New favorite soup.

I tried a new recipe, well actually two. But one is definitely worth sharing. This Creamy Chicken Soup recipe on thecookierookie.com, is unlike any other soup I’ve made or tasted. It was SO good. I’ve actually made it twice in the past 3 weeks. My first batch I gave to Eugene’s family because they watched the little one during one of my late-night events. The second batch was for me, but I also shared some with my mom, grandma, and sister. The reviews were unanimously positive. Everyone loved it.

I followed the recipe pretty closely; however I made a few substitutions to better fit with what I had in my pantry. For instance, I boiled a whole chicken the first batch I made, along with making my own chicken stock. The second batch, I used the rotisserie chicken as it calls for, and both batches were delicious. I used Italian Seasoning instead of the Herbs of Provence. I also used shredded parmesan instead of gruyere cheese as the topping. SO good. {Did I already say that?}

If you’ve never boiled a whole chicken, this blog post on prettyhungryblog.com is really helpful. I usually hate to boil whole chickens because I get grossed out pulling the meat off the bone. This time around, I followed my mom’s advice of letting it boil until the meat started falling off the bones. This made it really easy to “pick” off the meat {and I could even use tongs to do most of it} which made it much less gross.

One chicken gave me a whole bowl of shredded meat and two large containers of stock/broth.

Unlike most of the soups I make, this recipe doesn’t require hours of boiling and cooking on the stove. This one {other than boiling the chicken} only takes about an hour or less.

I made some crusty French bread, but I didn’t love the recipe enough to share it. I like my Italian Herb Bread recipe much better.

 

This soup was super good reheated the next day too. The recipe says you can freeze it, but I didn’t have leftovers long enough to freeze. I will definitely make this recipe again, and probably double it to share again. :)

New recipes.

I’ve tried a few new recipes this Fall. My neighbor gave me six fresh tomatoes, and I’m the only one who will eat a tomato {and only for a tomato sandwich every blue moon.} So they wouldn’t go to waste, I set out to try to make slow cooker marinara sauce from scratch. Pretty gutsy for me. Luckily, it turned out delicious! I couldn’t find a good recipe, so I just made it up as I went – sorry, no recipe to share.

I saw an easy slow-cooker applesauce recipe on instagram. It uses whole apples, peels and all, cinnamon, and water. No sugar! So healthy! I loved how it turned out…I had less apples, so I just used the ingredients, not the proportions suggested. The only thing I will consider changing is possibly using only half the apple peels next time. I used my food processor to blend the applesauce in hopes that the peel texture wouldn’t be noticeable, but I still noticed it. I love that the peels made it so healthy, but the little one would stop eating it if she tasted a piece of peel. Regardless of that, I will definitely be making this recipe again.

I also made this Pumpkin Bread recipe using my leftover homemade applesauce. Again, healthy option {minus the sugar this time.} The little one loved this recipe. It was a little on the gooey side – probably because it doesn’t have any oil in it, but it was still good. I added oatmeal on the top; liked it.

And along with the bread theme, I also tried a fabulous Zucchini Banana Bread recipe. I had just one zucchini, and I keep lots of extra bananas in my freezer, so I just searched the web for a recipe. I think this was the recipe I ended up using as my base {you know I always adjust recipes as I go!} I will also be making this recipe again…loved it. Toddler approved too!

I try to find recipes that are as healthy as possible, yet still work with ingredients I have on hand and are toddler accepted. This girl’s generally a good eater, but her palate is not very adventurous. {We’ll keep working on it. ;)}

Oh, and how cute are these individual fruit parfaits? We made them for a church breakfast for 300 people. I think these would be perfect for a baby or wedding shower!

Not too much time for cooking these days, but I thought I’d try to share a few good recipes that I’ve tested lately. ;)

Fourth.

We enjoyed our Fourth of July with lots of food and family. And of course, cute red, white, blue, stars & stripes outfits. :)

Girl loves having a chair her size…

Got some cousin time. The little one’s expression is super silly in this photo, and Cate isn’t looking at the camera, but this is about the best we could get!

These two are so beautiful. So thankful they’re in our lives!

I made my favorite fresh pepper salsa. {Apparently this is my go-to July 4th dish!}

We ate steaks bigger than our plates at my parents’ house & enjoyed tons more food at Eugene’s grandparents’ house.

We’re so thankful for our country, for freedom, for our family.

Skinny chocolate chip scones.

I think people either love scones or they hate ‘em. I don’t think there’s much middle ground when it comes to scones. I happen to be in the love ‘em category. I made these scones pretty much straight from the recipe, and I really liked them. I’ll happily make this yummy recipe again.

Skinny Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Scones
Skinnytaste.com
Servings: 12 • Serving Size: 1 scone • Old Points: 4 pts • Points+: 5 pts
Calories: 199.6 • Fat: 8.1 g • Protein: 3.7 g • Carb: 29.8 g • Fiber: 2.3 g • Sugar: 12.8 g
Sodium: 257.4 mg

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup cold buttermilk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup all purpose flour (Bob's Red Mill)
• 1 cup white whole wheat flour (Bob's Red Mill)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp chilled butter (must be cold) cut into small pieces
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips
• cooking spray
• 1 large egg white, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 tbsp sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°. Combine the first four ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Spray baking sheet with cooking spray.

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk.

Cut in chilled butter with a pastry blender, or you could use 2 knives, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. {Sorry, blurry cell pic.}

Gently fold in chocolate chips. Add milk mixture, stirring just until moist.

Place dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly four times with floured hands. Form dough into an 9-inch circle onto baking sheet, about 3/4" thick. Using a knife, cut dough into 12 wedges all the way through. Brush egg white over dough and sprinkle evenly with sugar.

Bake until golden, about 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven.

Serve warm.

The only bad thing about this is that Jordan is not a love ‘em type, so I end up eating his share…good thing these are “skinny”!

Diet soda girly cake.

I’ve seen a lot of pins and blog posts that have 2 ingredient cake – cake mix + diet soda. So on a whim, I decided to try out diet 7-up with a strawberry cake as my “something pink” for  our gender reveal party. Here are my whopping 3 ingredients…

You’re supposed to use a can of soda, so I just measured 12 ounces. 

Added the soda to the cake mix, and watched what looked like a volcano science fair project.

Mixed it together…

And baked it according to the cake box directions, yes right next to baked beans…

The cake actually tasted kind of like a strawberry margarita. Although, honestly, I don’t know that I’ve actually ever had one of those, but it’s what I bet they taste like! It was really good, really moist, and still fluffy. I used fat-free cool whip as the frosting, oh my, that was a great choice. Plus, it’s got to be much healthier than the normal cake since it doesn’t have eggs, oil, or icing. {Bonus!}

I will definitely make this again, probably in the Summer, and maybe add some fresh strawberries on top. Yum.

Mongolian Chicken.

I “pinned” a recipe a while back on Pinterest that I thought looked pretty scrumptious. Saturday, having a 3 day weekend, I was feeling ambitious and decided to try out a new recipe. The original recipe {found here}, from “Favorite Family Recipes” blog, is for Mongolian Beef similar to P. F. Chang’s, but I’m not a big beef lover, plus we didn’t have any of this type of beef on hand, so I decided to try it with chicken instead. I also realized that it was for a large amount of food. I only wanted to use 2 large chicken breasts, so I decided to try cutting the recipe in half. This worked pretty well. We had enough sauce for probably 4 chicken breasts, but we ended up saving the sauce and making more rice the next day as our lunch.

Here’s my halved version of the recipe:

Mongolian Chicken

2 tsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. ginger, minced {I used powdered because that’s what I had on hand
1 Tbsp. garlic, minced
1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. brown sugar {packed}
1 c. vegetable oil
2-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 c. cornstarch {I used flour b/c, again, that’s what I had}
3 large green onions {I didn’t use any}

I basically followed the original recipe’s instructions to the “t.” {See the original source here” http://www.favfamilyrecipes.com/2008/01/mongolian-beef.html}

Make the sauce by heating vegetable oil in a medium saucepan over medium/low heat. Don’t get the oil too hot. Add ginger and garlic to the pan and quickly add the soy sauce and water before the garlic scorches.

Dissolve the brown sugar in the sauce, then raise the heat to medium and boil the sauce 2-3 minutes or until sauce thickens a little bit. Remove sauce from heat.

Slice the chicken into small cubes or slivers. Add your flour or cornstarch so the slivers are fully covered & let them sit for about 10 minutes so the cornstarch/flour sticks.

As the chicken sits, heat up 1/2 c. oil in a wok (or skillet). Heat the oil over medium heat until its hot, but not smoking. Add the meat to the oil and sauté, and stir the meat around a little bit so that it cooks evenly.

Once the chicken’s fully cooked, use a large slotted spoon to take the meat out and onto paper towels, then pour most of the oil out of the skillet. Put the pan back over the heat, dump the meat back into it and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add the sauce, cook for 1 minute while stirring and add green onions {I didn’t do this part}. Cook for 1 more minute.

Now at this point you can either remove the beef with a slotted spoon or tongs and discard the sauce OR thicken the sauce with a cornstarch-water mixture to desired thickness and serve it over rice with the beef. I just added some flour and simmered it until it thickend up more like a gravy consistency. YUM!

It was so good. I was afraid that the garlic would be too much, but it really wasn’t overpowering. So delish. It would be good with pineapple and cashews, maybe even some carrots too. I think I’ll try out some variety for next time! Seriously, so good.

Pizza dip.

For my small group Christmas party, I decided to try a new recipe that Eugene might actually like. He’s not necessarily a picky eater; he just only likes basic {unhealthy} dishes like pizza, tacos, mac ‘n cheese, mashed potatoes. I usually make fun dishes that are healthier when I go to parties because I know I won’t be alone eating it, but this time around I aimed to make my man happy. ;)

This Betty Crocker recipe was my starting point, but I jazzed it up a bit.

Basically, it begins with one block of softened cream cheese mixed with whatever herbs you want {I used Italian seasoning} and some parmesan cheese. That was my first layer in my pie plate.

Second layer was mozzarella cheese.

Third layer, pizza/marinara sauce.

Fourth diced peperoni.

Fifth layer more parm cheese.

Sixth layer more mozzarella cheese.

And, in bad blogger {but good party attender} style, I forgot to take a photo after I took it out of the oven. Here’s a centimeter of it covered in foil. The plate next to it was garlic bread I made with a basic baguette from the store, sliced, spread with butter & garlic, and baked in the oven. YUM.

It was a big hit with the males. And the “homemade” garlic bread was a fabulous partner to the dip.