Irish Soda Bread Buns

Okay, I admit, I stole this recipe from a magazine. But it's really simple and accurate, and the buns could be made into one big loaf if you really wanted to. I think these taste wonderful, especially for a bread made entirely without yeast, though my husband and the baby don't like them.

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup raisins or currants
1 3/4 cups lowfat buttermilk
2 Tbs melted butter

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix first 5 ingredients in a large bowl. Add buttermilk and stir with a spatula to combine. Once mixture starts to become doughy, dig your hands in and mix it all together into one giant dough ball.

Knead it a few times once it's dough. Grease a large cookie sheet with cooking spray and form the dough into 12-13 little round balls, lining up on the sheet.

Cut a cross/"X" into each bun then brush the tops with the melted butter. Bake for 12-14 minutes.

Easy Turkey Sloppy Joes

I combined and added ideas from other recipes to make this one my own. It was really easy to throw together.

Ingredients:

1 tsp vegetable oil
1 pound ground turkey (frozen or thawed, doesn't really matter)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced (I was supposed to use green, but only had a red one)
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup prepared barbecue sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray's)
multigrain/whole wheat hamburger buns

Drizzle oil into bottom of crock pot. Add turkey. Toss all other ingredients in on top of turkey (except for the buns) and cook on low 6-8 hours. About halfway through cook time, open the lid and stir everything together with a wooden spatula; this is essential if your turkey was put in as a frozen block of meat.

(Sorry but for some reason the photo uploader keeps turning my image sideways)
When it's time to eat, just put some of the mix on the buns and enjoy!

Leftovers Lunch

Once again, I wanted to use up some of the leftovers and random things i had in my cabinets to make something healthy for lunch. Now that the baby is a toddler, she has a lot of her teeth and can eat just about anything. I'm going to recommend you either buy good-quality brown rice or rinse off the rice in a colander before you start cooking it, as mine came out tasting a little dirty.

Ingredients:

1 cup brown rice
2 1/2 cups water
1 scallion, chopped
2 white mushrooms, chopped
1/2-3/4 cup leftover roast chicken/poultry, chopped up
1/3 cup frozen peas
1/3 cup frozen corn
1 tsp seasoned salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. parsley flakes

Prepare the rice as directed; in other words, boil the water then throw in the rice and turn to a simmer for about 30 minutes. When rice is close to done, leave on low and throw in all other ingredients, mixing well. Cook another 10-15 minutes, or until water is all sucked up.

Makes about 4-6 servings. We ate this for lunch, and I ended up throwing a little sweet and sour sauce on it to spice up the taste a little. But hey, at least it's healthy!