Healthy Mango and Cherry Oat Muffins

Hi everyone! 

I have not blogged in a long time, and this post will be very short because I am in finals week. Like two weeks ago, on Foodgawker, I came accross a great recipe. It was a recipe for Mango and Cherry Oat Muffins. These muffins are delicious. They are sweet without much added sugar because of the fruit and they are healthy and full of fiber because of the oats. 

Best to-go breakfast! 

I made the muffins last night to have them ready for today in the morning for breakfast. It's the perfect to-go muffin to have for breakfast while studying for finals. Maybe after finals I'll try the recipe with different fruit. Enjoy!

Right out of the oven :) 

Healthy Avocado Cucumber Salmon Sandwich

Hi guys! Next week I am going on spring break! Woo hoo!! That means that I probably shouldn't stuff my face with cake this week. To avoid any unfortunate situation like that, I went to the grocery store today with my roomie. I had a list of healthy things that I wanted to make throughout the week. Since when we got back it was already 7pm and I was STARVING I decided to make a sandwich. Not just a regular sandwich, but an Avocado Cucumber Salmon Sandwich.

Yummy!! 

This sandwich comes together so fast! While you toast the bread, you can make the avocado mash and cut the cucumbers. Then you just layer the avocado on the toast, place the cucumbers on top, a bit of lemon juice, the salmon and you're done! You see how easy it is. So next time you don't have that much time, but still want to eat something delicious and healthy try this sandwich.  :)

Almost ready! 

Lasagna!

Hello hello! This weekend I had like 26 people over at my apartment for a dinner party. I needed to cook something that would be easy to make for everyone, so I decided to make pasta! Since the theme was Italian night it fit in perfectly. The idea of pasta them became LASAGNA! I made two huuuuge lasagnas: chicken lasagna and meat lasagna. 

Chicken Lasagna! 

Never had so many people in my apartment at once! 

To be able to feed so many people, my roommate and I bought those huge hefty aluminum containers to be able to cook the lasagna in. Firstly, because that way there was one less thing to wash and also because no regular Pyrex would be big enough to feed so many people. In El Salvador it is very common to have chicken lasagna and since not everyone likes meat I decided to make a chicken lasagna also. I wanted to recreate the lasagna that my cook back home always made. The problem was that I had the ingredients, but my cook did not give me any of the amounts she used. Since there was no way that I could contact her, I had to wing it! Luckily it turned out so good. It tasted just like the one I always had at home. I also had lots of help from my roommate, Nicole, and from a friend, Gian. If they had not helped me I would have never been able to finish cooking! The only problem we encountered when making this lasagna (other than the fact that we had no exact measurements) was that we did not have enough chicken! Before making the lasagnas I asked my mom how much chicken she thought I would need, she said just one rotisserie chicken (she did not realize how big the containers actually were) we ended up cooking a chicken breast also. Other than that is was so good!

There were not enough chairs!

The meat lasagna was easier to make. I made the meat sauce that I always make for spaghetti and just added more sauce. There was also the problem that I did not make enough meat. At first I made 2.25 lbs of meat, but when I started putting the lasagna together, well it jsut wasn't enought. I had to quickly make the last pound of meat, but it came together and it was also really good! 

Checking the oven :)

Nicole placing the meat lasagna on the table

It really was a great night. We had lots of great company, everyone loved the food and we also had plenty of help cleaning up the kitchen! My roommate and I did not have time to clean the kitchen before everyone came, because I was cooking right to the moment people walked through the door. So it really was great for everyone to help out, and by the end the kitchen was spotless! 

Charlie cleaning! 

Even our floors were cleaned :)

P.S. I started another blog: http://aselfproclaimedfoodie.blogspot.com/

Italian Appetizers

Hi everyone! It is time for another dinner party! Yesterday, my roommate and I invited a whole bunch of people to our apartment for a dinner party. Guess how many people came? 26! That will give me plenty of material for blog posts, so I will start with the appetizers I made to feed all these people. Ohh, and by the way the theme was: Italian. I made three different appetizers. The first were Caprese Skewers, then a sun dried tomato dip, and lastly a white bean dip with crostinis. 

Caprese Skewers

All of these appetizers are very easy to make. For the two dips, there is no chopping involved, you just put everything in the food processor and ready! The sun dried tomato is my own recipe. It is inspired by a sun dried tomato dip that I absolutely love from a restaurant in El Salvador. I liked the dip so much that my mom asked the waiter what it had in it: cream cheese, sun dried tomatoes, black olives, salt and pepper. Well, the first time I tasted it, it did not taste just right so over the years I have been adding this and that and I think that finally, it is just perfect! And lucky you, I'll give you the whole recipe not just half of the ingredients. 

Desi and me eating some dip! 

Since the theme of the night was Italian I needed to have the appetizers to go with the theme, right? Looking for recipes I saw these Caprese Skewers, which are the easiest and healthiest appetizers ever! Just place a cherry tomato and a little ball of mozarella cheese on a wooden skewer, drizzel some olive oil and balsamic vinegar on them and they are ready. Easy right? Problem was that I wanted one more appetizer. Looking over one of the many food blogs that I follow I found a recipe for a White Bean Crostini. Sounds Italian, so it goes on the menu. The best part that it has like 3 ingredients and its very simple, and it looks so fancy! 

So next time you are going to host an Italian themed dinner party, try these appetizers, or if you want to try one and eat it in front of the TV, you can do that too! Enjoy! 

Fastest Dinner Ever!

Hi guys! This is going to be the shortest post to go with the easiest and fastest dinner ever. Its a smoked salmon sandwich.

My roommate has been making it for a while now, but I never really tried it until a few weeks ago. Today I did not have anything else in my fridge so I made it again, added a little bit of pepper and BAM! Next time you are in a pinch, you can try it too!

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

Hi again! This past week was Valentine's Day as you probably noticed. I planned a nice dinner for my boyfriend and me, problem was that I forgot several of the components of the dinner! First of all I forgot to serve the Valentine's Day Wine I was planning on making. I also did not leave enough time to make my original dessert of Strawberry Frozen Yogurt. Instead I drank a glass of wine after dinner and I made the frozen yogurt on Sunday.

I really wanted to make the frozen yogurt soon because I did not want the strawberries to go bad. This frozen yogurt is like no other you have ever had. It tastes just like ice cream! Its fat-free (not going to say sugar free), but it's healthy and delicious! When I hear those two words to describe the same thing I am so happy.

The recipe I found as inspiration for the frozen yogurt is from a European website and so all the ingredients are in grams. I don't really use grams that much. When I went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients I was looking for the 500 g of yogurt that I needed, but it was a small tub of yogurt! If I was going to make yogurt, I was GOING TO MAKE YOGURT, a lot of yogurt. I ended up buying the 32 oz tub of yogurt. If you don't know which one that is, it's the largest tub you can find at the grocery store. That meant that now I had to change the rest of the ingredients, but more on that later.

Once I started making the yogurt I started chopping the strawberries, then I added the sweetened condensed milk and then the yogurt. It made soooo much! It was also a bit too sweet for my taste, so next time I will add a bit less of the sweetener or just more strawberries. The condensed milk gave it a really silky texture that makes it very similar to the texture of ice cream. After this initial batch of frozen yogurt I will definitely try to make other flavors of frozen yogurt or ice cream or sorbet! Hope you like it! :D

Chocolate Covered Strawberries & Valentine's Day Wine

Hi everyone! In the spirit of Valentine's Day I made Chocolate Covered Strawberries to eat as dessert for the dinner I cooked for my boyfriend. The first time that I made chocolate covered strawberries was almost a year ago. I went to visit my sister to attend her graduation and after I made a lunch for our family. The dessert was chocolate covered strawberries. I really love this dessert and it seems so fancy that I thought it was going to be really hard. Lucky for me it was super easy, just two ingredients: strawberries and chocolate!

I made this dessert because it's really good, it's easy, and elegant. You just have to make sure you don't burn the chocolate and you leave enough time to chill the strawberries so that the chocolate can harden. I know the picture below has macaroons on it, but sadly I did not make those. Maybe I'll make some and write about it some other time.

Keeping with the valentines theme, I wanted to make a drink to serve with dinner. The problem was that I did not remember the drink until after dinner, but I still made one for myself. I made a glass of wine, but I put frozen blueberries in it. The blueberries since they are frozen help keep the wine cool as well as makes it a bit sweeter. I also put in a bit of sweet peach juice. You could also add pomegranate juice (as long as its pink/red and sweet, it works). It al tasted really good together.

Happy Valentine's Day!