Potatoes. Celery. Carrots. Soup! Sounds delicious already, right? This is a simple dish that does take a while to make (it is soup), but the end result is… well, scrumptious. It is relatively low in calories and fat, thus making it very healthy.
What You Need:
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 small onion (or 1/2 of a medium, or 1/4 of a large onion)
- 4-5 baby carrots (or one medium carrot)
- 2 stalks of celery
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 medium potato
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 tsp thyme (or to taste)
- 1/4 tsp parsley (or to taste)
- 1 bay leaf
- 3 cups water
How To:
- Chop the onion, celery, and carrots. Peel and dice the potato. Mince the garlic.
- Heat oil over medium-high heat. Add in onion, celery, and carrots. Stir often. Cook 5 minutes and add in salt. Cook another 5 minutes.
- Add potato, garlic, and herbs. Stir together. Add water.
- Bring to a simmer, and let cook for about 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
- Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve.
I made this tonight for just my mother and I, so you may want to double or triple the recipe for families. If doubling, double only the celery, potato, carrots, and water. Use the herbs to taste (only one bay leaf, though), and leave the garlic and onions as is.
Beer bread is a personal favorite of mine. Have you ever tasted bread that is just so… delicious? It does have beer in it, but not alcohol. The beer acts as a sort of yeast that allows the bread to rise, and it leaves behind a light whiff of a beer taste as you eat it. My brother and I put a small spin on it last Thanksgiving weekend, but that’s just because our family loves walnuts - those are entirely optional.
This recipe is basically this recipe, but with nuts and slightly less butter.
All you need is:
- 3 cups sifted flour
- 1 tbsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 bottle/can of beer
- 1/2 - 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
- 1/8 - 1/4 cup butter
How to:
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan with butter.
- Melt butter. Chop walnuts. Set aside.
- Mix dry ingredients with beer in a large bowl.
- Fold in nuts gently.
- Pour mixture into pan. Pour melted butter over mixture, spread it evenly so that it lightly coats the entire top of the mixture.
- Bake for 1 hour, or until top is golden.
Simply put, this recipe is delicious. Make sure to sift! The nuts add a nice sort of crunch to an already tasty bread. Have fun!
Kale chips! These are tasty and absolutely delightful. They’re a bit of a hassle to make for about 30 seconds of full on munching, but they’re worth it. I made these with my brother over Thanksgiving weekend for the first time, and they turned out great! This is a healthy way to eat vegetables.
This is also a healthy substitute for potato chips.
All you need is (love!):
- kale (whichever kind you prefer)
- 1 tbsp of olive oil
- salt (to taste)
- pepper (to taste)
- shredded cheese (optional)
How To:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Take whatever flat baking pan you have, line it with aluminum foil.
- Wash kale leaves individually - make sure they’re clean! Dry them thoroughly or wring them as dry as possible.
- Tear the leaves into evenly sized pieces (bite size, bigger or smaller, you choose). Do not use the stem, as it will not crisp properly. Throw them into a large plastic container with a lid, like Tupperware.
- Mix up the olive oil and pepper, then drizzle it all over the leaves in the plastic contained. Put on lid and shake vigorously.
- Place leaves on sheets, make sure they lay down well if they curl up. If you would like, shred some cheese and lightly sprinkle some over the leaves.
- Bake in oven for 10 minutes, or until crisp.
Alternatively, you could just drizzle the leaves with olive oil in the container and shake. Then remove them and place them on sheets and sprinkle with salt and pepper and cheese. Try some variations! Enjoy.
Today, I made snickerdoodles by following Smitten Kitchen’s snickerdoodle recipe. They were simple to make, and extremely delicious.
All you need is the following:
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 16 tablespoons (2 stick or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 3/4 cups sugar, plus more if needed
- 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon, plus more if needed
- 2 large eggs
Sounds simple enough, right? It is! If you want images, here are the pictures of the ingredients I used.
Simple Fried Rice
No pictures this time ‘round, sorry!
Fried rice has always been a favorite of mine, since my mom rarely makes it. I don’t like restaurant fried rice, since it’s almost always too oily and gross and you can’t put what you want in it. We usually only make fried rice if we have a little bit of leftover rice that’s been kind of sitting there for a day or two (sounds disgusting, I know). This is easy and fast to make!
All you need is:
- rice
- eggs
- cooking wine
- Chinese chives
- canola/vegetable oil
- salt
- pepper
Cooking Chinese food is more of an art than a science, as it’s hard to get exact amounts. China is a densely populated country with a variety of cultures, and everyone’s preferences are different from each other. So keep that in mind as you make fried rice.
- Dice chives. Amount will vary depending on the amount of rice, but usually just using one or two “leaves” of the chive will be fine.
- Heat a frying pan (or really any pan you can cook in), pour in maybe a teaspoon or two of oil. Just so that you can cover the bottom in a very thin layer of oil so that the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom. Cook at high heat.
- Add in the chives, wait until the oil starts popping.
- In the meantime, beat together (by hand, with chopsticks or a fork) one or two eggs (depending on how much of a egg:rice ratio you want), with a teaspoon or two of cooking wine (to taste), along with a dash of salt (or to taste).
- Fry the eggs until almost fully cooked, and then put them in a separate bowl.
- Put the rice in the frying pan, until you feel like it’s been heated.
- Add the fried eggs back into the pan, stir everything together.
- Add a dash of salt and a dash of pepper.
- Turn off the heat. You can let your rice sit for a few minutes to get some crispy rice on the bottom, or you can serve it immediately.
Most of this depends on how much rice you have. If you have like two cups of rice, you should probably add in two eggs, or whatever you prefer. If you don’t really like eggs, you can just add one. Chinese food is very flexible, and you can kind of add in whatever you think is right.
Chinese cooking lacks proper amounts because, in the old days, you just worked with what you could get and sometimes the heat from the flame would differ when you were cooking, so you just have to watch the food and determine when it’s ready when there’s a color change or something along those lines.
Here is a simple dish for now. Enjoy!
