Breakfast Burritos

There are about two weeks left until what my sister has dubbed The NatiNugget.  I recently had a burst of energy and decided that this would be an excellent time to prep some food for the freezer so that we don't starve to death in our first few weeks as a family of three.

Over the weekend, I make taco meat, meatballs, honey garlic chicken, balsamic chicken, island chicken, ranch pork chops and pulled pork, most of which can be dumped in the slow cooker and forgotten about for several hours.

Tonight, I finished up my freezer cooking (because I ran out of room) with these breakfast burritos.  I first found this recipe on Pinterest when I was looking for something for my sister to take to a new mom friend of hers.  This is half the original recipe (more or less) and I ended up with 8 big burritos.

Breakfast Burritos

10 eggs, scrambled with a little water
4 cups of cooked hash browns
9 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
shredded cheddar
burrito sized flour tortillas

I used 1/4 c. potatoes, 1/2 c. eggs, about 2T of bacon and a handful of cheese in each burrito.  Roll each tortilla up, then wrap in plastic wrap and place in a gallon freezer bag to store.  To reheat, just unwrap them and microwave for 2 - 3 minutes.

You could change these up in an infinite number of ways - add veggies like spinach, mushrooms or green chiles, swap ham or sausage for the bacon, take out the bacon all together and make them vegetarian. 

Chubby Hubby Bars

Nearly every Sunday, we go to dinner at my sister-in-law's house and I am in charge of dessert.  This time, I think I might have made the most unhealthy delicious dessert on the planet.  I found this recipe on Pinterest and it led me to the blog Cookies and Cups.  You really need to make these; they are divine.

This bar cookie is like the Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor of the same name.  The base is a pretty standard chocolate chip cookie dough, but with chocolate covered peanut butter cups and pretzels instead of chips.

After that is baked and cooled, you add a layer of caramel.

Once that sets, you add a layer of melted chocolate.

So, so bad for you, but oh so good.

Jalapeno Poppers

My brother-in-law, Mark, has a garden with approximately 90 billion jalapeno pepper plants in it that go absolutely bonkers every year.  I have never known what to do with the peppers, but my other brother-in-law, Randy, makes a lot of poppers each summer.  I got Randy's recipe and gave it a try.

Jalapeno Poppers

Jalapeno peppers
1 pound of pork sausage
8 oz cream cheese
Grated Parmesan cheese
Bread crumbs

Ready for a bath

Cut the stem ends off the peppers, slice them in half length-wise and remove the seeds and ribs.  I was not too careful about this step, since I like a little heat in mine.

Stuffed for baking

Blanch the peppers in boiling water for 1 minute and remove to an ice water bath to stop the cooking.  This removes more of the heat, so feel free to skip this part if you like them hot.  Dry the peppers.

Golden brown and delicious

Brown the sausage, and crumble into very small pieces.  Drain.  Cool slightly and mix with the cream cheese.  Fill the peppers and place on a greased baking sheet.  Top with grated Parmesan and bread crumbs.

Bake at 375* for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Nom, nom, nom all the peppers.

Happy Pi(e) Day!

Today is Pi(e) Day. Get it? March 14th. 3/14. 3.14. Math joke. I'm a nerd and I know it. I embraced my dorkiness a long time ago.

Anyway, after all kinds of pie talk on Facebook today, I decided to make a pie when I got home. This is a basic blueberry pie right from the Betty Crocker cookbook. Every summer when blueberries go on sale, I buy a ridiculous amount and freeze them in 2 cup bags so I can have them all year long. This used up almost all the blueberries in the freezer, but it was so worth it.

Honestly, I've made dozens of pies over the last 20 or 25 years and I still am incapable of crimping the edges and having it look right.

That said, no matter how wonky the pie comes out looking, it always tastes fantastic!

Blueberry Pie

Pastry for a two-crust 9" pie
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, if desired
6 cups blueberries
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter or margarine

Heat oven to 425°F. With floured rolling pin, roll one round of pie dough into round 2 inches larger than upside-down 9-inch glass pie plate. Fold pastry into fourths; place in pie plate. Unfold and ease into plate, pressing firmly against bottom and side.

In large bowl, mix sugar, 1/2 cup flour and the cinnamon. Stir in blueberries. Spoon into pastry-lined pie plate. Sprinkle any remaining sugar mixture over blueberry mixture. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Cut butter into small pieces; sprinkle over blueberries. Cover with top pastry that has slits cut in it; seal and flute. Cover edge with 2- to 3-inch strip of foil to prevent excessive browning.

Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust, removing foil for last 15 minutes of baking. Cool on cooling rack at least 2 hours.

Turkey Rice Soup

My Mom always made turkey rice soup with the leftover turkey bones from Thanksgiving. I used to complain about this soup when I was growing up, but this year I decided I wanted it. I called my sister and asked her to look through Mom's recipe boxes and see if she could find it. No luck. Add this to the long list of little things that I wish I had asked Mom for or about.

I could remember that it started with the carcass and had tomatoes, rice, carrots and probably onion, because everything did, so I started with that and asked Google for some recipes. I found one that looked close, so I started there. I think I got pretty close.

Turkey Rice Soup

9-10 lbs turkey (bones and trimmings)
2 1/2 qts chicken stock
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground pepper (fresh)
1 cup converted rice (regular) - I used a bag of boil in the bag rice
3 carrots (thinly sliced)
1/2 medium onion (diced)
1 bay leaf
14 oz can diced tomatoes (undrained)


Break up turkey to fit in a 5 quart Dutch oven; add the water, salt and pepper and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

Remove bones and meat from broth and cool until you can handle it, then remove the meat from the bones and cut it into bite-sized pieces.

Skim the fat from the broth, then add the meat, tomatoes, rice, carrots, onions and bay leaf to the broth and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes or until the rice, carrots, and onions are tender.

Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Peach Cobbler

Every Thursday there is a farmers market just north of the White House and right next to my Metro station, so I usually stop in. The peaches had been calling me since I got to work this morning. They've had peaches for a few weeks now, but are just now getting free stone peaches and I wanted cobbler.

This recipe is from my Mom. I as is the case with most of her recipes, I have no idea where she got it. You can use pretty much any fruit in it; I frequently make it with blackberries.

Peach Cobbler

5 c. sliced peaches
1 c. sugar
2 T. corn starch
1/2 t. cinnamon
1 c. water
2 T. butter

Topping:
1 1/2 c. Bisquick
4 T. sugar
2/3 c. cream

Combine sugar, corn starch, cinnamon and water in a large sauce pan. Heat over medium until sugar dissolves. Add peaches. Stir in butter until melted. Pour into a greased baking dish.

In a separate bowl, mix baking mix, 2 T. sugar and cream to make batter. Drop by spoonfuls on top of fruit. Sprinkle remaining sugar on top of the biscuits.

Bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes or until biscuits are brown.

Red, White and Blueberry Trifle

My sister-in-law and her husband host a family dinner every Sunday night, and because my mother would die of embarrassment if I showed up for dinner empty handed, I make dessert.

Jim and I are both trying to lose a little weight and strawberries and blueberries were on sale this week, so it was the perfect opportunity to make this Red, White and Blueberry trifle from Skinny Taste. I first found Gina's blog on a chat board on The Nest and I cook from it at least twice a week.

I love a trifle. They are so pretty and they look much more involved than the actually are. I had this whole dessert put together in a half an hour. I modified the recipe slightly, so my calories and points may be just a bit higher. My store didn't have the white chocolate pudding (boo) so I used regular vanilla sugar-free. Also, I prefer the lite Cool Whip over the fat-free, so I made that substitution.

S'mores Crumb Bars

If you ask Jim he will attest to the fact that I have had a small s'mores addiction. This has been going on all summer and I think he's getting tired of it. Since I make dessert every Sunday to take to my sister-in-law's, I thought I'd give this one a try and see if it would finally satisfy the craving.

I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com and adapted it slightly as I went along.

3 c. of graham cracker crumbs (I crushed my own graham crackers to make crumbs. It took 1 2/3 packages of crackers)
3/4 c. butter or margarine, melted
1/3 c. sugar (I used a little more than 1/3 c.)
3 c. mini marshmallows (I used the whole bag)
2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used half semi-sweet and half milk chocolate, since a Hershey bar is milk chocolate).

Preheat oven to 375*. Combine crumbs, sugar and butter. Press half (I only reserved 1/2 c.) into a greased 13x9 pan. Sprinkle with chips and marshmallows. Top with remaining crumbs and press down firmly. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately press top with a spatula. Cool completely and cut into bars.

I was working with several different recipes, so I baked the graham cracker crust for about 8 minutes, then took it out and topped it with the chips, etc. and baked it for another 10 minutes. We haven't cut them yet, but I'll let you know how they turn out.

Edit: The crust was a little crumbly, but they tasted awesome. I think maybe a little more butter to hold it together would do the trick.

Thanksgiving Before and After

We had my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and brother-in-law's brother over for Thanksgiving today. It is so nice to have a house that is big enough to have people over for the holidays.

This is a picture of the table set before it was was heavily laden with food. We used my Mom's china on my Great-Grandmother's table.


And this is what the kitchen looks like after turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, sweet potato souffle, stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie and carrot cake.


We have a lot to be thankful. I hope everyone had a great day with friends and family.

Week Five - Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken

I love artichokes, in all their varieties. I like artichoke dip, fried artichokes, artichokes in my salad, marinated ones right from the jar. I even cooked my very own whole artichoke for the first time this year, so I did a little happy dance when I saw this recipe, even though I am totally incompetent at rolling things up in chicken and getting it to stay there.

Nevertheless, I made these last night and they turned out great, even if the stuffing leaked out the ends. My only caveat is that I would not want to make them on a week night again. We don't eat dinner until almost 10:00 p.m. because of J's work schedule, so this was just too much work for that late at night. However, my husband told me they were fantastic about four times during dinner and he ate two of them, so this one goes in the recipe box for sure.

August Cooks Week 4

I will confess, this dinner absolutely terrified me and I have no one to blame but myself, because I am the one who posted it. I had grilled cheese and soup in the wings, just in case it was a culinary failure.

It started off great. I got a fantastic deal on the fish at B.J.’s warehouse. I got them for $4.49/pound when the grocery store had them on sale for $6.99/pound.

The stuffing came together beautifully and smelled delicious.

Then, I got ready to stuff them. And I got scared. They didn’t “open flat like a book” which flustered me. Then I tried to cut the tails off and they didn’t want to go and that made me more flustered. And they have bones. And I forgot the lemon juice. I eventually got them stuffed and into the oven.

Poke, poke. Is it done yet?

They actually came out pretty good, but I won’t be doing whole fish again for a very long time.

August Cooks

A year ago, as I was planning my wedding, I met a wonderful group of women on the internet. We have stayed in contact as we moved from The Knot to the The Nest and this week we started a new project, the August Cooks blog.

Each week on Thursday, one person posts a recipe for the group. Then everyone takes the recipe, changes it to their liking, makes it, photos it, eats it and blogs about it. This week's recipe was a peach creme brulee.

brulee in progress

Why don't you pop over and see how 17 different cooks make the same recipe and sign up to follow our blog if you like it.

CSA Update

You may recall that earlier this year, I signed up for a farm share. To be honest, to date I have been pretty disappointed with the veggies. That is, until today. Today's share was ah-maze-ing. We got two baby eggplants, a yellow squash, a zucchini, a cucumber, five white potatoes, a head of garlic and a big handful of basil. I told Jim that we got a basket of eggplant parmesan in our share. I am excited again and can't wait for the tomatoes to start to come in.

Pasta with Roasted Garlic, White Cheddar & Wine Sauce

This week I made my menu plan from the Annie's Eats blog. Last night I made the very long titled pasta with roasted garlic, white cheddar and wine sauce. The title completely ignores the fact that there is also chicken and broccoli.

I roasted garlic for the first time to make the sauce and it was so easy and delicious that I don't know why I hadn't done it before now. This dish was quick to make - a must since Jim gets home so late in the evening. Now I am even more excited to try the other recipes I picked for this week.

Here is a link to the recipe on Annie's blog.

Greek Chicken Pasta

For the last two months or so, I've been taking the time to plan out our menus for the whole week. I've really enjoyed it - it's given me the chance to try out a bunch of new recipes and get out of a cooking rut. It also eliminates extraneous trips to the grocery store. This week, I am cooking almost exclusively from back issues of Taste of Home magazine. Thanks for the subscription, Mom. This one was really good, flavorful, made a ton and was pretty inexpensive to make.

Greek Chicken Pasta

2 cups uncooked penne pasta
1/4 c. butter
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 can (14 1/2 oz) chicken broth
3 c. cubed cooked chicken
1 jar (7 1/2 oz) marinated artichoke hearts
1 c. crumbled feta
1/2 c. chopped oil packed sun dried tomatoes
1/3 c. sliced pitted Greek olives (I omitted the olives)
2 T. minced fresh parsley

Cook pasta according to package directions.

Meanwhile, in a large ovenproof skillet, melt butter. Add onion and saute until tender. Stir in flour until blended. Gradually add chicken broth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes until thickened. Stir in chicken, artichokes, tomatoes, olives and feta.

Drain pasta; stir into the pan. Broil 3-4 in. from heat for 5-7 minutes or until bubbly and golden brown. Sprinkle with parsley.

"CaribBean" One-Pot Stew

Tonight for dinner, I made this new recipe. I wasn't sure how we would like it because, honestly, the idea of sweet potatoes was a little strange. It was delicious.

Here is my mise en place (yes, I watch way too much Food Network). It is the celery, onions, green peppers, garlic and fresh ginger in the little bowl, and the par cooked sweet potatoes in the big bowl. Have I mentioned how much I love, love, love that giant bamboo cutting board? Definitely one of the best gifts my husband gave me.

Ingredients

• 1 pound sweet potatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 jalapeno, minced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 pound pork loin, trimmed and cut in 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 3 (16 ounce) cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can chicken broth

1. Prick sweet potatoes with fork and microwave on high for 6-8 minutes until tender. Set aside. When cool, peel and cut into 1/2-inch cubes. Heat olive oil in large stockpot. Add ginger, garlic and jalapeno and saute until soft, about 2 minutes. Add celery, green pepper and onion, and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes.

2. Season pork with cumin, salt and pepper. Push vegetables to one side of stockpot and add pork, browning on all sides. Add kidney beans, tomatoes, broth and sweet potatoes and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 25-30 minutes, or until pork is tender.

Chocolate Hazelnut Thumbprints

I love Nutella. I mean, I really love Nutella. And because today is a holiday - the last one for a long time - I decided to try out this recipe for chocolate hazelnut thumbprint cookies.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed. This was the first time I've made thumbprint cookies, so this might be the norm, but when the cookies baked, the little dents for the Nutella practically disappeared. I used my Teflon thumbs and poked them back down as soon as I took them out of the oven, while they were still hot.

Due to pantry limitations, the fact that it is snowing AGAIN and I didn't want to go to the store and the fact that I hate coffee flavored things, I made the following changes to the recipe; I left out the espresso powder since it was optional, and I did not have the nuts to roll the cookies in. This might make me like the cookie more, so I'll give it another try when I have hazelnuts.

Chocolate Hazelnut Thumbprints

Yield: 28 cookies (serving size: 1 cookie)

Ingredients

• 4.5 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 cup)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup finely chopped hazelnuts, toasted
• 1/3 cup hazelnut-chocolate spread (such as Nutella)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, and salt; stir with a whisk. Place butter in a large bowl, and beat with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes). Stir egg yolks with a whisk, adding espresso, if desired. Add the yolk mixture and vanilla to butter; beat well. Add flour mixture to butter mixture; beat at low speed just until combined.

3. Turn dough out onto a sheet of wax paper; knead 6 times or until smooth and shiny. Shape dough into 28 (1-inch) balls. Roll sides of balls in nuts, pressing gently. Arrange balls 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Press thumb into center of each cookie, leaving an indentation. Bake, 1 batch at a time, at 350° for 10 minutes. Remove cookies from pans; cool completely on wire racks. Spoon a scant 1/2 teaspoon hazelnut-chocolate spread into center of each cookie.

Snowpocalypse = Baking

We went outside last night after it finally quit snowing and we ended up with 26". This means that we aren't going anywhere any time soon.

So, what to do when you are stuck in the house all day? Bake something! I decided on bread. This is the recipe I used and I think it turned out great




Bread dough after the first rise.






Dough after the second rise, ready for the oven.






Finished loaf - yummy!