The Empty Kitchen

My family loves pizza. My family loves Mexican food. So when the two worlds collide and make Mexican pizza, our taste buds don’t know what to do.

Here’s what we had for dinner tonight:

Mexican pizza

Ingredients:

• 4 8″ flour tortillas
• ½ cup onions, diced
• 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can tomatoes (you can use any flavor you like)
• 1 packet taco seasoning mix
• 2 cups colby jack cheese
• Optional: chopped jalapeños, sliced black olives, ground beef

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425°
2. While oven is heating, spray pan with cooking spray. Cook onions and black beans until onions are soft.
3. Add tomatoes, taco seasoning and approximately ½ cup water. Cook until water is boiling; reduce heat and cook approximately 5 minutes.
4. Place flour tortillas on baking sheet. Spread approximately 1/2 cup bean and tomato mixture on each tortilla (this acts as the “sauce”). Top with cheese, olives, jalapeños and/or ground beef.
5. Bake for approximately 13 minutes or until cheese is melted and browned to your liking.

That’s it. Simple, delicious, spicy, quick. What more could you ask for?

Tags: recipes

There are times that I find myself with a whole bunch of overripe bananas. They’re too ripe to eat and too ripe to freeze but I don’t want to throw them out. To deal with this problems, I’ve collected some recipes that use these bananas. One is a chocolate chip banana bread; the other is banana blueberry muffins.

While I love both recipes, the muffins are a little more practical for daily use. Plus, they last longer (the banana breads never lasts more than 48 hours in my house). I’m not really sure where I got this recipe so I apologize to the creator for not being able to give proper credit.

Banana Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups mashed banana (about 4 mashed bananas, depending on size)
• 4 egg whites
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup blueberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Line a muffin tin with liners or spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Combine the first 5 ingredients in a bowl.
3. Combine the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl.
4. Pour dry ingredients into banana mixture. Mix thoroughly. There might still be some lumps from the banana. This is OK.
5. Fill each muffin cup approximately 1/2 way.
6. Bake for 16 minutes.

These muffins are delicious! They make a quick breakfast or a nice snack, especially when paired with a glass of almond milk. And as far as muffins go, they’re pretty healthy. Most of the ingredients are ones that I have on hand so the cost for the muffins is really just the cost of the blueberries, which varies according to season. In the summer, each muffin would cost around $.40. So not only are they healthier than the muffins from  Dunkin Donuts, they’re way cheaper, too!

What do you do with overripe bananas?

Tags: recipes

My mom recently pointed out that I have not been posting many recipes. She’s right. And that’s mainly because, up until recently,  I haven’t really had many recipes to share. But now I do! Beginning today, there will be a recipe blitz. Look for approximately 7 new recipes in the next 10 days. Up first…breakfast burritos.

I found this idea on Money Saving Mom a couple of weeks ago. I really liked the idea of having a grab and go breakfast, especially for my husband who, on most mornings, does not have time to eat breakfast at home. Also, I was starting to get sick of bagels. I wasn’t 100% in love with Crystal’s recipe, so I made my own:

The Empty Kitchen’s Breakfast Burritos (adapted from Money Saving Mom):

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil (can substitute with 1 tbsp butter)
• ½ cup onions, chopped or diced
• ½ cup peppers, chopped or diced
• 6 eggs, beaten
• 2-3 slices hot pepper cheese, or any type of cheese you like
• 6 flour tortillas, whatever size you like
• salt and pepper, to taste
• Optional: sausage, bacon, ham

Directions:

1. Heat oil in nonstick skillet
2. Sauté onions and peppers until semi-soft
3. Pour in beaten eggs, letting them set in skillet and then scrambling eggs along with onions and peppers (If using optional breakfast meat, you can add the cooked meat to the pan at this point)
4. Add in cheese, letting it melt. Remove from heat when cheese is melted
5. Using ¼ cup measuring cup, scoop mixture into warmed tortillas. Roll up like a burrito.
6. Wrap burrito in tin foil (Crystal recommends using a paper towel for first roll, then wrapping in tin foil. Either way is fine) and place in freezer. When ready to eat, wrap in paper towel and heat in the microwave for approximately 1 ½ min

The recipe can be doubled, tripled, halved…pretty much however you want. I figured it was a one egg to one burrito ratio; you can use that as a rough guideline.

I spent no money making these as I had every ingredient on hand. If you had to buy the ingredients, I would think that each burrito would cost a total of $.50, depending on what you put in the filling. Not a bad way to start the morning!

Tags: recipes

One of my favorite features on my iPod is the shuffle feature. I love hitting that button and seeing what songs come up. Today I turned on shuffle and here are the first 5 songs I got:

1. Silent All These Years–Tori Amos
2. Mother Earth is a Vicious Crowd–Live
3. I Can Love You Better–Dixie Chicks
4. Glory Days–Bruce Springsteen
5. Survive–Rise Against

What I love most about shuffle is how 5 seemingly unrelated genres of music all blend together into a delectable auditory smoothie. Which, of course, got me thinking about my cooking.

I am not a good creator of recipes. I typically steal borrow from others and, when necessary, tweak the recipe to fit my preferences. Occasionally, however, I am able to pull together a variety of ingredients and come up with a recipe on my own that is too good not to share. In this case, it was my grilled cheese and avocado sandwich that I made with my friend Steph.

I love grilled cheese. If this lunch truck lived near me, I’d be broke and 400 pounds. I would eat a grilled cheese sandwich every day if I could. The first meal I ever ate with my husband was at a diner and guess what it was? Yup. Grilled cheese.  

Normally, I’m a grilled cheese purist. Bread, American cheese, butter. Nothing else. Maybe a tomato. To me, there’s no point in messing with perfection. Except once and a while, you gotta go bold. Which I did with this version:

The Empty Kitchen’s Fancy Grilled Cheese

Ingredients:

• Sourdough bread
• Pepper jack cheese
• White American cheese
• Avocado
• Tomato
• Butter

Directions:

1. Assemble the sandwich, leaving one slice of bread unbuttered.
2. Place sandwich, buttered side down, in a nonstick pan (butter second slice once sandwich in is pan)
3. Grill until golden brown on both sides

I am a little strange as I eat my grilled cheese with ketchup (if you haven’t tried it this way, go make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich and do it. It’s totally worth it), and I’ve been doing it that way since I’m about 6 years old. Which is why when I ate this version without ketchup, I was totally shocked. A grilled cheese sandwich that doesn’t need ketchup?! Impossible! But it really didn’t need it. It didn’t need anything except chips and a soda.

I think that child looks a little evil. I imagine I look the same way when near a grilled cheese sandwich.

It was the best lunch I’d had in a long time.

Tags: recipes