In a blogger’s choice swap, we’re assigned another blog, and we can choose any recipe we want from it. I was assigned Amy’s Kitchen Creations. Amy has a lot of delicious-sounding recipes, but once I saw the cinnamon-roll pancakes, I knew I wanted to try them. I love breakfast food. I love pancakes. I love cinnamon rolls. I was intrigued about how they would taste.

I had intended to make them on a weekend morning for breakfast, but I actually forgot. I ended up making them on a weekday night, intending to take them to work for breakfast. They seem like they would be easy to warm in the microwave, and the cream cheese glaze would make a nice dipping sauce.

Unfortunately, while these pancakes sound like a delicious combination of two breakfast foods, they’re a little bit more difficult in reality. While the pancake batter contains elements that make the liquid batter set while cooking, the cinnamon mixture does not. So, when you flip the pancakes over, the cinnamon mixture spreads everywhere. And when you lift the cooked pancakes off the griddle, the cinnamon mixture stays on the griddle.

It’s a nice concept, and could definitely be improved. The pancakes themselves were tasty, though they could have used a little sugar (which may have only been because of the lack of cinnamon sugar filling). Dave thought they were “dough-y” rather than fluffy, but that could have been user-error. Amy’s recipe called for one cup of flour, but the batter came out much thinner than what I was used to. So, I added flour a little at a time, and stirred, until I reached my desired consistency. All that stirring may have overworked the batter.

As you’ll see in the picture, I didn’t make the cream cheese glaze. I thought I had an entire tub of cream cheese in the refrigerator, but someone (ahem — Dave) likes a looooot of cream cheese on his morning bagel, so there was none left.

To see more recipes from the Blogger’s Choice Swap, click the images below!

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With me back at a full-time, in-office job, our home life has basically been turned upside-down. When I worked at part-time at home, I was able to prep dinner during the day and pretty much have it ready to eat when Dave got home.

Now, I have an hour commute each way. I leave first and get home last, so Dave has been taking on not only more of the cooking, but even researching recipes as well.

We still struggle with getting Liam to eat what we are eating at dinner time. So Dave had the great idea to look at one of the baby food cookbooks I bought back when Liam first started eating solids. One of our favorites was Tyler Florence’s Start Fresh. The book is full of healthy, flavorful recipes. The recipes are divided by stages: single-ingredient purees, flavor combos, foods with texture, and “everyone at the table” (for kids who are fully eating table food). The reason I love the book is that the later-stage recipes make enough to feed the whole family; other cookbooks offer dinner recipes, but only in single baby-size portions.

From the book, Dave chose One-Pot Lasagna. Our whole family loves lasagna, but not the effort that goes into making it, especially since I don’t have the time at home to put it together.

The book says the recipe takes about 25 minutes to make, start to finish, which is perfect for a family with two working parents. There is very little prep work, like chopping vegetables. You could even make the sauce the night before, and refrigerate it until ready to use.

Our minor complaint was that our lasagna came out very watery, but that can easily be remedied by draining the can of tomatoes before adding them to the food processor, or reducing the amount of chicken stock.

Also, the recipe doesn’t call for any salt, understandably, since these recipes are primarily geared toward young children. Yes, it’s better to season as you go while cooking, but just be aware that you’ll likely want to salt your portion at the table.

If you don’t have an ovenproof skillet, you can combine the ground beef, tomato sauce, chicken stock, ricotta and spinach in a baking dish sprayed with nonstick spray, then continue with the recipe as written. It just won’t be a one-pan dish.

Otherwise, this was a delicious take on lasagna, with fewer dishes to wash, and ready in less time!

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I am 17 weeks pregnant! According to TheBump.com, Pumpkin is the size of an onion.

The nausea is mostly gone, and I’ve been able to eat 3 meals — and several snacks — a day. I still get tired easily. I haven’t felt the baby move yet. I’m really looking forward to that! I was 18 weeks along with Liam when I felt the first kick.

So, what have we been up to this past week?

Well, working. And this past Saturday, we stopped by one of the largest animal adoption festivals in the country. A group called Citizens for a No-Kill Philadelphia has organized the event for the past 3 or 4 years. This year, nearly 30 organizations and their adoptable animals were there. We saw dogs, kitties, and even baby pigs.

Liam ran around so much that day that he wiped himself out, and slept from 7 p.m. until 9:45 a.m. the next day. That was AWESOME.

The next day, we had a late breakfast at a local diner, visited a farmer’s market, and got fresh, local tomatoes, and finished up our food shopping at a grocery store. I even made a meal-plan!

One meal that we really enjoyed that I won’t have the chance to blog about (since I didn’t snap a picture) were Burgers with Beer-Glazed Onions and Brie from Confections of a Foodie Bride. I’ve been salivating over them since she posted them. Dave actually did the cooking, as he has been for the past couple of months. I love that he enjoys cooking (and eating) as much as I do.

I’ll have a couple of new recipes to post this week, including a What’s Cooking Recipe Swap!

The post Monday Randoms, 5/20 appeared first on The Redhead Baker.

A little while ago, I was contacted by Cooking Light, inviting me to join the Cooking Light Blogger’s Connection. I was really honored to get the invitation, because I was already familiar with some of the bloggers in the group, and really admire them. My bio page should be sometime next week.

In the spirit of full disclosure, one of the perks of being a member of the group is that I get a free subscription to the magazine. However, any opinions expressed about Cooking Light, the magazine, or any recipes will be my own. At point, several years ago, I paid for a subscription to the magazine, and greatly enjoyed it. I don’t remember why I let the subscription lapse, but I look forward to receiving the magazine again.

I love the recipe round-ups they post on their site. For example, they have a slideshow of 75 healthy casseroles — 75!! We’ve had failure after failure using our crockpot to prepare meals while we are working, so we decided to try making casseroles ahead of time, and heating them up when we get home.

I bookmarked at least 5 different recipes from that slideshow, and the first one we tried was Baked Ziti and Summer Veggies. I ended up being home the whole day with a sick toddler, so it wasn’t “made ahead.” But let me tell you, it was delicious. To be honest, I thought it would be good, but I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did. But I had a helping and a half, and filed the recipe with my other “standard rotations.” This will be making many appearances on our table!

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Pregnancy does weird things to a woman’s body, in a number of ways. I mean, our internal organs get jostled and squished and pushed out of the way. Ever hear a pregnant woman claim she’s starving, then she eats two bites and she’s full? Yeah, that’s why.

Pregnancy also brings weird cravings and aversions. My cravings are based on my surroundings. Commercial on TV for Burger King? I suddenly NEED their onion rings. Commercial on TV for Hershey Park? Suddenly, I NEED a Hershey’s Special Dark. The couple in the apartment next door are cooking Mexican food? I NEED nachos.

My aversions have more to do with texture than with particular food items. The biggest ones are thick, chewy breads, like bagels (::cries::) and poultry. I can’t eat chicken breasts. I can’t cook chicken breasts. I can’t touch them, can’t even look at them in the store.

Yet, when the chicken is either shredded or ground, and mixed in with other ingredients, I don’t notice it, and can eat it.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I saw a recipe on Confections of a Foodie Bride that I really wanted to try. Shawnda, the blogger, was on the Whole30 Diet, and adapted this recipe from one of the books about the diet.

I’m not following Whole30 myself, so I didn’t make the sauce recipe that she lists in her post. I simply substituted my favorite bottled barbecue sauce from Trader Joe’s.

The recipe is delicious, and very filling, thanks to the baked sweet potato. Sweet potatoes not your thing? Substitute a baked white potato instead.

Why soak the red onion? It’s a trick I learned from Ted Allen. It mellows the flavor of the red onion when it’s going to be served raw. This step wouldn’t be necessary if the red onion were going to be cooked.

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I’m now 16 weeks along! According to TheBump.com, our little Pumpkin (our nickname for the baby since he/she is due in late October) is the size of an avocado.

I’ve had a much easier time eating lately, and when I get hungry, boy do I get hungry! I polished off a QDoba Craft2 (two tacos plus a smaller serving of Grilled Chicken Mango Salad) for lunch the other day, and polished off an entire foot-long cheesesteak plus a side of onion rings for dinner the next night.

For Mother’s Day, Dave took me out for brunch at Cuba Libre, a Cuban-themed tapas-style restaurant. Liam was sick, and stayed home with his grandparents. I’d been there once before, for my sister-in-law’s bachelorette party, but never for brunch before.

The restaurant is designed to make you feel like you’re at a Cuban restaurant, with large ceiling fans, and palm trees outside the “windows” inside the restaurant. Their are two floors, and the center of the lower floor is meant to resemble an outdoor patio.

Tapas-style means that the restaurant serves a smaller portion on each plate, and encourages you to order 3 t0 4 plates for your meal. Cuba Libre offers an “unlimited tapas” option, which means for the average cost of four plates, you can order as many of the dishes as you can eat. That was we opted to do.

We started off with cappuccinos and a “Latin breakfast bread basket,” which included a churro, a chocolate muffin, a slice of banana bread, a coconut-berry muffin, and a breakfast pastry called a “hojaldre”, which is triangle-shaped like a scone, with lots of layers like a croissant, and filled with guava jam and cream cheese, accompanied by 3 condiments: cinnamon-mango butter, guava marmalade and dulce de leche.

My first dish was the Churros con chocolate. Churros are similar to donuts, but they are straight sticks, rather than round. These were crispy, and coated in cinnamon sugar, and served with chocolate sauce for dipping. YUMMY!

Dave started off with the Crab Cake Benedict Croqueta (not surprisingly — eggs Benedict is one of his favorite dishes!). This consisted of a crab cake atop a potato cake, topped with a poached egg and tomato Hollandaise sauce.

For my next dish, I went a little adventurous, and tried the “sweet omelet”: a two-egg omelet topped with a lemon-crème fraîche custard, with warm cinnamon-dusted tomatoes on the side. It was . . . odd. I couldn’t say that I liked it; yet, I didn’t dislike it.

Dave had the chorizo and potato omelet, which I tasted, and enjoyed more than my omelet. Wasn’t surprised by that, since I love chorizo. I didn’t get a picture of his omelet.

Then I had the French toast a la Cubana, a very thick slice of brioche bread, topped with sweet plantains, whipped cream and maple syrup. It was delicious, but RICH.

Dave had the Cuban Sandwich spring rolls (sorry, no picture), which were essentially Cuban sandwiches — marinated pork, salami, ham, Provolone and Swiss cheese — in spring roll form, served with a spicy mustard sauce.

Then I got spinach and manchego cheese puffs, served with a goat cheese-ranch dipping sauce.  I expected to like them more than I actually did, though they were by no means bad. Just different.

And my last dish was the Croquetas: smoked bacon and apple croquettes topped with an onion-cilantro salad and Pimenton vinaigrette. This was my least favorite of all my dishes. I didn’t taste any apple or bacon at all in the croquettes.

Dave’s last two dishes were the Yuca frites and the Crispy Pork Belly Skewers.

Yuca is a starchy root vegetable. Yuca frites are prepared like French fries. Cuba Libre serves them with a cilantro-caper aioli dipping sauce. I remember eating the Yuca frites are my sister-in-law’s bachelorette party, and enjoying them, but not so much at this visit. I didn’t care much for the dipping sauce.

The Crispy Pork Belly Skewers? HOLY YUM!!! That was my favorite dish of the day. It’s a very fatty cut of meat, so it’s totally unhealthy, but, SO delicious.

There were still other dishes we wanted to taste, but by that point, you practically had to roll us out of the restaurant. We were STUFFED.

And now, it’s back to work. In a couple of weeks, it’ll be time to celebrate Memorial Day, and then I’ll have another prenatal appointment, and Liam will have his 18-month checkup.

The post Monday Randoms, 5/13 appeared first on The Redhead Baker.

I got my appetite (mostly) back just in time for a seafood theme recipe, hosted by A Taste of Home Cooking. I requested a salmon recipe, because it’s my favorite, and it’s loaded with great nutrients for growing babies.

I had a third reason: I was getting bored with my repertoire of salmon recipes. I felt like I was always making it the same way: flavored with lemon and dill.

I was thrilled when I got this recipe for pan-seared salmon with ginger-lime sauce from Sweet Beginnings. Salmon, a new flavor combination, and a kick of spiciness!  I served our salmon with brown rice cooked in water, because I didn’t realize that we were out of chicken broth. I think the flavor of the brown rice would have overpowered any flavor from the chicken broth, anyway.

The salmon was fantastic. The Mister and I both loved the spiciness and the flavors. It was a welcome change from the usual salmon with lemon and dill.

To see more recipes from the swap, click the images below!

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Time to give some attention to my poor, neglected blog.

I’m currently 15 weeks along in my pregnancy. I’m just starting to get the smallest hint of a bump.

Okay, fine. It looks like I indulged in one too many slices of pizza for dinner. Which I may or may not have actually done recently.

According to TheBump.com, Baby is the size of a navel orange. We don’t know yet if Baby is a boy or a girl. My anatomy scan is scheduled for mid-June, so if Baby cooperates, we’ll find out then.

We had a scare last week, which resulted in spending about 5 hours in the emergency room. I was having some abdominal pain at work, and later discovered I was bleeding. But the ER doctor did an ultrasound, which showed the baby happily kicking away, with a strong heartbeat. I was diagnosed with a “threatened miscarriage,” which is the generic term for any unexplained bleeding during pregnancy.

~~~

My morning sickness has mostly eased, but I still get the occasional bout of morning sickness. Since I’d lost weight from one appointment to the next, my doctor gave me an anti-nausea medication, Reglan, to help fight it. I’m still nursing Liam, who is now 17 months old, so I need to be eating even more calories than other pregnant women to 1) help maintain my milk supply, and 2) help the baby grow.

Speaking of eating, I found a new snack that I just LOVE — Brookside’s Chocolate-Covered Pomegranate Seeds.

My mom picked up a bag for me from Sam’s Club, and nearly one quarter of the bag was gone about fifteen minutes after she gave it to me! The company also makes chocolate-covered açai with blueberries, and chocolate-covered goji berries with raspberries. YUM!

Other recipes we’ve enjoyed lately, but I haven’t blogged about:

• BBQ Chicken-Stuffed Baked Sweet Potatoes from The Foodie Bride: I made ours with Trader Joe’s BBQ sauce instead of the Whole30 diet BBQ sauce, and used chives instead of green onions for serving. But wow, were these good. And filling!
• Guacamole from Elly Says Opa!: I omitted the jalapeño, and added a splash of lemon juice along with the lime juice, and served it tortilla chips on Cinco de Mayo.
• Gnocchi in Tomato Broth from Smitten Kitchen: I cheated and used store-bought gnocchi. Yes, she says feather-light homemade gnocchi is doable, and I believe her. But it’s also time-consuming. Store-bought or homemade, this was insanely delicious.
• Broccoli and Cauliflower Omelets from the Breakfast for Dinner cookbook by Lindsay Landis and Taylor Hackbarth of the Love & Olive Oil blog.

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As for Liam, he has adjusted quite well to daycare. He no longer cries during drop-off or pick-up. I love being able to log-in to the webcam, and see him sitting in a circle with the other children, listening to a story, playing with blocks, finger-painting, or eating a snack.

He chatters away most of the day, though he still only says about ten “words,” the rest is still just babbling, but he’s using intonation, so I can tell when he’s asking a question, or trying to get my attention.

His appetite seems to be back, though he’s still picky about what he’ll eat. He refuses most meat unless it’s in meatball form, or breaded “fingers” (chicken nuggets, fish sticks, etc). He still loves almost all kinds of fruit, but refuses most vegetables, so he gets a fruit/veggie combo puree pouch every once in a while. Sometimes he’ll finish one and ask for another. We use Plum Organics and Earth’s Best, depending on what’s on sale at Target.

The other day, I handed him a cup of yogurt and a spoon to see what would happen.

I’d say he successfully ate 3/4 of the yogurt on his own. I don’t know if they’ve been teaching utensil use at daycare, or if he just figured it out on his own.

Daycare also works with the kid on sign language, so Liam signs “More,” “Eat,” and “Drink” at home. We get a sheet each day detailing their activities, so I know they are also working on “Please,” “Thank You” and “Sorry.”

That’s it for now, enjoy your week!

The post Monday Randoms appeared first on The Redhead Baker.

I received A Taste of Home Cooking as my blog assignment for the Blogger’s Choice swap, who just so happens to host these swaps. Since, ironically enough, my “morning sickness” has been happening in the evening, the one meal each day I’m always up for eating is breakfast. I immediately went to her breakfast label. I considered the breakfast taquitos, originally seen on Pink Parsley, since I’d had those pinned for quite some time. But I kept scrolling, and saw the Egg, Brie, and Prosciutto breakfast sandwiches.

I love breakfast sandwiches. I love brie. I love prosciutto. My recipe choice was a no-brainer.

These were so delicious and came together relatively quickly. The eggs took only about four minutes to cook. These make for an indulgent weekend breakfast, but they are also easy enough to cook on a weekday morning, especially if you make the eggs the night before. Store the cooked eggs in the refrigerator, then warm in the microwave the next morning for about 20 seconds on high heat.

I omitted the scallions called for in the original recipe because I didn’t have any on hand. Other than that, I didn’t make any changes. I let the Brie sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes to soften to make it spreadable. I got the prosciutto sliced at the deli counter, though some stores sell it in pre-sliced packages. I bought a pre-sliced loaf of Pepperbridge Farm Sourdough bread, though you could get a sourdough boule (a rustic, bowl-shaped loaf of bread) from a bakery as well and slice it yourself.

These sandwiches elicited a “Wow!” from The Mister, and I definitely enjoyed them as well. I’ll be making these often.

To see more recipes from the What’s Cooking Blogger’s Choice Swap, click the thumbnails below!

The post Egg, Brie, and Prosciutto Breakfast Sandwiches appeared first on The Redhead Baker.

I received an email from Nicole of The Giving Table several weeks ago, asking if I would dedicate one post to spreading awareness of childhood hunger. I said yes without hesitation, and she sent me some information, links, and post guidelines.

I have to say, reading the facts about childhood hunger is overwhelming and heartbreaking. One in five children lives in a home that struggles to put food on the table. Nearly 10 million children receive free or reduced-cost breakfast at school daily . . . but another 10.5 million eligible children do not.

Children who don’t get enough to eat or adequate nutrition don’t do as well in school. They get sick more often. They are less likely to graduate, which negatively impacts their job prospects. And they are less likely to earn enough to feed their own families later in life. It’s a vicious cycle, perpetuated by our culture and government policies.

What is the solution? Food banks, while an integral part of the solution, can’t do it alone. Children need access to food; low-income families need education on preparing low-cost, healthy meals; and everyone needs to spread awareness of the problem to advocate for policy change at the local, state, and federal levels.

What can you do? Two things:

1. Write to your Congressperson, and urge them to support anti-hunger legislation; and
2. Watch the documentary A Place at the Table. Find a screening near you, or via iTunes or Amazon. Educate yourself on this serious problem, and help spread awareness to others.

Current proposals in Congress are calling for cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, which provides limited benefits to those who earn a paycheck, but not enough to keep food on the table. Some recipients are allocated as little as $4 per person, per day for food. These struggling families need every penny they get. Yes, I know we are in troubling economic times, and expenses need to be cut, but cutting funding for families who are struggling to eat is not the place to cut. This will only perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

I disagree with Share our Strength that the solution to the problem of childhood hunger is simple. There are issues contributing to the problem that aren’t addressed on their site, such as food deserts (a complete lack of access to fresh, healthy food in low-income areas); lacking the knowledge of how to cook, or not having access to adequate cooking appliances or tools; and lacking time to prepare healthy meals for the family (as many low-income families work more than one job).

But part of our mission of spreading awareness today is to show that it is possible to cook healthy, delicious meals on a limited budget. The recipe below, courtesy of Cooking Light, costs less than $3 per serving. It uses many pantry staples, so no need to run to specialty markets for fancy ingredients. The flavors of pork, pear and cranberry say “autumn,” but serving as a salad is perfect for spring or summer. The meal feels light, but it is very filling.

Pork Tenderloin, Pear, and Cranberry Salad

Recipe from Cooking Light

Number of servings (yield): 4

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