Salmon Cakes and Roasted Cauliflower

This recipe for Salmon Cakes was pretty good.  I will add more seasonings the next time I make it, but if I alternated bites with the vegetables, it was pretty tasty. 

Also, this recipe took a bit of time to make, but I learned a neat way to cook the salmon.  I used my large spaghetti pot with the steamer basket in the top.  I put water in the pot and cooked my potatoes in the water, and placed the salmon into the steamer basket.  If you don't want to go through the fuss of cooking your own salmon, you can always use canned salmon.  The potato was mashed and used as the binder in the crab cakes.  You could always substitute bread crumbs or panko.  Oh, and when I worked them into paties, they were really went (because these are almost all salmon, hardly any filler), but as you can see from my final product, they held together fine in the pan.

This recipe made 4 very large salmon cakes, plus one small bonus cake. 

The roasted cauliflower was easy and delicious!  You just have to remember that it takes nearly 30 minutes to bake, so take that into account when you make it.  It was sweet and kind of nutty.  We didn't even put the cheese on top.  Everyone loved the meal except Jack.  Oh, and when I cut up my head of cauliflower, I noticed that it was kind of small, so I sauteed up some spinach with evoo and garlic to supplement the cauliflower.

Turkey, White Bean, & Pumpkin Chili

This evening's healthy meal was a Turkey, White Bean, & Pumpkin Chili.  It was super easy to make, and I used the crock pot so it didn't heat up the house.  The pumpkin gave it a creamy texture, and a slight nutty flavor, although Bryan said he wouldn't have know there was pumpkin in it if I hadn't told him.  It was quite different from a tradition chili, but I think it makes a great summer chili. The only modification that I made to the recipe was using Tabasco chipolte instead of cumin.  We just really like the flavor of the chipolte.  Everyone devoured it, there is actually just enough left over for Bryan to take for lunch tomorrow!

As for the nutrition, it is based on 1 cup of chili.  I think the only person who had 1 cup was Ayden.  Jack and I ate roughly a cup and a half.  Bryan ate closer to 2 1/2 cups.  (Oh, and Audrey probably ate a heaping cup.)  Even at those larger servings, this is still a pretty good calorie/fat-wise meal.  182.6 calories per cup and 2.3 grams of fat per cup.  Anyone interested in the math: that would be 273 calories and 3.4 grams of fat for me and Jack, and 456.5 calories and 5.75 grams of fat for Bryan.  The only other thing we ate with it was a piece of rye bread lightly dipped in EVOO and fresh herbs.

Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

I am so stinkin excited!  I flipped the casserole dish over so you could see how clean it is.  I cooked baked oatmeal in it this am and put it in the dishwasher with all the crud still stuck to it!

Making homemade cleaning products is really addicting.  It is fun to see how clean you can get stuff with a few simple, nontoxic products.  Best of all, I feel like a real supermom, by saving sooo much money!

I have been using my homemade laundry detergent for quite a while now and still have a little over half a gallon left.  Since I made the laundry detergent, I already had almost all of the ingredients for the dishwasher detergent.

I found the recipe for dishwasher detergent at One Good Thing by Jillee.  If you haven't checked her blog out yet, you might want to find a couple good hours to read through her awesome ideas.  Feel free to click on the link above to read all of her great background info on the detergent.  I am just going to give you a quick recipe for it here.

1 cup of Washing Soda (or baking soda)  If you made the laundry detergent, you already have this!
1 cup of Borax Once again, used in the laundry detergent
1/2 cup of Kosher Salt
1/2 cup of citric acid or Fruit Fresh  Fruit Fresh is used in canning, so you can usually find it in the baking aisle or the area of your store where you will find canning jars

Mix all of the ingredients together.  I put mine in a gallon ziplock bag.

When you are ready to wash your dishes:
Put 1-2 TBS of the powder AND 2-3 drops of liquid dish soap (like Dawn or whatever you have on hand) into the detergent well.
Dump 1/2 cup-1cup of white vinegar into the bottom of the dishwasher (Or you could fill the little jet dry compartment with vinegar.)

Wash! And enjoy living the homemade/frugal life with me!

I used 2 TBS of powder, 2 drops of liquid soap, and 1/2 cup of vinegar. 

Healthy meal review: Pork Chops and Salad

Pork Chops with Mushrooms and Shallots

 

 This is the one meal that I really wasn't looking forward to.  But it was fabulous for 2 reasons.  1--Bryan cooked!  2--It was delicious (this coming from a non-pork lover).  The key to this recipe, I think was the delicate mushroom/shallot sauce. Mmmmmmm delicious!!!  Jack has never liked mushrooms, but we somehow got him to take a bite of one of these and now he is hooked!  Guess I am going to have to double the portions of sauteed mushrooms now.

I was going to serve the pork chops with the roasted cauliflower but since Bryan cooked, he didn't realize that the cauliflower would take longer to cook and he didn't start it early.  Sooo, I served it with salad.  I used some romaine lettuce from the fridge, fresh salad greens from the garden, carrots from the garden, and fresh herbs from the garden.  I was really sad that I didn't have a couple more ripe tomatoes.

If you like pork, I definitely recommend this recipe. One pork chop has only 180 calories and 9.5 grams of fat.  I am used to eating the thin pork chops, so I could only eat half of one of these.  If you don't eat pork, I recommend just making the shallots and mushrooms since that was my favorite part anyway. :o)

Not sure what was up with the settings on my phone's camera, wouldn't it be nice to have a DSLR???

Garden update

Yesterday, we started eating out of the garden.  It wasn't much, but we ate!!!  These are my bean plants.  We harvested 2 beans yesterday :o)

As you can see, the cucumber plant is filled with flowers.  We have a couple cucumbers growing already.

Cherry tomatoes.  Bryan and I each ate a tomato.  They were warm, sweet, and oh so juicy.  I can't wait for more to rippen!

Jack was so excited to eat a carrot. 

Audrey lucked out with a pretty large carrot.  Aren't they beautiful?

Creole tomato is turning orange.  That is going to make a yummy blt (at least that is what Jack is looking forward to).  We should be able to use that lettuce in the lower garden.  The mound of dirt is the potatoes.  And that huge bush of marigolds grew from three tiny seeds.  God is amazing isn't He?

Audrey enjoying her carrot.

Healthy Recipes to Try This Week

In an effort to make some more healthy recipes, I am going to try some recipes from Skinny Taste.  The first one that caught my eye was the spinach lasagna rolls.  I love lasagna in any form and these look delish!  Too bad Jack hates lasagna (he doesn't like cheese), I will have to find some alternative for him.

Spinach Lasagna Rolls

Next, I found a pork chop recipe.  I, personally, don't really care for pork, but Bryan loves it.  This one has mushrooms, which I love, so I will tolerate the meal. I will also serve it with the roasted cauliflower as suggested on the page.

Pork Chops with Mushrooms and Shallots

This next one has me really intrigued!  Turkey Pumpkin Chili!!  We all love chili, and I love meals that use my crock pot when the weather heats up here in southern Louisiana.

Crock Pot Turkey White Bean and Pumpkin Chili

I am also going to try some of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Recipes.  Since it is hot here, I like to utilize the grill outside as much as possible.  I am going to get Bryan going on his grill with Jamie's Grilled Chicken.  I think it will go great with a salad.  I have lettuce in my garden that needs to be harvested.  Too bad my tomatoes are still green and my broccoli and carrots aren't ready to be harvested yet :-(

Jamie Oliver's Barbecued Chicken

And meal #5 for the week will be Jamie's Salmon Cakes served with steamed broccoli. 

Jamie Oliver's Salmon Cakes

That about covers all of MY bases. Those are pretty healthy meals for my family: 1 pasta, 1 turkey, 1 pork, 1 chicken, and 1 seafood.  I know that this menu wouldn't work for all of my vegetarian friends, but for us omnivores, I think this is pretty balanced. . . and there isn't any red meat this week. 

By the way, even though we eat meat, I try to incorporate 1 meatless meal a week.  If you have any really yummy vegetarian meals that you think my meat loving husband would like, please share!

Audrey's Easter Dress

 

I saw this adorable dress on Shwin and Shwin's blog and loved it so much that I wanted to make one for Audrey.  I made some modifications, so now it is definitely a "Krohn Kreation!" 

I have been dying to try piping in a project, so I made a scoop neckline and put piping in the front and back of the neckline.

Also, so many of these little girl dresses use buttons.  Buttons and Audrey don't exactly mix because she doesn't hold still for long so I needed to make the dressing process quicker, so I put a zipper in instead of buttons.

 

Lastly, Shwin and Shwin only put the ribbon on the front of the dress.  I like the wrap around look, but as you can see, I had some issues getting the ribbon to lay flat in the back.

I followed the Cottage Mama's template and steps for the top, which I love because all of the seams are fully encased.  The dress looks very high quality.  And since the dress is made from seersucker (which is pretty thin), I also lined the skirt.