TWD: Perfect Party Cake

For our final recipe in June, Carol of Mix, Mix, Stir, Stir picked the perfect party cake!

I really liked this recipe and it was quite easy and not that time consuming like other TWD recipes can be, but of course even if they are time consuming they are worth it!! I love the raspberry jam that was in the middle of each layer. As you can see I didn’t frost the back of the cake because I thought the layers looked pretty.

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Tuesday Review: Palm Leaf Plates

Recently Marx Food Blog wanted food bloggers to test out Palm Leaf Plates.

I really enjoyed using these plates. I kid you not, they were more durable then using regular paper plates. Their story on how they are made is also very interesting.  If you recently read my Pork Chops with Nectarine post you will see that I used these plates to eat off of when I made the pork.  I wanted to use the plates on something I knew we would be using a steak knife on to cut to see if they would hold up.  These plates did, you couldn’t even really see the knife marks on them! I highly recommend getting these plates.

I was sent two sizes, 9 1/2 inch hexagon shaped and a 7 1/4 inch hexagon shape.

These plates are made from the Adaka palm tree and are bio-degradable. They are strong, leak proof and can hold hot or cold foods.

So how are they made, it’s a natural, renewable, simple process:

1. The freshly fallen naturally discarded sheaths of the Adaka tree are collected.
2. Each raw sheath is initially rinsed with water and then hand washed in a natural mixture of water and turmeric. The leaves are then rinsed a third time in water.
3. Once clean the plan sheaths dry naturally.
4. The leaves are then stretched and flattened. Various plates profiles, including round, square and hexagon shaped dinner plates, are molded using a heated press.
5. One to three plates ore more depending on size, can be created from each leaf. In order to maximize the surface area of each sheath, different dinnerware sizes or shapes may be cut from one leaf.
6. Once clean and cut, each plate is sun dried and packaged in groups of 25.

You can see here that you can really can’t see the knife marks from cutting the pork and the second picture, you can’t see any knife marks on the back side of the plate!

If you like this plates as much as I did, check out Marx Food’s Website!

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Give Away

This week’s giveaway is another book about grilling! But this time it’s all about PORK!!

This book has recipes, tips and how to store/cook your pork for the grill:

So what do you have to do to enter this give away?

It’s simple…tell me your favorite pork recipe! If you have a link to the recipe to share as well, that would be awesome!

Give Away Ends on Tuesday, June 30 at 9:00 am!

Good Luck!

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Chicken Cheddar Blue Cheese BLT’s

What an interesting name I gave this food, right? Haha, I really couldn’t think of something fancy to call it, just I figured Chicken Cheddar Blue Cheese BLT’s worked. So where did I get this inspiration from? Recently I was at the cracker barrel and my nine year old cousin ordered a chicken blt sandwich with melted cheddar cheese on it. It looked so YUMMY. I knew I had to recreate it at home.

Ingredients:

4 thin chicken tenderloins

3 slices of turkey bacon, 1.5 slices on each sandwich

Lettuce for 2 sandwiches

Tomato slices for 2 sandwiches

About 6 slices of cheddar cheese, sliced fresh, 3 for each sandwich

Blue cheese to your taste

Directions:

1. Pre-heat broiler.  Grill chicken on a grill pan for about 6-7 minutes or until no longer pink and juices run clear. In a small pan cook pan till crispy.
2. Place a bun in toaster oven to get a bit crispy while chicken is cooking.
3. Place bottom side of bun on a baking sheet; once chicken is done cooking place 2 slices of chicken on each roll, bacon and top with 3 slices of cheddar cheese. Broil for about 3 minutes or until cheese is melted.
4. Once cheese has melted, take out of oven and top with lettuce, tomato and blue cheese.

Enjoy!

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TWD:Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

For this week’s TWD, Andrea of Andrea In The Kitchen picked Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise.

This week TWD recipe was probably the most intense recipe I’ve ever made and the most time consuming. Dorie advises you not to try to make this recipe when it’s humid out because some of the recipe won’t hold together. Unfortunately it was very humid here over Father’s Day weekend, so I had some trouble with this recipe.

The first problem I had was that I couldn’t get the meringue to form correctly at all. I ended up having to use puff pasty for this part of the recipe because the dessert was for dinner Saturday night and I didn’t have enough time to go out and buy more ingredients to attempt the meringue again. Secondly I had a lot of trouble trying to get the ganache tofirm.  Thankfully by the time the recipe was able to chill in the fridge the ganache turned out great!

Everyone loved this recipe! The roasted pineapple’s were so yummy I found it really hard not to eat them as I was layering the daquoise.  I felt that this recipe had enough coconut in it ,so I didn’t add coconut around the edges of the daquoise.

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Chicken & Barley Salad

If you read my blog often you have probably have read that I’m allergic to fresh fruit, well in making this recipe I found out that I’m allergic to something else! That is almonds! I was going to put almonds on this salad as well and when I started cooking the chicken I was hungry so I popped a few almonds in my month, well within seconds my mouth started to itch and I started to break out, so I took my medication and I was fine.  But now I can add almonds to my allergy list, ugh!

Anyways, this salad was great. It would be refreshing to have on a very hot day when you just want something light to eat. The barley and chicken make this salad full-filling. This recipe makes about 2 servings.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup quick cooking barley

1 cup  of broccoli

Romaine lettuce, about 2 cups per plate

1/4 cup raisins

2 chicken breast cut into strips

A few cucumbers

Raspberry Vinaigrette, to taste

Directions:

1. Bring 2 cups of water to boiling in a medium size saucepan. Stir in barley and reduce to medium high heat and cook for 6 minutes. Add broccoli and cook for 3 more minutes. Stir in raisins and cook 1 minute and drain.
2. Grill chicken on a grill pan till no longer pink and juices run clear.
3. Lay a bed of lettuce on plate, then a spoonful or so of the barley mixture and top off with some grilled chicken slices. Add some of the raspberry vinaigrette.  Serve slightly warm.

Enjoy!

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Pork Chops with Grilled Nectarines

My husband was basically begging me to make something with pork chops for dinner since it’s been some time since we had pork for dinner. He wanted just a plain pork chop grilled. But we have had nothing but rain here, so I had to use the grill pan on the stove. Nectarines were on sale this week at the grocery store so I picked a few up. The only way I can eat nectarines is if they are baked or cooked because of my fruit allergy. This recipe is pretty basic and only takes a few minutes to make, so it makes for a great week night dinner.  It has about 300 calories and serves two.

Ingredients:

2 ripe but firm nectarines cut into wedges

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt and Pepper

2 pork chops

1 tablespoons of white balsamic vinegar

Directions:

1. Heat a large grill pan to medium heat. Brush nectarine wedges with 1 teaspoon of olive oil and sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon of sat and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Place nectarine wedges in grill pan and cook about 10 minutes or until charred and tender, turning the wedges over at least once. Transfer nectarines to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm.
2. Cut pork chops and use a meat pounder to flatten a bit. Sprinkle with the pork chops with the rest of the salt and pepper. Add pork to grill pan and cook about 10 to 12 mi until browned on the outside and still slightly pink in the center, turn over once.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar and rest of olive oil and drizzle over nectarines and pork.

Enjoy!

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Turkey & Pepper Baked Ziti

Mmm, ziti is probably one of my favorite Italian dishes to make and to eat. I was in the mood for ziti but not just the ziti I usually make, which is just ground meat, ziti and some spices, this time I thought about just adding red peppers and ground turkey meat to it. It came out great! I also used whole wheat ziti for the first time(in the ziti dish itself, I typically use whole wheat/whole grain pasta) and it was just as tasty. This dish makes about 6 servings with about 505 calories per serving.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of whole wheat pasta

2 teaspoons of olive oil

1 medium red bell pepper, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 of pound of ground turkey meat/or turkey sausage

1 cup part skim ricotta cheese

1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

2 cup marinara sauce

Parsley, Crushed Red Pepper, Italian Seasoning and Basil to taste

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Cook pasta in  large pot of boiling water that is lightly salted. Cook pasta till al dente or the texture you like.
2. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add peppers, onion and ground turkey. Cook for about 10 minutes or until ground turkey is browned. Remove from heat.
3. Mix ricotta, 1 cup mozzarella, 3 tablespoons of Parmesan and parsley in large bowl. At  this time, also add in Italian seasoning, crushed red pepper and basil Drain pasta; toss with cheese mixture, turkey mixture  and  1 cup marinara sauce.
4. Pour pasta mixture into a 2 quart shallow baking dish. Spoon remaining sauce on top sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan. Bake uncovered, 20 minutes or until bubbly.

Enjoy!

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BB: Cranberry Orange Scones

This month’s bonus Barefoot Bloggers recipe was Cranberry Orange Scones.  I’ve never made scones before so when I saw this recipe was picked I was excited!  They turned out great! Flour is your best friend though when making scones because the dough is so sticky! I added raisins to mine as well.  There was some talk about the orange glaze not being strong enough of a flavor, so I was going to add more but I read the recipe wrong and added 4 tablespoons of OJ instead of the 4 teaspoons it calls for, so the glaze turned out very good!

At first I thought about going out and buying a scone pan, but I just decided to roll the dough out and use my pizza cutter to give the scones the traditional scone shape.

Out of the oven:

With the fresh orange glaze, yummy!

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Cajun Tilapia & Remoulade

I first saw this recipe in Family Circle and it’s original recipe was with catfish and brown rice. We typically can’t find catfish in our area and tilapia is one of our favorite fishes so I decided to adapt the recipe and use tilapia and no brown rice.  I was a bit worried that the Cajun  seasoning would be too strong for me, but it wasn’t.  It was also great dipped the fish into the remoulade. The remoulade had such a cool, refreshing flavor.

Ingredients:

2 tilpia filets

1/2 tablespoon of capers, drained

1 teaspoon of spicy brown mustard

1/2 teaspoon of apple cide vingedar

1/8 teaspoon of hot sauce

1/8 cup of light mayonaise

1 teaspoon of cajun seasoning

Directions:

1. In a small bowl mix together mayonaise, capers, cider vinegar, hot sauce and mustard. Cover and refrigerate remoulade.
2. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Coat a glass square baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Place fish filets in pan and sprinkle both sides with cajun seasoning.
3. Bake at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily. Serve with remoulade sauce.

Enjoy!

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