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!

Kneaders Key Lime Tarts

Let me start out by explaining the difference between Key limes and your everyday supermarket variety, the Persian lime. Key limes come from the Florida Keys, thus their name, and are smaller, more yellow and contain more seeds than the green skinned Persian limes. The bad news is they’re almost impossible to find fresh at your local market, but the good news is Persian limes work just as well in this particular recipe.

Ingredients

• ½ cup fresh lime juice (3 to 4 limes)
• 4 teaspoons grated lime zest
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 – 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 8 3” tart shells

Preparation

1. It’s easiest to remove the lime zest from whole limes so start with that.

2. Cut the limes in half and squeeze out the juice being careful to not include any seeds.

3. Whisk the egg yolks and lime zest together in a bowl until tinted light green. This takes about 2 minutes.

4. Beat in the milk, then juice and set aside at room temp till it thickens.

5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

6. Pour mixture into tart crusts, bake for 5 minutes until the center is set, but still wiggles when shaken.

7. Remove from the oven and cool to room temp.

8. Refrigerate for at least three hours until well chilled.

9. Serve with whipped cream topping and decorate with a lime wedge.

Makes 8 Tarts

EASY Home Made Chicken Pot Pie

This is one of my favorites. Super easy. We eat this a lot.

Chicken Pot Pie

~One double pie crust- (you can buy this ready made next to the refrigerated biscuits if you're in a pinch and don't have time to make your own. I always have one ready made crust on had so I can pop this dinner in the oven when I'm in a hurry.)
~One can of chicken, (we buy ours at Costco)
~ one can cream of mushroom soup
~ one bag mixed frozen veggies
~a hand full grated cheese
~ sprinkle as much garlic salt as you think you would like

Line pie plate with one crust. Mix chicken, soup, veggies, cheese, and garlic salt. Fill pie crust. Cover with top crust. Cover edges of pie with foil so they don't over brown in the baking process.
Bake for 40-45 min at 425 degrees (or according to pie crust instructions) uncovering edges for the last 10 min of baking.

Hope you make it and enjoy it!