Quinoa enchilada bake

Do you go to costco? If you do, has it ever happened to you that you see a good deal for 5 lb quinoa and even though there are just two of you, you think “wow so much healthy food for so little”. Then you pick the bag of quinoa and put it in your cart, patting your back. Saving those few dollars made you forget that you don’t even like quinoa that much! Well it’s happened to me.

The good thing is that quinoa is has long staying power. So after sitting in our pantry for a months and months I finally decided to give this recipe a try.

Let me tell you not only does it look delicious, it is! It was yummy and healthy – there are very few dishes that we can put in this category!

I slightly adapted the recipe to what I had on hand and the quantity I had on hand. That is why for some ingredients you would not see a specific quantity just a range. I would encourage you too to use what you have on hand or what you like. We really like stir-fried green pepper, onions and serrano pepper. So that is what I added to the recipe. Use as much or as little cheese as you want.

Ingredients

• 1 cup quinoa
• 8-10 oz enchilada sauce
• 10 slices serrano pepper 
• 1/2 onion, sliced
• 1/2 green pepper, sliced
• 1/2 to 1 cup black beans, boiled
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves, plus 1 tbsp for garnish
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• salt to taste
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese, divided
• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
• 1 avocado, halved, seeded, peeled and diced
• 1 Roma tomato, diced

Instructions

• In a large saucepan of 2 cups water, cook quinoa according to package instructions; set aside.
• Stir fry onion, green pepper and serrano pepper.
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly oil an 8x8 or 2 quart baking dish or coat with nonstick spray.
• In a large bowl, combine quinoa, enchilada sauce, onion-pepper mixture, black beans, 2 tbsp cilantro, cumin; season with salt to taste.
• Stir in half of each of the cheese.
• Spread quinoa mixture into the prepared baking dish. Top with remaining cheeses. Place into oven and bake until bubbly and cheeses have melted, about 15 minutes.
• Serve immediately, garnished with avocado, tomato and cilantro.

Almond Biscotti

 

Biscottis are everybody’s favorite at our home! Even my mom and dad loved biscotti when they were visiting us! So it’s an obvious choice to bake when I feel like baking any sort of cookies. This is the second time I tried this recipe. The first time I did, it got such rave reviews and was over in no time. I couldn’t even take any photos. So this time hubby took the photos as soon as they were out of the oven {he’s so cute!}.

The texture, the crispness – everything is just perfect! I wanted to dip some of them in chocolate but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

The recipe is from my favorite source – King Arthur Flour.

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons butter, salted or unsalted
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 to 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1 cup chopped roasted almonds (the recipe suggests using 2 cups but I found 1 cup to be plentiful. You can use raw almonds too, since I only had roasted at home I used them)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line one large (about 18" x 13") baking sheet with silpat or parchment paper. If you bake often and don’t have a silpat, I would highly recommend one!
2. In a medium-sized bowl, beat the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, and baking powder until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
3. Beat in the eggs; the batter may look slightly curdled. At low speed of your mixer, add the flour, stirring until smooth; the dough will be sticky. Add chopped almonds and mix.
4. Plop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Divide it in half, and shape it into two 9 1/2" x 2" logs, about 3/4" tall. Straighten the logs, and smooth their tops and sides; a wet spatula or wet bowl scraper works well here.
5. Bake the dough for 25 minutes. Remove it from the oven.
6. Using a spray bottle filled with room-temperature water, lightly but thoroughly spritz the logs, making sure to cover the sides as well as the top. Softening the crust just this little bit will make slicing the biscotti much easier. Reduce the oven temperature to 325°F.
7. Wait 5 minutes, then use a sharp chef's knife or serrated knife to cut the log crosswise into 1/2" to 3/4" slices. Or cut the biscotti on the diagonal, for fewer, longer biscotti. As you're slicing, be sure to cut straight up and down, perpendicular to the pan; if you cut unevenly, biscotti may be thicker at the top than the bottom, and they'll topple over during their second bake.
8. Set the biscotti on edge on the prepared baking sheet. Return the biscotti to the oven, and bake them for 25 to 30 minutes, until they feel very dry and are beginning to turn golden. They'll still feel a tiny bit moist in the very center, if you break off a piece; but they'll continue to dry out as they cool.
9. Remove the biscotti from the oven, and transfer them to a rack to cool. Store airtight at room temperature; they'll stay good for weeks.

Everything I never told you

Author: Celeste Ng

This was quite an engrossing novel! If life didn’t come in the way I would’ve finished it one seating! It was kind of like a suspense novel…

The book is about a mixed race family back in the 60s – a white wife and a chinese husband; and their three kids. Of which, the eldest Lydia is the apple of their eye and for some reason both the parents look up to her to fulfill their dreams or rather the dreams that they couldn’t fulfill on their own. Her mother had wanted to be a doctor but somehow ended up getting married, having three kids and becoming a housewife. This would pinch her every single day of her life. So she decided that she would not let her daughter fall into this trap and have her become a doctor. Her father on the other hand, being a chinese at a time when there were hardly any and more like none in small towns, wanted nothing more than to blend with everybody. To be just like everybody else. So this is what he wanted for her daughter to become – to blend in. In their race, both the parents hardly cared or worried about the other two kids. One day Lydia’s body was found beside the lake. Nobody knew what and how it came to be there. And this is what kept me gripped to the end of the novel. Although I was kind of disappointed with the end.

Artisan Bread in 5

Many of you must have heard of the bestseller bread book “Artisan bread in five minutes”. I thought of giving it’s basic recipe a try and boy was I pleased with the results!

This is how my bread looked:

I couldn’t believe that we baked it at home!

Doesn’t it look gorgeous? Ready to be devoured?

I followed the basic recipe as outlined here except that I increased the rising time before baking to around 90 minutes. For baking I used a baking stone and preheated the oven for 30 minutes at the minimum, as suggested. Also I used a parchment paper to make it easy to slide the shaped dough into the oven and after around 20 minutes removed it (again suggested in the recipe).

Cleaning hood microwave filters

Till I came across this post I had no idea that microwave vents needed to be cleaned! Oh and especially after all the cooking we do, it certainly should be. We tried out the method outlined in the post and it works like magic! literally!

Here’s how our filters looked before cleaning:

and after cleaning:

 

Can you imagine?!?! The way to clean is pretty simple! Boil a big pot of water (pot should be big enough that you can put your filters in it). Once the water boils, add half a cup of baking soda (yes the elixir!). Then insert your filters. You’ll see grease and dirt getting off right away! Let the filters be in the pot till they’re clean and then just rinse!

Its time to plant!

Once again its that time of the year when activity in the garden begins!

I too these photos 1-2 weeks back when we cleaned up the bed to get it ready for spring plantation. Oh I should’ve taken the before photo! The beds look so good now – am so proud of them!

We got a staple gun this year and stapled the chicken wire as well as the weed barrier to the raised bed. The beds look so neat and tidy after that! {pat our backs}

The two little plants that you see are basil and lavender. With some regret I need to report that the basil is probably not going to make it After we planted there’ve been plenty of nights where the temperature dropped a little below 40F and I thought that wasn’t much to worry about; but I guess that took a toll on the basil. I’ve never had luck with basil. This is probably the 3rd year but somehow I don’t lose hope with it. I know hot peppers won’t do well in our climate and probably the same is true for basil but I think I chose to live in denial. When I see Lidia (from Lidia’s Kitchen) pluck fresh basil from her herb garden I want to do exactly that. I guess that’s what keeps up the hope Maybe this is the last chance basil gets! Enough about basil. Let’s talk about other veggies. We also planted a little strawberry plant; then spinach, radish and coriander – all from seeds. Finally some 80 onion bulbs! Yeah we don’t know what we’ll do with them So stay tuned and I’ll post a new photo in a few weeks with the updates!

A House in the sky

This book is a true story of a woman who spent more than a year in captivity in Somalia! It starts at the very beginning – with the childhood of Amanda. How, where and in what circumstances she grew up. Once she grew up, she took up a job as a waitress and one fine day she decided that she would save money from her job and try to travel and see the world. So she started saving money and soon she’d enough to make her first trip. After her trip she was fueled up and realized that she would like to do it more often. So it became a regular feature with her – save money for a few months and then travel to some far away place. As she started to do it more often, she became more bold and courageous; and started to venture into dangerous lands. Some didn’t do any damage to her, while some others almost cost her her life. One such being Somalia.

Almost the first half of the book is about her background – her growing up, travelling the world and so on. The second half is all about her captivity. It’s heart rendering and hair raising and sometimes hard to absorb (and that makes you wonder that if you can’t even read it how did this woman take it all in and still maintain her courage). Somewhere there she mentions that she always thought that at heart every person was good but experiencing what she was, she wasn’t sure of that anymore. I couldn’t agree more – I too would always like to believe that inside each of us there’s good but when you see humans treating other humans like they wouldn’t even treat animals, you have to tell yourself that no there are people who are inherently bad. There’s another anecdote that stuck with me. On one of her trips, in Afghanistan, she met with a sudanese woman in prison. She was there for drug trafficking. The imprisoned woman told her that she was sorry that she did what she did and that could Amanda please help her get out of prison. To which the author replied that somebody ought to pay for the crime that she committed. When the author was in captivity, she remembered this instance and realized that she was so wrong to not offer any consolation to her. It made me realize that before trying to be “right”, we should always try to put ourselves in others’ position. What the author said was not wrong, but in that situation nobody needed to hear right/wrong. One needed to hear what would be good for the heart.

The book is very well written. Since I’d read the summary I knew this was about the author being kidnapped so I spent the first half of the book for that to happen. I would highly recommend reading it.