Peach Lemonade

  This post is going to be short since today is a busy day.. I've been in the process of making a recipe index page which has made me realize that a few of my old posts needed to go and others need to be re-posted with better content and pictures.
  Anyway, I wanted to share a very good recipe for peach lemonade since I have already made  Cherry limeade Slushies & Strawberry Lemonade. This drink is sweet, tart, and perfect for the hot (and sometimes dreadful) August days.

Peach Lemonade

recipe: What Megan's Making

3 ripe peaches
1 cup sugar*
5 cups water
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1-2 cups water (optional)**

1. Peel (I found that a paring knife works best) and chop the peaches. Combine the peaches, sugar, and water in a medium pot and heat over medium-high heat for 10 minutes, or until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.
2. Blend the peach water in batches until smooth and strain through a fine mesh strainer into a pitcher. Add in the lemon juice and chill in the fridge. If you want a milder (less tart) lemonade, add in the extra water.

Notes:
*The amount of sugar depends on how sweet your peaches are so you can start with 3/4 cup and then add more. The peaches we have been getting here smell and look great, but aren't as sweet as they usually are.
**The extra 1-2 cups of water is optional- it depends on how strong and tart you like your lemonade.

Candied Cherry Sauce

  This sauce is really simple to make.The only thing you really have to be careful of is to have the right saucepan-to-sauce ratio because the cherries will produce a lot of bubbles since they are cooked over high-heat and the last thing you want to happen is for it to bubble over and make a big, sticky mess.

  You can serve this sauce over yogurt, ice cream, cake, or blend it into different drinks: the possibilities are endless. When I first made this recipe, I cut it in half since I'm stingy with my ingredients and I wanted to make sure it was a good recipe since I've tried plenty of other recipes that didn't turned out well. And seeing that I made this recipe twice in 1 week, I say that it is definitely a winner! And the end product can last in the fridge for months, though it only lasted 2 weeks in our house before I made another batch. 

Peaches & Cream Popsicles

  The last time I made popsicles, the sticks ended up coming out, but the filling stayed in. I think it has something to do with my cheap, but cute popsicle molds. Earlier this summer, my mom and I went shopping to find some popsicle molds since we had lost our old ones, but none of the half dozen stores we checked had them. I've used little paper cups for the doggie popsicles I've made (a recipe I'll share later), but I didn't want to use them for regular popsicles.  Well, she ended up getting me a 10 pop mold online and the very next day when we walked into World Market there was a small 6 popsicle mold. 

  I found this recipe the other day and really wanted to make it so I did and prayed that the popsicles would actually come out of the mold this time. I filled the sink with a little water and let the molds sit for a few minutes to help loosen them up. Well, history repeated its self; the handle came out,but with only half of the stick and the filling stayed in the mold. I then ran a little warm water over the ends of the remaining molds and tried again and it worked! These popsicles are creamy due to the yogurt and are packed with delicious peach flavor.

Roasted Cherry Dark Chocolate Brownies

   I'm warning ya'll now that this is the 2nd cherry recipe that I've shared so far and I have at least 2 more to share this summer. One is a recipe for a cherry fruit drink that I made up and the other is a cherry sauce/jam which you can have on yogurt, biscuits, or in drinks.I'll try to space out the recipes so I won't be overloading ya'll with 3 cherry recipes back to back; sometimes, I get a little hung up on a certain ingredient or dish and right now it's cherries.

   I found this recipe through Foodgawker and I knew I had to make it since it involved three of my favorite things: cherries, dark chocolate, and brownies! I told my dad about the recipe to see if he had every tried anything like it before and he said that he had, but those brownies were about 80% cherries & 20% brownie. I thought this recipe would be a winner since it only has 1 cup of cherries so they won't over load the dish and that everyone in our family  house are brownie-fanatics so it would be good. 

Avocado Yogurt Dip

  I wanted to share this recipe since I'll be working at my mom's job for the summer starting tomorrow. This means that I may not post recipes as much as I use to depending on how many days that they want me to work. I have a good collection of recipes that I want to try out this summer including this brownie recipe, a cheesy veggie rice, and I might try tweaking this recipe. 

Now back to this dip. 
This dip is delicious!

 I halved the recipe and adapted it a little to what we had on hand and my taste preference. This dip is rich and creamy while having a slight tang from the lime juice and cilantro. I had it on some tortilla chips that had lime seasoning sprinkled on them when I had a good idea. Why not have some of this dip on my turkey burger. And that is what I did. The turkey burger had some spice which was off set by the creamy dip and I will definitely have this dip on burgers again. 

News & Summer Berry Crumble

 Last weekend was a long one.

  Friday I had an appointment with the doctor to get my meningitis shot and ended up finding out some news. I've been having severe lower back pains for a while, but we never thought much of it. Well, we mentioned it to my doctor and he suggested that I get some x rays done. He then took my mom from the room and showed her the spine of an average, healthy 17 year old's spine and then mine. Apparently the lupus has caused me to have no cartilage between my vertebrae of my spine so it's bone rubbing bone which is the same thing that's wrong with my knee which we found out when I messed it up a few years ago. None of my doctors ever thought to check my bones, except to have a bone density test since most of my issues with the lupus were with my joints and fatigue. My doctor gave me some medicine to deal with the pain, a prescription for these patches, but after going to 2 different pharmacies and waiting we found out they were both out of stock, and a number to a specialist that I have to meet with.

Fresh Limeade & Cherry Limeade Slushies

  I'm not a fan of Sonic's food, but I do live their cherry limeades...I always get the largest size so it will last me longer. We bought a bag of fresh cherries since they were on sale even though we had a bag in the freezer, but they still had their pits in and I didn't want to wait for them to defrost before pitting them to make what I wanted.                             

  Anyway, I looked on several sites to get some good recipes and I got a few, but most of the recipe I found either used dried cherries, prepared pie filling, or preserves. I thought about making a clafoutis which traditionally uses the whole cherry because the pit are suppose to give the dish an almond-like essence, but can be difficult since you have to tell everyone who eats it that there are pits in the dessert so they have to be careful. I thought about trying to make it with pitted cherries and just add a splash of almond extract instead. I made a chocolate cherry shake today that I found online, but you couldn't taste the cherries, barely tasted the chocolate, and it tasted watered down...so that recipe was a no. 

Cantaloupe Smoothie

   This past weekend I bought a cantaloupe to eat, but once I got home and cut into I realized that I wasn't as ripe as I needed/wanted it to be. Since I had already cut and chopped half of the melon, I decided to leave the other half whole to see if it would ripen a little more.

Oven-Fried Chicken

Magazines.
Food Magazines.
I have a good amount of them.I also have a folder with pages from magazines and print outs of recipes to try. I actually have been trying to put together a binder of recipes that I have tried, liked, or created; so it would be like my own little cookbook. I recently found a recipe for oven fried chicken in a Better Homes and Gardens Anyone Can Cook magazine.

With this being the new year, everyone is trying to eat healthier and that usually means giving up the food you enjoy. Well, my dad isn't able to get out of the house much due to his sickness and he has been craving fried chicken. We did own a little fryer, but we got rid of it because we stopped using it a few years ago. While flipping through the magazine I found a recipe for oven-fried chicken that was simple and looked easy enough so I made it. And it was a hit. I've made this recipe twice and each time I tweeked it a little to try and get the perfect (or nearly perfect) results and I think each time it gets a little better. My dad said that If he didn't know that I baked it, he would have thought it was fried. The cornflakes gave a good crunch, the chicken was juicy, and the leftovers tasted even better the next day.

Mango frozen yogurt (without an ice cream machine)

The other day, I noticed that we had about 8 mangos in our fridge and I wasn't sure how they got there. Well, it was over 100 degrees outside and I wanted something cold to eat. So I decided to make mango frozen yogurt. I have never made one before, but its could not have been difficult. Then I realized that we didn't have an ice cream maker.

This is what you'll need. If you have full fat yogurt, it will be richer.

Cut the ends off of the mango so it can sit up so it looks like this

Carefully hold the mango and cut the skin off.

Its like a melon; you want to yellow, but not the green.

Mangos have weird shaped pits.