May 15th, 2008 karebear
This weeks Four Foods on Friday from Fun, Crafts and Recipes has made me really hungry.
#1. What’s your favorite beverage containing chocolate or chocolate flavoring? Chocolate milk (its nutrition in disguise.)
#2. What’s your favorite chocolate bar? OR Share a pic of your favorite candy, chocolate or otherwise. Hershey Bars
#3. What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten that had chocolate in it? chocolate crepe.
#4. Share a recipe using chocolate. Take vanilla ice cream out of freezer, pour hershey syrup over it. Right now, this is my favorite chocolate dessert. I don’t know why but the most simple meals lately.
Posted in Cooking/Cuisine, General | 11 Comments »
May 8th, 2008 karebear
Four foods on Friday time again. Here are the questions:
#1. How do you make chicken salad? I don’t like chicken salad, I think its because I need chicken to be hot.
#2. Fast food chicken. What fast food restaurant makes the best chicken? Burger King chicken tenders.
#3. What’s your favorite way to eat chicken? As a panini sandwich.
#4. Share a recipe using chicken or take a picture of a chicken dish. Stirfry with Chicken:
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April 24th, 2008 karebear
The other day, we had a Earth day pigout. Someone brought in my new favorite soup with my favorite vegetable–asparagus. It seems really easy to make too. So here it is:
Ingredients:
1 pound fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 in pieces
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 can (14.5 ounce) can chicken broth
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 teaspoons salt
1 pinch ground black pepper
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1. In a large saucepan, combine asparagus, chopped onion, and 1/2 cup chicken broth. Cover, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat, and simmer uncovered until asparagus is tender, about 11 minutes. Process mixture in a blender to puree the vegetables. Set aside.
2. In the same saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper. Cook stirring constantly for 2 minutes. Whisk in the remaining chicken broth, and increase the heat to medium. Cook, stirring constantly until mixture boils. Stir in the asparagus puree and milk.
3. Put the sour cream in a small bowl, and stir in a ladleful of the hot soup. Add the sour cream mixture and the lemon juice to the soup. Stir while heating the soup to serving temperature, but don’t allow to boil.
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April 22nd, 2008 karebear
One of my favorite meals growing up, was microwave chicken a la king. When I find a food or meal I like, I eat it to death until I can not eat it anymore. I recently found a recipe that I think almost matches the one I used to eat. Its supposed to be semi-healthy which we need because I want to lose weight and do not want to use weight loss pills.
Ingredients:
1 cup chopped cooked chicken breast
1/4 cup fat-free milk
1/4 cup frozen green peas, thawed
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 10 oz can reduced-fat, reduced sodium cream of chicken soup
6 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 2 oz jar diced pimentos
2 tablespoons low fat sour cream
2 slices bread
Combine the first seven ingredients in a large saucepan; cook over low heat 10 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat. Stir in sour cream.
Spoon chicken mixture over each serving of toast. Sprinkle with paprika.
Its a very simple and easy recipe. Even I can make it. (I’m not much of a cook–my husband usually cooks, but he said I did good.)
Posted in Cooking/Cuisine, General | 1 Comment »
April 17th, 2008 karebear
Let’s see if my sister and I answer the same way on some of the questions again:
#1. Cottage cheese. Small curd, large curd, chunk or whipped? Small curd
#2. Burgers. Made fresh, preformed fresh or preformed frozen? I’m actually more of a Boca girl .
#3. If you could only buy one kind of salad dressing what would it be? I don’t do salad dressing. I don’t really do salad.
#4. Share a crockpot or slow cooker recipe: Carrots, 1 can cream of mushroom, 1 can cream of celery, a pound of meat and onion soup mix for a couple of hours.
Posted in Cooking/Cuisine | 7 Comments »
March 19th, 2008 karebear
Yesterday, since I got my incentive bonus at work last Friday, Andy went to the liquor store for some wine. He bought a Pinot Grigo for $5. This wine is more what you would think of s $5 wine. It is kind of watered down, with a lingering fruity taste. It went down really easy, and kind of makes me feel like I will feel it in the morning. The one thing it does have going for it is the smell. It is very fragrant. I would rather pay $4.50 for Frontera wine.
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March 13th, 2008 karebear
This weeks questions (that I am doing prior to Friday morning) thanks to Fun, Crafts and Recipes:
#1. What’s your favorite fruit and how do you like to eat it? Right now pineapple, cut into pieces–fresh is okay, but I think I liked canned more.
#2. What is the one spice in your kitchen you use more than any other? Crushed red pepper (we eat a lot of pizza)
#3. Pudding. Instant, stovetop or premade? Premade–not a huge pudding fan, but I’ll eat it every once in awhile.
#4. Share a recipe using potatoes.
This is a recipe we made because we had left over potatoes.
Ingredients: 10 oz of spinach chopped, 3 large baking potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes, 1/2 cup heavy cream, 3 TBSP butter, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, 1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs, 3 TBSP grated Parmesan cheese, 3 TBSP melted butter, 1 teaspoon dried parsley.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a medium size casserole dish.
Place potatoes in a pot of water and bring to a boil. cook until tender, about 22 minutes. Drain and transfer to a bowl. Mash potatoes in bowl.
Gradually add spinach, cream, butter, salt and pepper to the bowl. Mix until combined. Transfer potato mixture to casserole dish. Smooth out top.
For topping, combine bread crumbs, Parmesan and melted butter. Sprinkle topping evenly over potato mixture. Bake until topping is golden, about 15 minutes. Sprinkle parsley on top and serve immediately.
We added chicken to the mixture because I thought we needed some kind of meat. It made a great filling meal. I know we will try this recipe again.
Posted in Cooking/Cuisine, General | 5 Comments »
March 7th, 2008 karebear
Here we go again. I wait till the last minute! Whoops. Here are the four questions:
#1. What type of m&m is your favorite? milk chocolate—side note: you really can taste what colors they are–my friends didn’t believe me a couple of years ago and I got everyone right. So my favorite color is red.
#2. Peanut butter. Smooth, chunky, creamy. How do you like it? I dont like peanut butter unless its a Reese peanut butter cup. I cant just eat that.
#3. Do you usually drink out of glass, acrylic, Tupperware type or paper cups? Glass, cuz then I make dishes for my husband to clean!
#4. Share a chicken recipe
My favorite chicken recipe is
Chicken Mushroom and Leek Soup.
Posted in Cooking/Cuisine, General | 8 Comments »
March 5th, 2008 karebear
Anyone who knows me should be proud. 3 years ago, I never would have tried this soup, let alone suggested that this should be supper. I saw this recipe and said I have to try this. This is going on my list of soups to have once a month.
Ingredients:
1 butternut squash (Andy’s been wanting to try one forever)
1 TBSP butter/margarine
1 medium onion, chopped
1 package (8 oz) sliced fresh mushrooms
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Dash ground red pepper (cayenne) Andy put more than a dash–be careful with this
2 cans (14 oz) chicken broth
1 cup half and half
1. Cut squash in half lengthwise; remove seeds. Microwave on High 8-16 minutes (this really didn’t work for Andy. He doubled the time, but it was still hard. His friend just told us if you skin it and steam it, it may work better. We are going to try this next time) Cool for 10-15 minutes.
2. Melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and mushrooms; cook about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in garlic, salt, ginger, cumin, black pepper and ground red pepper. Add broth; heat to boiling over high heat. Reduce heat to low; simmer uncovered 5 minutes to blend flavors.
3. Scoop flesh (that sounds nasty) from cooled squash into blender. Add half and half; blend until smooth. Stir squash mixture into mushroom mixture in Dutch oven. Simmer uncovered 10 minutes, until thoroughly.
We paired this with asparagus (it was on sale) for a very filling meal. I give this 4 stars. I have never tried butternut squash, but I will again.
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January 20th, 2008 karebear
Isn’t it nice to look at a recipe and have almost 85% of the ingredients in the house already. I saw the recipe for savory chicken rolls and told Andy I needed to have it.
Ingredients: 4 boneless chicken halves, 4 slices (about 1 ounce each), 4 sticks Havarti cheese, 1/2 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons butter, divided, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 package (8 oz) mushrooms, cut in half, 1/4 white wine or chicken stock, 1/4 cup chopped green onions (makes 4 servings)
Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly coat 11 X7-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Place each chicken breast half between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Using the flat side of a meat mallet, pound chicken until flattened to about a 1/4 inch thickness.
Place 1 ham slice on each breast half. Place 1 cheese stick on top of each ham slice. Roll up chicken, enclosing ham and cheese. Secure with toothpicks. Combine flour and salt in a shallow dish. Coat each chicken roll with flour mixture.
Heat 1 tablespoon butter and oil over medium high heat in a skillet; add chicken rolls. Cook until browned on all sides, 4 to 5 minutes.
Remove chicken and place in prepared baking dish. Add remaining butter and mushrooms to skillet. Cook until mushrooms begin to brown. Stir in wine, scraping to remove brown bits from skillet. Pour over chicken. Sprinkle with green onions.
Bake until chicken is no longer pink and is at temperature 180 degrees F. (about 25 minutes)
We used the white wine not the chicken stock. We were kind of surprised that you could use either or. They really are not substitutes for one another. But this was a nice meal that we add some vegetables and noodles with so we are starting to get our 5 vegetables and fruits a day. It was a little labor intensive, but something we plan to try again.
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