Hawaiian Burgers

The other day I hadn’t heard anything from Mark pretty much all day…I realized he was probably having a long day and decided to try to make a dinner he’d really like…after he ate it he dubbed them Hawaiian Burgers and I liked it so that is what they shall be known as!

I wish I had prettier pictures but I forgot to take them the day of and then this day we didn’t have any lettuce so they don’t look as delicious as they once did.

Ingredients for the hamburger patty:

1 lb ground beef
Squirt Mustard
Squirt Honey
5 Shakes Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
3 Tablespoons Kikkoman Sweet and Sour Sauce*
Enough Breadcrumbs to hold it all together (about 2/3 cup)

*it doesn’t matter what brand of sweet and sour sauce you use

Mix everything together by hand. Make patties as big as you want. Cook them like you like them.

While the hamburger patties are cooking slice your pineapple. Then put it in a pan. Sprinkle it with brown sugar and put it under the broiler for about 10 minutes (our broiler is weak sauce because it is ancient so a newer oven might have a shorter broil time)

While the patties are cooking and the pineapple is getting nice and caramelized mix about 4 tablespoons of the sweet and sour sauce with about 1 tablespoon of barbecue sauce. Then add about 2 tablespoons brown sugar and a small squirt of honey. Mix together and this becomes your “secret sauce’ it is yummy!

When all of that is done pile your burger how you like it! We used:
Buns
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Cheese
Pineapple
Secret Sauce
Hamburger Patty
Mayo

Tips From Kj:

I cooked my patties on the stove but if you have a grill or a George foreman grill use that! Don’t ask me why but we left our “George” in storage for the summer and it makes me sad.

If you have a grill: GRILL YOUR PINEAPPLE! This would have been even more delicious.

In the future I think I would have bought a different sweet and sour sauce. Kikkoman wasn’t my favorite.

I apologize for my “squeezes and shakes” in the hamburger patty mixture. I’ve never really measured when it comes to hamburger patties I just kinda squeeze an amount that seems good to me and mix until it all comes together.

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Zucchini/Squash Spaghetti Pasta….?

I need to come up with better names for my recipes. ha
I was at smiths and thinking that I really just wanted to have some pasta with veggies. We didn’t have any at the time so I perused the vegetable section and found the zucchini and yellow squash on sale.

I went home and boiled some Rotini Pasta.

In a saucepan I browned:

4 Cloves Garlic Made into a paste with a zester
1/2 an Onion
2 Tbsp Light Butter

Then I added:

1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce (the bigger one….same size as vegetable cans…I do not know the literal size haha I’ll have to get better at this)
1 Can petitie diced tomatoes
Oregano & Basil to taste
Salt & Pepper to taste
A few pinches of sugar

Literally I just taste this and add things as I feel they are needed.

Then In a large skillet I added all of my zucchini and squash cut into half circles. (I am sure there is a fancy term for that but half circles works for me) I added 1/2 cup chicken broth and sprinkled them with Garlic Mrs. Dash. Then I put a lid on it…set it on medium and let them bubble and simmer until they were soft.

When you are done pile some pasta on your plate, followed by sauce, followed by veggies, followed by grated mozzarella cheese…yum!

Tips From Kj:

I almost NEVER use oil when I cook anymore if I can get away with it. It just has SO many calories it is crazy. I learned a sweet trick and that is to use chicken broth! Whenever I am stir frying/sautéing/baking etc and it says to use oil I just substitute for some chicken broth and away we go! It also adds a great flavor!

There are definitely moments where you must have cooking oil…like deep frying? haha and there are others that I can’t think of right now but I use it when the time comes…in general though I try to be as healthy as can be when cooking.

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“Dessert Salad”

Long ago during the first Christmas Mark and I spent together he came over to a Christmas Eve dinner…We ate our food (most of us eating this dessert salad with our normal dinner food) After dinner we all went to get our dessert…Mark piled some of this salad on his plate! I was kinda confused because we always eat it as just a side dish….he said it looked like dessert to him and ever since then it has been dubbed: DESSERT SALAD :) The name suits it I think because it is SO YUMMY and totally worthy of a dessert title.

All you need is:

1 Tub Whipped Cream
1 Tub Cottage Cheese
(both of these are just the smaller/regular size not the bigger ones)
Package of Jell-O Mix
Fruit of Choice: Pineapple, Mandarin Oranges, Strawberries, Bananas, Apples, Raspberries….etc.
Marshmallows (optional)

We had a bag of giant Marshmallows in our cupboard so I just cut them into fours. I used about half the bag. Then add the fruit, cottage cheese, whipped cream, and Jell-O mix! Stir it all together and Eat it! This is so easy and delicious.

Tips From Kj:

You’ll notice in my pictures I have the Kroger Brand of Jell-O, Cottage Cheese, Mandarin Oranges, and Whipped Cream. They are cheaper USE THEM! It tastes the same I swear it! The only reason the pineapple is Dole is because it was on sale for the same price as Kroger :)

Mark is sometimes “Anti” fake brands of things. I agree with him when it comes to some foods a lot of the time the name brand will be super delicious compared to fake brands…but things like canned veggies, basic soups-tomato and cream of chicken/mushroom etc, canned fruits, whipped cream, and other things like that I ALWAYS buy the cheaper “fake brand” :)

Last but not least…get the low fat/fat free kind when it comes to the cottage cheese and whipped cream. Again you won’t taste the difference and it will be better for your waistline!

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Homemade Fried Ice Cream

We decided to make fried ice cream last year after remembering how much we loved it. (I had only had it once at Los Hermanos when everyone at the table decided to tell the waitress it was my birthday while I was in the bathroom…it wasn’t my birthday…but they brought me fried ice cream and it was absolutely delicious) We were worried about how it would work out but it ended up tasting just the fried ice cream we had! It was so yummy :)

First:  make as many ice cream balls as you want and put them in the freezer in an uncovered container for 1 hour.  (we just made 2 this time)

Next: In one bowl mix up crushed corn flakes-as many as you think you will need to coat the amount of servings you are making -and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, or more if you like alot of cinnamon.  In another bowl mix 1 egg-or more again for how many servings you need to coat-and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Dip the ice cream in the egg mixture and then roll it in the cereal mixture, try to get as much on as you can and then freeze for another hour uncovered. Repeat this step after 1 hour and freeze for about 2 hours or until completely hardened. 

Heat Oil in a pan (it is supposed to be 350 degrees but we didn’t have a way to measure that so we just guessed :D ) Place the balls in the pan one at a time for 10-15 seconds, take them out and enjoy!! You can put any toppings you want on them but we just ate them plain and they were so good!

Tips From Kj:
You can experiment with what you use to coat the ice cream. We used regular corn flakes, honey bunches of oats, special k with strawberries….etc. They all are really good and you can even use vanilla wafers, oreos, graham crackers etc. Anything that will coat the ice cream can be used :)

These are great with caramel or chocolate ice cream topping as well.

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Best Rice Crispy Treats!

For Easter thisyear we made egg shaped Rice Krispy treats made from peeps instead of normal marshmallows. The result? Cute colorful DELICIOUS rice crispy treats that taste so so so (a million so’s) better than normal ones.

First:
Melt the butter in your pan. (sorry no picture…this is a pretty boring step)

Next: Take Your Peeps and Stick them in A pan…these poor peeps think they are having a pool party but don’t realize they are actually about to be melted… :(

After that….Melt them!! Poor Peeps…finally realize this is not a party…. haha (Try not to mix the colors yet! It is tricky but almost possible)

Next mix in the crispies!

After that stuff them into plastic eggs and then transfer onto a cookie sheet!
This part is fun because your fingers get gooey goodness on them that you have to lick off after :D

TA DA!! :) These are amazing…we pretty much ate them all in one day! (With the help of some friends of course)

Recipe:
3 tablespoons butter
3 Packages of peeps (the ones that have 12 in a pack)
6 cups Rice Krispies

Follow the steps above and you will have it made! :) These are so super easy.

Tips from KJ:

These don’t have to be “Easter” rice crispy treats only. How fun would it be to make these at Christmas, Halloween, Valentines day, Forth of July…and any day they sell peeps for?? :) I think these will be a staple in my dessert recipe book for any time we are feeling like some Krispies!

 

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The Cupookie

One day about 3 years ago I said to my husband (boyfriend at the time) “I am going to make you the YUMMIEST cookie things…” Naturally he wondered what exactly “cookie things” were. I explained to him that I was going to make cookies out of a cake mix and then put frosting in the middle and he was going to be a happy man…I figured that would calm his fears of eating “cookie things” and I could get on to baking. (This was long before Pillsbury started selling their funfetti cookie mixes..these are legit and original-or at least I thought I was being pretty original)

Anyways so like I said I thought I had cleared his worries and I’d be able to bake…but this was NOT the case. He was convinced that my cookies were going to end up being cupcakes. No matter how many times I told him I was making COOKIES he was sure it wouldn’t work. (we hadn’t been dating very long…he did not yet understand my love for baking and cooking or that I was actually pretty good at it) I finally sent him into the other room and proceeded to make this recipe (only not Valentines...I used lemon for his but this is the only picture I currently have):

                  CUPOOKIES
  “Cookies from cake mix with frosting in the middle”

1 package cake mix
2 eggs
¼ cup oil

In a large bowl mix together the cake mix, oil and eggs. Roll into balls depending on the size of cookies you want. I normally do 1 inch balls.
Cook at 350 degrees for about 8-10 minutes. The bottoms of the cookies should be light brown; the cookies might seem like they need a little longer but do not leave them in…it will take away from their goodness.
Immediately put the cookies on a cookie rack and in the refrigerator until cooled (just enough so the frosting won’t melt…you don’t want them too chilly). Immediately pair up the cookies and sandwich them together with frosting-if you wait until later they just won’t be as good. Put in a Tupperware container or zip lock bag and refrigerate. 

For even better results: FREEZE THOSE COOKIES! For real. We are convinced that a frozen and then thawed cupookie tastes 100% better (if that is possible) than their unfrozen friends.


In the end he LOVED THEM! They became one of his favorite treats and he became the envy of his co-workers because he always had these in his lunches. We laughed a lot about how he thought they were going to turn into cupcakes…that is how the name came about because even though they didn’t turn into cupcakes but he started calling them cupookies (cupcake cookies) and the name stuck!
You can Make them for any occasion: Christmas, St. Patty’s, Birthdays, Halloween….or just because you want to eat something delish.

I absolutely love these and they are so fun because you can use whatever kind of cake mix you want, whatever kind of frosting  you want, and whatever kind of mix ins you want! One time I used a chocolate cake mix and we mixed in 3 musketeers bars chopped up…they were so amazingly yummy! (well to me anyways…the hubs does not like chocolate so you can imagine who’s tummy those ended up in) We also have decided that homemade frosting rocks the house with these but if you must use store bought frosting they will still be absolutely delish!

Tips from KJ:

Our favorite cake mixes to use are-Cherry Chip, Funfetti, Spice, Lemon, Strawberry, Carrot….um maybe all of them!

Online you can find a lot of recipes for cake mix cookies…but seriously this one is so simple and it is the BEST! I also use applesauce sometimes instead of the oil if I am feeling particularly healthy that day. :-p
Putting ice cream in the middle of these is a MUST!
Putting frosting on the top layer to make them cute for special occasions is also fun!





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