Mashed Potato Croquettes

Last night we had Polish kielbasi with onions and peppers for dinner and mashed potatoes to go with. The mashed potatoes got left out and smelled kinda funky in the morning. I know they didn't go bad but they wouldn't taste the greatest if we just heated them up in the microwave. I had the idea to make my mom's potato pancakes for dinner this week, but really don't feel like grating a bunch of potatoes and onions. So, I thought I would take the liberty to just make 'mashed potato pancakes'. Well, obviously there will be a little different technique to make them because you cannot just throw them in a ton of oil or else they will get all mushy and weird.  How do I know this? Well, I tried to make these when I worked at a quaint little bistro for a year and the mashed potato pancakes turned out miserable when I attempted to basically deep fry these puppies. This time, I decided to just use my handy-dandy non-stick pan and a small amount of veggie oil. Here is the recipe...These are delicate tasting and seem like little pillows that melt in your mouth! I really think these are better than just regular mashed potatoes. Of coarse there are way more carbs, but whatever! Enjoy!

Gather:

6 cups of mashed potatoes, chilled (that already have butter, milk, sour cream, salt and pepper)

1/2 cup of Kraft Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

6 Tbsp flour + 4 Tbsp to coat before frying

2 green onions, chopped

handful of chopped parsley.

Vegetable oil or Canola oil for frying

Steps:

1. In a large bowl, combine the chilled mashed potatoes, Parmesan cheese, eggs, 6 Tbsp of flour, chopped green onions and parsley.

2. Using your hands (if you have latex gloves you can put them on to protect your manicure!) mix all the ingredients together until even and smooth. (I had a few lumps in mine and worked out fine)

3. In a small bowl add 4 Tbsp of flour and season with salt and pepper (I used Jane's Crazy Mixed Up Salt from SR)

4. Using a wooden spoon, scoop out some of the mixture and place in your palm. Flatten them out to make a nice circle. Place them on a baking sheet.

5. Now, one by one, coat them with flour and place into a pre-heated, oiled, non-stick pan.

6. Cook on medium heat until both side are golden brown. In between each batch you will need to add more oil. Just remember, it is a non-stick pan so you only need about a Tbsp of oil each time.

7. Serve warm with sour cream. Note: You can make these ahead, and put them back on the baking sheet and warm them up for 10 minutes on 350 when the rest of your meal is finished!

Oatmeal Pancakes

Since Saturday I have been wanting pancakes!! I think this idea may be linked to me cleaning out the fridge and finding syrup hiding in the back while also buying Bisquick this past week. We were almost out of milk and I feel bad that my husband doesn't have any of his favorite cereals in the house, so I thought I would try to make pancakes. I knew I wouldn't be mentally able to get up early enough in the morning to make him pancakes so if I made just regular ones they most likely wouldn't taste good the next day. So, I thought of trying this out. I love oatmeal sooooo much that I used to eat it EVERY single week day for over a year. I finally grew sick of it! (same goes for strawberry Nutrigrain bars.) These pancakes will be a little dense so you can make them the night before and just pop them in the micro for like 30 seconds then put on some maple syrup and they taste just like they came out of the pan! I think the dense texture prevents them from getting all soggy and weird! 

Please try the recipe and let me know what you all think!

Liebe,

TyLeigh<3 

1 cup Bisquick

1 cup of quick cook oats

1/2 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup of buttermilk

1 egg

1. Mix Bisqucik and oats together in a medium bowl

2. Add vanilla, egg and buttermilk. ( I made 1 cup butter milk by adding 1 Tbsp. vinegar and then filling the milk up to the 1 cup line) 

3. Once smooth, heat a medium skillet with a Tbsp. of butter and tsp of olive oil.

4. When butter begins to bubble, using a 1/4 cup scoop out the batter into circles onto the hot skillet.

5. Once bubbles begin to show on the tops of the pancakes, flip them over and cook for around 2-3 minutes or until brown.

6. Turn your heat down so the butter left in the empty skillet does not burn. If the skillet looks dry, add more butter and/or oil and repeat with the rest of the batter.

7. Eat warm with syrup or top with strawberries, blueberries or bananas! 

(Please ignore the horrible paint job on my fingernails. I don't paint my nails until the end of the night when I am done all my kitchen and household duties...they just get chipped anyway!)

Cream Cheese Chicken Roll-Ups

Good Evening! I am sitting here waiting for one of our fellow young married couples to come over so I decided to share with you what I decided to make tonight for dinner. I wanted chicken last night, but I did not get home from the office until 8 pm so I had a big bowl of sausage and cabbage soup (which is sooooo simple, light and delicious!) and pan fried potatoes.

My good friend Lisa invited me for dinner a few months ago and made these crazy amazing chicken "roll-ups", I like to call it, not sure if that's actually the technical term or not. I texted her and asked what she put in them and she stated it was mozzarella, cream cheese, garlic and some cream cheese then top with breadcrumbs and bake it for 20-30 minutes. So I looked on Pinterest and Google and couldn't find any good recipe that had the ingredients I had. So I decided not to waste any more time and get to the kitchen since my hubby would be coming home in like 20 minutes.

Here is what I came up with...

Gather:

1/2 green pepper

1/2 red pepper

1/2 onion

1 Tsp olive oil

3 or 4 chicken breast (3 will yield 6 roll-ups, 4 will yield 8 roll-ups)

4 oz. cream cheese

breadcrumbs at your discretion

1. Saute peppers and onions in the olive oil on medium-low heat until onions 

are transparent and the veggies are starting brown.

2. Turn off the heat and transfer to a small bowl. Wait a few minutes and then add 4 oz cream cheese (or more if you like your chicken more creamy. This was the perfect amount for my husband and my taste.)

3. Cut the chicken breast in half horizontally to make thinner.

(On left is the full size chicken breast, right is the already cut breast.)

4. Place a heaping spoon of filling onto each piece of chicken, roll up and finish it off with a toothpick.

5. Place on a sheet pan covered with aluminum foil (to save time on clean up) and sprinkle bread crumbs

over each of the chicken roll-ups.

6. Bake 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

Smachnoho!

Love,

Ty Leigh <3

Better than Auntie Ann's Homemade Pretzels!

Okay so about a month ago my parents were coming over for tea and I needed to make a dessert. I really didn't feel like having cake or brownies or cookies. I was craving something salty. I know my dad has a serious addiction to pretzels and I know how much he loves the near-by Amish pretzel's....so I thought to my self....Why not try to make some at home??!!! So I got out my yeast and started this simple recipe. This is my own version...did some minor tweaks to the original from Ourbestbites.com 

GATHER: 

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 Tbsp sugar

2 Tsp kosher salt

2 1/4 Tsp active yeast (or 1 package dry active yeast)

2 cups whole wheat flour

2  1/2 cups unbleached flour

2 oz unsalted butter, melted

Vegetable oil or PAM to bake

Parchment Paper

10 cups of water

2/3 cup baking soda

1 large egg yolk beaten with a Tbsp water

Cinnamon-Sugar pretzels: additional melted butter + cinnamon sugar

Salted pretzels: additional melted butter + additional kosher salt

STEPS:

1. Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. 

2. Add the flour cup by cup along with the butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. 

3. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. 

4. Remove the dough from the bowl, scrape the bowl clean and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for about 60 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size. I have found that if I put my oven on 250 degrees F for 5 minutes before I put the yeast dough in, that is the best technique to obtain a nice warm place. I also take pictures before and after the 60 minutes to see if it doubled. There is no need to punch down the dough.

5. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and either brush with oil or else spray with Pam.

6. Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in a large soup pot.

7. In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.

8. YOU CANNOT SKIP THIS STEP!!!!! Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Use a metal skimmer spoon to get the pretzels out. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with kosher salt or skip the salt and use cinnamon sugar. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

I'm back!

Good Morning!!

I have been wanting to get back into doing a blog for some time now. I forgot actually that I started this one in 2011 and now its the start of 2013 and so much has changed. Since my last post, I got engaged and then married!

January of 2012, January 14 to be exact, Greg proposed to me! It was a roller coaster experience trying to plan a wedding in 8 months along with mixing 2 different cultures and dealing with language barriers. In the end, it all worked out and ended up being such a beautiful wedding thanks to God sending all these little angles who pulled it all together. My husband and I both looked at each other at the end of our wedding day and said we would not do anything over because it was absolutely PERFECT. I really was a princess that day and feel like i was living in my own fairy tale story. 

For our honeymoon we went on a road trip through NYC, Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont, Quebec City and Montreal. Each stop was amazing and had something different to offer. We would love to go back up and do more hiking than just 1 day. Does anyone have any awesome places up north for hiking or even in the Delaware Valley? We usually go to Jim Thorpe area for hiking when we don't want to go more than 2 hours. But now that we are married, we can go more like 5 or 6 hours and stay the night someplace ;)

Okay enough wedding and honeymoon chatter and more blog related talk!

I don't know how often I will blog or want to restrict myself to saying what things I'll blog about, so I will skip over this conversation. However, I will warn you that most of what will be posted is going to be pictures of what I am up to with my husband and our family and friends along with recipes I use from my kitchen...or links to other blogs. I will confess that I never measure anything unless I am baking because in baking you must since it is a chemistry matter. So, it is going to be hard for me to start measuring things out and giving exact measurements and steps to my madness. I learned the right way to make a sauce, soup and all that good stuff....but it doesn't mean that I follow "by the book" rules. I pretty much do as I please. I am a home cook just like most of you, and prefer to just have FUN in the kitchen! I throw whatever random things I have in the fridge to perfectly fine "by the book" recipes to create my own flare. Sometimes this completely ruins the recipe, other times I have made an even better concoction in which I say to myself "why didn't anyone else think of this?"

I wanted to start this blog when I first started cooking for my husband because I wanted to track my own recipes and things I make. I made so many good things and I am afraid I am going to forget about something amazing I made that is worth making again. But because of life, and because I simply do not want to take pictures of the steps and have to measure everything out, I decided to put it off. Well now its been almost 5 months and if I do not start tracking my recipes now, I will regret it later down the road. I hope that you will enjoy my humor, maybe learn something from me and what I hope the most is that you all will comment and leave me tips and recipes to try as well! I would love to create a community of Christian, married, food-loving women who can have an awesome online friendship from all over the globe!

Love,

Ty <3

Does Your Diet Honor God?

This little blog entry is a quiz for yourself to get you thinking if you are indulging more into food than God.
Everyone who knows me for a few days will find out that I live and breathe food. I find it fascinating how many different cakes, cookies, breads and brownies you can make with a few basic ingredients; flour,eggs,sugar,milk and butter. Food is needed to survive of coarse, but we don't need to over think and indulge in every meal. As a Chef and a person who loves looking in magazines and cook books, I find myself dreaming and spending a little too much time thinking about meals. Scary part is that I am not even married yet or have children! Imagine when I am able to have my own house parties and make my own dinners for my family. Now, don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with spending time planning out meals, looking at food magazine or spending five minutes staring at an ad in the newspaper for a new drink from Starbucks. But there is a limit that us Christian women need to realize.

To indulge in something means to have "unrestrained action". Well that should tell you right there that it is a sin. Anything that says "unrestrained" is going to have a non-Christian connotation. For example, when we are on our monthly cycles sometimes we crave things,such as chocolate, to help our cramps or bloating. Having a piece or two in order to curb that want or apparent need is fine, we all need to have a little satisfaction or treat when going through something hard. God gave us food for nourishment, strength and satisfaction. The problem lies when pleasing becomes unrestrained; when we eat a whole bar of chocolate or box of Mac and Cheese.

Be honest to yourself and to God, are you finding satisfaction from cookies, chips, ice-cream, and gummy bears? Are you craving food more than you are craving God? Food should not be what you are turning to in times of sadness, happiness and stress. We should be craving God NOT food. I read somewhere once that shallow desires give shallow efforts....which gives shallow results.

We all want to be healthy, but the process of getting healthy is more than just losing weight and focusing on ourselves. It has to be about realizing that having a healthy diet is more than just adjusting our diets to healthier choices and excersizing to have a nice body....it has to be about a spiritual journey your taking WITH God to honor His temple......your body.

And as an end thought......God made up our ablity to crave so we would want more on Him. Nothing will change until you direct your cravings to wanting more of What God has to offer you. And what he has to offer you is a better deal. There is guarantee that no carbs or fat will attach to your hips when you dig into a big portion of His word.

Beautiful, Beautiful

Bare with me for a paragraph or two. I know I don't just speak for myself when I say that when I wake up in the morning, I wonder what I look like today. I get up and go right to the bathroom, look myself in the mirror and analyze my hair and face; do I have any zits that need to be masked with cover-up and is my hair too greasy to just put up in a ponytail for the day? Why do us women have to analyze ourselves, judge others and constantly have to feel that we look okay to be able to own confidence? We occassionaly find ourselves on someone elses facebook checking out what new hair style they got or new shoes they purchased. In the clothing stores we are grabbing a million pairs of jeans in various sizes because we are wondering if the burger and fries we had over the weekend maybe fluxuated our weight and made us go up a size. And, in the check out lane at the convienient store our eyeballs seem to accidentally make their way to the front cover of our favorite magazine to see who's airbrushed body is on the front.

Are the things I mentioned really beauty? Why is it that our society has labeled beauty as having a "pleasing" outward apperance?

As a Christian woman, we need to remember that we need to part ourselves from the secular way of viewing beauty. I want to try something this week.... I know, its Thursday night....most goals start on the first day of the year or week or month....but we all know how they work out! So, maybe tricking ourselves by starting on an "off" day, we can accomplish this little goal. My goal is to wake up in the morning, and before looking in the mirror to see what horror story is blinking back at me, I want to focus on being a beautiful person inside. How will I do that? Well think about it; when you do your typical morning routine what is it that you normally do? I know I wash my face, layer my face with makeup, do my hair and pick out an outfit and purse. I walk out of the house feeling "beautiful" on the outside. Well, when you open your eyeballs tomorrow and turn off your alarm, before jumping out of bed to run to use the bathroom, try and take five minutes to determine what you can do to make you beautiful inside. Each day, try and add a minute onto your morning routine until you eventually have enough time to read a bible verse, say a small morning prayer and think about what you can do to help your inward beauty for the day.

Here is a Bible Verse from NKJV to back up what I am trying to say:

"Do not let your adornment be merely outward -- arranging hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel-- rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God." 1 Peter 3:3-4

And here is a little excert from a site I found when I simply typed in Christian Beauty into Google

"Now, dear girls and women, do you want a beauty which does not fade? A beauty that knows no wrinkles? A beauty that does not wash away like mascara, that is not rubbed off with a towel? A beauty that lasts, a beauty that is imperishable? This is the beauty that is to be found in Jesus Christ. This is His life in you, a life of trust and obedience in Him. Death and old age cannot touch it because it is the impression upon your soul of the likeness of Jesus Christ. When you see the beautiful women of the world, and everyone bowing down to them and worshiping at their feet and lusting, do you see the folly, the utter folly? I wish not to be cynical but to bring the truth. The Word of God says, "Dear beautiful woman, perfect figure, if the Lord tarries a short time, you will be old. You might, indeed, be forgotten in a nursing home, wrinkled, no family to visit you. And you shall die. In the grave, worms and maggots will crawl over you." Now, you say, I am being morbid? No. This is reality. Hear the Word of God: a plastic surgeon and facial cream can go only so far. They cannot overcome the grave. If your life is consumed in the outward beauty, how pathetic! It is vanishing. Stop, stop trying to erase the signs of death. Many women are still pursuing the allusive beauty of youth. They think that that is beauty. Their beauty will be their hair, their jewels, their clothes. This beauty fades away. But not the beauty in Christ." Rev. Carl Haak