Sharing some recipes

About 6 weeks ago I got this great new recipe book called Fix-it and Forget-it Big Cookbook by: Phyllis Pellman Good, as a birthday gift and I wanted to share some of the recipes out of it that we have tried and enjoyed. I shop two weeks at a time so I make a meal plan prior to shopping and do my best to stick to that plan. This book as made it very easy for me to throw something together in the crockpot and be on with the day.

Here are a few that we enjoyed:

Tortilla Soup

16oz can fat-free refried beans

15oz can black beans, rinsed and drained

14oz can fat-free chicken broth

1 1/2 cups frozen corn

3/4 cup chunky salsa

3/4 cup boneless, skinless cooked chicken, cubed

1/4 cup water

2 cups shredded cheese, divided

1 bag baked tortilla chips

1. Combine all ingredients except cheese and chips

2. Cook on low 3-4 hours, or until heated through

3. Add half of cheese. Stir until melted

4. Crush chips in bowls. Add Soup. Top with sour cream and more crushed chips

(I pre made the chicken in the morning and then came home during my lunch and got the rest of the meal ready - it was perfect!). This is not too spicy and there was enough to serve all of us and have left overs!!

Chicken Soft Tacos

(this is what the recipe is called, but not how I used it!)

1-1 1/2 lbs frozen, boneless, skinless chicken breasts

14.5 oz can diced tomatoes with green chilies

1 packet of taco seasoning

1. Place Chicken breast in slow cooker

2. Mix tomatoes and taco seasoning. Pour over chicken.

3. Cover. Cook on low for 6-8 hours

4. Serve in soft tortillas. Top with salsa, shredded cheese, guacamole and fresh tomatoes.

I took out #4 and shredded the chicken and added it to lettuce, corn and black beans for a variation of taco salad. I use lighthouse "jalapeno ranch" dressing (not too spicy when mixed conservatively with salad). Also there is a new salad topper on the market (usually with the croutons or almonds) that is tortilla strips; they have tons of different flavors and were a huge hit on this salad! I cooked this recipe overnight in the crockpot, shredded the chicken in the morning and then let sit in the refrigerator until it was time to serve!

I could also imagine using this chicken for enchiladas!

Mix-It-and-Run Chicken

2 15oz cans cut green beans, undrained

2 10oz cans cream of mushroom soup

4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

1/2 tsp salt

1. Drain beans, reserving juice in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

2. Stir in soup into bean juice, blending thoroughly. Set aside.

3. Place beans in slow cooker. Sprinkle with salt.

4. Place chicken in cooker. Sprinkle with salt.

5. Top with soup.

6. Cover and cook on low 8-10 hours, or until chicken is tender, but not dry or mushy.

I really enjoyed this recipe and served it over rice. One thing I love is that once you try something ideas on how to improve the meal often come up. We think next time we make this one (on next weeks meal plan), we will cook the rice and put in a casserole dish, put chicken over rice, cover with shredded cheese and bake on 350 until cheese is melted. It was super yummy on it's own, but we are excited to try the variation.

There are so many meals in this book and we have tried a few that we feel were good, but not great. We have tried a few that we made notes to change things here and there and we will try again and the great thing is there are 1400 recipes, so many more to add to the list! You can get your own copy of this cook book by clicking here.

I had a few more recipes that are out of our family favorites, but I ran out of time this morning. I will post those and a few more soon!

Weekend Update

I am so excited about the first part of this blog. For my birthday, my Dad and Kelly got me a cookbook. It was a good book, but had a lot to do with the history of why we eat the foods we eat and less recipes. So, I exchanged it (with their blessing) and got this amazing cook book!

Do you see that???? 1,400 recipes!!!! I am thrilled about this and the best part is that every one I read before selecting this was fairly easy (not like one of those cook books that I thing "hmmmm, I don't' know where I would buy that ingredient).

Every single page has FIVE recipes... I can not wait to start trying these out!

This morning our entire family slept in and when we woke up we found this...

More SNOW!!

In the morning is wasn't sticking to the roads, but before long we had this...

This is a MAJOR road and to not see anyone there at 10:00 seemed itself weird. Especially since after all the snow we have had people should be use to driving in it! The good news... it was GONE by the afternoon. I surely am excited for 4:44 on Friday morning, the start of SPRING!

For Christmas the girls Grandma gave them both tickets to see the Lion King.

Today was the day of the show and both girls were very excited. Sadie had seen the show about 2 years ago when it came to town, but this was the first time for Syrah.

The Lion King Group: Syrah, Great-Grandma Connie, Cousin Jesse, Sadie & Grandma Valerie

Bill and I had the afternoon together - we had a nice lunch together, ran some errands and took a nice walk. Although we missed the girls, it was nice to spend the afternoon with my man!

Warning: I usually make fun of people who take things as follows to this extreme, but here I am... that person.

We have had Ava for a two and a half weeks and today was her first birthday. Ava is a very good dog and we were excited to be able to celebrate the gift of having her in our lives.

There are four cupcakes from our fav cupcake place: Cupcake Royal and the one in the front is a doggy cupcake from Muddy Paws. We thought it was a cute little treat for her birthday.


As you can see Ava enjoyed her treat - she gobbled this down in NO time!!!

We hope all who are reading this had a great week. May the week ahead be filled with God's blessings!

a great recipe

French Pot Roast:

4lb roast

1 bottle Worcestershire sauce

1 package dry onion soup mix

3 cans cream of mushroom soup

4 large potatoes, peeled and chopped

8 carrots, peeled and chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In large roasting pan place roast. Pour Worcestershire sauce all over meat. Put potatoes and carrots around roast. Sprinkle onion soup mix on top of roast. Pour all cream of mushroom soup cans over meat. Cover with foil and bake for at least 2 hours until potatoes and carrots are brown. Serves 4.

Billy and I rated this one a 5 - I LOVED the flavor of the meat, potatoes and carrots! I cut this recipe in 1/2 and it still made enough to serve 4 and left-overs.

Recipe from Mariners menus published years ago (back when they won games...oh, was that my out loud voice?). Recipe provided by Ron Villone, pitcher #47.

more recipes

It has been a while since we posted our family recipes, so here are a few that we have tried and enjoyed:

Pork Fried Rice

1 egg, lightly beaten
1 lb boneless, center-cut pork chops, fat trimmed and cut into 1/4 inch strips
2 scallions, trimmed and sliced
2 packages (8.8 ounces each) fully cooked brown rice
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil

Coat a 12 inch nonstick skillet with nonstick cooking spray and heat over medium heat. Add beaten egg and scramble. Transfer to a cutting board and cut into small bites.

Increase heat under skillet to medium-high and add pork. Cook 3 minutes, until no longer pink, then add scallions, brown rice and peas. Cover with a sheet of foil and cook an additional 2 minutes. Stir in egg, soy sauce and sesame oil and heat through. Serve warm.

We loved this meal, loved it! However, we decided next time we make it we will add zucchini and mushrooms. All us rated this a FIVE! YEAH!!!



America's Favorite Pot Roast:

(have to admit here that I have never made a pot roast in my life, so this was an experience)

3-1/2 to 4lb boneless pot roast
1/4 cup flour
2tsp salt
1/8tsp. pepper
3 carrots, chopped
3 potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 small onions, sliced
1 stalk celery, chopped
10 button mushrooms, sliced

Trim all excess fat from the roast, brown and drain. Combine 1/4 cup flour, salt and pepper and coat meat with the flour mixture. Place all vegetables except mushrooms in the crock-pot and top with the roast. Spread mushrooms evenly over the top of the roast. Cover and cook on low for 10 to 12 hours (or high for 4-6 hours).

This meal was again super yummy, but it made me a little nervous that there was no liquid in the crock pot when I left it. Next time I will probably add two teaspoons of water. The other thing I noticed was that it was a tad salty. The girls really don't love chunks of meat, but both ate it, but would rate it only a 2. Billy and I rated this one a four, if you have a crock pot roast recipe, I would LOVE it!!!

Creamy Tortellini Alfredo:

1 can chicken broth
1 cup water
2 packages frozen cheese tortellini
4oz cream cheese, cubed
1 cup frozen peas
3/4 Italian five cheese blend
6 slices bacon, cooked, drained.

Pour broth and water in saucepan, stir. Bring to boil on medium high. Add tortellini. Reduce heat to medium low. Simmer 8-9 minutes or until tortellini is tender - DO NOT DRAIN.
Add cream cheese and peas, stir.
Heat 2-3 minutes or until cream cheese is completely melted.
Stir in cheese and bacon and serve.

This meal was super easy and very good. It was VERY rich and really need a good size bowl of fresh fruit to balance it out. We all rated this one a 4!

We have another new meal in the oven right now and several on the list to try over the next few weeks, so hopefully we will be able to post some successful ones soon!

Tonights meal

Tonight we had Simple Lasagna.

Simple Lasagna

1lb extra lean ground beef
2-1/2c mozzarella cheese, divided
1 container skim ricotta cheese
1/2c grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1/3c fresh parsley
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1c water
12 lasagna noodles, uncooked

Preheat oven to 350
Brown meat
meanwhile, mix 1-1/4c of mozzarella cheese, all the ricotta cheese, 1/4c Parmesan cheese, the parsley and egg until well blended; set aside.
Drain meat, return to skillet, stir in sauce and water.
Spread 1cup of meat sauce onto bottom of 13x9 baking dish; top with layer of 3 uncooked noodles (noodles will expand during cooking).
Spread 1/3 of ricotta cheese mixture and 1 cup of meat sauce over noodles.
Repeat 2 times.
Top with 3 remaining noodles and remaining meat sauce.
Sprinkle with remaining 1-1/4cup mozzarella cheese and remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.
Cover tightly with greased foil.
Bake 45 minutes
Remove foil bake additional 15 minutes.
Let stand 10-15 minutes before serving.

I have to admit, I have never made lasagna, so I have nothing to base “simple” from, but it seemed fairly easy (pre-made this yesterday).

My mom was over so she was able to be a part of our rating which was fun. As the guest, we let her rate first:
Mom - 5 (I made sure she wasn't just "being nice")
Bill - 3
Theresa -4
Sadie - 3.5
Syrah - 3
(rating 1 worst meal, would rather not have it again to 5 being the best meal ever and now on the all time favorite list. A three would be, lets add it to the regular menu).

Both Billy and thought some things could change... I would add some onion and garlic, it also needed more sauce, but overall it was very good and provided us leftovers for lunch!!

two more recipes

This last weekend I was down and out in bed sick. I started to go a little crazy on Sunday night, so I decided I would attempt to make dinner. I made: Meatloaf mini's.

Meatloaf Mini's
1lb extra lean ground beef
1pack stove top stuffing
1c water
3/4c Cheddar Cheese
add options below!

Preheat oven to 375
Mix meat, stuffing mix, water and add-in options
Press into 12 muffin cups (sprayed)
Make an indention in center of each meatloaf with spoon, fill with sauce option
Bake at 375 - 30 minutes or until cooked.
Top with cheese; continue baking 5 minutes or until cheese is melted

Options:
1) add-in: 1tsp garlic power - sauce: 3/4c BBQ sauce
2) add-in: 1tsp Italian seasoning - sauce: 3/4c Spaghetti sauce
3) add-in: 2tsp chili powder - sauce: 3/4c salsa

We made ours with the Italian option (#2) and I do look forward to trying this again with one of the other variations. I have to say that I was glad it turned out as the last time I made meatloaf it ended up in the garbage and the idea of portion control and options within this dish were exciting.

Declaimer on the rating… none of us girls eat much red meat, so this is out of the norm for us to eat. Also, Billy never really enjoyed meatloaf, so again, we are out on a limb. Please keep those things in mind when reading our ratings and know that Billy said the meal was super good as leftovers the following day!

Bill – 3
Theresa – 3
Sadie – 1
Syrah - 2
(rating 1 worst meal, would rather not have it again to 5 being the best meal ever and now on the all time favorite list. A three would be, lets add it to the regular menu).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night we had: Foil pack Taco chicken

4 small boneless chicken breasts
4tsp taco seasoning
1/2lb red potatoes - peeled, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
1/2c salsa
3/4c Mexican cheese
1/4c sour cream

Preheat oven to 400
Sprinkle chicken with seasoning
Place 1/2 cup of potatoes on center of 4 large foil sheets (sprayed), top with chicken, salsa & cheese
Wrap foil - leaving room for heat to circulate
Bake 30-35 minutes until chicken is cooked through - remove from oven
Allow to sit 5 minutes after opening foil carefully to allow steam to release.
Serve with sour cream.

This was super easy to prepare and pop in the oven and clean up was a breeze!!! I made two variations to this meal – the recipe as stated above and I made plain chicken (added some garlic) and cheese for the girls.

Bill – 3.5
Theresa – 4
Sadie – 3 (she would have liked it more, but I added too much garlic – she LOVED the potatoes)
Syrah – 3 (she too found it to have too much garlic on it!)
(rating 1 worst meal, would rather not have it again to 5 being the best meal ever and now on the all time favorite list. A three would be, lets add it to the regular menu).

Recipe - Chicken Nacho Bake

During our time in Medford we stayed with Grandma MaryLou (Bill's mom) and she has a subscription to several magazines including one that is packed with recipes. I took time to write several down and she was kind enough to give me one magazine from 2007 that was so filled with recipes I couldn't have possibly copied them all by hand.

I thought it would be fun as our family tried these recipes to put them on here with our personal rating.

Last night we had Chicken Nacho Bake, which was advertised as either an appetizer or a main dish (if used as appetizer, cut the size of the chicken to be much smaller).

Chicken Nacho Bake

4 small boneless chicken breasts

1/2c salsa

1/4c sour cream

1/2c crushed tortilla chips

1/2c mexican cheese

Preheat the oven to 400'

Place chicken on foiled baking sheet

Slice 3 cuts on top of each chicken breast

Top each with salsa, sour cream, chips

Loosely cover with foil and bake for 20 mins

Remove from oven, sprinkle with cheese and bake an additional 10 mins

We served ours with spanish rice and corn. Each of us ate our meal and discussed a rating system. Our rating system looks like this:

1 worst meal

2 not the greatest, but edible

3 would eat again, but didn't find it great nor bad

4 pretty good meal and would like to see it on the menu again

5 greatest meal and added to the favorites list

The family rated as follows:

Dad - 4

Mom - 3

Sadie - 2

Syrah - 4

Come back soon to see more new dishes!!

Sadie's Cobbler...

Saturday Sadie made her first (not her last) cobbler. I myself have never made cobbler; so this was something new for all of us. We LOVE raspberries and got a great deal at the local store on an entire crate of them.

Sadie and Syrah both help in the kitchen from time to time, but Sadie hasn't done any cooking on her own, but we are going to start working on that as she is getting to the age that is capable of baking and cooking. Sadie had a ton of fun making this cobbler and it turned out SOOOOO YUMMY!!!

How can you resist this? It was so good that when it came out of the oven I forgot to snap a picture of the final product. She is excited to make it again and also to try new recipes... if anyone has a dessert bread recipe to share or a pie recipe to share we would love to have it!

Raspberry Cobbler recipe:

3/4 c. sugar

1 tbsp. cornstarch

3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 c. water

6 1/2 c. raspberries, rinsed and drained dry

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 c. all purpose flour

1/4 c. butter

1/2 c. milk

In a shallow 2 quart casserole dish, mix 1/2 cup sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, water and 6 cups raspberries. In separate bowl, mix soda, baking powder and flour. In second bowl, beat butter and remaining 1/4 cup sugar until creamy. Add milk and flour mixture; stir until moistened.

Drop batter in 8 equal spoonfuls, slightly apart, onto the raspberries. Bake in 400 degree oven until batter is a deep golden brown and berries are bubbling, 35 to 40 minutes. Makes 8 servings.

recipe complements of cooks.com

Two down...

So, I had made a goal for myself to try to make at least one new meal a week. I have about three/four weeks worth of "regular" meals, but I thought it would be fun to try some new things. Well, last night was meal number two and just like meal number one... it was not good. Meal number one (last week) I could hardly get down, but Billy enjoyed it enough to take it to work with him for lunch (plus he is the kindest man when it comes to my cooking). Tonight I made an attempt at meatloaf; I have never made it and thought it would be worth the try. Well, that one didn't even make it on plates, I will spare you the pictures.

I realize rather then getting recipes online; I need tried and true favorites. So, I would love if you would post under comments one of your family favorites... I am willing to try and would love knowing they came directly from someones kitchen.


Happy Friday!