Meet Tomato

This is tomato, our tomato plant. We bought him at Walmart a month or so ago. When I took these pictures there was 6 tomatoes growing. Last night when I went out to water him there were 17! Can't wait for them to start turning red so I eat them and use them in some recipes!!

Lightened-Up Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

We were out of regular flour and sugar but had a bunch of blueberries that needed to be used. So we pulled out the whole wheat flour, ran across the street to borrow some sugar, improvised on the recipe a little bit and came up with some healthy and tasty blueberry muffins. (original recipe is from BHG).

Lightened-Up Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

1 cup milk

1/4 cup plus 2 T applesauce

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs whites or 1 egg

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/3 cup sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup fresh, frozen or canned (drained) blueberries

Heat oven to 400 degrees and spray muffin pans (makes 12 muffins). Mix milk, applesauce, vanilla and eggs whites in a bowl with a fork. Stir in flour, sugar, baking powder and salt with a spoon just until combined (batter should be lumpy). Gently stir in the blueberries. Divide among muffin cups. Bake 15-20 minutes till golden brown, immediately remove from pan and emjoy!

Mango Sorbet

I was going to put this recipe up, it is amazing! Seriously amazing! But my roomie said we don't want our secret to get out so I am not putting it up. I am just going to tempt you with a picture of it...

Copycat

We ate at a really cool old fashioned diner in Oakley Utah this past Saturday called the Road Island Diner. It was really tasty! So we decided to recreate the meal. We improvised a little bit but it was really really good. There was not one bite left in the pan! Its not much of a recipe, you can use any amount of any of the ingredientst that you want. First start by cooking a bunch of hashbrowns till they are crispy and brown, layer them in a sprayed 9X13 pan. Then put a layer of ham, green chiles and tomatoes. Then cook up some scrambled eggs, slightly undercook them since this is all going in the oven. Layer those and then top with slices of cheese, any kind will work. Pop it in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbly and voila, you are done. It was even better with some salsa verde on top, yum!

Paninis and Soup

I got a panini grill a year or so ago and I love it! It makes the best sandwiches, even if its just a grilled cheese. All you need is some good bread (french, sourdough, foccacia, etc) and sandwich toppings and you are set. Here are some we have made recently that have been a big hit!

Tomato, Avocado and Mozzarella Panini

2 slices bread (I used french bread)

Tomatoes, sliced

Avocado, sliced

Mozzarella cheese in thick slices

Assemble sandwich with a little salt and pepper and pop on the grill. So tasty.

Amazing Turkey Panini

Spinach Artichoke Mayo

Pesto

Turkey slices

Muenster slices

Tomato slices

Foccacia Bread

On one slice of bread spread Spinach Artichoke Mayo, on the other slice spread some pesto. Then build your sandwich with turkey, muenster and tomato. Throw it on the panini grill. This one has tons of flavor. The idea for it came from a sandwich at Zupas and from what I hear our rendition was better than the original!

To make the spinach artichoke mayo: put a glob of mayo, a handful of spinach and a few artichoke hearts in a food processor and blend them all together.

Its been rainy and cold for over a week here in Utah so soup has sounded really good. This was really easy to make and tastes really good!

Tomato Basil Soup

1 can tomato soup (26 oz)

1 can milk (fill up soup can)

1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz)

1 T olive oil

Salt, pepper and garlic to taste

Chopped up basil, grated cheese and croutons.

Put first four ingredients in pan and simmer on stove until hot. Season with salt, pepper and garlic to taste. When ready to eat dish into bowls and sprinkle with basil, cheese and croutons.

NieNie's Chocolate Cake Magnifique

Kimberly found this cake on a blog and we had to make it...enjoy the pics for now! This cake was super chocolatey and super rich but really good!

I Am Not a Perfect Cook!

I don't have any new recipes to put on here today...there was the possibility of two but that just didn't happen. On Monday night I made some Strawberry/Lemon Muffins that sounded really good. I looked in the oven when they were baking and thought they look a little flat, then looked at the recipe and realized I forgot to put in the baking powder!! When I realized this my roommate Jill piped in, "I need to take a picture, Jamie actually messed something up". So my strawberry/lemon bricks went into the trash. I tried tasting them, disgusting! Then last night Kimberly made some really good brownies that had pecans in them and were going to have homemade caramel on top. The directions weren't printed out, so we improvised, then found the directions and realized we were doing it horribly wrong. Instead of caramel we ended up with sugary white stuff that tasted ok warm but got scraped off the brownies before we ate them. This weekend I am going to attempt an amazing looking chocolate cake, keep your fingers crossed!!