Cheyenne Burger

I know, I said I'd post about sides, but that can wait!
I made dinner again last night. Bobby Flay helped me out with this one.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my finished results. Sorry! I'll cook it again soon and remember next time!
Here is the link to the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cheyenne-burger-recipe/index.html

The differences between this recipe and the way I cooked these burgers is that I mixed in some chopped vidalia onions with the turkey meat. Turkey tends to be quite dry, so I added the onions to juice it up. I also added a little bit of seasoned salt and pepper to the meat, for added flavour.

I'm not going to lie, though. I had serious issues with cooking last night. I made a huge mess and I had trouble multitasking. But then again, I always have trouble multitasking. In my defense, I was really tired because I didn't sleep very well at all the other night. I also didn't manage my time as well as I could have. Ahh, yes, what an amateur. I'll become better with practice, I swear!!

All in all, the burgers turned out nicely. The onion rings that I made to go on top were really good, too. I made extra burgers, so I heated one up for lunch today.
Also, the sauce that went on the burgers was delicious. My dad liked it so much, he used extra and demanded I save the rest in a jar for other uses.

Thanks, Bobby Flay. I think my dad is in love with your BBQ sauce.

Quesadilla

So, an awesome best friend of mine told me she forgot how to make quesadillas. Come again? One of the easiest things to make in the kitchen - quesadillas. [Amy, I love you!]
I wanted to be able to have a picture up, so I made a quesadilla for lunch today. Yay!
My Ingredients:
- two large flour tortillas
- hand-grated monterey jack cheese
- sliced or chopped black olives
If I ever have left-over chicken, I like shredding it up to put in my quesadilla.
Top one tortilla with your cheese and other ingredients. Spread it out evenly - and don't use too much cheese and whatnot, otherwise it'll be nasty and you'll probably make a mess. Use maybe half a cup or so of cheese, depending on how big your tortillas are.
Put a frying pan, or a skillet, on your stove. Check? Okay, turn your stove on to the highest level and let it heat up. Once it's nice and hot [put your hand above the pan - DON'T TOUCH IT - so you can tell whether it's hot enough or not], turn the heat down to medium or medium-low and put the quesadilla on the pan. Once you see the cheese starting to melt, put the second tortilla on top and press it down with a spatula. It should be ready to flip. Use your spatula to lift up the bottom, so you can check to see if it's ready to flip. Make sure it's got a crunchy-looking texture and a light brown or golden colour. Flip!!! CAREFULLY! Don't be so quick to flip, that it ends up on the floor - that's never happened to me, but I can imagine it would suck.
As you brown up the other side, check it with a spatula to make sure you don't burn it. When you think it's done, take it off the pan and put it on a plate. Turn your stove off, please! Cut the quesadilla into fours. And you're done. Congrats! You just made a quesadilla. Eat it. It's good, eh? Serve it with some guacamole, sour cream, salsa, or eat it naked.

If you want to quickly make some guacamole to dunk your quesadillas in, here's how to do it!
My Mother's Ingredients:
- one avocado
- lime/lemon juice
- seasoned salt
Cut the avocado in half [remember to cut around - there's a giant seed inside] and take the seed out. Spoon the avocado out and put it in a bowl. Add a few drops of lemon or lime juice and a couple pinches of seasoned salt. Mash it up with a fork. Dunk your quesadilla and eat it. It tastes even better.

You're welcome!

Stay tuned for an entry about lunch sides!

The Sandwich Chronicles

I think I'll post a lot about sandwiches in the near future. I love me some sandwiches! And this will help me experiment more, maybe with shapes and sizes and all sorts of ingredients! Stay tuned for THE SANDWICH CHRONICLES. *cricket noise*
Speaking of sandwiches, I used that naan bread again for lunch today! Scroll down to see an earlier entry, Pizza, where I mention naan bread for the first time.

I decided to make a sandwich with the garlic naan. Yay, first sandwich to appear in The Sandwich [or Sammich] Chronicles!
I toasted the naan bread, as it was frozen, for about 5 minutes. After taking it out of the toaster oven, I spread a little bit of butter on it to moisten and bring out the garlic flavour. I let it cool off a bit before I cut the thing in half [it doesn't really matter which way you cut it - whatever suits your fancy]. Then I mixed mayo and honey mustard together before spreading it onto both halves of the bread. I took a few slices of oven-roasted turkey sandwich meat, two slices of provolone cheese, one slice of colby jack cheese, and lettuce. I piled it high, put the other half of the bread on top, and cut the sandwich in half. Next time, I think I'd like some bacon to make it a super awesome club sandwich.
More sandwiches coming soon!

Chicken Satay Stir-Fry

I said I was going to make dinner last night! Which is exactly what I did. And it was delicious.
I used a Rachael Ray recipe I found on Food Network's website. I definitely recommend this dish to anyone who likes peanut butter.
The only difference between my dish and the original recipe is that I didn't use snow peas. I used sugar snap peas instead - I couldn't find snow peas at the store! Next time I think I'll try it with edamame.
I don't need to type out how to cook this. Here's the recipe: Chicken Satay Stir-Fry with Orange Scented Jasmine Rice.

My opinion on this dish - excellent. The sauce was fabulous; great texture. I love the colours, what with the green veggies and red bell pepper. It's got a bit of a kick to it, too, from the pepper flakes in the sauce. It's so yummy!! The rice is phenomenal. I think that every time I cook rice, I'll have to use the zest from citrus fruits from now on. It's tangy, but it's not an overwhelming taste. I love it!

Pizza

My mum inspired this one. She decided to buy Indian naan bread one day and thought we could make pizzas with them.
I love all kinds of naan bread. It's delicious and it makes excellent pizza bread. This is me turning something healthy into something fattening as hell. Honestly, though, I could just eat naan bread without anything on it - especially garlic naan.
Well, I had a naan bread pizza for lunch today.
So, this is basically what I like to put on my pizza:
- canned tomato sauce [with herbs]
- hand-grated or sliced mozzarella cheese [monterey jack cheese is a decent substitute, but it's more fattening than mozzarella]
- chopped onions [yellow and white onions are the best on pizza, in my opinion, and for cooking in general. I would not suggest using red onions, as they taste better when raw. Cooking red onions sort of takes away their flavour.]
- sliced pepperoni [spicy good!]
- chopped/sliced black olives [one of my most favourite foods ever - black olives - and unfortunately, I did not have those to put on my pizza today. *sad face*]
Before I top my pizza, I toast the bread in the toaster oven for maybe two minutes, just so that it warms up a bit. We always keep the bread in the freezer, as it lasts longer.
After the bread is done slightly toasting, I lay it out on a baking sheet with a little bit of cooking oil [olive, canola, etc], so as the pizza won't stick and the cheese that may droop off will not burn as much.
I then top my pizza with whatever I please and bake it in the toaster oven.
Temperature: 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees celcius)
Time: 10-15 minutes
Make sure you check on it, so that you don't burn the damn thing! And if it's not done by the time you set it at, then leave it in for an extra 5 minutes, keeping an eye on it.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention! If you're one of those people, like myself, who enjoys a crap ton of extra toppings - go for it. I layered my pizza with as much cheese and pepperoni to shoot my cholesterol levels through the roof. I do enjoy eating as healthy as I can, but it's so much fun when I don't.
And there you have it, people...

Yummy-as-hell pizza. And you made it all by yourself. You should be so proud because it was so damn easy, you didn't have to worry about setting the kitchen on fire - unless you're really incompetent, I feel for you. All you should have to worry about is the huge ass mess you made, getting grated cheese all over the floor. Good job. Let the dog clean it up, I say.

Fruit Smoothie

Hello! This is my blog about food and cooking it. I'm not a pro at being a cook, as I haven't been cooking for very long. But I hope with practice, I can be a much better cook than I am - and make less messes in the kitchen. I have learned how to cook from watching and helping my mother in the kitchen, who has been cooking since her early teen years. I also learn from watching Food Network.

Anyway, on with the first recipe of the day! It's an easy one.

Fruit smoothies are fairly easy to make. A child could figure out how to make a smoothie.
I've made several different kinds of smoothies and shakes*, but I'm only going to list the recipe I used today to make a frozen fruit smoothie. Many people have their own recipes. This is the one I came up with, a pretty general recipe, to suit my taste.
First, you need a decent blender. Check? All right!
Note: I don't usually measure; I eyeball most of the ingredients, so do take note in that I'm only giving an estimated guess on these measurements. You can add as much as each ingredient as you please.
My fruit smoothie:
- 2 tablespoons of water [I do this to soften the frozen fruit, which helps with the blending process]
- 1 cup of mixed frozen berries [You can use non-frozen, if you want to. Most people use frozen berries, as it keeps the smoothie a lot colder.]
- 1 banana [The banana gives the smoothie some added texture and flavour.]
- 2 cups of low-fat vanilla yogurt [It's sweeter than plain yogurt!]
- 1 tablespoon of honey [Just to make it taste even sweeter.]
- 1/2 cup of skim milk [Use whatever kind of milk you want. I personally prefer the taste of skim milk, but most people I know prefer 2% milk.]
Find the smoothie option on your blender and hit the blendy button until you are satisfied.
This recipe should serve two medium-sized glasses - unless you're a greedy bastard, then you might as well drink it out of the blender.
The colour should be somewhat of a purple colour. You should also expect tiny seeds from the berries. It's a very natural smoothie, and it tastes pretty awesome!

*The difference between a smoothie and a shake is that smoothies are generally made with fruit and/or vegetables. Shakes are made with ice cream. I have made a combination of the two - instead of using yogurt, replace it with vanilla ice cream. If you want to try out the fruity shake, I don't recommend using honey because the vanilla ice cream is sweet enough. I only use honey with fruit smoothies because the yogurt is not as sweet as I would like it to be.

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Expect more blog posts here in the near future. I will be making dinner Friday night. Rachael Ray's recipe for chicken satay stir-fry! I made it for my mum on Mother's Day, and I will be cooking it up again so soon because it was that damn tasty. Expect pictures as well.

-A