Chinese Barbecued Chicken Thighs

I’m always looking for new ways to cook chicken thighs, since we have them often in our house hold.  I found this recipe in my Cooking Club’s April 2009 Edition.  This recipe is so simple to throw together after a full day at work! I served mine with some white rice, because it is very saucy and you have extra sauce left over! This makes 2 servings, with about 435 calories per serving.

Ingredients:

4 bone-less chicken thighs, skin removed

1/4 cup hosin sauce

2 teaspoons of dark sesame seed oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon of sesame seeds, toasted

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Place chicken on a foil lined baking sheet. Combine hosin sauce, oil and garlic. Spoon over chicken.
2. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in the center. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
3. To toast the sesame seeds, put them in a dry skillet over medium heat for about 1 to 2 minutes, or until lightly browned. Stir frequently.

Enjoy!

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Crockpot Thursday: Salsa Chicken

I saw this recipe of The Novice Chef’s Food Blog and bookmarked it and knew I had to make it ASAP because it looked so good!  On her original blog post, she posted that this was a favorite with her and her family and it definitely holds true for ours! This we will definitely make again. This a great meal to make when you are having a football party this fall or just want an easy meal.  We actually ate half our serving just with the ingredients listed, but then halfway through eating my husband said, I bet this would go good on a tortilla. We happened to have some left so we quickly got them out and wrapped them up with the ingredients and it was just as delicious! I adapted this recipe to make two servings.

Ingredients:

2 boneless chicken breast

1 cup of salsa, any brand

1/2 package of taco seasoning

1/2 can of condensed cream of chicken soup

1/4 cup of sour cream

Directions:

1. Add chicken to the slow cooker.
2. Sprinkle taco seasoning over chicken.
3. Mix salsa, sour cream, and chicken soup in another bowl. Add to crock pot.
4. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
5. Shred chicken with forks and serve!

I like the original poster made a side of rice to lay the salsa chicken on.

Enjoy!

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Dry Rubbed BBQ Pork Chops

I’m always looking for or trying to think of different ideas when making pork chops. I had some fun just throwing together some ingredients that I thought would make a good BBQ flavor. I knew while throwing the ingredients together it was going to be a hit or a miss, and the flavor was a total hit!

BBQ Dry Rub

Ingredients:

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

3/8 teaspoon of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of chili powder

1/4  teaspoon of cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon of paprika

1 teaspoon of onion powder

1 teaspoon of garlic powder

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl, rub onto pork.

Enjoy!

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Apple Dumplings

Saturday, we had a school field trip to Johnson’s Corner Farm in Medford, NJ. We went apple picking! So I had an abundance of apples. Besides putting them in our lunches this week, I decided to make apple dumplings. There are a million apple dumpling recipes out there and I decided instead of searching for one, I was just going to throw some ingredients together and see how it worked out.  What a great idea, because these were AMAZING! Probably one of the best apple dumplings I’ve had in a while and I’m not just saying that because I made them!

Ingredients:

2 apples, I used Empire, fairly large in size

1/2 cup of sugar

A pinch or so of flour

A few tablespoons of cinnamon

1-2 tablespoons of butter

Your favorite pie dough(I used Pillsbury refrigerated dough)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Peel, core and slice apples.
3. Place flour, sugar and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon in a bowl.
4. Place sliced apples in the bowl with dry ingredients and make sure they are coated well.
5. I cut the pie dough in half, lay one half of the dough on a baking sheet and place apple mixture on the dough, sprinkle some of the remaining sugar mixture on the top and then close with other half of pie dough.
6. Sprinkle outside of dumpling with cinnamon and rub some butter over the top of the dumplings.
7. Bake for 40-45 minutes.

Enjoy!

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Meatball Stew

I love fall for two reasons, ok, well a few but these two are my favorites: the cooler temps and crock pot meals! We are going to start a new thing this fall in our house and have crock pot Thursday’s! So for our first crock pot meal of the fall, I found this recipe in the September 2009 issue of Family Circle. The original recipe called for ground beef, but I always substitute ground turkey for ground beef.  This recipe makes 4 servings.  It has 337 calories per serving.

Ingredients:

1 egg, lightly beaten

3/4 pound of ground turkey

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

3 tablespoons of plain bread crumbs

2 tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

1/2 cup of ketchup

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon of low sodium beef broth

1 1/2 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar

1 bag (16 ounces) of baby carrots

1 medium size onion, chopped

1 tablespoon of cornstarch

Directions:

1. Stir together egg, beef, onion, bread crumbs, 1 tablespoon of the parsley, the Parmesan cheese, and 1/4 teaspoon each of the salt and pepper. Form into 1 inch meatballs, makes about 20, set aside.
2. Stir together 1/4 cup of ketchup, 1/4 cup of broth and the vinegar. Place carrots and onion in the slower cooker and put meatballs on top. Drizzle with ketchup mixture.  Cook on high for 3 1/2 hours or on low for 5 hours.
3. Stir together remaining tablespoon of parsley, 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper, 1/4 cup ketchup, 1 tablespoon of broth and cornstarch. Gently stir into slow cooker and cook until thick about 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

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Spiced Beef Kabobs with Mashed Carrots

I saw this recipe in Better Homes and Garden’s, August 2009’s edition. I knew it would be a great easy week night meal to prepare for us and pretty healthy as well.  This makes two servings. One important thing with making this recipe is that the beef needs to marinate at least 4 hours and no longer then 24 hours.

Ingredients:

1/8 cup reduced sodium soy sauce

1.5 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 tablespoon of packed brown sugar

3 garlic cloves, smashed

1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

1/2 pound of filet mignon, cut into 1 inch cubes

For Mashed Carrots:

1/2 pound of peeled and sliced carrots

A half tablespoon of lemon juice

A half tablespoon of olive oil

Black pepper to taste

Directions:

For Beef:

1. In a plastic baggie, add soy sauce, oil, lemon juice, brown sugar, garlic and red pepper. Add meat to bag. Seal and turn to coat. Marinate, refrigerate, 4 to 24 hours, turning bag occasionally.
2. Drain beef mixture, discard marinade. Thread beef onto skewers, leaving about 1/4 inch between.
3. Pre-heat gas grill. Grill on medium heat, till about medium, turning occasionally.

For Mashed Carrots:

1. In a medium sauce pan, cook carrots, in salted boiling water, 12 to 15 minutes or until tender.
2. Drain, return to saucepan. Add a half of tablespoon of lemon juice and a half of tablespoon of olive oil.
3. Mash until nearly smooth and flavor to taste with pepper.

Enjoy!

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Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve been slacking on my blogs, both my food blog and my weight loss/life blog.  The reason being is my job is consuming all of my time! Two weeks ago I got hired to teach kindergarten, so basically I had two days to get lesson plans together and a classroom! That left me with no time to really bake or cook anything. I started to miss it quite terribly so this weekend I finally had a chance to get back into the kitchen and it felt great! Anyways, my husband and I also have a small bicker over when we make cookies, because he likes chocolate chip cookies and I like peanut butter, so we typically make a few of each kind so we are both happy.  This week though our local grocery store had Nestle morsels on sale so I bought a few bags and one of them happened to be chocolate chip and peanut butter chip mixed.  At the time I wasn’t sure what I was going to use them in, maybe waffles or pancakes.

Then I got the idea to make cookies! So we ended up with some yummy and big peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies!

This recipe makes about 16 large sized cookies.

Ingredients:

2 1/3 cups of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 cup ( 2 sticks) of butter, melted

1 cup of dark brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/2 of a 11 ounce bag of Nestle Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Morsels

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 325  degrees.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. In another large bowl or a stand mixer, beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar on medium high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until blended. On low speed beat in the flour mixture until just blended and a dough forms. Stir in the morsels.
4. Using an ice cream scoop, drop dough in a mound onto a baking sheet. Place about 3 inches part and bake for about 15-20 minutes(depending on your oven).

Enjoy!

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Chicken Pinwheels with Prosciutto & Smoked Gouda

On Saturday afternoon, the husband and I wanted to take a bike ride down to the shore for a biking event, but unfortunately yesterday’s weather wasn’t that great and about 20 miles into the ride we hit some rain, so we decided to turn around and come back. On our way back, he said that he wanted a chicken dish with a white cream sauce.  I thought about it for a second and remembered that a few weeks ago our friends had some smoked gouda cheese and it was so yummy. I said to my husband at the time that it would be a yummy cheese to pair with some prosciutto and chicken.  So we thought about a white cream sauce recipe and this is what we can up with! If this post entry looks a little silly it’s because my husband did it, I just typed up this paragraph!

Ingredients:

Pasta of Your Choice

Chicken Breast

Pinch of Garlic Power

Pinch of Black Pepper

Pinch of Red Pepper

Pinch of Paprika

Prosciutto

Shredded Smoked Gouda Cheese

Half Pint of Heavy Cream

Half Stick of Butter

Shredded prosciutto

1/4 Onion (Diced)

1/4 cup of Grated Parmesan Cheese

Pepper to Taste

Directions:

1. Flatten Chicken Breast to 1/4″.
2. Season lightly the inside of the chicken breast with the dry seasonings.
3. Place One Slice of prosciutto on the chicken breast, may use more if necessary.
4. Place Shredded Gouda on top of prosciutto use best judgment depending how cheesy you would want the chicken.
5. Roll Chicken and steak with tooth picks.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
7. When done cut in pin wheels.  Place around Pasta.

Sauce:

1. Begin Boiling Pasta While Preparing Sauce.
2. Sautee Onions for 3-4 minutes.
3. Add Heavy Cream, Butter,prosciutto, Parmesan, simmer to thicken.
4. Pepper to Taste.
5. When pasta is done, put in bowl, add sauce, may not need all of the sauce.
6. Mix pasta with sauce, place on plate, circle with chicken wheels.

Enjoy!

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Bean, Broccoli & Edmame Salad

I was looking for a cool and fresh replacement for dinner instead of a salad. We had some left over edamame in the freezer from some risotto I made some time ago. I also just happened to be out in our garden and picked some of the broccoli and string beans and decided they would go well together with the edamame.

Ingredients:

4 ounces of fresh green beans, washed and trimmed

3/8 cup of apple cider vinegar

1/8 cup of vegetable oil

A half tablespoon of dry red wine

1 teaspoon of Worcester sauce

1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard

6 ounces of edamame, shelled

A head of broccoli, cut and washed

Directions:

1. Combine all sauce ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together.
2. Combine veggies in a skillet with about an inch of water for about 10 minutes or until tender.
3. Mix sauce and veggies together.
4. Chill for about an hour and serve.

Enjoy!

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Corn Pie

My father’s birthday was this past weekend and one of his favorite things to eat is something my Nana used to make for him. It’s something my mother or my self ever acquired a taste for, but my dad did! He absolutely loves this homemade Pennsylvania Dutch Corn Pie!

Ingredients:

1 large potato, peeled and chopped

1 (15 ounce) can of corn, drained

1 (15 ounce) can of cream-styled corn

Salt and Pepper( a pinch or so of each)

1/2 cup of milk

1 tablespoon of butter

2 pie crust( you can make your own, or if you pressed for time, just buy the store bought)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. In a sauce pan over medium heat, stir together the potato, both corns, salt, pepper and milk. Simmer for about 15 minutes.
3. Press one of the pie crust into the bottom and the sides of a 9 inch pie pan.
4. Pour the hot filling into the crust, dot with pieces of butter.
5. Cover with top crust and cut a few slices in the top, so it can vent while baking.
6. Bake for 30 minutes at 425 then reduce temperature to 350 degrees and make for another 10 minutes, or until crust is browned. Serve hot or warm.

Enjoy!

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