Yvette's Chicken Salad

I saw a recipe for a chicken salad and decided I wanted to make one. After much discussion with my friend Yvette, this is what I ended up doing. And since most of it was her ideas, she gets the credit!

First, I made the Chicken Salad....
3/4 cup red/purple grapes, sliced in half or third
2/3 cup cashews sliced to tiny bits
1 12.5 oz canned chicken, drained, rinsed and cut finer than it comes
1/2 large granny smith apple, diced
2 stalks celery, sliced tiny
2 heaping spoonfuls miracle whip (a little more than 1/3 cup)
few grinds of black pepper

Then, I shredded some iceburg lettuce to bite size pieces in a bowl and drizzled with a mixture of olive oil and lemon juice. I mixed it in a measuring cup and by using more juice than oil, I had about 1/4 cup liquid, and with enough lettuce to serve three of us, I used maybe half the liquid. I mixed the lettuce and dressing together and put it on the plate, then a scoop of the chicken salad on top of that. Served it with a slice of cornbread and there was dinner! mmmmmmm!

(sorry for the lousy picture- it was late and dark...)

6/12/18 ETA: Most of the time we eat it on toasted bread as a sandwich and it is delicious!

Healthy little snacky-lunch!

ETA: I made it again and this time I took pictures!

I recently became a facebook "fan" of Walmart's Meal Solutions. This means that once a day they post some kind of budget-stretcher kind of meal. The other day they posted a snack that I had for lunch today! If this works, you can see the picture HERE. (altho you may need to scroll back to September 14)

You'll need 2 tortillas (whole wheat would taste better...), peanut butter, honey, and either a pear or granny smith apple*. That's it!

Spread the peanut butter all over the tortilla. Chop your apple or pear like french fries...long and thin, not slices. Lay them across the tortilla, running long ways, but sort of along a side. Drizzle with honey, wrap it up and ENJOY!

The recipe said to serve it with yogurt so I had a cup of yogurt with the apple wraps and water for lunch. It was just the right amount of food and so tasty!

*I used a granny smith apple because that's what I had. The recipe calls for pears. I don't think it matters much. :)

Banana Cake

Earlier this summer our neighborhood had a potluck dinner and our neighbor Jordan brought this cake. My husband had to work that night, but I saved him a little food since that was our dinner! We both loved this cake and had to get the recipe...but should a family of four eat a whole sheet cake?? Family reunions are great places to share good food, so this was our dessert contribution:

Banana Cake:
2 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup margarine
3 eggs
3 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 cup mashed bananas (around 3-5)
3 cups flour

Combine all ingredients and pour into an un-greased* sheet pan. Bake at 375* for 20 minutes. Cool completely and frost with the following:

Cream Cheese Frosting:
       (with a note that she doubles this, so I did too!)
1/2 stick margarine
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
powdered sugar

Combine all ingredients, beat until creamy. Add enough powdered sugar to make the consistency of frosting. (I used about 3 cups) Cut cake into bars and serve!

It was a hit at the potluck, it was a hit at the reunion! YUM!

* I had a hard time believing it would come out of an un-greased sheet pan, so I went ahead and greased the pan with crisco. As the cake baked it pulled away from the sides of the pan, and you can see very, very little stuck. I'm sure it would come out of an un-greased pan, but do what you like.
** If you travel with it, frost it after you arrive!

ETA: 
- This makes a lot of batter. It's too much for my large mixing bowl and it is a bit too much even for my mixer. Also, maybe mix the butter with the sugar first because otherwise you end up with a block of butter thudding around the mixture... 

- I also added 6-7 minutes to the baking time in 2024. 

Summer Salad!

When I got married, my MIL gave me a few recipes. One was labeled "Burt's Favorite Summer Salad". The thing is, I am allergic to half the ingredients and hey, my husband loves to cook. So I had never made this until Sunday. We decided to make it because it feeds a lot of people and a family reunion lunch is a great time to feed a lot of people, lol. And since the kids don't like it and I can't eat it, he doesn't get it very often. This time he got to keep what was left.

Ingredients: (for this batch)
1 head cabbage, diced?
2 cucumbers, cut into 6ths and sliced thinly (about 6 inches long, about 1.5 inches diameter)
2 green bell peppers diced
6 roma tomatoes, diced
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cup miracle whip (approx)
salt & pepper

First, you cut the cabbage into very small pieces, put it all in a big bowl and use about 2 tsp salt and let it rest for half an hour or so, while you cut the other ingredients. After the veggies are all cut, mix it up, add the miracle whip and a little freshly ground black pepper and mix completely. Chill and let the flavors blend- enJOY!

Harvest Season!

While its true * I * do not have a garden, I am the happy recipient of other people's garden surplus! A friend had given us some zucchini and due to a week full of migraines I hadn't had a chance to use it the way I like! (more to come on that later!) This meant I needed to find a new way to get my children to eat it. Those Betty Crocker emails come in handy! I found a recipe for a Zucchini Tomato Skillet Dinner HERE. Funny thing was that the same friend gave me tomatoes when I asked if I could use a can of stewed tomatoes to make the dinner! Nice that she contributed half our dinner that night!

Edits this time primarily come from not reading the instructions....LOL! I did use dehydrated onion, and then instead of waiting til the end for the chopped fresh tomato, I put that in with Step 2. Whoops. Its okay, it was still great.

Marshmallows, again!

This idea came from my friends blog HERE.
We have now done this three times and two different ways....
Her recipe is simply spread peanut butter on a ritz cracker, set it on the pan, stick a marshmallow on top and put it under the broiler for a few minutes.

That is soooo yummy!!!
But today, for our first-day-back-to-school treat I used nutella instead of peanut butter!!!
EVEN better!!!!

Butter Dip Biscuits

I am sure there is a grammatical problem with the title of this recipe, but it is a recipe of my great-grandmother's, who was born to farmers in 1887. So, it is what it is, and it is GOOD.

These are great with spaghetti, soup, whatever you need biscuits with! This round, it was a soup.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cup sifted flour
1 Tbsp sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup butter (or margarine is okay)

Heat oven to 450*. cut butter into pats and place all over baking pan like this:

Mix dry ingredients and milk in a bowl,

and then move to counter top to knead a bit, and roll out to about 1/2 an inch thick. Cut into strips like this:

dip into butter (smother both sides of the biscuit-which is why it is melted all over the pan you're using)

and bake 14-20 minutes.
tada!

my husband likes them with jam, I just like to dip them in whatever we're eating, like the soup...

Quick Treat!

The other night my husband was looking for some kind of treat. I had just bought a bag of regular marshmallows and the coconut covered ones -since my daughter has been begging me all summer for them...! He decided to melt down some chocolate baking chips that are meant for melting into like a chocolate fountain or something. He dipped the marshmallows til the melted chocolate was gone and we had about a cookie sheet full! He let them set up in the fridge for 15 minutes and they were ready! MMMM!

When things don't quite go right...

Here's a new way of making lemonade out of life's lemons. haha!

I recently volunteered to take dinner to a family who was moving, and I was also supposed to make two treats for a baby shower the next day. I thought No Bake Cookies would be great since I only stand over a hot stove for a few minutes and don't use the oven at all. Perfect!
...only. ...the cookies were still not set after about two hours. hmm....
I had made a nice, big double batch so that my family got some, along with all the sharing...and it was like picking up oatmeal.
what. was I supposed to do with a big old mixing bowl full of chocolatey oatmeal???

I called my husband {the foodie} to see if he had any ideas and he said "sure, throw in some eggs, flour and baking powder and bake them."
...Really? you can do that??

Yup. Guess ya can!
Behold! Baked No Bake Cookies!

They taste much more like oatmeal cookies than No Bake cookies, and they are quite flat. I added the following before baking:
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup flour
and baked them about 12 minutes each pan.

Also, I only put about a tbsp of batter on the pan and some spread to be as much as 3 inches across...!

Meatloaf from meat balls!

Remember my meatballs post? I really like those meatballs. My kids both like them now too. We have eaten them at least once a month since that first post, sometimes much more often. I've made them for my parents at least three times, and we actually don't have a nice dinner together all that often! lol!

Well. it is hot here, and I am very, very busy (as so many of us are) and I didn't want to take the time to shape out a bunch of meatballs. I just wanted to eat it. I asked my husband-the-cook if the mixture could be made into a meatloaf..? (my mom didn't make meatloaf one single time until after I was married so this is not a staple I grew up with. but since I do love those meatballs, I bet I'd like the meatloaf just as well...!) He thought it absolutely could, so that is what I did!

Since we used to watch Good Eats every night (until food network got so competition-heavy), I had vague memories of AB not liking square pans because casseroles get dry corners and uncooked centers...and something about dry meatloaf being bad...so I put the meat into a foil lined loaf pan for the first 45 minutes...

and then I turned it out into a rounded baking dish,smothered it in sauce and let it bake that way for the last 15 minutes. I added the extra five minutes to make extra sure the meat in the middle was totally cooked (I like my cows goooood and dead thanks).

As far as meatloaf goes, it was perfect! But it turns out I like the sauce in all three bites of meatloaf and unless you have the end slice, its hard to get the sauce in every bite. But that's okay, it was quicker, less messy and soo tasty!

While I'm on the subject, I should mention the alterations that my-husband-the-cook made to the meat mixture. He added minced garlic, Worcestershire sauce and a drop or two of liquid smoke. He might have changed up a couple other things, but at this moment I don't know what... if I think of them I will add them, so feel free to check back!

Barbacoa Pork

Sunday was one of those days we'd managed to run out of grocery staples. That meant it was time to get creative for dinner, and my husband did an awesome job!! Doesn't this look dreamy good??

He started with the meat that is wrapped inside that tortilla. Here's what he did....
Thaw 2 lbs of boneless, country-style pork ribs. Put about a quart of water in a large pot and add the following:
2 tbsp taco seasoning
1 8oz can tomato sauce
3 tbsp minced garlic
1 large bay leaf
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar OR red wine vinegar OR apple cider vinegar
1 tsp hot sauce paste OR 1 tbsp liquid hot sauce

Boil/simmer until liquid is reduced to 1/4 volume, and has become a good thick sauce, and pork can be shredded and falls apart.
Remove the meat and shred, then return it to the sauce until meat is completely coated.
So that's the meat filling, which we put into a tortilla, topped it with cheese and rolled/folded it up burrito style.
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Then he made a side dish of honey lime rice:
Put a pat of butter into the pan and toast the dry rice. Then add the water, boil/cook til the rice is done. He drizzled on a little lime juice and a little honey, and a dash of the rice wine vinegar. Use way less than you think!
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And a side dish of refried beans.... which are simply a can of refried beans dumped into a pot, and add a tbsp or two of milk and a small handful of cheese, and heat through!
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The burrito was then smothered in enchilada sauce and some cheese, cheese on top of the beans, and it went under the broiler for about 3-4 minutes. And came out looking like this:

oh yes. it was THAT good!

Nacho Skillet Dinner

I'm sorry there's been a lack of posts...it was really cold all spring and it just turned really hot so I don't really want to stand at the stove or use the oven. Not to mention the summer festivities and everything going on! But tonight I made a real dinner (hee hee) and tried a new recipe that we think is a keeper!

here's what it looked like:

and the recipe can be found HERE.

of *course* there are edits! :) For one thing, I didn't like the idea of putting the chips in the pan while it simmered....that sounded like they'd get soggy and I really don't care for soggy chips. So we ate the dinner as a dip, which always makes my kids eat better. Also, I will use black beans next time, instead of kidney beans. And my husband added salsa and sour cream to his. All in all? its a keeper!

Edited 10/14/12:
We had some left overs of this mixture and we were out of chips. So I made a quesadilla out of it!

Just laid down a flour tortilla, spread the mix on it, sprinkled it with more cheese, topped it with another quesadilla and there was dinner!