Tarin's Tropical Slaw and Ice Cream

I really liked both of these recipes.

For the Tropical Slaw I made a half recipe and the kids really liked it too. I didn't have any dried cranberries and I wish that I had because I think the tangy from them would have really helped cut on the sweetness from everything else. But I will definitely make this one again.

As far as the Ice Cream and Topping. I ended up using cream cheese because I couldn't find mascapone anywhere--okay, at least not at either of the two stores I tried. But it was still really good. I would have even liked a stronger cream cheese flavor. Then I was stumped on the cream, but not heavy cream, and ended up finding a table cream, but I don't know how big a difference it would have been if you had to use heavy cream still. As for the strawberry-balsamic topping--this was the bomb. I hate to go all 90s with that, but really there was no better way of describing it. I could have ate the entire thing myself. I made it for dessert for the missionaries and they came back for seconds and thirds of this stuff! And my two year old ended up just eating the strawberries off of the ice cream :)

Soup and Salad

Last week I made the tropical slaw to go along with our hamburgers and french fries. Sean wasn't home for dinner and now that I think about I was probably the only one who ate it. I just made a few changes, slivered almonds instead of pumpkin seeds, less oil in the dressing, and I added chunks of pineapple. I made it only 30 min before dinner and it was pretty good, but the next day it was delicious. The cabbage really had a chance to soak up the dressing and I really liked it:)

Last night I made the Chicken Orzo soup for dinner. I added extra amounts of the vegetables and I couldn't find chard at the store so I added Kale (don't know how similar they are). My soup ended up pretty thick but it was really good, it reminded me of risotto. The whole family enjoyed and ate it, so I say the recipe was a success and a keeper! 

New Recipes for the week of 2/23

I had a tough time finding a recipe, but I finally chose one from the Spring section.  This will be good for those of us still having some cold weather :)
Chicken Orzo Soup with Lemon and Chard pg. 24

Jacki's Filet Mignon and Tropical Slaw

The other night I made the Filet Mignon paired with the Tropical Slaw from this weeks choice and baked potato.  Excellent!  I must admit I don't think I have ever bought or cooked a Filet Mignon.  I remember we had a neighbor when we lived in Sacramento whose kids would only eat Filet Mignon! Anyway, I shopped around and found some on special (probably for Valentines Day) for $10.99 a pound.  I followed the directions but used the already cooked bacon which turned out just fine.  I also needed to cook it a bit longer in the oven than the recipe called for.  It was seriously a whole new steak eating experience - so soft, tender, and flavorful - I may never go back! (We rarely have steak anyway). The Garlic Herb Butter topped it off nicely. 
The Tropical Slaw was easy to pull together.  I thought it had a very good flavor with the dried mangoes and cranberries.  I used regular vinegar instead of the cider and sunflower seeds instead of the pepitas.  Yum!
I have not made any of the desserts but have my ice cream maker bowl chilling in the freezer right now to make the Mascarpone Ice Cream tomorrow. 

Leslee's Meal

Last night I made the steak and brownie dessert. I sent Sean to the store on Saturday night and he came home with Beef Tenderloin since there was no filet minion. I prepared it as the book says although I might have cooked it in the over a bit longer than they suggested. Honestly I am not sure i have ever cooked a steak in the oven so I was a little worried about how it would turn out. Well no need to fear, it was delicious! It was melt in your mouth tender! Sean and I had gone to Outback on Friday for Valentine's Day and I think this steak was just as good if not better then the ones we got there:) All the addition of butter made it delicious but a little more heavy! Fun for a nice occasion though:)

Next up was the Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Ice-cream Squares. Although a lot of layers, this was easy to make! I should have made it a little earlier so it could have frozen back up longer but we didn't mind. I just made it in a 8x8 pan. The only thing I changed was when I melted the chocolate chips I didn't add any cream, I just spread it on as is. We were all really excited to eat it and everyone loved it. It was definitely rich though!

New Recipes

While it seems like most of the country is pretty freezing right now, we've been having some awesome warm days so I'm skipping into the summer section for the recipes this week. They don't really have anything to do with each other, but they both look yummy, I'll blame pregnancy cravings :)

Tropical Slaw with Pineapple Vinaigrette, pg. 78
Mascarpome Ice Cream with Balsamic Strawberry Sauce, pg. 119

New Schedule

Hey Ladies,

I just put up a new schedule for recipe selection. I also updated the "what we have cooked" section so if you are not sure if we have already cooked a recipe just check there. Don't forget to post your results, reviews, and pictures! If you don't want to be included in the recipe selection rotation just let me know. There are a lot of recipes left to pick from. I know I still have a few to catch up on including the yummy recipes from this past week!

NEW RECIPES

I always think it is fun to cook a nice meal at home on or around Valentines' day, so I chose two meat recipes! Both use nice, expensive cuts of meat so I figured we could choose which one we wanted to make, or of course you could make them both:)
- Garlic-Rosemary Rib Roast p 224
- Pan Seared Filet Mignon with Garlic Herb Butter pg 226

And if you need a fun dessert...
- Mint-Chip Brownie Ice cream squares pg 236. (I have been eyeing these for a while!!)

Rutter Kitchen- Catch-up!

 This is the Tortellini Sausage Soup.  Most of us really liked this soup.  Very easy to make and pretty hearty with the sausage and cheese tortellini.  It has a very nice flavor.  I've made this quite a bit this winter.

 Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad.  We followed the recipe for this and it was fun to make the chicken, dressing and croutons.  I think the croutons were the biggest hit :) This salad had real good flavors.  I'm sure that we will make this again. 

 Here's the S'mores Hot Chocolate.  We followed the recipe and did like it, though we would probably skip putting the graham cracker crumbs on the cups edge next time.  Didn't really care for that being there while sipping the hot chocolate ;) Of course then it wouldn't be a S'mores Hot Chocolate!

 Next are the Beignets.  It was fun to try these, but they do take a little time.  They tasted really good and we like drizzling honey on them.  They tasted similar to sopapillas that you can get at Mexican Restaurants.

 Here's the Pepperoncini Beef Sandwiches.  I started the recipe the night before in the crock pot since we were going to eat these for lunch the next day.  So easy! Well the next day we had a power outage do to the weather, but by then the meat was ready and since I have a gas cook top we were able to pull the rest of the meal together.  That's one reason I love my gas cook top!

 Here's our group

We had chips with our meal, since we couldn't make the Spinach Walnut Salad with no power.  It was a fun afternoon making do.  Of course the power came on after about 4 hours ;)

Muffins and Stew

About a week ago I tried out the two muffin recipes, blueberry and pumpkin streusel (from a while back). The pumpkin ones were easy to make and smelled delicious! My two younger kids were big fans of these!
The blueberry ones also turned out well and weren't too hard to make. By batter and also the muffins turned out a bit dense but my husband still thought they were great! I usually just make muffins from a box mix so it was fun to make them from scratch for a change:)

Next up is the stew! This was delicious! I made it last Sunday for dinner and put it in the crockpot before we headed to church. I realized I forgot to get the V8 juice and I needed a substitute for the tomato soup so I ended up adding a jar of pizza sauce with some water and broth. It sounds funny but it actually worked great!! We really liked the recipe!

Dana's Kitchen

We couldn't do the recipe together this week, so I made them at home. It was so easy and very tasty! I used orange zest and I added an extra cup of blueberries. Along with adding the extra cup of blueberries, I had to double the coating that was called in the recipe for the blueberries. Other than that I followed the recipe. 

Johnny was ready for breakfast but only ate one bite of the muffin. 

New Recipes for the week of 1/26

Let try the Blueberry. Muffins on page 6.  Hopefully that hasn't been picked yet!

Jacki's Spinach-Artichoke Quiche

I made this recipe for dinner tonight and it was good!  I made the crust myself.  I didn't bother with the foil and beans etc. - seemed like a lot of extra work.  I just made the crust, put it in the pie plate and poked holes with a fork and cooked it for about 15 minutes at 400.  For the filling I made it as directed except I only used 1 1/2 cups of grated Swiss cheese because that is how much came in the preshredded bag.  I omitted the thyme.  We both thought it had a good flavor but I would add just a little less of the Dijon mustard and a little less salt next time.  I also made the Blueberry muffin recipe in the book (pg 6).  They were good too.  There is an error in that recipe though so might want to make the correction - step 3 says to combine the remaining 1 cup of flour but it should be 1 TABLESPOON of flour. 

Jenny's Sunday Beef Stew

I made the Sunday Beef Stew last night for dinner.  It was a hit!!  I made it exactly as the recipe calls for.  The only difference was that our store was out of regular tomato soup and so I had to use a can of the low sodium soup.  It was such an easy recipe to throw together.  Very simple in ingredients and prep.

During the afternoon when the stew was cooking in the oven, my 4 year old James said, "What smells so good"?  It really did make the whole house smell good.  Then dinner rolled around and my husband was in heaven.  He kept saying how good it was.  We ended up adding a little salt as we ate it...I guess to make up for the low sodium soup ;)  The meat and vegetables were so tender and the stew really thickened up nicely as it cooked.  It was just a delicious, old school comfort food recipe and it was very well received in my family.  Well, James just ate the "steak" out of the soup, but my daughter Avery loved the vegetables too.

My husband told me to make sure I didn't lose this recipe :)

New recipe for this week

Spinach and Artichoke Quiche page 11

Rutter Kitchen- Butternut Squash Pasta & Homemade Dulce de Leche

 

 

 

 

 

Our pictures pretty well explain what we did.  The Dulce de Leche was very easy to fix and very good to eat.  Some had it with apples and some with ice cream and everyone really liked it.  For the Pasta dish, the veggies were real easy to prepare.  I just bought the squash already cut up from the store so that made it simple.  We did cook and add extra bacon to the dish as we knew that would make our guys happy :) I think the most involved part of the dish was the Pumpkin Sauce.  Dana and Ashley fixed that and it went pretty quick.  We chose not to bake the pasta and sauce once it was all put together as we have done that before with one of their pasta recipes and decided we would have liked it better not baked.  Everyone liked it pretty good.  If you like all the ingredients you will like this recipe.  Dana and I ate on the leftovers for a few days so obviously we were the ones that liked it best ;)

Jacki's Gyro Burger Pitas

I made these for dinner a few nights ago and we both thought they were pretty good.  First I made the Tzatziki so it could chill in the fridge and the flavors could blend.  I thought it had a good flavor - be sure to add a little salt and pepper. For the filling I used ground venison instead of lamb.  I shaped the patties quite thin and in oblong shape. I omitted the rosemary.  I just cooked them in a frying pan.  I used small round flatbread from Trader Joes.  The flavors were all really good.  Having said all that, I would not shape the meat into patties next time.  It just seemed like the meat should be loose like in tacos or thin strips like fajita or the gyros you buy at restaurants.  I would like to try the recipe again using the thin strips of meat (lamb or beef) and use the spices and herbs as a marinade or rub for the meat. Something easy and different for dinner.

For this week I will choose
Apple pie pops- Page 232
Greek lamb pitas- Page 98

We have also made the puff pancakes several times.  I usually have to make a triple batch and they all get pinked right down.  I use a combination of the mini and regular sized muffin pans.  To me it tastes like creeps without as much work and they are all ready at once.

Also, I recently made the pepproccini (sp?) beef and it was really good.  I did it for a freezer meal but I tasted some and it was delicious!  I also used the spicier brand of peppers but it is not spicy nice its cooked so its not a problem for people who are sensitive.

Jacki's Review of her version of Sunday Beef Stew

I made this last night for dinner.  I know, I know, it wasn't Sunday but I changed the recipe enough that I felt I could make it on a Friday:)  My husband is not a fan of tomatoey foods and I knew he wouldn't like this recipe as written so I made a few changes.  I omitted  the V8 juice, tomato soup, water, and beef bouillon cubes and replaced it with 4 cups of beef broth. I also cooked it in my slow cooker on high for 6 hours instead of in the oven.  It made this recipe super easy and fast for a stew.   I just plopped the stew meat in uncooked, added the potatoes and carrots.  I did saute up the onion and celery together before adding. I  added the dried basil, pepper and a little salt.  I poured the beef broth over it all and let er cook.  I added about 1/4 cup of flour mixed with water the last 30 minutes to thicken it up a bit.  I loved the fresh taste of this stew and will make it again but next time I might add a bay leaf and a little less broth or else more of the vegetables.  I do like tomato based foods so I really hope someone makes the recipe as written and reviews it here so I can see how you liked it.

New Recipe

Hey ladies,

For this week I picked Sunday Beef Stew on page 156.  It's been cold here (for Houston) and I think my husbands and picky kids will eat this one :)

And I'll also do my review of the Puffy Pancakes.  I don't have a picture to go with it, but we've actually made these a couple of times.  I made them a long time ago when I first got the cookbook when I needed something quick and easy for dinner.

My husband and kids went a little nutsy for these!  They are just fun to eat, these little warm and light puffs.  We didn't eat them with the berry sauce though.  We dipped them in butter and powdered sugar.  Or if we were being a little more decadent...some nutella.

I have made them a few times since then and they are always a hit.