Lemon-licious!

Yesterday I mustered up the courage to tackle the girls room and actually accomplished the task. (Somewhere in there I forgot to start the lemon curd so we had stirfry last night instead.) I cleaned it all out and took out a whole box of donation toys. Seriously, I don’t know where these toys came from, I swear I just cleaned it all out a month or two ago and yet there was still an entire box full of things to donate. I haven’t figured out a storage solution for their stuff yet, its still too easy for them to make a mess. I need something for their million baby dolls and something else for their toys. Either way, I got it all cleaned up and semi organized into some bins in the closet. I did have a bit of motivation considering someone was coming at 7p to look at the bunk beds. What ever works right? The person liked the beds and will be back to pick them up on Sunday since it was pouring down rain last night. I sold it for double what I bought them for. Yea! Now I’m searching for new, new, bunk beds for them.

Today, I started the lemon curd (yea for remembering!) and worked in Anthony’s room all day finishing the painting. The only thing left is to sew his curtains and that’s first on my list tomorrow. After that I’ll post some pictures, I think it looks pretty awesome and he’s super proud of it.

With the lemon curd I made lemon chicken for dinner and a lemon and dark chocolate tart as a sweet treat. I really need to stop cooking. Every time I find a new recipe, like this one, I cook myself out of a dinner out. Brad’s theory is why go out to dinner when I can make it so much better at home. I really need to be a bad cook, then we’d go out to dinner more often and I’d get a break. Oh well, regardless, it was a delish dinner. One I guarantee I’ll be making again and tweeking, like maybe orange curd into orange chicken. Yum!

Luscious Lemon Curd in the Crock Pot

(Curd is not as gross as it sounds, its basically a lemon jam/jelly)

3 Large Lemons

6 tbsp butter room temperature (or nuked for 10 seconds)

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 egg yoks

Zest all the lemons.

If you don’t have a zester, use a very sharp knife and take off just the yellow part, the white is bitter. (Get a zester, totally worth it) Juice the lemons. In your mixing bowl, or with a hand held mixer, blend the butter until soft, add the sugar and blend for 2 min’s. Add the eggs and egg yokes, mix until incorporated, being sure to scrape the sides of the bowl so everything gets mixed. Next add 2/3 cup lemon juice. Reserve the rest for use later – like lemon chicken! The mixture will curdle, don’t stress, it’s suppose to. Pour the entire mixture into your crock pot and put on warm or low.

This is not something you can “set it and forget it” but it’s not nearly as intensive as regular lemon curd. Just stir every hour or so until it’s thick enough to coat the back of a spoon or 175 degrease. Mine took a little over 5 hours on warm. Transfer to an air tight container, mix in 2 tbsp zest and cool. It will keep for a few weeks in the fridge.

It’s perfect over toast, great swirled into cheesecake, wonderful with shortbread or perfect with a spoon. J

Lemon Chicken (adopted from a Rachel Ray recipe) No fancy pictures - sorry

3-4 large chicken breast diced

¼ cup flour

2 tsp powder ginger

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

Vegetable oil

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

½ cup chicken broth (1 Knorr broth cube and ½ cup water)

1 cup lemon curd

2 tsp lemon zest

2 tsp lemon juice

1 lemon sliced into rings (I used the left over lemon from juicing)

3 green onions diced

In a zip lock bag combine the flour, ginger, salt and pepper. Add the chicken, seal the bag and shake to coat. In a wok or large pan, heat the oil, add the chicken and cook until brown. Remove the chicken. Add the vinegar and broth. Mix in the lemon curd, juice, rings and zest. Add back in the chicken, stir to coat and cook for 5 min’s. Serve over rice with the diced green onions.

Shortbread

2 cups flour

½ cup powder sugar

2 sticks butter softened

Dash of salt

1 tsp vanilla or almond extract

In your mixer bowl add the softened butter, mix until fluffy. Add the sugar, (slowly!), mix until combined. Add the salt and vanilla. Scrape down the sides and mix for 1 min. Pour out onto a strip of saran wrap.

Using your hands compress into a disk and cover with more saran wrap.

Refrigerate for at least hour.

Roll flat and cut out cookies or press into a buttered tart pan. Bake at 375 until just starting to brown on the edge.

Dip in chocolate or serve with lemon curd….or both! I made a tart, spread the remaining lemon curd over it and drizzled it with dark chocolate. Yum!

Spicy Garlic Cashew Chicken

This is one of the meals from last week that I never got around to posting.

This is one of my favorite marinades/dressings for grilled chicken. You can control the heat by the amount of jalapeño’s you put in. *When the grocery stores are brimming with New Mexico Hatch Chilies and there is a guy out front of the store fresh roasting them, I usually substitute the hatch’s for the jalapenos. Taste as you mix to assess the heat level. It does decrease in heat when you cook it but you want the mix to be tolerable fresh as well because it’s good as a finishing drizzle over the top of the grilled chicken.

Recipe adapted from EliseA over at Simple Recipes : Spicy Garlic Cashew Chicken

Ingredients:

Chicken – bone in, bone out, breasts, thighs, wings – doesn’t matter, what ever you prefer

¼ cup Olive Oil

2 tbsp Soy Sauce

2 tbsp Brown Sugar

½ bunch Cilantro

1-2 Jalapeno’s (*see note above)

1 Lime - juiced

1 cup Cashews

With gloves on or with oiled hands, cut the tops off of the jalapenos and remove the seeds. (I typically use only one jalapeño but I leave most of the seeds in it. That heat is good for the kids once grilled but has enough of a kick when raw for Brad and I to enjoy.)

In your food processer, blender or bowl for your immersion blender, add all the ingredients and pulse until a smooth paste forms. If the mixture is not coming together you can add in more lime juice or up to 2 tbsp of water.

Reserve 1/3 of the mixture for drizzling over the finished chicken.

Coat the chicken with the remaining mixture. Let stand for at least 2 hours but overnight is best.

Cook on the grill until done or in the oven, covered, for 30 min’s at 400 until done.

Serve with rice, black beans and corn on the cob. Yum!

Sorry I didn't take more pictures for this one, I was making it in kind of a rush and the pictures I did take are very poor quality so I'm just skipping them. You'll have to use your imagination...or better yet, make this and you'll know exactly how it looks. :)

Green Chile Chicken Enchilada Casserole

In the crock pot. (Phew! Long title!)

This is another noshtalgic food for me. My mom use to make a version of this when I was a kid. The only thing I’ve changed, I think, is adding in more veggies.

Ingredients:

3 Chicken breasts

2 cans Cream-of soup (what ever kind you like)

1 10pkg tortillas

1 lrg can Green Enchilada Sauce

3 small cans Green Chiles

1 can olives

1 pkg cream cheese

2 cups cheddar-jack cheese

1 onion

2 stalks celery

1 red pepper

2-3 carrots

2 cups corn (not pictured because I forgot)

1 bunch cilantro

*Cook the chicken in the oven at 350 for 20-30 min's until almost done. Dice.

Cut the tortillas into wedges.

Mix together the cream-of soups, cream cheese, enchilada sauce and diced veggies.

Add a cup of the soup mix in the bottom of the crock pot. Layer the tortillas next, then the chicken, some of the cheese and some of the cilantro. Top with more of the soup mix then continue the layers until the crock pot is 3/4 full. Top with remaining (or extra) cheese.

Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6 hours.

To shorten the cooking time, sauté the veggies until tender and cook the chicken until completely done. Then you can cook it in the crock pot for only 2 hours on high just to meld everything together.

*I don't care for raw chicken cooked in my meals, so I always at least par-cook it first. If you are not opposed to it, then you can dump the raw, diced chicken in the crock pot. Increase the cooking time to 6 hrs on high or 8 hrs on low.

You really can't over cook this; it just gets better with time and crunchy cheese!

Weekly meal plan and Brussel Sprout Hash recipie

This week I’ll be busy setting up for our mega yard sale. We’ve planned on doing a garage sale for over 2 years and never gotten to it. Needless to say, between our ‘regular’ accumulation of crud and the additional things left from Pappy’s home, our garage is packed to the roof! My job is to organize, clean and tag everything. I’ll post a before and after picture just to illuminate on the mess that it’s become. I’m hoping to make quite a bit of money, for a garage sale.

For our meals this week we’re ‘eating from the pantry.’ Meaning I am banned from the grocery store until Friday. Here’s the plan:

Monday – Breakfast: Eggs, brussel sprout hash, pancakes and fruit salad

Tuesday – Grilled (spinach bread) cheese sandwiches with tomato soup

Wednesday – Pad Thai Pork in the crock pot

Thursday – Roast Beef sandwiches with side salad and wedge potatoes

Friday – Green Chilli chicken, tortillas and beans

As for my HCG diet, I prefer not to really plan out my meals. Considering how restrictive the diet is already the thought of having every meal planned out with no spontaneity drives me crazy, so I eat what ever sounds good at the time. I usually cook up several chicken breasts, chicken patties, hard boiled eggs, lean ground beef and steak strips to keep in the fridge as my choices. I’ll admit, cooking tonight’s breakfast for dinner was rough. I LOVE the brussel sprout hash and it was everything in my power not to cheat and eat that for dinner. To combat my desire to cheat, I grilled some fresh chicken instead of the chilled, week old stuff in my fridge. I also made up a huge crown of broccoli and grilled onions. All in all it was a pretty good meal. Anthony even commented that he was envious of my grilled chicken. He still wouldn’t trade me though.

Brussel Sprout Hash

Potatoes

Yellow and/or red bell pepper

½ onion

½ lb fresh brussel sprouts

Butter

Lawries

Pepper

Usually my go to method for any kind of hash browns is frozen tater tots, they make them perfect every time! Today though, I didn’t have any so I shredded 10 small(ish) yellow potatoes that I got in my bountiful basket last week. The trick to hash browns (according to me – and this is my blog *wink*) is a good non stick skillet. I put the shredded potatoes on the hot pan with out any butter or other oil. This helps them dry out and not stick together in one big blob. Once they are starting to brown add 2 tbsp butter and continue to fry. Dice the peppers, onions and brussel sprouts then add to the potatoes. Keep frying, adding more butter if you desire, until golden brown and the veggies are tender.

Serve with a sunny side egg on top. Yum!

Balsamic chicken with sundried tomatoes over egg noodles

This turned out better than I expected. I found the basic recipe on the back a can of cream of mushroom soup but modified it for our tastes and servings. I was looking for something light-ish, kid friendly and easy to make. I picked up the light cream of mushroom soup with intentions of making tuna noodle casserole even though it didn't sound good in the store. I couldn't think of anything else, it was one of those cooking brain-fart moments. This sounded a bit better than the tuna so I thought I'd give it a try. I'll be adding this to my recipe list to make again.

4 chicken breasts, diced

4 tbsp butter

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp lawrys seasoning salt

2 tsp dried oregano

1 cup diced sundried tomatoes

2 stalks celery, diced

½ onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, diced

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 cup water

1 bag egg noodles

Cook egg noodles according to the package.

In large sauté pan, sauté the chicken in the butter until browned and almost done, then add the celery, onion, garlic, sundried tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. Cook for 2 min.’s over medium high heat then add the can of mushroom soup and the water, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5-7 min.’s stirring occasionally until combined. Once egg noodles are done, pour the sauce into the noodles, mix and serve or you can dish out the noodles and spoon the sauce over separately. I splashed a little more balsamic on the adult’s plates and served with some fresh diced sundried tomatoes on top as well.

Valentines Day and meal

Happy Valentines Day to all! I hope you and your loved ones take the day to declare your love, maybe thru some pretty flowers or a special meal. (Poetic huh!?!)

Brad and I rarely celebrate valentines as a couple, more often than not, we volunteer to babysit or have others over for dinner. This year is no exception. We have our nephew, my grandmothers, my brother, and our best friend and her daughters all coming for dinner. That’s not to say that we don’t try to make it special. The little girls, particularly Hailey, are really into holiday celebrations right now so I try to make the most of it. My house has little foam hearts all around, some of the picture frames have been adorned with cute valentines wrapping paper and we will be making tomorrow as special as we can, on a budget. I bought some valentines for the girls to make for their family. I also have some construction paper to make place mats for dinner. We picked out some single flower vases for the grandma’s, a dollar picture frame and we will all be helping to make a yummy dinner. Hailey asked to play restaurant for tonight so we will make up menu’s for her to pass out as well.

Mommas Valentines Café Appetizers Sliced Apples with cinnamon peanut butter dip Or Apricot Chipotle cream cheese spread with crackers Main Course House Salad with choice of dressing (Blue cheese, Ranch, Italian, Creamy Cesar) Roasted tomato bread grilled cheese sandwiches Or Whole wheat bread grilled cheese And Tomato soup Or Chicken noodle soup Desert Spice cake with peanut butter marshmallow frosting And/Or Homemade chocolate chip ice cream Drinks Root beer Sprite Chocolate milk with whipped cream Hazelnut Coffee Rose wine White Wine Spritzer

The Apricot Chipotle recipe idea came from the Kraft foods website here. I made it for the Super Bowl and aside from the chicken wings my brother made, it was the only dish completely polished off. I even saw a few finger swipes across the plate to get the last few smears.

1 pkg cream cheese

½ cup apricot preserves (I used sugar free)

1-3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce finely chopped

Smear the softened cream cheese out on a small serving plate or butterfly the brick of cream cheese and lay flat. In a separate bowl combine the preserves with the diced up peppers and some of the adobo sauce. I started out following the Kraft recipe and only used one pepper but decided that it needed more heat to cut the sweet. (I’m a poet and didn’t know it!) So, I added two more, bringing the total to 3 diced peppers and a few teaspoons of the adobo sauce. Spread over the cream cheese and serve with sturdy crackers, like Wheat Thins.

Here's Hailey working on her Tinker Bell Valentines

Here's Dinner: Tomato soup with heart shaped grilled cheese on roasted tomato bread.

 And finally, desert, heart shaped spice cake with peanut butter marshmallo frosting (my hubby's favorite)

I have to say, the roasted tomato bread made the meal. Everyone was sneeking into the kitchen for the scraps left from the heart cookie cutter. Here's the recipe:

2-3 roasted tomatoes

5 roasted garlic bulbs

1/2 cup melted butter

1/2 cup warm water

1/4 cup warm milk

1 egg

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp itallian seasoning

3 3/4 cup flour

2 1/2 tsp yeast

Roast 2-3 tomatoes, sliced, coated in olive oil, at 375 for one hour.

Before Roast:

After roast:

I also like to roast a bulb of garlic if I have it on hand. Just cut the top off, drizzle some oil over it and close it up in foil.

Before roast

 After roast::

Just squeeze the garlic and the bulbs slide right out.

In your bread machine, add the ingreedients in the order listed. I combine the milk and water into a glass measuring cup, add the butter stick then microwave for 1 min, then add it all in. Set your machine to the dough setting and watch the mixture combine. Depending on the type and ripeness of the tomato the dough often needs either more water or more flour.

When the dough cycle is done, turn out onto the counter, kneed out the air and shape into a loaf. Coat your pan with olive oil and set your dough in to rise, covered, again until doubled. Cook at 375 until internal tempature is 180.

Yum!

I hope everyone had a great valentines! I'm ready to pass out!

The long awaited, but totally worth it, Asparagus Pesto Flat Iron Steak

(once again, my pictures don't do this justice at all, just trust me!)

This was almost the meal that was never meant to be. First, I put it off forever; I think it's been on the menu for what, 3 weeks now? I used this recipe for the asparagus pesto and doubled it. I substituted walnuts for the pine nuts as they were on sale and I added two extra cloves of garlic. I don't have a food processer (Me, no food processer? I know, right!?!?!) so I used the blender.  I added the ingredients to the blender wrong and tried to mix it up with a wooden spoon and this happened:

 Note to self: Don’t put the nuts on the bottom, then leaves, then olive oil, it can't hydrate enough to actually spin. Wood chips do not make good pesto. So, I had to scrap that entire batch and start from scratch again.

Into the second batch, my 1950's era blender started smoking. I had to transfer everything to a pitcher and get out my immersion blender instead. I almost gave up, why fight fate? But, low and behold, success!

Once it was blended to the proper consistency, I laid out 2 layers of plastic wrap, laid the steak on top, added two more layers of plastic wrap on top and pounded flat with a mallet. The plastic wrap prevents the blood from splattering. (Appetizing huh? Bleh!) Once its about 1/8 inch thick, remove the top layer of plastic wrap and spread 1/4 cup of the pest on the steak. I then added a few fresh asparagus spears, shavings of fresh parmesan and fresh mozzarella. (Its important to use the fresh mozzarella cheese vs the processed stuff because it has a lower melting point) Roll the steak up and close with tooth pick or bakers twine. Dust the outside with salt and paprika. (Did you know pepper will burn in the oil and can leave an odd flavor? Using paprika prevents that but still gives it a peppery flavor) Sear in a pan on all sides.

Don't worry, some of the gook will fall out. Once seared, transfer to an oiled oven proof dish; add some chopped peppers, onions and more asparagus.

Spread all but 1 cup of the remaining pesto over top, cover with foil and bake at 350 for 20-30 min's, until internal temperature reaches 170.
Cook the pasta according to directions then once drained, toss with the 1 cup of reserved pesto. Remove steak from the oven and transfer to a cutting board to rest for a few min's. Slice into rounds and serve a top the pasta.

This was a HUGE hit in my house. I had dinner guests last night and everyone liked it. The only debate was on the salt content. I am a salt person so I thought it needed more. The final votes were 3 wanted more salt and 2 said it was perfect the way it was. Be sure to taste the pesot before you toss it in the pasta to see if you need more salt.