Orange Poppy Bread

This month's word is oranges. My parents have a couple of orange trees in their backyard that provide a bounty of oranges starting this time of year. We saw them last weekend and they brought over the first bag filled with oranges. Feeling inspired to bake something easy that I can give out to others I thought of making a bread. Which are great for breakfast, desert and snacking.


Ingredients:
4 cups All-purpose flour
2 1/4 cups Splenda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1-1/2 cups orange juice
3 tablespoon grated orange zest
1 cup oil
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 cup dried cranberries

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray and flour 2 9x5 loaf pans.
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. In separate bowl mix eggs, juice, zest and oil. Add poppy seeds, cinnamon and cranberries.
4. Slowly add flour mix until just combined.
5. Divide batter among pans and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
6. Cool on wire rack.

Wrap in plastic wrap or foil. The breads keep well chilled for 1 week or frozen for 1 month. Makes 2 loaves.

Smoked Salmon Lasagna

Sometimes it's not just left overs that inspire a dish. Since we had a Cost Plus credit we decided to use the money toward some of their food items - Alaskan cracked pepper smoked salmon and Gia Russa oven ready Italian whole wheat lasagna. We still have a bit of cottage cheese and mozzarella cheese we're trying to use up so this sounded good.

Ingredients
whole wheat lasagna noodles*
can crushed tomatoes
can tomato paste
seasonings to taste - basil, oregeno, crushed red pepper, garlic, salt, pepper
2 eggs
2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
2 cups low-fat mozzarella cheese
1 Tablespoon parsley
smoked salmon

Steps
1. Preheat oven 400 and spray 9x13 glass baking dish.
2. Mix tomatoes, paste and seasonings.
3. In another bowl mix eggs, cottage cheese, mozzarella cheese, parsley and salmon.
4. Spread thin layer of sauce to cover baking dish.
5. Add lasagna noodles followed by a layer of cheese mix.
6. Repeat layering, ending with cheese mix and a dribble of remaining sauce.
7. Cover with foil and cook 45 - 50 minutes. Let cool about 10 minutes before serving.

Since I had left over lasagna noodles I made an extra with mushroom instead of smoked salmon for my sister and brother-in-law. Since they're caring for newborn twins this is a great dish for reheating for future meals.

*whole wheat cancels the fact that you're eating pasta... at least that's what I tell myself.

Turkey Cranberry Pizza

You may have spotted in my last post one our favorite cooking techniques for using up left overs. That is pizza!

Our pantry, or freezer as in this one, typically contains something for whipping up a pizza. Last week used left over bagels with our 'Sweet & Sour Chicken' for a delicious meal in minutes. Today we were low on bread so we went for our "in case of emergency" Boboli pizza shell to use with our left over turkey and cranberry from yesterday's Christmas Eve feast - which my parents picked up from Ralphs ready-to-go boxed meals to make cooking a breeze. Not to digress to much but this has been a long standing Christmas tradition in Mammoth because it afforded us a gourmet meal that was easy to cook after skiing all day and easily fed a group of hungry skiers for an incredible deal, about $40 bucks.

So to make the very yummy Turkey Cranberry pizza we preheated our oven to 425 and took our thin crust wheat Boboli pizza shell out of the freezer and scraped off the ice. I'm not sure how long they can be kept in the freezer but ours has probably been there about 3 months and still tasted ok.

After de-icing the pizza I spread low-fat cream cheese for the base then shredded turkey followed by the mashed cranberry sauce. A few extra small pieces of turkey and a sprinkle of low-fat mozzarella cheese for the topping. Baked about 15 minutes, the pizza was superb! The cream cheese melted nicely and the mix of turkey, cranberry and cheese was wonderful. The cream cheese and cranberry sauce also gave the pizza a perfect sauce so that it wouldn't be dry. I'm thinking this might make a good combination for a bread pudding. So keep an eye out for Turkey Cranberry Bread Pudding next.

Here's to creative cooking with left overs. By the way the cream cheese and mozzarella cheese had also been left over of course. The only problem as Marc likes to say is you never know when we'll have this set of ingredients again to try to repeat this. But you can always count on the pizza.

Apple Cake

For Chanukah, I made a traditional apple cake with lots of apples. A little less traditional I added cranberries and because I didn't have any honey in our pantry I used maple syrup for the sticky sweet glaze on top.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup Splenda
3 extra large eggs
1/2 cup apple butter
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp. vanilla
2 very large apples (I believe I used janigold)
1/2 cup Splenda
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup cranberries (optional)

Maple Glaze:
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons Splenda
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Steps
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch springform pan with cooking spray.
2. Mix flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Mix together 1 cup Splenda, beaten eggs, apple butter, oil and vanilla.
4. Peel and slice apples into chunks.
5. Sprinkle apples with 1/2 cup Splenda and cinnamon.
6. Stir dry mixture into wet mixture and apples. Add cranberries.
7. Pour into pan.
8. Bake about 60 minutes. Lightly cover pan with foil after 30 minutes.
9. Cool in pan. When it's cool place cake on wire rack.

For glaze: microwave 1/2 cup maple syrup, 2 tablespoons Splenda and 2 teaspoons cinammon.

Sweet & Sour Chicken

Using a Crockpot slow cooks the ingredients, making it very tender. A Crockpot also makes a big pot for serving a lot of people, or leftovers another day. And speaking of leftovers, we made some tasty 'Sweet & Sour Chicken' bagel pizzas with the ingredients accompanied with the sauce which made an excellent tomato-like soup.

Ingredients
2/3 chicken breast, 1/3 chicken thigh - browned
carrots, onions and celery
can vegetable broth
can stewed tomatoes
4 T soy sauce
2 T all spice
2 T pepper
chopped ginger
pineapple
red pepper

Steps
1. Place chicken on bottom of crockpot and top with carrots, onions and celery.
2. Top with broth, tomatoes, soy sauce, all spice, pepper and ginger.
3. Cook on low 8 hours, high 4 hours.
4. When ready, add cut up pineapple and red peppers and cook another 15 minutes.
5. Server over rice.

Egg Bake

This is a great brunch dish for serving lots of people.

Mix together:
8 eggs
1/2 cup non-fat milk
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup shredded smoked salmon
1 cup blanched spinach
basil and pepper to taste

Grease baking dish and bake 425 for 40 min.