busygirl

try this: mini banana puddings

My mother and in-laws came over for a little dinner party on Saturday.  And by little I mean we attacked a 16 quart pot of beef soup and barely made a dent.  So dinner was taken care of, but what to serve for dessert?  In an effort to channel spring, Adam demanded that I create something with fruit.  And by fruit, he meant bananas.

After googling some recipes, well, I didn't have enough ingredients on hand to create a masterpiece, so I went with mini-pieces.  Using only FOUR ingredients.  Brilliant.

Ingredients:

3 bananas mashed and 2 bananas sliced

1 pkg of instant vanilla pudding, 14oz

2 cups cold milk (we use 2%)

Nilla wafers

Directions:

Combine milk and pudding mixture as directed.  Add in mashed bananas and blend until smooth(ish, you'll still have some lumps).  Spoon into cups (I was going to use ramekins but thought it might be pretty to see the layers so I opted for our regular old fashion glasses that we normally use for mixed drinks).  Add a layer of crushed Nilla wafers followed by a layer of sliced bananas.  Top with more pudding, a sprinkling of crushed wafers, a whole Nilla wafer and a slice of banana.  Ta-da.  Easy as 1-2-3-4. 

Just pop in the fridge for a couple hours, serve and devour!

hearts and chocolate.

Since Adam wasn't going to be here for Hearts Day, I decided we'd celebrate a little early instead.  So on Saturday while he was out shoveling the last of snow, I quickly made one his favorite meals: homemade spaghetti and meatballs (a la lady and the tramp).  And of course threw some Texas Toast in the oven because the homemade kind never tastes as good as the frozen stuff.

And no romantic dinner is complete without champagne.  But my spur-of-the-moment plan didn't include a trip to the grocery store so I ended up raiding our wine rack instead.

   

 

And for dessert?  I recreated one of Adam's favorites from our honeymoon: chocolate molten lava cake.  Or as he calls it, 'the chocolate factory'.

Gooey and rich, it was the perfect finale to our impromptu Valentine's Day meal.

It might be untraditional, but a cozy valentine's day is just as good as a fancy night out.  And as for my Feb 14th?  Well, I spent it curled up in bed, with a glass of wine and a good book.  Absolute bliss.

souperbowl twenty-eleven.

In celebration of it being winter, and all of us really liking soup, Adam's family decided to hold a souperbowl a few weeks ago.  The rules were simple: each adult had to bring a 6 quart pot of homemade soup.  And you couldn't stick with the standard chicken noodle.  It had to be something different, creative and of course, delicious.

I pulled out my mom's spinach tortellini soup, an old favorite from my childhood.  While Adam recreated his Zuppa'tus'Adam, which is similar to Olive Garden's zuppa, but packed with flavor.  A creamy soup full of sausage, potatoes and kale.

Along with our submissions, we enjoyed potato leek, vegetable barley, chicken cordon bleu, broccoli mushroom, chicken tortilla and the coveted crab chowder.

Every bowl was scraped clean and we all left with bellies full of soup and laughter.

Take forty-eight quarts of soup, add great family and friends and you've got an evening full of more fun than the actual SuperBowl!  I cannot wait until our next attempt, I'm already scheming as to the next recipe I'll make...

try this: winter spaghetti.

We have two kinds of spaghetti in the house: summer spaghetti and spaghetti a la Prego.  But what to do when the pantry is devoid of our loving Prego and it's the dead of winter? Improvise of course.

Here's a quick twist on our summer spaghetti using only what we had in the fridge already.  Instead of summer squash and zucchini, we used red and green peppers.  Instead of white wine, red to make it a bit bolder.  Instead of fresh herbs we opted for the dry version.  An easy (and inexpensive) meal!

Ingredients:

1 cup of chopped onion

1 cup of chopped green pepper

1/2 cup of chopped red pepper

3 tbsp of minced garlic

2 tbsp of olive oil

1 (28oz) can of diced tomatoes

1 tbsp red wine

1 1/3 tbsp sugar

dried basil and oregano

salt and pepper

angel hair pasta

parmesan cheese

Directions:

Saute garlic and half of the onions in the olive oil.  Slowly add the remaining onion, green pepper and red pepper.  Saute for 5 minutes.  Add diced tomatoes and 1 tbsp of wine.  Simmer for 5 minutes.  Add sugar and season with basil, oregano, pepper and salt to taste.

Cook angel hair pasta.  Serve tomato dish over pasta and top with parmesan cheese!

try this: boston cream pie

At the request of the birthday boy (hubby), I made a Boston Cream Pie for the first time ever.  Surprisingly, it was fairly easy, even making the chocolate ganache, a frosting that I have always been wary of because it seems difficult.  The only twist on the traditional recipe that we included was a layer of chocolate chips on top of the filling.  Because well, chocolate chips make everything better!

Ingredients

Yellow cake mix (along with eggs, oil and water)

Jello Instant Pudding/Pie Filling in Vanilla (along with milk)

8 oz of semi-sweet chocolate

3/4 cup of heavy cream

semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Directions

Prepare and bake cake mix as directed on box in two 8" or 9" circle cake pans.  Be sure to grease and flour pans for easy removal.

After letting cool, place one cake on a platter.  Prepare vanilla pudding as directed (mix with cold milk for 2 minutes and then let sit for five).  Smooth pudding on top of cake.  Add chocolate chips on top of that layer if desired.  Top with second cake.

On the stove, slowly heat cream in a pan until boiling (watch carefully as the cream will boil over the pan!)  Place chocolate in a mixing bowl and pour boiling cream over it.  Stir until well mixed and let sit for one minute.  Then pour ganache over the cake letting it drip down the sides.

Refrigerate cake until ready to enjoy!

try this: homemade chicken soup.

Easy on the stomach and always delicious.  Not to mention easy to make! Here's the recipe for a 16 quart pot of soup, which for some people might be a bit too much soup.  So just cut it down accordingly.

Ingredients

(2) 5lb roasting chickens

4lbs of carrots, peeled and chopped

1 1/2 stalks of celery, chopped

4 yellow onions chopped

1 cup fresh chopped parsley

1 package of egg noodles

Directions

Remove gizzards from chicken and rinse inside out.  Place in soup pot and fill with water, enough to cover the chicken.  Bring to boil and simmer for 45 minutes.

Add in vegetables, bring to boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Take out chickens, remove from bone, shred and place back in soup.  (If you taste the soup and feel that the chicken did not produce enough flavor, add a couple chicken bouillon cubes for flavor).

In a separate pot, boil water and cook egg noodles.  Add noodles into bowls when serving soup.

You can refrigerate soup up to one week but keep noodles separate as they will get mushy if kept in the soup pot.

try this: chicken bbq pizza.

Here's an easy 20 minute dinner.  We've been eating leftover spaghetti and stuffed cabbage for three days now so I wanted to change up the flavors a bit.  Unfortunately we've reached that point of the week where I really needed to use up some produce without making a meal that would result in MORE leftovers.  So using some knowledge from my former days as a professional pizza maker, I threw this together last night.  Other than skipping the cilantro that should be a must on bbq pizzas (Adam can't stand it), it turned out to be pretty tasty!

Ingredients

Premade pizza dough (we use Pillsbury)

Your favorite BBQ sauce - we love Baby Rays

1 1/2 cups Mozzarella cheese

1 cup Cheddar cheese

Sliced leftover chicken (or rotisserie chicken from the store)

Sliced red or yellow onion

Sliced green pepper

1 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro

Seasoned salt and seasoned pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Cover a baking sheet with foil and spray with Pam non-stick spray.  Spread out pizza dough and cover with a light, thin layer of sauce.  Spread cheeses and top with chicken, onion, pepper and cilantro.  Lightly spice with salt and pepper.

Bake for 15-20 minutes - this will depend on the crust you use.  When the bottom of the crust is golden brown it's done!

For other tried-and-true recipes, click here!

try this: apple and pear cobbler.

While I was attempting to reorganize our fridge last night, I came across a couple of long-forgotten pears that had turned brown in their neglect.  Not wanting to waste food, I decided to turn the past-their-prime pears into something edible.  Even if the skin has completely turned brown, you can still remove it and eat the pear fruit inside.  So by grabbing two apples and some basic ingredients, I whipped together this simple cobbler for dessert!

Ingredients

2 pears, pealed and sliced thin

2 apples, pealed or not pealed (I like keeping the skin on) and sliced thin

1 egg

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup milk

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 8x8 baking dish.  Arrange sliced pears and apples in the bottom of the dish.

In a bowl, mix together egg, sugar, brown sugar and milk.  Add in flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in vanilla and melted butter.

Pour over apples and pears.  Bake for 30 minutes until bubbly and lightly browned.  Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream!

***If you don't have pears, just make with 4 apples and add 1 tsp of cinnamon into the dry ingredients!***

try this: city chicken.

After spotting some city chicken during our market adventure on Saturday, Adam decided he wanted to relive his childhood by making this dish.  Of course, realizing that neither of us know how to make this dish, we called in the big guns.  My mother-in-law came over last night to make dinner with us and although I'd love to share her recipe, it was from memory and I wasn't playing close enough attention to how much of each ingredient she used.  But I found a recipe that seems comparable.  It's much more of a fall/winter meal.  One, it uses the oven.  Two, it's filling.  But so good that we didn't mind firing up the oven in the summer.

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless pork and veal, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes and placed on soaked skewers

black pepper

seasoned salt

thyme

4 eggs

3 tbsp milk

2 cups Italian seasoned bread crumbs

2 cups chicken stock

2 tbsp butter

Directions

Remember to soak wood skewers in water before placing pork on them.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Season pork skewers with salt, pepper and thyme (to your liking).  In one bowl, whisk together eggs and milk.  Place bread crumbs in another bowl.

Heat 2 tbsp of butter in a saucepan.  Dip each skewer in the egg mixture, then in the bread crumbs.  Lay skewer in the pan, gently turning until all sides are golden brown.  Remove from heat and place in a 9x13 pan.

Pour chicken stock in the saucepan to mix with remaining liquid from browning the meat.  Pour mixture over the skewers in the 9x13 pan.  Cover pan with aluminum foil.

Bake until pork is hot and no longer pink in the center.  Then remove foil and bake for another 10 minutes to dry out bread coating.

Also excuse the stock photo, in all my excitement last night I forgot to take a photo before eating!  And there were no leftovers :)

what's in your laundry room?

For anyone who's been to our house lately, you may have noticed that there is an odd accessory in our laundry room/bathroom.  A somewhat small contraption perched on top of the dryer, that might just catch your eye as you're passing by to grab a tissue.  Oh yes, that hunk of metal is none other than the EdgeCraft 610 Chef's Choice Premium Electric Food Slicer that I snagged for Adam to thank him for his help with wedding planning.  What a nice wife I am.  Considering he has wanted one of these FOR YEARS and I've been refusing to get him one FOR YEARS.

I kept telling him that we wouldn't use it all that much.

He kept telling me we'd use it ALL the time.

It has been sitting on the dryer since July 2nd.

Who do you think was right in this case?  Just saying.

Anywho, the meat slicer isn't going anywhere, so finally we decided to give it a go.  London Broil was on the cheap at the market this week so we snatched some up.  I threw together a quick marinade and Adam fired up the grill.

While he was cooking, I relocated the meat slicer to the kitchen thinking that slicing meat in the laundry room can't be all that sanitary.  A quick wipe down and we were good to go.  Adam scanned through the instructions, grabbed a piece of meat and started the blade up.  It was surprisingly quiet for a sharp, fast moving blade.  I expected it to sound more like a circular saw.

There were a few issues at first, but once Adam got the hang of swiping the meat across the blade, things progressed pretty quickly.  I'd love to tell you there's a trick to slicing, but I have a feeling that the motion and how hard you need to press varies based on the type of meat you're slicing.  I'm sure we'll be experimenting with everything.  We did manage to create a large pile of ready-to-be-made-in-a-sandwich meat from our London Broil.  And have been feasting on it for the last few days.  This definitely beats deli meat by a mile!

Being Adam's 'toy', I refused to clean the meat slicer (and knowing in the back of my head that this was one of the main complaints about owning one).  However, clean up was relatively quick.  The slicer came apart easily.  Thank goodness.  A quick scrub and back to the laundry room it went.  I mean, we wouldn't want our laundry room missing its main piece of decor, right?