In The Kitchen - One Dish Chicken Dinner

Here's a very simple recipe for those nights when you don't have a lot of time and don't want to do a lot of cleanup because it all goes into one dish.

Ingredients:

4-6 Chicken Breasts

New Potatoes

Green Beans

1 stick butter (melted)

1 packet italian dressing mix

Arrange the chicken, potatoes, and green beans in a 9x13 baking dish and sprinkle with the italian dressing mix and then top with the melted butter.  Cover with foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour.

Banana Bread

What do you do with your over ripe bananas? Normally bananas get eaten pretty quickly at our house, but every once in a while we have a few that sit around and get overly ripe. When that happens, I like to make up a batch of banana bread.  Here's a great recipe that you might like to try.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 ripe large bananas, mashed well
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips 

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour the bottom and sides of a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla and then add the banana mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring as little as possible.  Lightly fold in the nuts and chocolate just until combined and the batter is thick and chunky. (Do not over mix the batter, you do not want it smooth. Over mixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery bread.)

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until bread is golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 60 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 1 – 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf of banana bread

When I was making this loaf I didn't have dark chocolate chips on hand so I threw in some white chocolate instead and I really like the taste that it gave the bread.  You could mix up the types of nuts also, maybe use walnuts instead.

If you try the recipe, let me know what you think.  Happy baking!!

In The Kitchen - Mississippi Roast

This past weekend I tried out a new crockpot recipe. It was really simple and turned out pretty good so I thought I would share it with you. I found this recipe when a friend shared it on facebook and the original poster boasted that it was by far the best recipe they had tried, so naturally I had to try it out. Here's the recipe:

MISSISSPPI ROAST

Put chuck roast in crock pot, Sprinkle with dry Hidden Valley ranch dressing mix, add packet of dry McCormick Au Jus mix, a stick of butter, 5 pepperoncini peppers. DO NOT ADD WATER. Cook on low for 7-8 hrs

Mississippi Roast

Here's what it looked like in my crock pot.

Now, in case you are wondering, I had two roasts in there because I feed an army at my house. I threw in a bunch more of the pepperoncini and my ranch dressing was buttermilk flavored, but these are the only changes I made to the recipe. It was quite easy, which most crock-pot recipes I've tried usually are.

I let it cook for 8 hours on low and then sliced it. I drizzled some of the juices from the pot onto the sliced roast and served it up. The family loved it. I, myself, thought it was pretty good but would not go so far as to say it was by far the best recipe I had tried. I fixed a hash brown casserole to go with it that I much preferred to the roast. Maybe it's the thoughts of getting ready to start a low carb diet and knowing that potatoes will soon be off my eating list that swayed my opinion...maybe.

Anyway, it was pretty good, worth making again. I think I might try just regular ranch mix next time instead of buttermilk to see if that makes a difference.

If you try the recipe out, let me know what you think.

Soup Weather

When the weather turns chilly, I think there's nothing better than a warm cup of soup.  Here's one of our favorites that I made recently.

Potato Soup

6-10 medium potatoes
8 oz. cream cheese (softened)
1 stick butter
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
2-4 cups heavy cream
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Peel potatoes and cut into cubes.  Place into stock pot and add water, just enough to cover the potatoes.  Cook until soft.  Add cream cheese and butter and cook until completely melted.  Add remaining ingredients and let simmer.

I like to garnish with cheddar cheese and bacon.  Yum!

Do you like soup on a chilly day and if you do, what's your favorite?

Pumpkin Yum

It's pumpkin season and to celebrate the first day of October I made a yummy pumpkin dessert.  (And I ask myself why I am gaining weight.)  But its pumpkin.......and I couldn't resist.  

I found the recipe on Pinterest and immediately knew that I had to try it.  The hubby has given it 5 stars so if you like pumpkin like we do, you should give it a try.  Even if you don't like pumpkin, you could always use chocolate or another flavor instead.  You can find the recipe here.  Just look at this yummy goodness!

Hot Corn Dip

I saw this recipe on Pinterest a while back and thought I would try it out.  I am always looking for new things to cook because, like they say, variety is the spice of life.  It was really simple to make and I'm all for easy, quick meals.  This isn't really a meal, its more like an appetizer so it's something that would be great to fix for a party or for a covered dish affair.  Hubby and I had it tonight while dinner was cooking and he was very impressed with my mad kitchen skills.

I didn't have any Montery Jack cheese so I substituted a Montery Colby mix which worked out well.  If you don't like chipotle peppers you can adjust the amount of that also but personally I loved it.  You should give it a try, I think you will like it.  Get the recipe here.

Sunday Dinner at Grandma's

Sunday is the day that my kids and grandkids come a visiting so I am always trying to cook something for dinner that both the adults and kids will enjoy.  Today I made one of their favorites, Pizza Pasta.  It’s a very easy recipe and it’s customizable for different tastes.  Today’s version was going to be eaten by more adults than children so I threw in a few extras like onions and green peppers, but if you have picky eaters like I had, you can leave those out.  It also makes a larger quantity because I’m always feeding an army, so if you have a smaller group, you will need to adjust the amounts.

Pizza Pasta

1 box rotini pasta

3 jars pizza sauce

1 bag pepperoni slices

1 lb of ground Italian sausage

1 green pepper – diced

1 onion – diced

2 cups shredded Italian cheese

Prepare pasta as directed and brown sausage.  I usually put the peppers and onions in the pan with sausage while it’s browning.  Drain both pasta and sausage mixture and place into a 9x13 casserole dish.  Add pepperoni and then stir in the pizza sauce.  Top with the shredded cheese.  Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes.