Cranberry Spice Glaze for Ham

So, I am just now getting around to posting my Easter recipes.  Sorry!  

Here is the recipe for the glaze I put on my Easter ham.  I got it from Recipezaar.

Cranberry Spice Glaze for Ham

Ingredients:

1 (16 oz.) can jellied cranberry sauce

1 cup brown sugar

¼  cup orange juice

½  tsp cinnamon

½  tsp allspice

Whole fresh cranberries (optional)

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan. Heat slowly, until smooth, beating with a wire whisk or rotary beater.

Spoon over ham during last ½  hour of baking.

Garnish with whole cranberries.

Serve any extra in a gravy boat to pass around at the table.

Makes approx. 2 ½ cups.

This was so delicious!  Everyone loved it.  It would be even better for a Christmas meal, I think, since cranberry has become a Christmasy kind of flavor lately.  You could certainly use it as a glaze for other meats as well.  Ham is usually the only meat I put a glaze on.

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Slow Cooker Tortellini Soup

A yummy slow cooker soup made with prepackaged tortellini and fresh mushrooms and spinach.

I love tortellini.  Filled pastas in general, really.  So I was excited at the prospect of trying tortellini in a soup.  I saw this recipe on BHG.com and tried it the other day.  I really liked it, but will make a few changes next time.  Here is my amended recipe.

Slow Cooker Tortellini Soup

Ingredients:

4  cups water

28 oz. chicken stock

1 ½  cups sliced fresh mushrooms

½  cup chopped onion

3  cloves garlic, minced

¼  tsp salt

½  tsp dried basil, crushed

½  tsp dried oregano

8 oz. prepackaged tortellini, dried or refrigerated, any variety (about 2 cups)

10 oz. fresh baby spinach leaves, torn

Parmesan cheese 

Directions:

In a 4 qt. slow cooker, combine water, mushrooms, onion, garlic, salt, basil, and oregano.  Cover and cook on low for 5 to 6 hours or on high for 2 ½  to 3 hours.

Add tortellini and spinach. Cover and cook on low for 1 hour more or high for 45 minutes more. Dried tortellini will take longer than refrigerated.

Sprinkle individual servings with parmesan cheese. 

Makes 6 servings.

The original recipe made a creamy soup.  It called for a package of dry white sauce mix and evaporated milk.  But I decided that a clear soup sounded better (maybe because I have a cold!) so I omitted these.  I didn't have dried basil, so I left that out.  But I think it would be good, so I will use that next time.  The original recipe also called for ⅛ tsp cayenne pepper.  I think I will omit this next time.  I just don't see the need for this soup to be spicy.  

Remember to adjust cooking time according to whether you have dried or refrigerated tortellini.  I used refrigerated, Buitoni Herb Chicken Tortellini.  You can find that in the dairy case at the grocery store.  I will probably try it with dried next time.  I noticed that the spinach turned the broth slightly green.  I thought it was a bit unsightly, but Jim said it looked just fine.  Either way, I don't see how it can be avoided.  The original recipe called for 6 cups of spinach.  I didn't measure it out in cups, but I used a 20 oz. package.  I don't think it would have been 6 cups fresh.  I didn't look like that much.  Anyway, the amount I used was way too much.  Next time I will use a smaller package, 10 oz. or even 8.

Also, the original recipe says it makes four servings, but I think it made more than that.  So I'm going to call it six servings.

By the way, Lena loved this soup!  It amazes me how much she loves her green veggies.  She gobbled up that spinach!  It's so great how she will eat anything we give her.  

Leave a comment if you decide to try this soup!

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Spinach Artichoke Stuffed Portabello Caps

Grilled portabello mushroom caps stuffed with spinach artichoke dip.  I saw this on 30 Minute Meals and ran to the store so I could make them for dinner that night! 

Spinach Artichoke Stuffed Portabello Mushroom Caps

Ingredients:

4 large portabello mushrooms

olive oil

salt

Your favorite spinach artichoke dip, put together but not baked (here's my recipe)

shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Remove stems from mushrooms.  Gently clean dirt off caps with a damp dish cloth.  Drizzle caps with olive oil and season with salt.  Place on grill smooth side down.  Grill for about 4 minutes on each side.  Flip back over so they are open side up.  

Fill each cap with dip.  Sprinkle with cheese.  Place foil over caps and grill on low heat until filling is warm and cheese is melted.

Makes 4 servings.

Now, the method here was Rachael Ray's idea.  However, I did not like the way she made her spinach artichoke dip, so I just used the one I always make.  My directions say to prepare it but not bake it, but if you happen to already have some in the fridge that was previously baked, that is fine. There's just no need to bake it first if you are making it just for this.  (If you are making it just for this, you could probably halve the recipe. I had lots leftover, so when the caps were done I put it in a small dish and baked it to eat with chips later.)

We actually ate these for dinner.  And let me tell you, they were very filling.  In fact, I made four thinking that we would each need two as a serving.  We could barely eat one each!  They made a really yummy dinner.  I served them with tomato soup and toasted pita chips.

This would make a great party appetizer if you used the mini portabellos (sometimes called criminis.)

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Meatloaf Cupcakes

Here is what I made for our Lenten potluck meal on April Fool's Day. They look like frosted cupcakes, but they are really mini meatloaves with colored mashed potatoes on top! Aren't they cute? So springy!

I got the idea from a recipe on Recipezaar. I was looking for something else and came across it. I filed it away for later and then it wasn't long before I realized we had a potluck at church on April 1st. Perfect!

Here is the recipe I used, but you can use any meatloaf recipe that you like. Mine were okay, but if you have one you prefer, then definitely use that one. Just remember to adjust the cooking time since the loaves are so small.

Meatloaf Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 cup soft white bread crumbs (not the kind in the can)

¼ cup whole milk

2 lbs. lean ground beef (I used 90%)

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

1 tsp salt-free Italian seasoning (I used Penzey's Tuscan Sunset)

2 tbsp finely diced onion

18 foil baking cups

4 to 5 cups prepared mashed potatoes

food coloring (without sugar added)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°.

Combine milk and bread crumbs and set aside. Gather other ingredients in large mixing bowl. Once milk has been absorbed into the bread, add it to the mixing bowl. Combine all ingredients, mixing enough to evenly distribute, but not too much that it becomes gummy.

Line 18 muffin cups with foil liners. Fill each liner with ¼ cup of meatloaf mixture. Bake for 15 minutes, or until cooked through.

Meanwhile, separate mashed potatoes into small bowls (the number depends on how many different colors of "frosting" you want). Mix food coloring into frosting.

When meatloaves have finished baking, frost the cupcakes with the mashed potatoes.

Makes 18 mini meatloaves. Allow 2 per serving.

Now here are some notes:

I did not use the meatloaf recipe that came with the cupcake idea. I got the milk/bread idea (called a 'panade') from America's Test Kitchen. They use it in hamburgers to keep them moist when cooking them well-done. I thought it would work to keep lean meatloaf moist as well. Then I just seasoned it with what I felt like at the moment. Tuscan Sunset is a really good Italian seasoning that I use on roasted potatoes. I think it worked really well in the meatloaf. I was expecting that 2 lbs. of ground beef would make 24 cupcakes, but it only filled 18 cups. Which was okay, because we ended up with a small crowd at church and didn't need that many anyway.

I found it impossible to find the old fashioned kind of food coloring. I was looking for the kind that comes in a liquid and you do so many drops into your food. All I could find were food coloring gels or pastes that contain sugar. What happened to the other kind? I looked at the regular grocery store (2 different ones), Hobby Lobby, Michaels, a cooking supply store, and a specialty cake baking supply store. Nada. Everything had sugar in it. So I was in despair, thinking this wasn't going to work, when I called my mom. She came up with a genius idea. It is just before Easter (thankfully!) so she suggested I get an Easter egg coloring kit and use the dye in that. Brilliant! I never would have thought of that. The kind I got had little tablets that you dissolve in vinegar. Instead of vinegar, I dissolved them in hot water.

The thing you have to keep in mind when making your potatoes is how watery your dye is. If your dye is watery (like mine was), you have to make your potatoes a little on the thick side since you'll be adding water to them along with the color. And lighter colors will require more dye and therefore water, so keep that in mind. I had to add probably three times as much yellow water dye than I did the pink and blue. The green was light too. So when making the potatoes, err on the side of too thick, because you can always thin them out once you get the color right. And you do either instant or real potatoes. My instant potato of choice is Potato Pearls from Gordon's Food Service. They are much more smooth and creamy than any real mashed potato I could make. They are smoother than any other boxed instant potato from the regular grocery store. I highly recommend them.

The "cupcakes" went over well at the potluck. The funniest reaction was when a five year old boy took a bite of the "frosting" and made a face and said, "Ewww, tastes like 'tatoes!" Ha ha ha! So funny! I've never been big on making April Fool's Day jokes, but this was fun!

Thanks so much, Mom! I couldn't have done this without you!

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Spinach Alfredo Pizza

It's been a while since I got creative and made a new tortilla pizza, but I just made the yummiest one ever for lunch today. Sorry there are no measurements; when I make it again I will measure what I use.

Spinach Alfredo Pizza with Turkey

Ingredients:

1 large flour tortilla

1 tbsp olive oil

alfredo sauce (I use jarred)

1 large handful frozen spinach, thawed and well-drained

1 clove garlic

turkey or chicken breast, cooked and diced finely

salt and pepper

parmesan cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Place tortilla on a thin baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil on and spread to evenly coat tortilla, all the way to the edges (I use a silicone basting brush). You can leave this step out if you like, but it makes the tortilla really crispy, which is a must for me. Spread a layer of alfredo sauce on the tortilla, leaving about ¾" around the edge. Sprinkle on spinach, making sure it is completely dry. Grate or very finely mince garlic and sprinkle on top of spinach. Top with turkey or chicken breast. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake for 10 minutes. Sprinkle generously with parmesan. Cut with pizza cutter and serve.

Makes 1 serving.

Man, this turned out better than I thought it would! I wish I had made two! Great use for leftover stuff I usually have in the fridge. The garlic is a must and hopefully next time I make it I will have some shallots laying around because I think that would be a great addition as well.

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Baked Tilapia with Spinach and Tomatoes

Another new tilapia recipe.  I found this one on Recipezaar.  I made just a couple of changes to it.

Baked Tilapia with Spinach and Tomatoes

Ingredients:

1 (8 oz.) bag baby spinach, rinsed and drained

4 cloves garlic, sliced

4 tilapia fillets

¼ cup parmesan cheese

1 (15 oz.) can diced tomatoes with basil, oregano, and garlic

1 small onion, chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.  Spray or oil a 9 x 13” baking dish.  Layer dish this way: spinach, garlic, tilapia, parmesan, tomatoes, and onions.  Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes.  

Serve over couscous or rice.

Makes 4 servings.

The first picture is of the dish going into the oven.  The one below is when it came out of the oven.  The original recipe didn't call for garlic, but I love garlic and spinach together, so I threw some in.  It said to bake it only 15 minutes covered, then to uncover it and bake until the fish flakes.  When I checked on it after 15 minutes, I saw that the spinach hadn't wilted down like I had expected.  So I left the foil on, thinking that would help the spinach wilt, and baked it another 15 minutes.  After that, the spinach still wasn't quite as wilty as I was expecting, but I didn't want to overcook the fish, so I took it out.  It was okay the way it was, but I think it would have been better with softer spinach.  I will probably try this again.  Maybe I will try decreasing the oven temp a bit so that I can cook it longer without turning the fish to mush.

Jim loved this dish.  He doesn't usually like tomatoes, but he loved them in this.  He ate so many he had bad heartburn that night!  I'm still having to force myself to eat the tilapia, but I did like it prepared this way.  As you can see in the photo below, there is so much other stuff on the plate, you can barely see the fish!

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Slow Cooker Chicken and Corn Soup

This recipe came from bhg.com.  I have been wanting to expand my repertoire of slow cooker soups, so I thought I would give it a try.  I changed a few things about it as I was making it.  Here is how I made it.

Creamed Chicken and Corn Soup

Ingredients:

16  oz. cooked chicken breast, cubed

2  10.5 oz. cans condensed cream of chicken soup

1  14.75 oz. can cream-style corn

2  cups reduced-sodium chicken broth

2  cups chopped carrot 

1  cup finely chopped onion 

½ tsp celery salt

1  15 oz. can whole kernel corn (or 1 cup frozen)

Directions:

In a 3 ½ or 4 quart slow cooker, combine chicken, chicken soup, cream-style corn, chicken broth, carrot, onion, celery salt, and corn.  Cover and cook on low for 5 to 6 hours or on high for 2 ½  to 3 hours.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Note: If you prefer, you can put raw chicken breasts into the soup instead of cooked. When done, take them out and chop them and put them back into the soup before serving.

So after cooking it on low for 6 and a half hours, the carrots were still quite firm and the onions weren't as soft as I would have liked (I didn't mind them, but I knew Jim would.)  And it just wasn't what I had been expecting.  I expected it to be more of a chowder.  In fact, I thought it was called a chowder and didn't realize it is termed a soup until I looked at it now to blog about it.  I'm not sure why I thought it was a chowder; I think it may be because of the picture on the website.  It looks thick like a chowder.  So that's what I was expecting, but it was definitely more of a soup.  I tried stirring in some corn starch, but that didn't seem to help.  Maybe because it has to come back up to a boil for the corn starch to thicken it?  I don't know.  But since the carrots and the onions weren't done, I decided to let it cook a while longer.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to wait for it.  We had a meeting at church, so I left it simmering in the crock pot and we hit Subway on our way to church.  By the time I got home (long meeting!), the carrots and onions were more to my liking, even though the soup as a whole hadn't thickened up very much.  I refrigerated it overnight and took it to church on Wednesday for our Lenten meal which happened to be a soup night.  It turns out that refrigerating it and letting the ingredients meld a bit really helped to thicken it up.  It ended up much more chowder-like.  

So, I'm not really sure I will make this again.  If I could figure out a way to make it thicker so I could serve it the day I made it, I probably would because it was pretty good. But I'm not really sure how to do that.  Maybe I'll try it again someday.

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Broccoflower

We tried a new vegetable tonight.  I've really been interested in trying new vegetables and new vegetable recipes lately.  Nuking frozen peas over and over again is getting boring!  I'm not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but I recently purchased the cookbook, Perfect Vegetables.  It has the best method for cooking each vegetable and has recipes to go along.  

Anyway, now I love perusing the produce department at the grocery store to look at all of the different vegetables I haven't tried yet.  The Meijer I do my monthly shopping at has a really nice produce section with lots of out-of-the-ordinary veggies.  Yesterday I came across something called broccoflower.  It kind of looks like green cauliflower, but has weird geometrical spikes on it instead of the usual clumpy head.  I assumed it was a cross between broccoli and cauliflower, but it doesn't really look anything like broccoli.

So I bought it and after I got home I looked it up.  It turns out that the term broccoflower can refer to two different things.  One is green cauliflower and the other is what I bought, a different type of cauliflower also known as Italian cauliflower or Romanesco broccoli.  That name is deceiving because it is not a cross between broccoli and cauliflower; it is just a different variety of cauliflower.  I guess it got that name because of the green color.  It is quite interesting, though, because of the pattern of the head, as you can see from the picture above.  The dark green spots are the result of bruising it received in my car on the way home.

To prepare it, I read that you cut it up similar to regular cauliflower.  I cut the core out and proceeded to cut off the florets.  Another difference from regular cauliflower is that the head is less dense and the florets have actual stems.  This was the one way in which it resembled broccoli to me.  The stems looked like broccoli stems, but were much more tender and not woody at all.  

To cook it, I just steamed the florets.  The broccoflower does taste a lot like regular cauliflower, but it is slightly sweeter.  It is more mild than regular cauliflower.  I didn't take a picture of the cooked broccoflower because it looked exactly the same as raw.  It was really good.  I would definitely buy it again.

And it's very nutritious.  One cup raw provides 20 calories, almost 2 grams of protein, 2 grams of fiber, and 56 mg of calcium.

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Mustard Crusted Tilapia

I've recently started serving tilapia at our house. It took me so long because I am really not a fan of white fish, so I usually avoid it.  But I saw frozen tilapia fillets at the store and they were really inexpensive. Every time I shop, I notice the price of salmon fillets going up, and I know it's good to have seafood in our diets, so I decided to give the tilapia a try. 

The first time I made it, I just seasoned it with salt and pepper and roasted it at 400° with some fresh asparagus.  It was okay; the asparagus took longer to cook than the tilapia, so the tilapia ended a bit overcooked and mushy.  But it wasn't horrible.

Last night I tried something different with it.  I coated it with a mustard-ranch spread and dipped it in Panko.  Then I browned it up in the skillet.  Here's the recipe.

Mustard Crusted Tilapia

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tilapia fillets (I use the individually-frozen kind)

2 tbsp spicy brown mustard

1 tbsp ranch dressing

2 cups Panko bread crumbs

Directions:

Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat.  Pat tilapia dry.  Combine mustard and dressing and brush over tilapia.  Then coat tilapia in panko.  

Brown in the skillet until fish is cooked though and coating is crisp, a few minutes on each side.  Be careful when flipping the fillets as they are quite fragile.  (I used two pancake turners.)

Makes 2 servings.

The reason I combined the mustard and the ranch is because I thought the mustard alone would be a bit too intense.  The ranch really did a nice job of mellowing it out and adding a nice flavor.

The coating did fall off a little bit.  It really wasn't too bad, but I might try to experiment with ways to keep it on better.  But it tasted really great.  The tilapia was good with a nice crispy coating on it.  

I'm still not that crazy about white fish, but I know it's something I should eat and I found a few recipes online I would like to try as well, so you will probably be seeing more about tilapia in the near future.

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Heart-Shaped Mini Quiches

My mom got me a heart-shaped muffin tin for Valentine's Day. I decided to make heart-shaped mini quiches for Jim and Hilary (she was visiting for the weekend) this morning. They turned out pretty well, but I will make a few changes the next time I make them. Here's my amended recipe.

Heart-Shaped Mini Quiches

Ingredients:

4 eggs, lightly beaten

¼ cup milk

¼ tsp salt

½ cup shredde cheese

½ cup frozen spinach, thawed and drained

2-4 slices deli ham, depending on size

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°. Spray a heart-shaped muffin tin with cooking spray. Combine eggs, milk, salt, cheese, and spinach. Cut heart shapes out of the ham slices, the same size as the wells in the muffin tin. Lay a ham heart in each of the wells. If desired, finely dice remnants and add to egg mixture. Pour egg mixture into muffin tin, filling only about halfway full.

Bake about 15 minutes, or until set in the middle.

Makes 6 mini quiches.

Now I had intended to flip them over when they came out of the oven and serve them upside down. I thought it would look neat with the pink ham heart on top. However, some of the egg seeped underneath the ham, so it wasn't as pretty as I thought it would be.

Pink ham hearts.

Going into the oven. These ended up being overfilled. They really poof up when they bake and as a result, some of the egg ran out onto the top of the tin. I made too much filling. I started out with six eggs, and it made six of these overfilled ones and two halfway filled ones. So I think next time I will only do four eggs.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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