Yummy Fish Tacos

This weeks Taco Tuesday was on the healthier side with fish tacos served.  I used Alaskan Cod for the fish cooking it with butter, ( I used "I Can't Believe it's not Butter Light- this is actually the only butter I ever use) fresh lime juice, lime zest, fresh garlic, pepper, and a dash of salt.

The tacos alco consisted of corn tortillas, green cabbage, cilantro, corn, and cheddar cheese

I also made a special sauce to go with our fish tacos with included light sour cream, lime zest, lime juice, and hot sauce ( I used Tapatio) It was amazing!

All put together....

Some Thanksgiving highlights.....

For Thanksgiving my husband and I went to Sonoma to visit his parents.  I cooked the appetizers: Pumpkin Spice Dip and a baked Spinach Artichoke Dip.

The pumpkin spice dip was made with Cool Whip, Greek Yogurt, Pumpkin Puree, Pumpkin Pie Spice, Cinnamon, Vanilla Extract and Nutmeg.  I served it with sliced apples and figs.

The spinach artichoke dip was made with light sour scream, reduced fat cream cheese, reduced fat mozzarella, fresh spinach, artichoke hearts, fresh garlic, parmesan cheese, lemon zest, nutmeg, pepper, and a dash of salt.

It was such a hit, that I didn't even get a chance to snap a picture of the final product before everyone dug in!

I also made Green Bean Casserole, and Cranberry Pear Sauce for dinner.

This dish is VERY simple, but amazingly good.  Just follow the directions on the French's Fried onion container!

Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the cranberry pear sauce but it was made with fresh cranberries, fresh pears, sugar, and water.  This was a big hit, everyone wanted seconds and thirds!

I loved visiting in Sonoma, it is definitly a different expereince from Southern California.  While we were there we did some wine tasting, and drove around absorbing in the scenery.  The colors of the changing leaves are absolutely amazing.  This was a fun adventure!

*Recipes for the Pumpkin Spice Dip and Cranberry Pear Sauce are from http://www.skinnytaste.com/



Double Decker

Last week Taco Tuesday was celebrated with home-made Double Decker Tacos!  I started it off by making home-made guacamole.

Ingrediants: 

2 avocados, cayenne pepper, hot pepper seasoning, salt, pepper, and salsa.

I used fat free green chili and lime refired beans for the middle layer

We made our tacos with extra leam ground turkey, and seasoned it with taco mix.

Then it was time to build our tacos

I topped the tacos with cheddar cheese, fat free sour cream, cherry tomatoes, black beans, corn and cilantro

Pumpkin Martini

This week we wanted to do a not so sweet martini, but I still wanted to do one that was kind of Halloween themed.  I thought about how delicious the zucchini-tini was, and came up with a recipe to duplicate that, but using pumpkin instead.

We used the same ingrediants- gin, saki, simple syrup, and then used "pumpkin water."

Getting the pumpkin water was a bit more challenging than it was with the zucchini.

It took us a few tries, but we managed to get enough juice out of the pumpkin to make it work!  We ended us using about half of a three pound pumpkin.


For the garnish I used a few of the pumpkin seeds, and then I cut the top of the pumpkin in half, cut some slits and put them on the rim of our glasses!

It did not taste quite as good as the zucchini-tini, but very close.  It was fun to try something new, and to put our own creative twist on a favorite recipe!

Last weekend we went up to my in-laws, and they sent us back with a bunch of home grown squash.  So I came up with another creative way to utilize these and made squash tacos for Taco Tuesday!  It may sound odd, but trust me, they were delicious!! I steamed the squash until tender, and then let them continue to cook in red enchilada sauce for 10 minutes, and that was all it took!

Fright Night-tini

Last week was EXTREMELY busy so I am a bit behind on my posts!  Halloween is almost here, and it is one of my favorite holidays!!  In honor of this amazing holiday, we did a Halloween themed martini, called Fright Night.  I have a collection of hand-painted Lolita martini glasses, and each one comes with a recipe on the bottom, and this was one of them!

The recipe is equal parts vodka and hazelnut liquor.  That's it!  Super simple!

Just shake the two ingrediants, and pour into a frozen martini glass.

Now time for the garnish.  In keeping with the halloween theme, we choose candy corn as our garnish.

Normally I HATE candy corn but these were flavored candy corn one flavor being caramel.  It was definitely an improvement on the traditional candy corn, although still not my favorite.  Candy corn is very fragile as I found out, which made it very difficult to do as I had planned which was to cut a slit in them, and slide them onto the rim of the glass.  I was successful with one, (botton pic) and the rest just crumbled apart. 

I also decided to throw some of the candy corn directly into the glass, which was good in theory, but the longer they stayed, the sweeter the martini got, until it became too sweet for me to drink!

Here is my final product.

And because I slacked on my posts last week, here are some of my culinary highlights from the week.

Pinto Bean and Chicken Chili:

Ingrediants:

Chicken seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic seasoning, two cans of pinto beans, chicken broth, cayenne pepper, green chili peppers and a jalepeno.

This was delicious!  One tip- be sure to wash your hands throughly after cutting up the jalepeno!!! I did not do that, and ended up getting some in my eye, not a great feeling.

Brown Rice and Black Bean Casserole

This was our Taco Tuesday dinner, and was also very delicious!

Ingrediants:

Chicken, black beans, brown rice, cheddar cheese, green chili peppers, cayenne pepper, cilanto, tomatoes, red onion, lime zest and sour cream.

Cheese and Cracker Appetizer

Brie Cheese, Irish Aged Cheddar, and Pepper Boursin.  This appetizer was so good, it also ended up being our dinner!

My first home-made pumpkin spice latte!

Taco Tuesday (with a twist)

My husband and I love Taco Tuesday.  I often like to change it up a bit, and do different Mexican themed dinners when we get tired of plain old tacos.  This week we did tacos in a shell, a pasta shell that is, giving the traditional taco a twist. 

Original Ingrediants:

lean ground beef, cream cheese, pasta shells, butter, taco sauce, shredded cheddar cheese, shredded jack cheese,  crushed tortilla chips. sour cream, and chili powder.

My Ingrediants:

extra lean ground turkey, pasta shells, hot taco seasoning, diced green chili peppers, tomoatoes, olives, red onion, green onion, cilantro, lime juice, lime zest, red enchilada sauce, shredded low fat cheddar cheese, shredded pepper jack cheese, and fat-free sour cream.

After I cooked the pasta shells, I loaded them up and put it all together in my casserole dish

While this was cooking away in the oven I prepared my sour cream which I decided to jazz up with lime juice and lime zest.

And Wa-lah, the finished product:

And there is our twist on the taco, the lime zest sour scream has a very refreshing light taste, and complements this dish very nicely, I would definitely recommend incorporating this.