If you follow my blog or have read many of my posts, you know that lunch is a difficult meal for me. I try to avoid processed meats, so I don't eat sandwiches often. In the past I have made protein cookies or balls and that works well. I can join them with my Greek yogurt I eat every day and that generally will satisfy me. I guess I should just do better about making them and keeping a supply of them on hand.
The last time I bought some protein powder, I chose a chocolate flavor. I usually get vanilla, and thought the chocolate would be a nice change. If you have never made any protein cookies or balls before, the nifty thing about them is you can take liberties and add just about anything you want to the recipe. (ie dried fruit, mini chocolate chips, coconut, etc)
PEANUT BUTTER & BANANA OAT PROTEIN BALLS
2-1/2 cups oats (quick or old fashioned - I used the latter)
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cups creamy or chunky peanut butter
1 cup ripe bananas (about 2 large)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 scoops of protein powder
Put all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and stir until well blended.
Form into balls and refrigerate. (The mixture was "wetter" than others I have made. I decided to use my medium ice cream scoop to form balls. I covered a cookie sheet with wax paper and dropped scoops on it. I ate one a few hours later, but they were better the next day.)
Using the medium size scoop, I made 14 balls.
When I woke up yesterday morning (Valentine's Day), I felt like doing something special for breakfast instead of the same-o-same-o. I thought about making some muffins, but couldn't find anything that looked exciting. What I did find and decided to make was this Fruity Oatmeal.
I know what you are thinking....what's exciting about oatmeal. Really? Well, the addition of apples and dates were different from my plain oatmeal I usually make in the microwave. So I figured it had to be an improvement.
And it was! I will definitely be making it again.
The recipe was in a new cookbook I bought last Friday when Friend Janice and I went to a few estate sales. It was a Better Homes and Garden cookbook called Eat Healthy Lose Weight. It said each serving had 140 calories. I drink my milk and do not add it to my oatmeal.
FRUITY OATMEAL
2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup rolled oats (I did use Old Fashioned Oats)
1 cup chopped apple or chopped peeled peach (I used a Fuji apple)
1/4 cup raisins or snipped whole pitted dates (I chopped whole pitted dates)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
In a medium saucepan, bring the water and salt to a boil.
Stir in the rest of the ingredients.
Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 3 minutes (if you use quick oats) or 5 minutes (for regular oats), stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat. Cover and let stand for 2 minutes before serving.
If desired, serve with fat-free milk.
Makes 4 servings.
Saturday night our Tasty Bunch gathered for dinner at BC Bistro and then for dessert at Friend Judy and Paul's house. Almost half of the group were absent because they were all enjoying the sun and warmth in Florida as snowbirds (even though we have had almost no snow this winter). Judy decided to treat us with a layered chocolate cake for dessert. She loves to bake and tries to give away as much of the sweet stuff as she can when she wants to make something. Not sure what she did with the other half of the cake (that we didn't eat).This is one of those goodies that would be hard for me to give away because it is so delicious.
Judy said she always made her chocolate cakes by the same recipe. That is until she found this recipe. She thinks the difference in the taste is the boiling water you add at the end when mixing it up. Seems like I have made a chocolate cake and added boiling water as the last ingredient, but I couldn't find it. Whatever. It was a really delicious cake.
BEST EVER CHOCOLATE CAKE
2 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons soda
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup boiling water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare two 9 - inch cake pans by spraying and dusting with flour.
Put flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Whisk to combine.
Add milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla on beat on medium speed until well combined.
Reduce speed and carefully add boiling water.
Beat on high for 1 minutes. Batter will be thin, but that's okay.
Pour batter into pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans to cool.
When cool, ice with Fluffy Frosting.
FLUFFY FROSTING
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup water
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla
Bring sugar, cream of tartar, salt, syrup, and water to a boil and boil till sugar dissolves.
Add to unbeaten egg whites, beating constantly until frosting is of spreading consistency.
Add vanilla.
Judy thought she would make the cake look festive for Valentine's Day and sprinkled the chocolate sprinkles on the top in the shape of a heart. She said she had cut a heart shape out of a piece of paper and laid it on top of the cake, but when she removed the paper, they fell out onto the rest of the cake. I suggested she might have used a heart-shaped cookie cutter and place it on the iced cake. After you sprinkle the chocolate inside the cookie cutter, you could lightly press around the edges so that when you lifted the cutter, the pieces wouldn't move.
She also served it with some gelato.
I saw this recipe called Marriage Meatloaf on Kevin Williams' Amish365.com website. I read his introduction for the recipe and was intrigued. Kevin said he had received a letter from a reader who said that Elisabeth Coblentz's recipe had "saved her marriage" as it was the one thing she could do for her husband that really brought them together, satisfied him, etc.
I checked it out not because I felt my marriage needed saving, but because meatloaf just happens to be one of my husband's favorite meals. I like it, but won't usually order it in restaurants because they usually put onions and peppers in it and I don't do "onions and peppers" well in recipes. As I was thinking about making it, I decided I could make it and it would "save our marriage" as it would make my husband very happy and me, too.
You see what I decided to do was first mix up all of the ingredients except for the diced onions. Then I divided the mixture in half. Using my Pyrex "mini" loaf pans (they are actually a little bigger than mini loaf pans), I put half of the mixture in one of them and then added the diced onions to the rest of the mixture. It was quite a bit of onion in the smaller loaf because I used the full amount the recipe called for with the bigger loaf, but that just pleased him more. (I offered to add peppers even though the recipe didn't call for it, but he said that was okay.) It was easy then to divide the mixture for the topping between the two pans.
MARRIAGE MEATLOAF
2 lbs ground beef
3/4 cups quick oats
2 well-beaten eggs
1/4 cup chopped onions
3/4 cup tomato juice
2 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 teaspoons pepper
SAUCE
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Mix all ingredients together.
Pack firmly in loaf pan.
Mix sauce ingredients and spread over meatloaf before baking.
Bake for 1 hour.
My directions:
Mix ingredients except for the onions together to
distribute the oats and other ingredients evenly.
Mix with a wooden spoon and/or your hands.
Divide mixture in half using two loaf pans.
Add chopped onion to one of the "halves".
Press mixture in loaf pans.
Mix sauce ingredients, divide evenly
and spread over mixture.
Bake 45 minutes.
Mine....
My husbands....
We both were able to enjoy a delicious meatloaf for dinner.
The last recipe I shared with you that Friend Luci made was very well received. She had made Peggy's Apple Cake the last time that our Mexican Train group met at her house. I missed the game because I had been at the funeral for one of the volunteers at Hillcrest Thrift Shop. I did drop by afterwards and got there in time to eat the dessert. Actually I got some pictures of the sauce that she was making to serve with the cake since she wanted it to be warm. It was really, really yummy.
Yesterday, our group met at Luci's house again. She had quite a bit to tempt us with. The Parfait Peach Salad was one I couldn't resist. (Neither could the rest of the group.) I asked her if I could share the recipe and she said I could.
It is so delicious, you could easily eat it for dessert. (I think if you wanted to use different fruit, you could. In fact, I asked Luci if she had used fruit cocktail in it. I think that would taste good, too.)
PARFAIT PEACH SALAD
1 (14-oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 (8-oz) carton whipped topping
1 can drained peaches (diced)
Combine the condensed milk and lemon juice and beat until smooth.
Fold in whipped topping.
Stir in pecans and fruit.
Refrigerate.
It is always hard to get back into the "swing" of things after we have been on vacation. Last week we were able to enjoy the warmer temperatures and sun in "mostly" sunny Florida. We woke up Sunday to fog and were glad it waited until the day we were coming back home to do that. What a joy to be greeted by the sun shining in our bedroom window every morning! I am definitely a "sun person".
But we flew back home last night and life goes on. It will probably take me several days to get back on central standard time. Even though I woke up at 6ish this morning, I did stay in bed another hour before finally getting up. (I didn't have the joy of the sun back home which was disappointing.)
I did have a dental appointment this morning to get my permanent crown. (Remember the tooth I broke the corner off of earlier in January when I was sick with a sinus infection?) It surely feels better than the temporary. Before I even left for the appointment, I was searching through a couple of cookbooks looking for something to make later in the day to take to Hillcrest Thrift Shop today for the volunteers.
I didn't get excited about anything in the first cookbook I checked out. Then I picked up one of my Amish cookbooks, Heritage Country Harvest Cookbook (over 700 favorite recipes from the Amish in Indiana). I have marked several recipes that sounded interesting but haven't gotten around to trying. I guess that is a disadvantage of having as many cookbooks as I do.
This recipe of Mrs. Leroy (Betty) Yoder has an interesting name, Can't Leave Alone Bars. It doesn't take but one bite to know why she named them that. She listed a yellow cake mix in the list of ingredients, but then said at the end of the instructions that you could use a chocolate cake and then change the amounts of chips. I was going to use a chocolate cake mix but picked up a yellow one first, so just stuck to it. I did use the change in the amounts of the chips though. I also used a can of chocolate flavored sweetened condensed milk that I have. I bought several cans back last year at the commissary at Fort Leavenworth. I haven't seen them there or anywhere else. It is too bad because the taste is absolutely fabulous. (I have to admit I forgot the butter. I didn't realize it until I was writing the recipe.)
CAN'T LEAVE ALONE BARS
1 box yellow cake mix (or chocolate)
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used 1/4 cup of special dark)
1/4 cup peanut butter chips (I used 3/4 cup of peanut butter chips)
1 can sweetened condensed milk (I used a chocolate flavored sweetened condensed milk)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a cake pan. (Mrs. Yoder didn't indicate the size of the pan. I decided to use my 8 x 11 - inch Pyrex one.)
Mix cake mix, eggs, and oil
(until well blended).
Spread half of the mixture in the bottom of the baking pan.
Put the other side aside.
Melt next 4 ingredients together.
(I placed them (remember I forgot the butter) in a quart size dish and heated them on High for 20 seconds intervals, stirring after each interval.
After the third one, it was all melted.) Mrs. Yoder says you can use 1 cup of chocolate chips instead of chocolate and peanut butter chips. (I personally like the taste of the peanut butter chips.)
Pour on top of the cake mix
and crumble the rest of cake mix on top. (The cake mix is too wet to really crumble. I just dropped small amounts around the top leaving some of the chocolate mixture showing.)
Bake for 30 minutes.
Then Mrs. Yoder says you may use a chocolate cake mix then use 1/4 cup chocolate chips and 3/4 cup peanut butter. (I interpreted that to mean peanut butter chips.)
Cool on a wire rack.
When cooled, cut in squares to serve. (It did sink in the middle but that didn't ruin the taste.)
It has been many years since I first enjoyed this dessert. I remember that my sister-cousin Marie made it and brought it to my mother's when the family was all getting together. I fell in love with the sweet/salty combination. I actually made it a couple of times, but that was a long time ago.
Thursday, our quilters' canasta group met at Friend Ellen's house. I missed because I was enjoying the sun and warmer temperatures in Florida. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from Ellen telling me about the afternoon game and that I was missed AND also pictures along with the recipe of this Strawberry Pretzel Dessert that she made and served.
Seeing her pictures brought back memories of that first time when Marie made it for our families. I remember thinking - I would never have thought about using pretzels in the crust. It's funny now when I think about it. I have even made chocolate chip cookies that had crushed pretzels in them and they were so good. You can check that recipe out HERE.
The recipe for this dessert is so old, container sizes have changed. I have reflected those changes in the recipe. Some people consider this a dessert, but you could also use it as a salad. When I was growing up, Mother often made congealed salads that we loved.
STRAWBERRY PRETZEL DESSERT
3 tablespoons sugar
2 cups crushed pretzels (do not crush too fine)
3/4 cup melted butter
Mix the above ingredients together and pat into a 9 x 13 - inch pan. Bake for 15 minutes in 350 degrees F oven. Cool.
2 cups powdered sugar
1 8 - ounce package cream cheese
1 8 - ounce carton whipped topping
2 cups miniature marshmallows
Mix the powdered sugar and cream cheese. Fold in the whipped topping and marshmallows. Spread over the cooled pretzel crust. Chill.
2 3 - ounce packages of strawberry gelatin (Ellen used sugar-free strawberry gelatin)
2-1/2 cups boiling water
1/4 teaspoon strawberry flavoring (Ellen omitted)
1 15 - ounce package frozen strawberries
Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add flavoring and frozen strawberries. Chill until partially set. Pour over cream cheese layer and refrigerate until firm.
Thanks, Ellen, for thinking of me and sharing your dessert with me so that I could share it with you.
I am so impressed with Friend Ellen. I asked her to take pictures of a casserole she was going to cook for dinner so I could share it here with you. (I will be sharing it next week.) She sent me the pictures the next day and sent me another email telling me she was roasting a pork loin and had taken pictures that I could share if I wanted to. If I wanted to? If I wanted to? Seriously? Of course I will share them. I am always telling my friends when they tell me things they are making/baking to take pictures, send them to me, and I will share them. Finally, someone is taking the initiative. And I love her pictures!
Ellen writes: I buy a whole Cry-o-vac wrapped pork loin. It is usually 7 to 8 lbs. I ask the butcher to cut about 1/3 of it off for a roast and then cut the rest into Iowa chops. He calls them American Chops. Whatever you call them, they are thick chops about 1-1/4 inches thick. I have the butcher package them 2 in a package and then I freeze them.
I spray a 9 x 13 - inch pan and a roasting rack with non-stick cooking spray. I place the roast on the rack with the fatty side up. After combining and applying the rub, I cover it with foil and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. (The recipe says to let it stand for at least 2 hrs. I'm not sure if it's okay outside the refrigerator so I refrigerate it.)
Remove the foil and roast it uncovered at 450 degrees F for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 degrees F and roast 2 hours more or until meat thermometer registers 185 degrees. (Ellen adds, "I think the guidelines have been changed to maybe 165 degrees F now. I cooked mine to 178 degrees F and it was a little dry.)
ROASTED LOIN OF PORK
1 boned & rolled 5 lb loin of pork
1 crushed clove of garlic
2 tablespoons coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon each thyme and pepper
Spray a 9 x 13 - inch pan with roasting rack with non-stick cooking spray.
In a small bowl, mix the garlic, salt, thyme, and pepper.
Place roast on rack with the fatty side up and apply rub on roast. Cover with foil and place in refrigerator for two hours.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Bake for 30 minutes and then reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees F and roast 2 hours more or until meat thermometer registers 165 degrees F.
Slice to serve.
Thanks, Ellen, for sharing your pictures and recipe with me.
Last Friday was the first time this year that Friend Janice and I got out to some estate sales. We didn't have many to choose from, but the ones we went to were fairly good. It is amazing what people collect. One house we went to had so much merchandise that was still unopened. We only had one sale that Friday was the first day. The other two had started on Thursday which meant everything was 25% off on Friday. I bought almost new Lee jeans and Dockers jeans for $2 each. I was so excited. I know you are wondering so I won't keep you in suspense any longer. Yes, I did buy two new cookbooks. The recipe I am sharing with you today came from one of the cookbooks.
OATMEAL BUTTERMILK MUFFINS
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1/4 cup raisins
Combine the oats and buttermilk in a bowl and allow to soak for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease or spray a 12-cup muffin pan.
With an electric mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar
until light and fluffy.
Add egg. Beat to combine. (Looks like I forgot to take a picture.)
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Stir the flour mixture alternately into the butter mixture with the oat mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
(The oat mixture after it sets for an hour.)
Fold in the raisins.
Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling each about 2/3rds full.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
Transfer muffins to a wire rack to cool. (Running a knife around the inside of the cup will help remove the muffins.)
Great still a little warm.
Hilaire Walden's Cookies - irresistible biscuits, brownies, and bars.
