I can't wait to dive back into creative cooking depending on what the box has in store for me each week! (Last time I checked, Harmony Valley still had shares available if anyone is interested.)

3. Our co-op garden! I will definitely post more pictures of it in the future. We garden along with our neighbors and this year we have doubled the size of our gardening space. The space is tilled; paper, compost, and wood chips are laid. The next time the sun is out, you can certainly find me planting seeds! We do sugar snap peas, 3 kinds of beans, several varieties of tomatoes, probably some peppers, strawberries, greens, purple carrots, green onions, basil, oregano, cilantro, and decorative gourds, oh my!

Stay tuned... hoping to back with more good stuff starting next week!