Category: Cooking

Cinnamon Sugar Almonds

Cinnamon Sugar Almonds

Recipe by LisaCourse: SnacksDifficulty: Easy
Prep time

15

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 egg whites

  • 2 tbsp vanilla extract

  • 4 cups unblanched almonds

  • 2/3 cup coconut sugar

  • 1 tsp salt

  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

  • Preheat oven to 300 F
  • Beat egg whites until frothy; beat in vanilla. Add almonds and stir to coat.
  • Combine sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Add to nut mixture and stir gently to coat.
  • Spread evenly on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes. Stir and bake for another 10-15 minutes (until crispy).

Flavored Sparkling Water – Hops

I got a bunch of flavoring to make carbonated flavored water. In the process of researching all-in-one electric brewing systems, I happened across a recipe to make a *hop* sparkling water!

Boil water for 10 minutes to sterilize. Chill to 170 degrees. Add a bit of lemon or lime juice to drop PH to 4.6. Add ~2 grams of hops per gallon of water and let stand 20 minutes to make a hop tea. Filter out hops. Keg hop tea and carbonate. Voila, hop soda.

Creamy Corn Chowder

Creamy Corn Chowder
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Creamy Corn Chowder

Recipe by LisaCourse: Dinner, SoupsCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 Tbsp butter

  • 1 medium onion, chopped

  • 2 cloves garlic, minced

  • 5 ears fresh corn, kernels cut from cobs

  • 6 cups stock (veggie, chicken)

  • 1 lb potatoes, diced

  • 2 tbsp corn starch

  • Bacon (or veggie bacon)

  • Cheddar cheese

Method

  • Melt the butter in a stock pot and saute onions until translucent.
  • Add garlic and saute until fragrant
  • Add corn kernels and saute until they start to caramelize
  • Add stock, corn cobs, and potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes.
  • Mix cornstarch with a little water to form non-Newtonian fluid. Slowly mix into soup to thicken broth.
  • Near the end of cooking time, saute bacon.
  • Ladle soup into bowls. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese and bacon.

Crispy Kale Chips

Krispy Kale Chips

Recipe by LisaCourse: SnacksCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

  • Kale

  • Olive Oil

  • Salt

Method

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
  • Wash kale, dry, and slice
  • Toss kale with olive oil and salt
  • Set convection oven to 325 degrees F and roast for 10 minutes. Turn kale over and roast for another 5-10 minutes

Notes

  • This is a great snack, but I also use it as a crunchy topping on hearty stews.

Grilled Corn

Turns out you can cook corn directly on the grill. When we bought our grill eight or nine years ago, I found a recipe has you peel back the husk, remove the silk, re-wrap the corn in the husk, and soak it all in saltwater for an hour. That is a lot of lead time, and we wrapped up our yard work at 9PM this evening … so an extra hour and a half or so to get the corn ready wasn’t going to happen.

But if you shuck the corn, baste it with a little olive oil, and toss it on the grill … turn the ears every 3-4 minutes to avoid scorching … it is delicious. Total cook time was somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes over medium-high flame. The grill itself was open a lot (every 3 or 4 minutes to turn it, plus checking on the burgers).

Garlic Yogurt Salad Dressing

Garlic Yogurt Salad Dressing
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Garlic Yogurt Salad Dressing

Recipe by LisaCourse: SaladsCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

15

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups Greek yogurt

  • Juice from 1/2 lemon

  • 2 Tbsp olive oil

  • 1 clove garlic, finely minced

  • 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

  • 1-2 tsp salt

Method

  • Combine all ingredients and mix well – adding salt to taste.

Notes

  • Served over a combination of romaine lettuce, onions, and cucumbers.

Oven Roasted Mushrooms

Oven Roasted Mushrooms

Recipe by LisaCourse: DinnerCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Prep time

20

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes
Total time

50

minutes

Ingredients

  • Mushrooms

  • Olive oil

  • Salt / pepper

Method

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
  • While oven heats, clean mushrooms and slice
  • Toss mushrooms with olive oil (about a tablespoon per pound of mushroom) and a light sprinkling of salt and pepper
  • Change to convection at 400 degrees. Roast mushrooms for 10-15 minutes, stir and flip, and roast for another 10-15 minutes.
  • Season to taste with salt and pepper

Notes

  • Pan roasted mushrooms take a long time — there’s only so much space in a pan, and raw mushrooms are much larger than their cooked counterparts. Scott loves strogonoff, but it takes me HOURS to make it simply because two pounds of mushrooms take HOURS to cook. Using two large roasting pans, I was able to roast three pounds of mushrooms in under an hour (including washing, cutting, and cooking). By making the sauce and egg noodles while the mushrooms roast, I had strogonoff ready in about an hour (and that’s because I let the mushrooms simmer in the sauce for about fifteen minutes to absorb flavours).

Baked Breaded Fish

Baked Breaded Fish
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Baked Breaded Fish

Recipe by LisaCourse: FoodCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

20

minutes

Ingredients

  • 4 fillets of tilapia

  • Panko Mixture

  • 1 tablespoon sea salt

  • 1 cup panko bread crumbs

  • 1/3 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

  • Egg Mixture

  • 2 eggs

  • 1 tablespoon chili seasoning

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1/4 cup oil

  • Flour Mixture

  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Method

  • Heat the oven to 425 F
  • Oil a baking tray
  • Blend the egg mixture ingredients in a bowl
  • Blend the flour mixture ingredients in a bowl
  • Blend the panko mixture ingredients in a bowl
  • Dip fish filet in flour mixture, then egg mixture. Then dip in panko mixture and press to ensure crumbs adhere to fish.
  • Place each filet on oiled baking tray
  • Using convection oven at 400 degrees F, bake for 15 minutes, turn fish, and bake for 5 more minutes

Notes

  • Serve with tartar sauce and lemon wedges

Biffy Minestrone Soup Recipe

Biffy Minestrone Soup Recipe

Recipe by LisaCourse: DinnerCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy
Servings

6

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 3 Tbsp olive oil

  • 1/2 large onion, chopped

  • 15-20 baby carrots, sliced

  • 4 cloves garlic

  • 4 oz tomato paste

  • 1T chili garlic sauce

  • 1 cup potatoes, diced

  • 1/2 cup corn kernels

  • 1 cup green beans, diced

  • 1 tin cannelloni beans

  • 28 oz petit diced tomatoes

  • 4c broth

  • 2 tsp Italian spices

  • 1/2 tsp black pepper, ground

  • 1 cup elbow macaroni, cooked

Method

  • Put oil in pot and heat until shimmering. Add onion and carrot and saute for a few minutes.
  • Add garlic and heat until fragrant.
  • Stir in spices and heat until fragrant.
  • Add diced potatoes and saute for a minute.
  • Add in diced tomatoes, tomato paste, corn, cannelloni beans, and broth. Cook for 20 minutes
  • Add in green beans and cook for five minutes
  • To serve, add soup to bowl and stir in cooked elbow noodles.

Notes

  • Substitute whatever seasonal vegetables are available for corn and green beans

Indoor hops?

Not really — but we’ve had a random week of nightly freezes since the hop plants arrived. Instead of planting them outside and keeping them covered, I’ve got them in the pots I use for seed starting and we’ll get them planted in the middle of this coming week. It was also a bit of an experiment — can you keep hop plants in little pots for a week?

Hops + 2 days

Hops + 5 days

They’re not growing anything like the hops out in the ground that we’re covering at night … but they appear to be doing well. And they should be happy enough until Wednesday when it looks like the cold snap ends.