More Adventures in Home-Cooked Goodness

Last night, we decided to embark on another kitchen adventure. I've been scouring the world wide web for new ideas and recipes, and last week I stumbled upon the Everyday Paleo blog post for homemade plantain chips with guacamole. I was surprised to find the recipe, because for some reason, M and I were under the impression that we had invented the combination of plantain chips and guacamole...we pretty much thought we were culinary geniuses...but apparently, everyone eats plantain chips with guacamole...who knew?

Anyway, after a quick jaunt to Whole Foods, we had all of the ingredients to make some plantain chips to go with our beefy taco salad. I modeled the taco salad recipe after one that I found on the Whole9 Blog. The plantain chips were produced by two methods: lightly frying in coconut oil a la Everyday Paleo, and baking with olive oil, a la Martha Stewart's recipe for baked potato chips. I also baked up the last sweet potato from over the weekend...

Plantain Chips (& Sweet Potato Chips)

(please disregard the wine and ping pong balls)

Ingredients:

Ripe plantains-- I used two and had plenty of chips for two people
2-4 Tbsp Coconut oil*
Sea Salt to taste

* For the baking method, replace coconut oil with olive oil (or another oil that's liquid at room temperature.)

If frying, place coconut oil in a pan over medium heat. Slice the plantains either width-wise or lengthwise with the peel still on (a tip from Everyday Paleo: the plantains keep their structure better with the peel). Remove peel and place in oil, and fry until brown on both sides.

If baking, line a baking pan with aluminum foil and spray with olive oil. Place the chips on the tray making sure that they do not overlap. Spray the chips with oil and salt them at your own discretion. Bake for about 25 minutes rotating the tray once. (Follow the same protocol for sweet baked sweet potato chips, but bake for about 30 minutes).

The baked chips came out great! Some were crispy and some were chewy. All of them were deliciously sweet and salty!

The fried plantain chips were, in M's words "sinful." The first thing he said when he tried one was "these can't be good for you..." I mean, they're not great for you...but they're better than...some other things. Frying the plantains in coconut oil seemed to caramelize them more than baking them. The browned edges of the chips were almost like candy, but the added salt balanced the sweetness perfectly. They were a little bit thicker and chewier than their baked brothers, but we ended up liking these more.

To go with our plantain chips, we also prepared a nice, taco-y salad:

For the meats we used:

Four hamburger patties (leftover from our weekend BBQ)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cumin
1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (we lika da spicy foods)

M ground up the hamburger patties in a bowl, added the spices and then cooked the meat in a pan with some olive oil and a little water to moisten it up. In the future, we'll probably just buy ground beef instead of using already formed hamburgers...but we were trying to be thrifty.

I cut up some tomatoes, red pepper and red leaf lettuce for the salad base. We topped our salads with salsa and some guacamole from Whole Foods.

It was a great, homemade Mexican-ish feast with plenty of leftovers for another day. We both ate too much and walked off our bellies with Chester after dinner. Isn't it great to eat too much of a meal that you made yourself? To want to eat more of something you created? It's kind of a new experience for me...and I love it!

Bacon Wrapped Sweet Potatoes Equal a Glorious Memorial Day

Last weeks module for my Integrative Nutrition course focused a lot on healthy cooking at home. Since starting the program, I've gotten much, much better at organizing my grocery store trips so that I have plenty of ingredients to cook dinners and pack lunches. I make sure to have lots of leafy greens for salads galore, a variety of fruits, and snacks for throughout the day. The beautiful summery weather has made us grill crazy, so we've also been making sure to stock up on turkey burgers, chicken sausages and chicken wings (M makes a mean grilled buffalo wing).

This being Memorial Day Weekend, we hosted the obligatory BBQ. The usual suspects showed up and we had a grand ole time playing games (beer pong and ladder ball), eating steak tips, burgers and some mouthwatering hors d'oeuvres.

My newly found love for cooking at home inspired me to make something different for this get together, so I experimented with two of my favorite things: sweet potatoes and bacon. This is what I came up with:

Bacon Wrapped Sweet Potatoes:

Ingredients:
Two sweet potatoes
One pound uncured, nitrate-free bacon (I used Nature's Promise from Stop and Shop)
Olive oil
Rosemary (I used dried, but fresh would work too)

I cut the sweet potatoes into "fries" (with the skin on), sprayed with olive oil and baked at 400 for 10 minutes on each side. After baking, I let the sweet potatoes cool to a temperature that I could comfortable handle them, and dipped them in a mixture of olive oil (1/4 cup ) and rosemary (1 Tbsp). Then, I cut the bacon strips in half and lightly fried them. I wrapped each fry in one "1/2 strip" and secured with a skewer. After laying each morsel on an aluminum foil lined baking pan, I baked them again at 400 degrees for 7-10 minutes on each side (until the bacon was crisp).

These were a hit! I will most definitely make them again...

Also among our mouthwatering hors d'oeuvres was this crazy-good (but probably not good for you) Buffalo Chicken Dip:

One of our friends makes this for basically every party we have...because it's addictive...like crack.

She won't divulge her secret recipe, but I'm pretty sure it's chicken, buffalo sauce, and many kinds of cheeses including blue cheese and cheddar.

The BBQ was a success! Everyone enjoyed themselves...including Chester and Meadow, who shared a rawhide bone.

They were in a rawhide induced coma for most of the evening...