Food for Friday

Hello!

How about I mix it up a bit and talk about food on Fridays? Not every single Friday, but if you enjoy cooking and baking, weekends are a great time to try new recipes or a favorite dish that you've been meaning to make for a while.

Before I share a couple of my latest recipe trials, I want you to  know that I'm just an average cook. I can boil water, find my way around a kitchen and make simple healthy meals. Other than that, you will not see me starting a cooking website anytime soon or creating my own recipes. I can, however, tell you about the latest recipes I've tried and let you know if they were successful. I have a very choosy husband (sounds better than picky eater) and a 10 year old son who has been known to simply look at a meal and know he's not going to like it! In other words, our family is a lot like yours so if I can cook a meal without burning the house down and if my 'boys' like it...yours might too. :)

Creamy Shrimp and Mushroom Pasta

I don't know how it happened, but our 10 year old son loves seafood and mushrooms! I know...it's amazing! Perhaps it's a gene I passed down. He sure didn't get it from his father! This week I indulged Christopher and I with a dish of Creamy Shrimp and Mushroom pasta from Chaos in the Kitchen, while dad enjoyed leftovers from another night. ;)

This is an easy dish to make and if I had a rating scale of five stars for best recipe, this one might earn fives...at least four. Please note, this recipe calls for 9 tablespoons of butter! That's over a stick of butter people! The author claims that it sounds like a lot, but it's "not the same" if you don't use that much! Additionally, the recipe calls 3 oz. of cream cheese! Oh boy! The nutritional facts for this recipe are also given and with that much butter and cream cheese, you will go over your daily allowance for saturated fat and cholesterol in just one meal! I just can't do it! So I used half the butter and 2 oz. of cream cheese and it was fabulous! Just not as creamy. Maybe we're not used to rich foods??

Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos

Here's a recipe for those kids who will not touch seafood or mushrooms until hell freezes over...how about taquitos from Pennies on a Platter. These would also receive a four to five star rating. Oh they were good! Serve them with light sour cream, salsa and or guacamole, a side dish of corn and you're all set! By the way, they were pretty darn quick to make too...a double bonus!

Frosted Banana Bars

Saving dessert or the best for last are these delectable Frosted Banana Bars from Taste of Home. This is another recipe I tweaked a bit for health purposes. I didn't think four cups of powdered sugar in the frosting was necessary! I just couldn't do it. I figured two cups was plenty so I made half the amount of frosting! The bars I baked look almost the same as those in the picture with a tad less frosting which makes them very good! For those who appreciate icing that's not sickening sweet, you should appreciate this alteration!

Another thing you might be interested in knowing about me, since I'm recommending recipes to you is that less than two years ago I was the Queen of Lean Cuisine! I at them for lunch and the whole family ate frozen meals for many dinners too. They were convenient and great for portion control...some were not too bad tasting either. But there are a few problems with a frozen meal diet...like the impact on the environment from all the packaging! Frozen meals are notorious for not including enough vegetables and often contain preservatives and ingredients that are less than healthy, not to mention the amount of sodium!

We decided to change our ways and went from one end of the spectrum to the other by cooking and eating meals from scratch! Scratch cooking doesn't have to be difficult or time consuming either. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here...you don't have to be an excellent cook to turn over a new, healthier leaf! :)

Kathy