Southwest Roll-ups

This took me less than 15 minutes to prepare! And I made a lot at once for future dinners.

I took this recipe from Money Saving Mom. I halfed her recipe, it made 7 large tortilla wraps, and one small one. Another adaptable recipe to toss in whatever vegetables you have, and I would suggest doing so to create a healthier adaptation.

Ingredients:

1/2 can corn

1 can refried beans

1/4 cup salsa

About 7 tortillas, depending on size.

Shredded cheddar cheese

1-2 cups Cooked chicken, shredded or diced.
Mix chicken, salsa, corn, refried beans together. I tossed in the rest of my spinach for good measure. Mix well.
Put on tortillas. Top with cheese, and wrap to your heart's content.
To bake, just put them in the oven at 350 degrees. Top with more cheese on top, to melt over if desired, and bake for 30 minutes. I am freezing mine, and will pull them out to cook at a later date.

Stuffed Peppers

I don't know why stuffed peppers intimidated me so much. They were so EASY to make and very versatile to accommodate what I already had in my fridge. I used chicken sausage, because there were leftovers after making this super simple meal. But, any meat will do, just make sure you cook it first. & I meant to add mushrooms, but totally forgot!

Ingredients I used:

2-3 Bell Peppers

1/2 of an onion finely diced

2-3 links chicken sausage

1 cup brown rice, cooked

Spinach

Drizzle of spaghetti sauce that I had in my fridge. Original recipes call for tomato sauce. But, I was out, so I compromised.

First, cut off the top of your peppers and clean out the insides. Stick your peppers into boiling water for no more than three minutes.

Fry up your onions and sausage together

Mix in cooked rice, and spinach, (And mushrooms, and any other vegetable you want). Then drizzle some of your tomato sauce onto mixture, and stir in.

Scoop your mixture into peppers, until heaping full. Then cook in oven at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes. Your peppers are good when tender and growing some wrinkly skin. You don't want to burn them though, so check on them until they look to your satisfaction. I topped with some parmesan cheese, since I did use spaghetti sauce after all.

Super tasty, and super fun!

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I just made these today and they are super tasty!!

WARNING: This is not your grandmother's oatmeal cookie.

Mix together:
1.5 cup white sugar
1.5 cup brown sugar
1 cup shortening

Once mixed, add in:
2 eggs
1 tsp

Mix separately then add into sugar mixture:
3/4 cup white flour
3/4 cup wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Then add in 3 cups of oats and 1.5 c chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Vegetable Lasagna

Coming soon to a blog near you

Jumbo 3-Chip Cookies

This recipe is taken from"100 Best Chocolate Recipes" -a cookbook gift given to me when I was married. The gift giver, my cousin, knows me well, don't you think? To give you an idea of how jumbo these are, I let Michael eat one. It's still hard to tell, but jumbo is the truth!Jumbo 3-Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

2 Large eggs

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 cup dark chocolate chips

1 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup milk chocolate chips - - Any variety of chips will do the trick, this is just what I used.

1 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda in medium bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop dough by level 1/4-cup measure 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake for 12-14 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes, remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Makes about 2 dozen.

Now for the second half. I could already tell by the amount of dough that I would have too many cookies on hand, so I decided to measure out the dough into cupcake tins to freeze them. Just below the fill line is about 1/4 cup. I put a knife around the edges to make for easier removal from pan once frozen. Freeze for a couple of hours. I had to turn the pan upside down and rinse the bottom of it with warm water for a second and then tap the pan on the counter and the dough just fell right out. I placed the dough into plastic bags and back into the freezer, so they are ready to pop into the oven for future use!

Easy Wraps

Wraps are a fantastic way to switch up eating a traditional deli sandwich, and it's a little more versatile too. Just take a glance in your fridge and discover what leftover veggies and meat you can use.

The spread consists of: cream cheese, sour cream, seasoning salt, and a dry ranch packet all spread on a Mission brand Garden Herb tortilla. Regular flour tortillas are delicious too.

Today my wraps included: Diced red pepper, diced tomato, packaged deli meat, spinach, and green onion.

Measurements can definitely be adapted according to the amount of people you are trying to feed. To make about 4-5 large wraps, place 1/2 block of cream cheese in a bowl. Put a few spoonfuls of sour cream into the bowl. You want it to be a creamy, spreadable texture which the sour cream helps fulfill, but you don't want to overpower the sour cream taste. Sprinkle generously with seasoning salt and a quarter of a dry ranch packet. Beat until mixed together and spread across tortilla.

Load the veggies on, leaving at least a 1/2 inch at one end so the tortilla will stick together when you roll it up.

These can also be cut up into little pinwheels if you are looking for a good, easy appetizer.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

2-3 Boneless Chicken Breasts

1 Quart Organic Chicken Broth

1-1.5 Cups Water

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 Stalks Celery, medium diced

3 Carrots, peeled and medium diced

1 Leek, diced

Dried Thyme

About 2 cups uncooked whole-wheat egg noodles

Salt and Pepper, to taste

1. Turn oven to 400 degrees, and roast chicken sprinkled with salt and pepper (or any desired seasoning) until fully cooked (abt 30-40 minutes for 2 breasts). When done, shred and cut up chicken to bite size pieces.

2. Put oil in pan, and saute celery, leeks, and carrots for about 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, pour chicken broth and water into pot, and bring to a soft boil. Pour in egg noodles and let them start cooking. As noodles cook, add more water if necessary.

4. After sautéed vegetables are tender, put them into broth mixture. Also add the chicken to the broth.

5. Add a couple teaspoons of thyme and some salt and pepper.

Ready to eat once the egg noodles are cooked!

Leek Potato Soup

This recipe is very simple, and pretty tasty. If I had bacon bits, I would've topped the soup off with them (for extra color, and a different flavor). I made my soup by combining two different recipes and creating my own. Some soups call for more spices, but I kept it simple with just salt and pepper and just a little bit of basil.

Potato Leek Soup
1 Tbsp Butter
2 large leeks (for tips on how to properly cut leeks click here. BTW, my leeks were much larger than the one pictured here, so if you use small leeks like this, then I suggest using 3 for the soup.)
1 lb potatoes (abt 3-4) peeled and cut into quarters. (We used red)
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 -2 cups water
salt & pepper to taste

1 Cook leeks in butter with salt and pepper in a medium sized sauce pan. Cover pan, cook on low heat for 10 minutes. Check often. Do not brown leeks! Browning will give leeks a burnt taste.
2 Add water, broth, and potatoes. Bring to a low simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes, until the potatoes are pretty soft. Scoop about half of the soup mixture into a blender, puree and return to pan, or do the entire soup for less chunks.

That's it! Serves 4-6 I served ours with crusty garlic bread. Croutons would work well too!
Bon appetit!

Cabbage Potato Gratin

My gratin^

I'm pulling this recipe straight from blog "Small Potatoes". With St. Patrick's Day and all, cabbage is really inexpensive at most stores, so I wanted to try something new with it. Actually, I don't think I've ever bought a cabbage since being married so it was fun to cook with.

Potato Cabbage Gratin

1 pound yellow potatoes (about 3-4) I used Red Potatoes
about 1 pound green cabbage
4 tbls. butter, plus more for dish
1 garlic clove
1 1/3 cups milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup grated cheese (Parmesan or other hard, white cheese)
1/3 cup AP flour
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a 2 quart baking dish. Put a large pot of water on to boil.
2. Peel and slice potatoes to 1/4 inch thick.
3. Slice the cabbage roughly into ribbons.
4. Add potatoes and 1 tbls. salt to water. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove potatoes to a bowl.
5. Drop cabbage into water and cook for 5 minutes. Remove cabbage from water and place on an old dish cloth. Squeeze out as much excess water as you can.
6. Melt butter in small skillet and toss garlic in for one minute.
7. Gently toss cabbage, potatoes, butter and garlic, and salt and pepper (to taste) together. (Your potatoes may break up a little, but no worries, it will all bake up nicely.) Pour into baking dish.
8. Whisk milk, eggs, cheese, and flour together. Pour over potato mixture. (Reserve a little cheese to sprinkle on top.)
9. Bake for 50 minutes and cool slightly before serving.

4 to 6 servings
We served it with crusty bread and sausage, but this could easily be a vegetarian main.

We served it with crusty bread as well as lots of fruits. Richard didn't hate the dish, but considering it was mostly veggies, he didn't love it either. He thought it was a little bland, but I found it to be plenty flavorful since I like the taste of cabbage and potatoes. But, just adding more pepper helped dramatically. If I make it again, it will probably include some ham chunks in it (because men don't think a meal is a meal without meat). Lol. I would love to hear your feedback if you make it! Also, if anyone has any other cabbage recipes, please share them! I'd love to give them a try.

Truffles

This year for Christmas I made truffles to give away to all my neighbors.

Thankfully they're easy to make and oh so delicious.

First thing you need is about a lb. of chocolate. Dark, milk, mint, doesn't matter. Make sure it's something you like to eat on it's own. In this photo I'm using a cadbury milk chocolate bar. What you need to do is chop the entire lb of chocolate into small pieces (for me it ended up more like shavings which worked out better).


Put the chocolate in a bowl.

I forgot to take pictures of this step but you need to heat up 3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream on the stove. Heat it until just before boiling when bubbles appear around the side of the pan. Remove the cream from the heat and pour directly into your bowl of chocolate shavings. It should combine into a smooth creamy mixture (for me I still had a few lumps so I placed the bowl over a pan of boiling water and made it a little hotter to melt the rest). Cover the bowl with ceran wrap by pushing it down into the bowl directly onto the smooth chocolate mixture. Refrigerate at least 2 hours but until the mixture is solid.


At this point remove the bowl from the fridge and remove the ceran wrap. Next to it place a small bowl with cocoa powder. Take a spoon, remove a spoonful of chocolate from the bowl and drop it into the powder. Now it's time to get your hands dirty. Grab that spoonful and roll it into a ball. Place it onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. If the chocolate mixture gets too soft place it back into the refrigerator to harden again.



Once you get the balls all formed it's time to double boil (melt) more chocolate. The best I've found is actually a dipping chocolate in the form of large chips. The best locally here in Provo is from Funfetti by the distribution center on University Parkway. Their milk chocolate chips. Generally another lb. will do.


Melt down the chocolate until it's smooth, being careful not to overhead. Generally once it starts melting down it's hot enough to remove from the heat and with continued mixing the melt all the chocolate. Once it's melted drop a ball of chocolate into the bowl make sure it's covered and then place on another cookie sheet covered in Parchment Paper.

Very important note on the dipping chocolate, don't get any water in it whatsoever. If you do it will seize (thicken and get lumpy) and make dipping impossible.

Once all the balls are covered place it in the refrigerator to harden again. If you want you can drizzle more chocolate on top of the hardened truffles. I did green drizzles on my mint truffles so you could tell them apart.

Hopefully all that made sense, I'm sad I forgot to take a picture of the final product but it was oh so yummy!

Have fun making your own truffles!