Cranberry Peanut Butter Breakfast Quesidillas

Kraft has recently come up with some new kinds of peanut butter and sent me some to try. They are (from top left to right) Cranberry Peanut, Honey, Banana Granola, and Cinnamon Raisin Granola.

I'm a big fan of peanut butter. Honestly, I can't eat it often but when I do, I always buy Kraft. These ones are gooooood. I love the texture in the granola ones and the cranberry peanut is a crunchy peanut butter with dried cranberries thrown in.

Along with my cans of peanut butter were some recipes that I thought I'd try and share with you because they are so fast and easy, not to mention tasty. These quesidillas are super easy-your kids could make them by themselves, or you could make them as a quick snack on the go if you are in a hurry.

All you need to make one is:

1 small whole wheat tortilla (about 6 inches)
2 tbsp cranberry peanut butter
1/2 apple, sliced (you could also try banana, pear, or what about blueberries?)




1. Lay your tortilla flat on the counter and spread the peanut butter over it.




2. Lay the apple slices on half of the tortilla.



3. Fold the tortilla over in half, covering the apple slices. Cut into wedges and serve.

Makes a lunch for a small child, or snack for an older kid/adult. Now wasn't that easy?

Disclosure: Kraft sent me a a basket of items to make recipes, as well as the peanut butter and a gift card. I agreed to write the posts-all opinions are mine. I agreed because we buy and use Kraft peanut butter on a regular basis.

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Cinnamon Raisin Granola Peanut Butter Cookies

When I was a kid, my Dad taught me how to scoop peanut butter straight from a can, pour a bit of corn syrup over top, and eat it. Or dollop that peanut butter directly on top of a banana, bite by bite.

I looooove peanut butter. Slathered on warm buttered toast, English muffins, or in a sandwich with fat slices of banana, I could eat peanut butter every single day.  For awhile there, I had to stop eating it because my stomach didn't love it so much, but recently I've discovered that all is not lost; I can still eat peanut butter occasionally.

In spite of my love for peanut butter, I was never really fond of it in cookies. They were often too dry and crumbly for my taste. The only cookies I liked were these delectable chocolate peanut butter cup cookies. That is, until Kraft sent me a bunch of their specialty peanut butters to try.

You may have seen these new peanut butters in the store-I had awhile ago and was very curious about them. Peanut butter with raisins and granola? Cranberries? Honey? Yum! You can understand my excitement then when Kraft offered to send me some, and some recipes to try. I'm always one to try new recipes, and with something I love? I'm so in.

These peanut butter cookies are not crumbly or dry, and honestly are so easy to make you don't even need a mixer. Kids could do these with nothing more than a wooden spoon and a bowl. I admit that since I never use margarine in my baking (it's butter here, all the time) it was a little strange to me to be using Becel. You probably could substitute butter, but then you'd need to use a mixer. If you try it, let me know how they turn out! The cookies were very tasty and I really liked the fact that they used whole wheat flour and bran cereals, as well as apple. I think they'd make a good breakfast cookie to have on the go. When John took a batch to work he said that they disappeared very quickly. Kevin was a little sad that he couldn't eat them at all; Kraft peanut butters contain soybean oil, so if you have a soy allergy, this is a recipe you want to avoid.



Ingredients:

1/3 cup Kraft cinnamon raisin granola peanut butter
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine (I used Becel)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cup bran flakes
1/2 cup All Bran cereal
1/2 cup grated apple (squeeze to get out excess moisture, and leave the skin on-more fibre!)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

Pre-heat your oven to 400 F.

In a large bowl, stir together the peanut butter and margarine until smooth. Add the brown sugar, egg and vanilla and continue to stir until well blended.

Combine the flour and baking soda in a separate bowl before stirring into the butter mixture until just combined. Add the cereals, grated apple and pecans, stirring until blended.

Drop by tablespoons onto an ungreased baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes until set and golden. Let cool on sheet for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 2 dozen

Adapted from Kraft Canada

Want more peanut butter recipes? You'll find them at Kraft.

Disclosure: Kraft sent me a basket of ingredients to try their new line of specialty peanut butters in some recipes that they enclosed. I agreed because I've been planning to buy the peanut butters anyway. All opinions are my own.

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Maple Oat Waffles

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack, waffles are a favourite in my house. When these were cooking away in my new Krups waffle maker (read about how well that baby cooks up waffles), both John and Kevin came wandering into the kitchen and took a sniff. Sweet and bread-like, this is an extremely tasty recipe.

Oat flour may be a bit difficult to find in a typical grocery store. I found oat flour at Anita's Organic Mill here in Chilliwack on Yale Road. You can actually find a lot of specialty flours at the store, along with all kinds of other things such as beans, lentils, and baking supplies. Anita's products are also carried in retail locations in Western Canada and online. I love using different flours and experimenting with the various tastes and textures. Oat gives a slightly nutty flavour to these waffles, and combined with the oat bran, they really are somewhat healthy.



Ingredients:

1/2 cup oat bran
1 cup oat flour
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups whole milk
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp sugar

1. Heat 1 cup of the milk until steaming hot. Pour over the oat bran and let it sit while you continue with the recipe.

2. In a large bowl, sift and then whisk together the oat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. If you get a few little bits of grains left behind in the sifter, be sure to add them back into the mixture. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, vanilla, and maple syrup.

4. Stir 1 cup of cold milk into the oat bran and warm milk. The cold milk will bring the temperature down. Whisk the milk and oat bran mixture with the egg yolks and maple syrup.

5. Using an electric mixer, beat your egg whites. At first, they will be frothy but then will begin to become thick, like pictured below. Add 1 tbsp of sugar.


Continue beating the egg whites until fluffy, like cotton candy. It takes approximately three minutes.


Once the egg whites look like this, stop beating them. You don't want to over beat them. If you do, they'll crack and look mealy.

6. Stir the egg and milk mixture into the flour mixture until blended. Don't worry if there are a few lumps still throughout the batter. Fold half of the egg whites into the batter. You don't want to deflate the egg whites so be extra gentle. Add the other half of the egg whites and fold them in as well, being very careful to completely incorporate them but still being careful not to deflate them.

7. The batter will be fluffy and should be cooked right away, or the batter will deflate as it sits. Brush the waffle maker with melted butter, then ladle out about 1/2 cup of the batter at a time (per waffle) into a pre-heated waffle maker. Close the lid and cook the waffles for about 4 minutes.



8. Eat those babies right out of the waffle maker, while they are hot. We liked them topped with yogurt and then drizzled with blueberry syrup. The yogurt is a much nicer (and less fattening) substitute for whipping cream or ice cream. I found a fantastic yogurt from Ridgecrest Dairy at Abbotsford's Lepp Farm Market. Sometimes people find natural yogurt to be a little sour, but this one is really fantastic.


Makes about 12 waffles

 Adapted from Good to the Grain

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BBQ Pulled Chicken Wraps With Avocado Bacon Salsa

Sometimes when I don’t feel like cooking, I get creative with leftovers and the end result is a new recipe. It’s not like I set out to make something new, it just happens because I’m hungry and create something with what I have in the kitchen.

It’s all about being hungry and taking risks, you know. That’s why this kitchen is fearless. What's the worst that could happen? If it bombs there's still food around to eat, but if it's amazing then I have something great!

First of all, I made this slowcooker pulled BBQ chicken but instead of using Bullseye BBQ sauce, I made the sauce from these maple chipotle chicken thighs and used that instead. Holy smoky , delicious flavor! The meat was piled on salads, in buns, you name it-but we still had lots leftover.  What to with it?

I’ll tell you what to do-pile it into a tortilla and top it with smoky bacon avocado salsa, that’s what.

Ingredients

2 cups of saucy pulled BBQ chicken meat, warmed slightly

4 ten inch soft flour tortillas

1 ½ avocados, diced

2 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced

5 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 lime

Salt and fresh cracked pepper

2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

2 tbsp minced red onion

In  a medium sized bowl, toss together the avocado, tomato, red onion, cilantro, and bacon. Zest the lime over top, cut the lime in half, then squeeze the juice over top. Stir gently. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Lay the tortillas out in front of you.  Divide the chicken between them in the center, and then pile on the avocado salsa on top of the meat. Fold the sides inwards, then fold the side closest to you up and over the filling, tucking it all in and the sides in as well. Roll the tortilla away from you. Slice the wrap in half and set it on a plate, seam side down.

 Makes 4 wraps

Want more fearless cooking? Check out my new blog on Yummy Mummy club and learn how to chop an onion, what Gordon Ramsay's new cookbook is like, and a recipe for coconut mango pancakes!

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Lentil Barley Salad with Feta, Spinach, and Tomatoes

Let's be honest, shall we?

 I don't really like green lentils. I'm not sure why-maybe it's the soup I've made before with them that seemed tasteless and horrible, or the fact that their texture was always a little weird to me, but I just never have liked them. Red lentils are fine in curry to thicken, but that's as far as it goes. So it seems a little weird that out of the blue I decided to make this salad, but I was trying to use up some of the ingredients in my cupboards and fridge, plus the photo in the cookbook looked amazing, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Have you done that before? Cooked something solely because the photo of it made it look delicious? I have. Once I made liver from a magazine because the photo looked amazing, and I completely ignored that it was..well.. LIVER. It tasted disgusting, as liver does, and was the one time I refused to eat my own cooking, excused 4 year old Kevin, and made us sandwiches.

I digress! Back to this tasty lentil salad!

So, the salad. It was really, very good. The barley and lentils give it a nice nutty, grainy taste, and the salty feta with tomatoes and spinach really add to it. Kevin had three helpings and we we still had enough to put in our lunches tomorrow. It would be really great alongside some grilled chicken seasoned with oregano, garlic, and lemon and a green salad for a little more veggie crunch. I would enjoy it just as a light lunch. You can do what you want with it-I ended up adding more feta because I'm a cheese lover, and then I bumped up the veggies too. You can change things up however you wish. I used only about half of the dressing, since we are a family that doesn't like too much dressing on anything. You can judge this for yourself, and use the leftover dressing on a nice green salad later in the week.


Ingredients:

1/2 cup dry green lentils
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 garlic clove, peeled
a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 packed cup of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 cup feta cheese
1/4 of a small red onion, chopped finely
fresh cracked pepper

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp grainy mustard, or dijon
1 tsp honey

In a medium saucepan, stir the lentils, garlic, and barley together, then cover with a few inches of water. Turn the heat to medium and bring it to a boil, then let it simmer uncovered for about 45 minutes, checking now and then and adding a little more water if you need to. The barley and lentils should be tender with a teeny bit of bite, with barely any water left. Spread them out in a dish and let them cool. Remove the garlic clove and throw it away-or you could just chop it up and throw it in the salad, which is what I did.

Once the lentils and barley are cool, toss them in a medium sized bowl with the cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheese, and onion. Sprinkle with pepper and toss.

To make the dressing, measure the ingredients in a jam jar with a tight fitting lid, and give it a shake until it thickens and is well mixed.

Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss well. We only used a small amount of dressing since that is how we roll, but you can use more if you wish. The leftover dressing would be great drizzled on a tossed green salad and will keep for a few days in the fridge.

Makes 4 servings

Adapted from Spilling the Beans

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A Healthier Chinese Noodle Soup Bowl

Being back at blogging is a little more challenging than I thought it would be. Partly because I have all these places to be writing-here, over at Notes From the Cookie Jar, on Yummy Mummy Club, and over at the Real Women of Philadelphia site. Sometimes, I just fall asleep on my couch and figure that you all won't mind if I sleep instead of write. Back when I was away from blogging, that happened a lot. These days it's happening less as the weather is getting nicer and I feel a bit more energized.

I've been cooking less. No longer am I pumping out the volume of recipe posts that I used to, so I've been allowing myself more time to play in the kitchen and create things that are really mine. This often comes about because now that it's just Kevin and I at home (John is still working in Sechelt during the week), I don't need to make as much and I can make all sorts of things that John normally wouldn't eat, like curries and Asian food. I've worked harder at getting our grocery bill lower and using up the things in our pantry. It's like a challenge some days to make dinner out of almost nothing left in the fridge, but even though the grocery store is a 5 minute walk away I find myself too lazy to make the trek.

Doing this inspired me to try to make a healthier noodle bowl. Do you remember those horrible noodle package soups that we ate as kids? Not content to even eat those as is, I'd always mince up some carrots and throw them in, along with some peas or corn to add some real veggies to the mix. Occasionally a lightly beaten egg would be stirred in as well, it's yellow strands thickening up the soup to make something thick and filling.

Kevin hasn't had those noodles in so long I daresay he likely doesn't even know what they taste like. In an effort to make something similar but with less sodium and more  veggies, the other night I made this. There's lots of veggies and noodles with just enough broth to slurp up at the end.


Ingredients:

1 lb prawns, peeled and de-veined  (you could use a cooked chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces instead)
2 green onions, chopped (green parts only)
1 can of mini corn cobs
1 shallot, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2/3  cup frozen peas
2 carrots, peeled and minced
4 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp soy sauce (or soy sauce substitute)
1 tsp sesame oil
4-5 oz fine Chinese egg noodles

In a large soup pot, saute the shallot and ginger in vegetable oil until softened and fragrant. Stir in the chopped carrots and continue to stir and cook for about a minute or two. Pour in the chicken broth. Bring to a boil.

Once the broth is bubbling, turn the heat down a little and cook for about 5 minutes, testing the carrots occasionally to see when they are tender. Drop the prawns into the broth and let them cook until they turn pink, before fishing them out with a slotted spoon and setting aside.  Add the noodles , corn cobs, and soy sauce to the broth. Cook for about 3 minutes, until the noodles are tender. Stir in the sesame oil, and peas.

Divide the noodle mixture among bowls, topping with the cooked shrimp and scattering with some sesame seeds if you wish. Garnish with the green onions.

Serves 4

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