Grilled eggplant May 30, 2012

I made this tonight to go along with our Italian sausage sandwiches. The tanginess of balsamic really brought out a lot of sweetness in the eggplant. Super easy and super tasty.

Ingredients
Eggplant, washed and cut into 1/2″ thick slices.
Kosher salt sprinkled on eggplant slices
1/2 cub olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1. Whisk olive oil and vinegar in bowl.
2. Brush on eggplant slices.
3. Grill for 20-25 minutes, turning once while cooking.
4. Serve and enjoy. To protect yourself from major burns, resist urge to eat directly off of grill.

Baked chicken strips May 24, 2012

My kids love chicken strips but I absolutely hate the mess and the work that comes along with  frying them and the strips they sell in the frozen food section are awful.  If I wanted to eat soggy rubber, I’d chew on my flip flop.  Over the years, I’ve learned how to get crispy and delicious chicken strips (or nuggets, if you prefer) straight from the oven.

Ingredients

• 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts sliced into even sized strips or nuggets
• A shallow dish with seasoned flour.( I always add salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, and paprika and then whatever else I have lying around and I’m in the mood for)
• A shallow dish with 2-3 eggs beaten
• A shallow dish with 1 cup of panko bread crumbs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Spray a baking sheet with your favorite cooking spray.
3. Dredge the chicken through the flour mixture.
4. Next put it into the beaten egg and coat well. (It helps to keep one hand dry so that your hands don’t turn into Floured Hulk hands)
5. Coat chicken strip with panko.
6. Place on baking sheet and continue until all chicken is coated.
7. Bake for 20 minutes. Turn over the strips.  Bake for another 15-20 or until chicken is cooked through.

Serve with your favorite dipping sauces and vegetables.  Total prep time is about 15-20 minutes and cook time is about 45 minutes.  Sure it takes longer than getting them out of the freezer, but they taste so much better!

Rainbow Party May 14, 2012

My daughter recently turned 9 years old and for her birthday party we had a rainbow theme. The 9 year old rainbow and unicorn sticker collecting me loved this theme and went a wee bit overboard. Oh yeah, my daughter liked it too.

We knew we wanted a rainbow theme but didn’t really know where to go from there. So where does the non-creative mother with big dreams turn? Pinterest, of course. There I found more ideas thank I could have possibly accomplished but I wanted to share a few of my favorites here.

Chocolate Covered Pretzel Cupcakes May 11, 2012

Cupcake, delicious cupcake

The fundraiser was a giant success today.  We raised a lot of money for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.  These little babies were the biggest hit and sold out first.  You just can beat that salty and sweet combination. Everyone who tried them love them, so much that I never even got the chance to try one! Wait until they find out how easy they were to make.

Ingredients

Chocolate cupcakes -24. I used a boxed cake mix (gasp!) and prepared according to package directions

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

Crushed Pretzels

24 small pretzels

1 bag of Wilton Candy Melts of your choosing

Directions:

While cupcakes cool, melt the candy melts according to package directions.  Dip small pretzels into melted chocolate and set to cool on waxed paper lined cookie sheet.  Put in fridge to set.

Once cupcakes are cooled, frost the cupcakes.

Dip the frosted end into crushed pretzels.  I sifted the crushed pretzels with the strainer to remove fine powder. Coat the top of the cupcake with the crushed pretzels.

Stick chocolate covered pretzel into center of cupcake.

That’s it! Super easy, huh? What are you favorite easy cupcake tricks?

Baking for Boobs May 10, 2012

It’s a big day at work tomorrow.  We’re having a bake sale to help raise money to support me in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.  It’s less than a month away and I still have a lot of money to earn and training to complete.  Hopefully this sale will help me on the way towards that.  We’ve been touched by cancer too much in our family so I’m not just walking for breast cancer but to bring an end to all cancers.

Some of my fabulous co-workers have agreed to help bake so I only needed to make two things for tomorrow. I decided to try two new recipes.

First up, caramel and chocolate covered marshmallows.

Pardon my lousy cell phone/instagram picture

Ingredients:

20 lollipop sticks

20 marshmallows

1 bag of unwrapped caramels

1 bag of Wilton candy melts (I used dark cocoa)

Directions:

1. Put sticks into marshmallows
2. Melt caramel in microwave according to package directions
3. Dip marshmallows into caramel and coat (Lesson I learned: marshmallows dipped in super hot caramel start to melt. Duh.)  Place onto cookie sheet on your favorite nonstick material.  Because they will stick.  A lot.  No really, they are sticky little mofos.
4. Place in fridge to chill for about 3o minutes
5. Melt candy melts on 1/2 power in microwave
6. Dip caramel covered pops into the chocolate and coat well.  Put on wax paper and back into the fridge.
7. Once fully chilled, wrap and serve.  Or rap and serve depending on your MC skills.

Tomorrow, I will post the recipe for the chocolate covered pretzel cupcakes.  Um, yum!

 

 

 

Simple Barbeque Chicken Pizza May 6, 2012

I don’t know about you but May is easily our busiest month of the year.  School year activities are winding down while summer activities are ramping up.  Plus our weekends are full of picnics, family parties, and recitals.  As a result I want to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible.  On our way to a party today, my husband reminded me that we had leftover barbeque chicken in the fridge and requested that I try to make one of his favorite restaurant items for dinner,  barbeque chicken pizza.  This turned out to be a quick, easy, and delicious way to use up some leftovers.

Warning dear reader: I have cooking skills.  I have photography skills. I have no skills when it comes to taking pictures of food and making it look edible.

I received the following recipe for the crockpot barbeque chicken from my brother Tony, I would link you to his twitter but he never actually tweets and I fear I would be wasting your time.

Ingredients:

2-3 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken breast

1 large bottle of barbeque sauce

1 cup of Italian dressing

1/2 cup brown sugar

4 TBSP Worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1. Put chicken breasts into slow cooker.
2. Mix remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour over chicken
3. Cook on low 6-8 hours or low 3-4 hours.  Chicken is ready when it shreds easily with a fork.

I usually serve the chicken on a roll with a vinegar based cole slaw and hot sauce.  I also usually have a ton leftover which  made it the perfect topping for this pizza.

To make the pizza using the leftover chicken, I made my standard pizza crust.  I use a slight variation of this recipe.  It’s a New York style pizza crust but you can use any crust that you choose.  I live in the Chicago area but I think Chicago style pizza crust is the Devil’s cracker.  I expect hate mail for this.

I cook the crust for 5 minutes at 400 degrees before adding any toppings. I find this helps get the crust a bit crisper.

Layer your toppings on top of the partially baked crust.  I added the leftover barbeque chicken, shredded mozzarella, and diced red onions.

After the toppings have been added. Ready for the oven

Bake for another 15-20 minutes until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden brown.

This is how it looked after coming out of the oven.

Verdict: The whole family loved it.  Yes, even the kids.  It’s a non-Christmas miracle!  I’ll make it again, next time I will experiment with a wider selection of vegetables.

Do you have a favorite non-traditional pizza recipe?  Or a great way to re-purpose boring leftovers? Share them in the comments section.

WTH Rachel Ray? July 22, 2009

Cheeseburger salad! Seriously?

I saw this a few weeks ago on The Colbert Report and have not been able to get it out of my mind ever since.  Now, I admittedly have an issue with melted yellow cheeses, and by issue I mean that I feel that they are pure evil sent to destroy us all.  I also have a strong anti-Rachel Ray bias; she is bubbly, I don’t like bubbly. But this has to be one of the grossest examples of a salad that I’ve ever seen.  Look at the way the grease glistens on the cheese as the beef juices congeal on the alarmingly small number of lettuce leaves.  Ew.

I don’t think this one is going to make it into the dinner rotation at our house.  I would like to hear what the cheeseburger lovers out there think of this.  It may be a fine salad, I just can’t get beyond the melted yellow cheese.

Dear Mr. Ice Cream Man July 18, 2008

When I order two kid’s sized cones and 1 medium cone in the drive-thru, it is safe to assume that the medium cone is for me!  Do not hand me that cone first because it is nearly impossible to pass two cones to the backseat while holding on to my ice cream cone.  Hand me the little cones and then the larger cone, it would make life so much easier.  Thanks ever so.

Chicken Enchiladas & Corn Cake July 17, 2008

For dinner last night I pulled the extra Chicken Enchilada pan out of the deep freeze.  I covered it with aluminum foil and cooked it in the oven at 375º for about an hour.  I removed the foil for the last 15 minutes. It tasted exactly the same as when cooked fresh.  I will never just make one pan of the chicken enchiladas again, this made for such a tasty, easy supper.

As a side dish I made corn cake, we went to Don Pablo’s Mexican Restaurant while in Minneapolis and it made me crave corn cake.  It’s a simple recipe and the kids loved it!

CORN CAKE

1 stick softened unsalted butter

4 ears worth of corn removed from the cob (you could also use frozen corn),

1/3 cup Mexican corn flour

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup whipping cream

pinch of kosher salt

2-3 grinds of black pepper

1/2 tsp baking powder

Combine butter, corn flour and water and add in the corn.  In another bowl mix together the remaining ingredients.  Add this mixture to the corn mixture and pour resulting batter into a loaf pan.  Bake at 400º for 60 minutes, keep loaf pan covered with foil for first 45 minutes of baking.  Remove from oven and let sit for 10-15 minutes.  Scoop out and enjoy.