OKK MEMES & PRIOR CONTRIBUTORS – Page 68 – Chasing MY Life WHEREVER it Leads ME

What did you bake today: Flax Wheat Bread

This is a really healthy, low glycemic bread. It is dense and makes fabulous toast (I like mine with Adam’s peanut butter, as you can see in the picture below…I almost ate the last slices before taking any pictures ~ YIKES!)

Flax Wheat Bread:
1 cups warm water
1 cup white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup ground flaxseeds (flaxmeal)
1 Tbls oil
1 Tbls honey
2 tsp salt
1 Tbls yeast
In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the oil, honey and salt. Add 1 cup whole wheat flour, flaxmeal and white flour. Beat with a dough hook in a mixer. Add remaining wheat flour and knead thoroughly. Let rise in a warm place until double in bluk. Punch down and shape into a loaf and let rise in a greased loaf pan. Bake 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until done.

You can make this in a bread machine. I did it this way, to prevent the house heating up too much, but I have technical difficulties with bread machines…the bread almost always rises too high and then falls when I use a machine. I like the control I get when I make things by hand. If you use a bread machine, select whole wheat bread and light crust. Put ingredients into machine in the order your machine specifies.

Healthy Helpings – Breakfast in a Cup

These little “muffins” are great for breakfast on the go.

4 oz reduced fat loose breakfast sausage

1/4 cup chopped green peppers

1/4 cup chopped onion

1 c liquid egg substitute or 4 eggs

1 large egg

1 can (4 oz) sliced mushrooms (drained)

1/2 c (2 oz) shredded reduced fat cheddar cheese

Coat a 6-cup muffin pan with nonstick spray. Preheat the oven to 350F
In a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, cook the sausage, pepper and onion for 5 minutes, or until sausage is browned.
Spoon mixture into a bowl and cool slightly.
Stir in egg substitute and eggs, and the additional egg and mushrooms.
Spoon mixture evenly into prepared muffin pan.
Sprinkle with cheese.
Bake 20 minutes, or until egg is set.

2 pts – ww (using egg substitute)

107 calories, 12 g protei, 4 g carbs, 5 g fat, 1 g fiber.

Black Walnut Cookie Recipe: Save Room for Dessert

When I first found this black walnut cookie recipe it called for 1/2 an egg and no walnuts, but making a recipe our own is part of the fun of cooking and baking, so I didn’t let little details like that deter me from trying it out. I used a whole egg because I don’t have time to wonder what to do with the other half, or to ponder why someone would think of beating a whole egg and using only half of it. Since I like nuts and it seemed an integral part of the recipe, I add a handful of them too. This recipe calls for black walnut flavoring, but any kind of nut flavoring or extract can be used, and you would get a whole new kind of cookie.

Black Walnut Cookies
1 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon black walnut extract
1/2 cup chopped black walnuts

Cream butter, sugar. Add egg, extracts, and beat well. Sift flour, measure, and sift with salt and nutmeg. Add to creamed mixture. Add nuts and mix thoroughly. Form into rolls about 2 inches wide. Chill overnight. Cut in thin slices. Place on greased baking sheet. Bake in hot oven (410 F.) for about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!
See you next Wednesday for another Save Room for Dessert.
Don’t forget to visit the other participants, and to comment on their blogs.

(Stop by Joy Of Desserts to enter my latest giveaway, too!)

Be sure to leave a link to your participating recipe in McKlinky, rather than just to your main blog, and let us know what your recipe is.
EX: Tamy @ 3 Sides of Crazy (Banana Cake)

Raisin Drops

Save Room for Dessert Wednesday, hosted by Joy and What Did You Bake Today? Friday, hosted by Kristen are great ways to find new recipes for baking and desserts. Head on over to tHe KrAzY KiTcHeN to play along.

RAISIN DROPS

1 1/2 (3/4 cup) stick butter, softened
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon PURE maple syrup
1 teaspoon grate orange rind
2 cups golden raisins
1/4 cup rum
1/4 cup favorite jam (I used my Blackberry Pineapple Jam – yummy)
3 JUMBO eggs
1/4 cup orange juice with pulp

Preheat oven 350 degrees.Whisk rum, orange juice and jam together until well blended.
Pour over raisins and let sit an hour or so.
Cream butter, sugar and maple syrup together until well blended.
Add eggs and blend until creamy and smooth.
Sift together the flours, spices and orange rind.
Gradually add flour mixture to the cream mixture until well blended.
Pour off any remaining liquid from raisins into the cream mixture and blend well.
Fold in raisins mixture until well distributed.
Drop by spoonfuls onto Silpat covered cookie sheets.
Bake 14 minutes.
Cool 2 minutes on the pan and then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

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Coffee BBQ Chicken, Vegetable Yam Mash & Cherry Green Beans

Many of you know that we are sitting and waiting for our investment house to sell so we can move home. One of the things I DON’T want to do is move food cross country so I have been taking my recipe experiment nights and trying to use what we have on hand and use up ALL stock (packages and bottles that are space hogs and breakable especially). The result? I have actually developed some great new recipes that I don’t mind sharing and we will eat again and again. This week we have Coffee BBQ Chicken, Vegetable Yam Mash & Cherry Green Beans. I hope you enjoy them.

COFFEE BBQ CHICKEN
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts or 3 pounds of chicken wings
1/2 cup STRONG coffee
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup minced green onion
2 teaspoons minced garlic, jar
1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon chili powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons brown sugar
Juice of 1 lime*
honey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Juice of 1 orange*
1 7up
dash apple cider vinegar
dash Worcestershire sauce
salt & pepper

Pierce each piece of chicken a few times with a fork.
Whisk together the 7up, Juice of 1 orange, dash of apple cider vinegar and dash of Worcestershire sauce.
In an airtight container place chicken pieces side by side. Salt and pepper generously.
Pour the 7up mixture over top and marinade for several hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a small saucepan whisk together the first 11 ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes to meld flavors.
Add honey to thicken.
In a shallow baking dish place chicken pieces side by side. Pour BBQ sauce over top to cover and bake for 1 hour or until tender.

*I saved the pulp from each to simmer in the BBQ sauce.

VEGETABLE YAM MASH
1 large yam*, peeled and quartered
1 large russet potato*, peeled and quartered
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 package KNORR vegetable recipe mix

Melt the butter and blend with the sour cream.
Add in the vegetable mix and blend well. Set aside while you prepare the yam and potato. This can also be done the day before and refrigerated until needed.
In boiling, salted water cook yam and potato until tender.
Add yam and potato to the sour cream mix and mash together until well blended.

*any combination of the two would work well

CHERRY GREEN BEANS
1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut into bite sized pieces
1 large bunch green onions, sliced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cherries
1 lime, juiced
2 teaspoons minced garlic, jar
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar

Melt butter. Saute’ green beans until tender.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Add garlic and onions and cook until translucent.
Whisk together the soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, lime juice and sugar until sugar is dissolved.
Pour over the bean mixture and simmer 2-3 minutes.
Add cherries and heat through.

Enjoy! See you next Sunday for another Simply Delicious Sunday. Don’t forget to visit the other participants, and to comment on their blogs.

Coffee BBQ Chicken, Vegetable Yam Mash & Cherry Green Beans

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Simple Supper Saturday – Easy hot and spicy chicken

On my menu plans last week I had an idea for easy hot and spicy chicken to try for Tuesday night along with some leftovers ideas. It was just something I came up with while searching the pantry for things I have on hand already. Everything turned out really good so I thought I’d share it here.

Season some chicken breasts with sea salt and fresh ground pepper, brown on each side in little olive oil in a large oven safe skillet – if you don’t have an oven safe skillet you can transfer the chicken to a baking dish – and really the browning is just for aesthetics. It isn’t required to brown it but it just looks more appetizing and it does help seal in the juices too.

Pour a can of the Hot Rotel over the browned chicken. If you don’t like hot, spicy foods you can just use a can of diced tomatoes instead. Any kind of salsa would work well for this too. Bake for about 20 minutes at 350 or until chicken is done.

I served this with Mexican rice and cheesy refried beans the first night – the rice was a packaged rice, Vigo Mexican rice. The refried beans were canned topped with shredded colby jack cheese and baked alongside the chicken – so sue me for using canned and packaged, this recipe meme is all about simple! 😉

For the second night I shredded the leftover chicken, heated and wrapped the leftover refried beans, rice and chicken in warm burrito shells – what a hit with the hubby and kids!

I still had a very small container left of the chicken and Rotel mix which went into to freezer to use another night for a Mexican pizza topping or a spicy chicken soup. This was a great meal stretching recipe.

Hope you’ll join in and link your simple supper ideas!

What Did You Bake Today: Cloverleaf Rolls

Welcome to another “What Did You Bake Today” Friday. This week, I made a trip to my new local library. I have been without a library for the last two years and the first thing I wanted to do was stand in the nonfiction section and just touch the books. Crazy, but you don’t realize what you are missing until it’s gone. Libraries are like that. Anyway, long story short, I checked out a few cookbooks. This recipe is a variation of a Taste of Home Country Cooking recipe published in 2000.

Cloverleaf Rolls:
2 Tbls yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 tsp salt
3 1/2 – 4 cups all-purpose flour
In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add whole wheat flour, sugar, oil, salt and 2 cups all-purpose flour; beat until smooth. Add enough of the remaining flour to form a soft dough. Knead (or use the mixer) until elastic and smooth. Cover and let rise until double in size (about an hour, unless the room is really warm, then it will take less time). Punch down, divide in half. Divide each half into 36 pieces. Shape into balls; place 3 balls in each greased muffin cup. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. Bake 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Makes about 24.

Thanks for joining us today!

No-bake cherry cheesecake recipe – save room for dessert

The lazy days of summer have a reputation for a reason. It’s hot, some of us are on vacation, others wish they were, and often the last thing we want to do is turn up the heat in our kitchens by baking. I have just the answer for this week’s Save Room for Dessert — a delicious, no-bake cherry cheesecake recipe.

Enjoy!
See you next Wednesday for another Save Room for Dessert. Don’t forget to visit the other participants, and to comment on their blogs.

(Stop by Joy Of Desserts to enter my latest giveaway, too!)

No-bake cherry cheesecake recipe
4 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup whipping cream
1 small can cherry pie filling
1 graham cracker pie shell or pre-baked pastry shell

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract together. In a separate bowl, whip the whipping cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese and evenly pour into pie shell. Pour cherry filling over the cream cheese mixture and keep chilled until ready to serve.
Photo: Flicker Commons/is2vampires

What do you do with those forgotten overripe Bananas?

You head on over to the crazy kitchen for Save Room for Dessert Wednesday and What Did You Bake Today? Friday to check out their recipes and play along.

Tasty Tuesday is hosted by Jen over at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam. Vintage Recipe Thursday is hosted by Joy of desserts. Tuesdays at the Table is normally hosted by Andrea over at My Chihauhau Bites but Andrea is taking a break while she has her baby and is being hosted by Cole for a while.

Here is my entry:
BANANA BREAD/CAKE
This recipes makes either 2 loaves of moist yummy banana bread or 1 9×13 cake. Top it off with PINEAPPLE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING for a super yummy dessert!

BREAD/CAKE
8 ounce can crushed pineapple, drained well*
3 large overripe bananas
2 JUMBO eggs
1 cup butter, softened
1/8-1/4 cup rum
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 tablespoon PURE maple syrup
1/2 cup crushed walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 3/4 cups flour

Poor the rum over the raisins several hours before making the bread/cake.
In a sauce pan melt 1 stick of the butter. Stir in the brown sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon until well incorporated. Add the raisins and nuts and blend well. Set aside to cool.
In a mixing bowl cream together the other stick of butter, sugar and eggs until well blended.
Sift the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder into the cream mixture and blend well. It will have a thick cookie like consistency.
Add the cooled banana mixture and blend until a smooth consistency.
Pour into 2 prepared large bread pans or a 9×13 pan.
Bake 45-50 minutes until tester comes out clean.
Top with PINEAPPLE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

*optional

PINEAPPLE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon reserved pineapple juice

In a bowl of electric mixer, combine cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract and reserved pineapple juice. Beat until smooth and of spreading consistency.

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2 types of Egg Rolls & 2 dipping sauces~ Simply Delicious Sunday

EGG ROLLS
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cloves minced garlic, jar
1 stalk celery, thinly sliced
1 small bunch green onions, sliced thinly
1/2 cup grated carrot
1 cup Napa cabbage, shredded
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 to 2 tablespoons sesame oil
wonton wrappers
1 cup shredded pork or

In a wok or skillet, stir-fry the garlic in 2 tablespoons of the oil until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the scallions, celery, carrots, and stir-fry over high heat for 2 minutes.
In a bowl, combine the chicken broth, soy sauce, and sugar. Add the cabbage to the broth mixture. Bring to a boil and simmer 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft. Add sesame oil, cool for at least 15 minutes, and strain. Fold in the meat pieces.
Fill and roll the egg roll wrappers. Brush the edge with water. Fold in the sides of the wonton and continue rolling the egg roll up until it is closed. Press to seal, set aside, and complete the rest until all ingredients have been used up.
In a skillet set over moderately high heat, heat the remaining oil and saute the egg rolls until golden brown on all sides, using tongs to turn them. Serve when cool enough to eat, with dipping sauce.

SHREDDED CHICKEN VEGETABLE EGG ROLLS
2 cups finely chopped cooked chicken or pork pieces
1 medium Vidalia onion, finely chopped
1 large stalk celery, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic, jar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon sesame oil
4 tablespoons canola oil
egg roll wrappers (I use Melissa’s)

Heat skillet with 2 tablespoons of oil. Add onion, garlic, celery and carrots, Saute’ until tender.
Drain, retaining oil.
In a large mixing bowl toss meat pieces with sesame oil, sugar, salt and pepper. Add vegetables and blend well.
Cool 5-10 minutes.
Fill center of each wrapper with 2 tablespoons of filling.
Fold 1st corner towards the center. Then fold each edge towards the center. With a pastry brush wet the exposed triangle of dough and roll the bulk onto it.
Add oil back into pan and add the additional 2 tablespoons and bring to medium heat.
Cook egg rolls on all 4 sides until golden.

BLACKBERRY PINEAPPLE DIPPING SAUCE
1/2 cup Blackberry Pineapple Jam
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Heat jam in microwave for 20 seconds to warm and thin.
Whisk in honey and sauce sauce.
Set aside.

DIPPING SAUCE
* 1/3 cup lite soy sauce
* 1/3 cup rice vinegar
* 1 tablespoon honey
* 1 to 2 teaspoons sesame oil
* Pinch of red pepper flakes

Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

Simple Supper Saturday – Pasta with Pesto

It doesn’t get much more simple than a nice pasta with pesto supper. You can use the easy pesto recipe below – it can also be frozen for even quicker meals, be sure to make a double batch! Of course if you don’t even want to go that far there is always store bought pesto sauce. It’s a quick and easy meal either way.

Pesto

2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Romano cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts
3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Combine all ingredients except olive oil and pulse several times in a food processor

2. Slowly add the the olive oil preferably in a constant stream while the food processor is on. Scrape sides, add the grated cheese, a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper and pulse a few more times – that’s it!

Serve over fresh pasta (I like mine with a little red pepper and Parmesan sprinkled on top). Serve with garlic bread.

Category: OKK MEMES & PRIOR CONTRIBUTORS