Tag: family

Spicy Asian Taco

Another twist on a classic! I love tacos, and I love Asian inspired flavors! So why not create a little flavor infusion! These tacos are quick easy, and delicious. They are topped with a fresh made quick pickle of cucumber and radishes for a little tangy sweet flavor! Great for a quick family dinner.

Here’s what you’ll need!

For pickle topping:

3-4 large radishes thinly sliced

2 small cucumbers thinly sliced

2 Tbsp white wine vinegar

salt

pepper

and 1 tsp sugar

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, coat vegetables well and set aside to “pickle” the veggies. Stir occasionally as you prepare the rest of the meal.

For spicy sour cream:

3 Tbsp sour cream

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

For Beef filling:

1 Tbsp oil

1lb lean ground beef

2 cups shredded purple cabbage

3 green onions thinly sliced

1 Tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp sugar

2 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp sesame oil

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes,

1 tsp Siracha sauce

Flour tortillas, and chopped cilantro

In a Large sauce pan over med-high heat add oil, cabbage and green onions, cook 3-4 minutes until tender. Add ground beef, garlic powder, and sugar. Cook until beef is browned and cooked through. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, and siracha. Stir well and heat through.

To assemble take a tortilla and top first with the sour cream, add beef mixture and top with quick pickled veggies, and chopped cilantro. Serve immediately! Enjoy!!

Tuscan Sausage Spaghetti

Spaghetti is a pretty regular occurance at our house it’s quick easy and can serve a large group when we need it to! So I prepared a variation on traditional spaghetti with this Tuscan Sausage version that includes red peppers and just a little tuscan spicy heat! Enjoy!

1lb spicy sausage casing removed

1 medium red bell pepper thinly sliced

1 md yellow onion thinly sliced

4 servings spaghetti noodles

2 tsp spicy tuscan seasoning

1 Tbsp chicken boullion

1 tbsp butter

1 can crushed stewed tomatoes

1/4c. Parmasan cheese

2 tsp. Parsley chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot boil water seasoned with a little salt, once boiling add pasta and cook 9-10 minutes until soft. Drain pasta reserving 1c. of pasta water

While pasta is cooking, In a large sauce pan add 1Tbsp butter melt, and add onions, red peppers, and a tsp. of spicy tuscan seasoning. Cook until crisp tender 3-4min. Add sausage and cook crumble into pieces as it cooks. Once meat is cooked through add tomatoes, 1 tsp tuscan seasoning. Heat through add 3/4 c pasta water and chicken boullion. Allow to simmer until thickened.

In a large bowl combine pasta, and sauce. Toss to coat add 1/2 of the parsley and half of the parmesan cheese and stir into mixture. Add additional pasta water if too thick. Salt and pepper to taste. Coat noodles well. Plate up and add additional parmesan cheese and parsely as desired!

Beef and Cheese Tostada’s

I have been seriously neglecting my blog this year. I apologize to my regular followers who are looking for new content. I have a ton of stuff saved up to share and tonight I’m going to start with a fresh and tasty dinner recipe for your family to enjoy!

Tostada’s remind me of a flat taco. They use the tortilla toasted so that it’s crispy and can act like a plate for all of the yummy toppings. This is a quick and easy to prepare meal that your family will be sure to love. Here’s what you need, Enjoy!

**Preheat oven to 450°F

1lb lean ground beef

1Tbsp southwest seasoning

1 tsp. chili powder

2 Tbsp. beef bouillon

1 small green pepper

1 small yellow onion

1 Roma tomato

2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro

1 Lime

2 Tbsp. sour cream

1 tsp. Siracha hot sauce

8- small flour tortillas

1c. shredded Cheddar Jack cheese

salt, pepper, olive oil, and water

Dice the tomato, chopped cilantro if needed. Thinly slice half of the onion and finely chop the remaining half. Thinly slice the pepper, and quarter the lime. In a small bowl combine the tomato, onion, and cilantro. Squeeze the juice from half of the lime over the top and season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

In a small bowl combine the Siracha hot sauce and sour cream, stir in a small amount of water until the mixture is thin and can be drizzled like a dressing.

In a medium sauce pan add a small amount of olive oil, beef, southwest seasoning, and chili powder. Stir until combined and meat is broken apart. Once cooked through add the thinly sliced onion and green pepper and cook until veggies are tender. Add beef bouillon and a 1/4 c of water stir over medium heat until thickened and set aside.

Prick the tortilla’s with a fork and drizzle with olive oil, place in a single layer on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 3-4 minutes until brown and crispy, remove from the oven, turn the tortilla’s over and place back in the oven to toast the other side.

Once tortilla’s are toasted you can assemble you tostada. Layer tortilla, cheese, beef mixture and then top with homemade salsa and sour cream dressing. If desired you can add another squeeze of lime on top just before serving! Enjoy!!

Light and Fresh Fish Taco

I’ve been searchong for some new healthy dinner options. I feel like I’ve had dinner on loop lately. So last night I started back to through the loop woth tacos…but decided at the last minute instead to make this a lighter and tad healthier by using fish as the primary protein instead of the usual ground beef. I have to say it was a delicious change of pace and I’m so glad I decided to change things up!

Here is what you need!

1lb. Fresh cod

3Tbsp butter

2 lg cloves garlic

Zest of one lime

2 Tbsp lime juice

2 Tbsp chicken taco seasoning, I use McCormicks brand.

1/4 c. Cilantro or curly parsley

Shredded lettuce

Shredded cheddar cheese

Cubed avocado

Fresh pico de gaillo

Flour tortillas

In a large sauce pan melt the butter add the garlic and fish. Cook on medium high heat 3 minutes each side. Once you turn the fish add lime zest juice seasoning and cilantro using spatula cut fish into chunks and stir the ingedients around in the pan till coated. Turn down heat and layer fish in the tortilla with any of the additional ingredients you prefer. Enjoy!

Tour the Town!

During a recent hangout with my BFF Amber, we decided we wanted to inspire something a little different for 2019. We were talking about some of the Instagram pages that really strike us, how the imagery makes us want to do more, and travel more, and eat more, and figure out internet fame! We cracked up over how popular some pages are and for such simple content. This discussion became a rabbit hole of ideas and before we new what was happening we were starting something pretty awesome!

We have decided to take 2019 and discover everything we can about our own hometown, and any other place that we might travel too or stumble upon along the way! And whilst exploring we’ll share these adventures with all of you here, along with pictorial reviews on Instagram! You can follow us @Tour_the_Town

Amber and I met 7 years ago when she and her husband moved back to Michigan from South Carolina. Her husband and I went to high school together, he and my husband grew up playing baseball together, and we had one other rather sad connection…. Her son was a cancer survivor and my late son was at the time a newly diagnosed cancer patient. Not something you expect to bond over but there was an empathy there that I needed, and 7 years later I don’t know what I would do without her!

We live a block away from each other in a small Michigan town that we both grew up in. We have thrown parties, held fundraisers, gone to community and school events, and even vacationed together! Our families often feel like one big family and we love that! So now that we are starting Tour the Town we hope you’ll have fun with us, laugh with us, and get to know us a little better.

Since we are so close to our little district of Vandercook Lake we plan to start there! There are a couple of awesome little restaurants right around the corner from us, and we plan to highlight these locations each week, or as often as our schedules allow! This week we visit Klavon’s pizzeria and pub in Vandercook Lake! This locally owned restaurant and sports bar has quite a story to share and we can’t wait to get to it! More soon, until then enjoy some memories from Amber and I. Thanks for following along!

Monkey Bread

One last holiday favorite before I retire for the night. My Mom first made monkey bread at Christmas when I was in high school and I remember everyone raved about it at our annual Christmas Eve party. I’ve used this recipe several times since then and it’s always a predictable hit!

My daughter doesn’t enjoy raisins so I only put mine on the top instead of throughout the bread so she can pick them off. But feel free to mix them right in!

Here’s what you need

2 cans of prepared biscuit dough

1/2c granulated sugar

2 Tbsp cinnamon

1 c. Light brown sugar

1/2 stick butter

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup raisins

In a large bowl cut the biscuits into bite size pieces. Add granulated sugar and cinnamin. Coat the biscuits add raisins and set it aside. In a medium sauce pan melt the butter and brown sugar into a loose caramel. In a bundt pan add a small amount of raisins, and caramel sauce layer in biscuits and top with more caramel. Bake 350F for 20-30min. Turn out onto a serving plate. Pieces can be brokwn off by hand or you can cut and serve like a cake. Enjoy!

Hand-piped Spritz Cookies

My final recipe from round one of my holiday baking are Spritz cookies. These light, crispy sweet short bread cookies are perfect when you want something sweet but no too sweet this holiday season.

Spritz cookies are traditional Christmas cookies in Scandinavian countries. They are simple butter cookies, shaped by putting the dough through a cookie press. The name comes from the German word spritzen, meaning “to squirt” because the soft dough is squirted or pushed through a cookie press to make fancy designs.

My great Grandma Reeves would make these every Christmas and they were always one of my favorites because although homemade they always looked so perfectly pretty. The collar for my cookie press was found to be broken this year when I went to make my cookies…probably from being moved all over the place during the kitchen renovation, accidents happen I guess… so I improvised and used a piping bag with a large star tip to hand pipe these pretty little cookies.

This is a simple recipe with common ingredients making it all that much better so here is my recipe for Hand-piped Spritz Cookies. Enjoy!

1c. butter

1/2c. granulated sugar

2 1/4 c. all purpose flour

1/4 tsp. salt

1 egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

colored sugar or sprinkles for decoration

Pre-heat oven to 350F

Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Stir in flour, salt, egg, and vanilla extract. Place dough in cookie press or piping bag. Form desired shapes on ungreased cookie sheet. top with decorations. Bake 5 to 8 minutes or until set but not brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. To decorate cookies after baking, use a drop of corn syrup to attach decorations to cookies.