Breakfast Rut

I get into a breakfast rut way to often, I get stuck on eating the same thing day after day and eventually get so burnt out I don't want anything to do with it anymore. The one that lasted the longest was 1/4 bear naked granola, 1/2 cup fat free yogurt, and blue berries and or strawberries. I ate that every morning for over a year, sometimes throwing egg whites or something else in the mix. I still don't have an appetite when I try to eat that breakfast anymore. I get stuck with eggs too, egg whites scrambled with some veggies, or over easy egg on a slice of bread with ham, etc. I get stuck.

So I go out searching for alternatives, I found a good list today that has a long list of easy to prepare items. Since the list is long enough it should help me keep some variety, as long as I don't get stuck on one of these items.

Breakfast Ideas:
25 Easy Breakfast Ideas for the Bleary Eyed!

Beer can chicken and other endeavors

So now that the kitchen is all unpacked, I've gotten back into cooking once again. Menu planning and all. So I'm going to make a "catch all" post for all the things I didn't get to blogging about. I probably tweeted about them, but that's not even a guarantee.

Waffles

So I'll start with my first attempt at making waffles. I'd had the waffle iron for a few years, but kept it in storage as it was too big for my old kitchen. Just used a box mix as it was my first attempt I didn't want to get to creative and wanted to learn how the iron worked.

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

Next up was my mom's spaghetti sauce recipe. I'd made this before but it had been a few years, as it just seemed like too much work. I typically opted for pre-made jarred sauce. But it was SOOO worth having the homemade sauce, and I didn't even let it simmer as long as I should have, but I waited too long to make dinner and just simmered a little longer than the minimum 30 minutes (while everything else was finishing up). Paired it with some whole wheat noodles, and garlic crescent rolls.

Next cooking adventure was Beer Can Chicken, this is something I'd heard about but had never tried. I had forgotten about it until I got a "Cooking with Beer" cookbook. Scanning through for ideas came across two recipes for beer can chicken, I mostly followed one with some help from this website also. As once looking into indirect cooking on the grill realized that would be more involved that I wanted to get. So I made it in the oven. Got the man to help with the chicken, but it turned out awesome. Super juicy and moist, and not beer flavored at all. :)

So that's a few of my cooking adventures recently in my new kitchen.

Stuffed shells

Tonight I made something new, broccolli and cheese stuffed shells. They were good, but the man noticed they lacked meat. But still tasty.

Havarti Ham and Potatoes

So I made this tonight, and changed leftover buffet to last night as there was just too much food in the fridge. Good problem, but overwhelming at times too.

Recipe

The pot roast I made was good, although a little bland in comparison to most food I make lately. It was just basic American cooking with only salt and pepper as seasonings relying upon the flavor of the meat and veggies to enhance the meal. Good but needed something more for our taste buds.

Tonight I made the Havarti Ham and Potatoes casserole it came out awesome (minus some precooked potatoes, not being cooked all the way through). Not having eaten Havarti cheese it was an experiment that turned out awesome. It was flavorful and tasty. Will make again.

Finished and served

I took a picture of the meal after we'd eaten we obviously have some leftovers. But that's okay as it was tasty.

Zuppa

On Wednesday I went out with my Red Hat group (I'm a pink hat, and joined to go along with my mom) We ordered our desserts first, and then had lunch it was fun and enjoyable. It just goes to show you that you don't always have to conform to the norm, but enjoy life and all the little things.

Turkey, turkey, turkey

Hope everyone had a wonderful and fulfilling thanksgiving last week. And if Black Friday or Cyber Monday are your thing that you got some great deals. I did make one cyber purchase yesterday but it was an impulse buy for myself. :) I decided to get myself a pretty apron, I've been cooking a lot and when I wear the old school boxy aprons while I stay cleaner (I'm somewhat of a klutz) they don't feel comfortable nor look cute. So when I saw on a blog I read (don't remember which one) there was a deal for cyber Monday from Flirty Aprons I decided to order one, Cherry Blossom specifically. It hasn't arrived yet as I ordered it yesterday and didn't pay for fancy shipping. I'll update when it arrives.

My parents made a huge turkey on thanksgiving, like 21 pound huge for six people, six. My dad feels he can fit more stuffing inside a larger bird, while that is probably true. It leaves us all with tons and tons of turkey leftovers. Since I can now eat more solid foods, nothing crunchy or anything fried, etc. But soft, easily chewed as my extraction site is still healing. Anyways my point. I was looking through recipes online for ideas, and saw a recipe for turkey enchiladas. Well that sounded like a good idea, so I made up my own recipe, I didn't measure anything so I'll put down my guesstimates. Luckily enchiladas aren't an exact science.

Green Chili Turkey Enchiladas
made 5-6 enchiladas

5-6 tortillas (we had flour on hand)
2 cups cut up/shredded Turkey (or whatever meat)
2 heaping tablespoons light sour cream
bag(s) shredded cheese
1 can green chilis (this is a small can)
1 can green chili enchiladas sauce
Salt, pepper, to taste

What to do:
Heat over to 350.
Cut up the turkey into small pieces or shred if your patience allows. :)
Add sour cream, green chilis, and a handful of cheese, salt, pepper whatever seasonings to taste. I added a 6 pepper blend and cayenne pepper. Mix till blended and all meat is coated.
Then take a heaping spoonful of the mixture and place on a tortilla roll and place seam side down in a casserole dish.
Pour can of enchilada sauce over all rolled tortillas, bake in over uncovered 20-30 minutes till warm.

Pull enchiladas out of the over and sprinkle top with cheese, to taste but try to get decent coverage. I mixed habanero cheese and pepper jack blends for ours.
Then place under broiler for a few minutes till the cheese is bubbly and begins to brown.

Let cool for a few minutes then enjoy. :-)

Notes: I made this completely with things we had in the house on hand, we enjoy Mexican food and almost always have enchilada sauce, green chilies, so feel free to change it up to taste.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Here is one of the two pumpkin spice cakes I made. One for each parents house, were getting two turkey meals tomorrow. ^.^ So I made cakes and pumpkin dip.

The pumpkin dip recipe comes from an e-book (free) that's posted here: Yourway.net it's on page 14 of the .pdf file.

On a completely random note, I had to have one of my molars extracted yesterday due to cracking the tooth. So I've been on a liquid diet the last two day, a cold liquid diet. So I've been "eating" slim fast, pudding, ice cream, and some cold cheese soup. I want warm food so badly, tomorrow I get to which will be so awesome. I'm looking forward to mashed potatoes, stuffing, and anything else that doesn't require much chewing.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Chaos Theory

Life was going great, there was routine and consistency, so I guess I should have expected something to happen. Unfortunately I couldn't, nor would I have wanted to predict what happened next. My man and I just "celebrated" two years together (yay us), but this was downsized due to his brother passing away. His brother was 26 years old and just graduated from the motorcycle mechanic institute, and moved home. He unexpectedly passed away on November 3. So the last few weeks became a complete and utter whirlwind, life is just now going back to "normal." Obviously it's not the same, but we are making due.

Trying to get back into normal routines is taking time, the desire to do laundry wasn't great to begin with and now at times it's down right annoying. But it's getting done, slowly...because it piled up a little bit recently. Earlier this week I actually did some meal planning for the week, I picked easy dishes and spent a little more money on some convenience foods, but at least I'm attempting to cook at home again. Tonight I was adventurous and made broccoli cheddar soup, it was my first attempt at a homemade version of this, which I always crave in the cooler months. I used this recipe, and just varied the Velveeta amount till it was good, I also added some matchstick carrots, I was a little short on flour so I added some cornstarch to compensate. It came out REALLY thick but I think that's due to my man adding more cheese. I made some Pillsbury crescent rolls to go on the side (buttery flavor), as I said easy convenience foods. But it was good and filling. I didn't think to take pictures but it looked pretty standard for broccolli cheddar soup. ^.^

Hopefully I'll have happier news to report in the near future, just trying to get back into the swing of things.

Crock pot chili

So I made some chili the other day, as planned. I didn't quite realize, or well think about the fact that 6 quarts is a gallon and a half of anything. So in the end I created 1/5 gallons of yummy chili...that consisted of 3.5 lbs of beef. :-)

I read some basic recopies to remind myself of ratios and get an idea of quantity for the crock pot, as I'd never attempted chili in the crock pot.

Crock Pot Chili

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
2.5 lbs stew meat
1 can diced tomatoes
2 cans spicy V-8
1 can chili beans
1 can red kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
1 medium onion chopped
2-3 cloves garlic chopped/minced (depending on taste)
1/4 cup chopped jalapeños (to taste)
ground cumin
chili powder
cayenne pepper
oregano
salt
pepper
hot sauce

Directions:
First, I chopped all things that needed to be chopped or diced. Then I put some mined garlic paste (jalapeño* liquid from jar) in a pan and turned on the heat, then I added the ground beef. Began to brown beef, and added stew meat. After all meat was in pan I added the onions and some of the garlic I had chopped reserving some to go straight into the Crockpot (we like garlic).

Served with a few Fritos and Cheddar on top

While meat was browning I added the canned tomatoes, V-8, and beans to crock pot and stirred together.

Once the meat was browned on the outside, I drained the fat and added it to the crock pot. Mixed all items together then added all the seasonings. I knew basic measurements and just eyeballed everything, so I can't post the amounts that I put into the crock pot. The hot sauce I used was called After Death and I only added 3-4 drops, that was enough. But we like things super spicy most of the time.

Then turned the Crockpot onto low for 7-8 hours, I stirred it a few times throughout the day, just to insure no meat dried out from stick out at the top. It was a little soupy in the end, but for leftovers I added a table spoon of cornstarch (mixed with water) and that thickened it up really well and made it a more traditional chili consistency.

*Whenever we brown beef we typically add some jalapeño liquid from the jar and a 6 pepper blend to add some flavor to the meat, no matter what dish we are creating.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

BBQ Chicken Pizza, this was something quick and easy and we love BBQ and Garlic Chicken pizza's so much.

We used Pillsbury ready crust we used the classic tonight which was as easy to use as expected. It puffed up good too, but I spread it out decently thin. Next time we'll try the thin crust.

Then just tossed some BBQ sauce on there, a little garlic powder on the crust, chopped onion, shredded cheese, chicken tossed in BBQ sauce, and more cheese. We put jalapeños on half the pizza for my man.

The shredded cheese we used is Kraft with a little Philadelphia to help it melt better, and I must say the cheese was super melty and ooey gooey too. So I say grab some if you like your Kraft products.

Sweet and Spicy

Okay crock pot cooking has many, many advantages. Such as the obvious "fix and forget" mentality. Something I need to pay closer attention to though is the amount of prep that is involved prior to putting it all in the pot and forgetting about it, but we live and learn.

Some of the finished ribs

Fortunately for me this time at least, all the "extra" hard work was well worth it, I made some Sweet Spicy ribs and beans, as I saw ribs were on sale at HEB last week. To say these were a small hit would be lying, these went over huge.

Pinto Beans w/ onions cooked with ribs

Some of our neighbors were having a bbq outside and invited us to join, and I felt even less intrusive being able to offer some of our ribs. Luckily for me as I made 5lbs of ribs in the crockpot, and it's just me and my man here typically I was more than happy to share.

These were a huge hit, the meat fell right off the bone, and I must say my neighbors homemade potato salad was awesome too. They were also BBQing chicken, sausage and steaks, so just tons of food.

I now have to pass the recipe along to both households, but I don't mind sharing my find from food.com with them as they were awesome. I followed the recipe exactly, cooking on low for 9-10 hours except added a lot more hot sauce than the 1 teaspoon called for, and we here in San Antonio feel that next time I should add more, but that's our taste. ^.^

Meal Planning Monday

So last week we didn't get to everything I had planned, which is good and bad I guess. We had company and people arrive that I hadn't prepared for so it was easier to go out one night. Another night I ended up making some hamburger helper as it was easier, etc. So here are the carry overs with a few new things thrown in, as it requires less prep on my part for things already in the house. (~.^)

So again in no specific order:

Grilled Steak w/ mashed potatoes and salad

Pan Burritos w/ rice and salad

Shepard's Pie (have the extra potatoes now)

Leftovers

Simple Something (aka probably going out)

Pulled Pork sandwiches (crock pot) w/ salad

Tilapia with rice and steamed veggies

Linked to: Meal Planning Monday @ OrgJunkie

Domestic goodness

Today I decided to make Chicken Parmesan, something relatively common and simple. I looked up a few recipes and more or less followed this one. 

I also made a spaghetti squash (with some butter and Parmesan cheese) along with some whole wheat noodles. I just used some Ragu sauce we had on hand.

But both my brother and man seemed to very much enjoy it, devouring it quickly without much talking. ^.^
Sorry I didn't get to take pictures before, but I did take a few of the leftover's. The chicken breasts I had were huge so even though I only made two cutting them in half was more than enough for the three of us.


The chicken turned out juicy and moist not over done or rubbery at all. I also used low fat Italian blend of cheese to melt on top. And omitted almost all butter from recipe, I also changed pans so the oil I used wasn't infused into the sauce, I also used Crisco Canola oil with Omega-3 DHA. More cleaning but saving on some calories. Will probably make this one again. 

Cooking

I've been baking and cooking a lot today. It's been fun, it was broken up by an episode of Mad Men or two with my man.

Made bacon cheddar muffins earlier today they came out pretty good, the bacon isn't overwhelming. I used fat free cheddar cheese. It could be healthier if turkey bacon was used instead of regular. :-) But these are for the boyfriend more than me.

I peeled a bunch of potatoes, boiling them now. Going to mash them pretty plain then portion out into 2 servings, to flavor accordingly later; also save some for a Shepard's pie.

I'm most excited about the crab stuffed tilapia and reading the comments got the idea to use extra stuffing inside some mushrooms. Yummy!!