So You Want Some Cake but Don't Want to Bake One...

Well then I have a great Compromise. Make a pancake and spread frosting on top with some fruit and there you have it! Fast, smallish sizes, and little clean up. We did it for dinner last night. It should have been the dessert but we were out of syrup and really only had frosting so the kids thought I was the coolest mom ever. I liked it too! I think in the summer when turning on the oven is dreaded this would be a good way to go too. I thought they looked really pretty as well! Maybe I'll do it when we have company over sometime for dessert. Wouldn't that be a fun dessert?

* I recommend the fluffy pancake mix because it will give a more cake like pancake then the buttermilk types. But any would be yummy. Butter cream is a good way to go too since you expect a buttery taste when you eat pancakes. But like I have said before any would be yummy!

Taking Something Lardy and Making it Lite!

Here are some ideas for healthy versions of our favorite indulgent yummy treats.

Frosting: Instead of spreading yummy yet very very fattening frosting on our cakes you can top your cake with pudding. It's healthiness varies with what type you use but either would be a health improvement from frosting. To achieve absolute healthiness you can make no sugar added instant pudding mix with non fat milk and make your cake with apple sauce instead of oil. That way you have a great tasting healthier frosted cake. I love making a chocolate cake and then topping it with chocolate pudding because it is so moist, not that fattening, and yet it still gives me my chocolate fix.

*The pudding will be more like frosting if you make it with less milk then it calls for.

Alfredo Sauce: I have two recipes. neither of them are as good for you as a basic marinara but when you are hankering for a cheesy cream sauce on your pasta these are great ways to get that and not raise your cholesterol 10 points. *I also recommend using whole wheat pasta to achieve the most you can out a creamy pasta dish.

Weight Watchers Version

1 Stick of reduced fat cream cheese - I think the non fat is too low in fat to taste good, but that could just be me
1 cup Chicken broth
1/2 cup grated Parmesan

In a sauce pan melt cream cheese and then add your chicken broth stir until smooth. Add cheese and let simmer until the thickness you want pour on pasta and there you have it!

My Made Up Version
(for when I don't have cream cheese)

2 TB Flour
1 TB Butter
1 - 1 1/2 cup Chicken broth
1/2 - 1 cup grated Parmesan/Ramona cheese

Make a basic rue by melting your butter in a sauce pan. Then sprinkle in your flour and stir till smooth and caramelized. Then slowly add chicken broth while stirring and keep as smooth as possible. Then add your grated cheese and mix well. You can play with the amounts of things because I am not really sure what I actually use when I make it. I just eyeball it. When I want it to be a whole dinner I stir in some veggies steamed in and flavored with chicken bullion and some grilled chicken. Pour on pasta and you have a healthy-ish yummy dinner.

Cooking Yummy Vegtables

Growing up we ate a ton of vegetables. Every night we had two side dishes of some vegetable in addition to a green salad. This was largely do to my father being a vegetarian but also just because we grew a lot of produce and needed to eat it up. My mom didn't just put a pat of butter on top and call it good. She cooked our veggies as if they were the main dish and thus we kids loved them. I have a distinct memory of coming home for dinner in 4th grade and telling my sister, "Oh, I love the smell of broccoli cooking." And feeling genuinely excited to when I could eat that broccoli. It was all because I was smelling onions, garlic, olive oil, and who knows what else cooking along side that broccoli. To this day when I go home and my mom asks me what I would like her to fix for dinner I always answer "just cook a bunch of vegetables!" She really dose magical things to her veggies. So I have decided I need to be more like my mom and put a little more effort into cooking my veggies if I want my kids to love them as much as I did. So here are my latest creations.

Italian Green Beans

These were the hit tonight. I think we eat more of them then our favorite BBQ chicken pizza. They are healthy, a perfect vegetable for an Italian meal, and not very much work.

1 bag or frozen green beans
1 TB butter or olive oil
2 TB chopped onion or according to taste
Chicken broth or water
Chicken bullion
garlic powder
basil

I defrosted my green beans by placing them in a large bowl with warm water. While they warmed up I sauted the onion in butter. Once the onion was golden and soft I added the green beans, 1/4 to 1/2 cups chicken broth, a dash of garlic powder, a couple dashes of basil, and seasoned with chicken bullion to taste. I covered them and let them simmer until they were tender. Then I sprinkled the beans with freshly grated Parmesan and serve to my hungry family.

*If you omit the basil this is a basic yummy green bean recipe that goes great with any meal.

Awesome Corn

We don't have a microwave and so we heat everything on the stove top or in the oven. The other day I put a bunch of left overs in the oven and then threw in our left over corn too and to my surprise the corn was divine!

1 can of Corn
1 teaspoon Butter or more you want more
Salt to taste
Pepper taste

Toss your corn with melted butter, salt, and pepper. Then spread it on a cookie sheet and then let it bake until the corn is aromatic and warmed through. It tasted like grilled corn, you'd hardly believe it came from a can!

More FHE Fun

This week we decided we'd cook up another activity for Family Home Evening. PLAY DOUGH! We had fun making it and even more fun playing with it. Our lesson was on sharing so the kids had lots of opportunities to share with each other as we cooked, played with our makeshift play dough toys, and cleaned up all together. So if you are snowed in like us and wanting to do something a little different then we suggest mixing up a little play dough and have yourselves a good time.

Traditional Play Dough

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon oil
• 1/4 cup salt
• food coloring - I did 11 drops
  

Mix all ingredients, adding food coloring last - I added the food coloring into my water before I added it to the flour mixture . Stir over medium heat until smooth - you'll get a good arm workout doing this! Remove from pan and knead until blended smooth. Place in plastic bag or airtight container when cooled. Will last for a long time.

I made two separate batches one green and one blue. Thus you can see this recipe is smallish and it isn't hard to make different colors by just making two or three different batches.

Bridger and his Daddy Playing it up with their Homemade Play Dough

Salads I Cant Stop Eating

Oriental Chicken Salad

I served this with some fried rice and it was a hit. I added a little chicken bullion because my canned chicken wasn't very salty. I used a full bag of coleslaw mix that was larger then the recipe called for so I made a little extra sauce. It is super easy to make, healthy and yummy.

¼ cup veg oil

3 TB sugar

2 TB seasoned rice vinegar

1 TB soy sauce

¼ pound Chinese pea pod, strings removed (1 cup), cut diagonally in half

3 cups coleslaw mix

1 can (10 ounces) chunk light chicken, drained

½ cup sliced almonds, toasted

Mix oil, sugar, vinegar and soy sauce in large bowl. Add remaining ingredients; toss to coat. Serve immediately.

Salad De Masion

This Recipe is from Stewart's Aunt Sherri Larsen. I have had this at her home twice and loved it. Over our Christmas trip I was able to get it from her. It is to die for!!! Usually I shy away from salads with bacon but this one won me over. It sure isn't healthy but when you want to wow people who wont realize how much mayo it calls for then I say just go for it!!!

Salad:
2 bags of Romain Lettuce raised and torn into bite size pieces
1 lbs. Bacon fried and cut up - I hate frying bacon so I bought ready to use stuff. The flavor
isn't quite as good but saving myself the time and mess was well worth it for me
grape/cherry tomatoes
1 cup Parmesan cheese freshly shredded - I used the high quality pre-shredded stuff
1 cup Swiss cheese - I found some pre-shredded stuff who knew they had that?!?!?!
croûtons

Dressing:
4 sliced green onions
2 cups mayo - please don't use miracle whip!!!
Juice of 1 large Lemon
Mrs. Dash lemon pepper to taste
I think I added a little slat and pepper too

Prepare the salad dressing and then ensemble the salad. Add as much dressing as you like and mix well. I like to give it a little time mixed together before serving so the croûtons can soften a little bit.

Great News!

For Christmas my mom got me a subscription to Cooks Illustrated!!! And today I got my first copy! Watch out my Blogging Foodie Friends we are going to have some major recipes to try! Thank you Mom, its the perfect gift. I Love it!!!

So Now I Will Get Healthy

This week we have tried two new chicken recipes that we really liked. They are different then the normal Mormon cuisine and aren't overly healthy but they are healthy enough for my standards and very yummy if you dig the non-Mormon cuisine. :o)

Lemon Dill Chicken

¼ cup margarine or salted butter

6 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (1 1/2 pound)

½ cup chicken broth

1 TB chopped fresh or ½ teaspoon dried dill weed – I recommend fresh

1 TB lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

1 medium green onion sliced

1.) Melt butter in 10 inch skillet over medium high heat. Lightly salt and pepper chicken and then cook chicken in butter about six minutes turning once until brown

2.) Mix broth, dill weed, lemon juice, and salt and then pour over chicken. Heat to boiling, reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer 10 to 15 minutes or until juice of chicken is no longer pink Remove chicken from skillet and keep warm

3.) meanwhile heat broth mixture adding half of the green onion and bring to a boil. Boil about 3 minutes or until reduced to about half, pour over chicken and sprinkle with other half of green onion

I served this with whole wheat pasta and the "traditional Ragu" sauce (my favorite these days) jazzed up by adding my favorite frozen vegetables to the pasta water for the last few minutes of cooking (fresh vegetables work too). I know a girl that her kids wont it vegetables at all so she purees them in the blender and then adds them to stuff. - So thats an idea to trick your kids into eating them more.

Thai Basil and Mint Chicken

4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (1pound) salted to taste

2 TB vegetable oil

3 garlic cloves finely chopped

2 red or green jalapeño chilies seeded and finely chopped - I know it sounds like a lot but its fine

1 table spoon fish sauce - don't be too scared off by this you can't taste the fishness once cooked, I used a little less though

1 teaspoon sugar

¼ cup chopped fresh basil leaves

1 TB chopped fresh mint leaves

1.) cut each breast in half into 4 pieces and lightly salted to taste

2.) heat oil in wok/skillet over medium high heat. Cook garlic, chilies in oil stirring constantly, until garlic is golden.

3.) Add lightly salted chicken, stir-fry 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in fish sauce and sugar. Sprinkle with basil and mint.

I served this with a simple vegetable stir fry from frozen vegetables and a made up sauce (chicken broth, soy sauce, basil, green onions, a little brown sugar, and a little seasoned rice vinegar, and thickened with corn starch) and also some steamed Jasmine rice. If you go whole grain rice it'd be even more healthy!

* Both of these Recipes were from Betty Crocker's Good And Easy Cookbook and alterations were made by yours truly

A Fun FHE Treat and Activity

So last Night we had a yummy Thai Chicken stir Fry which I will post in a bit but the real hit of the night was our Family Home Evening treat and activity, homemade Oreos. Bridger is addicted to cookies and he wanted Chocolate Oreos and we only had the vanilla kind so I decided that it would be a fun activity to make our own. I have only seen people make them using chocolate cake mixes which is so easy and yummy but we didn't have one so I found this recipe that was so weird and I thought would give the sane type of result. It turned out really good despite its weirdness and the fact that I had to use almond extract instead of vanilla because we were out. So here our of new favorite homemade almond chocolate Oreos. Here it is:

Lion House's Chocolate Crackle Cookies

1/4 Shortening - who has shortening sitting around? I used margarine
1/4 cup cocoa - I had dark *Dutch* (wow wow) chocolate cocoa so that is what I used
1/2 cup oil - this cued me off that this would give me a cookie like the cake box kind (makes them very thin and moist)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs - I know, how weird, I guess it's good to get a little more protein in there
2 teaspoon vanilla - I didn't have any so I used 1/8 or 1/4 teaspoon almond extract instead. If you replace almond extract for vanilla make sure to use less then is called for because it is much stronger then vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 baking powder - a little weird they usually call for baking soda
1/2 walnuts - I didn't add thise
1/2 cup chocolate chips - I didn't add this either
1 cup powder sugar

Preheat to 350. in a large mixing bowl cream shortening margarine cocoa, oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla/almond extract.

Add flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix well. Add in the chocolate chips and walnuts is you want them. ( the dough will be very sticky and not firm at all)

Then refrigerate dough for 2 to 3 hours or over night. OK, so I didn't do that at all. After I put them on the cookie sheet I placed the cookie sheet in the refrigerator for a few minutes. The next day I used the rest of the dough that had been refrigerated over night but I didn't notice a differences in how they turned out. So no need to plan ahead just bake them when you want to.

Form balls to whatever size you want, rolling the dough between your palms to make a round ball. Mini ones are a little more stable because these cookies are so soft and smaller is also a better size for kids but I was too lazy to have to make that many cookies so I just made regular sized ones. Either are just fine.

Then roll the balls in the powdered sugar. This isn't necessary but it makes them prettier and perhapses helps them come off the cookie sheet easier.

Bake them about five minutes but the time depends on what size you make them. Make sure to not over bake them. ( that is the hardest part for me!)

Once done let them sit awhile then remove them from the cookie sheet and have fun frosting them!

I made up my own butter cream frosting: 1 stick butter/margarine, vanilla (or in our case almond flavoring), and lots of powder sugar, and a little bit of water. Mix butter until very soft then add a lot of powder sugar (2-4 cups) it should be very dry and crumbly looking. Then add extract and while mixing drizzle tiny bits of water at a time until its the consistency you want. But, store bought frosting is much easier and tastes about the same so you can totally go for that. I think the cream cheese frosting is a yummy way to go too.

Our activity was spreading the icing on the cookies and then putting them together. Bridger loved it! I think he eat more icing then cookie but it was worth the mess and sugar high.
Angeli's favorite was sucking on the beaters.

Over all it was a really fun and yummy way to spend time together as a family even when the recipe had to be changed a lot and was very last minute!

Me trying to be a food Photographer :o)

My Very Own Cookie Monster

Bridger recommends Milk to go along with your very rich cookies

Sharing One Of My Passions: FOOD

I have decided to start a recipe blog. I am currently writing a cook book and I thought this would be a fun way to share my "research" and keep me motivated to remember to type up my latest creations. Plus I hope to get impute and other recipes from my fellow foodies.

I go through phases, and right now I am on a healthy cooking kick, thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law Kirsten, and thus that is what I will be starting with. So I hope you check it often and have fun trying some of the stuff we are cooking up here in the Rasmussen abode!

This first recipe isn't healthy and I am not even sure if it counts as a recipe but here it is:

Mac and Cheese

If you are like us you have mac and cheese for lunch at lest once a week and being a wannabe chef I have to play with it and try different things to jazz it up. This is my latest theory on very yummy blue box Mac and Cheese. If you are going to cook something that has that much butter I figure you better be able to taste and enjoy the fattiness you are ingesting. You can accomplish that by using real butter and then caramelizing it!

After you drain your macaroni let it sit in ther drainer and return the pan to the heat and add your 1/4 cup of real yummy butter. Let it cook by itself until it is very bubbly and has taken on a caramely color. Don't do it too long or you will burn the butter and that won't be the way you want to taste your butter. I then add the cheese to the butter, followed by the milk, and finally the mac. Stir it and enjoy your Yummy Buttery Cheesy Heaven!