New Recipes for Week of April 28th

Ok ladies, this will be the last week of cooking from the PW cookbook.  I have chosen two random recipes because I couldn’t make up my mind.
Lemon Blueberry Pancakes   22
Chicken Tortilla Soup               76

If there is something else in the cookbook you would rather make this next week and report back on feel free to do so since this is the last week.  Next week we will start with the next Our Best Bites cookbook – Savoring the Seasons.  It looks really good.  I have posted a new schedule.  Thanks to you all for participating and helping to keep this blog going – I really enjoy it and love reading your reviews and pictures.

Jacki’s Tequila Lima Chicken, Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce, Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am a little behind on my posting but I have been cooking.  A couple of weeks ago I made the Tequila Lime Chicken and I thought it was delicious!  Like the rest of you I substituted water for the tequila and put a splash of vinegar in.  I used my food processor to mix everything up but next time I will use my blender.  The food processor didn’t chop up the garlic enough for my liking.  I marinated the meat for about 4 hours and then grilled it in a grill pan on the stove.  I really liked the flavor the marinate gave the meat but next time I would add a little less water to concentrate it more and marinate it for longer.  I sliced the chicken into thin slices and used it in tacos.  I also made the Mexican rice to go along with it. Good recipe!

A few days ago I made the Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce and the Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies.  In regards to the Tomato Cream Sauce I must preface my statements with the fact that I love the mixture of a marinara sauce and alfredo sauce.  But, this wasn’t it.  I followed the recipe as directed and used a marinara sauce instead of tomato sauce and whole milk instead of heavy cream.  The directions should state to omit the onions and garlic if using a marinara sauce – way too many onions as they are already in the marinara sauce.  The recipe was ok but just nothing special – maybe it needed more parmesan cheese.  I paired it with some grilled chicken and steamed veggies. 

And last but not least come the Malted Milk Chocolate Chip cookies which made absolutely divine dough for snitching by the way.  I used Ovaltine malted milk powder and after reading Dana’s review I used half shortening and half butter and chilled the dough for a couple of hours.  They still came out very flat but tasted good.  I think they would be perfect for ice cream sandwiches because of the flatness.  I am not sure if using all shortening would help the flatness or maybe that and a little more flour?  They were tasty though!

Rutter Chick's Kitchen

Tonight Audrey cooked the tequila chicken but used water in the place of the tequila. Ashley made the sauce and noodles. She said it is pretty easy to make. Dana (me) made the cookies. We are also making ice cream to make cookie ice cream sandwiches. 

We chick's liked everything. The guys; however, didn't think the noodles had a very strong flavor. They were indifferent to the chicken. Audrey thinks using chicken broth instead of water would be good.

The cookies were yummy, but next time I think we will put our dough in the frig before baking. I also think, personally, I'll use Audrey's method and use shortening instead of butter. Think they will look prettier and not as flat and runny when cooking.

New Cookbook and New Recipes

Thanks everyone who took the survey! The winner was  Savoring the Seasons with Our Best Bites . Let's cook from PW for two more weeks and then start the new cookbook May 6th. I know they sell it on amazon and we have found it at Sams and Costco. 

This week lets cook the Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce pg 139 

with the Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies pg 272 

Chicken...

Last night I made the tequila lime chicken.  It was so very tasty.  We thought it was almost as good as chipotle.  I did not have tequila handy so I just left it out.  Sadly I was also out of fresh garlic so I just shook in a few shakes of garlic salt and left out the kosher salt.  I also added maybe 1 1/2 cup of water to the blender. Also, I didn't have any fresh jalapeno so I put in about 6 pieces of jarred left over from the burgers last month.   After marinating the chicken tenders for about 4 hours we grilled it.  Luckily Sterling was home because he is the best one around at grilling chicken.  It has a bit of kick to it but the kids enjoyed it.  Just had some left over on a salad for lunch and it was great.  For dinner I made it a simple meal and served it with flour and corn tortillas, black beans, cheese, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes a guacamole.  So basically just tacos.  I will definitely make this recipe again. 

-Nika

NEW SURVEY INFO

So I guess the survey wasn't really working and I am not sure what to do about it, so I just created a survey on SurveyMonkey. Just follow the link on the side and vote. Sorry to make this more work! Let's try to get it taken by the end of the week.

Heidi just posted a new recipe below! Looks delicious. 

New Recipe

Well, it looks like we are running out of recipes to pick from.  Lets try the Tequila Lime Chicken on page 170.  I googled to see if there were any substitutions for tequila and didn't find any.. I'm thinking maybe water instead...

Beef Drip and Enchiladas

I was able to make both of these delicious recipes last week. The Beef drip was first. I put everything in the crockpot for most of the day on low. It came out nice and tender! I served it on rolls with cheese for Sean and the kids and over a salad for myself. Everyone really enjoyed this one!

Next up is the enchiladas. These two were really tasty. I already had some chicken shredded in the freezer so that made these a little easier to pull together. I actually grilled the peppers which gave them a nice flavor. I omitted all the cream and used some milk for part of it. With the sour cream it still had a nice creamy flavor. I did two smaller pans. In the first one my corn tortillas were breaking apart so in the second pan I just layered tortillas and the mixture and it worked great, and tasted the same. We really liked these! Even my daughter scarfed them down, which is saying something:) 

Jacki’s Drip Beef and Brie-Stuffed Mushrooms

I made both of these recipes tonight for dinner and they were both very tasty. 
The Drip Beef was very easy, smelled delicious when it was cooking and tasted great.  I cooked it in the slow cooker on high for about 5 hours and it was so tender.  I really like peperoncinis so that was a real treat.  (actually used sliced banana peppers – not sure if they are the same but close enough).  I didn’t have fresh rosemary so I crushed up some dried and added it although I wouldn’t do it again.  It didn’t taste bad but I don’t think it added anything either.  The caramelized onions added a nice flavor. 
The Brie-Stuffed Mushrooms were delicious and very easy to make.  We ate them right out of the oven but they would be good at room temp too I think. I didn’t have any parsley so I omitted it and added a little more of the green from the green onions.   The Brie was perfect for this recipe.

Jacki’s White Chicken Enchiladas and Strawberry Shortcake Cake

I made these tasty recipes a couple of weeks ago and thought they were both good. 
The Enchiladas were quite time consuming but I thought they were worth it in the end:)  I cut the recipe in half and only had about 1/4 cup of heavy cream so I just used that and 1% milk for the rest and it tasted just fine.  Other than that I followed the recipe as written.  I agree with Audrey – they did kind of fall apart but not too bad.  I also used a couple of flour tortillas because I didn’t have quite enough corn and both tortillas were good.  The leftovers were yummy as well.
The strawberry shortcake cake tasted really good and was something a little different.  The frosting was really yummy.  I have to agree with Audrey though and just stick with a simple presentation of angel food cake or pound cake or white cake with sweetened sliced strawberries and whipped cream for my strawberry shortcake – just easier and oh so tasty.  It was fun to make this version though too.

Enchiladas – forgot to take a picture of them plated up.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake – I left half unfrosted because my husband doesn’t like frosting. I just put whipped cream on his.

My slice – oh yummers!

Vote for the next cookbook!

Hello Ladies,
It seems we are nearing the end of this cookbook so we thought it would be fun to vote on the next. I created a poll that you can take on the right hand side of the blog. We have four choices..
1. Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen by Tricia Yearwood - this was recommended by Heidi and it looks like a fun cookbook similar to Pioneer Woman's.
2. Our Best Bites Savoring the Seasons - I have this cookbook and I have already made several great things out of it. There is definitely some family favorites in there just like in the original OBB.
3. Six Sisters' Stuff - I haven't looked through the cookbook but I have made several of their recipes off their blog and they have always been tasty!
4. Recipes from Pintrest/Internet- Jenny came up with this last suggestion and I think it could be fun! The idea would be to find a recipe or two and share the link with us to cook from.

I have set the poll to close next Wednesday, so get voting:) We can definitely keep cooking from PWs for a few more weeks! I am catching up on several recipes this week myself!

Week of April 7th

Hi All.... Ok this week I picked

Brie-Stuffed Mushrooms Pg 96

&

Drip Beef  Pg. 64


Happy Cookin!!!!

Rutter's Kitchen- White Chicken Enchiladas & Strawberry Shortcake Cake

 We decided to make two kinds of re fried beans.  On the left are the black beans & the right is the pinto beans.  I used dry beans for the black beans & just followed Ree's recipe for them that I found on her website.  The other are just canned & I added some butter & cheddar cheese to them.  They both were tasty.

 Here are the enchiladas ready to serve. Dana, Ashley & I all cooked this recipe.  We doubled our enchilada recipe as we had a good sized group eating.  We followed the recipe as printed.  They took some time, but you could certainly do some of the prep work ahead of time & that would make it nice & easy that night when you assemble them & then baked them.

 Here's my plate.  The enchiladas broke apart some when we dished them up, but they still tasted really good.  They are certainly not a low fat/calorie food! We also made the salsa recipe in the cookbook & as usual it was a hit. 

 Here's my dessert.  We decided to make cupcakes of the cake part, as some of our group didn't want any frosting on theirs.  We also made homemade vanilla ice cream :) That is ice cream on the side & frosting on top ;) It tasted real good.  I will probably just stick with our usual angel food cake or the little shortcakes that you can find in the grocery store, but it was fun to try the recipe.  Dana fixed the Strawberry shortcake recipe & she did a good job!

 

Here's our tasting group.  We had a fun time fixing & eating the recipes and hope that you have a chance to try them out yourselves :)