Recipes

From now on, I am going to try and start including the recipe to all the foods I make. I do have photos from foods I have made months ago, so I might not be able to come up with recipes for those. But for all my new ones, I will be sure to write them. I realized that I haven’t been writing enough of my recipes down, and that makes it hard to cook that food again! I have to mention one thing though, I have turned out to be one of those people who don’t cook by exact amounts. And when I write recipes, I don’t always include how much of something it calls for. For example, you will see that I often write carrots as an ingredient without including how many. That is because I decide at the time about how much I want to make. Some recipes I will have written down an exact measurement, and on others I don’t. Hopefully you can still use the recipe to make the meal if you are wanting to.

Black Bean Patties

I definitely like beans! There are so many of them and so many things you can do with them. I certainly don’t make enough meals with them. If I were to meet my ideal, I would have about half my meals per week made with meat and the other with beans for the protein. It would be cheaper and very tasty!

As for this meal, I made the patties too fat and I also need to fix them in some way by adding something to make them stick together a little better because two of them fell apart while cooking. I also should have had hamburger buns rather than regular bread. However, they did taste good and I will want to make them again in the future!

Black Bean Patties Recipe

½ onion, finely chopped

1 can black beans

½ cup flour

2 slices of bread, crumbled

2 clothes garlic, minced

Spices (salt, pepper)

Sauté onions till translucent, adding garlic about a minute before done.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, including sautéed garlic and onions.

Form into a thin patty with your hand.

Cook in oil till hot.

Serve immediately as burger or sandwich.

Breadcrumb Chicken & Veggie Casserole

We enjoyed this and ate it for lunch and dinner that day. We needed to put a lot of salt on the vegetables though. In the future, I might try to mix some seasonings with the vegetables before adding them to the dish. Everything else was good though.

Breadcrumb Chicken & Veggie Casserole Recipe

6 slices soft bread broken or cut into cubes

1 cup cheddar cheese

2 tbs butter

Broccoli florets

2 carrots

1 zucchini

2 stalks celery

1 1/2 onion, chopped

5 small garlic cloves

3 tbs butter

¼-1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

Thyme

cumin

1 ¾ cups milk

2 chicken breasts

1 large tomato

Combine bread cubes with melted butter and cheese. Arrange ½ bread mixture into casserole dish.

Steam vegetables until soft. Put in bowl, sprinkle seasonings of your choice (I chose thyme, salt, pepper and cumin).

Cut chicken breasts into pieces.

Sauté onions until soft, add garlic and chicken.

Cook until chicken is no longer pink.

Remove chicken from pan.

Add flour, salt and milk. Once mixed and hot, turn off heat and add chicken back to it; mix.

Spread vegetables over bread mixture that is in the pan.

Pour chicken mixture on top of vegetables.

Then put the other half of the breadcrumb mixture on top.

I added extra cheese to the top to cover well.

Cook on 325 F for 25-30 minutes.

Bowtie Pasta Primavera

We always enjoy this filling and delicious pasta dish. It certainly has a high amount of fat, but at least includes some vegetables as well. I eat this often.

Bowtie Pasta Primavera Recipe

Bowtie pasta

Broccoli florets

Carrots

1 onion

3-5 garlic cloves

Alfredo sauce (I always make the Betty Crocker kind with butter, cream and parmesan cheese)

Cook pasta as directed.

Steam carrots and broccoli.

Sauté garlic and onions.

Mix alfredo sauce.

Add all together when all done, and enjoy!

Peanut Butter Cookies

These were made with organic peanut butter and turned out really yummy! I will have to make these again too, they certainly made a great snack. I enjoyed them the most with milk.

Cran Orange Ice Cream Pie

This one I made for dessert when our friends came to visit for dinner. I really liked it, although Joel wasn’t crazy about the taste of the cranberries. The recipe calls for you to mix the cranberries in orange juice, and it makes a tart flavor. I think that was what Joel wasn’t crazy about. But the orange ice cream was made by mixing vanilla ice cream with orange zest, and that was so easy and yummy!

White Mini Cupcakes with Hazelnut Coco Filling

This one is a trick because it looks amazing, I think, but doesn’t taste that great at all. Very boring, and I think we didn’t eat them all, and threw a lot out.

Mini Lemon Cupcake Circles

This one is a trick too because this was from the batch in which the icing didn't work out. The cupcakes were ok though, just not the icing.

Brownies from a Box

My parents friend from the church, Janet, who gave us the recipe to the In-Laws chicken had given us a box of brownie mix, so we made it. It just tastes like the normal boxed brownies. I prefer homemade stuff, but it sure was easy to make.

Wheat and White Chocolate Chip Muffins

These were pretty good because I was able to have a yummy flavor with the white chocolate chips but were healthy too with the complex carbohydrates.

Wheat Flax Banana Muffins

These would have been great if the bananas were ripe, but I was short on time because I was making them before I went out of town. So we weren’t too crazy about them. But if made correctly, it can be a tasty healthy snack!

End of the Month!

You might notice a pattern, that at the beginning of the month, I tend to post, and towards then end, I seem to disappear. My mom said to my sister that we must be starving because she hadn’t seen a new post in a while. My sister reminded her, it’s the end of the month and that I had spent my budget! Its true. Joel & I do try to stick to a budget of 200 dollars a month on groceries. We haven’t gone over more than 100 dollars before, but I do seem to always go over at least 50. The last week of the months, Joel usually lives off of protein shakes and skimpy burritos, while I drive to visit my family and eat with them! Haha. Now you know why The Red Plate is empty at the end of the month – because it literally is!

Cheese Breads & Pastas

I mentioned in the French Onion Soup post that we really liked the cheese bread. Here is a group of the various cheese breads and pastas I have made recently.

Basil Pesto Pasta

The first time I had pesto was when I was eating at UNO’s (a pizza restaurant) and we ordered a pesto pizza. I don’t think any of us liked it. So I thought I didn’t like pesto. Then Joel ate pesto pasta at my aunt’s restaurant and it was really good! We all loved it. So then I thought about it. What is in pesto? Its basil, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil, all things that I really like, so how could I not like it? I’m not sure what went wrong with the pesto at UNO’s, but I was up for making it myself.

I had some slight troubles with my tools, since I didn’t have a food processor, I tried using a blender, which doesn’t work as well. So this was a much chunkier pesto than it should have been. But overall it was amazing. I loved the strong taste of garlic and basil! I loved the pasta!

Basil Pesto Cheese Bread

This was probably my favorite of our cheese breads. I loved all the flavors, of the tomatoes, pesto, and seasonings! This one was great!

First the basil

Then the tomatoes

Then the cheese, basil and salt

Amazing!

Chicken Spaghetti with Cream of Chicken

I just tried using cream of chicken rather than cream of mushroom. Overall, it tasted ok, but I think I like the cream of mushroom better. Now I know!

Cheddar Cheese Bread

This one is still good, but probably my lease favorite. I just love the taste of mozzarella cheese the most on the breads.

Pad Thai

Joel introduced me to Pad Thai when we were eating out during out honeymoon. I had never had any Thai food before, but I loved it! We have since then eating Pad Thai about 3 times! I wanted to learn to make it, because I liked it so much! I actually made two go’s at it. The first time was way too salty! Fish oil is so salty and gross, and I didn’t realize that. Plus it makes you want to throw up when you smell it. I wonder if people in Thailand like the smell. I can’t see how anyone could!
As for the second try, I added caramelized onions, and it was actually a little too sweet. But it is much nicer to eat a meal that is too sweet than too salty, at least for us. Both were very close to tasting like a version of Pad Thai. So Joel was really proud of me for that. It did take me a long time to look up the many different ways to cook it and to make my decisions of how I would. Overall, I think I know how to do it just right whenever we get the craving next.

Tomato Cheese Bread

This one is a good one. When we have the ingredients, we make this one often. Tomatoes just taste so good with mozzarella cheese, salt and basil when it is warm!

Soupy Chicken & Vegetable Pasta

I really liked this pasta. It really was like a soup, I might try adding flour to it to thicken it more, but it was very tasty.

I loved the vegetables, the green peppers were wonderful! We also really liked the shape of the noodles as well. I made this twice in a row because I liked it a lot and still had all the ingredients.

Broccoli Shrimp Pasta with Thick Garlic Sauce

Even though I did really like the pasta above, in general, I really prefer my pastas (and soups for that matter) to be thick. So I created this recipe out of some suggestions I found online. I joined together a think pasta sauce recipe with a garlic sauce recipe. It was the first time a sauce has been too thick for me! It had the consistency of mashed potatoes or gravy. But it tasted wonderful of course. It was certainly a sauce full of flavor! It basically consisted of the usual for me, butter, garlic, and onions! We will definitely make this again because it was really nice.

Pumpkin Season!!

Around our house right now, everything is pumpkin! I have made so many pumpkin recipes lately, I didn’t even know so many existed! As it turns out, pumpkin is very versatile and delicious! Hopefully some of these will inspire you to try out some new dishes using orange vegetables this fall! I am still making more dishes and will post them as I cook them.

Pumpkin Pasta

I really enjoyed this pasta. It was very healthy! Joel didn’t like the wheat noodles, he prefers regular. But I didn’t mind them. I really liked the sweet flavors of the caramelized onions with the pumpkin. It is a great meal!

Pumpkin Bread

This bread is wonderful! Joel pretty much ate the whole thing, so I will have to make more soon. It is a wonderful snack. It has the consistency of banana bread, very moist and delicious!

Pumpkin Pancakes

These would be great, if I hadn’t have put way too much nutmeg in there. So I definitely encourage you to try these out since they are simple, yummy and seasonal!

Pumpkin Seed Pizza

The pumpkin seeds didn’t really go with the vegetables that I chose for the pizza, but I liked the idea. I will have to think of a topping that the seeds go better with. Regardless, we liked the pumpkin seeds, and I have a lot of them right now, so I will be roasting them soon.

Also, a note on the crust, I wrote that I discovered that I wasn’t adding enough water to the mix, so I put more water in it, and it was great, just like when I found it out at mom’s place. And this time, I mixed up and egg and parmesan cheese and coated the pizza with it. It made the pizza a shiny kind of golden brown when it came out. I am excited because my pizzas are beginning to look more and more professional.

Joel’s Pumpkin Pie

Joel loves making the pumpkin pie, so he made this one. He made two actually. And we love them!

Butternut Squash Soup

This one I had made many months ago at Joel’s place. We really liked it then, and we still love it now. It’s a great tasting soup.

Our Dinner Table

This is just a picture of our dinner table.

Pumpkin Candy!

I love these things!

Pizza!

If we have enough cheese and a pizza crust (only .33 cents at Wal-Mart!) then pizza is an easy dish that we can fall back on for a quick dinner. Since I’ve been cooking so many interesting foods, then we haven’t been cooking many pizzas, but we have some. Most of these pizzas have generally the same ingredients, but the caramelized onion pizza is unique! In the future I will have to post other pizzas I have made in the past (but don’t have pictures of) such as veggie pizza, BBQ pizza, cheese and the works.

Caramelized Onion Pizza

Blogging about caramelized onions got me in the mood to go through with making the pizza. I hadn’t been eating many onions for about a week or so. It was amazing!!! Joel & I loved it! We are definitely onion lovers! I used one whole onion and just topped the pizza with it. The other ingredients in the pizza were mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese. We just love onions and will put them on everything!