Smashed Caulifower

I know this sounds totally weird, but it was super yummy!! This is another Rachael Ray recipe. I know I was knocking the complication of her recipes but this one actually works really well.

I changed her recipe to fit my needs, but I am giving you both recipes so you can see your options and decide what works best for you.

Rachael's recipe:

• 1 large head cauliflower, cut into florets
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 4 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
• 1 cup shredded white extra-sharp Vermont Cheddar (recommended: Cabot brand)
• 1/4 cup grated Parmigiano
• Coarse black pepper and salt
• A generous grating nutmeg

Laura's recipe:

1 large head cauliflower, cut into floret
2 cups chicken broth
3 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (add more cheese depending on desired taste)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
black pepper and salt
2-3 tablespoons chives (mainly for the color)

Place cauliflower in a medium shallow pot or pan. Add stock, cover and place pot over high heat. When liquid boils, reduce heat to simmer and cook covered 10 minutes. Remove cover, raise heat to medium high and allow the broth to reduce by half, 2 minutes. Drain excess liquid. ( I drained it into a glass measuring cup, in case I needed more liquid. Add 3 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces and the cheeses and smash the cauliflower with a masher to the same consistency as desired for mashed potatoes. Add more broth if the consistency is too sticky! Season the cauliflower with pepper, salt, chives or your choice of seasonings!


I used the cheese I had in the fridge, but you might want to use a sharper cheese for more of a flavor. I almost had to use double to get the right taste. Also, I wish I had used a hand mixer to mash the cauliflower because it didn't quite mash very well with a hand-held masher. This also did not pass my husband's approval because he didn't like the consisitency. However, My dad and Sadee ate two helpings and my mom loved it!

I loved it as well and it was fun to eat cauliflower in a different way. Who knows you might be able to fool your picky eaters! It didn't work for mine, but it was worth it for everyone else!

Catalina Chicken

I am so excited for this post because this is from one of my favorite readers!! Well, it's from my cousin, Lichelle, so maybe I am a little biased, but I love to know that someone is reading my blog and giving me recipes to try.

6-8 pieces of boneless, skinless chicken
1 cup of catalina salad dressing
1 can of cranberry sauce or 2/3 cup Apricot Jam
1 packet of onion soup mix

Place chicken in a 9x13 casserole dish. Mix the rest of the ingredients together. Pour over the chicken. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees until chicken is cooked through.


When I read my email yesterday, and saw her recipe, I went to the store and bought the ingredients I needed right then and there!! I know kind of silly, but I could not contain my excitement. I doubled the recipe to make enough for four adults and enough for leftovers! My favorite type of recipe! I also, couldn't find apricot jam at our grocery store, so I used cranberry sauce instead.

I know easy right?? When I saw this recipe, I was really worried that the husband wouldn't like this and honestly, I am not sure he was totally honest with me either. Since we live with my parents right now, I get very mixed reviews about the new recipes I try. This is how our evening played out...

John: Wow, this is good. This is delicious. Wow, I can't get enough!
LuAnn: Laura, you have outdone yourself! This is amazing!!
John: What is in this?? It is so good!!
Laura: Josh, what do you think?
Josh: It's okay!

So much for making me feel good!! I guess, I can please the regular people in the world. On a scale of picky-eaters 1-10, and the least picky being a 1!! My dad would be a 0, my mother would be a 4 or 5, and Josh would be a 9! This gives you an idea of how to compare the responses I received!


Coming up later this week: Whole Wheat pancakes that you can make in bulk and store in the freezer until you want it! Yeah! Thanks Lichelle!!

Mexican Lasagna

I was watching food network one day and enjoying Rachel Ray's "thirty-minute meals" show. Now for someone who is an experienced cook, who can handle more than one or two things cooking at a time, and has knives that cut through a penny like butter, her show is perfect for them. For me, there are too many ingredients and too many steps, plus, she has mad chopping skills! However, one day while I was watching her show, I found a recipe of hers that actually worked. I converted it to fit the ingredients I prefer, but it is delicious.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 pounds ground chicken breast, available in the packaged meats case or 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken, cooked and shreddedor cut up into small cubes
  
• 2-3 tablespoons taco seasoning
  
• 1/2 red onion or 1/2 cup green onions, chopped (your preference is what matters, I prefer green and the picky eaters don't mind)
  
• 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained
• 1 cup medium or mild heat taco sauce
  
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels
• 8 (8 inch) spinach flour tortillas, available on dairy aisle of market
• 2 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar or shredded pepper jack
• 2 scallions, finely chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Preheat a large skillet over medium high heat. Spray pan with PAM or two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. Add chicken and season with taco seasoning and your choice of onions. Let cook together until hot for about 5-10 minutes, depending on your time frame. Add taco sauce. Add black beans and corn. Heat the mixture through, 2 to 3 minutes.

Coat a shallow baking dish with remaining extra-virgin olive oil, about 1 tablespoon oil or spray with PAM (my preference). Cut the tortillas in half to make them easy to layer with. Build lasagna in layers of meat and beans, then tortillas, then cheese. Repeat: meat, tortilla, cheese again. Bake lasagna 12 to 15 minutes until cheese is brown and bubbly. Top with the scallions and serve, as is. You can also top with sour cream, lettuce, or tomatoes.

This is so yummy or as Rachel Ray says "Yummo!" You can use whatever meat you like, ground beef or turkey, or letfover shredded pork or beef. It's your choice. Yeah for that, right? Try it out and let me know what you think.

I would really appreciate feedback. If you don't feel like this recipe is for you, or you are in desperate need of a certain type of recipe, send me a comment and I will find it!

Ground Beef, how I loathe thee!

Okay, so maybe I don't really loathe thee, but i find you terribly inconvenient. Most of my recipes that call for ground beef, you have to pre-cook it before you use it in your recipe. That seriously adds on an extra step and more time than I am willing to spend. Plus, it usually leaves me one more dish to clean at the end of the night. Oh the agony of it all!! Can you feel my pain?

How do I survive...Here's my solution: Buy your ground beef in bulk at sam's club or costco, or when it is discounted at your local grocery store. When you get home, most people I know, separate that red gooey mess into ziploc bags with a pound in each and toss it in the freezer. Do I do that? Nope. I cook it right there all together. Well, I usually cook half at a time and then divide the amount evenly into five or six bags depending on how many pounds I bought.

Also, most recipes have you cook your meat with onions. Solution to that....add dried onions to the beef while you cook it all together and that will save you the time of sauteing those little guys. Plus, no more tears over cut onions.

Then they go into the freezer until I need them again. Pull out of the freezer in the morning when you want to use it or defrost in the microwave when you are ready to start cooking dinner.

This saves so much time and less mess during the week. I sometimes try to plan ahead and if I want to make a meatloaf or something that requires the meat to be raw, I just put some uncooked beef in a bag before cooking the rest. Time saver, I guarantee, and you only have to clean the greasy pot with yucky beef remnants once in a while.

Check out my spaghetti recipe below using pre-cooked ground beef.

Spaghetti, almost homemade!

I just made this last night and it fed six adults and four little children with lots to spare. I know everybody has a spaghetti recipe or they are just good with opening up a bottle of prego and pouring over hot pasta. Dinner is done, right? Well, I was the same way. Then my mom showed me how to make it semi-homemade and it doesn't require a lot of work. Yeah!

Ingredients:
1 lb. cooked ground beef
Spaghetti seasoning packet
Can of diced tomatoes
1 jar of spaghetti sauce

Pull ground beef out of the freezer and defrost in the microwave. Then add to a medium to large size pot. Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of seasoning onto the beef and mix it around and let it cook for a few minutes. You can add more or less depending on how strong you want the flavor. Then add the tomatoes and let that cook for a few minutes. Stir in the jar of spaghetti sauce and heat til it starts to bubble. Serve over pasta.


Pretty dang easy, right? The best part is it freezes really well, so you can use it as another rainy day dinner when you really don't have time to cook. Plus, it has a more homemade taste to it than the basic jar can do for you. Plus, it almost doubles the recipe. More bang for your buck!

Breakfast Pizza

This is a recipe from my friend, Jessica. I have actually made this a lot and it is a top choice with my picky eaters. We usually do it for dinner, even though it's all breakfast foods.

2 dozen rhodes rolls ( I use the biscuits from pillsbury, you know the pop-out cans.)
1 package of hash browns
1 cup grated cheese
1 lb. sausage
1 lb. bacon
3 eggs
2 tbs. milk
salt and pepper

--Set your rolls out to rise for 3 hours, if you choose rhodes. Cook bacon and sausage, and drain.
Flatten rolls like a pizza. (I use a small cookie sheet with sides, so it's more in the shape of a rectangle. That way you don't lose the egg/milk mixture.) Layer on top of biscuits or rolls, hash browns, bacon, sausage and cheese.
Whisk together eggs and milk. Pour over pizza. Pre-heat oven to 350 and cook for 45 minutes with rhodes rolls and twenty to thirty with biscuits!

!!SO DELICIOUS I THINK I WILL GO MAKE THAT RIGHT NOW. THANKS FOR THE INSPIRATION!! --Jessica

Sorry, Jess, if I changed it a little! This is fun to change it up to what fits your family. If you want to be more healthy, use turkey bacon or reduced fat rolls. Or you can add veggies on top. I always served this with fruit on the side, because there is no vegetable that goes with breakfast pizza.

Green, green, green onions!

I always have this problem with green onions. I buy a huge bundle and only use about three or four stalks, and then they go to waste in my fridge. I have also planned meals for a week and knowing that I am going to need green onions for one recipe, I plan the rest of the meals to fit around green onions!! I know it's crazy but I hate to waste them!! But never fail, my sister-in-law saved me one day with her tip.

When you cut up the green onions for a recipe, cut them all up. Place unused green onions in ziploc bags and throw them in the freezer. Next time you need them just pull them out of the freezer, measure how much you need and add them. You don't even need to defrost. Sweet, right? This is also nice when the green onions are super cheap. Stock up, slice them up and then put them away when you need them.

Second tip with green onions: If you cut off the green onions where the white starts, place unused bottoms in a cup. Add some water, give it a few days and they will regrow! Perfect for toppings or a little garnish! Plus, if you grow enough of them, you can cut them up and add to the freezer batches!!

My New Favorite Cooking Tool

Does anyone hate the time it takes to clean off the inside of the crockpot?? Especially, when you accidentally leave the crockpot on after you have taken most of the ingredients out?? It is not fun to spend countless hours soaking the dish and then hoping that the next time you scrub it the chunks will come off.

My solution: Reynolds Slow Cooker Liners!

You just place on of these little babies in the crockpot before you add the ingredients. When you have finished, pull the bag out and toss it! Clean-up done!!

Only downside, you might rip the bag while scooping food out, but it rinses right off. Trust me! Try it you won't regret it!

Freezer-Proof

I added a new section to my food finder for all the things that freeze well. These are nice recipes to have when you need something quick and are low on time. I know a lot of pregnant women try to have back-ups in the freezer for when the baby comes, so this is a great way to stock up on yummy food. Try them out!!

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches

This is a favorite recipe of mine and it is quick and easy!! Just what I love!!

6-8 pieces of skinless, boneless chicken
1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce
hamburger buns

Place chicken in the crockpot. Pour bbq sauce over the top. Place the lid on, and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for at least 4 hours. The longer this cooks the more tender the chicken will become. Just before serving shred and mix until the shredded chicken is covered in sauce. Place on hamburger buns or serve as the main dish with potatoes.

This makes a lot so, of course, you can freeze half of it and save for a rainy day. Just my kind of recipe!!