May YBR @ Spice Foodie

This month I am participating in Your Best Recipe on Spicie Foodie.  Please take a look to see some amazing dishes.  Each month participants submitted what they felt was their best recipe in that month.

Spicy Fish Tacos with Creamy Chilli and Cilantro Sauce

We really enjoyed the fish tacos I made a few weeks ago.  Recently I saw another recipe on Cookin' Canuck that looked so good.  I wanted to give this a try because it looked like it would be more spicy than my first try at fish tacos.  As usual I increased the spices.  These were very quick to make.  The Creamy Green Chilli and Cilantro Sauce was really good.  The recipe called for 2 oz of green chillies.  In Canada they don't put ounces on our tins.  I figured this would be half a tin.  I added this and gave it a taste....wasn't spicy at all.  I tasted the green chillies and they weren't hot so I added the whole tin and I was so glad I did!  You can top these with whatever you like.  We had lettuce, tomatoes, green onions and some Simple Guacamole.  I also loved that the sauce used all low fat ingredients (which I would have done anyways).

Simple Guacamole

I have one recipe for Guacamole on this blog and it turned out good but it involved more chopping than I would like.  I adapted this recipe from one I found on Simply Recipes.  What I love about this recipe is that there is very little chopping and it is very fast to make.  I used my chopper to make this but you could also use a food processor.  We had these with some fish tacos I made (a new recipe which I will post soon...)

Strawberry Cake

Now that warm weather is here the grocery store has lots of sweet strawberries.  I had bought 2 packets from Longo's....then I went to my mom's and she had bought a packet for Hasan...so now my house is overflowing with strawberries.  I hate it when food goes bad so I knew I had to do something with them or else I was going to end up with some rotting strawberries.  I found a recipe at Smitten Kitchen which was perfect because it used strawberries, had no vanilla (I am all out of vanilla powder) and it used 4 egg whites (I had exactly 4 egg whites sitting in my fridge).  I replaced the butter with margarine and made a low fat cream cheese frosting.  I made half the recipe because the whole recipe was way too much for our family.  I didn't have cake flour so I just used all-purpose but reduced the amount.  I should have sifted it but I was lazy.  Next time I would do a proper substitution to make the cake less dense.  I omitted the food colouring.  The original recipe uses frozen strawberries which would be a great idea when strawberries aren't in season.  This was so yummy...I am really looking forward to making it again!

Easy Thin Crust Pizza

When my brother and I were in public school we always came home to eat lunch.  Once in awhile my mom would make pizza.  When we were walking in the hallway to our apartment we could smell the pizza...hmmmm...that was my favorite lunch.  I've always heard that pizza is so easy to make and I've been wanting to give it a try.  This was not my first try.  I tried a recipe with proofing the yeast..my dough didn't rise and it turned out very dense.  This was not my first bad experience with yeast.  I thought maybe I should just give up on yeast and search for a yeastless recipe.  I found one and that turned out very dense and was not good.  After searching the web I decided I should check out Smitten Kitchen.  She always has great recipes.  I found this recipe and it turned out great.  There is no proofing of the yeast.  Just mix it all together!!!!  This makes a thin crust pizza.  I love thin crust but the problem is I end up eating way to much.  You can double the recipe (I haven't had the chance to try that).  (UPDATE: I tried to double this recipe and it didn't turn out well)  I've made this twice.  Once with all all-purpose flour and the next time I replaced 1/2 cup with whole wheat flour.  I preferred the one with whole wheat.  I didn't really make any changes to this recipe.  The original uses all-purpose but says you can replace up to half with whole wheat.

When I made this my dough didn't double in size and I was getting all upset with myself knowing I screwed up somewhere.  But I continued on and made the pizza.  I was so surprised how good it turned out!  I put olives on half the pizza because my son loves olives...I don't.  He cannot understand why I don't like olives.

Low Fat Fudge Brownies

I love finding recipes that taste great and are low fat.  I found this recipe at Obsessed with Baking.  I made a few minor changes to the recipe.  I used semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet, reduced the vanilla to 1 tsp (since that is all I had) and I used one egg white.  This is originally a Cook's Illustrated recipe.  So far I have had good results with Cook's Illustrated recipes so I was eager to give this recipe a try.  At first I didn't like this brownie very much.  I don't like coffee and I could taste the coffee.  I took these over to my parents.  My mom really liked them.  The next day I couldn't believe how good these brownies tasted.  I find some chocolate baked goods really do taste better the next day.  I was so sad I only had 4 brownies left.

Mushroom Risotto

We really enjoyed the Spring Green Risotto I made a little while ago.  I had some arborio rice left and thought I would try to make a mushroom risotto.  I used the Porcini and Cremini Mushroom Orzo "Risotto" as a guideline.  It turned out really well and my 1 year old son loved it!  The next day it held up much better than the Spring Green Risotto.  I didn't put any cream cheese in it which helped it to not turn into a big pile of mush the next day.  I'm looking forward to trying more risotto recipes but it is something I wouldn't make regularly since it has a lot of starch.

Beef with Broccoli Lower Sodium Version

I am always trying to make our dinners more healthy so it can be something we can enjoy over and over.  A while ago I made Beef with Broccoli which was so yummy but it was loaded with sodium.  I wanted to try this again but reducing the soya sauce.  I cut the soya sauce in half.  It turned out very good but the original was still above and beyond this.  In this version, the orange flavor was more pronounced.  I love how quick this is to make.  This is a dish I can make regularly.

McCain Purely Potatoes

For the last few years I have been participating with BzzAgents.  It is a word-of-mouth marketing network.  Anyone can join.  You get offered campaigns where you get to try new products for free. Then you submit reports about all your conversations regarding that product.  Your comments can be good or negative but most important it must be honest.  It is a great way to try new products and spread the word about them.  My latest campaign is for McCain Purely Potatoes.  You can find them in the frozen section of your grocery store.  The potatoes are already washed, peeled and diced.  They come in sweet potato or white potato chunks.  You can put the whole packet in the microwave to make mashed potatoes or roast them in the oven.  I picked up the sweet potato packet.  I was only able to find them at Longo's.  Wal-Mart didn't have them.  They were pretty expensive for the amount you get...around $4 for one pack.

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

I've seen a few recipes for Cookies and Cream Cupcakes.  My son loves Oreo cookies so I thought this would be a good recipe to try.  I settled on a recipe I found at Annie's Eats because it had actual Oreos in the cake and it just looked so good.  I made half of this recipe and I replaced the butter with margarine.  I also made a low fat version of the cream cheese frosting.  It ended up being very thin and I wasn't able to pipe it.  It was also too much since I wasn't piping.  I found the cupcakes way too sweet.  My dad called me the next day and told me they were way too sweet and his sugar had gone up.  The recipe called for putting half an Oreo at at bottom and then putting the batter on top.  I loved this idea and the way it looked.  But when eating I wasn't too fond of it.  I thought it was way too many cookies in the batter.  So I made another batch and reduced the cookies by half and I didn't put the half Oreo at the bottom.  I also coarsley chopped them so the cookies were more distrubuted.  In the first batch I broke the cookies into 4-5 pieces.  They turned out much better.  I still have to work on a good low fat cream cheese frosting but I've posted what I did below.