Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!  

I hope y'all have a great time with your families today.  


Remember, getting in a workout today is easy and it can be a family event!  Take a walk around the neighborhood after dinner or, run around with the kids hunting for those eggs!

Easter Recipes

From:  Wide Wallpapers

2014 is a year of change.  Everything is changing.  I have gotten my certifications, Sunny starts school this year, I'm doing a fitness competition.  So many big changes!  After making the same holiday dinners for the past 3 years I've decided that since this is a year of change I'm also changing all my holiday dinners.  Easter is the first holiday that has food associated with it so, it starts here!

So, with that being said, here is the 2014 Easter menu.  Recipes follow the menu.

Main Dish
Simple baked Cobia

Grain
Herbed brown rice 

Vegetables
Roasted carrots
Asparagus (if the price isn't too high)
Salad

Bread
Yeast rolls

Dessert
Meringue nests with whipped cream and berries

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Foil Wrapped Cobia

Ingredients
2 lb Cobia Fillet
Seasonings of your choice

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Spray a large piece of aluminum foil with pan spray and lay fish down.
3. Spray again with pan spray and season then tightly wrap foil around fish.
4. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes until the fish is done.
5. Rest for 5-10 minutes before serving

Roasted Carrots

adapted from:  Ina Garten's Roasted Carrots

Ingredients
1 lb carrots, peeled
seasonings of your choice

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Cut carrots into 1 1/2 inch chunks
3. Spray baking sheet with pan spray, lay out carrots in a single layer and spray them.
4. Season to taste
5. Roast for 20 minutes until brown and tender

Herbed Brown Rice Pilaf

Adapted from:  Herbed Brown Rice Pilaf
8 servings
Calories:  84.5
Fat: 0.5 g
Sodium:  592 mg
Potassium:  65.8 g
Carbs:  18 g
Protein:  1.6 g

Ingredients
1 small onion, diced
2 cups brown rice
5 cups vegetable broth or water, warm
2 T minced garlic
2 t thyme
2 t parsley
6 green onions, sliced

Directions

1. Saute onion in a medium saucepan until translucent.
2. Spray pan again with cooking spray, dump in rice, and coat with pan spray.  
3. Pour in broth, thyme, garlic, and parsley
4. Cover pot, turn stove to medium, and cook for 40 minutes. 
5. Turn off heat and let stand 10 minutes.
6. Fluff with a fork and stir in green onions

Meringue Nests

Ingredients
4 large egg whites
.5 cup sugar
.25 t cream of tartar
food coloring
8 oz tub of Cool Whip {you won't use all of it}
6 cups of your favorite berries, fresh or frozen {thaw if using frozen}


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees
2. Spray 2 baking sheets with pan spray and line with parchment
3. With an electric mixer beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until the whites reach soft peaks
4. Add in sugar and continue whisking until stiff and glossy.
5. Drop 4 mounds of meringue on each baking sheet and use the back of a spoon to make an indentation in it and spread them out to about 4 inches {you can also use a piping bag and pipe your nests}
6. Bake meringues about 1.5 hours, until they are dry, rotating halfway through.
7.  Cool completely then fill with Cool Whip and top with fresh berries.

Easter Menu Post

 
 Happy Easter!  Yesterday was the community Easter egg hunt and the girls had a blast!  They came away with a ton of candy!  Here are all my Easter recipes for today.  I was hoping to have these up before today so y'all  would have ideas.  But, due to school and kids being so time consuming I couldn't. 


Oven Poached Salmon
2 lb salmon 
2 cups water
any herbs and spices you like

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Grease baking dish
3. Place salmon in baking dish and season
4. Pour water around salmon
5. Poach for 12-15 minutes until done

Peas w/onions and mushrooms
16 oz bag of peas
1 bag pearl onions
16 oz mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 shallot
1 T minced garlic

Directions

1. Diced onions, and shallots
2. Slice mushrooms
3. Sautee mushrooms, onions, garlic and shallots until slightly brown
4. Boil peas and onions according to package directions, drain
5. Mix together peas, pearl onions, and your mushroom mixture

Asparagus
Directions

1. Steam for approximately 15 minutes until done to your liking

Banana Dream Mousse

2 envelopes Dream Whip
2.75 cups skim milk, divided
1 tsp vanilla
2 small packages Fat Free Sugar Free Banana Cream Jello Pudding mix  (you honestly can you whatever flavor jello you'd like.  I've made chocolate,vanilla, and cookies and cream before
2 bananas, sliced

Instructions

1. Beat together Dream Whip, 1 cup milk and vanilla until soft peaks form
2. Add remaining milk and pudding mixes.  Beat on low until combined then beat on high for about 2 minutes (make sure to scrape your bowl occasionally)
3. Pour filling ontop of bananas and refrigerate for 4 hours.

 And here's a link to last year's recipes:  Easter Recipes 2012

Easter food

Easter eggs the kids made

Happy Easter!  I hope y’all are having a great day.  I know I am. 

Mr. Amazing had to work all day so I’m saving him a plate.  Even with my dietary restrictions I love cooking for the holidays.  Actually I think I love it more now than before because it’s a challenge.  I am treating myself today because I’m allowing myself to have salmon for dinner.  The rest of the meal is 100% fat free. 

I was super excited because I found fat free frozen dinner rolls.  I normally make my own dinner rolls to go with special occasion meals but I really didn’t feel like doing that on top of all the other cooking I was going to have to do.  When Kay and I went to the store to get the stuff for dinner I looked at the labels on all the dinner rolls.  I happened across a fat free one.  They’re by Alexia.   They’re amazing and you can’t even tell that they’re fat free.

Here’s my menu.  Click on the dish to take you to the recipe

Main Dish – Salmon

                 Spinach Soufflé  (for my vegetarian sister and her boyfriend)

Sides – Roasted baby potatoes 

                Asparagus  (I just steamed this, nothing special)

                Succotash

                Rolls

Dessert – Trifle

Strawberry Trifle

Dessert was super amazing.  This trifle is my go to dessert when I want something fat free but semi-fancy.  This one ended up not being 100% fat free though.  I used Dream Whip and I realized after the fact that it’s not fat free.  Next time I’m going to mix the pudding with Cool Whip or maybe even try using a meringue mixed with the pudding.  Or just plain meringue would probably be awesome too.  My trifle had angel food cake, pudding, strawberries and strawberry jam (both bought at the farmer’s market last Friday.)

Recipe:

Ingredients

1 box angel food cake

2 large packages pudding (I used simple vanilla)

2 packages of Dream Whip (or you could use fat free Cool Whip)

1 pint berries of your choice (I used strawberries but, any berry would be good)

 1 jar jam or preserves (you can either match flavors with the fruit or do a complimentary fruit)

Directions

11)    Bake cake according to box mix

22)      Make Dream Whip pie recipe

33)      Put Dream Whip pudding mixture in fridge to rest

44)      Spoon some jam into a bowl and microwave about 15 seconds just to thin it out

55)      Tear/ cut cake into pieces after it’s cool

66)      In a pretty bowl layer it all

a.       Cake

b.      Pudding

c.       Berries

d.      Drizzle of jam

77)      Repeat until you reach the top of the bowl

This is simple, and semi quick to throw together.  If you don’t want it to be fat free you can use brownies, chocolate pudding or mousse and chocolate ganache.  This is the type of dessert that you can make to YOUR likings.  Search the internet for trifle and you’ll get some great recipes. 

How was your Easter?