Asian Rice Salad with Broiled Tilapia

Well I've been cooking a lot lately, but haven't had much time to blog about the finds I've made. Here's an asian rice salad that I found on this site that is great!

Sorry my picture is a bit blurry...We served the rice salad on a bed of lettuce fresh from our garden (don't mix the lettuce in - just put on plate and scoop salad on top and broiled tilapia. Yum.

Broiled Almond-Crusted Tilapia
Printable Recipe

*4 light servings

INGREDIENTS:
4 4-oz. tilapia fillets
1/4 Cup butter, melted
Seasoning salt
1/2 Cup ground almonds (pulsed in a blender)

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat Broiler. Place tilipia fillets on a broiling pan or cookie sheet. Spread with melted butter. Sprinkle with seasoning salt, to taste and ground up almonds. Broil for 6 minutes or until tilipia is tender and flakes easily with a fork.

Recipe Source: healthyfamilycookin.blogspot.com

Read More

Easy No-Knead Refrigerator Crescent Rolls

I love this recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com. Do you have recipes that use refrigerator crescent rolls (like pillsbury) and cringe every time you use them at the unhealthiness, expensiveness, etc? Well here's a great substitute for those. I've made them twice and have been amazed at the simplicity of them. They were especially perfect for Father's day yesterday when I needed a roll recipe that I didn't have to spend a lot of time with because we were at church. Wonderful recipe (with half whole-wheat flour!)

Here's what my dough looked like when I put it in the refrigerator. I love that I don't knead it and it turns out so wonderful! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I have!

Read More

Making Yogurt Part II

I had one of my readers comment to me recently that they were trying to make homemade yogurt using my instructions and it was not turning out how they wanted it to. So I decided to give you some more tips to help you be successful in this.

Tip #1: Make sure you get the right kind of yogurt starter. I've tried many different brands and one of my favorites is Dannon. It consistently makes good yogurt that's not too runny or too clumpy.
But I think my all-time favorite starter is greek yogurt. They run about double the price of regular yogurt, but I think it's worth it. Especially since you just need to buy a small cup's worth and then you can make multiple quarts out of it. I like the yoplait brand of yogurt, especially their greek yogurt. I've recently discovered this one and it's smooth and creamy and really good consistency.
I talked to a friend who makes Greek yogurt a few days ago and she told me that traditionally greek yogurt is made with whole milk and a little cream. YUM, huh? But I've been making mine with 1% milk and it turns out just fine and is much healthier.

Be careful when using store brand yogurts for your starters. They might taste fine at first but after several batches, the quality often goes down. Not all do though, so experiment if you want. Don't use walmart brand plain yogurt!. That one does not do well, I can tell you for sure.

Tip #2: Make Yogurt fresh every week. If you don't make it for a while, start out with a fresh starter because the bacteria in the yogurt dies after a while. As long as you make it every week you can use some of your last batch as a starter without losing too much quality.

Tip #3: I'm still perfecting the time to culture our yogurt, but lately I've been going only about 6 hours and I've found it's just about perfect for us. When it comes out it should kind of stick together in the shape of the quart jar. If you want it thicker (and I usually do), you can pour out a little of the whey right after you culture it. Just gently tilt it and the excess whey should pour right out without spilling any of your yogurt. It still might be thinner than store-bought yogurt, but that's okay. As long as you got a good starter it should taste really really yummy. If you do want it really thick you can use a cheese-cloth to drip out more of the whey - until it becomes the consistency you want it. If you drip out all the whey, it turns into yogurt cheese which is good to use as a substitute for cream cheese.

Tip #4: If you accidentally culture your yogurt too long, it turns sour. Some people like it that way, but I don't. If you don't like the taste, start out with a fresh starter (don't use the bad one). A bad starter will make bad yogurt.

Tip #5: Use good milk, to make good yogurt. Again, the milk does matter. Don't use Walmart store brand. Use the tastiest kind of milk you can find.

Tip #6: When heating your milk, heat it on a medium to medium-low temperature. Don't be impatient. It might take a while to boil, but that's okay. It doesn't have to completely boil either. If you just want to heat it until it's good and hot, that should be fine as long as you're not using raw milk. If you're using raw milk that is unpasteurized, you'll probably want to boil the milk to kill the bacteria in the milk before using it to make yogurt. Strain it after boiling before putting it in your jar or you might end up with a yucky milky gooey thing that sits on the top when you boil the milk.

Finally here's another recipe you can use with your yogurt that is really good. My youngest son loves this for breakfast!

Fresh Strawberry yogurt
1 Cup plain yogurt
3 large fresh strawberries, chopped
1 tsp. vanilla powder, or to taste
xagave, honey or sugar, to taste
granola (optional)

Put yogurt and vanilla powder in a bowl, mix. Add sweetener to taste. Add chopped strawberries and sprinkle with granola, if desired. Enjoy!

I love strawberries this time of year! They are perfect and you can find them so cheap! Here's my favorite vanilla powder that my Mother-in-law introduced me to a while ago. This is so good! It makes your food smell heavenly!

Read More

The BEST Mexican Black Bean Taco Salad

Oh my goodness! I have eaten this dish 3 times this week and it is soooo good! I think it just get's better and better. I made it one night for dinner and have had leftovers for lunch twice. I've made the black beans before, but with this combination, wow - this is an out-of-this world dinner - one of my most favorites of all time. The nice thing about it is it is vegetarian, easily vegan, gluten-free, and....tasty!

I'm posting this as a surprise for my Dad for Father's day. My Dad's diet is gluten-free, low-fat, low sodium, and a ton of other restrictions that I probably missed. As you can probably guess, he eats pretty bland food. For my Dad, I'm having him try the recipe below with a few changes: leaving out the salt, using fat-free or low fat mayo in the dressing and using the healthier tortilla chips with little or no salt or leaving out the chips all together.

Mexican Black Bean Taco Salad
Mexican Black Beans
Corn (canned or frozen), warmed
Lettuce, chopped
Tomatoes, diced
Avacados, chopped (optional)
Tortilla Chips
Cheese (optional)
Other salad veggies as desired (Cabbage, green onions, cucumbers, bell peppers, etc)
fresh limes, sliced into wedges (You've GOT TO USE FRESH LIMES!! A MUST!!)
Cilantro-lime buttermilk dressing (see recipe below, leave off for vegan or make a variation using vegan substitutes)

Prepare the ingredients and place in individual serving bowls on the table. Each person can prepare their own salad as desired. I like to layer chips, black beans, corn, lettuce, tomatoes, avacadoes, cheese and other veggies on my plate. Then I squeeze the lime juice all over and pour on the dressing. I like to either eat as a salad or dip chips into it for a dip.

Cilantro-lime Buttermilk Dressing
¾ C. Mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. Freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tsp. Ground black pepper
¾ tsp. fresh oregano, minced or ¼ tsp. dried
½ tsp. salt
½ C. buttermilk
2-3 Tbsp. fresh cilantro, minced (or more, as desired)
1 tsp. fresh garlic, minced
½ tsp. onion, minced

Mix all the ingredients in a blender. Use immediately or store in a tightly covered container and refrigerate up to 1 week. Shake well before using.

Read More

Honey Oat Wheat Bread - OH SO YUMMY!

Have I ever told you how much I love bread? Oh my, it's my weakness. Especially when it comes out of the oven all fresh and delicious smelling and IRRESISTIBLE! I've made homemade bread just about every week (or more) for several years now. My tried and true whole-wheat bread recipe is here and I mostly make this one because it's fast, dependable, healthy and very tasty. Well, I've been branching out a little bit trying to get some variety to our diet. Here's a variation on my tried and true recipe that I made today - the thing I loved about it most was how easy it was - as easy as putting in one more ingredient in it and how yummy it turned out. Just a slightly lighter taste than my every-day bread recipe. So good....in fact, it has all the necessary qualities to become another tried and true bread recipe. Enjoy!!

Honey Oat Wheat Bread

Printable Recipe

*Makes 3 loaves of bread

*Helpful Hint: If you put the oil in the 1/3 cup measuring cup first and then reuse it to measure the honey, the honey won’t stick.

INGREDIENTS:

3 Cups hot water, microwave on high 2-3 min or until quite warm ( >110° F)
1/3 Cup oil
1/3 Cup honey
1 Tbsp. salt (put in first before adding yeast)
½ Cup quick or old-fashioned oats
3+ Cups freshly ground whole wheat flour (ground from hard white wheat)

½ Cup gluten flour*
2 Tbsp. yeast on top of flour

DIRECTIONS:
Combine above ingredients in order in a Bosch mixer with dough hook and mix. Add more whole wheat flour until the dough pulls away from the side. Then mix for an additional six minutes. Divide dough into 3 loaves (the dough will still be VERY sticky - so sticky that you won't be able to form your loaves without putting oil on your hands). Put dough in oiled pans. Turn the bread over in the oil and top with a light sprinkling of oats. Let rise until double or until the bread fills the pans. While bread is rising, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the bread has risen, bake it at 400 deg. for 5 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 350 degrees and continue baking for 25 min or until done.

*NOTE on the Gluten flour: I use Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour that I buy at WinCo foods in their bulk bins - or you can get a 25 lb. bag of it there if you order it. I think you can also get it at Walmart in smaller quantities - like 22 oz. pkgs. You only use 1/2 cup for 3 loaves so it lasts a long time. It allows you to make the bread with whole-grain flour and still have it light and fluffy and stick together. This really is not an optional ingredient - you can try to leave it out, but you will end up with denser bread, that is crumbly, doesn't have as long of a shelf life and really is not as enjoyable to eat. Another option (if you're looking for one) is to use a good quality, high gluten white flour instead of some of the whole-wheat flour (experiment with how much - maybe 2 cups or more to get it to a good stick-together consistency). I'd rather spend a little more for the gluten flour because you can use less of it (which means more whole-grain flour which is better for you) and still have a great textured, tasty bread.

Recipe Source: healthyfamilycookin.blogspot.com

Read More