It is officially Fall. The season made for chili, soup and crockpots!
This week I tried Paula Deen's Taco Soup (as seen in "The Lady and Sons, Too"). A great crockpot soup recipe that couldn't be easier to make. The original recipe serves 12-16. Since it's just the hubs and myself, I halved the recipe and we ate off it for several days (it makes a great lunch warmed up the next day!).
Ingredients
2 pounds ground beef
2 cups chopped onion
2 15oz cans pink kidney beans (I'm not a fan of kidney beans so I substituted red beans)
2 15oz cans pinto beans
1 15oz can niblet corn drained
1 14oz can Del Monte Mexican tomatoes
1 14oz can diced tomatoes
1 14oz can Del Monte tomatoes with chilies
2 4oz cans diced green chilies
1 small can black olives drained and sliced (optional - I opted to not include them)
1/2 cup green olives sliced (optional - I opted to not include these too)
1 package taco seasoning
1 package ranch salad dressing mix
corn chips
sour cream
grated cheese
chopped onions
Cooking Directions
1. Brown the ground beef and onions.
2. In crockpot combine ground beef with onions, beans, corn, tomatoes, chilies, olives and seasoning packets. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
3. Serve with corn chips and top with sour cream, cheese and onions if desired.
The consistency was a little more like chili rather than soup, but it was still delicious. It has just the right amount of spice kick for my preference. Perfect for chilly Fall nights. And the most expensive ingredient is the ground beef making for a very inexpensive meal that lasts for days (definitely a plus for those of us cooking on a budget!).
One of the hub's favorite desserts is strawberry cake. Plain box cakes just taste, well, too plain. My sister-in-law make a delicious Paula Dean version which requires lots of butter and lots of time. So thank you to Pinterest I found a recipe for a strawberry cake made from a box cake that requires a little more work than mixing and placing in the oven, but requires a lot less time and ingredients than Paula's version.
"Fresh Strawberry Cake With Cream Cheese Icing" from SouthernPlate.com (the website has great step-by-step directions with pictures!)
Ingredients
1 box plain white cake (I went with the 98cent Pillsbury one)
1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 3oz package strawberry gelatin mix
3 eggs
8oz cream cheese at room temperature (icing)
4 tablespoons margarine at room temperature (icing)
3 cups confectioners sugar (icing)
Directions
1. Grease and flower two 8in round baking pans or one 9x13in pan. In a large ziplock bag mash the strawberries and set aside.
2. Beat together cake mix, milk, vegetable oil, eggs and gelatin mix in an electric mixer until smooth. Add in strawberries and juice and mix until well blended. Pour into baking pans and bake in oven at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.
3. Allow cake(s) to cool. Mix icing ingredients together with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Ice cake and store in refrigerator.
So, confesion. This might have been slightly on the fiasco side. First, I didn't have cake round cake pans (how do I not own cake pans!). But I wanted to have a 2 layer cake so in an effort to improvise for my lack of a cake pans I baked my cake in a 9x13in pan. Once the cake cooled I transferred it to a cooling rack and cut it in the middle creating two rectangle cakes.
The cakes weren't quite ideal. They weren't perfectly level or even. But, once it's in your mouth does it really matter so much what it looks like on the plate? Haha, of course it does.
In spite of the looks, it tasted pretty yummy. Not quite as delicious as Paula Dean's, but way better than a boring ol' out of the box cake without too much extra effort. Oh and the homemade icing definitely beat store bought!
We moved into our new house in Denham Springs this week which meant re-stocking the refrigerator. I was basically starting over from scratch so I decided to only buy the basics to get us through the week to help save a little money. Hence, no new exciting recipes this week.
But, I did try a new chicken pot pie recipe. Growing up, chicken pot pie was always one of my favorite meals and I have only cooked it once, maybe twice, since being married (aka the last year and a half). So I turned to Paula Deen and The Lady & Sons Too cookbook for the home made how-to of my tried and true favorite.
"Hurry Up Chicken Pot Pie"
serves 4-6
Ingredients
2 cups cooked chicken breast (I used 6 chicken tenderloins and shredded the meat)
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced (I skipped these because the hubs doesn't like them)
1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots
1/2 cup frozen green peas (I used half a can of green peas)
1 cup chicken broth
one 10 3/4 ounce can cream of chicken soup
Salt and pepper
1 cup Lady and Sons Biscuit Mix (I just used Bisquick)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
Cooking Directions
1. Mix chicken, eggs, carrots and peas in casserole dish
2. Mix chicken broth and cream of chicken soup. Mix into the casserole dish and add salt and pepper.
3. Mix biscuit mix and milk and layer over the top of the casserole.
4. Drizzle butter over the topping. (This step is optional and not really necessary in my opinion. I only used 1/2 stick of butter)
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, until topping is golden brown.
In our house, you can't really go wrong with Paula Dean. Hubs loved this one so much he asked me to make it again a few days later.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We traveled back home to Georgia for the long weekend and get to spend some much needed/wanted time with family and friends.
To start this shortened week off on the right foot I decided to try out a new recipe. Pinterest, yet again, provided some inspiration for tonight's supper: "French Chicken Broccoli Supreme" from Get Off Your Butt and Bake!
I tweaked the original a little bit, so bellow is my version and how it turned out.
A bit of warning before I begin. The prep time for this dish... for me, for the first time... was 1 hour. I'm hoping that it only took this long because I was constantly referencing back to the recipe to make sure I was doing it correctly. Or I could just be a very slow cook :)
Ingredients
1 lb chopped broccoli steamed 'til softened
10 chicken tenders boiled and shredded
2 cups shredded mild cheddar cheese
2 sleeves of Ritz crackers
1 and 1/3 sticks of butter
1 tablespoon poppyseeds
1/4 cup corn starch dissolved in 1/2 cup cold water
1/3 cup chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon of each salt and pepper
2 cups milk
Directions
1. Boil and shred chicken and place in a 9x13 inch baking pan
Chop and steam broccoli and place on top of chicken in pan
2. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine 1/3 stick of melted butter with dissolved cornstarch, chicken broth, milk, salt and pepper. Stir continuously as sauce thickens.
4. Once sauce thickens, stir in 1 cup of shredded cheese. Pour sauce over chicken and broccoli. Use 1 cup of cheese to cover the chicken and broccoli.
5. Melt 1 stick of butter and stir in poppyseeds. Crush Ritz crackers into crumbs and spread over the shredded cheese.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until the crumbs turn golden brown and the sauce bubbles.
Yet another yummy chicken casserole dish going into the recipe folder! The hubs was less than thrilled with the broccoli (said it took away from the yummy chicken flavor - he really just doesn't like broccoli). However, I liked the idea of having a vegetable in the casserole rather than as a side. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.
Hmm, two chicken recipes in a row... maybe next week I will get a little more adventurous. Maybe.
