Ellie Krieger's Broiled Buffalo Wings & Broccoli Cheddar Soup

I borrowed another cookbook from the library and made these two dishes from the book I borrowed.

The book is called "Comfort Food Fix" by Ellie Krieger

She used to have a show on Food Network. She always cook something healthy and good for you. I think she is a nutritionist and have a few cook book published. 

I normally don't look at cook books which are focused on healthy food but this one is called Comfort Food Fix and she tried to recreate all the comfort food in a healthier way. I was interested so I borrowed it and I found quite a few things which I wanted to try out. 

One of them was Broiled Buffalo Wings. I love Buffalo chicken flavor but I don't normally make Buffalo wings at home since I don't want to fry them. But this is broiled and you don't have to fry them. I was a bit skeptical but wanted to give it a try. 

First, she ask you to boil the chicken. I liked this idea. Actually, one of my friend did this for BBQ and I really liked the idea of boiling chicken (especially skin on and bone in ) before broiling them. It will take some of the excess fat and also you don't have to worry about the chicken being undercooked inside. 

Anyway, then broil the chicken in broiler until crisp and brown. 

I liked this and my husband also liked this. It is not greasy since it is just broiled and still very tasty. I also made Blue Cheese Dip from the book. I need Blue Cheese Dip when I eat Buffalo Chicken! 

Since I wanted to eat some vegetables also. I made Broccoli Cheddar Soup from the book. 

This was also great. In the recipe, it asked to use low-fat milk but I didn't have low-fat milk at home so I just used regular milk. Also I didn't have enough Cheddar Cheese so I used a lot less Cheddar Cheese than the recipe required but it came out great! 

I pour this Broccoli Cheddar Soup over rice and gave it to my son and he loved it also. I think he eats a lot more Broccoli this way. 

If you are interested in cooking healthier but still want to eat those comfort foods, this is a book to go. I was quite impressed how she made them very tasty yet more healthy. I am planning to try her Sesame Chicken recipe tonight. I will let you guys know how it turned out! 

Shrimp with Roasted Garlic Pest Pasta

This is something I made before and loved it so I wanted to make it again for a while. Finally, I was able to make this again and as I remember, it was so delicious! (Click here for my previous post for the same dish)

This is another recipe from Food Network. One of my favorite Food Network Star is Sunny Anderson. Her recipe always seems quite easy and tasty. I also love her personalty on TV. She seems very positive and friendly. I would love to meet her in person someday.

Anyhow, the dish I made from her recipe was "Shrimp with Roasted Garlic Pest Pasta". This is easy to make with usual ingredients which you can find in a local grocery store and always comes out great. I mean, I love garlic, tomato, basil, Parmesan Cheese and Shrimp so this dish is full of things I like. For her "Shrimp with Roasted Garlic Pest Pasta" recipe, click here to go to for Food Network site. 

I also love the pine nuts topping. Yummy!

Speaking of nuts, there is this one nuts which I recently discovered and have been eating a lot. It is "Candied Pecan" from Trader Joe's.

I knew that they have candied walnuts because I buy them quite often for my salad but I found out the other day that they also have Pecan version.

I bought this since I needed pecan to make chicken salad sandwich . Recipe did not ask for candied pecan but I thought it will be nice with a little sweetness.

Then, I tried one before I use it for the chicken salad and totally fell in love with this product. It is so good. It is difficult to stop eating. I had to control myself. I will definitely buying this again when I go to Trader Joe's.

If you have a chance to go to Trader Joe's, please try this. It is really good snack!

Tapas dinner

My husband and I went to Trader Joe's over the weekend and bought lots of our favorite stuff so we decided to have tapas dinner with many small plates. We had hummus, pita bread, spinach dip, tortilla chips, salad, leftover pasta and so on.

One of my husband's favorite from Trader Joe's is this spicy cilantro hummus dip. We always buy this and small pita bread. I normally don't like beans/peas but I love hummus. Plus, I love cilantro so this hummus is one of my favorite also.

The one I really liked was this spinach dip. We tried this for the first time but I loved it so much. My husband said that there are too much spinach in it but I think that's the best part!

For dessert, we had clementines. We also bought these from Trader Joe's and it was one of the best clementines I eve had! It was juicy and sweet. I loved it. I have to be careful not to eat too many of these because I can just eat 3~4 clementines at once! (My husband made this beautiful decoration with clementines :-)

By the way, I heard that it has been really really hot in Japan lately. Since summer in Japan is very very humid, my sister told me that it feels like you are in sauna all the time. I hope it will get cooler soon.

NY had been warm but not too hot lately. Highs are normally around 82~89F (28~30C) but not too humid so it is not too bad.

Salmon Dinner & My favorite snack "Bombay Mix"

Thank you very much for everybody who worry about my finger and left me nice comments! My finger is healing and getting better but I still try not to bend it so the wound will not open up.

That was my excuse to make this "knife free" dinner. I did not use knife so I came up with the menu which I didn't have to use knife.

I had a slice of salmon in the freezer so I defrost this and sautéed in a frying pan. That was super easy and one dish done!

I also made sausage and eggs. The sausages were already cut into small pieces and frozen so I just sauteed these and also made scramble egg. Easy!

I ate these with rice. Since I am Japanese, I like adding soy sauce to my salmon. This salmon was really good. It was fatty and just melted in my mouth. Sometimes these simple things are luxury.

I like making my eggs sweet when I eat them with rice. I add sugar and soy sauce in it. I think many Japanese do this when they make eggs called "Tamagoyaki" I did not like it sweet when I was little but now I like it that way. It's funny.

Today, I would like to show one of my favorite Indian snack. I am not sure if you can really find these in India but an indian lady whom I used to live with in California introduce this snack to me so I believe that this is real indian snack. I normally buy these in a indian grocery store in Manhattan. It is called "Bombay Mix"!!!!

I am not certain how to explain this delicious snack but it is spicy and sweet at the same time. It got lots of stuff in it. Let's read the back to see what is in it. It says Chick pea flour, corn oil, moong, split peas, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, sugar, paprika, sesame seeds and chili powder. I have no idea what moong is but this snack taste really good.

It looks like this.

Each pieces are quite small so it is difficult to eat them with hands. I use spoon to eat so I can eat a lot in one bite. This is so spicy but sweet and I can not stop. If you have never tried this before and if you like something spicy, please try it sometimes. Does anyone know that this snack really exist in india?