Recipe- Easy Cucumber Salad

This is one of our favorite sides right now. We serve it with just abut anything, but crab cakes are especially good. This is a great little salad for the summer, so cool and refreshing! It’s also a very forgiving recipe, open to lots of substitutions.

Ingredients
3-4 cucumbers
salt
1/4 c vinegar (your choice, I’ve used balsamic, rice wine, and plain white, and they’ve all been great)
1/4 c sweetener (sugar, honey, or Stevia)
1/4 c olive oil, optional
1 pinch (about 1/8 tsp.) red pepper flakes
1-2 green onions, chopped

Directions
Peel your cucumbers and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the insides with a spoon. If you’re using English cucumbers, you can skip this step. Slice your cucumbers and salt well.

If you have time, take the extra step to drain your cucumbers. Place your salted cucumbers in a colander and put the colander in a bowl. Stick everything in the fridge for a couple of hours. You’ll be surprised at how much liquid the cucumbers let off the first time you try it! This isn’t a necessity, so if you don’t have a couple of hours, don’t worry about it. But it does make a difference in the crispness of your salad.

Mix up a dressing of the vinegar, sweetener, and oil. (I don’t really like a lot of oil in my dressings, so I usually don’t use it, but I think I’m probably in the minority). Add red pepper flakes and green onions. Mix in cucumbers and enjoy!

Recipe for Cream Cheese and Green Onion Corn Muffins

Love these, especially with chili. They’re so warm and squishy and cream cheesy.

Ingredients
Jiffy corn muffin mix
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 box cream cheese, cut into small chunks
2 green onions, chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Stir together corn muffin mix, egg, and milk until barely combined. Fold in cream cheese and green onions. Bake according to package directions. Serve warm.

Roasted sweet potatoes with onions and rosemary

I have to say, I’m not the biggest sweet potato fan in the world. The thought of sweet potatoes with marshmallows is even worse. (I hate marshmallows). For the longest time I thought that was the only way that they were ever made.

Then I started looking into low-carb cooking and found this recipe from Kaylin’s Kitchen. Savory sweet potatoes were a revelation! I made them before we moved, following her recipe exactly. Then I made them again on Monday without the cheese. I think I might actually like them without the cheese better. Will definitely be making these more.

This will count as one more new healthy recipe on my 52 in 52 Weeks Challenge.

“Jason Is Great” Week

I was a week late in celebrating Jason’s birthday. I am a bad wife. 😛 In my defense, his birthday was the day after we moved and we had already planned to celebrate it later than the actual day.

Here are a few of the highlights…

I made this. It’s my first piece of “homemade home decor”. I’m not really into the whole handmade scene, but I’m definitely willing to dip my toe in. And the more I see, the more excited I get to start making fun stuff for our new place.

(Frame is from Target. Fonts are American Typewriter and Lobster 1.4)

I also made Sausage Pasta from this recipe from All Recipes. My photos were bad, definitely not blog-worthy. One of Jason’s favorite recipes.

I made this lemon cake recipe from Ina Garten. It was good, but a lot more lemony than I was expecting. I guess that happens when you use real lemons 😛 Unfortunately it was way too much cake for us and I had to toss most of it. Note to self- half all future baking.

I also made Fish Tacos. So tasty 🙂

The last Favorite Meal I made consisted of Apricot Dijon Chicken and Broccoli gratin.

The “week” ended up stretching a little longer than expected, but it was nice getting to cook all of his favorite meals.

As for presents, he was going back and forth between an Apple TV, the TiVo Premiere and a bluetooth for the car. He ended up going with the Motorola Roadster 2. He’s really liking it and it helps a lot on the longer commute. He’s able to use Siri to call and text me, and listen to Pandora through the radio.

I think overall it was an okay birthday experience. I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to, but I think our cheaper holidays make us more creative. And I can mark off one more thing on my 52 in 52 list.

Recipes

There is a very good chance I won’t be cooking much “teal” food in the next couple of weeks. Food will come from boxes and cans and jars. And I’m (mostly) ok with that. When we get through the move I can get back to normal.

Some things I’ve made in the past couple of weeks-

Crab Cakes
2 cups crab (or tuna or salmon, I’ve tried them all)
1 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup green onion, chopped
1/8 cup finely chopped celery
3 TB mayonaise
1 egg, beaten
dash of Tobasco sauce
salt and pepper to taste
flour for dusting
3 TB vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients, except flour and oil.
Shape into four patties and dust lightly with flour. Heat oil over medium high heat. Cook cakes until browned on both sides, about 10 minutes.

Coleslaw
1/2 bag coleslaw mix
2 TB mayonaise (more or less)
splash of rice wine vinegar
1 green onion, chopped
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Mix everything together. This is not an exact science. Sometimes I have cilantro, sometimes not. They go Great with the crab cakes

Both recipes came Saving Dinner the Low Carb Way with slight variations.

I also made Jason’s favorite Wilbur Cookies. I’ve been making these so long I’m not sure where the recipe originated from.

Wilbur Cookies
1 box cake mix (I’ve tried a lot of different ones but our favorite is Devil’s Food)
1 egg, beaten
1/2 tub whipped cream
Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix egg and whipped cream. Slowly add in cake mix until all is added in. Batter will be really stiff and this is best done with a stand mixer. Pop into the fridge for an hour. This is not totally necessary, but it will make the dough much easier to handle.
Roll dough into balls. I use a mellon baller to make sure the balls are relatively close in size. Roll the balls in the powdered sugar.
Place balls on a baking sheet and bake for 12 minutes. Let the cookies sit on the sheet for 1 minute, then transfer to a cookie rack to cool.

*Photo taken last December

Elise Blaha inspires me in so many areas. I made her Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns and they were Awesome!

Another blog I’m really excited about lately is Macheesmo. He makes healthier versions of fast food and convenience foods. Last week he did a week of variations of frozen foods and I tried his frozen burritos. Definitely a new favorite. We ate about five of them over the course of last weekend and froze the rest. I followed his recipe exactly except we couldn’t find the green chili sauce at our grocery store so we left it out. I also used Fire Roasted diced tomatoes instead of the plain ones.

And this is why I’ll never be a proper food blogger… I forget to take photos and when I do, they’re usually not great quality. And I pile a bunch of recipes in one post when they really should be separated. I will work on that.

The Buns and Burritos will qualify for 2 more healthy recipes for my 52 in 52 Challenge.