Creamy Ginger Dressing

I made this salad dressing quite a few days ago, and didn't write anything down, so I'm not sure how accurate this post is going to be.  But I'll do my best.  This was my attempt to replicate the house dressing from the local sushi restaurant, which is delicious.  Mine came out much darker, and not quite tasting the same, but still pretty good.  I will of course be playing with this recipe until it is perfect.

Ingredient List (guesstimates)
-chunk of ginger, chopped finally and then thrown in a food processor
-spoonful of mayonnaise
-some ketchup
-5 or 6 packets of soy sauce (or whatever that amount would be out of a bottle)
   I have quite the soy-sauce-packet collection right now, thanks to the 2 times I've ordered take-out sushi)
-herbs/spices (I have absolutely no memory of what I used!)
    garlic powder for sure, maybe some onion powder, maybe some chili powder?

*next time I make this I will be sure to write down the ingredients!

it was pretty tasty on this arugula salad

it was also tasty when I turned it into guacamole!

By the way, Cooking Club of America tells me that today is National Guacamole Day!  So go make some delicious guacamole!  Check out my "Appetizers" page for more of my versions.

Asian-Inspired Guacamole

I was on a roll with the blog-posting last week...then something happened.  I didn't stop cooking though.  I must have been too busy eating to put stuff up on here.  I do have a couple of things to post later, but for tonight I think I'll just post the amazing concoction I made this evening. I'm not really giving you a recipe for it here...but you'll get it eventually.  If I can remember exactly what I put into the asian dressing...

update: scroll down for the link to the creamy ginger dressing recipe

A few days ago, I decided to try a salad dressing experiment.  I love the creamy ginger dressing that comes with salads at the sushi place, and I wanted to try to make it myself.  The result looked nothing like the original, but there was some semblance of a similarity in the taste.  I'm sure I will be experimenting further with that.  Anyway, I had this salad dressing that I had made, but I have really not been in the mood for salads lately.  I was running late with dinner this evening, and pretty hungry, so I thought I'd have some chips and dip while I waited for dinner to cook.  I decided to mix the ginger dressing with some avocado and tomato for an Asian-inspired guacamole.  Pure genius.  I'm pretty proud of some of my other guacamole dips, such as the cucumber avocado dip, and now this one is going up there in the guacamole hall of fame as well.

this is what the ginger dressing looked like before I put 2 avocados and a roma tomato in it

creamy ginger dressing

tostitos whole-grain chips are awesome

and so is this guacamole

Cherry Yogurt-Banana Cake

The Great Yogurt Saga of September 2012

Part 1: Yogurt Cake

Part 2: Yogurt Muffins

Part 3: Yogurt Scones

Part 4: Yogurt Cake II

For this recipe, I mashed together the recipe I used for the other yogurt cake, and my banana cake recipe, found here.  It's in the oven right now...so I don't know yet if it's edible or not.  I've only recently gotten brave enough to make up recipes when baking...I'm always afraid something will go horribly wrong.  I'm much more adventurous with cooking than I am with baking.

Timer just rang!  Here comes the moment of truth...

sure looks good

(even if it did burn my fingers...)

And it tastes good!  Hooray!

CHERRY YOGURT-BANANA CAKE

1/4 c vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 bananas (overripe)

6 oz cherry yogurt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 c brown sugar

1 c wheat flour

1 1/2 c white flour

grease and flour a 9x13 baking pan

bake at 350 for 40 minutes

only one bite left...yum.

pre-bake

post-bake

And thus ends the Great Yogurt Saga of September 2012.

Yogurt-Banana Scones

       The yogurt saga continues.  Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here.
On this cold rainy Saturday evening, I bring you Part 3: Yogurt-Banana Scones. Part 4 is in the oven now, and that will conclude the great yogurt saga of September 2012.
      It has been a very productive day. I made a Bacon Pancake for breakfast, then I made some mint-chocolate chip cookies for the bike shop people (cause I'm supposedly supposed to make them cookies every Sunday and I have been majorly slacking on that for like...a month?) Then, I went to the Pub to prep the veggies for the soup I'm making tomorrow.  And then, I went to school and worked for a looong time.  I think I'm ready for Monday now.  To top off all that productivity...I have been spending my evening playing in the kitchen making up TWO new recipes!

YOGURT-BANANA SCONES

1+ c flour

1 c wheat flour

1/3 c sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

6 oz strawberry-banana yogurt

1/8 c orange juice

1 banana

recipe adapted from this one

Mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the yogurt, juice, and banana (mashed) in another bowl.  Then, pour the wet ingredients into the dry and gently stir together.  The dough was super, super, sticky, so I kept adding more flour.*  Grease a baking sheet, spread the scone dough out on the sheet, then cut into whatever shapes you desire, and bake at 400 for 15 minutes.   

*I don't know exactly how much flour I added, but I kept adding until I felt like the dough was just barely smooth enough to work with.  The result?  My scones are more bread-y than scone-y in consistency.  However, the taste is absolutely fabulous!  I give them a 5 for consistency and a 10 for taste.  I will have to play with this recipe in the future and work on perfecting it.  Taste-wise, I like these ones way better than the Pumpkin Scones I made in August.  However, the consistency was better in the pumpkin ones. 

I'm eating another scone while I upload photos...I can't get enough of the fabulous taste!  This is so much more fun than eating the yogurt by itself...

Check back soon for Yogurt Saga Part 4!

Yogurt Muffins

Running used to be my only real stress reliever.  After a long day at work, no matter how tired I was, all I wanted to do was go pound some pavement.  Somehow, this is starting to change.  It has something to do with the fact that I stopped running just for fun and fitness and started running to win races.  I've done quite a few races in the last 6 months, and it's past time to back off a bit.  I don't want to quit running, but I definitely need to get back to running for fun instead of always worrying about making sure I'm going far or fast enough.  So, time for a new stress reliever.  It seems that playing in the kitchen is taking over that roll in my life.  I came home from work today with absolutely no desire to run, and a strong desire to concoct something new, exciting, and delicious in the kitchen.  It actually took me another 3 or 4 hrs to get around to figuring out what to bake, but I did get there eventually.  And I did take a day off from running.   I'm on an every-other-day running schedule for a bit.

If you've been following my blog, you know I'm trying to get rid of some yogurt.  I got rid of some of it the other day when I made peach-basil yogurt cake.  I got rid of some more of it this evening with these muffins. The flavor of the day: blackberry-pomegranate.

I started with this recipe and turned it into this recipe:

preheat the oven to 375

butter and sugars

yes, I was playing with my food.  it's happy to see you!

flours

everything but the walnuts, all swirled together

add the walnuts

prepare the muffin tray

fill it up!

scrape the bowl clean.

into the oven for 15 minutes

 they weren't done after 15 minutes so they went back in for 5 more

done!

eat up!

not sure why I got a fork out...I didn't actually use it...but it looks cool in this picture

Buttery Sage-Turmeric Chicken

I decided that maybe butter wouldn't kill me for one meal. 

Maybe it takes too much effort to eat healthy ALL the time.  

look at that sizzlin' deliciousness!

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 425

Step 2: Make some flavored butter.

-2-3 tbsp of butter

-1 tbsp bacon grease

-turmeric

-sage

-garlic powder

-1 handful of shredded cheese

mash it all up.

Step 3: Get out your drumsticks and slather them with the butter, stuff some underneath the skin and spread it all over the outside too.  Then roll each drumstick in breadcrumbs.

Step 4: Lay them in a baking dish and pop them in the oven for 45 minutes.

take them out of the grease-filled dish so they don't soak up any extra grease now that they are done cooking...

Step 5: Make a meal!

chicken, carrots, pasta

pasta ingredients:

-turmeric

-mustard

-olive oil

-sage

-arugula

Peach-Basil Yogurt Cake

       I'm not a huge yogurt fan, but every now and then when it's on sale I will buy a whole bunch and make myself eat them with breakfast cause I don't completely dislike them, and yogurt is good for you.  I never ever buy the "lite" yogurt though, it's got aspartame in it.  That stuff is way worse for you than the couple of extra calories in the regular yogurt.  Anyway, yogurt was on sale 10 for $6 last week, and for some strange reason I actually bought 10.  Don't know why I didn't just buy 5.  So I ended up with all this yogurt in my fridge, and I just have not been in the mood for yogurt lately.  I've been too obsessed with my bacon pancakes to even think about eating yogurt and granola for breakfast. I mean seriously, who would want to eat boring yogurt when they could eat a bacon pancake?!
     Today, I'm looking at a whole 2 days off in a row (super exciting).  It's muggy and cloudy out, so there's nothing I want to do outside, and I decided it was a perfect day to play in the kitchen.  I've been dying to try something new, and just haven't had time or energy to figure out what.  Until this morning.  I decided I needed to bake something with yogurt in it so I could use up some of the yogurt without actually having to eat it by itself.  I was thinking that it might be a good way to flavor a cake.  So I went to google and typed in "yogurt cake" and found this gem of a recipe.  I meant to use raspberry yogurt, but upon inspection of my fridge, I discovered I had actually eaten all of the raspberry yogurt.  But I had 2 peach yogurts, and I usually don't even buy peach because although I love peaches, I'm really not a huge fan of peach yogurt.  Clearly, I was not in my right mind when I went grocery shopping last week.  I was probably half asleep and thinking about all the work I needed to get done, instead of thinking about the groceries I was putting in my cart.
    So I decided to make a cake with peach yogurt.  And then I had to come up with an herb that would taste good with peaches.  For some reason I feel the need to put herbs in everything lately.  Rosemary has ended up in the last several batches of chocolate chip cookies I've made.  (recipe here...they're amazing)  Lately I've been loving using fresh herbs instead of dried.  The only fresh herbs I have are basil and oregano.  I decided basil would go great with peach.

The Original Recipe

My Adapted Recipe

The Wet Ingredients...and the Basil

*for the whiskey, I used Tullamore Dew

smells sooooo good!

The Dry Ingredients

fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients

grease a 9x9 cake pan with butter

pour the batter into the pan

bake at 350 for 30 minutes

cake is done if a toothpick comes out clean

Let the cake sit in the pan for 10 minutes, then loosen the sides from the pan with a knife, and transfer the cake from the pan to a wire rack to cool. 

THE ICING

Yogurt comes in 6 oz cups, and the cake recipe called for 8 oz, so I used the remaining 4 ounces to make the icing.  I don't know exactly how much confectioners sugar it took, but it seemed like an awful lot.  Probably because I started out using a tablespoon to measure it out.  After about 7 heaping tbsps I switched to a 1/3 c measure.  I used about 3 of those.  Then I just started pouring the sugar straight into the bowl. 

 I added some grated ginger and a tbsp of Tullamore Dew in an attempt to cut the sweetness of the yogurt and sugar. 

Once the cake was cool, I transferred it to a glass cutting board (the only flat thing I have that is large enough to hold this cake...) and poured the icing on top. 

one of the corners made its way into my belly

yum