Grilled Ham and Mango Quesadillas + Sweet Brocolli Slaw with Cranberries

You may have thought this was one of those blogs that started as a good idea, but died shortly thereafter. And no one would criticise such a thought, for I myself may have thought this as a reader. Fortunately, I've been keeping a photo documentary on many of the adventures of our kitchen, and I intend to get these all transfered into blog format asap!

We've still been cooking out of the "Fresh Food Fast" cookbook. We've made quite a few interesting new meals, but our favorite thus far is the Grilled Ham and Mango Quesadillas! This recipe has become one of those recipes we always have the ingredients for, a staple in our daily food consumption.

Ingredients: mango chutney, multigrain tortillas, shaved deli ham,

crumbled queso fresco, chopped green onions

 Shopping for the ingredients to this recipe posed a bit of a challenge. Have you ever bought Mango Chutney? Neither had any of the people working at the grocery store! I started looking near the jelly, but we eventually found it in the condiments aisle, near the relishes and barbeque sauces.

Another new ingredient for us was queso fresco. Our grocery store didn't have it in crumbled form, but the blocked form was easy to crumble. We use this cheese for a variety of purposes in our kitchen now.

It's worth mentioning that we've tried the recipe with the regularly sliced ham and shaved ham. It is worth the wait to have your grocery store actually shave the ham (using the lowest setting on the slicer). The queso more easily melts into the shaved ham, while the sliced ham causes seperate layers.

The mix of the ham, chutney, queso and green onions is a delicious combination that we never tire of!

The secondary plate to combine with this recipe is Sweet Brocolli Slaw with Cranberries. This recipe was also a pleasant surprise. I'm not one to eat slaw, picky eater that I am trying not to be. This recipe, however, was a delicious combination!

Vidalia onion dressing was a new one for me, as was brocolli coleslaw. The combination of these with gala apples, cider vinegar, dried cranberries and chopped pecans is a genious combination! Way to go CookingLight!

We give these recipes 5 stars each!

Want to purchase this cookbook? https://www.cookinglightfreshfoodfast.com/

Our First Meal in the New Place! - Chicken Tortilla Pie and Fresh Salsa!

The blog cooking frenzy has begun! The cookbook we have been making everything out of so far is called "fresh food fast" published by Oxmoor House.

I've really enjoyed using this cookbook because it's filled with delicious recipes that don't take much time to make and are really healthy! At the bottom of each recipe, the nutrition facts are listed for the health conscious eater.

Our first adventure was the Chicken Tortilla Pie. It was delicious!

The ingredients: Shredded cooked chicken breast, Fresh Salsa (recipe provided), spicy black bean dip, multi grain flour tortillas, and Monterey Jack cheese.

It called for shredded chicken, which seemed to be difficult to find (or maybe just in our grocery store), so we just made some chicken breasts and shredded them ourselves. My favorite part of this recipe was the black bean dip! I'd never had it before (I'm actually a rather picky eater . . . or I was until the last year or so) and I searched for quite a while before I finally found it in the health food aisle. I'm have little tolerance for spicy foods, so I took the mild version, instead of the spicy that the recipe called for. It's by Guiltless Gourmet with just 40 calories per serving and no fat, cholesterol or sugar! Sodium count: 125mg, Carbs: 7g, Fiber: 2g, and Protein: 2g. This has become one of my favorite snack time foods, and that alone has made this recipe worth the making!  

I think our version turned out much like the cookbooks picture, and it was quite delicious! We made plenty of extra salsa to keep for snacking later. We found that scoops chips with a bit of bean dip topped with salsa is a great finger food!

The happy husband amidst our move-in mess.

We hadn't even gotten a table yet, so we ate on the floor!

Welcome to The Newlyweds' Table!

Hello! and welcome to my new blog! Allow me to introduce myself! My name is Amanda and I just got married a week and a half ago. If you know me, you are probably aware that I'm not much of a cook. I'd like to argue that this is more because I have lacked the opportunity to do so, rather than the inability, but in either case, I plan for this to change!

Just about a month before our wedding, I moved into the place my husband and I now call home. For the first time in my "big kid" life, I had a kitchen, and I had it all to myself. In that month alone, I started to make a few things from the many cookbooks I received as wedding gifts (word must have gotten out about how little I cooked), and I'd like to say I did a pretty good job at the new recipes. I think if you asked my new husband, he'd agree that I'm doing quite alright in the kitchen.

During our discussion over a delicious dinner just a few days before we tied the knot, the topic of my cooking adventures came to the table (pun intended, haha). It was during that conversation that the idea of "The Newlyweds' Table" was born. And now that we're newlyweds, it's time for the cooking adventures to begin! I hope you enjoy the stories from "The Newlyweds' Table"!