Eat Your Fruits and Veggies

Today I’m offering four for the price of one! Four food ideas, that is.

I’ve been whipping up goodies and taking only a few photos of each, so I decided to lump them all together in one blog entry.

These are all the healthiest of recipes, too. They have to be ‘cause they all contain either fruits or vegetables.

Let’s start with a cute orange idea I came across on Pinterest. Searching the Internet, I came up with the same idea in several places, so kudos and credit to all who developed this delightful dessert/snack.


Easy as pie...
Cute 3-4 large oranges in half. Loosen the insides with a knife along the side. Scoop out the insides with a grapefruit spoon. Mix up a batch of Orange Jello (made with 1 cup hot water and 1 cup ice cubes). Place the hollowed out orange halves in a muffin tin and carefully fill each with the Jello mixture.

Serve as pictured, or cut into wedges after the Jello sets. My grandsons loved them.

Try them with various flavors of jello. I’m thinking toward the future... mix up various flavors of jello, pour them into a small watermelon half, one at a time, allowing each layer to set before adding the next.


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CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO SEE AN ENLARGED VERSION.

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I found a can of cherry pie filling in the back of the cupboard and frozen homemade pie dough in the freezer.

I had enough dough for a two-crust pie, which I divided into eight pieces. Rolled out a piece, plopped a few tablespoons (5-6 cherries with liquid) in the middle and pulled up the sides. See, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Place a piece of parchment paper on your baking pan. You’ll need it ‘cause you’re going to drizzle each tart with honey and sprinkle them with cinnamon powder. Plus the cherries will gush and you definitely don’t want to clean that off the pan.

My oven has been acting up, so I had to monkey around with the temperature setting and the time. I’m going to recommend that, if your oven works right, you set it at 375-degrees Fahrenheit and cook these little goodies for 25-30 minutes. They should be golden and brown. Mine would have benefited from being cooked a few more minutes.

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I love Dolsot Bibam Bap in Korean restaurants. This is my made-up version of DBB, using leftover sushi rice, toasted sesame seeds, bean sprouts, shredded baby spinach, shredded carrots, sliced mushrooms (use any/your fav) and an egg. Oh, and leftover cooked chicken breast, cut into small pieces.

It seems to me when I eat DBB in restaurants that there is very little, if any, seasoning, only soy sauce and hot sauce served at the table. If you prefer to add some kind of seasonings when you cook, I suppose you could. I didn’t.

Precook (barely) spinach, carrots, and mushrooms in a wok or non-stick pan.

Authentic DBB is cooked in a clay dish. I used a ramekin which can take the 400-degrees Fahrenheit required. Heat the ramekin/s while prepping everything else.
Remove from oven and coat with sesame oil, add rice and carefully --don’t burn yourself -- press it against the bottom and partway up the sides. You should hear sizzling as the rice browns itself against the hot sides of the dish. Next time I think I’ll stick mine back in the oven for 5-minutes after adding the rice. I don’t think a ramekin holds the heat as long as a clay pot would.

Add the veggies and chicken (beef, tofu) in a wheel pattern.

I’ve read that the egg can be pre-cooked, or just added raw on top of this dish. I chose to partially fry the egg. I then placed it on top of the veggies and sprinkled all with sesame seeds. Stirring the egg into the hot veggies and rice will cook it.

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One more healthy dish. Of course it's healthy... it includes carrots, walnuts and vegetables. Yep, it’s a Raisin-Walnut Carrot Cake! This recipe came from Woman’s World magazine (4/30/12 issue, on the newstands this week).

What really sent this recipe over the edge is the frosting. It’s cream cheese buttercream with marshmallow fluff stirred in. Wow!

I tried to pipe a big icing star on top, but this icing is a bit soft, so I took the back of a spoon and starting spreading the icing blog out and, voila!, it’s a star. Green sugar sprinkles on the top.

Isn’t that the yummiest cake you’ve ever heard of (other than something chocolate, of course).

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Now, are you going to eat your fruits and veggies?

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I really love to hear from readers, to know what you think of my blog and my food ideas.