Mandy and Jace

Every week I decide what we are going to eat for dinner ahead of time so that I can make sure I have everything I need to cook for the week. I didn’t do this until about a year ago when we decided to eat more meals at home. It has helped so much in keeping me organized and it also keeps me from making hurried trips to the grocery store every day.

This week is healthy week because I have to get into a bridesmaid’s dress on Saturday and look presentable. Here’s the plan:
Tonight: Leftover chili from Saturday with whole wheat crackers
Tuesday: Teriyaki brown rice with squash, zucchini, eggplant and red peppers. So good!
Wednesday: Grilled chicken and mashed potatoes.
Thursday: I have praise and worship practice so we will be having take out.
Friday: Clear Springs for the rehearsal dinner.

I will put up some of the recipes as we go.

Happy Eating!

I was a little afraid when I got this recipe. I didn’t like the sound of pumpkin brownies, but I assure you they are amazing. Contrary to what it sounds like there is no chocolate in the recipe only pumpkin. I got the recipe from www.whoorl.com.

Pumpkin brownies with cream cheese frosting

4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream Cheese Frosting:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In your mixer beat the eggs very well. Add in the butter and sugar and continue mixing. Add the pumpkin and the vanilla and keep mixing. Last but not least at in the flour and spices and finish mixing.

Pour the batter into a 9×13 pan and put in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the brownies cool completely. While they are cooling combine all the ingredients for the frosting and spread onto the brownies when they are ready.

Have fun cooking!

Lately I have been trying to make some changes to our eating habits around the house. I have come to realize that by eating healthy, unprocessed foods I feel so much better than when I ate all the fast and pre-packaged stuff I was eating. I have more energy now and I also don’t have the daily headaches that I used to have. So I bought this cookbook:

The ladies who wrote this cookbook are Jennifer Aniston’s personal chefs (we all know how good she looks) and every recipe that I’ve tried is great tasting and very easy. Best of all, every recipe in the book requires fresh and natural ingredients. They even have a section for baby and kids food. I have to admit that I still do eat fast food, but I’m down to maybe once or twice a week when I have to go somewhere right after work or on Saturdays. We have saved money on not eating out and I feel great.

On this, our second wedding anniversary, I took it upon myself to prepare a dinner of an almost Faincy variety. And to do dishes. Most of them at least.

So, the menu for this evening is a steak au poivre with fried zucchini. The steak uses a rather interesting method of preparation and this was the first time I’ve ever tried it, to great success, thankfully. The secret: salt — lots and lots of salt.

You have to coat the steaks in salt — like a tablespoon per steak — about half an hour before you’re ready to cook them, then wash the salt off, pat dry, dust with freshly cracked pepper, and sautée on medium high heat for 4 minutes per side for a perfect mid-rare.

The zucchini is cut in a large julienne, like french fried potatoes, coated in flour, egg wash and then, muched up tortilla chips. I ran several handfulls of chips through the food processor, but I think some cornmeal would work just as well.

The final plate looked a little something like this:

The tao of steak
Step 1: Salt the steaks, use a lot of salt

Step 2: Rinse the salt from the steaks and pat them dry

Step 3: Put some pepper on the steak, freshly cracked is the way to go, and you can run some peppercorns through a coffee grinder if you like

Step 4: Sautée with a little browned butter and oil. It smelled too good and I forgot to take a picture of it. I’m only sorta sorry about that.

Step 5: And this is one of the very most important steps of cooking a steak – let it rest. Put it on a plate and don’t touch it for at least 5 minutes and 10 if you can wait.

The zucchini files

Step 1: Forget to take pictures any of the prep work.

Step 2: Cut the zucchini in a large julienne, think Wendy’s French fries rather than McDonald’s.

Step 3: Dredge in flour seasoned with salt, garlic powder and whatever else might sound good; then a little dunk in egg; lastly put some of the chip crumbs on ’em.

Step 4: Fry in oil at somewhere around 350° F for a couple of minutes and dig them out. Hot oil can hurt your hands so use a spider.

Until recently I didn’t know how stupid easy making your own chili powder was. Who knows how much money we have spent on “good” chili powder when we could have done it ourselves for a couple of bucks.

So are you ready… there is a lot to remember…

Chili Powder

Dried peppers (any kind you want. We just went to HEB and bought a bag of mixed dried peppers)
Ground white pepper (any kind of pepper will do)

Cut peppers in small pieces and leave as many seeds in as you can handle. Remember the more seeds you leave in, the hotter the powder will be. Put the pieces in a coffee bean grinder and grind into a powder. Grind some pepper into the powder and leave it out for a day to finish drying. Put it in a shaker and use it wherever you want to.

Ta da! That’s it. Enjoy!