Quiche Cups

makes 12

Base:
6 eggs
2 tbsp cream cheese or heavy whipping cream

Veggies:
2 cups fresh or frozen spinach, chopped
1/4 cup diced peppers
1/4 cup diced onions or green onions
1/4 cup diced tomatoes, well drained
1 tbsp minced jalapeño peppers

Other add-ins
1 cup shredded cheese
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice
1 tbsp soy sauce
3/4 cup chopped meat
1/2 cup chopped cilantro, parsley, oregano, or other herbs/spices
1 tsp hot pepper sauce

Grease a 12-cup muffin tin or line with muffin cups. Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine eggs and cream cheese or whipping cream in blender and mix until fluffy. Add other ingredients as desired. Pulse blender just until mixed.

Fill muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Egg cups will expand as they cook--to prevent falling, cool in oven with door open.

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Modified from a South Beach Diet recipe. Two favorite combinations so far: cheddar cheese, spinach, green onions, and hot sauce, and spinach, lemon juice, parmesan cheese, and cilantro.

Super Chicken Divan

aka One Amazing Cholesterol Trip

1 lb chicken, cubed
2 cups broccoli
2 tbsp butter
1 cup onion, chopped
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup white wine
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 cup shredded cheese
1 cup bread crumbs
1 tsp ground nutmeg

Cook chicken in butter and olive oil. Cut broccoli into 1/2 inch spears. In 2-quart saucepan, heat 1 inch salted water to boiling. Add broccoli. Boil uncovered 5 minutes; drain and keep warm.

In the same saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Saute onions until soft. Add remaining ingredients, stirring constantly, until smooth and bubbly. Add chicken pieces. Serve over rice or noodles.

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Sort of based on two Betty Crocker recipes, one for Turkey Divan, one for Chicken Divan. I couldn't decide which one I had more ingredients for, so I just combined them. I got an all-star approval!

Cucumber Avocado Soup

makes 5 servings

2 pounds soft-skinned cucumbers
6 ounces watercress, arugula, OR cilantro
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 small jalapeño pepper (use more if it's very mild)
1 large Haas avocado (7 ounces)
1-2 teaspoons sea salt

Trim the ends off the cucumbers, taste each end, and trim off any bitter part. Cut the cucumbers into cubes. Wash the watercress, remove any heavy stems, and chop it roughly. You should have about 2 cups.

Combine half the cucumbers and most of the lemon juice in the container of a blender or food processor and puree. The cucumbers will soon be a liquid, and you can then easily add the remaining cucumbers, watercress, garlic, and jalapeño. Puree until everything is smooth, working in batches if you need to.

Cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, peel the avocado, and cut the flesh into cubes; you should have not quite 1 cup of diced avocado. Add the avocado to the cucumber puree, along with a teaspoon of sea salt, and process again. The mixture will become thicker and creamier. Stir everything together in a bowl and taste. Add more lemon juice and more salt, a bit at a time and stirring thoroughly each time, until the balance feels right to you.

Chill the soup well. Serve it in small bowls, and drizzle each serving with a little olive oil, then scatter a few tomato cubes and croutons on top.

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This is a wonderfully refreshing summer soup--and a great way to eat more raw veggies.

Notes from The Splendid Table: Long, soft-skinned cucumbers, called English, Armenian, or Persian cucumbers, are best for this soup because they can be used with skin and seeds. If they are very large, check for mature seeds and remove them, but a slender cucumber of this type generally has tiny, soft seeds that puree perfectly.

Watercress adds a little bite to the mild cucumber and avocado. Arugula can be used instead, or a bunch of cilantro, but choose one — don't mix the flavors. This recipe is based on proportions for one large avocado and can easily be doubled.

Savory Mushroom Spread

2-3 tablespoons butter
1/2 lb fresh mushrooms, chopped
1 tablespoon shallot, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon dry white wine
2 tablespoons pine nuts or almonds, toasted
2 tablespoons sour cream
salt and pepper

Melt butter in skillet. Add mushrooms, shallots and garlic and saute about 6 minutes on med-high heat. Add wine and cook 2 minutes longer. Cool mixture.
Remove to serving bowl and stir in sour cream and nuts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with baguettes or crackers.

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I started making this before realizing that I didn't have sour cream, so I crushed up the toasted pine nuts and mixed them, along with some heavy cream, into the mixture and kept cooking till it thickened. It's cooling on the stove now, so I haven't tested it on bread or crackers, but my spoon tests (and my nose) tell me that "savory" is the right word for this!

Butternut Squash Soup

with curried apples

1/2 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup butter
8 cups peeled and cubed butternut squash (about one squash)
4 cups chicken broth
3/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
16-20 oz cream cheese (and/or sour cream)

In a large saucepan, sauté onions in butter until tender. Add squash, water, bouillon, marjoram, black pepper and cayenne pepper. Bring to boil; cook 20 minutes, or until squash is tender.

Puree squash and cream cheese in a blender or food processor in batches until smooth. Return to saucepan, and heat through. Do not allow to boil.


Curried Apples

2 teaspoons white-wine vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon curry powder
1 small tart apple (4 ounce) peeled, cored, and diced

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring vinegar, honey, and curry powder to a boil. Add apple; cook, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes and remove from heat.

Ladle the soup into warm bowls, add a spoonful of apples, a dollop of sour cream, and sprinkle with mint and cinnamon.

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Soup recipe from AllRecipes.com, curried apple recipe from MarthaStewart.com. This is an amazing recipe! So tasty! I used half a squash to test this recipe out, intending to make some kind of pasta dish with the rest, but my roommates all requested more soup instead!

Granddad Franklin's Potato Salad

10 white potatoes, still warm
2 medium peppers
2 celery stalks
1 onion
1 large tomato
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tbsp celery seed
4 oz pimentos
1 cup sweet pickle relish

Cut and mix? I haven't made this yet--maybe I'll sit down with Grandma tomorrow and figure some more detailed directions out. She is apparently the only family member (aside from Great-Granddad Franklin himself) who can make this potato salad right.

Scott's Pasta Salad

1 pound pasta
2 heads broccoli
1/2 head cauliflower
2 carrots
1 cup chopped chicken
1 red or yellow pepper, chopped and raw
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup freshly shredded Parmesan cheese
Salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Cook and drain pasta. Cut broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots in bite-size pieces and steam until tender-crisp. Throw everything except the cheese into a big bowl and mix it up. The hot pasta will take a little of the edge off the raw garlic. Add the cheese last, on top of each serving if you like.

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I haven't tried making this recipe yet, but when I ate it (straight from the Kirner kitchen) for the first time, it was amazing. Now that I've rediscovered the recipe, I will make it soon!

Chicken with Goat Cheese and Artichoke Hearts

Yay, I get to post my own recipe now! I guess technically I stole it from Bonefish Grill, but I don't remember them putting capers or chives in their dish... =) Let's see if I can remember what I did this time, and hopefully I can go back and figure out some specific measurements at some point.

Cut chicken breast into bite-sized pieces. Melt butter in skillet or pan along with chopped chives and parsley and cook chicken. Deglaze pan with milk or cream, add capers and artichoke hearts and reduce. Top with goat cheese medallions or crumbles.

I confess...I haven't tested the last bit yet, with the cheese. I'll have a verdict after lunch tomorrow. I can see where with the sauce it'd be too much creamy stuff, but I'm hoping if I use it sparingly it'll fly. When I added milk and cream, I also put in some flour because it looked like it was going to be really thin. It was probably quite unnecessary, because I just had to add like another cup of milk to make it liquidy again. I have a hunch that heating and reducing would have worked just fine. I'll make this again at some point and refine. Ooh exciting, I'm a real chef!

I plan to serve this tomorrow with broccoli and fruit salad (made with pineapple, red grapes, blueberries, and strawberries and maybe some wheat thins on the side. I'm meeting John for lunch with this, so I put some extra time into it. As in, I actually planned what I was going to make (colors and everything) before even going to the store. Amazing! I think I'll take the rest of that cucumber soup along as well, it needs to get eaten, and I want to spread the word about it. That recipe will be along very soon, promise.

Chicken With Red Grapes and Mushrooms

in a thyme cream sauce

2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
1 cup red wine
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 cup seedless red grapes, rinsed and dried

Melt butter with oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. When hot, add chicken breasts. Brown 3 to 5 minutes on both sides until golden. Add mushrooms, and saute for 2 to 3 minutes, or until soft. Deglaze pan with wine, making sure to loosen any brown bits from bottom of pan. Simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in cream. Add salt, pepper, and thyme. Reduce heat to low, and cover. Simmer for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove cover. Reduce cream for 3 minutes, until thickened. Add red grapes, and heat through.

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This is a fantastic dish! I made this for dinner last week and my parents and I nearly died of deliciousness. Even the cold leftovers tasted great. I ended up having to add more grapes because we had way too many they were gone with dinner. This was also a good vocab recipe; I learned what 'deglaze' and 'reduce' meant. =)

I was hoping to find some angel hair pasta to serve this over, but all we had was whole wheat spaghetti. It wasn't bad. At allrecipes.com they suggest bowtie pasta or wide egg noodles. Personally, I think everything worth eating can be eaten with rice, but I try to cater to the Italian in everyone as well. ^^ They also suggest using white wine rather than red and adding garlic, which both also sound wonderful.

Honey Orange Glaze

2 tbsp orange juice
1 cup honey
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Mix and baste preferred meat while baking.

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The recipe uses ham, and that's what I used, but I just grabbed some already sliced from our freezer and oh dear, now it's been so long that I don't remember what I put with it. Must have been carrots...and maybe broccoli too? This is why I should take pictures before I let myself get lazy and wait a week before updating. But whatever I made, it got thumbs up from both parents. =)

Avocado, Tomato, and Corn Salad

makes four servings

1/2 avocado, chopped
1 cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 cup fresh, frozen, or low-sodium corn
1 lime, juiced

Combine and toss. Wow, that was easy.

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The original recipe (from who knows where, my mom sent it to me) didn't say to halve the tomatoes, but I went ahead and did it. After poking around a bit, there's a recipe on foodnetwork.com that does say to do that, and has a fancy dressing with cilantro and olive oil and stuff. Really, the lime juice was just fine. They also added red onion. Meh. I put this in our lunchboxes with some leftover lime chicken my mom made and the vegetable remains from the cow bento. Might've been some flatbread too. Yum!

Moo bento

Ok guys. Prepare to be amazed.

Because I'm freaking proud of this one.



In case anyone was still wondering...THIS is a bento. Lots of food groups, lots of color, and hopefully cute enough that kids (or parents) will eat their vegetables. =)

Rice underneath as usual, the grass is made from cucumber and zucchini (is that what a julienne is?) with a tomato and carrot flower, orange pepper sun, leftover lime chicken clouds in a (colored) egg white sky and the rather large centerpiece, an egg cow. I mixed in some soy sauce and sesame oil before frying it, and it is delish!

My parents both like putting their bentos in obvious places till they get to lunchtime...I can't wait to hear what people have to say about this. =D

Orange bento

I've been dying to make color-themed lunches. Because I'm a hippie (at least a wannabe). Last night I was thinking of what was in the fridge that I could fix up without too much hassle, and I remembered that I had a cantaloupe and some ginormous oranges to use. So the color of the day is orange (which of course includes yellow and red for aesthetics and my sanity).

Today's bento consists of cantaloupe and orange fruit salad alongside rice with barely-cooked carrots, Wisconsin cheese, and eggs drizzled with honey orange sauce and accented with tomato flowers. Oh, and a layer of goldfish sandwiched between the lid and some plastic wrap for a snack.

The fruit salad is really just fresh fruit; I did try mixing it with mint and vanilla, but I don't really care for the cantaloupe that way. The orange however...to die for! Anyway, so I just cut them up nice and small and nestled them into a little bowl made of half an orange rind.

The carrots are barely-cooked because I decided I wanted to glaze them at the last minute, and didn't have time to do much except boil them for five minutes. I think that was just enough though. I made a hasty omelet last night and cut some little hearts out of it and dumped honey orange sauce on everything.

I didn't look up a recipe for that because my 7.30 deadline was fast approaching, and decided that mixing honey and orange juice tasted just fine. About.com tells me I should have used much less honey and simmered it for a while rather than sticking it into the microwave for 15 seconds, and Betty Crocker suggests cooking brown sugar, butter, and a little salt and grated orange peel and then simmering the carrots in that. I'll have to give both of those a try and see what else turns up.

Don't know what to say about the little grape tomatoes except that they were hastily made and I need a better set of knives. I'm going to walk into a kitchen store one of these days and pick someone's brain about them, since I currently know next to nothing. Maybe I should search for some little shape-cutters for carrots and stuff too. I can make shapes by hand, but they're never as good, and I tend to run out of creative ideas after stars and flowers.

Overall this was a fun bento. I'll have to do it again, maybe once for each color. Although that could get tricky for colors like blue and purple. How about black and white? Would that even be appetizing? I could make it checkered, like the bathroom set my mom crocheted when she moved out...LOL.

Garden Gazpacho

Makes 4 servings

2 lbs large ripe tomatoes, seeded, and diced
1/2 orange bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 tbs red wine vinegar
2 tbs mild çayenne pepper sauce
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 c vegetable juice
3/4 c fresh corn kernels
2 green onions, chopped
2 tbs thinly sliced fresh basil

Put half the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumber as well as all of the vinegar, pepper sauce, oil, garlic, and salt in a blender. Purée until smooth and transfer to a large glass bowl or container. Stir in the remaining tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, vegetable juice, corn, and green onions. Cover and refrigerate until the flavors are blended, at least four hours. Continue to check flavors periodically as soup chills. Ladle the soup into chilled bowls and sprinkle with basil.

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This recipe is actually a Glad advertisement in issue 43 of Everyday Food that I picked up in the South Bend airport. It's not too hard to make, evidenced by the fact that I managed to make it without having a clue how to dice tomatoes or use the food processor or anything. I hard boiled some eggs to go with it (it's for lunch tomorrow) and managed to crack most of them. *sigh* On the daily cooking scale, today might be about a 5. But at least lunch will be tasty if nothing else.

P.S. This is the beginning of my make-my-parents-lunch-every-day phase, as it is summer. This means I'll be updating a lot more and hopefully learning something in the process. My parents are my test-tasters, so I'm hoping they can give me some feedback such as MAKE IT AGAIN PLEASE or ....maybe let's have that other thing again. =)