Recipes

Maybe this should be a bi-weekly update now?  The last two weeks have been slow.  I’ve been recycling a lot of recipes and scraping by on other things we already had.  Chicken pot pie and tomato soup have become weekly favorites.  A few new recipes of note I did try were:

Angel Sugar Cookies

I’m a chocolate chip cookie fan.  Usually sugar cookies are kind of dry, tasteless a nd just, blah.  The sugar cookies were one of the last desserts I picked to make out of the cookbook.  But man, I’m sorry I made the wait.  These were yummy!  The cookies had a nice kind of after-taste, almost lemon-y.  I’m supposing it’s the cream of tartar.  While the cookies were crumby they weren’t dry.  The only suggestion I would say is don’t skip on the refrigerating the dough.  It helps it set up and makes them nice and thick and helps hold their shape.

Tomato Basil Pizza

I’d made her pizza crust no less than 5 times but for the first time this week, I made the tomato basil variation (we added red onions too).  It was yummy, yummy, yummy.  Scott said it was the best pizza he ever ate…even better than Mellow Mushroom.  We ended up making it again two days later.  The biggest difference I think is we use the expensive mozzarella..the kind in the fancy cheese section.  I really can’t stress enough what a difference it makes.  The pizza is going to end up costing you as much as a Pizza Hut pizza but let me tell you, WAY WORTH IT. 

Twice Baked Potatoes

Have to be honest on this one…the only thing I did was put the potatoes in the oven.  We made these when Kaitlin was visiting and she and Scott whipped them up while I made Ranch Chicken.  I DID eat them though and they were fantastic.  PW also mentions they were freezer-friendly so when we had a good 8-10 left, I was happy to individually wrap them and freeze them.  I pulled them out when I made fish the other night.  Perfect side with almost no work!

All of these are on my make-again list!  Go  buy her cookbook!

I’ve been spreading my wings a little bit in the cooking department (read: kitchen).  As I have leftovers and try recipes, I’ve been using pieces of recipes and creating my own dinners.  It’s nothing fancy, it’s not like I’m throwing spices around at will but I am making things work for me.  I did have a few full, original P-Dub recipes I tried this week.

Pioneer Woman’s Sweet Potatoes aka “Soul Sweet Taters”

I have to admit I used canned sweet potatoes in a pinch here but it still worked.  Overall, liked these.  Definitely satisfies any sweet tooth!

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Pineapple Upside Down Cake

This one COULD have been outstanding save my incompetence.  When I was dissolving the brown sugar in the butter, I had the heat up too much and it burned a large section of the sugar.  I was too ignorant/naive to know it was really burning, not just getting brown and I should just to turn the burner down.  Also, I’ve never been a fan of this cake and didn’t know how important the cherries were.  Why I made this and don’t even eat it? I don’t know.  It appears I’m a little addicted to cooking and I had gotten a few cans of pineapple for free.  What can I say?

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Blue Cheese Sauce – except not

I posted on this before but I changed it up a little and thought it was worthy of note.  I used some gorgonzola cheese instead of blue cheese and poured it over Tilapia instead of Steak.  Yum.  Yum, yum, yum.  Even Emma asked for more.

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We also had some repeats this week…chicken pot pie, lasagna and homemade pizza and calzones (different stuffing than Cowboy Calzones) and then used leftover pizza dough to make dessert pizza.  Good stuff!

This week we had some major winners!

Ranch Chicken

This was by far the best chicken dish I’ve ever had at home and might rival any chicken dish I’ve had at any restaurant.  It was DELISH.  It was juicy and flavorful and oh so right.  These are permanently in rotation at our house.

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Cauliflower Soup

In Emma’s words, “this soup is just good”.  So yeah, it’s definitely a keeper.  I had never had cauliflower soup that I can recall and the best I can describe it is a mix between broccoli and cheese and potato soup.  My only issue with this is it took much longer than it says.  From the time I put the butter in the pan to serving it, it was an hour and a half.

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Baked Fudge

I’m not sure I can give the proper review for this as I didn’t have ramekins and used some small measuring cup/bowls from Pampered Chef.  I decided to make these Thursday night while watching Grey’s.  They were ready to put in the oven within 10-15 minutes and seemed very simple but as PW says, the timing in the oven is the tough part.  I took mine out too early and a lot of mine was more like fudge for a sundae rather than baked fudge.  But, the taste was still good and Scott and I “suffered” through it.  I want to make these again as I bought ramekins this weekend at the mall.  I also have to mention the whipped cream I made as well.  Yum!

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Marlboro Man’s Second Favorite Sandwich

We choose to eat these a la carte (read: no bun).  I’ve now deleted three attempts at writing how I feel about these.  Basically, it’s not as good as the ranch chicken, better than the cube steak in Marlboro Man’s favorite sandwich but less juicy but way better than any chicken recipe I had before.  So, take that for what it’s worth.  I’ll make it again, how about that?

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Red Velvet Cake (no link)

I believe this was my first cake that didn’t come with a box.  I think it came out great albeit a little more like pink velvet cake instead of red velvet cake.  The icing was definitely my favorite part.  The edges seemed a bit dry at first to me but after the cake was in the fridge for a while it didn’t bother me a bit.  Maybe because the piece only lasted about 30 seconds on my plate.

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This week also included the frozen chicken spaghetti from the other week.  It thawed and heated up perfectly!

So things went a little slow last week.  I had a horribly busy week at work, Scott went back on nights and it just didn’t happen.  BUT I do have a few things to share

Chicken Spaghetti

This was very creamy, flavorful and comforting dish.  My mom made a tuna casserole growing up and it reminded me a bit of that.  I think adding peas to this dish would be a great addition.  Oh my, is that me being a cook??  The best thing is I divided it between two dishes and froze one of them!

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The Best Lasagna Ever

I was a little hesitant with cottage cheese in my lasagna but I’ve learned to simply trust P-Dub.  It’s ok I’ve only had ricotta cheese in mine.  Really.  And it was really MORE than ok.  Scott took a plate over to my parents (long story but just go with it) and my mom emphatically said it was the BEST lasagna she’d had in her 50 years.  So that’s saying something.

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Potato Skins (no link)

This recipe called for real bacon.  And I’ve never fried real bacon.  It’s a shame, I know.  But we always buy that already done stuff and stick it in the microwave for 32 seconds.  But lawd, why haven’t I done real bacon before?  Wow, what a difference!  The sad part is we used most of the bacon for the jalapeno poppers so I only got to fry up 4 pieces of bacon but I will not do potato skins without them again!  But even so, these were FANTASTIC.  I have to say they aren’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done with all the cooking and scooping and more cooking and oiling and more cooking.  Yeah, it was probably an hour and a half process altogether.  But it was worth it.  And they were just as good leftover!

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That’s it for new stuff this week.  We also made several repeats: tomato soup twice this week, another round of mocha brownies, jalapeno poppers and onion strings. Can you tell we had an impromptu Super Bowl party?  It was so nice to say hey, I have an onion.  Why don’t I make onion strings?

One last note, DO NOT make the tomato soup with anything but fresh parsley and basil.  Just sayin’.

The cooking is out of control in this house.  For the third week in a row, we only went out to eat one time a week.  And we’re not skimping on the meals at home.  I am WEARING OUT P-Dub‘s cookbook.  In fact, I ate a cinnamon roll for snack this afternoon, ate some leftover tomato soup for dinner and now have jalapeno poppers in the oven as a snack this evening.  Actually, they were meant for tomorrow but Scott and I just couldn’t wait 24 hours to have them so we cheated and made the filling for all of it but only cut up 4 of peppers.  In the span of a week, I’ve also made the chicken pot pie twice, corn bread and beans, blueberry cobbler, chocolate sheet cake and mocha brownies.

To say that you need to go buy the cookbook is an understatement.  You need to go buy it, do a happy dance and immediately drive to the grocery store for the ingredients to the tomato soup.  It is ridiculously easy and delicious.  Make the corn bread with it and dip it in the soup while you’re at it.  Oh and then have any one of the desserts.  But if it were me, I’d have some more mocha brownies.

I might just have to start a weekly update of my progress.

Oh, and the jalapeno thingies just came out and YUM!  That needs to be your appetizer!

Out.

of.

control.

We were supposed to go out with Mom and Dad after church today but they decided they had enough leftovers to stay home.  Breakfast for dinner is always my go-to meal but I remembered that Ree had a pancake recipe.  Actually my nephew said while looking at the recipe over Christmas, “Sour cream in pancakes?? Ewww…” But I knew Ree knew what she was doing when she added it to the cookbook and anything with sour cream in it is usually a winner. Ree didn’t let me down again.

Honest to goodness, these were THE BEST pancakes I’ve ever had in my life.  It was so good it was almost like dessert.  But not in the IHOP cream cheese, I’m going to die if I eat this dessert way.  It’s basically a batter with a lot of sour cream, vanilla and sugar all fried up into a pancake.  Yeah, you don’t want to eat these every day of your life but WOW, were they delicious.  I made a HUGE mistake by halving the recipe.  Most of the time Scott skips on the pancakes and we have leftover pancakes even with the halved Bisquick recipe on the box.  But not this time.  We were scrounging the kids plates for any bits left behind.

The kids declared it good.  Emma said, “Mom, you need to bookmark this one.” Lexi I believed declared it the best pancake ever.  Let’s just say kid tested, mother approved was never more appropriate.

And I certainly don’t want to leave out the egg-in-the-holes.  I wasn’t at all familiar with this thing but it was easy and it was different than just over easy eggs.  And hey, bread, butter and eggs?  Can’t really go wrong.

They were easy-peasy and delish.

How many recipes do I need to make and blog about before you go buy her cookbook?