J@H - Cheesey Popcorn

Making cheesey popcorn is almost as easy as buying it! Well, once you locate the necessary ingredients, but that's what Amazon is for! Go there now and place your order for cheese powder, buttermilk powder and popcorn kernels. You'll be making your own cheesey popcorn in no time!

Also, I have to mention that I did all of this without a microwave. We are still renovating our new house and haven't gotten to the kitchen yet. There are grand plans to install an over-oven microwave, but that hasn't happened yet. I tried a few different methods until I came upon this popcorn popping procedure. It pops all the kernels and doesn't burn the finished popcorn.

You may be asking if this cheese popcorn is "better" for you than the store-bought variety. The popcorn itself is so easy, it's worth ditching the microwave stuff. Sadly, if you're for all-natural everything, the cheese powder may be outside of your comfort zone. The yellow cheese powder contains yellow #5, a food safe synthetic dye. Want something a little less yellow? Try this white cheddar powder.

Natural or not, I ate the entire bag of popcorn in one evening. So good.

One Year Ago: Peanut Butter Bar Ice Cream Sandwiches
Two Years Ago: Nutella Thumbprints
Three Years Ago: Strawberry-Lemon Preserves & Ginger-Pear Preserves
Four Years Ago: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Five Years Ago: Crunchy French Toast

Tahini Cookies

Some items should really be sold in much smaller containers. For example, chicken bullion cubes, fancy vinegar and cornmeal. Generally, you need just a tablespoon for the recipe and are left with a near-full container of the ingredient. Tahini is another ingredient that always languishes in my pantry until it reaches its expiration date.

Thanks to Cooking Light Magazine, my tahini now has more purpose! I recently noticed a new section in the magazine called the "Use it Up Challenge." The May 2015 (I'm a little behind in reading magazines!) ingredient was tahini! While all of the recipes sounded fantastic, I'm making the orange-tahini vinaigrette next, these tahini cookies fit the bill for my Sunday plans.

They come together a lot like a peanut butter cookie recipe, but the flavor is completely different. If you like tahini (which if you have it in your house, I'm assuming you do), you'll love these cookies. The whole recipe comes together in about an hour - from ingredients to baked cookies.

The recipe also makes a completely realistic number of cookies - 24. Even though this recipe comes from Cooking Light, I wouldn't consider it to be healthy or low fat. The recipe includes refined sugar and butter. Enjoy them for the flavor and try not to eat all of them in one sitting!

What ingredients sits in your pantry month after month? I'd love to start my own version of CL - Us it Up Challenge and help everyone use up those weird ingredients!

One Year Ago: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Bars
Two Years Ago: Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Cherry Swirl
Three Years Ago: Simple Arugula Salad
Four Years Ago: Oatmeal Pancakes
Four Years Ago: Chocolate Buttercream & Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Thai Chicken with Peanuts

Don't want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen, prepping dinner and sweating over the oven? Make a stir fry! At least once a week during the summer you can find me tossing ingredients into a big pan and pouring on different sauces. Stir fry isn't really a science. I usually don't follow a recipe and cook up whatever we have in the fridge.

Yes, the stir fry is the ultimate pre-vacation meal. You can clean out the fridge and use up any meats and vegetables. For this stir fry, had a bunch of sweet peppers and carrots, as well as a pack of chicken sitting in the fridge. With a business trip coming up on Thursday, I decided to use up the stuff in the house, rather than buy groceries this week. Also, since I tend to make a lot of stir frys, I had all the ingredients for my sauce already. My pantry is a well-stocked stir fry zone!

What is your go to "Use it up" recipe? With so many business and personal trips this year, I find that I've been tossing way more food than I would like. Resorting to eating out each night is not the best plan either, for the wallet or the waistline!

Two Years Ago: Milky Way Cake
Three Years Ago: Peanut Chicken with Asian Slaw
Four Years Ago: Banana Coconut Muffins
Five Years Ago: Indian Chicken Curry