Sometimes I just get a craving for nachos, but then I think about how horrible they are for me. Fake liquid cheese, ewwww. No THANK YOU. Quinoa Nachos to the rescue!! Now I can feed my craving without feeling really guilty afterwards. You can find the awesome VegNews recipe here.

I haven't tried the cheese recipe to accompany the nachos, but if you do, please let me know how it goes! Instead, I just melted some shredded cheese over the quinoa mixture.

Hope you're having a happy weekend!

Mixed Berry Muffins

Recently I heard about almond flour and immediately was intrigued. So lately I've been an eager beaver wanting to get my hands on some and experiment. I found my bag at the local Trader Joes in the nut section for a reasonable $3.99. 

We had some fresh raspberries and blackberries in the fridge, so I thought berry muffins would be nice for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Now, I've heard almond flour makes whatever you bake less fluffy, so I was a bit hesitant as to how the results would come out. I got Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook My Father's Daughter for my birthday back in December, and still hadn't tried anything from it. So I decided to use her Blueberry Muffin recipe. The recipe calls for 2 cups of unbleached flour, so I decided to substitute half organic wheat flour and half almond flour. Good choice because, these bad boys came out tasty!

Getting started

Folding the berries in

Ready to bake...

                                     

Panko Delight

Last Saturday I got up early before everyone else, even my dog. So, I made myself a cup of tea and starting watching cooking shows. First it was the cooking channel (which is pretty amazing. if you have it, and your not watching it, well, I don't know what to tell you about that.), then it was the food network, and soon I found myself sucked into hours of food making television. But that's ok, that's what the weekends are for....just plain enjoyment, right? Right.

Ok, the point to this story is this "panko crusted salmon."  Oh, Ina Garten, you're awesome! I made it for dinner tonight, and it was so tasty that I just had to tell you about it too." Tasty" and "Easy", those are some awesome adjectives. The recipe basically calls for panko, parsley, salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon zest (I used lime zest instead), and mustard. You can checkout the full recipe here and thank me later.

Chinese New Year.

Happy Chinese New Year! 2011 is the year of the Rabbit. To celebrate the new year, I decided to make homemade Wonton Soup. I crossed my fingers that it would turn out ok, but it was better than ok. It turned out super yummy. My mr. even went back for seconds!

Here's some photos of my cooking adventures....

May the new year bring you happiness & prosperity!