Monday, September 30, 2019

Super Easy Teriyaki Sautéed Mushrooms

This is an incredibly quick, easy, and DELICIOUS way to prepare a batch of sautéed mushrooms to use as a topping on just about anything! It is also extremely inexpensive and the ingredients are likely things you already have in your refrigerator.

I like to put these teriyaki mushrooms on veggie burgers, but I also love them in a rice bowl or noodles, or with other vegetables.

INGREDIENTS:
1 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 clove fresh garlic, smashed and finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Teriyaki sauce (such as Mr. Yoshida’s)
1 tablespoon red cooking wine
Black pepper to taste


1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and olive oil together. When everything is melted and it starts to get a little bubbly, add in your fresh garlic and stir quickly. Never let your garlic burn.

2. Immediately add the fresh mushrooms and sauté to let the mushrooms cook a little bit. About a minute or two. They will shrink down slightly.

3. Once the mushrooms are starting to get hot, add in the red wine and teriyaki sauce. You can add extra teriyaki sauce if you like. When the sauce starts to bubble, turn the heat down to simmer. Gently stir everything for about 4 more minutes.  Add some fresh ground black pepper to taste.

4. Use the mushrooms immediately, or let them cool to store in the refrigerator for later use. 












Sunday, September 15, 2019

Magic Mojo Easy Spaghetti Sauce for Picky Children

My sensitive kid is currently finicky about textures in his food.  He likes sauces that are "smooth with no chunks" and no pieces of unidentifiable herbs or vegetables.  While we are working on helping him broaden his horizons to include more variety and chunky things in sauces, in the mean time he helped me create this great recipe for spaghetti/pizza sauce.  It is simple enough for a kid to assemble, extremely inexpensive, and so tasty!  The credit for the inspiration for this goes to a wonderful and gracious lady/blogger mom, a.k.a. 4hatsandfrugal.com , who also has finicky kids.  We started with her fabulous make-ahead pizza sauce recipe and adapted it to our tastes to be a quick spaghetti sauce.

Ingredients:
1 small can (6 ounces) of tomato paste
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 to 1 tablespoon ground oregano (should be like a powder, not leaves)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

How to make it:
In a medium sauce pan, combine the ingredients (my son measures and combines in the pan for this part).
Turn the heat on to just under medium and continually stir as the sauce heats up.  Make sure it's smooth.  We like to use a whisk; It works great.  It takes just a few minutes before the sauce starts bubbling. Then, turn it way down to simmer while your noodles (or whatever protein/vegetables) are cooking.

We like to put it on Italian Bucatini, which is a large, tubular spaghetti type pasta, and then chop up a baked, crunchy vegetarian "chicken" patty to put on top.  Then we top it all with some Parmesan cheese.

If you are the type that mixes sauce into pasta and mixing before serving, this recipe makes enough sauce to cover an entire 16 ounce package of Italian Bucatini noodles.

SO EASY. SO TASTY. SO YUMMY.