New and old recipes

I've been using my awesome new meal planner book to write down recipes I find to try since by the time I sit down to write my shopping list I've usually long since forgotten all the recipes I wanted to make. One "new" recipe was mini taco salads. We've made them before, and I even have a taco salad shell form to bake the tortillas in, but this recipe called for corn tortillas instead of flour (which is necessary for me) and showed how to tuck them in between the groves of an upside down muffin tin to bake them into shape.

Super easy and practically finger food. I definitely like these smaller corn shells over the larger flour shells we usually make.

This morning I made a new breakfast recipe that were sausage, egg and hash brown muffins. Although the "hash browns" I bought at Grocery Outlet turned out to be square shaped like southern style potatoes. Anyway, you mix the thawed potatoes with oil, salt and pepper and scoop them in 12 muffin cups and then use a pestle-style implement to make a well in the center of the muffin cups while pushing the potatoes along the sides of the cup to form the sides of the muffins. While the potatoes bake for about 20 minutes you cook up some turkey or chicken breakfast sausage and then chop it up. After you pull out the potatoes you add a sprinkle of low-fat cheese in each muffin cup topped with a few chunks of sausage and then you fill each one up with beaten egg and it all goes back in the oven for about another 15 minutes. After all of that, you end up with this;

Suck ass. When they say to spray the pan with non-stick spray they don't mean a light, half-hearted spritzing. They mean douse every freaking square inch. The pan is a total loss. After 6 hours of soaking in two different refills of boiling water I still can't get the potato debris out. If I ever make these again I will definitely use cup liners. Besides all the devastation left behind, they were really good and the leftovers will make the next few breakfasts' a breeze. Live and learn, right?

Tonight for dinner we did an old favorite, Eggplant Parmesan.

The recipe was out of one of my Healthy Cooking magazines my mom got me a subscription to last year. I half the recipe and it fits perfectly in an 8x8 and makes four, 3-layered stacks of eggplant parmesans.

I bread the eggplant in gluten free bread crumbs and that little tweak makes them perfect for me. It's layers of baked, breaded eggplant slices, marinara sauce, jarred mushrooms mixed with oregano and basil, and low-fat mozzarella cheese. Yum, yum, yum.

I've got two more new recipes to try this week. Buffalo chicken "cupcakes" and then a chicken sausage and spinach risotto. They sound delicious and I have high hopes for their tasty success. That should be a 2012 resolution - no bad recipes. Ha, I wish!