New Recipes: Week of 11/27

I had a hard time choosing the recipes this week. So many good looking things. I am not sure if these have been chosen yet but I will take a chance.

page 104- Chicken and dumplings

page 188- Carmelized green beans

page 210- Gingerbread cookies

Leslee’s Catch Up

I am a little late in saying this…but CONGRATULATIONS to two of our cooks who had their babies this month.

Kim had her sweet little girl Norah on Nov 2nd and Tarin had the adorable little Weston on Nov 16th! I am sure they are both pretty busy (and tired)!

I have a few recipes I need to catch up on.  A few weeks ago I made the Banana Cream Pie. I used vanilla pudding mix and graham cracker crusts for both pies.  I set aside some filling for myself and that was some tasty stuff! It was pretty rich with the sweetened condensed milk but everyone loved it!

I also made the Smokey Bean Soup that week.  It tasted great but I probably needed to add a little more liquid because it was a little thick.  It wasn’t the most photogenic thing so no picture on that.

I had made the Chicken Cacciatore a month or so ago.  I cooked it in the crockpot and served it over rice.  It was very delicious so I made it again last week.  This time I didn’t cook it in the crock pot and served it over noodles.  I took a few shortcuts by not blending up all the ingredients as directed but it turned out very tasty still!

Heidi's catch up post

Okie dokie... it has been a LONG time since I have pulled my pics off my phone so here an my fabulous photos :)

I believe that this was the chicken tortilla soup.  It was pretty good.  A little spicy for my little family; but I loved the flavor.

 Greek Couscous Salad - I really liked it.  Kenton isn't a fan of "cold salads" other than regular salad so he didn't really care for it.  The kids picked out all the veggies and ate those.  I would fix it again, maybe to take to a potluck function.

 Puffed French Toast:  Very good although very sweet.  I also fixed the Buttermilk syrup too and that was good.  I actually preferred the flavor of the home-made syrup on the french toast too the regular syrup.

 Smoky Bean Soup with Ham and Bacon:  Not really a fan of this one, the flavor was just too strong for us. 

 White Chicken Chili:  If I remember correctly, this had really good flavor.  Lots of chicken pieces though!  I think I fixed this in the crockpot which really made it easy.

 Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Chop Chocolate Cookies:  these very VERY good!  I was a bit skeptical because I thought it would be "too chocolatey" but they were really good.

That's all the pics that I could find so hopefully that gets me all caught up!

Recipe for the week

Sorry I completely spaced it on picking out a recipe. I just picked one since we are already a couple of days into the new week.

Let's try the Chicken Cacciatore on pages 168-169.

French Toast with Buttermilk Syrup

Last week I made the french toast with buttermilk syrup. It was so yummy! And very sweet! It was like eating donuts. But it was definitely good french toast. My family loved it too.

I actually ate it without the syrup to begin with and I thought it was great. It's already sweet enough. But the syrup is good too. The syrup gave me a little grief, but it was my fault. I started cooking it in a pot that was too small. All of a sudden it boiled out everywhere. It was a mess! So I transferred it to a bigger pot and things went much better. I think I might have cooked it a little too long...but it was still tasty.

I froze half of the french toast like the book said. We pulled it out yesterday and it tasted really good. So it is good to know that that is an option.

Jacki’s Review of Double Chocolate Waffles.

These were absolutely delicious!  Nothing better than dessert for breakfast:)  Actually, I made these for dinner and served them with an egg and some sausage but just the waffles and some milk would have been plenty because they are so rich.  At first I was a little disappointed because they came out of the waffle iron soggy but they crisped right up after just a minute or two.  I like a crispy waffle.  I made the berry sauce to go with it and it was good but I think next time I would just use cut up berries and skip the whole jam and hot water part.  Of course I also added some fresh whipped cream – divine!

Jacki’s Smoky Bean Soup and Banana Cream Pie.

I made both of the recipes a few nights ago for dinner and they didn’t disappoint.  I followed the Bean soup as directed but added just a little bit less broth than called for.   I also used white potatoes and peeled them.   I thought it had a really good flavor and it made good leftovers.  I served it with corn muffins and sliced pears. 

The store I went to didn’t have the Nilla Wafer pie crust so I just bought some Nilla Wafers and made my own.  The filling was very good but quite sweet so I think the next time I will just use a regular pie crust to counter the filling sweetness since the cookie based crust was quite sweet also.  It was still really tasty though.  One of the best banana cream fillings I have had.  I would also add more bananas next time.  I used the vanilla flavor pudding.   Also, I made the recipe as directed and used a 9 inch Pyrex glass pie plate and all of the filling fit into it.  So if you want to get two pies out of the recipe I would use the 8 inch pie plates.    I would make both of these recipes again. 

Puffed French Toast

From 2011-11-02 (by Eye-Fi)

This was really yummy (Jake loved it so much I thought he was going to cry). I served it with bananas on top and that was so good! Somehow I missed that we were suppose to make it with the syrup recipe :( which sounds really good. I probably will only make this on special occasions from now on though since there isn't a ton of nutritional value. But definitely a keeper!

Jenny's Sort Of Catch-up

This is my sort of catch-up. I'm still behind on a few recipes! But I will make them soon.

I actually made the greek cous cous salad a few months back. I thought it was really yummy and a good salad to take to a potluck. I made it without feta, because Al doesn't like feta, but I missed it. I think next time I will just add feta to mine and keep Al's plain. I thought I had taken a picture of the salad, but I can't seem to find it...

The waffles were yummy! And the whole family liked them. I actually made the strawberry syrup that is in the book to go with them because I had a lot of strawberries, and not the berry syrup that was on the same page as the waffles. Anyway, the waffles were easy and we love to have breakfast for dinner here, so I will definitely make them again.

I thought the pumpkin shakes were delish! And again, the whole family loved them. We added mini chocolate chips to ours and left off the graham crackers. The chocolate was good, but I think I would have like it even better without. They really hit the spot and were a fun seasonal treat.

Recipes For Week Of 11/6

Smoky Bean Soup with Ham and Bacon    101

Banana Cream Pie                                                224

Puffed French Toast and Syrup

I made this breakfast this morning and it was a success.  They syrup gave me a bit of a hard time but I think I just needed to use a bigger pot. It turned out really tasty though, just like candy! For the french toast I used french bread because when I was looking for Texas Toast they only had garlic flavored and I didn’t think that would work out. The french toast worked out well though.  I didn’t have enough oil to really fry them but they turned out nice and golden brown.  Sean isn’t a big french toast fan but he thought these were really good!

 

Jacki and Nika’s Chicken Tortilla Soup and Grilled Taco Chicken

I have been traveling so I am waaaay behind on my cooking and postings.  Hope to catch up soon.  While I was visiting Nika and family we made the Grilled Taco Chicken one day for dinner and used the leftovers to make the Tortilla soup the next day.  Both recipes were excellent.  The Grilled Taco Chicken had just the right amount of spice and bite and the soup had a very good flavor.  For the grilled chicken we followed the recipe as directed except doubled it.  Served it with a lime/cilantro type rice and salad along with some pineapple.    When we made the soup we added a can of black beans to give it more substance and if we had any we would have added some corn.  I would also add less of the broth next time.    Nika fried up some corn tortilla strips to go with it which tasted really good as well.  Grated cheese, diced tomatoes and avocados were toppers.   Definitely two recipes to make again.

The Grilled Taco Chicken – delicious.

Chicken Tortilla Soup – delicious.

Tarin's Puffed French Toast & Syrup

We loved these recipes! They were both easy and delicious. Just a few comments:

The syrup was definitely worth it. I was really concerned when I started making this because I couldn't see how this:

Would turn into this...

But somehow it did :) It did take longer than 7-9 minutes and then if you really want that thick syrup texture you need to really wait for it to cool. But everyone agreed that it was so much better than store bought syrup.

For the puffed french toast, if you try to fry these at 375 for 3-5 minutes on each side you will be eating burnt french toast. I fried them at about 350ish for 30-40 seconds on each side and they were perfect. Crispy and brown without the burnt flavor!

Here's the batter for your bread...it reminded me of a thin pancake batter.

Heating up the oil.

And frying up the toast. I would also recommend for those of you who haven't done a lot of frying to make sure not to try and overstuff your pan with the bread slices. They cook quicker, more evenly, and are easier to flip when it isn't packed.

And the completed dish. My brother Jack (14) said that this was the best french toast in the world. Score!