Chicken with Avocado Cream Sauce
09 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in at least one kid ate it, chicken
Another pinterest winner!
I saw this recipe a few weeks ago and knew I had to try it.
Here are my thoughts: the spice combination used in the original recipe was fine, but I didn’t love it. I think that I’d use this same combo IF I grilled the chicken outside next time (it was raining this time). Otherwise, I think I’d rather, if cooking on the stove, season the chicken with salt and ground black pepper and cook in olive oil and then serve with this amazing, easy sauce.
So here’s what you do:
Cook some chicken, either as recommended above or in the original recipe.
While it’s cooking, peel and pit an avocado and cut it into a couple of pieces. Stick it in your food processor with 2 Tbl of light sour cream and a dash of salt (original recipe calls for Greek yogurt, which I bought but couldn’t bring myself to use…I despise Greek yogurt and am through giving it a try). Puree until creamy.
Serve over warm chicken.
That’s it. I can’t believe, with how much I love avocado, that I never thought to puree it into cream before. It was just so delicious!
And get this: all 3 boys tried some of the avocado cream, and THEY ALL LIKED IT! Praise God. They’re getting more adventurous, and I love it!
Obviously, the cream won’t save well because avocado browns so easily, so enjoy it when you make it!
Peanut Butter Cookies with Homemade Honey Roasted Peanut Butter
03 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in dessert
Oh my word…make these cookies.
Now.
Here’s the recipe (complete with lovely pictures), and here’s my only change: start with 2 1/4 cups of flour and add the other 1/4 cup if needed. The dough was pretty dry, and though they baked up just fine, it was a little bit hard to work with.
Jalapeno Popper Dip
30 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in appetizers, company's coming!, snacks
Hey all! We’re still here…but in our house, it’s baseball season x3 kids, so many evenings are consumed by practices and games right now, meaning I go straight to a few standbys for dinner!
I’ve had a couple of failures in the kitchen lately (pumpkin bread that turned out like rubber-how does that even happen?), but I’m moving on from those to give you this really delicious dip that is perfect for serving to a crowd!
Via Pinterest, of course, and approved by my small group as worthy of sharing! It’s spicy, but not at all burn-your-mouth hot. Original here, my very slight changes below.
PS…Listed below is the full recipe, but I made a half-recipe for small group last night, baking it in an 8×8 dish. There weren’t any leftovers 
2 (8 ounce) packages light cream cheese, softened
1 cup light mayonnaise
1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
4 ounces diced pickled jalapeno peppers, drained (I used them from the jar and chopped up the slices)
1/2 cup shredded Mexican style cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup Panko bread crumbs
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
Sliced french bread, carrots/broccoli/cauliflower, tortilla chips, or crackers for dipping
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray an oven safe serving dish (I’d go with 9×13 or so) with non-stick cooking spray or grease with butter.
Using an electric mixer, blend the cream cheese and mayonnaise until smooth. Add green chiles, jalapeno peppers, and Mexican and mozzarella cheeses. Spoon this mixture into the prepared baking dish.
Mix together the Panko and parmesan cheese and sprinkle it over the cream cheese mixture. Spray the Panko and parmesan with a quick spray of non-stick cooking spray (or oil from your Misto!).
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the mixture is hot and the topping is lightly browned.
Easy Chicken Taco Soup
04 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in crockpot, freezes well, leftovers, soup
OK, you know how Sonya’s Skinny Chicken recipe is so delicious and easy and can feed an army? Or, if you’re just feeding your own family, how it leaves lots of yummy leftovers?
Well, last night, I used leftover Skinny Chicken to make a quick, easy Taco Soup that I’ll be making again for sure. I just made this for Matt and me because it was one of those nights when baseball practice meant we weren’t all home at dinnertime, etc. so Matt and I ate later than the kids. It’s fine anyway, because they all hate soup and I didn’t have the energy to fight them on it last night.
So here’s what I did, and feel free to adjust as needed based on how much you have leftover:
5(ish) cups leftover skinny chicken (this was a lot of the broth that’s left in the crockpot + some of the shredded chicken)
about 2 cooked, chopped chicken breasts (leftover from dinner the night before – I just threw it in so it wouldn’t go to waste, but it’s not necessary if you have plenty of chicken leftover in the salsa mixture)
3 sliced green onions
16 oz. chicken broth (you can use a can or bouillion or whatever you want)
half a bag of frozen, fire-roasted corn (regular frozen corn would be fine, too, but I had this kind from Trader Joe’s and it’s just perfect for soups like this)
beans (I didn’t add them this time, but that would have been really good)
Just heat it on the stovetop until hot. That’s it! This amount made about 5 or 6 good-size bowls of soup.
I served it with a cheese quesadilla. In the soup you can add crushed tortilla chips, avocado, diced tomato, sour cream, cilantro…whatever you like!
Breakfast Pockets
30 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in at least one kid ate it, breakfast, brinner (breakfast for dinner), freezes well, sandwiches
I made these for dinner last night, and they were REALLY good! A bit time-consuming, but since it makes a lot (we had several pockets leftover for the freezer, which means Luke will get a hot breakfast on a school day in the weeks to come, which will make him really happy!) I was okay with that.
You do make a bread dough, but it was really easy and totally worked. In fact, now that I have this dough recipe, I’m thinking of all kinds of stuff to fill these pockets with! It makes a light, not-tough bread that’s perfect for filling with something, and dough that was very easy to work with.
I mostly followed the original recipe, found here. My only change was to use crumbled bacon instead of sausage, since that’s what I had on hand (and what we prefer). I just sprinkled it over the top of the egg filling when I had it on the dough already, so it stayed crispy. That meant that instead of frying the sausage with the onion, I just needed to saute the onion in a tiny bit of butter before I added the egg and hash browns later.
A note about the filling: instead of frozen hash browns, thawed, I just bought Simply Potatoes hash browns (I used the southwest seasoned ones – these are found in the refrigerated section of the grocery near eggs). And, next time, I will omit the hash browns completely. We just don’t eat a lot of potatoes around here, and Luke even commented that he loved them, but next time he’d like no hash browns. To me, it was just filler. I’ll add a couple more eggs to make up the difference in volume.
Dough
1 1/2 Tbl yeast (2 packets)
1/2 c warm water (110 degrees – I microwaved for about 30 seconds)
3/4 c evaporated milk (110 degrees – again, microwave, but only about 20 seconds because it’s not as cold as the water to start with)
1/2 c vegetable oil
1/4 c sugar
1 egg
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 c flour
Filling
1 lb bulk sausage (or bacon, as described above)
1/2 c onion, chopped
1 1/2 c hash brown potatoes (thawed or use Simply Potatoes)
7 large eggs
3 Tbl milk
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic salt
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 1/2 c cheddar cheese, shredded
Dough:
In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in the water.
Add milk, oil, sugar, egg, salt, and 2 cups flour; whisk until smooth.
Add enough flour until it makes a soft dough but do not knead. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.
Filling:
Cook the sausage and onion over medium heat until browned. Drain. Whisk the eggs, milk and spices together in a bowl. Add the hash browns and egg mixture to the pan. Cook and stir until set. Sprinkle with cheese and keep warm.
Assembly:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Punch down the dough and cut into 16 equal pieces.
Roll or stretch each piece into 7 in circle on a floured surface. Top with 1/3 c filling, fold, and pinch shut (I didn’t have any problems with filling oozing out while baking, and I just pinched them closed with my fingers). Bake for 15-20 minutes.
To freeze:
Allow to cool completely. Once cooled, place in the freezer on the baking sheet until frozen. Store in a ziploc bag in the freezer for 3-6 months. To reheat, place on a paper towel and microwave for 1 1/2-2 minutes.
Peanut Butter Apple Roll-ups
16 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in at least one kid ate it, sandwiches, school lunch, snacks
This is a quick, delicious lunch or snack that I can’t believe I haven’t posted before now! I’m not sure where I saw it…maybe Tiffany’s blog years ago? Anyway, I just quick put these together for the boys’ lunchboxes yesterday.
You need:
Flour tortillas
peanut butter
honey
apple slices
Sprite or similar if you’re making them to be eaten later (like school lunch)
Lay out the tortilla, spread some peanut butter down the middle and drizzle on a little honey. Cut the apples into large slices (1 large apple makes 2 roll-ups) and put them in a bowl with some Sprite for a minute if you’re serving them later, so they don’t brown. If you are serving them immediately, you can skip this step.
Roll them up, cut them in half, and you’re done!
Really easy and my boys gobble these up.
Chopped Dinner: Take 4
08 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in appetizers, at least one kid ate it, beef, chopped dinners, company's coming!, grill, side dishes, vegetables
Whew…this challenge is finally over! No more creative cooking for a little while
Dinner #4 in the Chopped challenge was Matt’s. His list was longer (because he was the oldest? I dunno.) but overall, pretty easy to work with AND gave me the excuse to try three new recipes!
Ok, so Matt’s ingredient list (which I accidentally leaked for those of you with eagle eyes last week!) was this:
So for the brie, I made these little Baked Brie Bites that were in puff pastry. Simple to make, and they were ok, but I think that Matt and I both prefer to eat brie bites the way I’ve made them in the past, which is these little brie cups. I’m thinking next time I make those for company, I’ll make some with pepper jelly and some with sweet jelly. I just used what I had on hand, which was strawberry jam, and the flavor was good, but so much jam baked out of the inside even though I felt like I sealed them well that the flavor was lost.
However, Luke and Jack Henry loved them and ate a few each, and Bennett had one and thought it was fine.
Moving on to dinner, which was Crash Hot Sweet Potatoes and Garlic Gorgonzola Steak. Oh. My. Goodness. Some of the best food I think I’ve ever made.
I’m not a huge sweet potato fan…not something I’d usually crave, but these were amazing (for the kids, I just used salt and pepper instead of the spice blend). Follow her instructions and you will not be disappointed. I did parboil the potatoes even though mine were fresh, but then they accidentally got left boiling too long when Jack Henry wandered into the kitchen with a fake sore throat and I was distracted away from my job for 5 minutes. Look at this pic compared to the original, and you’ll see what I mean…they fell apart but it mattered not…they were delicious.
The only change I’ll make is cutting my slices of sweet potatoes slightly smaller, about an inch tall. And I substituted regular chile powder for New Mexico chile powder…I don’t know the difference, but I’m thinking it can’t matter much in this recipe. And for the sake of using cashews in dinner per the Chopped list, I chopped them up finely and put the on each side of the potatoes with the spices. But, it really didn’t add anything, and I won’t do it again. (Bennett, however, was elated to see a can of cashews and put those on his plate instead.)
On to the steak. I did not buy ribeye as Matt requested; I got strip steaks, because I found a huge package of them on sale and they were better than ribeye, so I figured he wouldn’t complain. Plus, we almost never grill steaks, and we truly NEVER share with our kids, so this was a special dinner. Luke likes steak; the other two are fine with it, but seriously they’d rather have chicken or a hot dog, so it pains me to hear “how many bites of this do I have to eat?”
I seasoned all of the steaks as recommended in the recipe: rubbing a cut garlic clove over the steaks, drizzling with a tiny bit of oil (I used olive oil), and then sprinkling generously with salt and pepper. Next time, I’ll skip rubbing a garlic clove on them…for me, at least, it did nothing to give garlic flavor. I’ll use garlic salt and black pepper and omit the regular salt so we actually get some garlic flavor.
After that, Matt grilled them to close to medium for me, and as soon as he got them inside, I melted a very small amount of butter on each, and put gorgonzola on Matt’s and my steak and covered them with foil for a few minutes to help the cheese melt. It was recommended that you do this step ON the grill, but it was already dark out, and I was picturing it being too much hassle with falling cheese, etc. Know, though, that tenting foil over the steak will make it continue to cook, so that you don’t accidentally overcook your steaks.
Anyway, it worked for us to put the toppings on inside, off the grill. I topped the gorgonzola ones with the french fried onions, and that was it. Seriously, one of the best steaks I’ve ever had.
The leftovers tonight were great, too.
So there you have it! The kids commented that I didn’t get Chopped on any of my meals, so we need to do something harder next time.
Avocado Chicken Salad
28 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in chicken, company's coming!, Cooking for 2, salad, sandwiches
This was one of those pins that I couldn’t wait to try!
And it didn’t disappoint. I’m really partial to my own chicken salad recipe as far as homemade goes, so I’m always reluctant to try a new one BUT because of the avocado, I gave this a try. Yum!
The original is here, and the only slight change I’ll make next time is using red onion instead of green onions. I think that will make this taste like the perfect mashup between Chipotle’s guacamole and chicken salad.
Here’s how I did it, along with approximate quantities:
~3 1/2 cups of chopped rotisserie chicken (of course, you can cook/shred chicken at home, but I keep rotisserie chicken in the freezer for occasions like this!)
1 1/2 regular-sized avocados
1/4 cup light Hellmann’s mayo (really go easy on this…I may have used a bit too much, and you can always add a little more if needed)
4 green onions, sliced – or, next time, I’ll use minced red onion. Again, start with a little, taste, add more if you want.
cilantro, to taste
juice of one-half a lime, or maybe a bit more
salt/pepper to taste – using rotisserie chicken meant I didn’t need to salt this, really, but it did need pepper
Mix everything in a bowl, simple as that. Serve with crackers or make sandwiches. I’m a chicken salad sandwich snob, and if I’m going to eat it as a sandwich, I want it on a croissant or pita or mini King’s Hawaiian bread or something, so a piece of whole-grain bread just won’t do. And since none of the breads listed above are remotely healthy, I opted for a few crackers with mine.
i can't wait until there is still sunlight coming through my windows at dinnertime, so my pictures with my crappy camera are less crappy.
Enjoy!
Chopped Dinner: Take 3
28 Feb 2012 3 Comments
Luke’s choices were third.
These were changed from his original 3 choices of marshmallows, jalapenos, and a third-choice-we-can’t-remember, after I reminded him that he was actually going to have to eat what I made with those foods.
His list was very easy to work with, and I used this meal to try out some more recipes I’d pinned to Pinterest.
For an appetizer (and the vegetable of the meal, and this is a huge stretch, especially since the boys only ate one of these) I made these zucchini chips and used the Spicy Mayo as dip (though the dip in the original looks really good!). The original calls for making them into sticks, but I thought the “chip” idea may go over better with my kids. They liked them fine, no one gagged, but no one wanted more, either. Matt loved them, and I thought they were good.
To use the garlic and honey, I followed this recipe, which I’d pinned earlier, and following the advice of many, I baked these at 375 for 20ish minutes (I’m not remembering exactly). Note: did you know that you only need to cook pork to an internal temp of 145 now? Anyway, I was completely underwhelmed by this recipe…the kids ate it fine, Matt said it was fine, and I’m just not a huge fan of pork chops. I don’t think I’ll make it again. I’d much rather repeatedly eat chicken than try to shake things up and eat pork chops.
For the English muffins and garlic again, I made the Paula Deen Roasted Garlic Spread and put it on the untoasted English muffins. I stuck them in the oven just enough to melt the butter (5 minutes or so) and the turned on the broiler and broiled them for about a minute so that the edges toasted. Two thumbs up from the whole family on this one!
the pasta is just wacky mac with melted cheese!
So that’s it! A bit lackluster overall, but still fun
Chopped Dinner, Take 2
23 Feb 2012 3 Comments
in chicken, chopped dinners, dessert, there's chocolate in this!, vegetables
Bennett was up second…and his list was a little harder to work with.
Oh boy.
So my first thought, again, was chicken…though, I promise, the next two meals will not involve chicken. I looked and looked for orange chicken recipes that I thought would be eaten by my children, and when I came across this one, I thought immediately of my Balsamic Garlic Chicken (which we all eat and love), so I thought I could modify my recipe to include orange instead of lemon.
The french fries…really, again? Inspiration for that was from the episode of Chopped viewed right before writing down ingredients, so I have those fries to work with again. I bought Ore-Ida Fast Food Fries in hopes that they’d bake up really crispy. They did, and made a perfect little “nest” for the chicken…get it? A bird in a nest?
food thrown on a plate. this dinner took forever to make and i didn't plate it very creatively, did i?
*crickets*
I also made Roasted Broccoli, which I’ll post on here soon, as it’s a keeper. And, I made these orange rolls, which were really yummy and almost dessert-like. I didn’t have Grands biscuits; I had regular Pillsbury ones though, so I just rolled each of those into the rope she describes instead of cutting the biscuits and rolling them. I halved the rest of the recipe (for one can of biscuits) and had more than enough for the amount it made.
Now for the chocolate syrup. No way was I going to ruin dinner with chocolate syrup, so I just made dessert. I used an allrecipes recipe for Chocolate Orange Fondue, using semi-sweet Ghirardelli chocolate chips + some Hershey’s syrup – the orange liqueur because we didn’t have any. I served it with marshmallows, strawberries and banana slices. Delicious! It was the kids’ first time eating fondue (I just put their chocolate in a bowl and cut up their fruit, and let them dip using a toothpick), and they were fans for sure! Matt and I had a couple of bites, but otherwise, they polished off nearly a pound of strawberries and a couple of bananas!
yum!
