Cooking with a Wallflower - Page 89 of 139 -

Asian Inspired Gluten Free Healthy Quick and Easy Recipes Vegan Vegetarian

Two-Ingredient Pandan Extract

Pandan leaves blended with water to create an aromatic extract perfect for baking and other desserts. This two-ingredient pandan extract is simple to make and will definitely enhance the flavor of your desserts.

Pandan. Have you heard of it before? In Vietnamese, it’s called lá dứa.

It’s definitely an Asian flavor, and it might not be easy to find unless your local Asian market has it in stock.

It’s just I’ve been obsessed with this flavor for awhile now so I thought I’d share it with you. Just venturing briefly away from my usual “easy to find ingredients” niche.

Whenever I’m at an Asian bakery or dessert shop, I’m constantly looking for something pandan flavored. Have you ever had pandan flavored baked goods or desserts? You might have. It’s soo flavorful and just plain addictive. And they’re kinda distinctive since almost anything pandan flavored will most likely also be green in color. That delicious aroma from the green waffles? Pandan. That green jelly in your Vietnamese dessert? Pandan.

So of course, that meant that I wanted to try to create that flavor at home.

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Recommendations Wallflower Weekly Faves

Wallflower Weekly Finds, 70

Don’t you love all the fresh fruits available during the summer?

My favorites are all sorts of berries and stone fruits. In other words… Everything.

Strawberry Mango Bread

Slightly sweetened buttermilk quick bread filled with fresh strawberries and mango. This strawberry mango bread is the perfect summertime breakfast for when you’re on the go.

All these fruits!

I am absolutely in love with the variety of fruits available during the summer! My house is usually stocked with all sorts of berries, peaches, and nectarines. Oh, and how can I even forget watermelon?

Sometimes, I think I can live off of just fruits during the warm months. Sweet, refreshing, and sooo delicious. And the colors!

What are some of your favorite summer fruits?

So with all the abundance of fruits available, I really like being able to use them in baked goods, especially with these types of breads because they’re easy to bring with me when I need breakfast or a snack. Plus, they’re always better the next day when the flavors have time to meld together. Um, that’s only if my sisters and I don’t keep “taste testing” to see what needs improvement.

Roasted Asparagus Bacon Cauliflower Crusted Pizza

Cauliflower crusted pizza topped with roasted asparagus, crispy bacon, and fresh baby greens. This roasted asparagus bacon cauliflower crusted pizza is absolutely delicious and perfect for serving guests.

Have you ever personalized your own pizza? It’s the best.

Why? Because you end up with all of your favorite ingredients as your toppings. Plus, you don’t have to do extra work and pick out the ingredients that you don’t like.

This might make me seem like a picky eater, but I really can’t help it. I don’t like sausage or pepperoni on my pizzas. I know, they’re classics. But I don’t like them. Is that weird? And cheese pizza is just too plain. I like my pizza, like almost everything else, loaded with ingredients. So I love when I get to personalize my pizzas.

And while I love personalizing my pizzas, I have no patience whatsoever to wait for the yeast. But I swear, you’ll love this cheesy garlic pull apart bread that I made way back when. I’ve used it as a pizza crust too. Just divide the dough in half to create two pizza crusts. Just FYI, in case you’re interested in a more “traditional” crust. =)

But for today, because I’d rather not wait for the yeast, we’re making a cauliflower crusted pizza.

Crispy Garlic Fries with Fresh Herbs

Crispy fries baked with minced garlic and seasoned with garlic salt then topped with freshly chopped herbs. These crispy garlic fries with fresh herbs will instantly become a favorite side dish for any of your summer gatherings.

Crispy fries, anyone?

If I could have fries every day, I totally would.

These crispy garlic fries are adapted from my truffle fries from several weeks back. But rather than a simple truffle salt seasoning, these crispy fries are seasoned with garlic salt and smothered in minced garlic. So if you’re making these fries, you’ll have to be a garlic lover, or become one.

There are so many different ways to make fries, and they come in all sizes. You might love steak fries or skinny fries or shoestring fries. SO many options.

I prefer skinny fries because there’s that extra crispy layer on the outside and it doesn’t taste overwhelmingly starchy. Steak fries are too potato-y for me and shoestring fries don’t have enough of the potato taste and texture. Skinny fries are perfect for me. What kind of fries do you like?

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Recommendations Wallflower Weekly Faves

Wallflower Weekly Finds, 69

It’s super hard to find a day where everyone in my family is available to go out to eat. Our schedules are all so different. When one person is off, another person has to work or go to school. I swear, I’ve been trying to plan a lunch date with my family since December. It wasn’t until May that we were finally able to go out to eat. Sad, isn’t it?

We’re almost always home to eat dinner together. It’s a must in my family. But sometimes, what we really want to go out for is dim sum. Have you had dim sum before?

There’s something fun about going to these dim sum tea houses where servers push carts full of different food to your table. Then you get to take a look at what they have to offer and choose what you want.

This is a photo of our recent outing. This particular dim sum tea house, Dragon Beaux, has such pretty dishes.

Shanghai dumplings but in different flavors – regular, squid ink, beet, turmeric, and spinach.

These are chicken buns but made to look like mushrooms. So cute!

Strawberry Watermelon Mint Lemonade

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ElevateSalads #CollectiveBias

Refreshing lemonade filled with mint, strawberries, and watermelon. This strawberry watermelon mint lemonade is delicious, easy to make, and perfect with a healthy salad on a hot summer day.

It’s June! Which means summer is quickly approaching! And I am soo ready for it.

Not that I have big plans for my summer yet, but we’ll see. There are so many different possibilities for a local getaway. =)

With summer just around the corner, I can already picture spending more time outdoors. Maybe hiking or picnicking or lounging around at the beach.

It’s so easy to bring along a ready to eat salad bowl, such as USDA organic superfood Ready Pac ElevAte salads, and a refreshing beverage for any of my outdoor adventures, or even for when I need something quick for lunch before heading back to work.

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Life of a Wallflower

Life of a Wallflower, 28 – May Graduations

Oh, the joys of a long weekend!

My cousin just graduated this last Friday from SFSU, and although she was the one who graduated, I was utterly exhausted by the end of the day. I don’t think we got home from the ceremony and the after graduation late night dinner until nearly midnight. So I’m kind of glad to have a long weekend to recover from the festivities.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This whole month was filled with graduations. And I just wanted to share with you a little peek into my life.

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Recommendations Wallflower Weekly Faves

Wallflower Weekly Finds, 68

Another graduation this weekend! And then we’ll be done with graduations for a little while.

This Yuen Yeung macaron ice cream sandwich. Coffee macarons with Hong Kong milk tea and coffee ice cream and coffee condensed milk. Seriously, the ultimate dessert.

Caprese Avocado Toast

Avocado toast topped with sliced tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella then drizzled with olive oil. This caprese avocado toast is refreshing and delicious, perfect for spring.

Avocado obsessed.

Which is nothing new, considering that I almost always have avocado in the house. You know, just in case I need it. Maybe as a topping, or part of my dip, or on my toast, or in my dessert. Oh, yes. If you haven’t had avocado as a dessert, you’re so missing out.

Avocado toast is my go to breakfast/lunch when I’m not in the mood to cook. They’re super simple to make and easy to customize too. Are you in love with the avocado toast trend as much as I am?

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