Since summer is on its way out lets get one more burger in with the BBQ bacon sliders with crispy shoestring onions on page 106 and a S'mores cupcake on page 131.

Question...

Hi ladies...and gents?? I have a question for all of you. I'm making the BBQ brisket this week and the recipe calls for a 4-5lb brisket and says the day before serving you bake it for 5 hours. At the store I went to the only brisket left was 2.6 lbs (which is still a lot of meat and perfect for my size family) so I bought it. I'm just going to half the recipe but does that mean I half the bake time???? I don't want to dry it out or anything. Did anyone try using less meat? Just thought I'd ask!

Jenny's BBQ Brisket and Key Lime Trifle

A few days ago I made the BBQ Brisket and the Key Lime Trifle.  They were both really yummy!

I did the BBQ Brisket just as the directions said.  I cooked it the day before and then made the sauce and reheated the meat the next day.  I don't always love BBQ sauce.  I don't like it if it's on the thick side and super sweet.  But this was a runnier sauce and not overly sweet so I thought it was really good.  I could even stand to have it a bit more spicy, but since I was making dinner for another family and I also wanted my kids to eat it, I didn't dare add more spice.  I don't know if my husband was super starving that night or what, but he said it was one of the best briskets he ever had!  I wondered about cooking the brisket with no liquid to begin with, but it turned out so moist and tender and there was quite a huge amount of drippings in the pan.  The brisket sliced up so nicely the next day.  I was very pleased with the outcome.  I did use yellow mustard instead of dijon.  I don't love the flavor of dijon and was worried it would be too strong.

I only made enough of the trifle to take to the other family, and so I just had a tiny taste of the lime part.  It was delish!  Yum!!  It is very, very similar (almost the exact same) as the recipe for Paula Deen's banana pudding, which is also delightful.  For whatever reason our Kroger's was completely out of heavy cream and I wasn't about to go to another store, so I just used cool whip in its place.  I also decided not to put the coconut in it in case they didn't like it.

I would make both of these recipes again for sure :)

New Recipes for the Week of Aug 18th

Hey ladies,

Sorry I have been MIA for a while.  We were out of town for a month visiting family.  So sad that summer is almost over!  But it will be good to get back to routine, and I can catch up on this blog!

I need to take dinner to a gal this week and so I picked a couple of recipes that make a lot of food and that are hopefully sort of kid-friendly:

Oven-Roasted Barbecue Brisket- pgs. 154-155

Key Lime Trifle- pg. 126

***Just a little note on the Brisket- I read through the recipe and for their recipe they want you to cook it the day before serving and then refrigerate overnight to prepare the next day.  Not sure how much it would affect the taste to just do it all in one day, but just plan accordingly I guess :)

****Okay, I just saw that the Key Lime Trifle was already picked.  Sorry!  I missed it when I was gone.  Maybe we can just do one new recipe this week and then catch up on some others...

Rutter Kitchen-Grilled Coconut-Lime Skewers, Peanut Dipping Sauce & Mango Rice

We started out by marinating our meat that morning.  I bought chicken breasts and shrimp to use.  We weren't sure if everyone would like the taste of the coconut milk, so we marinated a batch of the chicken in teriyaki sauce and a batch of chicken and shrimp in the recipe marinade.  That night, Ashley cooked up all the meat and  shrimp skewers which took awhile, but she stuck with it ;) I worked on the Mango Rice which was not difficult as it mostly just involved a bit of chopping and simmering.  Dana fixed the Peanut Dipping Sauce and that was also pretty simple.  I followed the recipe for the marinade and we marinated the meat for about 8 hrs.  We used a grill pan on the stove top, so it did take awhile to get all of the skewers cooked.  We compared the two varieties of the chicken and we did prefer the one with the teriyaki marinade.  We didn't find the recipe marinade very flavorful, so that was a surprise.  I'm interested to see other reviews on the marinade to see what all of you think of it.  Maybe we did something wrong.  The meat all got eaten though ;)  We all liked the Peanut Dipping Sauce.  Very tasty and not too peanutty! We wanted to make the Thai Spring Rolls also, but I couldn't find the rice paper wraps at my two grocery stores.  We'll keep looking though, as they looked very tasty.  I followed the recipe for the Mango Rice.  I used cilantro instead of parsley and that tasted good. I forgot green onions at the store so we didn't have those.  I thought that the rice tasted good, but I was surprised that it wasn't a stronger flavor.  Maybe the green onions would have helped with that.  It was fun to try the different recipes, but we they are probably not ones that we will cook again.... 

Rutter Kitchen-Fresh Tomato-Basil Pasta & Baked Zucchini Fries

It was my turn this week to pick the recipes, so I thought that we should use produce that was available this time of the year.  For the pasta sauce we used fresh peeled diced tomatoes. After thinking about it for a bit, we also ran them through the food processor, since we prefer that texture over the chunks of tomatoes.  It was a good choice for us we discovered. We followed the recipe except used thin spaghetti pasta instead of the angel hair pasta.  I will say that it took awhile to cook the sauce down so that it was thick enough.  I think that if you wanted to, you could use canned diced tomatoes, if you didn't want to mess with the fresh.  I fixed the meatballs from our cookbook authors previous cookbook, as our guys like a little meat with their meal ;)  We forgot to add the fresh basil at the end.  We'll just have to cook it again and try it :)  Ashley and Dana fixed the Zucchini fries and they followed the recipe, except we couldn't find any crumbly Parmesan cheese, so we just had to shred our Parmesan up real fine and that worked.  The fries were pretty simple to make and we liked the fact that they were baked and not fried.  Both recipes were a hit with everyone, so we will definitely be making them again!

New Recipes

Hello! I feel like I have been a bit MIA the last few months since we were out of town! I'm slowly catching up and will have lots of reviews to post this week. For the new recipes I chose the Mango Rice (118) and Grilled Coconut- Lime Skewers (90). They suggest using the leftovers for the Thai Spring Rolls (91) so I will go ahead and add that too. Hopefully that will be an easy one since everything is just about all made the day before.

Pasta Salad & Enchiladas

I forgot to take pictures when we had these two dishes (not the same night).  I fixed the pasta salad one evening and nobody really liked it.  My family isn't huge fans of pasta salad except for me and I didn't really care for it.  The enchiladas were a whole different story! We had some friends over for dinner last week and I fixed them then.  The were a huge success and everyone loved them.  They were a little more time consuming to make but they were very good.  I just bought a rotisserie chicken and used that.  I also made them according to the directions. We haven't tried the rub yet; but I'm sure we will soon.
Looking forward to trying the new recipes.

Rutter Kitchen-Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas & Key Lime Trifle

Here's our pictures from our cooking night.  We doubled the recipe for the Enchiladas as we had a nice group eating that night.  We followed the recipe and for the cheese, used Monterey Jack and cheddar as that's what I had.  Ashley fixed the enchiladas and Dana was able to help her roll them up when she got there. We used flour and corn tortillas and I really liked the corn.  I think this would be a good recipe to make ahead or make some of the steps ahead.  We really liked these enchiladas and Doug and I ate on the leftovers the next night ;) We served the enchiladas with black beans and some homemade salsa and guacamole.  A very tasty meal! For the Key Lime Trifle, we had made that another night.  I made up an angel food cake and then Dana mixed up all the rest of the ingredients.  We just set out the different components of the trifle and let people assemble their own.  We also had some strawberries that we added also.  It was really good.  Had lots of good flavors and textures.  I think this dessert would be fun to take to a get together.  Another successful cooking night :)

Rutter Kitchen-Burgers with Meat Rub, Southwest Pasta Salad & Blackberry Cobbler

We had a good time trying out the All-Purpose Meat & Veggie Rub with our burgers.  We didn't have the mustard that it called for, so we used some Dijon Mustard instead and we thought that the rub gave the burgers a good flavor.  Very easy to mix up!  We just grilled our burgers in a grill pan on the stove top.  The Pasta salad had quite a few ingredients to make it.  We followed the recipe and thought that it had a good flavor, but it's probably not a salad that I'll make again for my family.  There are other pasta salads that we like better ;) It was fun to try it out though and it all got eaten.  We did make a blackberry cobbler, but I forgot to take pictures of it.  We really didn't follow the recipe except for using blackberries ;) We prefer the use of pie crust and not the bread/biscuit crust version, so that's what we did.  Dana whipped it up using her own recipe :)  All in all a very successful cooking night :)  

Tarin's Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas

As I started to make this recipe I realized that last time I had chosen the recipes that I had picked the other enchilada recipe in the book. I'm addicted! Sorry it took me so long to post about these, we've been really sick lately and I just haven't been doing a lot of intensive cooking. These were pretty medium/medium-high on the amount of effort it took to put them together, but definitely worth it. I could see how awesome these would be as a freezer meal.

I forgot to take a picture--we inhaled these too quickly--so sorry about that.

I made these exactly to the recipe (except I used a Mexican cheese mix instead of straight Monterey Jack) and they were delicious...not too spicy or anything! They were really filling and I was able to make about 10 enchiladas and the 4 of us got through half of them. Plus they are really good as leftovers too.

I've got the missionaries over for dinner on Tuesday so I'll have to wait until then to do the Key Lime Trifle, but I'm really excited to try it!

New Recipes

Since produce is ready from our garden's lets fix
Fresh Tomato-Basil Pasta pg. 114
and
Baked Zucchini Fries pg. 112
I'm excited to try a new spaghetti sauce :)

Owens' Recipe Reviews

I fixed the Pinapple Avocado Chicken dish and we really liked it!  The kids thought the sauce was a litte spicy and didn't care too much for the salsa on top of the chicken but they really liked the chicken.  I also fixed this when we had some freiends over for dinner and everyone LOVED it. 

I fixed the chicken berry salad with dressing last week (or was it the week before?).  I really liked everything.  Kenton didn't care for the dressing and the kids didn't like the dressing or many of the toppings.  I also served this when some friends came over for and they really liked it too.

Overall, I will fix both of these recipes again!

New Recipes

This week I chose the: 

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas, pg 28

and 

Key Lime Trifle, pg 126

Jacki’s Southwest Pasta Salad, Meat and Veggie Rub, and Berry Cobbler

I had visions of making all three of these recipes at the same meal but for various reasons I ended up making them on three different occasions.  I made the meat rub to add to burgers and I thought the version the recipe book had (add to ground beef and stone ground mustard) was quite tasty.  I would add just a little less rub than the recipe called for (1 Tbsp rub to 1 lb ground beef).  I used spicy brown mustard because that is what I had and I really liked the flavor it added. 
I made the pasta salad on a different day to take to a potluck event for mutual – I heard positive comments and it got eaten so that was a good sign.  Having said that I thought it was good but not my favorite.  I think it was just a personal choice – I prefer the more traditional type pasta salad. 
I finally got around to making the Berry Cobbler last night.  Again, it was good but not my favorite but my husband thought it was great – success!  I think I overcooked it and I would have liked it better cooked less.  I cooked it for 45 minutes and 35 might have even been enough so watch the cooking time.  I also thought it needed more berries – I used blueberries.

Rutter Kitchen-Grilled Chicken & Berry Salad & Berry Cheesecake Pops

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Here are all our pictures from our cooking night.  I started out making the Berry Cheesecake Pops the night before so that they would be ready in time.  They were pretty simple to fix.  I used a combination of all 3 berries suggested and that was a good flavor combo.  As you can see, I used little plastic cups and then poured in the ingredient layers and did the little swirl.  I then covered them with the plastic wrap that clings to anything, cut little slits in the top over the cups and stuck in the wooden craft sticks and in the freezer they went.  For the Salad we fixed all the ingredients and set them out and let everyone assemble their salads how they wanted them.  We also added some beef steak to the recipe and grilled that and the chicken on the stove top in a grill pan. Dana made the vinaigrette and said that it was simple to make.  I thought this was a fantastic salad.  I ate on it for days afterwards! The berries in the salad and then the berry vinaigrette were great together.  Everyone liked both recipes really well, so we will be making these again :)

New Recipes for July 21-27

Hello All, so sorry for being absent for a few weeks – vacations, reunions, sickness etc.  Time to get cooking again!  For this next week I have chosen:

Southwest Pasta Salad   84
All Purpose Meat and Veggie Rub   104
Berry Cobbler   125

I am planning on making hamburgers using the rub as a mix in and the pasta salad and cobbler sound like good side dishes/dessert to go along.  Hope you are all enjoying your summer.

New Recipe

Hi everyone!  I'm sorry this is getting to you all SO late!!  I just barely moved from TX to Utah (I already miss Leslee and Jenny SO much), so I have been very scatterbrained.

Since it's summer and nice and hot outside I wanted to make a weather appropriate meal.  So...

Grilled Chicken and Berry Salad pg 80

Berry cheesecake pops 124

I also saw the patriotic cupcakes on page 132 and thought they were cute but a lot of work.  I am not picking those but I thought I should point them out because they are so fitting this week and maybe some of you want to try them out. 

Happy cooking!!

Jenny's Chicken with Pineapple salsa and sweet chili

Well, I made this a couple of weeks ago, but summer has really slowed me down on blogging!  I am glad we have this week to catch up :)

We all really liked this chicken.  It had a lot of yummy flavors.  After reading Leslee's review I cut down on the curry a tiny bit.  Other than that I followed the recipe.  I ended up having to use canned pineapple, which was still good but I can imagine fresh would be really really good!  And I didn't get a chance to grill the chicken, which would add a different flavor as well.  I liked how colorful this dish was and it tasted very summer-y!

Leslee's Meals

We aren't big fish fans around my house so I substituted chicken in the fish stick recipe. It worked out well. I had to make a few more changes to make them gluten free. I just put some gf oats and rice chex in a food processor to make the bread crumbs. We ate our "chicken nuggets" with some delicious sweet potato fries (Alexia is our favorite brand). Everyone loved them!

 sorry they didn't really photograph great! 

The tandoori chicken and indian rice was another delicious meal. I marinated the chicken for most of the day and then grilled it on the bbq. The yellow rice was a favorite of Knox's. I thought it was good but the flavor wasn't as strong as I expected. Maybe I just needed to add more spices? All in all it was delicious and I will probably make this again!