Floral Cookies

I made a batch of cookies and flooded them with pastel pink. I decided to try some simple floral designs... Though these are some what a little better than my previous decorated cookies ... I still need more practice to get better to perfect my cookie decorating results! ...still in my infancy on my decorating skill ... more like baby steps still, wishing I could make bigger leap next time :).

Vanilla Sour Cream Birthday Cake

My girlfriend's family is having a birthday party for her and we are invited. Their family parties are always festive events and I have volunteered to make my friend's birthday cake. ( I am so happy they asked me ). I needed to doubled the recipe for such a party. I made 2 layers of 12 inches each so I needed plenty of cake batter. I decided on using my Vanilla Sour Cream Cupcake recipe that I have had good success with before. They were great tasting cupcakes the first time so I am sure I will have a nice cake from this recipe as well.

Here are some pictures.

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Small Burgers

I love home made burgers and my husband is very good at grilling them. He made them smaller so that we have leftover for our weekday lunches :) This size is perfect for us. Tonight with our little burgers we had some delicious fresh corn on the cob and simple but tasty salad with fresh summer vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and cilantro... yummy, yummy yummy! This simple meal was clean, delicious and filling. My tummy is happy, I say! You should try them too.

Fish Cake Burger

I didn't want to spend too much time preparing lunch, so we put together  this simple and healthy lunch quick and easy . These are frozen fish cakes that we bought at Costco that are really tasty and easy to cook in a pan with a little bit of oil. They bring a nice variety to our lunches, especially when paired with a tossed salad, some thin slices of blue cheese and a fresh hard boiled egg... just the right amount to fill our hungry stomachs. Lunch is ready!

Grilled Chicken with Broccoli Florets Medley

My husband does most of the cooking when we are home together. We both like the taste of grilled meats and these grilled chicken breasts were perfectly marinated overnight with simple lime juice base. He added garlic, salt, pepper and Italian salad dressing and let it sit in the frig overnight. I decided to cook a veggie dish made from broccoli florets and some left over sweet peppers that had to be used before they went bad. I was able to quickly put together a tasty stir fry that really complimented the grilled chicken.

Direction on Veggie Dish:
2 bunch of broccoli (cut into florets)
8-10 mini peppers
1 small tomato
1 small chinese sausage ( you can use ham or any other meat if you prefer )
1 Tbs Thai Tom Yam sauce
1 cup water.

In a 12 inch skillet pan, pour water into pan and add all the chopped vegetables and chinese sausage.
Over medium to high heat, steam all the chopped vegetables and chinese sausage for 8 mins.
Stir and mix vegetables.
Turn heat to medium low, add Tom Yam sauce to the pan, continue to steam for another 5 mins.
Serve over Grilled Chicken.

Simple tasty, hearty and healthy dinner, yum!

Citrus Lime Cake

I was interested in  baking a citrus flavored cake. I really like lime flavoring but could only find recipes for a lemon flavored cake. Here is a really good recipe I found for lemon cake. I had to tweak it a little bit but the basic recipe really worked out very well. Tasted great, will make it again for sure.

Here are tweaks:
I used lime juice in place lemon juice and I used orange zest in place of lemon/lime zest.
Margarine was used in place of butter.

Lessons learned: Leave the cake completely cool before removing from the pan. I made the mistake of removing cake from pan while cake was still warm thus cake didn't come out clean and smooth from the pan.

Cilantro Garnish on Grilled Salmon

This is my favorite garnish yet. OMG, you can dab this garnish just about on anything. My husband was looking for a salmon recipe and stumbled upon this garnish to go with the grilled salmon. It goes so well also with any poached or grilled summer vegetables.

Recipe is so simple and easy. But I like to prepare two different consistency to give a twist and bite to the garnish.

Here are the ingredients:
3 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoon lime juice
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 red onion
1 large tomato
1/2 cup cilantro ( or a little more )

Works really well to coarsely chop up all the ingredients listed. Divide 1/3 in one bowl and 2/3 in another bowl of the chopped ingredients. Place all the chopped ingredients from the bowl with 2/3 chopped ingredients into a small electric chopper, pause chopper several times to obtain a semi-pureed sauce. Pour puree back into bowl, now scoop the coarsely chopped on top of semi-pureed bowl.

     Delish !!

       Now, look at this sumptous dinner, grilled salmon and green beans topped with cilantro garnish...
         ..... so so delish !! who says hearty dinner has to be unhealthy!

        Here is the 1/3 bowl of coarsely chopped garnish

               Here is the 2/3 bowl of semi-pureed garnish

                 Coarsely chopped on the left   and   semi pureed garnish on the right