Oven Roasted Potatoes in 30 minutes (or less)

Oven Roasted Potatoes with Shredded Cheese

I've been going through various recipes about the best way to bake potatoes. Sometimes, my family and I simply do not have an hour to wait for this yummy carb to bake. One day, I decided to change things up and simply turn on the broiler on our oven and broil the potatoes.







Steps:

1. Line a baking sheet with foil. This makes for easy clean up.
2. Dice the potatoes and lay on top of the foil.
3. Pour olive oil over the potatoes and coat well.
4. Season with rosemary, salt and pepper.
5. Put the potatoes in the oven.
6. Broil for 30 mins and you're done! 💪

Strawberry Walnut Salad

Strawberries with Salad! Our favorite!

Making a salad is simple, but how do we make it taste good? Easy! Walnuts, strawberry, with a bit of low fat cheese of your choice does the trick! As for dressing, we kept it simple: white wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and extra virgin olive oil! Enjoy!!

Bok Choy Recipe

Bok Choy

Quick Bok Choy Recipe:

1. Wilt the Bok Choy in a skillet.
2. Add a couple dashes of Oyster Sauce on the Bok Choy--sauteé.
3. When combined, add a bit of lemon juice.
4. Serve and enjoy! 

This should take about 2-5 minutes tops! 

Frittata/Crustless Quiche/Omelet

The easiest brunch recipe that only needs one skillet! We should also add that it is super versatile-just add whatever vegetables, cheeses, and meet you like (ours is meatless).

Ingredients:
sliced baby portobello mushrooms, bell pepper, feta cheese, and eggs. Season to taste, generously with salt and pepper and any herbs.



Mix all the ingredients in a scrambled egg mixture then pour on to a skillet. Cook ti'l it looks like above. 😎

Walnut Pancakes

Walnut Pancake

We love pancakes for breakfast. Now this isn't

our original pancake yesterday--simply a 

modification of pancake mix. We added 

walnuts, agave, and cinnamon! It is delicious! 

Garnish with walnuts, sugar free syrup, and you'll have quite the treat for breakfast ☀️

Strawberry Salad

Quick Salad

STRAWBERRY SALAD

There's nothing to it to a quick, healthy salad! 

1. Chop up some greens: cabbage, kale, arugula, and any other robust green (ours is from Trader Joe's pre-washed salad section). 

2. Chop a handful of strawberries or granny            smith apples

3. Rough chop a handful of walnuts

4. Add some cheese
5. Dress it up with white wine vinegar and             extra virgin olive oil 

Note: We did not measure out our dressing. We simply eyeballed this. How much dressing one puts in his or her salad (obviously) depends on personal preference. Customize this salad as you like--it's a good one!

Oven Baked Potatoes

We struggled with baking potatoes, because we could never get the temperature right and get the potatoes tender.

After playing around with different baking temperatures and cooking times, 425°F for 30 minutes has worked for us best! Lastly, season with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning! Enjoy!!

Tuna Salad with NO MAYO!

We doctored up the traditional tuna salad with mayo. Trying to be healthier, instead we used: extra virgin olive oil, capers, Spanish olives, anchovies, and canned tuna (drained).

All you have to do is toss the ingredients above and season with salt and pepper. That's it. Enjoy!

Marinated Tomatoes

One of the easiest things to make--marinated tomatoes! Simply slice cherry tomatoes in quarters and place into a bowl. Pour a dash of soy sauce and squeeze the juice of one lemon into the same bowl. And that's it! Super easy. We should add this is a great pairing with fish!

Baked Squash

We love baked squash topped with sunflower seeds and dried cranberry! What a great pairing.

Simply drizzle olive oil on the squash slices and season with salt and pepper. Next, place the seasoned squash into a 400 degree (Fahrenheit) and bake for 35-45 minutes until tender. Once tender, sprinkle the sunflower seeds and dried cranberry! Enjoy!!  

Quickest Fudge [Only 2 Ingredients]

This dessert is so yummy, and the best part is that it is so quick to make. We were craving some chocolatey dessert and didn't know what to do with our left over condensed milk so we decided to make fudge!

For this fudge recipe, simply mix condensed milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips in a double broiler (eyeball the amount of condensed milk to semi-sweet chocolate chips). Once the chocolate chips have melted and combined well with the condensed milk, take it off the broiler and quickly transfer it to a dish lined with foil for easy clean up (we didn't do that). Also, be very quick when transferring the fudge mixture to a bowl because it sets pretty quickly. Lastly, put the fudge in the fridge and once it sets, eat!

This fudge is pretty sweet so next time we'll try using bittersweet chocolate chips and see how that works. Anyhow, this fudge is so good when you have a chocolate craving!

Some variations to try: add some nuts to your fudge mixture (inside or for garnish), shredded coconut, crushed candy canes, crushed cookies of your choosing, etc.

Enjoy!

Balsamic Vinegar and Red Cabbage Sauté

Red Cabbage has that super strong, tangy taste that we don't like eating raw. Instead of putting it in our salad, we decided to sauté the red cabbage in something sweet--balsamic vinegar. It was really good.

All you have to do is put your roughly chopped red cabbage into a slightly oiled pan/skillet, and once it begins heat, pour in a good amount of balsamic vinegar. And that's it! We hope you'll like it!

Pea Pesto

We have a lot of frozen peas just sitting around the house, and we just don't know what else to do with them. So we thought, hey why not make a pesto. I looked up some pea pestos but changed it up a bit.

Here's our method:

1. Thaw out a bunch of peas (we used about 2 handfuls).

2. Cut 1 clove of garlic in half.

3. Crumble up some feta cheese.
* We didn't add salt and pepper because the feta is pretty salty as is. 

4. Combine the above into a blender and pulse. 

5. Add olive oil and keep pulsing until you get a hummus-like, smooth consistency. 

Enjoy with toasted bread. You can also add some vegetables (tomatoes, roasted bell pepper, etc.) or meat (prosciutto, crispy bacon, turkey breast, etc.) on top!

Miso Soup Part II

We had made some Miso Soup before, but we had to change it up a bit because we had some leftover grilled salmon, tofu, and edamame in the freezer. Basically we wanted to combine these and they tasted great together.

Let's talk about Miso Soup. Essentially, making miso soup consists of a type of fish stock and miso paste. If you don't have these two ingredients, then instant is fine though making the real thing is better. Anyhow, below, I'll have the steps for miso soup. It's super easy. 

By the way, searching for Hon Dash was a major pain because many big supermarkets don't know what "fish stock" or Hon Dashi is. We suggest going to an Asian Marketplace. 

Here's our method: 

1. Put in about 1.75 tablespoons of Hon Dash (it looks like dried pellets but is essentially fish stock) into boiling water (I didn't measure out the water but in the package they do have a ratio of water to Hon Dashi). After making miso soup quite a bit, I eyeball so apologizes for not being so precise. 

2. Cut tofu in blocks and put it in the soup with the seaweed. Just warm them up 

3. Turn off the heat and add miso paste but you need to stir in the miso paste so it dissolves completely. 

* Keeping miso paste in boiling water turns the flavor bitter so that is why we turn off the heat when incorporating the miso paste. 

4. Add in leftover salmon and thawed edamame.

Enjoy! 

Broiled Grapefruit

We love grapefruit, but sometimes it can be too sour. Inspired by an I Love Lucy breakfast scene, we decided to broil grapefruit.

Here's our method:

1. Cut grapefruit(s) in half and run your knife through the tough membranes (this makes it easier for you to scoop out the pulp and juices when the grapefruit is ready to eat).

2. Top grapefruit halves with cinnamon, brown sugar, nutmeg, and salt (optional). 

3. Arrange grapefruit halves on a sheet tray. We put foil on our sheet tray to avoid a messy cleanup. 

4. Broil for about 3-5 minutes. 

Enjoy! :)

Stuffed Portobello Mushroom

Two Minute (NO ICE CREAM MACHINE) Raspberry Sorbet

Since we don't own an ice cream machine, I decided to make a sorbet with frozen raspberries. We are kind of a little lazy to be making a custard and all that extra stuff, so a sorbet seemed like a good way to cool down and have a refreshing, palate-cleansing dessert. 

Using just three ingredients, we hope you'll love this quick-frozen treat!



Here's our method:

1. Freeze a bunch of raspberries (probably 2 cups).

2. Pulse the raspberries in a blender/food processor (we used a blender) with granulated sugar (add sugar according to preference). We didn't measure our sugar nor did we add much because our raspberries were pretty sweet.

3. Add a dash of water to bind the mixture and pulse again until a sorbet consistency is reached.
* Be super careful with how much water you add because the sorbet can become too watery. Luckily, we got this on our first try.

Hope you enjoy! 

Grilled Mushroom with Cherry Tomatoes

For a quick finger food (appetizer, or hors d'oeuvre)...you may try this
1. Remove the mushroom stalk
2. Lay the mushroom upside down on a hot griller
3. Salt and pepper the mushroom cavity lightly
4. Remove the mushroom carefully, not to spill, once mushroom juice starts to appear
5. Grill the cherry tomatoes at the same time, and remove in about 3 minutes or as you like
6. You are done!

Fish Soup

Fish soup does not create excitement in a dining table. However, fish soup has been proven to lower ones high blood sugar down to 30 milligram per deciliter. Cholesterol and high blood pressure, maybe.  And if you're on a diet, of course!

Fish soup are prepared in so many ways, for example, the Miso Soup.

Here is another way of making your fish soup, different than the norm: brew a fish stock.

1. Cut the fish head and tail and add them to a pan.
2. Add water enough to cover the fish head and tail.
3. Add ginger, enough to season
4. Let it boil, once boiling, reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 45 minutes.
5. Remove the head and tail and discard.
6. This is your fish stock. Place this in your refrigerator or freezer for future use, or you may use it right away.

Moving forward, you can add most vegetables to your fish stock. For example:
1. Onion bulb chopped in quarters
2. Bookchoy, petchay, cabbage and other greens, to your liking
3. Beans, any kind, green beans is good
4. Green onion leaves, chopped finely
5. etc. imaginable

Quick Bruschetta

Quick, easy, and tasty! We love making this. 

Ingredients: 

• Parsley (I couldn't find cilantro so I substituted for Parsley)
• Tomatoes (any), Mozzarella
• French Bread (any)
• Olive Oil
• Salt, Pepper for seasoning 

Here's what we did: 

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F
2. Slice the bread, tomatoes, parsley leaves, and cheese
3. Assemble by sprinkling the bread slices with olive oil, tomato, mozzarella, then parsley for garnish. Salt and pepper. 
4. Warm bruschetta for about 5-10 minutes or so, depending on how crunchy you like your bread. This can be served hot or cold.