The New Red Plate

I have wanted to make this cooking "blog" a cooking "website", but hadn't found the right place to make that happen yet. Well, now google has "google sites", so I can finally turn The Red Plate into a cooking website! I hope everyone who looks at The Red Plate will now move their bookmarks to the new location:

http://sites.google.com/site/theredplate/

*Effective immediately, I will begin making all my new posts on the website and will no longer post new posts here. I have many new foods to add, but I am also going to work on moving all my previous posts to the new location as well.

I am very excited about the move!

Fall is Here!

Soups

Fall is approaching, if it’s not already here, so here are some soups I have made.

Ratatouille Soup

I was inspired to make this soup after watching the movie Ratatouille. It is a very tasty soup, and I especially liked how it didn’t require a stock because the vegetable’s juices make the soup! This is a fun soup to make because it is very enjoyable to cut all the vegetables and see all the colors and watch the soup grow – not to mention the smell!

Recipe for Ratatouille
2 large onions
1 red pepper
2 sticks of celery
1 eggplant
1 medium zucchini
1 medium yellow squash

4 garlic cloves
2 large tomatoes
cherry tomatoes
1 tin chopped tomatoes
basil
thyme
parsley

Add olive oil to a soup pan and turn it on med-high heat. Begin chopping the vegetables and adding them to the pan in the order it’s written on the ingredients list. After you added the fresh tomatoes, then decide if you need or want to add the canned tomatoes. Then add seasoning, cook covered for 20 minutes. Add cheese or bread on the side to your soup when you serve it.

Olive Garden Minestrone Soup

I love this soup. It is one of my favorites. This definitely tastes similar to the Olive Garden minestrone soup, but maybe a little better! Here is the recipe that I found online. Note: When I make soups, I have learned never to “just add water.” I always add broth if I need more liquid, or I add water with a bullion cube. Now that I do that, I never have a flavorless broth!

Recipe for Olive Garden Minestrone Soup

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup minced white onion (about 1 small onion)

1/2 cup chopped zucchini

1/2 cup frozen cut Italian green beans

1/4 cup minced celery (about 1/2 stalk)

4 teaspoons minced garlic (about 4 cloves)

4 cups vegetable broth

2 (15 ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained

2 (15 ounce) cans small white beans or great northern beans, drained

1 (14 ounce) can diced tomatoes

1/2 cup carrot, julienned or shredded

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

3 cups hot water

4 cups fresh baby spinach

1/2 cup small shell pasta

Heat three tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot.

Sauté onion, celery, garlic, green beans, and zucchini in the oil for 5 minutes or until onions begin to turn translucent. *Adding garlic in at the last 2 minutes.

Add vegetable broth to pot, plus drained tomatoes, beans, carrot, hot water, and spices.

Bring soup to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer for 20 minutes.

Add spinach leaves and pasta and cook for an additional 20 minutes or until desired consistency.

Makes about eight 1 1/2 cup servings.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Who doesn’t like chicken noodle soup? This is the first time I made it rather than buying it in a can, and now I can never go back. It not only tastes better when you cook it, like so many other recipes, but it is also a pretty easy soup to make to.

Lentil Carrot Sweet Potato Soup

This recipe my mother-in-law sent me from a magazine. It was good, but I did encounter problems with it. First, I went overboard with the spices, and it dried my throat out every time I ate it, and second I somehow didn’t put enough water in there, or the lentils soaked it all up and in a day the soup dried up to a paste. Joel then spread it out on a tortilla and made a little tostada on the stove. That was pretty good!

Chickpea Veggie Red Soup

This soup I just threw together, I don’t even remember all the things I put in it. It was an “ok” soup, but not one worth repeating.

Also, don’t forget the soups I have posted about before in the archives:

Vegetable Wild Rice Soup

French onion soup

Carrot soup

Cilantro soup

Potato soup

Butternut squash soup

What I've Been Eating The Past Two Weeks

I have been making a lot of wonderful meals lately. Most of them include a lot of beans and vegetables. I have been pretty proud of the cooking since I made up three of the recipes myself. We have certainly been enjoying the foods! Here is what we have eaten lately.

Melissa's Black & Red Bean Pasta

I am very disappointed to see that I didn't get any good photos from this dish. For some reason, they are all blurry! But I thought this was a beautiful bean sauce with the greens and black and red all mixed.

This is a fairly simple bean sauce with black beans, red kidney beans, white onion, and kale. The sauce was Newman's Own marinara sauce and I served it over whole wheat couscous. It was really good with the couscous and was a good way to change up the idea of bean pasta. I am happy about making up this as well as the other bean recipes!

Melissa's Asian Noodles with Spicy Peanut Chicken and Egg Drop Soup

This is another meal that I created out of a mixture of things leftover from months before when I was making pad Thai and other Asian foods. I used rice noodles for the pasta, and the chicken and sauce included: a sauté sauce I got from HEB, some chili sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce and lots of garlic cloves. The result was very tasty! And I had some easy egg drop soup packet, so I put that on the stove, stirred in some eggs and made the soup!

Spaghetti Squash Pasta

This meal is pretty much total vegetables!! So if you ever want an entire vegetable meal, here it is!

I had never experienced spaghetti squash before, so I enjoyed discovering something new! It was pretty amazing to me how you just cook the squash in the over, and then it all comes apart into noodle like pieces! Very fun!




For the sauce, I used a red sauce I already had, and threw in a bunch of vegetables such as: green pepper, onions, garlic, carrots, zucchini and kale. Then I put cheese on top. This was a very good meal!

Chicken Salad Sandwich

I know I have posted about making chicken salad sandwiches before, but I just really liked this photo, so wanted to display it! It is also something yummy that we ate recently, and that is kind of like my "theme" right now.

Minestrone Soup with Chicken, Beans, Veggies & Rice

I have made the soup before, it is a recipe I got that is a copycat version of the Olive Garden's minestrone soup. I really liked it before. This time, I changed it a little by using kale rather than spinach (because I had kale and no spinach). It is full of good vegetables and beans like zucchini, carrots, onions, green beans, garlic, red kidney beans, white beans, tomatoes and spinach (or kale).

The chicken meal that I made with it was good too and made up of many of the same ingredients. It included chicken, red kidney beans, black beans, carrots, green pepper, onions, kale, tomatoes and rice.

These meals together made for a very nutritious lunch!

Fettuccine Asparagus with Cream Cheese Sauce

I got this recipe out of a Taste of Home recipe book and modified it a little. This is a tasty pasta that includes fettuccine, asparagus, sliced garlic, sliced yellow onion and long shreds of carrot. The sauce was good, I wanted an alternative to Alfredo and I found it! (Alfredo is tasty, but pretty fattening too!) You just melt some cream cheese and milk and there you have it!

Quiche (sort of) with Potato Cubes

As we were leaving from our beach vacation, my mom made what she called a quiche with no crust for breakfast in order to help us use up the eggs we had leftover. It was really tasty. Then when we got home from our vacation, I noticed that I had a ton of eggs, so I decided to make my own version of this crustless quiche.

I basically put eggs, kale, onions, tomatoes, cheese and whipping cream into a bowl and mixed it all. It came out almost great, but fell short because I had put in way too much cream compared to the eggs and so it didn't have a good enough egg flavor. But it was ok. Maybe I made it right for a quiche, but I was hoping for more of an omelet flavor - I'm not sure. But next time, I will have more eggs and less cream.

The potato cubes were simple and yummy!

Melissa's White Bean Pasta

I was intending on making bean pasta since I hadn't gone to the store yet for the week. I generally consider bean pasta to be a quick and easy meal to fall back on, since it is easy to keep a can of beans, prego and pasta stocked. However, when I noticed what items we did have in stock, I quickly put together a more intricate bean pasta which is very yummy.

The sauce is Newman's Own marinara sauce with white beans, kale, onions, garlic, green pepper, artichoke hearts (from a can), some ground flaxseeds and cheese to top it all. I am the most proud of how it was a very healthy meal while still being good tasting to us.

Tomato, green pepper, onions, black olives and pine nuts pizza

For this pizza, I put the tomatoes and onions underneath the cheese, so this is what it looked like.

As you can see, the cheese totally hides the tomatoes. I also put green peppers, pine nuts and olives on the pizza.

Garlic Breadstick Pizza

For this "pizza", I bought some garlic bread dough and basically stuffed it with pizza sauce, cheese, and onions. It was pretty good, although I think I prefer my other crust better.

Green Pepper, Olive and Pine Nuts Pizza

This pizza includes: green peppers, olives and pine nuts. As for the cheese, I put cut up pieces of mozzarella cheese and also sprinkles a mixture of yellow and white cheese (called fiesta blend form Wal-mart). The mozzarella cheese turned out really good on the pizza when melted!

Also, you might be able to notice that I did the crust right such that it sticks up around the edges. I can't always get it right, but it's fun when I do.

Green Pepper Pizza

This was a yummy pizza, and I really liked the colors. The green peppers certainly make the pizza look pretty.

Cilantro Soup Pizza

I don't remember exactly how I came up with this idea, but I really like it. Since my family loves the cilantro soup so much, they should enjoy the pizza too. It pretty much has all the same ingredients.

You chop up the green onions, white onions and green peppers.

Then in a bowl you mash the beans, and add rotell.

Then you spread the bean mixture over the pizza.


Then add the toppings on top.

I was planning on putting cheese on the pizza, but I forgot to! As it turns out, it tasted good without the cheese, but it did taste a little less pizza like because of it. I might try making it with the cheese sometime as well. I would definitely say this was a success though.

Fake Pepperoni Pizza

I finally have been in the mood for pizzas again. I was making many pizzas before I got pregnant, and then I lost all interest in pizzas until just this month (the third trimester). I have been trying to get more complex carbohydrates, so for the crust, I took the Walmart pizza crust mix and added ground flax seeds, wheat germ and vital wheat gluten. That gave it some extra nutrients, and it didn't make it taste bad or anything. I like it this way rather than using whole wheat flour since the crust is always hard when I do that.



The toppings were: fake pepperonis (made of soy I think), roma tomatoes, white onion, cheese of course and some basil for seasoning. Oh, and I usually use Prego spaghetti sauce as the sauce, but this time we tried Bertroli's marinara sauce and wow it was good!! The pizza overall was amazing.

Chicken Salad Sandwich

I really enjoy Chicken Salad Sandwiches because I love the crisp, fresh flavor of the onions and the celery and the red grapes are especially my favorite. I usually made the sandwich like this: chop celery, chop onions, mix with cream cheese and canned chicken, then stir in red grapes. Joel & I have always liked it that way.


Although recently, I tried out making it a new way, since I know that some people put mustard or mayonnaise in theirs. I also happened to be out of red grapes this time, which is disappointing because they are such a great part of the sandwich, but it tasted really good regardless. So the way I made it yesterday is basically, to take the same ingredients (celery, white onion, caned chicken and cream cheese, but no grapes this time, although I would have if I had some) and to add a little bit of honey mustard (like 2 tablespoons) and 1/4 cup miracle whip. We really liked this because unlike the previous one that I usually make, it was creamier and easier to spread. Also, I really liked the flavor that the honey mustard added to it. I would like to make this meal for lunch about once a week as well! (oh, and I usually serve it on toasted wheat bread)

BBQ Dinner

Joel has been wanting BBQ, so we bought some sauce and have made two great meals. The first meal, we had for Easter.

We got Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, which is sweet and it tasted pretty good. I wasn't crazy about it though, since a main ingredient was high fructose corn syrup and it just tasted syrupy. We also bought Stubbs Spicy BBQ Sauce, which i really liked because this sauce tastes more unique and was more tomato based or something, not so syrupy. Joel liked them both. Along with the BBQ chicken made with white onions, we had mashed potatoes with garlic and cheese, mixed vegetables with cheese and some Texas toast.

The second meal, we just had last night, it was wonderful as well! Last tiem, i cooked the chicken by cutting it up and i made two different batches, once with Sweet Baby Rays and the other with Stubbs. This time, i made the chicken with a BBQ seasoing mixture i put together that includes the following spices: Cumin, Paprika, Cayanne Pepper, Chili Powder, Garlic, Salt and Sugar. Then we put BBQ sauce on top of that while we ate, and I didn't cook the white onions this time, so they were fresh and crisp. We also had a little bit of corn on the side as well as pinto beans and potato wedges. It all tasted great and everything went well with Stubbs BBQ sauce! This time we bought the original, which isn't the spicy version, although it is still a little spicy. And of course, Texas Toast to go on the side. We have now decided to have a BBQ meal once a week.

Pregnancy Food Week!!

The main thing that makes the following foods “pregnancy” foods is basically the fact that I am pregnant and loved eating them while also feeling like they were nice and healthy for my growing baby too. But of course these are great foods for any one! The following are the meals Joel and I have enjoyed recently!!

Galligaskins Sandwich

There is a restaurant in Fort Worth called Galligaskin’s and I really like their turkey sandwich particularly because I like the mixed tomatoes and onion garnish that they put on top. So Joel & I went there just to see how they make the sandwich and we figured it out! (mostly) I was missing the ingredient: pepperoccinis. Luckily Joel knew about them, so he recognized them easily. This sandwich is fresh and very easy to make. You just take a tomato, onion and some pepperoccinis (those are pickled peppers) and you cut them into small square shapes then put them together in a bowl. Then get an Italian sub roll, put turkey, cheese and lettuce on it, then add the fresh mixture. At the restaurant they have some dressing, it must be oil and vinegar or something. I haven’t figured that out yet, so I have been going without dressing so far. But Joel and I love the sandwiches!

I also decided to cut it all up and make it this way too.

And this is a salad I call Galligaskin’s sandwich because I put the tomatoes, onions and pepperoccinis in the salad, with romaine lettuce, collard greens and spinach and sprinkles it with sunflower seeds.

Bagel Sandwich

There is another restaurant in Fort Worth called Yogi’s Bagel Café, and I like their sandwich called Turkey gobbler and having them put in on a wheat bagel with avocado. I didn’t try to recreate that exact sandwich yet, but I made this other bagel sandwich with inspiration from that place. This sandwich includes roasted red pepper hummus as the dressing, lettuce, tomato, turkey, pepper jack cheese, and sprouts in a bagel. It was good!

Brouschette Chicken

I also made a few chicken meals recently. The first I found the recipe online, it was called chicken brouschette. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but I basically took a chicken breast and put cut up tomatoes on top. Then added basil and garlic (spices) and then shredded mozzarella cheese. Then in the baking dish, I also used sun-dried tomato dressing to give it some more moisture. This was what Joel and I ate for our Valentine’s dinner.

Pineapple Chicken

Joel had made this meal a few years ago from a muscle and fitness magazine. It was better when he cooked it, but it is still pretty good. You basically soak the chicken in crushed pineapples, Chinese red pepper sauce, soy sauce and sesame sauce. It is like a sweet and sour thing. We liked it.