Cashew Rangoons

This was a good vegetarian substitute for crab rangoons, and I think they tasted much better. Sometimes I think using other ingredients to make vegetarian dishes of food that are traditionally filled with meat are really better, they are more creative and have a better flavor, most things I have made have been great.

This recipe is from Mary Makes Dinner.

Ingredients:
-15 wonton wrappers
-1/2 cup raw cashews
-1 tablespoon tahini
-1 Tbsp lime juice
-1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
-1 tablespoon hot sauce
-1/2 cup water
-3 scallions, thinly sliced
-1/2 red pepper
-salt and pepper

Mix the cashews, tahini, lime juice, soy sauce, hot sauce, salt and pepper in
a blender.Mix in a little bit of water at a time as needed.

Combine the cashew mixture with the red pepper and green onion.

Put a spoonful of the mixture in the middle of a wonton wrapper.
I had to cut my wonton wrappers into fourths so they weren't so big.
Get 2 sides of the wrapper wet, and fold the wrapper into a triangle.
Then pinch 2 of the corners together.

Heat oil for a few minutes.
Drop in the wontons, heat until golden brown, about 4
minutes per side for me.

I dipped these in soy sauce, which was really good. The shell was crispy and the inside was soft, it was a good combination. They were't too spicy, and didn't have any overwhelming flavor. It took me a little more time than I expected, there were a lot of ingredients to mix, but it still took less than 30 minutes, and I thought it was worth it.

Cheddar and Chive Mashed Potato Waffles

I had been seeing this recipe all over Pinterest and I knew that it would be something that J. would really enjoy. We served this as a side dish to the Fried Green Tomato BLT that I'll be posting tomorrow. I really like that this recipe was a fun twist on two traditional dish -- and truthfully there are endless flavor possibilities. 

This recipe comes from Joy the Baker.

Ingredients:
-4 tablespoons unsalted butter

-1/4 cup buttermilk

-2 large eggs

-2 cups mashed potatoes

-3 tablespoons chopped chives

-1/2 cup all-purpose flour

-1/2 teaspoon baking powder

-1/4 teaspoon baking soda

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

-1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

-1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Stir the butter, buttermilk, chives and eggs into the mashed potatoes.
In a small bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and seasonings.
Mix into the mashed potatoes until just combined.

Pour 1/4 of a cup onto a greased waffle iron.

Cook until golden brown, cool on a wire rack until all of the waffles are finished.

Place the mashed potato waffles on a baking sheet and top with lots and lots of cheddar.

Broil for one to two minutes or until cheese is melted.
Top with more chives.

                                          

These were crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Cheddar and chive are always flavors which compliment each other nicely. We only had a few leftover and J. heated them up for dinner. They weren't as crisp once they were reheated, but J. still really enjoyed them. Check back for more variations on this recipe.

Black Bean Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potato and cheese sounds really weird, and I thought it tasted a little weird too, but it was interesting to try. It was easy to make though for a weeknight dinner, or it could be a side to have with something else.

Ingredients:

-1 can black beans

-3 sweet potatoes

-2 tomatoes

-1/2 onion

-mozzarella/cheddar cheese

-sour cream

Saute onions for a minute until they are soft.
Add the black beans and tomato and cook for
a few more minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the sweet potatoes. I just did mine in
the microwave.

Add the black beans on top of the sweet potato.

Top with cheese and sour cream.

I thought that this maybe could have used some extra seasoning to it, maybe some red pepper or something. The cheese was pretty good on the sweet potato though, I might try this again with other combinations of toppings.

Buffalo Cheese Fries

Becky and I both love spicy foods and thought that these fries would be a nice side dish to a dinner recipe.

This recipe comes from Tidy Mom.

Ingredients: 

-1½ bags frozen french fries (crinkle cut or steak)

-1-2 tablespoons olive oil (or canola oil would work)

-1 teaspoon garlic salt

-1 teaspoon cayenne powder

-ground pepper to taste

-1 cup buffalo wing sauce

-1-2 tablespoons butter

-1½ cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated

-1/2 cup blue cheese, crumbled

-3 green onions, sliced

-1 tablespoon chopped chives

Preheat your oven to 450. Toss the frozen fries in olive oil, garlic salt, cayenne and pepper. Bake for 20-30 minutes, turning halfway through the bake time.

Heat the buffalo sauce in the microwave with the butter. 

Coat the fries with the sauce, and cheeses. Broil for 5 minutes.

Serve with chives and green onions.

Deliciousness.

There were no leftovers! Becky and I really enjoyed this recipe and so did my family. The buffalo sauce added the right amount of heat, the blue cheese added a tangy flavor. The green onions and chives added a nice fresh touch, I will make this recipe again.

Caesar Style Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing

As a vegetarian I really enjoy eating salad, but I don't use Caesar dressing because of the anchovies. I was drawn to this recipe because of the updated dressing, but the original contained Worcestershire which also has anchovies in it, so I subbed soy which is my go to substitute for Worcestershire.

We served this with Creamy Slow Cooker Tortellini Soup.

From a Cup of Jo.


Ingredients:
For the dressing:
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. mustard (whole grain Dijon if you have it)
3 tbsp. soy sauce
2 lemons, juiced
Sea salt & fresh black pepper
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

For the salad:
3 heads romaine lettuce, roughly chopped
5 oz. Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1 package croutons
Black pepper for serving

Makes 6-8 servings.

To make the dressing: Whisk together all ingredients. If you're cutting this recipe in half, I recommend halving the vinaigrette because it made a lot of dressing. The oil, soy and mustard will try to separate, just give the dressing another good whisk before serving.

Assemble the salad on a plate and spoon as little or as much dressing as you'd like.

I really enjoyed this recipe. The romaine lettuce was crisp, but missing the hard pieces that other mixed lettuce has (am I the only one who hates those incredibly crunchy pieces of lettuce?). The fresh black pepper was a nice touch and the tangy vinaigrette dressing was the perfect pairing. I would much rather having this dressing over a heavy dressing like Caeser. The most prominent flavor was the garlic, but the mustard was also detectable, this is a recipe I will be making again as a side dish.

Nacho Pasta Salad

I like pasta salad, and it is perfect for a summer party, and since it is getting close to the end of summer, I'm glad I got to make another pasta salad. This one was really good, probably one of the best pasta salads I have made. It had just the right amount of kick from the dressing, but wasn't overwhelming.

I got the idea for this recipe here.

Special thanks to our friend Kayla for her awesome photography, check out her blog here.

Other blogs featuring Kayla: Twice Baked Red Potatoes, Corn Risotto, King Cake Cocktail, Smore's Cake, Rust City Buffalo Sauce, Lucky Charm Doughnuts, Poutine with Guinness Gravy, and Birthday Cocktail, 

Ingredients:

-1/2 box pasta, cooked

-1/2 cup chunky salsa

-2 cups tortilla chips, crushed

-1 cup cherry tomatoes

-1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

-1/2 cup chipotle ranch dressing

For this one, I cooked the pasta ahead of time, and added the salad to keep it from sticking, and cut up and added the tomatoes. When I was ready to serve it, I just added the dressing, chips, and cheese.

I really liked this because it was easy to make ahead of time, and took almost no work at the time of serving when other dishes need attention. This was a good side, it had the perfect combination of crunchiness and saltiness from the chips, and the salsa and ranch went together great.

Carrot Salad

Chick-fil-a used to make this carrot salad, but it wasn't at our store anymore when I went a few weeks ago. It was one of my mom's favorite thing from a fast food restaurant. I like to make copycat recipes, so I said I would try to duplicate it.

I saw this recipe on Just a Pinch.

Ingredients:
-1 cup carrots, shredded (I used about 8 baby carrots because it was what I had)
-1 8 oz can crushed pineapple, with juice
-1/2 cup raisins
-1/4 cup mayonnaise
-1/2 Tbsp sugar

Mix it all together.

Enjoy

My mom really liked this, it tasted similar to the fast food version. She told me I would have to make it again, but the only suggestion was to use a little less pineapple juice, I didn't drain any of it, so there was a lot of liquid in it. It was really simple to make this since there wasn't any actual cooking, just mixing the ingredients together.

Atomic Hash Browns

This was a good way to make something different for breakfast, and I adjusted the original recipe from making my own hash browns from scratch to just using frozen hash browns, so this was really quick and simple.

This recipe comes from Food Network.

Ingredients:

-2 cups frozen hash browns
-2 tablespoons butter
-2 tablespoons olive oil
-1 teaspoon garlic powder
-1 teaspoon paprika
-1/4 teaspoon cayenne
-Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Add the spices to the thawed hash browns first.

Cook them like you would normal hash browns,
flipping them over halfway through.

These were pretty tasted, not too spicy, but had a little bit of kick as an aftertaste. The best part was that I already had all of the ingredients in my kitchen ready to go.

Cheesy Cajun Fries with Cajun Guacamole, Bacon and Fried Eggs

 

I've been wanting to try this recipe for a long time, I love cajun seasoning and all the other things on these fries are some of my favorites. I was a little nervous about using vegetarian bacon, I never had before, but it was really good, it tasted just like regular bacon, and it got crispy which was perfect on top of the fries. 

This recipe comes from Half Baked Harvest.

Ingredients:

-1/2 bag of sweet potato fries
-3 tablespoons olive oil
-1 tablespoon cajun seasoning
-4 ounces cheddar cheese
-2 fried eggs
-1 peice crumbled vegetarian bacon

-pepper

Grilled Corn Cajun Guacamole
-2 avocados
-1 ear grilled corn
-1 grilled red pepper
-1 grilled orange pepper
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-1 tablespoon cajun seasoning
-3 green onions, chopped
-1/2 lemon, juiced
-1 tablespoon hot sauce
-pepper

Roast the peppers on broil until they are blackened, and
leave them in paper bag to steam, then remove the skin, it should come off easily.

Roast the corn on the grill until it is cooked, and slice it off the cob.
Cut the peppers, and mash the avocado, and mix all the ingredients together.

Cook the fries in the oven according to the package directions.
Top with the guacamole, cheese, bacon, and a fried egg.

The combination of toppings were great on this. The only think I thing we would have changed would be to use regular fries rather than sweet potato fries. The guacamole was also really good on it's own, we couldn't stop eating it with chips while we were waiting for the fries to be done.

Mango Coconut Rice

Originally, this was supposed to be an elaborate recipe where I cut mango thin and used a sushi mat to roll up the rice inside the mango. Obviously that didn't work, but this turned out to be a nice dish anyway. I don't think I've ever used coconut milk before, the consistency was a little different than I thought, and it was also much sweeter than I thought, and didn't taste like shaved coconut like I thought it would.

This recipe was originally on She Simmers.

Ingredients:

-1 mango

-1/2 cup rice
-1/2 cup coconut milk
-1/2 cup sugar

Add half a cup of rice with a cup of water, and heat covered
for 15 minutes.

Mix the sugar and coconut milk, and microwave
for 2 minutes.

Turn the heat off the rice. Stir the coconut mixture into the rice.
Let this sit covered for 30 minutes.

Peel the mango. I used a potato peeler, that worked
pretty well for me, and I thought I didn't lose as much
mango as I would have if I used a knife.

Slice the mangoes into chunks or slices.

This was my attempt to make it into a sushi like roll.

It rolled up ok, but when I tried to cut it up it fell apart.

So not much of a roll up, but the taste combination was still very good. This was more of a dessert I think than a meal, it was really sweet. The mango and sweet rice went together well, the combination of coconut milk and mango is something I will try again.

This was my first try using my sushi rolling mat, sometime soon I'll be making a vegetarian sushi roll.