Blog Archives
Quick Recipe: Sesame Chicken
Sesame chicken is a Chinese food restaurant staple. And even though each place usually makes it slightly differently, it’s almost always good and a safe bet to order if you’re unsure what to get. Well there’s good news! You can easily make sesame chicken yourself at home. It’s important to note though, that Chinese food restaurants’ sesame chicken usually has chicken that has been coated and fried. Ours does not. Honestly though, that kind of makes it even better since it makes it a bit lighter than the fried version. This sesame chicken is so good you’re going to want to eat it every day. You could also just make the sauce and use it on another meat like pork or on a ton of veggies (substituting vegetable broth if you want a vegetarian dish) if you wish. This is one of our favorite quick stir-fry recipes to make for dinner.
The Snack Report: Ritz Fudge Covered Crackers
I feel like we’ve said this before in Snack Report, but it seems like everybody has jumped onto the “limited edition” bandwagon lately. Oreos have become the worst offender, but nearly every snack food has dipped its toe into the limited edition waters. One of the latest to join in is Ritz crackers. Their limited edition offering is Fudge Covered Ritz. We first saw these in the grocery store last week, and this week they just happened to be on sale, so I decided to give them a try. I was actually kind of excited about them because I really enjoy crackers. Cheese and crackers and peanut butter and crackers are classic snacks, but I’ll also just snack on crackers plain. So the prospect of a dessert cracker was intriguing.
The chocolate plus salt combo is nothing new. It has gained in popularity over the past few years though. Chocolate covered pretzels and peanuts have been around for a long time. And chocolate covered potato chips entered the scene a bit later. There’s even chocolate covered bacon. So chocolate covered crackers really isn’t that far out of an idea. But can they stand up to their predecessors?
Thanksgiving Leftover Recipe: Cranberry Pancakes
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. You open your fridge and remember that it’s stuffed to the gills with leftovers. What do you do with it all? There are only so many sandwiches, burritos, and pizzas you can make. Never fear, we’re here to find even more ways for you to use up your Thanksgiving leftovers! This recipe features cranberry sauce. And by cranberry sauce I mean cranberry sauce that has whole cranberries in it. Not the pure jellied stuff. I’m not dissing the canned, jelly cranberry sauce, I have a soft spot for it in my heart, but it won’t work for this recipe. You could also just toss in some smashed up cranberries if you want, but you’ll need to add extra sugar.
Test the Recipe: Hearty Whole Grain Coffee Cake
It can be a lot of fun looking through old cook books. Some recipes you look at wondering what people were thinking back then while others still sound really yummy. Though it’s usually pretty easy to tell the horrific vintage recipes at first glance, sometimes it can be harder to tell for sure which recipes have actually stood up to the test of time. That’s where our new recurring “Test the Recipe” posts will hopefully come to help. We plan to find recipes from vintage cookbooks/recipe cards/magazine cutouts, etc. and test them out. For the first run through we will follow the recipe exactly (barring any possible ingredients that are very hard to find/might not exist anymore in which case we will make the closest possible substitution) and see how it turns out. If it turns out good, then that’s it! Recipe is good to go and you can rest assured that you will end up with something yummy if you make it. If it doesn’t turn out good? Well then we’ll be revisiting the recipe and tweaking it and then posting our version of it as a “We Can Do It Better” post at a later date.
Our first recipe up for trial is from the Quaker Oats Wholegrain Cookbook from 1979.
There’s a bunch of interesting sounding recipes in there, so we’ll probably test some more from there, but first up is the “Hearty Whole Grain Coffee Cake.” I enjoy coffee cake but hadn’t had any for awhile, so it seemed like a good place to start.
The Snack Report: Nature’s Path ‘Love Crunch’ – Apple Chia Crumble
You’re all familiar with the TV Trope, the ‘granola girl‘ (or granola guy, if you will), are you not? If no, you can read up, but it’s essentially just our modern day incarnation of what hippies used to be, decades ago. Preaching love and happiness, exploring counter culture, an affinity for mother nature, etc… You get the idea.
Interestingly enough, with Meg and I’s newfound love for yoga, actual granola, and gardening, you could probably classify the two of us as a granola girl/granola guy. Interestingly especially with me, since anyone who grew up with me knew I was a major league cynical asshole in high school and college. But hey, people grow up, right? I’ve already come to grips with the fact some people consider me a hipster, so what the hell. Bring on the granola. (Though admittedly I still have no idea how to play a guitar).
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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