Like most people, I’m often short on time to cook dinner and a stir fry is usually my solution. Last night I made my quick & easy orange sesame chicken. You should see the reaction I get when I serve it to company. “How did you make this?” “Is this takeout?” “It must take forever to make a sauce like this!”
Actually, it takes 20 minutes… not just to make the sauce but to make the whole meal. That’s why I love to cook Chinese for dinner. Making it at home is always fast and it’s never deep fried, at least not the way I make it. The chicken is briefly marinated and then lightly sauteed and the sauce is so simple you won’t believe it. I make it with…
– fresh orange juice – rice vinegar – soy sauce – garlic – sugar & salt. It’s thickened with cornstarch and once it cooks you drizzle on some toasted sesame oil at the end. Wow! Make sure you use toasted sesame oil and not plain because the flavor when it’s toasted is intense. Then a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds and you have something so much better than takeout and so delicious, it might be your newest 20-minute meal.
By the way, some steamed broccoli on the side goes perfectly with this. I love it! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Almost every time I make Polish pierogi, one or two don’t make it. They come apart when I boil them because I unknowingly left an opening or a little hole when I sealed them up. But not today. Every single one was perfect! I made 27 piroshki and they all survived.
We had them as a side dish for dinner with chicken and some brocolini although when I was growing up, pierogi was the entire meal… along with fried onions, bacon bits, and lots of sour cream. So I had a little sour cream and onions but I skipped the bacon bits.
Whoever invented the concept of mashed potatoes wrapped in dough, I thank you. Next I’ll be working on a sauerkraut-mushroom filling. Yummm! But potato & cheese pierogi will always be my favorite. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Any time I make apple pie there’s an air of excitement around here. Has it cooled yet? How long before we can taste it? Don’t tell the neighbors – they’ll come over for sure and I want it all for myself. Homemade apple pie never loses its appeal and let me tell you this was delicious.
I used three pounds of granny smith apples and my popular oil crust and it made dinner more than just a meal… it was an event. That may be because I made my orange-sesame chicken, one of my favorite quick dinners. The picture may not show it but this easy chicken stir fry is really really good. And it’s fast. When dessert takes a little longer, like apple pie, I usually opt for a quick and easy dinner.
So anyhoooo… I’m just sharing what I cooked today. Click here for my homemade apple pie recipe. – Jenny Jones
Weekend breakfasts are the best because there’s more time to make things like my caramelized apple oven pancake. It only takes 30 minutes and boy, is it good! You need a 9-inch cast iron skillet and lots of apples. I use two huge apples, weighing 1/2 pound each and I’ve used both Granny Smith and gala, cut into 1-inch chunks. There’s more apple than pancake in this delicious breakfast but that’s a good thing.
First you melt a little butter and brown sugar in the skillet and cook the apples on the stove top over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes until they get caramelized. After 5 minutes, they should look like this.
Now you just pour the batter right on top of the apples. The batter is really light and super easy, made with milk, eggs, and flour basically and you just whisk it by hand – no mixer. As soon as the batter is added, using an oven glove, you put the hot pan in the oven (preheated to 400 degrees F) and fifteen minutes later, it’s done. Then you carefully, with oven gloves, invert in onto a big serving plate and it will look like this…
The edges of the pancake are caramelized just like the apples, which are soft and sticky sweet. You don’t need any topping like syrup but you can sprinkle it with a dusting of powdered sugar if you like. If this is all you’re eating, it will serve two but if you have some eggs and toast and this on the side, it will serve four. And if you’re starving and you make this easy apple pancake, someone I know actually ate the whole thing in one sitting. It wasn’t me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
I forgot how easy it is to make homemade pickles. It was a lot easier than putting together that jig saw puzzle they’re sitting on. The pickles took 5 minutes. The puzzle? Three months!
These are bread & butter pickles, which are also called refrigerator pickles, and now is a good time to make them. Cucumbers are at their best during summer and it’s the Kirby cucumber (not the Persian one) that is best for pickles. I sliced the cuces super thin this time and they are so soft they bend but they’re still crispy, probably because I left the skin on. If you peel the cucumbers, the pickles are a lot softer.
I also put more sugar in this time and I found I like the pickles a little sweeter. So I added a note to the recipe that you can use more sugar if you like sweeter pickles. Don’t be freaked out by the amount of sugar: it’s 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup because remember, the sugar mostly stays in the water.
So make some pickles. If you start now, they’ll be ready to eat in 3 hours. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Blueberries are on sale! That means I need to make my lemon blueberry bundt cake today and I need it in time for dinner. I always made this amazing cake with only 1/3 cup of butter but today I mistakenly used only 3 tablespoons of butter and guess what? It was moist and delicious! This was a good mistake.
OMG – this is so delicious! And now it has even less butter. I use the zest of three lemons and a whole bunch of blueberries (one and a half cups). If you wash the berries, make sure they’re dry before adding them to the batter. Otherwise, they can sink.
It’s the fresh lemon zest that gives all the flavor so don’t skimp on the lemons. When you take the zest off take just the yellow part and avoid the white part, which is bitter.
Start with all your ingredients at room temperature and take your time. It takes 7-8 minutes with an electric mixer to get the batter just right. But what a reward! I like to top my finished cake with a simple glaze made with lemon juice and powdered sugar but you can also dust it with a little powdered sugar. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
It must be Sunday morning because I’m making breakfast cookies again. Here they are before baking. There are three things that are a constant in my kitchen (besides me)… three things that when I almost run out, I make more. They are: breakfast cookies, granola bars, and tortillas. This morning I ate my last breakfast cookie, there’s one tortilla left and I made granola bars yesterday. So it’s breakfast cookie and tortilla-day today.
Are you wondering why these three? Because you can’t buy anything even close to homemade tortillas. My granola bars are out of this world. And my breakfast cookies may not be pretty, but they are fantastic, especially if you want more fiber in your diet. Those are chopped prunes you see there… or wait… those could be pieces of dark chocolate!
My recipe uses bran cereal, whole wheat pastry flour, and oats (did I mention there are 4 grams of fiber in one cookie?). Then I add some moist chopped prunes (they do not taste like prune cookies!) and either chocolate chips or this time I chopped up some of a dark chocolate bar. And here they are all done…
These are cookies of substance, great taste and texture, and many health benefits. Dark chocolate benefits the heart and all that fiber benefits your digestive system and keeps you regular. As for prunes, besides fiber, they are very high in antioxidants. Prunes benefit your eyes, heart, immune system and can help prevent bone loss.
Just like people, don’t judge this cookie by its appearance. It’s what’s inside that matters. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
Today is my sweetheart’s birthday and he, again, asked for his favorite cake. It’s my fresh strawberry cake and oh my… it is so good! It weighs almost six pounds! That’s because it uses two pounds of fresh berries, two layers of white cake, and a whole pint of whipping cream.
The strawberries are sliced and mixed with sugar to bring out lots of their juices and then you build the cake. It’s a layer of cake, covered with half of the macerated strawberries as the juice quickly soaks into the soft cake below, and you cover the berries with freshly whipped cream. Don’t even think about using Coolwhip!
Then you add the second layer of cake, top it with the remaining strawberries and juice, which soaks into the top layer of cake. Now you cover the whole thing with whipped cream. OMG!!
This is clearly a special occasion cake and one of the few things I bake using butter but it’s unbelievably delicious – it just melts in your mouth. Click here for the recipe. Oh, Happy Birthday, Denis! ♥ ♥
On the menu this morning – bran muffins. And I’ll tell you why you should try this easy recipe. We all need fiber. You could try one of those cereals with tons of fiber — you know, the ones that taste like particle board chips. Or you can make your own delicious bran muffins, which by the way, are very portable for breakfast on the go.
Fiber is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and gastrointestinal diseases. Fiber also promotes regularity and can prevent constipation and hemorrhoids. By the way, when you increase your fiber you also need to increase your water intake. So I had one and a half muffins for breakfast with a big cup of green tea and some peaches. And that’s what I cooked today (so far). …just sharing… – Jenny Jones
Here’s a snapshot of dinner today, my one-pan thighs and fries made with skinless chicken thighs, lots of potatoes, and asparagus. The recipe may seem complicated on paper but it’s really easy and there is no cleanup. None. I’m posting this so you can see how it looks on the pan. I line my rimmed baking pan completely with foil. Then I place a disposable broiler pan at one end. This broiler pan is needed because all the fat will drain off the chicken thighs and it will stay in the broiler pan and not spread onto the potatoes.
After coating the chicken and potatoes with an easy mixture of olive oil and spices, I put the chicken thighs in the broiler pan and the potatoes on the rest of the baking pan. Then it bakes in a 425 F oven for 45 minutes. The potatoes get crisp and the chicken gets tender. After that you just push the potatoes over to make room for asparagus (or green beans). Then back in the oven for another 10 minutes and it’s done.
To serve, I lifted the chicken off the broiler pan with tongs, scooped up some potatoes and asparagus and we had a fabulous dinner. Then I threw away all the foil and only had to wash two dishes. So that’s what I cooked today. …just sharing… – Jenny Jones
Like most people, I’m often short on time to cook dinner and a stir fry is usually my solution. Last night I made my quick & easy orange sesame chicken. You should see the reaction I get when I serve it to company. “How did you make this?” “Is this takeout?” “It must take forever to make a sauce like this!”
