Patacones (or Tostones)

The other day, I had my sister come over so I could make these and teach her how.  So I figured I'd document and share with the facebook world :).  Because, frankly, they are too good not to share!

We grew up calling them patacones.  They are also called tostones in some countries.  But we stick with patacones.

First thing you need to know is that you need to buy those banana-looking things that aren't bananas (they are plantains).  And you need to know what color to buy (so they aren't too ripe for this recipe).

So you want it to be about like this.  A little bit more yellowish is fine.  But not much more.  The riper they get, the sweeter they get -- and then you would want to use them for a different recipe :).  Which I don't like nearly as much!  The below picture shows that this one was even a little more yellow on another side of this!

There will be some angled "protuberances" (for lack of a better term) along these plantains.  You'll want to slice through the skin as pictured above on all of those..  Try not to slice too deeply, but it won't hurt anything if you do slice into the meat.  These do not peel like bananas, especially at this point in ripeness -- or lack thereof!

Once you've sliced down all of them, you can pretty easily peel off each section like above.

Slice the plantain into about 1-inch sections.  (those pictured above are actually bigger than they should be).  You'll want to have a skillet on the stove with about 1/2 an inch of oil for frying heating.  Then you'll place the plantains into the hot oil, flat side down.  (You may have to work in batches, depending on how many you are making.)

Let them fry for 3 to 4 minutes (or until golden on that end).  Then turn with a fork or tongs to the other flat end.  (With the non-flat end pieces, I just lay them down, as pictured below.)

Allow to fry for another 3 to 4 minutes or until golden.  Then remove to cutting board or plate (I prefer a cutting board, and you'll soon see why!)

With the bottom or a glass, flatten the plantain chunks.  (This is why you want the pieces to be about 1-inch...  They flatten easier because they got all cooked in the oil!  You can tell a couple of mine were just too big and didn't cook in the middle!  Still worked out, but not as nice.)

Return the squashed plantains to the oil and cook 2-3 minutes on each side.

Remove to a paper towel-lined plate to drain off excess oil and salt according to your preference.  Then enjoy them!

We don't fry much in our household, but these are just so yum, and every once in a while, I get a hankering for them.  So I make them :)!  And you should too!

Roasted Buttercup Squash

This year we planted a lot of squash.  Of a lot of different varieties:  crookneck, yellow zucchini, green zucchini, acorn, and buttercup.  Not to be confused with butternut...  I'd never heard of buttercup squash before, but we figured we'd plant it and see what happened.  It's a winter squash. 

Well, we got 2 buttercup squash from our plant.  And the easiest way to eat it is by slicing it in half, roasting it, and adding butter and brown sugar.  So that's just what we did :).

In case you're like me and don't trust yourself to cook without some sort of recipe...  Here's how it goes:

Preheat oven to 350.  Cut squash in half and scoop out and discard pulp and seeds.  Place cut-side down on a baking dish (I covered mine with foil because I have a lazy streak).  Bake for 30 minutes.  Flip over.  Place 1/2 tablespoon butter in each half.  Sprinkle 1 tablespoon brown sugar over meat.  Bake an additional 25 minutes.  Enjoy!

My husband eats the skin...  I don't.  I just eat the flesh stuff inside. 

This is what a buttercup squash looks like.  They aren't particularly large -- this was the larger of the two we got.  I thought it tasted good, but we probably won't plant these again...  We just didn't get as much as we'd hoped we would from the plant.

We served this as a side dish to buffalo chicken pasta salad and garden zucchini cakes.  Because I love those two items :).

Loaded Baked Potato Salad

In keeping with my no-bake summer tradition (except on the days that don't get out of the 70s :)), I decided to make a potato salad.  When I told my husband what we would be having for dinner that night, he did a double-take when I said potato salad. 

See, I'm not a huge fan of potato salad.  Mostly because I don't like mayonnaise much.  So I never made potato salad.  But, while perusing Pinterest one day, I came across this recipe.  And it looked interesting.  So I decided to try it.

Just so you know, I liked it.  I wish I'd had all the ingredients (I was lacking the chives and the cilantro) just so I could taste it as it was written.  But I was too lazy to walk to the garden and clip chives.  And my THRIVE Cilantro hadn't arrived yet (it came later that evening), and I don't like wasting fresh cilantro, so I don't buy the fresh stuff anymore.  Thus, I made the potato salad without those two things.  In the future, I will be sure to add them.  Because I'm pretty sure they would only make it more awesome.

To be fair, I'll also include my husband's opinion.  When he got home that night, he said, "So this is potato salad?"  Hahaha.  Well, he is used to his mom's potato salad, which has egg and black olives and pickles in it.  Her potato salad is good.  I like that she doesn't use much mayonnaise.  But I tried something new.  And my sweetie wasn't expecting that.  He said, "It's not bad, it's just not what I was expecting."

I think my favorite part was the ranch dip dry mix sprinkled on the potatoes after boiling.  Just gave them an awesome flavor!  And I only used 1/2 a packet, rather than the full packet called for in the original recipe.  So, without further ado, here's the recipe as I made it:

6 medium baking potatoes (4 peeled, 2 with skin on), cut into 1" chunks
1/2 package ranch dip mix
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
2 teaspoons cilantro (I omitted)
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup to 1/3 cup bacon bits
2 tablespoons chopped chives (I omitted)
garlic powder to taste
pepper to taste

Cover potatoes in a pot with about 1" water.  Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to simmer.  Cook about 10 minutes or until fork tender. 

Spread out on a baking sheet and sprinkle immediately with ranch.  With a spoon, turn potatoes over and try to stir them together to evenly coat with ranch mix.  Allow them to cool (either on the counter or in the refrigerator).

In a large bowl, mix together sour cream, mayonnaise, mustard, cilantro, garlic powder, pepper.  When potatoes are cool, add them to the sour cream mixture and mix well to coat potatoes.  Stir in cheddar cheese and bacon bits.  Sprinkle with chives.  Enjoy!

Tomato Biscuit & Cheese

As I mentioned here, I got this recipe from my mother-in-law.  It is a great way to enjoy fresh garden tomatoes when the tomato harvest is on!  And ours definitely is!!!  In fact, last night's dinner featured tomatoes and zucchini from our garden.  I made these plus the zucchini garden cakes.  It was delicious! 

This recipe is relatively simple -- and it's one of those I like to call "accordion" recipes.  You can make more or less depending on how many people you are feeding.  There is something about the blend of flavors that really makes this a refreshing and delicious meal, in my opinion.  I'd never had it before I tried it last summer when all our tomatoes were ripening.  But now that our tomatoes are ripening again, I made sure to put it on our list (particularly since the temperatures have been in the 70s the last several days -- you know my rule about heating up the house with the oven in summer!).  So I'm hoping the temperatures drop while we still have fresh tomatoes.  Because I want to make this again :).  (Especially since my sweetie came home from work last night and gobbled up 6 of them ;) -- leaving none for leftovers!  I can't say I blame him, though...  He works 10 hours and doesn't eat lunch.  Poor guy.)

You could probably enjoy this as a side dish as well, but we usually use it as a main dish -- meatless style!  I always use cottage cheese, which has a decent amount of protein, so I feel like we get what we need.

I made the biscuits from scratch, though you can use English Muffins or other pre-prepared biscuits.  The biscuit recipe I used can be found here on my THRIVEing Nilla blog, since I used THRIVE butter powder to make the biscuits.

And here is the recipe for Tomato Biscuit & Cheese:


8 English Muffins or biscuits or home-made recipe of biscuits already baked
8 slices of tomato (thickness of your choice, but probably not super-thick as you want them to get hot and cooked somewhat in the cooking stage)
salt, pepper, oregano, and basil to taste
1/2 cup cottage cheese (or sour cream or plain yogurt -- I always use cottage cheese)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 to 3 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Place biscuits (or English Muffins) on a baking sheet.  Place a slice of tomato on each biscuit.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper, oregano, and basil.

Mix cottage cheese and mayonnaise.  Distribute evenly over tomato slices.  Sprinkle all with cheese.  (If you push the biscuits together, you can keep the cheese sprinkling more contained :)).

Bake at 450 degrees until the tomato is hot and cheese is melted (I did about 5 to 7 minutes).  *You can also microwave these individually until the tomato is hot and cheese is melted.

Linda's Pasta Salad

So, if there is an official name for this pasta salad, I don't know what it is.  Thus, when I got the recipe years ago, I named it after the awesome lady who shared it with me.  And now I just call it Linda's Pasta Salad.

And it's way yummy.  You could probably add chicken to it, if you want to make it a main dish.  I pretty much always make it as a side dish, though.

3 cups cooked and cooled pasta (colorful rotini is especially eye-pleasing, but I always just have plain elbow)
1/2 of a large red onion, diced small
1 cucumber, cut into small pieces
1 to 2 tomatoes (depending on size), diced
1/4 cup Italian salad dressing
1/4 cup mayonnaise
Seasoning salt to taste

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  Cover and marinate 2 hours overnight.  Serve cold.  Serves 6 to 8.

Added bonus is that I get to use a cucumber from my garden!

Garden Zucchini Cakes

If you've ever grown zucchini in a garden...  You know it's a plentiful crop!  Very plentiful!  I have definitely found a variety of ways to cook and enjoy zucchini.  But, even so, I still end up shredding and freezing a lot to use throughout the year for zucchini bread and zucchini brownies.  And I'm okay with that!  Yumm-o!

But during the summer, we try to enjoy our zucchini fresh and in a variety of ways.  Which led me to finding this recipe on Pinterest.

The recipe is delicious.  Even my toddler likes the zucchini cakes!  So here it is (with my changes):

2 cups shredded zucchini
2 eggs
1 cup Panko breadcrumbs (I used unseasoned, because that's what I had)
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoon Creole seasoning (Tony Cachere's brand)
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
2 tablespoons flour

Heat skillet over medium heat.  Spray with cooking spray (or use a small amount of olive oil).  Add all ingredients into a large bowl and mix together until well blended.  Form the mixture into patties.  When the pan is to temperature, place the patties in and cook 3 to 4 minutes on each side.  Serve as soon as possible so they are warm.  I got 9 zucchini cakes from this recipe.

*Original recipe claims they can be frozen and heated up later.  Wrap individually in plastic wrap and then place all of them in a freezer storage bag and freeze.  That and re-heat in a skillet or microwave.  I'm currently trying this, so hopefully it works well!

Yum!

I served these along-side a buffalo chicken pasta salad using THRIVE seasoned chicken strips.  Delicious!

Copy-Cat Panera Mac and Cheese

Two things I want to say right away:

1.  I wish I had a different colored bowl to help the mac and cheese really pop.  Because I'm not a fancy food photographer (though I wouldn't mind being ;)...).
2.  I've never actually been to Panera and had their mac and cheese.  So I cannot say if this is a good copy-cat or not.  It's times like these when I need to have my dear friend Stacy living nearby so she can be my taste-tester.  Not only has she eaten the real thing, she also has exquisite taste in things like cheese.

That said...  I have been doing a lot of searching Pinterest for stove-top recipes for summer-time.  And, because I'm a huge macaroni and cheese enthusiast, I am always drawn to pins for macaroni and cheese -- of pretty much any sort.  But when I saw this was a copycat of Panera's...  Well, I've heard the scuttlebutt from Stacy about that stuff.  So I knew I needed to try it.  And we did.

I definitely like that the recipe doesn't call for hard-to-find ingredients.  True, they aren't all ingredients I have on hand all the time, so I did have to do some shopping (mostly for the cheese), but they weren't difficult to find.

Also, the recipe was easy.  And I followed it almost exactly, except for the type of pasta I used (I used shell pasta) and I used salted butter, so omitted the salt.

Here's the recipe:

16 oz pipette pasta or other small pasta shape
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups milk, heavy cream, or half-and-half
4 oz white American cheese, chopped or torn into pieces
8 oz extra sharp white Vermont cheddar, shredded
2 tsp - 1 tbsp Dijon mustard (adjust according to your tastes)
1 tsp Kosher salt
1/4 tsp hot sauce (like Frank's)

In a large stockpot, cook pasta according to package directions. Drain well.

While the pasta cooks, melt the butter in a 4-quart sauce pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and has started to bubble, whisk in the flour; cook for 1 1/2 minutes whisking constantly. Gradually whisk in the milk until no lumps remain. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook milk mixture, whisking frequently, until it thickens and bubbles, about 8 minutes.

Remove sauce pan from the heat and by the handful, stir in the cheeses allowing all of the cheese to melt into the sauce before adding more. Stir in the mustard, salt, and hot sauce. Return the sauce pan to the heat and stir in the pasta. Be sure to stir up the sauce from the bottom of the sauce pan and thoroughly coat all of the pasta with sauce. Cook for 1-2 minutes over medium-low heat until heated through. Serve hot in bowls with spoons.

(Again, recipe is from http://www.smells-like-home.com)

My thoughts:  This is definitely rich and creamy.  And very, very filling.  The recipe claims to serve 4.  Often, in our house, that just isn't the case.  I love macaroni and cheese.  And my husband can eat a lot (though I have no idea where he puts it).  But this is definitely a macaroni and cheese that literally serves 4, in my opinion.  I was beyond full after 1 bowl (the one pictured).  My husband had seconds, but not a huge helping.  And I put plenty away for leftovers.  My toddler loved this too, but didn't eat a lot of it -- again, I think because it's so filling.  She ate everything I gave her happily and excitedly, but didn't want more food when she was done. 

I honestly don't know if I'll make this recipe again.  It was good.  But it may have been a little too rich for me (I'm glad I used whole milk and not heavy cream!).  I will be trying to try the Panera, though...  Just so I know how close this recipe is :).