What's Cookin' in the Aiduk Kitchen

Grilled fruit pizza.  This was a first and definitely a keeper.  I made it as our treat for an essential oils class I hosted.  The crust was my normal whole wheat no knead bread dough but I added some maple syrup.  The "sauce" was yogurt cheese (leftovers from dripping whey).  Then I topped it with an assortment of fruit and some crumble topping (oats, a little bit of wheat flour, butter, and honey).  It was definitely a hit but I think I'll make it a little sweeter next time.

Grilled steak and peppers.  I really like this steak marinade recently.  But I also just love to throw some salt, pepper, and garlic on it before grill time.  Also.  I think this is the first time I made successful grill marks (hence the picture).  Homemade ranch dressing on the salad.

Bacon.  I usually avoid Oscar Mayer like the plague, mostly because I don't know how they make it and lots of people think it has harmful stuff in it.  Katie has an interesting post about how nitrates are actually not of the devil that is so confusing I'm just like "eh, we don't need it often".  But then I found some prepackaged bacon at Globus that tastes just like the "real thing" (as My Love calls store bought bacon).  So since I trust the Germans to not be killing me slowly with creepy food additives, this bacon has been around more often ;o)

Chocolate chip soaked whole wheat pancakes.  A little fun to celebrate Jesse's four day weekend this month.  Lily asked for pancakes pretty much every morning for a week after this treat hehe.

Salmon cakes.  Lily calls these pancakes, too.  She's a confused little girl ;o)  I'm pretty excited to share this recipe because it's a huge hit around here.  It was a little scary at first because of the bones in the canned salmon.  (I've always avoided those cans because I'm so freaked out by the bones.)  So when she's like "just crush the bones with the back of your fork" I'm like "my husband is going to kill me when he finds out I'm feeding him bones".  (Sorry Babe!)  So anyways, give it a try, they're really good and relatively easy.  My only tip is to use your fingers to crush the bones.  (I know, gross... but with my hands I was able to crush them to smithereens so no one would notice... not my husband, not my kids, not the company that ate them!)  Yay for extra calcium and a cheaper way to eat salmon!

Quinoa.  New to our table.  I think we've only tried it once before now... so I'm looking for ways to use it more.  So far it's graced the top of our salad.  And then been used like rice as a side dish.  I have this recipe for spiced quinoa that I'm going to try soon.

Mason jar salads.  Such a neat idea (thank you internets) and it really worked well.  I have a more detailed post coming soon with my tips but here's the original post I got it from.

The mason jar salad post actually inspired me to try quinoa AND radishes all in one week!  I'm excited that everyone likes both newbies.  Well, J is a little skeptical about quinoa in the salad... but he's okay with it as a side.  Radishes are just something I never really bought and used.  I really like the slight spice and lovely crunch.  And color.  Mmmmm radishes.

Here's a simple quinoa and leftovers lunch.  Quinoa, curried onions, and gingered carrots.  The onions were leftovers from honey curry chicken and went fantastic as a "sauce" of sorts.

BBQ pizza.  All good posts start and end with grilled pizza, right? ;o)  BBQ sauce, cilantro, gouda cheese.  Very yummy.  Better with chicken, but I was using it as a simple/frugal meal that week so we went meatless to save $$$.

Aiduk kitchen, signing off.