Crab Quiche and Oil Pie Crust

Pie Crust: 

• 2 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup oil (it called for vegetable, I used EVOO)
• 1/2 cup milk

Directions: Mix flour and salt together. In another bowl and oil and milk together- do not stir, and add all at once to flour mixture. Stir until mixed  and shape into two flat balls. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes or more.

Roll out on floured surface and place in pie dish.

Crab Quiche

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup mayo 
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese
• 1/2 lb imitation crab meat
• black pepper - to taste
• sauteed onions, bell peppers and corn
• other spices - to taste

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 F.

Combine first 4 ingredients. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pie crust. Cook for 35-40 minutes.

Thoughts: We all loved this! I used the pie crust recipe as written above and doubled the crab quiche recipe - there was too much of the filling, but had I doubled the pie crust recipe there would have been too much crust!

There were enough scraps of pie crust dough left over that I put some in a mini muffin tin, made a thumb print "hole" in the middle and filled it with the quiche filling for the boys - they loved the kid size quiche :)

We ate one quiche and I put the other one (precooked) in the freezer, when we eat it I'll let you know how it did being frozen.

Banana Bread

I tripled this Banana Bread recipe but ran out of some of the ingredients that were needed and added some of my own extras and ended up LOVING the end result so thought I would post it here. Note: This will make a triple batch of bread/muffins. (I made both!)

Ingredients:

6 cups flour
3 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup of butter + 1/2 cup apple sauce*
1 3/4 cups of brown sugar**
6 eggs
15 bananas (or 7 cups)

*The original recipe tripled would have been 1.5 cups of butter, but I only had 1 cup, so I added applesauce in place of the missing half cup.

** The original recipe tripled would have been 2 1/4 cup brown sugar - ew! I cut out half a cup figuring that the apple sauce would act as sweetener too.
Both of those changes worked really well - I *love* this recipe!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F and prepare your bread and/or muffin tins.

In a large bowl combine flour, baking soda and salt.
In a seperate bowl cream together butter, apple sauce and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended.

Stir flour mixture in with banana mixture, stir until moistened. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Loaves will bake for about 60 minutes and muffins will vary depending on their size. I think my mini muffins took about 20 minutes.

With this recipe I made 1 loaf, 7 jumbo muffins and 48 mini muffins - our freezer is now full of banana muffins, perfect for a quick snack or when friends drop by!

Review: I love this recipe!
There are so many things that can be done to spruce up the muffins/bread.
My favorite thing to add to them is raspberry chocolate chips - I bought an enormous amount of 'gourmet' chocolate chips after the holidays last year when I found them marked at a huge discount and the raspberry ones are SO good in the muffins!

To others I added walnuts, a spice crumble and dried strawberries. They're all yummy, but the chocolate is my favorite!

Summer Salad

Ingredients:
Spinach leaves
Grilled Chicken (cooled)
Strawberries
Pepper Jack Cheese

Directions:
1. Tear the spinach into bite size pieces, cut the chicken and the strawberries into small pieces and cube the cheese.
2. Put it all in a bowl and eat as a salad or put into homemade tortillas.

Review: Next time I make this I'll be sure to have poppyseed dressing on hand, as I think that would go together really well. But the strawberries were juicy enough that we really didn't notice the lack of dressing. The zip in the cheese went so well with the sweetness from the strawberries, and the chicken and spinach complimented it all really well!

Homemade Tortillas

Ingredients:
3 cups wheat flour
1 cup warm water
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup oil

Directions:

1.Measure liquid ingredients into a mixing bowl.

2. Add baking powder and salt. Add the flour until the dough is workable. Leave for 10 minutes.

3. Shape into 8 balls and let dough stand for 10 more minutes. Roll to form a 10 inch circle.

4. We cooked ours on a George Foreman Grill, but you could also cook it on a greased griddle. We kept ours on for just over a minute each.

REVIEW: D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S. I don't think I'll ever be buying store bought tortillas again! I will try playing around with adding different seasonings to it, but they were yummy as is!

Homemade Lemonade

Ingredients:

3 unwaxed lemons, quartered
3/4 cup sugar
6 1/4 cups water
lemon slices and ice, to serve

Directions:

1. Place the quartered lemons, the sugar and part of the water in a blender or food processor. Blend for a few seconds until the lemons are finely chopped.

2. Pour the mixture through a strainer into your serving jug. Add the remaining water and stir well. Add ice cubes and lemon slices for serving.


Review: This is easy to make and delicious!

Breakfast Burrito

Recipe from Taste of Home Best of the Holidays magazine

Ingredients:

• 1 lb bulk pork sausage
• 1-1/2 cups Southern style hash brown potatoes
• 1/4 cup diced onion
• 1/4 cup diced red or green peppers
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 12 flour tortillas (8 inches),
  
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar Cheese

Directions:

1. In a large skillet cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink, drain. Add the potatoes, onion and pepper, cook and stir for 6-8 minutes or until tender.
2. Add eggs; cook and stir until set.
3. Spoon filling into center of each tortilla, sprinkle with cheese. Fold sides and ends over filling and roll up.

To Freeze and Reheat:

1. Wrap each burrito in wax paper and foil. Freeze for up to 1 month.
2. To reheat, remove foil and wax paper. Microwave on high for 2 minutes.

Review: This recipe is so easily adaptable to your tastes! We love it done following this recipe, but we've also adapted it a little bit at times; adding seasoning, bacon and other vegetables. It is so handy having these in our freezer! We triple the recipe and stock our freezer.
We have made these with the larger tortillas and put a bit more filling in them. With the 8 inch we need to eat two each to be full. With the larger size we only need one each.

Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Recipe from here - I loosely followed it.

Ingredients:

• 11/2 lbs Sweet Potato
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

• Peel and cut potatoes into fries.
• Preheat oven to 425 F (if you do it before peeling the oven will be heating for a very long time!!) Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.
  
• Put fries, oil and seasonings into a bowl or zip lock bag. Stir or shake to coat fries.
• Spread onto baking sheet in a single layer.
• Cook for 30 minutes, turning every 10 minutes.

Review: I added way more salt and paprika to mine, and a little bit more cinnamon. I love the flavor! The ones I made for the freezer I did not season at all. Just cut the Sweet Potato and stuck it in the freezer. I cut my fries pretty thin and they were done after 20-25 minutes, so make sure to watch your fries during the last ten minutes of cooking!