Vegetarian Pea Salad

Yesterday, I was looking for a good side dish with sloppy joes. We normally have french fries (or another kind of potato product) but we didn't want to turn the oven on. I looked online and most people suggested a cold salad, something you might find at the grocery store's deli, like a potato salad, pasta salad, or cole slaw. I didn't have the ingredients to make any of those and didn't feel like running out to the store so I decided a pea salad might do the trick!

I made the pea salad almost the exact same way I make tuna salad, but with a few changes. First, I rinsed the (frozen) peas in warm water until they were about room temperature. Then I added a dollop of mayo (I actually added too much because I underestimated how many peas I was using but that's just a rookie mistake), about 2 tablespoons of ranch dressing, a sprinkle of dill weed, a dash of garlic, and a small handful of shredded Colby Jack cheese. Mix it all together and put it in the fridge until the rest of your meal is ready. It comes together really easily and it's probably all things you already have on hand. Some people like to add bacon (but I didn't want to defrost any) and some people use cubed cheese rather than shredded but we had shredded on hand.

This salad would go with most things, especially those with a barbeque theme. It's also easy to customize it to your family's tastes. I know some people also use Greek yogurt instead of mayo to make it a little healthier.


By the way, we got our first little crop of tomatoes from our garden! One hot house and five cherry! Plenty of green ones left on the plants too. Nothing else really thrived in our garden this year but we'll see about next year.

Lemon Yogurt Cake

Our grocery story does this thing where it takes money off of dairy products that are going to expire soon to encourage you to buy them. I'm sure most grocery stores do this but our store seems to do it WEEKS in advance. This means I go crazy and buy all the good things for really cheap and then get home and figure out ways to use them.

One of these things was a tub of lemon yogurt. I realized when I got home that 1. David wasn't going to help me eat it because he was sick and he doesn't do dairy when he's sick. 2. It was low fat, which basically means it's loaded with chemicals and I've been trying to buy the full fat version of things and 3. I don't really like lemon. I opened the yogurt anyway, hoping for the best. It was pretty disgusting. I had to choke down my little bowlful.

I decided to bake with it because I know I have baked using yogurt before. I had a hard time finding a recipe that didn't use Greek yogurt and I wasn't sure if the consistency of this really thin, runny low fat yogurt was going to work out because Greek yogurt is so thick. I decided to try one anyway. It didn't use any expensive ingredients and it would use up my yogurt. I choose this recipe. I did make quite a few changes though so read mine carefully.

These are my ingredients (notice I doubled it so I could use up all my yogurt)

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups lemon yogurt
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
splash of lemon extract
splash pure vanilla extract
1 cup vegetable oil

I didn't make the glaze and it tastes really great without it. I also realized as I was typing this up that I forgot to double the baking powder and salt. Oops. It was only supposed to take 50 minutes in the oven but it wasn't done then. It ended up taking 59 minutes. Next time, I might set the timer for 55 and see then.

Also, not following the directions, I mixed everything in my electric mixer in the order they told me to (the wet ingredients first, then slowly add in the dry). Then I added the oil (also with the mixer, not a spatula). I'm not sure if this made any difference in taste or texture but it did make it easy to prepare! I should also mention while I was making this, David was husking and blanching 20 pounds of corn we got from his Grandma's garden that we were freezing (we ended up with 7 quarts! Awesome!). So our kitchen was pretty busy and messy by the end of all this!

We both rate this recipe a 9/10 but next time I also might try to remember to double the baking powder and salt if I have to double it again. As much as I liked this, hopefully I won't have any more gross yogurt to use up.

Circular Coasters

My mom had asked me to make her a set of coasters because the fabric ones absorb the condensation and her cork ones just let it run off the sides, onto the table, defeating the purpose of a coaster. I have log cabin square ones (that I have previously blogged about) but I wanted to try something new. I decided to do circle ones.

First, you take 4 coordinating fabrics, each about a 4 inch square. Then sew them together into a block, forming the top of the coaster. Be sure to sew right sides together. Make a circular template from a cup or dish (I used my breast pad one) to trace a circle on the block how big you want the coaster, plus a little bit for seam allowances. Cut out the coaster. Then cut out the same shape from a piece of fleece (what I use for the insides, you can use whatever kind of batting you want), and the fabric you have selected for the backing. Then stack them so the top and the back are right sides together and put your fleece on top of that. Pin and sew around, leaving a gap to turn. Be sure to back stitch at the beginning and end.

Then, turn right side in, iron, and invisible stitch (by hand) the gap closed. Iron again. Then top stitch however you choose. I decided to just do a stitch along the perimeter but you may also choose to top stitch wedges.

Pork Chops and Patty Melts

As a former vegetarian, I have no experience cooking meat. Usually, David cooks it (when we have it. We actually cook meatless more times than not) but I needed a break from Baby so I made dinner. On Monday night, we had amazing pork chops! I had to cut the recipe in half since we only made 2 pork chops but that didn't work out well for the spices so I mostly just guessed instead of measuring. I don't know if it was because of this or if the original recipe was like this too but all we could taste was the carmelizing, not the spices. It was still so good though! It was even easy for an inexperienced chef like myself to make! I would definitely make this again. It is a tad annoying that it uses the stove top and the oven but it actually hasn't been too hot here so we haven't had a problem using the oven in a while.

Last night, I made patty melts. I did this slightly different than they did. For instance, I didn't toast the bread in the pan first. We keep our bread frozen so I just microwaved it and I used our regular wheat bread, instead of rye. Then I melted some butter to cook the patties in (didn't use salt or pepper. I thought the cheese would make it salty enough). I also cooked the onions at the same time as the patties. I used red instead of white.

Then I buttered one side of one slice of bread (for each sandwich) and put the non-buttered bread down in the pan. I figured that the grease leftover would be enough for the plain side. Then I added a slice of american cheese, the patty, the onions, shredded mozzarella and then the other slice of bread (buttered side up). I am a pro at making grilled cheese so this was very similar. Even though I had never cooked ground beef before, my patties came out medium-well and that's just the way we like it! This recipe was a bit more time consuming and it involved keeping track of a lot of things at once but it was actually quick (for the average person) and really really really good (probably all that butter!)!

Cinnamon Cucumber Bread

We were given a lot of cucumbers fresh out of David's grandma's garden. It was just after we had bought some at the store so at the end of it all, we were getting sick of them and running out of ideas. On Pinterest, I came across this recipe! It didn't sound that bad. We liked zucchini bread so why wouldn't we like this?

We baked it and it was SO good!!! The hardest part is grating all the cucumbers. After that, everything is simple. We even happened to have whole wheat and regular flour in our pantry so we followed the recipe to a T. The source had said that it tastes like zucchini bread but we can definitely tell it's cucumber. Also, because of the extra water content, it takes a bit longer to bake it but you can't tell that with the toothpick test. It took us the full 45 minutes.

I will definitely make this again but I'm not sure if I would buy cucumbers specifically for it. I might wait til we have a plethora again. The bread isn't particularly healthy (other than the cucumbers...it does have 2 whole cups of sugar in it) but it's also great smeared with a little butter.

The source also says that it freezes really well. They had made 4 mini loaves but we don't have mini loaf pans so it turned out to be 2 regular size loaves (filled about halfway full before baking). It would be a bit hard to half this recipe since it uses 3 eggs but I don't think 2 loaves is unreasonable. Then you can freeze one or share it with a friend!

Sour Cream and Dill Chicken

Hey everyone! I'm sorry for not blogging the past week (and getting behind before that) but I was at my parent's house. We are back now and I would like to try to get back in the swing of things and blog more often but we'll see how that goes. Today, I am blogging about a recipe I made with my brother for my parent's. Sour cream and dill chicken is quite easy to make. Due to my family's tastes, we left out the mushrooms. Had I been making this at my house, I would've used fresh mushrooms and I would've cut the onion soup mix in half (but my parents liked it with the whole packet).

This was very simple to make. We made it with frozen chicken breast so it took 1 1/2 hours to cook instead of an hour but it turned out great! The sauce was very easy to ladle over egg noodles (to make the prep even easier, we had leftover egg noodles to use up!) or rice. This recipe would be great to make after having mushroom stroganoff and you still have sour cream and noodles left over!

I think we all rated this a 5 out of 5. Obviously, it's not the healthiest of recipes but you can modify it to your family's tastes.