It's been a long past several days. The husband was traveling, which always means cereal for dinner, and now he is doing the "Daniel Fast" with our church which means no meat, no dairy, no sugar - no food. :-) So..........the cooking department has been a little wacky here lately and a little non-existent, which is unusual.
I wanted to let you know about a fun GIVEAWAY I am doing here at The Recipe Box. Since this blog is dedicated to food and food alone, I thought it would only be appropriate to give FOOD away.
Several years back when I watched the Food Network nearly every day, I saw a business they featured that made my mouth water. I have almost sent them to friends or family on 100 different occasions, but then for some reason did something else (there's a strong chance I was feeling cheap) :-). I have been dying to order these treats for myself, but felt too guilty. Here's my chance to send them out and maybe that recipient is YOU!!
I am giving away one gift tin of Carol's Cookies to one of my awesome readers.
Here's how you can enter to win: 1. Leave me a comment on this post for one entry, 2. become a "follower" to have your name put in for the second time. If you are already a follower, I will still add your second entry if you leave me a comment. It's very easy to do both, so don't be shy!! My goal is to see at least 50 followers on here, so help me out - would you??
I have never tasted these cookies personally, so you will have to be my taste tester. I have been thinking about these cookies for years and wanting to sink my teeth into them. They were voted one of the best cookies in the nation by People's magazine and they have all sorts of other wonderful awards that tell us "These here cookies are super tasty." :-)
So sign up friends and I will be drawing the winner next Monday night, October 4th, at 9:00 p.m. Who wouldn't love getting some sugary goodness in the mail? Me! Me!!
Check back here tomorrow and I will post pics and a recipe of my Chicken Crescent Squares , which I served for lunch today when my friend Kelley and her little man Cole came for a visit. (Here you go Shauna!!)
Enjoy.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
I have been making these cookies since I was still living at home with my parents and using a curling iron to style my long hair.
I have shared them before over at my main blog, but since I am trying to get all my recipes organized over on this site, I figured I would post it today since I made them this week.
If you make them with the little cookie scooper thingy, then you get these perfect little ice-cream-scoop looking mounds of yummy goodness. I bake these almost a little undercooked when I pull them out of the oven, and then they cook a little more after I remove them. This way they seem to stay super soft and amazing.
Here's the recipe I use. I add about 1 cup of chocolate chips per batch. They taste amazing and they freeze really, really well. I have frozen just the dough before and then took it out, thawed it a little and then baked the cookies, and I have also just made up the cookies and froze them, and then set them out for an hour or so before I want to eat them and they taste fresh out of the oven.
Enjoy!
Oh, and for the review:
Parents and Kids both can't stop eating them! :-)
Lastly - I made nothing exciting for dinner tonight. I was by myself with the kids for our meal, so they had mac-n-cheese and hotdogs and green beans and I made a whole wheat roll-up filled with 2 eggs, cheese, salsa verde and sour cream. No recipe - just yummy. :-)
Monday, September 20, 2010
Chicken Pot Pie
It's my 2nd post in 2 days!
Who's excited?
I had already roasted a bunch of chicken breasts the other day (I used a couple of them with the Risotto last night), so I had several ready to go to cube and put into this dee-lish recipe. I really think the flavorful chicken had a lot to do with the richness of this particular pie. I LOVE this recipe and it is totally a comfort food for me. I told you I'm a stealer of food, so I found this on one of the blogs I follow, and Lynn had posted this there one day.
I made a bigger one to freeze and made a small one just for the 4 of us tonight.
I usually do what Lynn mentioned and plop the crust dough on top in heaps, but the kids were playing nicely outside after having a long morning of time-outs and threats of more to come, so I decided to roll out the dough and make it look fun.
See? Don't they look all brotherly and sisterly love-ish? :-)
This particular chicken pot pie turned out amazing and I have to say the crust was perfection - and trust me, I don't always say that. It was light and buttery and crisp. Loved it!
Little girl was hesitant to try it as you can see.....
But she is my PLAIN eater and prefers to have all her food separated. Ugh.
She warmed up though and gave me a thumbs up after her first bite - crust included of course.
Parents review: 2 thumbs way up! Can't wait to eat it again. I would make it more but it contains 3 gazillion calories. Don't look it up.
Kids review: Little Girl ate it and only dramatically gagged once (lovely). Baby Boy gobbled it up and kept asking for more.
Make it and tell me if you loved it too! If you enjoy this new blog - please sign up to become a follower. It's easy and I would love to see your little name on my page! Thanks for reading!
Chicken Pot Pie
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup chopped celery
6 TBSP flour
3 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 cups cooked, shredded or cubed chicken
2 cups cooked potatoes
1 cup cooked peas
1 cup cooked carrots
Saute onion and celery in butter until soft, add flour, seasoning, and broth. Cook until creamy and thick. Layer chicken in a 9x13" greased baking dish. Add veggies and potatoes. Pour sauce over and mix.
Crust
1 1/2 cups flour (add more if needed)
6 TBSP Crisco
4 TBSP softened butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold water (add more if needed)
Roll out dough and cut into strips to make a lattice pattern on top of casserole. Bake at 350 for 45 min or until crust is brown.
Lynn's shortcut tips...
-I cook the vegetables together (add the peas for the last 5 min), and I use whatever vegetables I have on hand. Potatoes, carrots, and peas are staples around here, but I usually throw in some edimame (soy beans) too since we like them.
-If I don't have Crisco for the crust, I just use more butter and change the amount of flour and/or water to get the consistency I want.
-I don't take the time to roll out the dough. Sometimes I just flatten parts of it in my hands and lay it over the top. Sometimes I grab balls of it and roll it in my hands to make a rope and then lay it on the top. I never take the time to weave the pieces together.
Who's excited?
I had already roasted a bunch of chicken breasts the other day (I used a couple of them with the Risotto last night), so I had several ready to go to cube and put into this dee-lish recipe. I really think the flavorful chicken had a lot to do with the richness of this particular pie. I LOVE this recipe and it is totally a comfort food for me. I told you I'm a stealer of food, so I found this on one of the blogs I follow, and Lynn had posted this there one day.
I made a bigger one to freeze and made a small one just for the 4 of us tonight.
I usually do what Lynn mentioned and plop the crust dough on top in heaps, but the kids were playing nicely outside after having a long morning of time-outs and threats of more to come, so I decided to roll out the dough and make it look fun.
See? Don't they look all brotherly and sisterly love-ish? :-)
This particular chicken pot pie turned out amazing and I have to say the crust was perfection - and trust me, I don't always say that. It was light and buttery and crisp. Loved it!
Little girl was hesitant to try it as you can see.....
But she is my PLAIN eater and prefers to have all her food separated. Ugh.
She warmed up though and gave me a thumbs up after her first bite - crust included of course.
Parents review: 2 thumbs way up! Can't wait to eat it again. I would make it more but it contains 3 gazillion calories. Don't look it up.
Kids review: Little Girl ate it and only dramatically gagged once (lovely). Baby Boy gobbled it up and kept asking for more.
Make it and tell me if you loved it too! If you enjoy this new blog - please sign up to become a follower. It's easy and I would love to see your little name on my page! Thanks for reading!
Chicken Pot Pie
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup chopped celery
6 TBSP flour
3 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 cups cooked, shredded or cubed chicken
2 cups cooked potatoes
1 cup cooked peas
1 cup cooked carrots
Saute onion and celery in butter until soft, add flour, seasoning, and broth. Cook until creamy and thick. Layer chicken in a 9x13" greased baking dish. Add veggies and potatoes. Pour sauce over and mix.
Crust
1 1/2 cups flour (add more if needed)
6 TBSP Crisco
4 TBSP softened butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold water (add more if needed)
Roll out dough and cut into strips to make a lattice pattern on top of casserole. Bake at 350 for 45 min or until crust is brown.
Lynn's shortcut tips...
-I cook the vegetables together (add the peas for the last 5 min), and I use whatever vegetables I have on hand. Potatoes, carrots, and peas are staples around here, but I usually throw in some edimame (soy beans) too since we like them.
-If I don't have Crisco for the crust, I just use more butter and change the amount of flour and/or water to get the consistency I want.
-I don't take the time to roll out the dough. Sometimes I just flatten parts of it in my hands and lay it over the top. Sometimes I grab balls of it and roll it in my hands to make a rope and then lay it on the top. I never take the time to weave the pieces together.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Risotto 101
It's Up! I finally did it! The Recipe Box is now open for business. Well, I'm not making any money and this isn't really a business, but, well, it's open. Woo! Hoo!
:-)
I stressed and belabored over the name of this blog and then once I chose a name I liked, I couldn't find a URL to match it and my husband said this just wouldn't do. I ended up choosing my name to be "The Recipe Box" because it seemed to fit what I was wanting to accomplish on here. I want to share recipes that will be so easy and yummy and a little more fun than your average casserole - that you'll want to add them to your own Recipe Box in your own kitchen.
Let me start by clarifying that I am not a food snob (usually) and I am just as happy to serve my kids mac-n-cheese from a box once in awhile as I am to make chicken stir fry with a foo-foo dessert. I love to cook. I love to eat. I also love to be healthy. Sometimes those groups don't combine, so I have to just be happy to find a balance. I love to cook fancy foods and I also have a few box mixes that I have come to enjoy on a busy night and are actually quite yummy. Crock pot meals that you toss in 5 ingredients and call it a day are also some of my bestest friends. So, let this blog just be fun and a way for me to share the things I cook and you share back. I would love to have special times where you all post a fun recipe on here to share as well. Wouldn't that be fun? I am a recipe stealer. I basically scope out other cooking blogs and the internet and other people's facebook pages to find what I want to cook for the week. Trying new recipes is very fun for me - especially ones off of blogs that I know other real moms have tried and enjoyed.
I typically like to plan out my menus if I have time and then make my grocery list off of that. It makes my weeks go so much better and then I don't have the desire to order the kids and us pizza so many times if I already have a plan in place.
So, here's my first recipe to share. Back in the day when David and I were newly married and we lived in California for a whole year - the hubs surprised me with a 12 week French Based Cooking School called "Home Chef". It was Valentines Day and we were poor, so my stellar man had saved all of his birthday money and Christmas money and several other things to get me this gift. I totally flipped out!! It was seriously one of the most fun things i have ever done. I went every Monday night for 3 hours each week, and he also signed me up to be the Prep Assistant (we got a discount) and I would help the chef chop and prep the food before class. It was awesome because I got to ask a lot of questions and tell them how my recipes from that week went and stuff like that. I learned SO MUCH in those few weeks. I never realized I loved to cook so much. I kind of got hooked.
One of the recipes we did during "Stocks and Broths" week was we made Risotto. It basically is this creamy rice concoction that you make with Arborio Rice and a little wine (love it), a little cream (yummo) and a few other things. It's certainly not hard, but you do have to stay close to it and keep adding your chicken stock in as the rice absorbs it. I made this last night and it took me back to my class nearly 11 years ago when I made it for the first time and fell in love.
I actually didn't use my Home Chef book, but I did follow the recipe on the back of my Trader Joe's Arborio Rice box, because frankly, I think it was pretty similar to what I had done in class. The only difference was I think I added leeks and bell peppers to mine back then, and this one just started out with some chopped onions as the base. It turned out so good.
O.K. - Here's the recipe from the back of the box (you could use any arborio rice - it doesn't have to be from TJ's).
Risotto:
12 oz. Arborio Rice
4 cups Heated Stock (vegetable, chicken or beef)
1 chopped onion
1/2 Tbsp. Butter
parmesan or other grated cheese
4 oz dry white wine
1/4 cup cream
Salt to taste
1. In a medium sized saucepan, saute the onion in butter until golden, along with any additional ingredients (mushrooms, etc.). Add the rice and stir until well-coated and translucent.
2. Add the wine and cook until evaporated. Stir in 1 cup of hot stock and simmer gently.
3. When the stock has been absorbed, add another cup, and continue this way through the 18-20 min. of cooking time.
4. Stir in the cream and cheese (I just grated like 1/4 - 1/2 Cup in there of parmesan reggiano). Salt to taste. Remove from heat, cover and set aside for 2 minutes before serving.
Terrible, Terrible Photo. Food tastes way better than this photographer can show you. Sorry for this rookie shot.
Here's how I serve it up to the kiddos
They like everything plain and separated like this. No mixy-mixy.
Here are our plates. Again, the color combos on the plate aren't super flattering, but trust me - the food was delish!
If you are wanting to just jazz up your dinner with something a little extra special, and your kids are adventurous in the taste department - try this Risotto. You can do a ton of different flavors with it too, but we opted to make the plain variety with just some parmesan cheese and heavy cream. I served roasted chicken and some frozen corn with ours and it was perfect.
Parent reviews: 2 thumbs way up.
Kid reviews: Little Girl snubbed it completely and Baby Boy ate several bites which is a score in my book!
:-)
I stressed and belabored over the name of this blog and then once I chose a name I liked, I couldn't find a URL to match it and my husband said this just wouldn't do. I ended up choosing my name to be "The Recipe Box" because it seemed to fit what I was wanting to accomplish on here. I want to share recipes that will be so easy and yummy and a little more fun than your average casserole - that you'll want to add them to your own Recipe Box in your own kitchen.
Let me start by clarifying that I am not a food snob (usually) and I am just as happy to serve my kids mac-n-cheese from a box once in awhile as I am to make chicken stir fry with a foo-foo dessert. I love to cook. I love to eat. I also love to be healthy. Sometimes those groups don't combine, so I have to just be happy to find a balance. I love to cook fancy foods and I also have a few box mixes that I have come to enjoy on a busy night and are actually quite yummy. Crock pot meals that you toss in 5 ingredients and call it a day are also some of my bestest friends. So, let this blog just be fun and a way for me to share the things I cook and you share back. I would love to have special times where you all post a fun recipe on here to share as well. Wouldn't that be fun? I am a recipe stealer. I basically scope out other cooking blogs and the internet and other people's facebook pages to find what I want to cook for the week. Trying new recipes is very fun for me - especially ones off of blogs that I know other real moms have tried and enjoyed.
I typically like to plan out my menus if I have time and then make my grocery list off of that. It makes my weeks go so much better and then I don't have the desire to order the kids and us pizza so many times if I already have a plan in place.
So, here's my first recipe to share. Back in the day when David and I were newly married and we lived in California for a whole year - the hubs surprised me with a 12 week French Based Cooking School called "Home Chef". It was Valentines Day and we were poor, so my stellar man had saved all of his birthday money and Christmas money and several other things to get me this gift. I totally flipped out!! It was seriously one of the most fun things i have ever done. I went every Monday night for 3 hours each week, and he also signed me up to be the Prep Assistant (we got a discount) and I would help the chef chop and prep the food before class. It was awesome because I got to ask a lot of questions and tell them how my recipes from that week went and stuff like that. I learned SO MUCH in those few weeks. I never realized I loved to cook so much. I kind of got hooked.
One of the recipes we did during "Stocks and Broths" week was we made Risotto. It basically is this creamy rice concoction that you make with Arborio Rice and a little wine (love it), a little cream (yummo) and a few other things. It's certainly not hard, but you do have to stay close to it and keep adding your chicken stock in as the rice absorbs it. I made this last night and it took me back to my class nearly 11 years ago when I made it for the first time and fell in love.
I actually didn't use my Home Chef book, but I did follow the recipe on the back of my Trader Joe's Arborio Rice box, because frankly, I think it was pretty similar to what I had done in class. The only difference was I think I added leeks and bell peppers to mine back then, and this one just started out with some chopped onions as the base. It turned out so good.
O.K. - Here's the recipe from the back of the box (you could use any arborio rice - it doesn't have to be from TJ's).
Risotto:
12 oz. Arborio Rice
4 cups Heated Stock (vegetable, chicken or beef)
1 chopped onion
1/2 Tbsp. Butter
parmesan or other grated cheese
4 oz dry white wine
1/4 cup cream
Salt to taste
1. In a medium sized saucepan, saute the onion in butter until golden, along with any additional ingredients (mushrooms, etc.). Add the rice and stir until well-coated and translucent.
2. Add the wine and cook until evaporated. Stir in 1 cup of hot stock and simmer gently.
3. When the stock has been absorbed, add another cup, and continue this way through the 18-20 min. of cooking time.
4. Stir in the cream and cheese (I just grated like 1/4 - 1/2 Cup in there of parmesan reggiano). Salt to taste. Remove from heat, cover and set aside for 2 minutes before serving.
Terrible, Terrible Photo. Food tastes way better than this photographer can show you. Sorry for this rookie shot.
Here's how I serve it up to the kiddos
They like everything plain and separated like this. No mixy-mixy.
Here are our plates. Again, the color combos on the plate aren't super flattering, but trust me - the food was delish!
If you are wanting to just jazz up your dinner with something a little extra special, and your kids are adventurous in the taste department - try this Risotto. You can do a ton of different flavors with it too, but we opted to make the plain variety with just some parmesan cheese and heavy cream. I served roasted chicken and some frozen corn with ours and it was perfect.
Parent reviews: 2 thumbs way up.
Kid reviews: Little Girl snubbed it completely and Baby Boy ate several bites which is a score in my book!
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