A Cheesy Day

Today's recipes are courtesy of my trolling around on Pinterest.  Cheesy Potato Soup and Spinach, Chicken and Pasta Casserole.

First up:  the soup.  The first instruction is to cook a pound of diced bacon.  OH YEAH!!!  The chopping was almost theraputic today, onions, celery and garlic and then, potato all having a turn on the cutting board.  Brian got a new peeler set for Christmas, and I didn't realize until today just how DULL our old one is!    It took forever to cook the potatoes because I didn't cut them up small enough, making our lunch a very quick one at that because we had movie plans.  It was delicious though, and there's enough for leftovers AND the freezer.  Hooray!

The casserole was good, but a bit of a pain to make.  The only reason it was a pain was our lack of planning, though.  Brian browned red onion in the oven while I defrosted chicken and frozen spinach.  And I'm making a decision:  no more frozen spinach in casseroles.  Or maybe at all:  why would you put yourself through squeezing all the moisture out of it with paper towels if you don't have to?  Peeling chopped spinach out of a paper towel is tedious, next time I'll just wilt some fresh spinach in a skillet and add it later.  The cheesy part of this casserole that I liked best was adding 8 oz of chive and onion cream cheese to the pasta, chicken and spinach.  It melted beautifully and combined with a can of diced Italian-style tomatoes to make a thick "sauce."  And the mozzarella cheese melted on the top was pretty fantastic, too.

ATK and Shepherd's Pie

Some nights there just isn't anything on television.  Last night that happened, and we did the unthinkable....we turned it off and went to bed.  Most nights though, we find something palatable and stay up anyway.

On one of those "nothing good on TV nights" Brian found "America's Test Kitchen" on PBS.  (I know!  PBS has good kids' stuff and the occasional concert or documentary, but other stuff too!)  This is a show where they put recipes to the test, making them many times to decide the "best" way.  They also have segments on testing out kitchen gadgets too.  And it's produced and filmed in Boston, so there's the local flair of it too.  Brian's put a bunch of them on our DVR and we've found some delicious things. 

The first one?  Shepherd's Pie.  I've been making it for years, using the recipe in the cookbook from the campground that Brian's family has been going to since he was a kid.  It's good....but nothing dynamite.  Ground beef sauteed with onion, add a can of drained corn, some flour to thicken it up, then put in an oven-safe pan and cover with mashed potatoes.  To make it more flavorful we added a layer of shredded cheddar between the potatoes and meat, and like it with steak sauce dolloped on top of the individual servings.

Yep.....ATK found a way to improve all of that.  Last night's shepherd's pie omitted the corn and added mushrooms, peas and carrots.  They used baking soda as a tenderizer for the meat, and the potatoes got "chived."  The whole thing was cooked in a cast iron skillet (ease from stovetop to oven) so it was truly a one-pan recipe.  And the scalloped top of the casserole with the potatoes perfectly browned?  I bow down to you, America's Test Kitchen.  This was a delightful Sunday dinner. 

The only problem is, theirs takes like two hours to prepare.  So obviously, this is NOT a weeknight dinner for sure.  But it makes a ton of leftovers, so I know what's for lunch almost every day this week.  No steak sauce required.  :)

Day Eleven: Another Old Favorite

I love dinners that come together in a skillet.  Y'know, saute some meat, add some veggies and then a starch.  They're quick, easy, delicious and usually make leftovers.

Mexican Chicken and Rice has long been a favorite of mine, I got the recipe from a Good Housekeeping ad about fifteen years ago.  It consists of chicken breast, peppers and onions, a can of corn, some salsa, chicken broth and instant rice.  Sprinkle some cheese (I used taco blend last night, but Monterey Jack or Cheddar work well also) and you've got dinner.  So, so good.  If I could get the kiddos (who had leftover chicken and green beans from the night before) to eat it, it would be the perfect meal.

The Makings of Awesome

On the menu for tonight:  beef and eggplant casserole.  Picked not by me....but Brian.  I read the menu when he wrote it up and gave him a blank stare.  "Are you sure?  Eggplant?"

Glad he was up to it...I adore eggplant.  This casserole (from the trusty old "9x13, The Pan that CAN!" cookbook I received as a gift a few years ago.) was incredible.  So incredible in fact, that I didn't take any pictures because I was too busy devouring it.  It was a pasta meatsauce, with bits of fried eggplant.  What's not to love???

Lots of leftovers, and even hubby wants to take some for lunch tomorrow instead of his usual ham and cheese sandwich. This one is obviously a keeper.  (The recipe AND the man!)

Pasta and Muffins

Highlights of this past week:  Three Cheese Penne Bake.

  The recipe was in some magazine this week, I think it came with Brian's copy of Time Magazine.  It was cheese (well, duh) spinach, chicken, peppers and pasta.  We opted to swap ricotta for cottage cheese, I despise cottage cheese.  A perfect dinner, with lots of leftovers for lunch later in the week.  It even served as dinner another night for Brian and I, stopping us from succumbing to the Takeout Pizza Monster.

Later in the week, I made chili.  It was not good.  I've made chili many times, but usually use tomato salsa as a base.  This time, there was no salsa in the house, we'd eaten all of it with guests last Sunday and forgotten to buy more.  So in a pinch, I used spaghetti sauce as the base.  Also, we had no red kidney beans in the house, so I used the only thing I had for beans in the house:  white kidney beans.  I thought they'd be better than nothing....I was mistaken.  No leftovers from this epic fail.

However, corn muffins were part of the menu plan on Chili Night.  Whenever there's baking to be done, both boys come scrambling to the kitchen, begging to help.  Will got there first this time, and got to mix the muffins and help pour:

Brian has a few weeks off before his FINAL grad school semester this summer, so we'll be sure to eat better in the weeks to come.  :)

Overnight French Toast

After some speculation, I think I know why I've never been a big fan of French toast.  It's because I've been making it wrong.  Sure, you can make it by dipping pieces of sandwich bread into egg mixture and then cooking it on a griddle.  It comes out a bit dry.

But if you let it soak in a milk and egg mixture over night in the fridge, it's nothing but soaked creamy goodness.  And if you put blueberries, brown sugar and pecans in it too, then that's just French Toast Perfection in my book!

Happiness is:  reaching for the box of Kashi in the cabinet on Monday morning and then remembering you have Blueberry Overnight French Toast leftovers in the fridge.  Totally made my Monday Morning!!!

Smothered Chicken over Biscuits

Lately, I'm lovin' the crockpot.  Since I am home during the day, it's not hard to pull something off, and I really, REALLY love the way you can assemble a meal in the morning and have it ready at dinnertime, and smell it cooking all day so you look forward to it!

This is Smothered Buttermilk Chicken over Biscuits....kind of like a chicken pot pie filling with biscuits instead of piecrust.  It was awesome!  And the leftovers were even better the next day.  Some things are just better the day after you make them!

I got this out of a slow cooker cookbook by Pillsbury, the same place the Pork Loin and Sweet Potato recipe came from.  I'm floored by the cookbook selection at my local library!  And after three or four tries to find it, I found a copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child when I was last there.  I've wanted to pore through this since seeing "Julie and Julia" last fall.  I brought it home and have been enthralled with it ever since.  But that's another blog post.  :)

Do-Over

Last month I made a ham and potato casserole from the 9x13 Cookbook and it came out ghastly.  I shredded my own potatoes instead of using frozen shredded hash browns because I was trying to be thrifty, and it turned out gray and it had the consistency of boiled cabbage. 

Do over!  This one came out perfect, with just the right amount of cheese flavor.  The only thing I would do differently is to dice the onions instead of thinly slicing them, so they would distribute more evenly.  For some reason, looking at it on the plate reminds me of Eggs Benedict.  Hmmmm........now I want Eggs Benedict.  :)

The Casseroles Continue....

Tonight's Casserole is Ham and Potatoes Au Gratin.  You already know what recipe book it's from!  This one features hash brown potatoes, ham, spinach, onion and a made-from-scratch cheese sauce.  I'm not the sauce guru in this house, in fact I usually don't have luck with them at all.  But I made the sauce exactly as the recipe indicated and I didn't get the usual clumping, separating mess that results from me making sauce.    The recipe also called for frozen shredded hash browns, but there was an overabundance of potatoes in the house, so I shredded my own.  It didn't take long with a box grater, though they seemed kind of thin.

I layered the ham, potatoes, sauce and spinach onion mixture as indicated, and baked at 350 degrees.  The result was uhmm.....interesting.  Smelled great, but didn't look quite right.  A quick stir through the serving on the plate revealed that the potatoes were a ghastly shade of gray.  A couple of bites said that the ham, cheese sauce, spinach and onions were delicious, but the potatoes were limp and the consistency of oversteamed cabbage.  Gah!!! Picking through the ham and veggies was enough to tide us over for the night, but none of this one is going to go in the freezer.  My garbage disposal is going to eat well tonight.

I'd definitely try this one again, but with the 20oz package of frozen hash browns it called for instead of trying to be thrifty.  I'm just disappointed that my luscious, velvety cheese sauce met an unfortunate end!

Casserole Week

You'd think I never got anything new in my life......we picked three new recipes out of my new cookbook for dinner this week.  Spotlight:  9x13:  The Pan that Can!  All casseroles, since that seems like a simple, winter-night kind of meal.

Last night for dinner we tried Turkey and Stuffing Bake.  The description was that it was like Thanksgiving dinner.  This is pretty much true, minus the cranberry sauce.  Basically, it was stuffing, rice, turkey, red pepper, onion and a creamy sauce.  We had to make some adjustments, as our box of stuffing was only 6oz instead of the called-for 8oz.  The end result was filling, but needs some spice.  That's something we can adjust for ourselves, though.  And I definitely think that if I was to make it again, I'd wait till I had some leftover turkey or chicken that I could slice up.  Brian had gotten turkey cutlets at the grocery store and cooking the turkey before assembling the casserole for the oven just took that much longer.

I did put some in the freezer, and froze the leftover sauce separately from the turkey and stuffing mixture.  Hopefully it freezes well and makes for a good weeknight dinner after Baby is here!

On Friday, during the Winter Classic, we'll try our hands at Nacho Chicken Casserole, and for Sunday dinner, a Ham, Shredded Potato and Spinach Casserole.  Looking forward to it.  :)