Oven Fried Beef Taquitos

Oven Fried Beef Taquitos

I can be a very outspoken and stubborn person. Not in a mean or spiteful way, but I grew up with a mother that made it very clear that I was not going to have the life that she ended up with. She spent hours taking me to chess club, dance classes and science camps. I never thought that I couldn't do something, I just had to try a little harder. My mother was one of the smartest people that I have ever known. However, she was also the oldest of 12 kids, so money was always tight and opportunities were few.

Growing up we oftentimes had little money. My dad worked as an aide in a nursing home and my mother sold Tupperware. Neither of my parents were fortunate enough to have gone to college and most of the jobs they worked were minimum wage. There were years my mother cried standing in line at the food bank, but we pulled through.

While I would never wish hardship on anyone, my mother was incredibly strong and passed this trait on to me. I worked my way through college and graduate school, paying my own tuition, rent and traveling to Europe twice. My parents weren't overly gushy with praise, but the day I graduated with my undergraduate degree my dad cried. He didn't have to say anything, I understood. Nine days after my oldest son was born my mother passed away of cancer 2500 hundred miles away from me. I called on the strength that my mother instilled on me to get through some of the hardest weeks of my life.

So whenever my husband jokes that I am stubborn and outspoken, I smile. Those aren't the worst traits that someone can have and I hope that my kids carry on the family tradition.

The last couple of weeks I have been trying to make more oven roasted recipes that use less oil. I try to watch my husband's diet due to health issues that run on his side of the family. That doesn't mean that we don't enjoy the occasional treat, but I try to use recipes that reduce the fat at least a couple of days a week. Last night I tried a new recipe for Oven Fried Beef Taquitos from the November/December 2013 issue of Eating Well Magazine.

Lake Vesuvius Ohio

This recipe has 10 ingredients. It takes 40 minutes of total time, all of which is active and makes 4 servings. I did make a few changes to the original recipe. I find it much easier to heat corn tortillas in the microwave with a damp paper towel. I do them in batches of 6 at a time, be careful they are really hot when they come out. The biggest change I made was to cook the taquitos for an extra 5 minutes. At 18 minutes they were still not fully browned.

Lake Vesuvius Ohio

My kids absolutely fell in love with this recipe, they loved it. I served the taquitos with sour cream and salsa, which were great sides. My husband and youngest son ate the left overs cold the next day. They both thought that the cold leftovers were even better than when the recipe was served hot. The one change that I would make would be to increase the amount of salt. As the recipe is written it is under salted.

For the recipe go to Oven Fried Beef Taquitos. 

Oven Fried Beef Taquitos

Recipe Type: Main

Summary:

An easy oven fried beef taquitos recipe with 33 grams of protein per serving. Even better the next day!

Preparation Time: 0h, 20m

Total Time: 0h, 40m

Yield: Serves 4

Salt and Pepper Biscuits

Salt and Pepper Biscuits

I did not grow up on biscuits. The only biscuits my mother ever made came from a can. She was a great cook and made many delicious recipes, but she didn't really bake. My husband brings up almost every Christmas about the year she took my great brownie batter and added a bag of raspberry chips to it. They were pretty inedible. Needless to say I had no idea how to make biscuits when I moved 2500 miles away from home to the State of West Virginia. Biscuits are a big deal in this state. I quickly learned that knowing not only how to make a biscuit, but being able to whip up a batch on the fly was an essential part of being a West Virginian. Since my husband and I met and got married in graduate school I quickly realized I was in trouble. My first few biscuit attempts were disasters. I kneaded the dough, I rolled out the biscuits with a rolling pin and they resembled hockey pucks. After a few years my mother in law took pity on me and kindly asked me if I could help her with her breakfast biscuits. In reality she very nicely pointed out everything that I was doing wrong without it feeling like a baking lesson. It worked, the next time I made biscuits they were perfect, they rose beautifully, they had a great texture and my husband would eat them (which is saying a lot I promise). Now she still makes the best biscuits I have had in this state and every time my husband goes home she makes him a big batch. They are the only biscuits that he never adds any jam or butter to, they are perfect as is. So I concede to coming in second best, a place which I think is pretty great considering the competition. I make a number of biscuit recipes depending on if they are for breakfast or as a side. Today I tried a new recipe for Salt and Pepper Biscuits from the November 2013 issue of Bon Appetit magazine.

Salt and Pepper Biscuits Sliced 

This recipe has 8 ingredients. It takes 30 minutes of total time, 20 minutes of which is active and makes 8 biscuits. I made few very changes to the original recipe. The main changes were to the execution of the recipe steps. The recipe states to use a food processor to cut in the butter. While I love food magazines, this is a step I have to debate. I have always cut my butter in by hand with my fingers and so does my mother-in-law. It keeps the butter a great texture and the flavor is always perfect. I cut the butter into small pieces and rub it into the flour mixture with my fingers. It should resemble a lumpy batter when done. You want these butter lumps in order to have flaky, buttery biscuits. The other big change I made was to roll out my biscuits by hand. Do not roll out biscuits with a rolling pin, it makes for flat biscuits. I pat out my biscuits with my hands and then use a biscuit cutter. Avoid too much contact with the dough in general, the less you touch it the better the biscuits.

These biscuits are definitely dinner biscuits. I served them alongside a veggie smoked salmon chowder recipe and they worked well together. As a breakfast biscuit they would not work as well, so remember that these should be a lunch or dinner biscuit/bread. With a little bit of butter my whole family liked this biscuit recipe. My husband still prefers breakfast biscuits, but he may be the pickiest biscuit eater I have ever met so his opinion is a little biased. Overall, these were easy to prepare and were a nice side with soup.

For the recipe go to Salt and Pepper Biscuits. 

Pumpkin Spiced Pecans from Southern Living

Pumpkin Spiced Pecans

Before I had kids I never lost anything. Now it seems that every time I turn around something disappears in my house. This evening it was a 30 dollar library book. I have looked everywhere and can't find it. While in most people's houses it could be hiding behind a bookcase etc. Not in my house. I thrive on organization and could tell you exactly where everything is, everything except the library book. During the book search my husband did find an old iPhone under the seat of our car. We bought it last January used. It had 15,000 miles on it and was a rental car. I have cleaned that car top to bottom every week, but apparently the phone was stuck right up next to the under part of the seat. So my husband got to make a man's day by finding his email on the phone and telling him that his long lost phone was found. I still can't find the library book, but I'm hoping by my husband helping someone else find something lost that the universe can see fit for me to find the lost book. If not at least the day ended up with a good deed, even if it does remind me that I can't seem to find anything even if I have cleaned the same spot for almost a year. I also end the day knowing that I married a man that is sweet enough to spend two hours tracking down someone to return their lost phone. All in all the day is ending on a good note. My food posts have been a little sparse the last couple of weeks due to offline life. I'm hoping to get back into the blogging grove soon. This week I tried a new recipe for Pumpkin Spiced Pecans from the September 2013 issue of Southern Living.

Harris Riverfront Park Huntington, WV

This recipe has 6 ingredients. It takes 55 minutes of total time, 5 minutes of which is active and makes 1 1/2 cups of nuts. I did make a few changes to the original recipe. First instead of apple pie spice I used pumpkin pie spice. I didn't want to have to buy a spice that I don't use, so I substituted the pumpkin pie spice that I already had. I did not add the ground red pepper since my two boys aren't big fans. Make sure to stir the pecans frequently or they will burn. Let them sit for at least 10 minutes after they are done cooking to let them get fully crunchy.

View from Harris Riverfront Park, Huntington, WV

These pecans turned out great. My whole family enjoyed them and they were the perfect blend of crunchy and spiced. I would suggest at least doubling the recipe, the 1 1/2 cups didn't last long at all. These would be a nice party snack or just a fall treat.

For the recipe go to Pumpkin Spiced Pecans.

Soft Pretzels from the Food Network Magazine

Soft Pretzels

So apparently I no longer know how to do elementary mathematics. I went through upper level calculus in college, but my 7 year old had to explain his homework to me last night. Just so you don't think I'm a total failure let me give you the background. He was adding three number together (so lets use 4+5+9). I told him to add the first two and then add it to the third. He looked at me and told me I was wrong. What? Then he had to spend 10 minutes explaining how they learned to do it (completely different than I learned). I was so confused until I finally understood it. I laughed telling my husband the story, who still doesn't understand what my son is talking about. I'm just glad that I went to school in the 80's since everything is apparently turned upside down and backwards. The same thing has happened on other assignments. Apparently even though I have a Master's degree I would fail elementary school. My son finds it hilarious, I just remind him if the answer is the same I don't see why it matters how I get to it. It doesn't help that both of my in-laws taught school for 40 years a piece so I am surrounded by teachers. Luckily they don't know how to do his worksheets either. That at least makes me feel slightly better. This has been a long week for my household so I decided to reward my kids with a new recipe for Soft Pretzels from the October 2013 Food Network Magazine.

Rotary Park Huntington, WV

This recipe has 6 ingredients. I takes 3 hours of total time, an hour of which is active and makes 12 large pretzels. I followed this recipe pretty closely to the original. I did make a few minor changes. First I found that I only needed 5 cups of flour and I added two more tablespoons of warm water. My dough would not come together with less water. Additionally, I used bread flour instead of all purpose. I turned my oven down to 400 since they browned way too quickly at 425 for the first batch (I baked my pretzels in two batches).

Rotary Park Huntington, WV

My husband really thought that these pretzels would go great with beer, mustard or as a sandwich bread with ham. They would also go well with any German dishes especially those with sauerkraut. My two boys loved these pretzels and ate them as soon as they were cool. They do get a little less firm after they are stored so they are best served warm.

For the recipe go to Soft Pretzels. 

Soft Pretzels

Recipe Type: Snacks

Summary:

A delicious and straight forward recipe for Soft Pretzels. Great with mustard.

Preparation Time: 2h, 45m

Cooking Time: 15h, 0m

Total Time: 3h, 0m

Yield: Serves 12

Spiced Salmon Kebabs

Spiced Salmon Kebabs

Food blogging can drive me crazy. I started blogging not knowing what my focus was going to be. If you go back to my first 5 posts, I talked about coupons, cleaning, you name it. Then my husband and I were talking about how much I loved to cook. I made the decision to start a food blog. It was a rough start to say the least. My photos for the first year and a half were pretty horrible. Then I bought a new cell phone and for 6 months the photos were a slight bit better. After those 6 months I decided I wanted to take myself a little more seriously. I bought my domain (and changed from the horrible name I started with), bought a new camera and tried to be better about engaging with other bloggers. Then the Internet started to change everything. I had to teach myself how to code rich snippets (wordpress make things so much easier with their pluggins!), fix coding errors, found out that Google never even knew my new domain existed and pretty much decided that I hate html coding. Then last week I read a post on Facebook telling a female blogger that they didn't need to know how to html code on their blog. It ruffled my feathers a little. While I would love to say that food bloggers can just sit back and wait for people to flock, it doesn't work that way. There are millions of food blogs and in order to be noticed you really have to step it up. And I still don't do everything right. I refuse to write key search words in my first two sentences. It would make my blog sound ungenuine and fabricated for hits. According to search engines though it would make me a better food blogger. I think I resign myself to being a blogger that likes food, I don't think that I have the patience to play in the big leagues. Plus I'm not a straight recipe blog, so I fall in Bermuda Triangle of food blogging. Enough food blog rants, on to the recipe. Today I tried a new recipe for Spiced Salmon Kebabs from the June 2013 issue of Bon Appetit magazine.

Rainy Day Railroad Bridge WV

This recipe has 8 ingredients. It takes 25 minutes of total time, all of which is active and makes 4 servings. The salmon that I purchased was skin-on. I had to bone and skin the fillets, which added slightly to my prep time. I used my indoor grill to cook the salmon so my total cooking time was approximately doubled. It's normal for an indoor electric grill to take a lot longer. I let my kebabs sit in the fridge with the spice mixture for 45 minutes before they were grilled. This allowed the seasoning to absorb slightly and intensify the flavor.

Rainy Day Railroad Bridge Huntington, WV

My two boys loved this recipe. I wasn't sure if it would be too spicy with the red pepper flakes, but they ate their whole servings and then tried to steal food off my husband's plate. If you have three males in your house like I do, this recipe will not serve four people. I would suggest at least doubling the amount of salmon (and increasing the other ingredients proportionately). The inside was perfectly cooked, while the outside had a nice browned look and texture.

For the recipe go to Spiced Salmon Kebabs.

Spiced Salmon Kebabs

Recipe Type: Main

Summary:

An easy grilled Spiced Salmon Kebabs recipes. Perfectly cooked on the inside and full of nice flavor.

Preparation Time: 0h, 15m

Total Time: 0h, 25m

Yield: Serves 4