Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas

I made these about a week ago.  The recipe is from the-girl-who-ate-everything.com.  I made them during the day so we could pop them in the oven right when we got home from Addi's soccer game.  It was an exciting night, as Addi scored her first goal ever!  With all the excitement and calling every family member to tell them the good news, I forgot to take a picture of the final product.  It didn't look much different than these, I even used the same blue dish.  I got a set of these blue dishes at a garage sale for $6.  Steal.  I love the blue.  This is probably the most interesting thing I've made in a while.  It has so many different flavors going on.  The filling is chicken mixed with lime, honey and chili powder and it is amazing how all of the different flavors are distinguishable.  The sauce is just a green enchilada sauce mixed with a little cream.  It was really good.  I will definitely make them again.  And if you are looking for something out of the ordinary, these fit the bill.

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it
Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting

Love this.  It is really good.  I made it in two 9X9 pans, one for us one for Ian to take into work tomorrow. The only bad thing about it is that it can't be healthy.  It has one whole cup of oil in it.  And then the frosting has butter and cream cheese in it.  That is probably why it is so good :)  The recipe is from howto-simplify.com, it is really simple and SO yummy.  I'm not really sure why they are called "Pumpkin Bars," as it is really more of a Pumpkin Cake.

The frosting calls for 3-4 cups of powdered sugar.  I used 3 1/2 cups.  It could have used the extra half cup to make it a little more stiff.  Have I mentioned I've gained five pounds since we moved, and I've never worked out so much in my life.  Go figure with all of the cooking and baking I've been doing!

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy 

Baked Mexican Penne

I made two things tonight, this and Pumpkin Bars.  The Pumpkin Bars get two HUGE thumbs.  This dish, not so much.  It wasn't bad, it just didn't love it.  And there was a bit of yelling at dinner due to a two year old that refused to eat it because he wanted "Lightning McQueen" mac & cheese.  That didn't help.  

I cut the recipe in half and it still made a ton of food.  We didn't even finish half of it.  Hopefully, I can get my family to go for round two tomorrow, so it doesn't end up in the trash.

Pinmaker's Rating:  Like It

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Barbecue Pork Sliders

Again, I am a sucker for anything on a Hawaiian Roll.  And this recipe only has three ingredients, extra bonus.  In the past, I have always used pork butt, when cooking pork to shred for tacos or sandwiches, but this recipe called for pork tenderloin.  It made a huge difference in the fattiness of the meat.  It was so much leaner, I loved it.  I bought it at Costco, it is about as cheap as you can find it at $4.99 a pound.  And it comes with four loins, so I froze the rest to use later.  

My daughter even ate it.  Yay!  We are expanding her repertoire.  My two year old, not so much :(

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it 

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

To Die For Banana Cake

The first thing that caught my eye in this recipe is that it has sour cream in it.  Sour cream.  We LOVE sour cream in this household, so I gave it a try last week.  It's from butteryum.blogspot.com.  I like banana's just barely ripe. Almost a little on the green side.  So, when they get to ripe for my liking, I stick them in the freezer to use for banana bread or protein shakes.  

I was a little excited to try it and frosted it when it was a little too warm, hence the melting frosting.  The cake is really good and really moist.  We ate the whole cake in less than 24 hours.  And I love this plate.  I found a set of them when I was in Washington garage saling with my grandpa.  It's milk glass from the 1920s and all four plates were in perfect condition.  I just had to have them.  

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Chicken Broccoli Supreme

This is the best version of the traditional "Poppyseed Chicken" I have ever had.  Yum-O.  It's from justgetoffyourbuttandbake.com, and seriously you should get off of your butt and bake this.  Instead of using a cream of chicken soup and sour cream mixture, you make your own sauce starting with a roux.  Her recipe uses cornstarch in her roux, but a cornstarch roux is weird to me, so I substituted 1/3 of flour and 1/3 cup of extra chicken broth for the cornstarch mixture.  I hope that makes sense.

 Again my picture doesn't do it justice.  I need to work on that.  I served it over rice.  It was delish.

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it
Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Portobello Sliders

I love a good vegetarian dish and I love sliders.  Probably because I love Hawaiian rolls.  Nothing gets much better.  This recipe is great if you are looking for an alternative for meat.  I changed it just a bit because I didn't have some of the ingredients.  Here is what I did:

I took 1 tablespoon of olive oil and I added 1/2 teaspoon of seasoning salt, because seasoning salt has paprika and onion powder in it.  And then added 1/4 teaspoon of chili powder and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. I brushed both sides of the mushrooms with the mixture and cooked them on a frying pan until they were tender.  And then I caramelized onions and topped with a tomato, cheese and barbecue sauce.

And our barbecue sauce of choice is Famous Dave's Sweet and Zesty.

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it
Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

I love The Pioneer Woman.  I want to be friends with her.  I would love to eat her cooking everyday, but I'm afraid I would weigh 400 pounds if I did.  This Tomato Cream Sauce is amazing.  I had intentions of using fresh basil, but unfortunately my basil plant is looking like this these days...

I ended up throwing it away, next time I get to Trader Joe's I will buy another one and try again.  I think it has just been to hot for it to be outside, and I don't get enough natural sunlight inside to keep it alive.  It did make me a few great meals, see here and here.

I had sausage and mushrooms left over from the weekend, so I sautéed them to add to it.  I failed to take a picture of the final product.  It was really amazing.  Of course I cut the recipe in half, and I was able to save half of the sauce (before I added the sausage and mushrooms) and freeze it.  That means 1/4 of the recipe fed our family of four.  Sauce is one thing that freezes really well, I'll be excited to have it again.

Pinmaker's Rating: Love it
Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Mushroom, Onion & Sausage Egg Muffins

I am a breakfast person.  I eat it religiously everyday.  I practically have to shove food down my kid's/husband's throat in the morning and I just don't understand it.  I am ready to eat the second I wake up. I made these last weekend, the recipe is from snackinginthekitchen.com.  My daughter, who is especially hard to feed actually loves eggs, so I made her two of her own with just eggs and cheese.

Instead of broccoli I sautéed mushroom and onion with the sausage.  The two that just had cheese in them fell a little once they were out of the oven, like a soufflé would fall, but it didn't effect the taste at all.  My daughter like them so much, I ended up making another batch of them the next day to freeze for an easy breakfast before school.  I just have to microwave them for one minute and they are done.  "Easy peasy" as Addi would say.  We've been having a few behavior issues with her at school, so part of my reasoning for making them was to avoid her eating any sugar in the morning.   The eggs I buy are omega-3 organic eggs from Costco.  Omega-3 is proven to be effective with kids with behavior and attention problems so we give her the eggs as well as a supplement (also from Costco) and we've cut back on her TV watching.  Good news!  Her teacher told me there has been a big difference in Addi's attention this week compared to last week.  Sorry for the rambling...

I will make these again.  I think they would be so good with a combination of spinach, bacon and tomato.  That's on my "To Do" list for next time.

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Bubble Up Enchiladas

I made these Friday night, altering the recipe a little bit.  The recipe is from recipe-diaries.com.  It is a "Weight Watchers" version.  I don't think mine qualifies for Weight Watchers.  I used ground beef instead of ground turkey and I didn't use reduced fat biscuits or cheese.  And as I am now blogging this, I realize I didn't add a can of tomato sauce.  Oops.  I'm not sure why you would need the tomato sauce.  Maybe to not make the enchilada sauce so spicy.  I did use the Trader Joe's enchilada sauce that I love and I halfed the recipe.  You can buy half of cans of the Pillsbury biscuits.  They only have five biscuits per roll which is exactly what you need to cut the recipe in half.  

And because I had a coupon and they were on sale for $1, I only paid $.60 per can!

My kids, who generally don't like any real food--they live on a diet of string cheese and edamame--actually loved this dish.  I didn't have to beg them to finish it or threaten immediate bedtime.  The only thing that was missing was sour cream.  I wish we would have had some!  It would have been the perfect combination of spice and cool.  

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Peanut Butter and Jelly Blondies

Along with the apple dip I made for the relief society night, I also made these Peanut Butter and Jelly Blondies.  I love this recipe.  It is great because most likely you have all of the ingredients in your kitchen right now.  I used homemade strawberry jam.  Yum.  Because I was making them for about 30 people I made three batches of it.  The only problem I had was I used a glass 9x9 pan and then two foil 9x9 pans.  The batches in the foil pans took longer to bake than the batch in the glass pan.  The glass pan took 25 minutes like the recipe says, but the foil pans needed closer to 30 minutes.  

Mine for some reason don't look as pretty as hers (they never do, right?), but I am sure they were just as good!

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it
Level of Difficutly:  Easy

Caramel Apple Cheesecake Dessert Dip...Need I say more?

I was in charge of a food demonstration at a Relief Society night last week.  It was a back to school theme. So I stretched it a little and made and demonstrated this...

The recipe, found on Pinterest is from fakeitfrugal.blogspot.com.  It's really easy.  And when I say easy, I mean it takes all of five minutes to make.  The bottom is a layer of cream cheese mixed with a little sugar.  It's covered with caramel sauce, Heath Bar and mini chocolate chips.  It would be great for any party.  

One recipe of it does not make a whole lot.  This is on a salad plate.  I demonstrated it, doubling the recipe and it was able to fill up a regular plate.  The one thing I would really recommend is following the direction to place the apples in lemon water before serving them.  I cut these apples up just a few minutes before I served them and they were already starting to brown.  The only bummer of the night was as I was walking through my garage when I came home.  My bag with all of the left over ingredient broke and the leftover jar of caramel sauce shattered all over my garage floor!  Ugh!  I sure there are hidden shards of glass left in my garage.  

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Tangy Meatloaf Bread

I'm always asking my husband for suggestions on what to cook for dinner, and last week, he suggested a meatloaf sandwich.  I love a good meatloaf and found myself this recipe on Pinterest.  It's from vanillakitchen.blogspot.com.

I am ordinarily a bargain shopper for everything I buy, food included.  I try to use coupons for just about everything.  Meat, however, is one corner I don't cut.  I've just watched too many food documentaries to know better.  "Food, Inc." among others, will change your life.  Don't watch it if you don't want to be totally disgusted.  I buy my organic ground beef at Costco.  It's about $3.99 a pound, not too expensive and and well worth it.

And then I used this Pillsbury dough for the bread, which I bought with a coupon :)

It was delish.  The meat mixture is bell pepper, onion salt, pepper and Worcestershire.  And then layered on top of it is caramelized onions and cheese.  And then there is a homemade barbecue sauce that you top it with.  I would have taken a picture of the entire thing, but it looked like way too much of a certain phallic symbol.  

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Cake Batter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Of all of the things I have made, I had never made cake batter cookies.  I have eaten plenty of them.  My friend Kori, likes to make confetti cake batter cookies and keep them in her freezer.  One time when I was babysitting her little one, I'm sure I ate a dozen of them in a sitting.  So when it was our turn to bring treats to Addi's soccer game, I gave them a try using this recipe from Stephanie Cooks.  For the amount of effort put into these cookies, they are good.  But if you are looking to make a classic chocolate chip cookie, this is not the recipe for you. They really taste like a cake mix (though there is nothing wrong with that).

I'm always worried about over baking cookies.  My husband has what he calls the "7 minute rule" when it comes to baking cookies.  He loves cookies slightly undercooked.  Seven minutes, however usually isn't enough.  This recipe calls for a bake time of ten minutes.  Which I followed for the first batch.  They turned out just slightly overcooked.  I think nine minutes would have probably been sufficient.  The second batch, I had some bad luck.  I am in the middle of potty training my two year old (a.k.a. my worst nightmare) and while I was baking cookies I had my timer set to remind me to have him use the bathroom.  I thought I would remember to take the cookies out at the right time, because I had nothing else to worry about, right?  Like a little boy peeing all over my floor among who knows what else.  So when my timer went off they had been in the oven for 12 minute.  Oops!  Luckily, the kids will eat anything that is called a cookie, even if the bottom is slightly charred :)

Pinmaker's Rating:  Like it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Tortellini Spinach Bake in a Lemon Sauce

Yum.  Our Best Bites does it again.  I've seen their cookbook at Costco and think it would be useful investment.  If only my cart wasn't full of things I actually needed.  

I used the same tortellini from Costco I mention in a previous post  and the bacon of course was from Trader Joes.  I followed the directions, except I was out of red pepper flakes, so those were omitted.  My husband added a little hot sauce to his to make up for it.  Just as we took our first bites, my oven beeped.  And I realized that I forgot to bake it.  It was too late, we were ready to dig in.  It was still great, the sauce was more saucy as I presume it would have been if I would have baked it.  So you could do it either way and it would be a success I'm sure.  

Pinmaker's Rating:  Love it

Level of difficulty:  Easy

Baked Southwest Eggrolls with a Chipotle Dipping Sauce

I had made these once before for my family and they were a hit.  Even my kids ate them.  The original recipe is from melskitchencafe.com.  However, I could tell that by the looks of the recipe it was going to be too spicy for my taste, so I altered it.  Here's what I did:

First, I sauteed a white onion and bell pepper with garlic, cilantro, olive oil, lemon juice, cumin and chili powder. I added some black beans, shredded rotisserie chicken, shredded cheese, fresh corn which I cooked and then cut off of the cob. And then I baked it according to the Mel's Kitchen Cafe directions. I made the dipping sauce with sour cream, a little salsa and cumin, and then fresh guacamole to go with it.  

I just happened to make these the day of the big power outage.  All of San Diego, parts of Orange County, Arizona and Mexico were all out of power from 3:30 pm until into the night.  We got our power back at 12:30 am.  I assembled them in the early afternoon so they would be ready to bake in the right after Addi's soccer game, but unfortunately with no power, I was unable to bake them.  So the next morning, as I went through my fridge deciding what to toss out, I knew they had to go.  I didn't want to risk getting food poisoning from the chicken.  I was sad, until my husband mentioned, "Why don't you just make them again?"  You can tell by my disappointment how much we love to eat (and how good they are).  So I made them again the next day and they were just as fabulous.  The final product...

So good.  And it's even better that it's baked.  To make it meatless, just omit the chicken, it would still be very tasty!


Pinmaker's rating:  Love it
Level of difficulty:  Easy

Blackberry Cobbler

 Where my parent's live on Camano Island, Washington, there are endless amounts of berries on their property.  They have a large berry patch of boysenberries, logan berries and cascade berries and then the blackberries just grow in the wild.  Here's a picture of my dad with my kids driving through their back property (their front property is the Puget Sound, so pretty).  The berry patch is on the right and apples trees on the left.

I love blackberries, but my parent's don't ever pick them.  So when I was there last month, we picked and picked.  Did I mention they have fresh crab all summer too?  This is one of the pots my dad pulled.  There were 11 crab in one pot!  They sometimes get 50+ crab in a weekend.

Back to the cobbler.  I used a recipe found on Pinterest.  It's from thepioneerwoman.com.

 Here it is before I put it in the oven.  I followed the recipe exactly.  I baked it at 350 degrees for one hour and it still didn't look done.  So I baked it another 10 minutes and took it out.

I should have left it in longer.  I was afraid of overcooking the bottom of it, but even with the extra 10 minutes, it was still undercooked.  Edible (I still managed to eat almost the entire thing by myself over the course of a few days), but could have used another 10 minutes in the oven.  Also, I'm not sure if I put in too many berries and maybe the moisture from the berries contributed to needing a longer cook time.  So, if you make this, just cook it until you know it's completely cooked.  It was good, but could have been even better, more cakelike, had I cooked it the proper time.

Pinmaker's rating:  like it
Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Alphabet Magnets

I first saw these alphabet magnets about a month ago.  It's a great idea and super easy (so I thought).  These magnets are from bubblynaturecreations.com.  I still love the idea, but I should have either read the directions on how to make them or put more thought into the process, because mine turned out to be a flop.

I had these letter stickers from a paper pack bought at Target a few years ago.  They looked like they would work perfect.  They are only 1/2 inch round, so the letters are really small.

Because I couldn't find my circle punch, I hand cut all of the circles out.  It only took about one episode of CSI.  Not too bad, but had I had a punch, it would have taken minutes.

I modge podged all of the circles on the back of 3/4 inch clear stones that I bought at Joann's for about $2.  I have also bought them before at the dollar store.  

 They look great, right?  This picture actually makes the letters look more clear than they actually are.  With the curvature of the stone, it is so hard to read the letters, especial on the tan and green circles.

I bought a magnet strip that had adhesive on one side also at Joann's for $.89, and cut and applied a small magnet to each stone.  There were two problems with the magnet.  First, if I did not apply the magnet upright (like the letter on the front), the letter would not stand upright when placed on the fridge.  And second, the adhesive from the magnet strip was not strong enough to stay on the stone if dropped on the ground even once...

Which of course within five minutes of playing with, my kids had dropped all of them on the floor.  Which left a mess of stones and magnets everywhere.  

I still think this is a great idea, and I will attempt to make them again.  There are four things I will be doing differently, however.  First, I will use bigger stones.  Second, I will use a white background for the letters so they are easier to read.  Then, I will make sure to adhere all of the magnets upright.  And last, I will use e6000 glue as Bubbly Nature Creations suggest.  I think it would be a really great Christmas gift for Addi's kindergarten teacher.  So, when the time comes, I will give it another try.

Pinmaker's rating:  Like it

Level of Difficulty:  Easy if you follow the directions!