Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

My husband is feeling a little under the weather and requested a brothy soup for dinner. I myself am not feeling fantastic, and wanted to crack open a can and throw it into the microwave. Sadly, the pantry was bare (from broth based soups) so I decided to make something quick and easy.

The entire recipe was from my brain, though it’s not exactly an act of genius. It tastes great, though, and comes together quickly. If you’re looking for a 1-dish meal, cook the aromatics in your dutch oven, then cook the chicken a bit before adding the broth, etc. If you’re looking for something faster, get the chicken going in the broth to boil it while cooking the aromatic in another pan.

Enjoy!

Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

Ingredients:

1-2 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
3 stalks of celery, chopped
3 carrot sticks, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 cups chicken broth (I recommend Better than Bullion Chicken Base)
1 package gnocchi, or homemade if you’re brave
Sea salt (I used pink Himalayan sea salt, it was delicious) to taste
Pepper to taste
Basil, about 1/2 tbsp, for some color mostly

Directions:

In a sautee pan, heat a bit of oil and sautee the aromatics (onion, celery, carrots) and the garlic for 5-8 minutes or until slightly softened. In a dutch oven or stock pot, place the chicken and the broth and bring to a boil to cook your chicken. Add the aromatics, salt, pepper, and basil. Once the chicken is cooked (10 min or less).

Throw the gnocchi in and cook for 2 min or until the gnocchi is done. Serve warm and enjoy!

Note: There’s a handful of rotini in there, about 3oz I had from a leftover bag of it. Just go with it, people!

Sweet Barbacoa Pork

I love this dish.

The first time I explained it to my husband, he said he’d try it, but he tried to bargain with me for a pizza as needed if he did not like it. That’s fine, it’s the deal we have. We’ve only ever ordered a pizza once, and that was when I forgot to cook chicken before putting it into a dish that required it to be pre-cooked. Ooops.

Anyway, this dish is fabulous. You should make it, and it’s super convenient because you’re going to use your crockpot! It does have a 2-step cooking process, but it is worth it. I recommend making both the marinade and the sauce at the same time and putting the sauce in the fridge so it’s ready to go.

Feel free to do something more interesting with the rice and beans. I usually just do a packet of brown rice from Trader Joe’s and a can of black beans. I have been known to spice the black beans with salt, pepper, cumin, garlic powder, chili powder, and a little bit of the sauce. It isn’t the prettiest dish, but what it lacks in appearance it makes up for in sheer awesome.

Sweet Barbacoa Pork
From Skinny Taste

Ingredients:

Marinade
2.5 lbs pork shoulder, most of the fat removed
6oz Coke Zero
1/4 cup brown sugar
Salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
1/4 cup water (set aside)

Sauce
8oz Coke Zero
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 can green chilis
8oz tomato sauce
1 chili in adobo sauce
1/8 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp garlic powder

Directions:

The night before, marinade the pork shoulder in the marinade minus the water. You can marinade it in the crock pot dish, should you desire. In the morning, add the water. Turn it on low for 8 hours.

Remove the pork shoulder form the crock pot and put on a cutting board. Shred with 2 forks or your fingers, don’t burn yourself! Discard the cooking liquid and put the pork back in the crockpot.

Add the sauce to the pork and mix. Heat for 30 min at minimum, the original recipe suggests 90 minutes.

Serve over rice and black beans.

Fair warning, this makes enough for 3 dinners for my husband and I!

Whole Wheat Banana Nut Pancakes

This morning, I was in the mood for some hearty pancakes using some of the delicious walnuts we picked up yesterday at Trader Joes and at least one of the bananas that have ended up in the freezer after reaching “too ripe.” I also didn’t want to make a ton of pancakes since we never eat them leftover.

I ate mine with a little bit of butter, sugar free syrup, and chia seeds. Chia seeds are a recent addition to my diet, I throw them on top of yogurt, oatmeal, and really anything where they can disappear. Chia seeds have no flavor and, when introduced to water, have a gel-like coating that puffs up. They add fiber to your food and keep you full longer buy increasing in volume. On top of that, they help keep blood sugar even. They also have omega 3s in them, which is something I don’t get much from in my diet.

Anyway, here’s the recipe for these hearty, filling pancakes.

Whole Wheat Banana Nut Pancakes

Ingredients (adapted from food.com – makes 4ish pancakes):

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg (omitted)
1/4 tsp cloves (omitted)
1 banana, mashed
1/8 cup honey
1/4 cup milk, add more to make thinner if needed
1/4 cup walnuts

Directions:

Mix all dry ingredients together, then all the wet ingredients together. Combine slowly until the consistency you want is achieved. For fluffier pancakes, it should be thicker and you can adjust with more flour. Add more milk to make thinner, runnier pancakes.

Cook on a hot griddle, serve warm.

Nutritional Information (2 pancakes):

Amount Per Serving
% Daily Value
Calories 378.5

Calories from Fat 44
11%
Total Fat 4.9 g
7%
Saturated Fat 1.7 g
8%
Cholesterol 110.0 mg
36%
Sodium 526.6 mg
21%
Total Carbohydrate 76.8 g
25%
Dietary Fiber 9.0 g
36%
Sugars 25.0 g
100%
Protein 13.0 g
26%

Homemade Hamburger Buns

Yesterday was a snow day. See:

I worked from home, but it gave me time to make some homemade burger buns to go with my delicious burger idea (which I will post about soon). I googled “homemade burger buns” and came across the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, which is one of my favorite cooking blogs on the internet. She’s very thorough and thoughtful about food. She said in her post that she’d tested recipe after recipe and this was the best. Of course, I adopted it to a bread machine, who has time to knead bread? If you want the by-hand instructions, no one will tell you how to do it better than Smitten Kitchen.

These are delicious, and to be honest, huge. Next time I’d make 10-12 smaller buns instead of 8 large ones. Enjoy!

Homemade Burger Buns

Ingredients:

In your bread machine, mix the following:

Dry –
3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup AP flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tbsp sugar

Wet –
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup warm water
3 tbsp warm milk
2 1/2 tbsp softened butter

2 tsp active dry yeast
Sesame seeds (optional)

Directions:

Use the dough setting on your bread machine, or refer to Smitten Kitchen for by hand directions. Once the dough is done, turn out onto a floured surface and use a dough cutter to separate in 8 equal pieces. Form into bun shapes and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet. Make sure to leave a few inches between each for rising and cooking space.

Cover with saran warp, lightly coated in cooking spray, and let rise for an hour in a warm place. I use my microwave for rising! They should just about double in size.

Add a shallow pan of water to the oven, then preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the saran wrap from the rolls and brush with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake on the center rack for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Simple Meat Sauce

Simple. Fast. Delicious. No need to buy premade sauces, just 2 inexpensive cans of tomatoes and meat of your choice and you can have a delicious and simple meat sauce.

I made this using Red Gold Tomatoes, which I am still enjoying. This recipe used a can of petite diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste.

Simple Meat Sauce

Ingredients

1 can petite diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
1 lb ground meat (beef, veal, pork, turkey, bison, venison…)
1 small onion, chopped finely
1 tbsp fresh garlic
Spices to taste (salt, pepper, oregano, italian seasoning)
Spicy spices to taste (cayenne, tabasco)
EVOO

Directions

In a saucepan or frying pan, heat the EVOO. Add the garlic and sautee for 30 seconds, then add the onions. Cook until golden brown, then add the meat and about half of the spices you plan to use. Make sure the meat is cooked thoroughly, then add the tomatoes and the remainder of the spices. Cook as long as you want, the longer you let it cook the more the flavors will develop, but you can also serve immediately. Enjoy!

Chicken with Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese

I need more uses for goat cheese. I know it is fantastic on salads, but I don’t love salads in the winter. So right now I’m in a chicken and goat cheese rut. There are worse places to be, I won’t lie, but I should branch out soon.

That doesn’t change the fact that this dish turned out very well. The sweet flavor of the onions plus the goat cheese compliment each other perfectly.

So today, perfection. Soon, new ventures.

Chicken with Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts, butterflied and separated
2/3 cup panko
1 egg
1 medium onion, sliced
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp goat cheese
EVOO

Directions

Crack the egg into a shallow bowl and scramble. Coat each piece of chicken in the egg, then coat in the panko.

In 2 pans, heat EVOO. In the first, add the onions and sautee over medium heat with the sugar. Stir regularly. In the second pan, add the chicken and brown, flip over once and cook until 165 degrees F.

Serve the chicken with the onions and cheese immediately.

Local Product Feature: Red Gold Tomatoes

As you probably know, I love local products. I’ve got a weekly produce delivery which is all organic and often local (when available) from Door to Door Organics and a bi-weekly dairy delivery which is hormone and antibiotic free from Calder’s Diary. I’m tantalizingly close to local organic meat delivery too, details on that soon. Buying local is important to me because it allows me to both support local businesses as well as reduce my carbon footprint by decreasing the “food miles” I consume. You won’t often get me evangelizing about all things green, but this is a movement I can get behind.

One of my favorite foods by far is tomatoes. I love them fresh, sliced on a sandwich or burger, I love cherry tomatoes in my salad. I drool over those plump, red fruits (yes, fruit) in the grocery store and add them to my delivery whenever possible. Unfortunately, there are a few inalienable truths about tomatoes.

1 – Fresh winter tomatoes…. suck
2 – Sometimes, canned tomatoes are just better for things, like when you need stewed tomatoes or whole peeled tomatoes, even tomato paste
3 – They go bad quickly, especially because you’re not supposed to refrigerate them (something about the sugar making them grainy)

Most of the winter I’ll spring for a few romas and then stick to canned tomatoes, which of course are all grown all over the world.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Red Gold Tomatoes are an Indiana based company which sources tomatoes from the midwest, including Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. The company sent me some more information about the farms which grow the tomatoes, which include the following:

AcMoody Farms, Inc. Union City, MI
M Forche Farms, Inc. Blissfield, MI
Iott Farms, Inc. Deerfield, MI
Iott Ranch & Orchard Petersburg, MI
Janssen Brothers Farms, Inc. Monroe, MI
KD&A Tomatoes Coldwater, MI
Lievens Bros. Farms, Inc. Petersburg, MI
Morrin Farms, Inc. Erie, MI
Stanton Country, LLC Sherwood, MI
State Line Farms Morenci, MI

Of course, now comes the test. Do they hold up to my standards? How well do they cook? What do they taste like? What’s with the bright yellow label?

I can answer a few of these questions now, and over the next few weeks I’ll be using a few additional products.

Tonight after my fairly successful Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken adventure, I wanted to use up the rest of my goat cheese. I decided to pull out the can of Red Gold Tomatoes with olive oil and garlic to create a basic tomato sauce and provide a base for the goat cheese, which I can serve over some leftover pasta from the other night.

I heated up my skillet and tossed in the can of tomatoes.

The first thing I noticed was the texture (visual) of these tomatoes. Most canned tomatoes don’t hold up too well after canning, but these held a good firm shape and looked a whole lot like I’d diced them myself. Excellent first impression.

I roasted the tomatoes over medium heat with a pinch of salt and pepper, but this specific variety of tomatoes came with a bit of spices already so I did not want to add much. I cooked off most of the liquid and softened the tomatoes. The wonderful aroma that the simple can of tomatoes provided even peeked my husband’s interest.

Since I’d already eaten tonight, I put the sauce on top of some leftover pasta from yesterday and topped that with some goat cheese. Of course, I had a little bite on the side before I put it all away. I was not disappointed in the slightest. The cooked texture of the tomatoes was exactly what I like and the flavor was very robust.

I’m looking forward to trying a few other varieties of Red Gold Tomatoes. So far I have not seen a tomato paste product by this company, so I’ll have to see if that exists at all. Can’t live without tomato paste. They also have a ketchup, which is sitting in my cupboard and I’m eying it suspiciously. I’m a Heinz girl through and through, but I’ll try anything for the love of food and local.

Roasted Squash

Ever hear of a delicata squash? Me either. I got one in my Door to Door Organics delivery a few weeks ago. I love squash because it is fairly versatile and, even better, it lasts forever in the fridge. It is also known as the Sweet Potato squash, which I find moderately confusing because I feel like the butternut is more sweet potato than the delicata, but I’ll let it slide.

Either way, the delicata squash is very good, and you could do a lot with it. I need to get my hands on some more.

Roasted Squash

Ingredients (makes 2 side dishes)

1 cup squash cut into small pieces, and really any squash or even pumpkin will work well for this recipe
2 tbsp EVOO
1 tsp kosher or sea salt
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the skin and seeds from the squash and discard (or roast the seeds if you’re feeling adventurous!) Cut the squash into bite sized pieces and put in a bowl. Add the olive oil and spices to the bowl and coat evenly.

Place on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake 20 minutes, then turn over and bake an additional 10-15 minutes.

Sausage Stuffed Peppers

This recipe was inspired by an appetizer on the menu at Roast here in Detroit. We had this dish on my birthday and I’ve been kind of dreaming about it since. This is my best attempt at a copy, but it isn’t perfect by any means! I hope you like this. Remember, you can change the peppers for something with less of a kick and still get great flavors.

Sausage Stuffed Peppers with feta cheese and yia yia sauce

Ingredients

Sauce –
4 fresh roma tomatoes finely chopped or 1 can crushed tomatoes
1 small onion, quartered
1 tsp fresh garlic
1 bay leaf
1.5 tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions for the sauce – Throw this all in a sauce pan and simmer for at least an hour. Remove the onion and bay leaf before serving.

Chopped tomatoes with a bit of chopped onion, because I had extra and I like onions and I put a bit in the sauce, not necessary!

Peppers –
2 pork sausage links
6 banana peppers or similar pepper, medium to large sized (I had 5 smallish banana peppers and 1 large poblano pepper to use tonight)
Crushed red pepper

Feta cheese

Directions

Carefully remove the stems from the peppers and gently scrape out the seeds from the inside. Set aside.

Cut the sausage casing and remove the meat. Mix with a bit of spices, of your choice. My sausages were mild, so I added a bit of crushed red pepper, but you’re welcome to add anything… garlic would be great, but you knew I’d say that.

Gently stuff each pepper with sausage.

Heat the indoor grill on the stovetop on medium high heat. Place the peppers on the grill pan and cover with aluminum foil. Turn every 3-4 minutes and cook until 165 degrees, which is a safe cooking temperature for sausage.

Serve the peppers immediately with sauce and feta cheese.

Pictureless Post: Tomato Vodka Sauce

I fail as a blogger today, and I am posting without a picture. But it was so good, I absolutely must share this amazing recipe. I had a handfull of gorgeous roma tomatoes from Door to Door Organics and I wanted to make a sauce of some kind, and I had some gnocchi (store bought, I have not yet mastered gnocchi) I wanted to eat. So I decided to go with a fresh tomato sauce to keep the meal light. I served some pan seared chicken breast along side.

So, close your eyes (well, keep reading, but then close your eyes once you’re done), and imagine some fluffy gnocchi with a light and refreshing tomato sauce on top. The tomatoes are diced into small pieces and have been cooked through, keeping the flavor but eliminating the texture of the fresh tomatoes.

I hope you trust me on this one. It was really, just that good.

Fresh Tomato Vodka Sauce

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

4-5 roma tomatoes, diced
2 shallots, finely minced
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tsp oregano, freshly crushed
2 tsp basil
1 tsp garlic powder
salt, pepper to taste
1 cup vodka, divided
EVOO

Directions

In your pan, heat 2 tbsp olive oil. Add the shallots and garlic and cook for 30 seconds, or until aromatic. Then add the tomatoes and spices, cooking on medium heat for 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup vodka to the sauce, cook for 5 minutes or until the vodka has completely cooked off (i.e. it does not smell like vodka anymore). Add the second 1/2 cup of vodka and repeat. Serve immediately.