Mischievously Good Food
I have 4 meals planned for this week, hopefully we will actually get to have them all!
Sunday – Take out. Meal planning exhausted me…
Monday – Korean BBQ Beef (Crockpot recipe… I hope this works out, I only got 1/2 the ribs it called for, those suckers are expensive)
Tuesday – Baked beans and hot dogs
Wednesday – TACO NIGHT!
Thursday – Jumbalaya with smoked turkey sausage
Friday – Unknown…
Saturday – H is on his own, I’ll be at a dance fest all day
My wonderful husband has this real character of a father. He’s got crazy curly grey hair, big thick glasses, and possibly one of the most warming and welcoming personalities. Spending time with him is a pleasure. Plus, on top of that, he loves to cook. In fact, he usually shows up at my house and cooks for me! Who doesn’t like that?
This was a dish he’s made a few times, namely for my bridal shower, in which he was the caterer. The food was so fantastic! My Aunt has asked for the recipe, which of course I had to get from the father-in-law.
You will note that there’s not a lot of measurements in this recipe. That’s because he doesn’t cook by measurements. He cooks by feel. Fortunately, I do too, and this worked out well. As a note, this is in no way, shape, or form, healthy. It is a great special occasion meal!
Please enjoy this recipe!
Chicken Marsala
Mmmm. Chicken Marsala!
Ingredients:
1 sausage link, cut into a few pieces (this is used for flavor only, I didn’t have any, so I just used a beef bullion cube, some garlic, some crushed red pepper, and some salt and pepper and it worked just fine)
EVOO
1 medium onion, sliced very thin
Sliced mushrooms
2 chicken breasts, cut into small pieces, larger than bite size but smaller than filet
Flour
Garlic powder
Parsley
Basil
Butter (appx 1/4 to 1/3 cup!)
Chicken bullion
Marsala wine (bartolo, burgundy, chianti will also work, and honestly, I have used sangria, it worked too!)
Directions
Heat up the EVOO (about 1/4 cup) and add the sausage. Cook until the sausage mushrooms on both side. Remove. (If you go with the alternate method, add the listed ingredients and allow to eat). Add the sliced mushrooms to the frying pan. Cook until brown and soft. Place the onions into a dutch oven with some water. Add the mushrooms. You’ll want to have enough water so that it looks a bit soupy now. Don’t worry, it will thicken!
Put the butter into the frying pan and allow to melt and start to bubble slightly. Take that chicken and put it into a plastic bag with the flour, garlic powder, basil, and parsley. Shake to coat the chicken, then saute it in the butter. Let it saute slowly, don’t rush it!
When the chicken is done, add it to the dutch oven. If your frying pan is too small and you have to do 2 batches of chicken, you may need more butter.
Add the chicken bullion to the dutch oven. Then take the flour leftovers from the plastic bag and put it in the leftover saute butter. Allow it to come together, then add to the dutch oven. I had too much flour, but it still worked out! It should for a paste.
Allow the dutch oven to cook while simmering for about 15-20 minutes. Then add the wine to taste. At this point, you can serve, or allow it to sit for a while longer. I let mine sit for about 30 minutes more, just to allow the flavors to really sink in. When I do this, I add another dash of wine at the end.
Serve with pasta, though we eat it with rice. I’m weird.
Another slow cooker recipe. Its been fitting nicely into our seemingly too-busy schedule. This was a definite hit! I loved the flavors and the beans… so good!
I added a lot more spice than the recipe called for. As with any chili, spice as you like!
Three Bean Turkey Chili
Turkey Chili
Ingredients:
1 pound ground turkey
1 small onion, chopped
1 can diced tomato, undrained
1 can tomato sauce
1 can light red kidney beans, drained and washed
1 can black beans, drained and washed
1 can chick peas, drained and washed
1 can green chilis
1-2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp garlic
1 tbsp crushed red pepper
2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp black pepper
Salt to taste
Directions:
Brown the turkey and the onion until it is no longer pink.
Add all of the ingredients to the crock pot. Cook on high for 6-8 hours, or on low for 8+, then on high for 1 hour.
Serve as you would chili! We had ours over rice with a little cheese and sour cream.
I wanted a quick and easy cinnamon roll for breakfast this past Sunday. I didn’t have the fridge kind, and I did not want to spend the time making dough. Google to the rescue! There are lots of recipes for cinnamon rolls using cresent rolls as a base.
These were super good, very sticky! I’d almost consider a cream cheese frosting instead of the one I used.
Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
Ingredients:
1 can crescent rolls, I used reduced fat
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans (I used walnuts)
1/6 cup brown sugar
1/6 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup soft butter
Glaze:
1/2 powdered sugar
1/2 tbsp melted butter
Milk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine the pecans, sugars, cinnamon, and butter. Mix well. Open the can of crescent rolls and unroll into 2 rectangles. Spread the mix onto one of the rectangles, then place the other on top. Cut into 8 thin strips, then roll up.
Place in an ungreased baking dish with a little room between each. Cook for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
Make the glaze while the rolls are baking. Only use enough milk to create the glaze, you don’t need much at all!
Enjoy!
This is a quick and easy recipe I’ve been seeing on blogs for a long time, and I finally got around to trying it. I will admit that I did not love the spice mixture, and I’ll probably go with something a little less cumin-heavy next time. This issue was entirely my fault, I don’t use taco seasoning packets as suggested, they are so high in sodium! I just use my own spices to make a mixture.
The recipe below is as I have seen it on various blogs, not my spice-flop version!
Enjoy!
Crockpot Salsa Chicken
Crockpot Salsa Chicken over Rice
Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts (I used 2 big ones)
1 cup salsa, medium spice
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 packet of taco seasoning
1/2 cup sour cream
Shredded cheese, taco shells, tortilla shells, rice, tostadas… however you want to serve them!
Directions:
Place the chicken breasts in the crock pot, frozen is just fine (how convenient!). Put the salsa, soup, and seasonings on top. Mix up, place the lid on the crockpot, turn on low, and go away.
Come back hours later. When you’re getting ready to serve, shred the chicken using 2 forks and add the sour cream. Serve in any way you like!
Week 2 Meal Plan
This will be a weird week. I’m flying out to Baltimore on Wednesday, so the husband is on his own. He’ll do just fine, he used to cook for all of his college roommates! So here’s our short meal plan:
Sunday – Dinner with friends from Papa Murphy’s Pizza, a take and bake pizza place that is a local chain
Monday – Three Bean Turkey Chili in the slow cooker (new recipe)
Tuesday – Chicken Parmesan or Spaghetti and Meatballs, depending on time
Wednesday through Saturday – Loki
Wednesday – Dinner with Dad, We had Chicken Marsala!
Thursday – Dinner with BFF!
Friday – Dinner with Di!
Saturday – Back home, dinner depends entirely on timing
What’s your meal plan this week? Does it help you to think about food ahead of time?
UPDATE 1 – We had spaghetti and meatballs on tuesday in an italian sausage pasta sauce (jarred… what are you gonna do?). I spiced it up and it was DELICIOUS! I also added my Wednesday dinner at my Dad’s house that I made.
I recently got the Best Loved Crockpot Recipes book as a gift. I think I have about 30 pages marked with recipes I want to try! This was the first, steak fajitas. It does require about 15 minutes of prep work, but I did it the night before to make my morning easier. These were a hit in my house, and I highly recommend them.
One important note: Read the directions carefully, the peppers don’t go into the crock pot until an hour before you want to serve. Otherwise they will be soggy.
Crockpot Steak Fajitas
Open faced fajita
Ingredients:
1 lb flank steak, cut crosswise then into strips
1 medium onion
1/2 cup salsa, medium, plus additional for garnish
2 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro (omitted b/c cilantro tastes like soap)
2 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 small green bell pepper, cut into strips
1 small red bell pepper, cut into strips
Flour tortillas, warmed
Directions:
Put the meat into the crock pot. Add the onions and the salsa, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, chili powder, cumin, and salt into the crock pot. Mix up. Cook on low for 5 to 6 hours.
1 hour prior to eating, add the peppers and cook for 1 more hour.
Serve on warm flour tortillas.
So I have a block of cream cheese (1/3 reduced fat) that was about to hit its sell-by date. I decided to make some cookies for the week. I had some trouble finding a recipe, but I got lucky. These are super tasty and they allow you to kind of manipulate them as you wish. Make the cookie dough, then do any of the following:
1 – Mix in finely chopped pecans or walnuts
2 – Drop the cookie onto the baking tray and press your thumb down into it and then fill that with preserves or candies like candied cherries
3 – Use a cookie press to create fun shapes!
4 – Use sprikles
5 – Ice them
6 – Roll into a log and then freeze them, cut them off as you want to eat them
etc, etc etc!
See, good basic cookies. I decided to make some cream cheese frosting to top them with, though the frosting tastes great it is not hardening well, so you don’t get the recipe for that now. Maybe later, when I fix it.
Cream Cheese Cookies
Frosted cookies going into the fridge!
Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
3 oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 and lightly grease a cookie sheet.
Cream the sugar, butter, and cream cheese until soft and fluffy:
Light and fluffy
Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix well. Add the flour slowly to the batter.
Use the cookie press or put 1 tbsp drop cookies onto the greased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, but monitor the cookies closely. They don’t really change color from the original batter, so it is a little hard to tell when they are done. After 15 minutes, turn one of the cookies over, the bottoms will start to brown up a bit. When they look like the picture below, or darker, they are done.
Bake until the bottoms of the cookies get slightly golden
I’m no good at menu planning and I end up making pasta entirely more often than I should. So I’m going to ATTEMPT to post weekly my meal plan. Don’t give me too much crap if I’m not doing this in a month!
Saturday – Sausage and peppers
Sunday – Swedish meatballs which I will re-blog due to recipe updates, prepare for Monday’s meal Too full from late lunches and baking. We’ll be snacking for dinner! But the fajitas for tomorrow are prepped:
Prepped fajitas which will go into the crock pot tomorrow morning
Monday – Beef fajitas in the crock pot (new recipe!)
Tuesday – N/A (we have evening activities and I don’t plan anything on tuesdays)
Wednesday – Chicken parm (I may reblog this due to bad pics) We ended up running errands after work that took 2 hours, and got home too late for a long prep like chicken parm. I did make some burgers on the indoor grill, those were pretty good… not blog worthy.
Thursday – Crockpot salsa chicken (new recipe!)
Friday – Something quick!
Saturday – Dinner at the Melting Pot for my birthday!
UPDATE 1 – Sausage and peppers made enough for 2 dinners! I’m going to freeze it for later use.
UPDATE 2 – Sunday changed, but the fajitas are ready to go!
UPDATE 3 – Wednesday did not go off as planned, but we’re not all perfect, are we?
FINAL UPDATE – Crockpot salsa chicken complete, friday was sandwiches, and saturday was an excellent and inspiring dinner at the Melting Pot!
October 18, 2009
Stephanie @ Libra Fit
Loki's Kitchen 