Food for Fit for a Picnic

To start out, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that Reading Cuisine has been light on posts lately. I really haven't been posting very regularly at all. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, my baby boy is not really a baby anymore, but a 16 month old toddler who is into anything and everything. I dont always have a lot of time to sit down and write a reflective or thoughtful post. I have another blog about our family for friends and relatives that I have trouble keeping up on! However, I am going to try harder at posting more frequently.

Secondly, however, I have just been uninspired in my cooking lately. I usually get in a cooking rut around this time. Our tomatoes are not ripe yet, so the recipes I have been saving for them can't be used just yet. I also am sick of hot weather by this time, although it has cooled down for a couple of days here in Columbus, Ohio, and am longing for fall. I can't wait until football season and the fun foods that go along with fall and football like Chili and the wide array of soup recipes and braising recipes I have been saving up. Chili and soup just dont go with summer.

Anyway, with all that said I decided to post one of my favorite recipes. I keep only the best recipes and transfer them to a program on my computer. The one I am posting is great for summer or fall! The recipe is for Chicken and Bacon wraps. They would be easy and great for a football game, but we have also made them for a picnic and they work great!! They can be serve hot or room temperature. I hope you enjoy them as well as we do. This recipe is from Cooking Light, but I have adapted a bit to our liking. The original recipe calls for fresh tarragon, but I use thyme since I grow it in our garden. I marinate and grill chicken tenders for the chicken, but you could use a rotisserie chicken from the grocery, or left over chicken from the night before.

Chicken and Bacon Wraps

½ cup reduced fat mayonnaise
1 teaspoon fresh tarragon, minced (I use thyme instead of tarragon)
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
4 whole wheat flatbreads, such as Flatout
2 cups romaine lettuce, shredded
2 cups tomatoes, chopped
4 center cut bacon slices, cooked and drained
2 cups shredded skinless chicken

Combine mayonnaise, tarragon, and fresh lemon juice in a small bowl. Spread 2 tablespoons mayonnaise mixture over each flatbread. Top each with lettuce, tomato, 1 bacon slice, crumbled, and chicken. Roll up like a burrito or fajita wrap. Makes approx 4 wraps.

Note: This recipe would also work well with turkey, I am thinking left over Thanksgiving turkey.

Salmon with Lemon and Rosemary

I have made this recipe a couple of times and I do think it is one of my favorites. It is so easy to make and clean up! The salmon comes out perfectly cooked, nice and juicy with a lot of flavor! I have to give credit to where credit is due. This recipe is from Giada de Laurentis and the Food Network. This recipe serves 4, but can easy be decreased or increased in serving size. The recipe is as follows:


4 (6-ounce) salmon fillets
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary leaves
8 lemon slices (about 2 lemons)
1/4 cup lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
1/2 cup Marsala wine (or white wine)
4 teaspoons capers

4 pieces of aluminum foil

Brush top and bottom of salmon fillets with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Place each piece of seasoned salmon on a piece of foil large enough to fold over and seal. Top the each piece of salmon with 2 lemon slices, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of wine, and 1 teaspoon of capers. Wrap up salmon tightly in the foil packets.

Place a grill pan over medium-high heat or preheat a gas or charcoal grill. Place the foil packets on the hot grill and cook for 10 minutes for a 1-inch thick piece of salmon. Serve in the foil packets.

You can serve in the foil packets, but I serve it on a plate. The fish and other contents will easily slide off of the foil. I have served this with vegetables before, but it is also great on a bed of orzo or rice as there is a lot of juice left that can be poured over the rice or orzo. Really a winning recipe!

Best Ever Chocolate Cake

I found this recipe in the Kraft Foods magazine and it really is the best chocolate cake I think I have ever had. An added bonus to this recipe is that it is super easy! You can find the recipe here at the Kraft Foods website or I have it below.

1 pkg. (8 squares) BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate, divided

1 pkg. (2-layer size) chocolate cake mix

1 pkg. (4-serving size) JELL-O Chocolate Flavor Instant Pudding & Pie Filling

4 eggs

1 cup BREAKSTONE'S or KNUDSEN Sour Cream

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup water

1 tub (8 oz.) frozen COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

2 Tbsp. PLANTERS Sliced Almonds

PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Grease two 9-inch round baking pans. Chop 2 of the chocolate squares; set aside. Beat cake mix, dry pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, oil and water in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed just until moistened. Beat on medium speed 2 min. Stir in chopped chocolate. Spoon into prepared pans.

BAKE 30 to 35 min. or until wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 min. Loosen cakes from sides of pans. Invert onto racks; gently remove pans. Cool cakes completely.

PLACE frozen whipped topping and remaining 6 chocolate squares in microwaveable bowl. Microwave on HIGH 1-1/2 min. or until chocolate is completely melted and mixture is smooth, stirring after 1 min. Let stand 15 min. to thicken. Place one cake layer on serving plate; top with one-fourth of the chocolate mixture and second cake layer. Spread top and side with remaining chocolate mixture. Garnish with almonds. Store leftovers in refrigerator.

Making Baby Food 101

My son is 11 months old and still only has a couple of teeth so we still feed him quite a bit of baby food. I have noticed that baby food can often tack on a lot of money at the grocery store. I have made some of my own baby food before and it is very easy. We go through a lot of applesauce because we mix it into my son's cereal so that he will eat it better. It is really simple to make applesauce for babies and really this same technique can be applied to a whole host of other fruits and vegetables. I have the book So Easy Baby Food, by Joan Ahlers and Cheryl Tallman which I use as a guide and is a great book to get you started.

First I quartered and peeled 4 Red Delicious apples. Put them in a microwave safe dish with about 1/4 cup or so of water, cover with plastic wrap and microwave. I microwaved these apples for 4 minutes total, checking them in between for doneness. You want to be able to easily pierce them with a fork. I let them cool under the plastic wrap for just a couple of minutes.

Put the apple slices in a food processor with some of the cooking water. Puree until smooth. You dont want to add all the cooking liquid at one time, start with a little and slowly add it until you get the right consistency. Also, dont forget to vent the food processor to allow steam to escape.


Once you puree the apples to the consistency you want, spoon it into ice cube trays and let cool. Cover the ice cube trays and freeze overnight. The next day you can pop them out of the trays and freeze in a large ziplock bag. This is so handy! You can defrost just as many cubes as you need! Four Red Delicious apples made about 20 ounces of applesauce. You can use different apples, but I like the red delicious because they are sweet. I made applesauce for my son using Golden Delicious apples and he did not like them as well. They are a little more tart.

I did some math to see if making my own applesauce would save me any money at the grocery. I found that I broke out about even, however, I made this batch in the springtime when apples are not in season. I could probably find better prices on apples in the fall time. If you made baby food from fruits and vegetables that are in season, you made find yourself saving some money making it instead of buying it. There are other benefits, however, besides just monetary benefits. If you make your own you know exactly what is in there. You are able to pick the freshest produce for your baby's food. When you buy baby food, you assume the manufacturer is using the highest quality, freshest ingredients, but you dont really know. When you make it yourself, you know. Other great benefit is that you can make combinations of fruits and vegetables that you may not be able to buy, for example, my next batch of baby food is going to be zucchini and yellow squash with a dash of dried basil. Another great benefit comes if you are able to buy certified organic produce or even produce from farmer's markets. In doing this you are able to reduce the amount of herbicides, pesticides, and other chemicals that may be in baby food (because it was used in the produce they are using). Lastly, it is a lot of fun! You can be creative and cater the food to your baby's taste and diet!

I hope you try making you baby's food and have fun in the process!

Fish Pockets

A couple of nights ago I made Giada de Laurentis's Italian Fish Pocket recipe. This recipe is available on the Food Network website. I thought this was a great recipe! The vegetables and fish are all cooked together wrapped in an aluminum foil pocket. This was a terrific recipe! The vegetables were done nicely and the trout had a wonderful flavor to it! The recipe calls for sugar snap peas which I substituted with snow peas instead because my husband prefers snow peas. The snow peas got a little over done, so I think the sugar snap peas may have worked better in this case. This type of recipe is a great solution for a busy parent! Everything is assembled in the foil and then wrapped up and baked. It is quick, easy and even quicker to clean up after dinner! I am planning on searching for more of these types of recipes and may even experiment on some of my own! This one is definitely a must try!

A Romantic Dinner

Ok, so I am a bit late on this one, but I thought I would share my Valentine's Day menu. I decided to cook a nice meal this year instead of going out to a restaurant. I was excited about the chance to make something that I woiuld not normally make!

This year's January/February issue of Cooking Light had a Valentine's menu consisting of rack of Lamb, truffled polenta, and a spicy sweet pepper relish so I decided to follow that. I added a side dish of peas sauteed with bacon, mainly because I wanted a bit more color .

The lamb chops were excellent, which was exciting as it was my first attempt with lamb! I started with chops right out of the refrigerator which may not have been the best idea. The chops were a little underdone after baking for 15 minutes, so I put them back in for a couple minutes. I think that 20 minutes of baking would have worked better, or letting my chops get to room temperature. Besides, this little setback, the lamb chops were very successful!

For the polenta, I made my own from scratch rather than using the Cooking Light recipe that used instant polenta. Polenta is really not hard to do and I started that first and then working on chopping the ingredients and preparing the lamb. The polenta worked really well as an accompaniment, especially since I get sick of mashed potatoes as an accompaniment. The spicy sweet pepper relish was not as big of a hit. I think it was a strange thing to pair with lamb and I didnt think it worked very well. I also just dont think I liked the recipe. I loved the peas and bacon! They were such a nice green! There is something about lamb and peas that makes me think of spring!

All in all, I think the meal was a hit. This lamb chop recipe is great as a romantic meal, but it would also be great for Easter or for entertaining! Again, the recipe is from Cooking Light and is as follows:

Fennel and Rosemary-Crusted Roasted Rack of Lamb:

1 tablespoon fennel seeds, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 (12 oz) French- cut rack of lamb, trimmed
Cooking spray
Rosemary sprigs (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
2. Combine first 5 ingredients in a small bowl. Rub lamb evenly with garlic mixture; place on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 475 degrees for 15 minutes or until a thermometer registers 145 degrees (medium-rare) to 160 degrees (medium). Garnish with rosemary sprigs if desired. Yield: 2 servings (serving size- 3ribs).

Chicken Piccata with Gnocchi

A few nights ago I made a Chicken Piccata recipe from Giada de Laurentis' book Everyday Italian and also available on the Food Network website. I served it over top of gnocchi. The piccata sauce is a very nice lemon sauce that went very well with the gnocchi. I used store bought gnocchi which was a bit too gooey. One of my next cooking adventures is going to be to make my own gnocchi. This is a great recipe and one of my favorites. I like it because it is easy and it really only takes about 20 to 30 minutes to make, which is great on a weeknight!

This is a great recipe and one you should definitely try!

Crab and Ricotta Manicotti

Monday I wanted to make a dish that was a bit time consuming as my husband was home for MLK day and was able to watch our 9 month old. I was also looking for a recipe that would give us some leftovers that we could eat for lunch in the days to follow. I chose a Crab and Ricotta Manicotti recipe from Giada de Laurentis' book Everyday Pasta and can also be found on the Food Network website.

The recipe was fairly simple though a little time consuming because you have to make the Bechamel Sauce before anything else. However, as the book states , the sauce can be made a day or 2 in advance.

We enjoyed the creamy characteristics of this dish. I also liked that this manicotti is not heavy as your more tradional manicotti recipe. There was a nice crab to ricotta ratio in the filling. You get a nice amount of crab in every bite.

The only negative comments I would make about this recipe is, though I enjoyed the filling, I also felt that it fell a little flat. Granted this could be because I live in Columbus, Ohio and not in Maryland where I could get really fresh crabmeat. Or it could be that I am just not a big of Bechamel Sauce, I find it to be a little bland, unless there is something I am not doing correctly when I make it. Either way, I think the next time I make this recipe, and yes I will try it again, I am going to try adding a little spicy seafood seasoning to the filling. Also, the manicotti did not reheat as well as we would have liked, though I think this is more our error than the fault of the recipe. I should have known that crab may not be the best thing for leftovers.

All in all, we enjoyed this recipe. It really is pretty simple. I think if you really like crab, then you are going to love this!