CEIMB: Oven Baked Onion Rings

The recipe this week was chosen by Meet me in the Kitchen. These onion rings were FABULOUS! Think bloomin onion without the sick greasy feeling you have after eating it! Seriously, these were so good and I will definitely be making them again. The recipe can be found here. Give them a try. I think you will love them too!

CEIMB: Aromatic Noodles with Peanut Lime Sauce

The recipe this week was chosen by Supplicious. Head on over to Ms. Bethorama's blog to check out what she and the other CEIMB'ers thought about this dish!

As for me, I am a sucker for Asian noodle dishes. I LOVE THEM! Seriously, love them! This one was no exception, however I think it would be better cold -- and it was definitely better the next day.

I followed the recipe for the sauce -- adding slightly more soy sauce than called for as well as a couple of shakes of sesame oil. Next time around, I may reduce the peanut butter because I thought it was a little too peanut buttery.

I played a little substitution game on the vegetables. I used broccoli, carrots, edamame and snow peas. I tossed in some green onions along with the peanuts at the end. I added some grilled chicken and served it with wheat linguine and thought it was great! I will definitely be making this again. Thanks for picking a great recipe this week!

CEIMB: Shrimp Rolls

The recipe this week was chosen by MacDuff of Lonely Sidecar. I really wasn't very excited about this recipe because shrimp salad typically is not my favorite. But I decided to give the recipe a go nonetheless.

I used shrimp and had the seafood guy steam them with lots and lots of Old Bay seasoning. The shrimp were pretty darn good! I diced the shrimp up for the salad and added fresh dill, cilantro and garlic to the recipe. I also only used about 1 TBS of mayo.

I served the shrimp salad on a toasted french bread roll (the hot dog bun just isn't up my alley when I think of good bread!)

Overall, the salad was okay. I'm very glad I added the fresh herbs, otherwise it would have been really bland. But after this recipe, I think I am sticking with chicken salad being the only meat salad that I like.

CEIMB: Breakfast Cookies a/k/a The Substitution Game

The recipe this week was chasen by Natalie of Whats for Supper. I have been so busy lately that I was planning to skip this recipe. But, after some last minute convincing, I decided to give it a go. Besides, its a holiday weekend and cookies are acceptable...right???

However, I really didn't have a number of the ingredients called for in the recipe and I really refused to buy them! I mean after all -- is pastry flour that different from regular flour? I think not! So I took a gamble and substituted a number of the ingredients. I substituted:

wheat flour for the pastry flour
light brown sugar instead of dark brown sugar

instant oats instead of regular oats (oh crap, as I am typing this I am realizing that I completely forgot the oats!) Oh well!

Vanilla Almond Special K for the bran cereal

craisins instead of the nuts (since i already had almonds from the cereal)

Overall, I thought the cookies turned out really well. Granted, I have no idea what they are supposed to taste like given all the substitutions and the forgetting of the oats! I am just glad I have some cookies -- because making these cookies was really a disaster.

How was making cookies a disaster you say. Well -- in digging for the nutmeg, I knocked a number of other spices out of the cabinet and the glass bottles they were in broke (mess # 1). I then managed to spill just about an entire bottle of vanilla down the front and corner of my lower kitchen cabinets (mess # 2). Then there was the whole baby food debacle. I bought the smallest jar of carrot baby food I could find. Yes, there were smaller jars, but they were all some horrific combination of fruits and veggies like: carrots and bananas; carrots and green beans; carrots and sweet potatoes. YUCK! Now I know why babies are always spitting their food out. Those combinations sound just plain gross.

Anyways - back to the small jar of baby food. The recipe said 1/4 cup (1 small jar) of baby food. Well the jar of baby food I bought was 4 oz. Is it just me or is that 1/2 a cup? So I debated for a long time whether to use the entire jar of baby food as the recipe said or just half of it which would have been 1/4 cup or 2 oz. Finally, I just said screw it and dumped the entire jar of baby food in the bowl. I don't understand anything "baby"!!!

But, I did finally manage to make the cookies. Here they are. They were yummy -- however I don't know how I feel about eating them for breakfast. They did make a nice after dinner dessert though!

Thanks Natalie for picking this recipe this week. I will definitely be making my substituted version of these cookies again.