New Recipe

So I've been MIA on Blogger the last couple weeks so I might have just noticed today that it was my week to choose so sorry that this is going up a little late.

Since it's starting to get cold over here I've been in soup mode! So let's try the Vegetable Beef Barley Soup, pg 220 with the Hearty Whole Grain Crescent Rolls, pg 138.

I'm hungry just looking at the pictures! Yum!

Rutter Kitchen-Weeknight Chili

We fixed this recipe on our usual cooking night.  We decided to cook two versions of chili, since our guys aren't real crazy about beans and veggies in their chili ;) Ashley cooked the Weekend Chili and I cooked our usual version of chili.  They both turned out great and everyone was happy! Ashley started out by cooking the ground beef and then drained it and did a quick rinse under hot water.  We don't like meat fat floating on top of our chili ;)  She then put it in a big pot and followed the rest of the recipe.  Very simple and I already had most of the ingredients.  This would be a great recipe to do in a crock pot or in the oven.  We surprised our guys and they liked the chili! They did like the fact that we fixed both of our versions just in case.  Doug even ate the leftovers a couple days later.  We topped our chili with shredded sharp cheddar or mozzarella cheese.  We also had Frito's for those who wanted them in their chili.  This was a successful recipe and we will fix it again :)  

 Johnny having a taste test.  He actually ate most of it. 

 Our usual version of chili.  Meat, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, Williams Chili Seasoning etc...

Weeknight Chili :)

New recipe

I chose the Weeknight chili on pg 147 for this week!

Jacki’s Easy Thai Coconut Soup & Lemon Cake

Both of these recipes were good.  I cut back on the chicken broth in the soup because I like a heartier soup but I should have added the full amount because it was almost too hearty (not much liquid). The flavor was good but with each bite I kept expecting it to taste like Top Ramen because of the noodles:)  I added chicken to make it a little sturdier for dinner and also mushrooms. I didn’t want to buy a whole bunch of cilantro because I knew I wouldn’t use it all so I bought a tube of it – you can find it in the produce section right by the fresh herbs. Very convenient and tastes good too.  I prefer just the fresh without the additives but this worked out better this time.

The Glazed Lemon Cake was easy to make, moist, and tasty. I didn’t serve it with whipped cream because I thought it was rich enough just plain.

Jacki’s Pastry-Wrapped Breakfast Sausages with Maple-Dijon Dipping Sauce

I made these cute little dippers last week and we thought they were good.  I didn’t read the directions very carefully so I cut the puff pastry before I rolled the sausages up so I didn’t have room for the cheese but they still tasted good.  I used raw sausage and the cooked up fine in the time it took to cook the puff pastry.   The dipping sauce was ok but I wasn’t a big fan of it.

Jacki’s Roundup of Recipe Reviews

I have been really bad  posting about my recipes – too much summer fun I guess!  So here goes….

Mango Rice, Grilled Coconut Skewers, Thai Spring Rolls

I was able to enjoy these recipes twice – once at Nika’s house and once at Leslee’s so this is their review as well.  Both times everything was delicious!  I also really liked the peanut sauce that went along with the  skewers and Thai spring rolls.  At Nika’s we used won ton or egg roll wrappers because we couldn’t find any rice paper at the store we went to and they were really good – we fried half of them and baked half and both turned out quite tasty.  At Leslee’s we were able to find the rice paper wrappers so we used those.  The rice paper was interesting to work with.  I wasn’t sure how it would taste with the veggies not being cooked but I thought it was really good.  The rice paper was a bit gummy though. 

Mango Rice and Chicken Skewers at Nika’s

Me fixing the Thai Spring Rolls at Nika’s

Mango Rice and Coconut Lime Chicken at Leslee’s

Spring Rolls at Leslee’s

Grilled Chicken and Berry Salad

We made this salad at Leslee’s house and we both thought it was very good – both the salad and the dressing.

Fresh Tomato Basil Pasta

I have had this three times this summer and love it!  Nika made it when I was visiting her this summer and used fresh basil from her garden – delish!  Leslee made it when I was at her house – yum again.  And, I recently made it with homegrown tomatoes from a friends garden and it was so tasty again.  I think the balsamic vinegar is a good addition to it.  When I made mine I just cooked it all day in the crockpot which made it easy.

Leslee’s

Mine.  I guess I didn’t get a pic of Nika’s.

BBQ Bacon Sliders and Crispy Shoestring Onions

Oh, my goodness this made for a tasty meal!  I really liked the BBQ sauce in the burger and the crispy shoestring onions were really good on it.  I made homemade rolls to serve it on since I didn’t have any store bought ones and that made it extra good:)

Nika also made the Tabbouleh when I was there and we all thought it was really good but I guess I didn’t get a picture of it.

Rutter Kitchen-Breakfast Sausages with Dipping Sauce, Smoothies and S'mores Cupcakes

We decided to do a breakfast for dinner meal on our cooking night.  After reading over the sausage recipe I wasn't sure whether I should get uncooked or cooked sausage links, so I got the cooked links and they worked just fine.  Ashley made these and she followed the recipe and for the cheese she used sharp cheddar as we like that.  She made it look pretty easy ;)  Dana made the Maple-Dijon Dipping Sauce and that was very simple.  She did follow the recipe for that also.  I decided to go with a different concoction for the smoothies as not everyone in our family likes mango and coconut flavors.  We had two blenders out and the guys had frozen berries, milk and vanilla ice cream smoothies.  They said they were pretty good, but would have liked them a little sweeter.  We also had frozen berries and milk and they were good.  Dana mixed up some that had frozen berries, milk, peanut butter and cocoa powder.  All interesting flavors ;) Next time we will probably add some form of sweetener.  To round out the meal we had fried or scrambled eggs.  We thought that the sausages tasted good and only a couple liked the dipping sauce. We also made the S'more cupcakes as we hadn't done them with an earlier recipe pick.  I cooked the cupcakes earlier in the day so that they could cool.  Ashley whipped up the Marshmallow Frosting and we assembled them after dinner and ate them.  Very good!  Nice flavors and textures.  They would be ones that I would make again.  They are right about the batter being runny, so if you haven't made them yet don't be alarmed!  We enjoyed cooking all the recipes and hope you have a chance to try them also :)

Jenny's Pastry Wrapped Sausages

I don't have a picture, but I made the Pastry Wrapped Sausages with the honey mustard sauce.  I had some left over phyllo dough that I decided to use instead of buying puff pastry.  The phyllo was flaky and kind of messy, but it ended up tasting pretty good!  My kids thought these little sausage bites were so fun.  And I made them at dinner time too...kind of jazzed up the regular 'breakfast for dinner.'  :)  I thought the dipping sauce was yummy.  It wasn't too strong of a dijon flavor, which I like.  And I liked the creaminess that the mayo added to the sauce.  I would for sure make these again!  But next time I would forget about the leftover phyllo and go with the puff pastry :)

New recipe

Hi everyone!! I've picked a couple of recipes that sound delicious! I hope they haven't already been chosen. Also, sorry if soup doesn't sound that good to people in hot states but it sounds delicious to me!!
Easy Thai coconut soup pg. 22
Glazed lemon cake pg. 50

Enjoy!!!

I have been meaning to post some of my meals for a while now! I made the BBQ brisket a few weeks ago and it was delicious! I cooked it in the crock pot the day before and then next day heated it back up with the sauce on the stove top. We ate it on some homemade rolls and it was delicious! Definitely a tasty way to fix brisket!
The BBQ sliders were another hit. Adding the BBQ sauce to the meat mixture and at the end of the cooking made them so good!! I also made the onion rings to add on top and those added a nice crunch. I will definitely be using the BBQ sauce trick the next time I make burgers!

Recipes for the week of 9/9

I don't thing that either if these recipes have been picked yet.. Hope not! I'm thinking we might have tried the smoothie. I'm always looking for new fast and easy breakfast ideas for my kids before school.  Lets just say that pop-tarts and cereal are a staple in my house :)
Lets try:
Pastry-wrapped breakfast sausages with maple-Dijon dipping sauce - page 8
Tropical smoothie - page 69

Rutter Kitchen- Grilled Summer Vegetable Sandwich & Fruit Pizza

 Ashley grilling all the veggies!

 Yummy!

 Johnny sampling some grilled zucchini

 Pizza cookie crust ready for the fridge.

 Dana assembling the fruit pizza.

Fruit pizza ready to eat :)

I fixed the fruit pizza crust earlier in the day and got it in the fridge.  We cooked the crust while we were fixing dinner and that worked good, since we weren't using the oven for anything else at the time.  We followed the recipe for the veggie sandwich and doubled the recipe for the everything except for the lemon-garlic mayo.  We just used a big flat grill pan on the stove top for grilling our veggies. We cut up the focaccia bread into servings and grilled them for the people that wanted their bread grilled.  We let everyone assemble their own sandwiches as not everyone wanted the mayo and cheese on theirs.  We used tomatoes instead of the red peppers and for the cheese we went with the mozzarella slices.  Everyone really liked the sandwich and it did help for the guys that we added bacon slices to their sandwiches ;)  We probably won't make the lemon-garlic mayo the next time as we were happy with our usual sauces for sandwiches.  Once again, this book has been big with the use of lemon ;)  Just reading the recipe again, I see that we forgot the basil leaves once again in a recipe ;(

The fruit pizza was fun to make.  We assembled it after our dinner.  Ashley had made the creamy topping earlier, so it was easy to get it pulled together.  Dana melted up the semi-sweet chocolate chips after assembling the pizza.  As you can see we used kiwi, blueberries, strawberries and orange slices. We just used half of the dough for our crust as I only had a 12" pan and that was plenty of dough for the pan.   Only us women tried the pizza and we thought it was great!  The men missed out by not trying it :)

All in all these are both recipes that we will definitely fix again :)

BBQ Bacon Sliders, Onion Straws and Cupcakes

 

Last night I made the meal from last week.  I must admit I was feeling very lazy and it was so darn hot and humid that the trip to the store to buy the marshmallow cream almost did me in.  After giving myself a pep talk I got to making the dinner.  I had prepared the cupcakes earlier that afternoon.  It is a moist and tasty recipe but I only used half the water and half the oil it calls for.  The first time I made them I followed the directions completely and the batter was too soupy.  This time, after cutting back the liquids it was just right.   For the burgers I had every intention of making my own patties, but when I went to get the meat out of the garage freezer I saw a nice and tidy package of premade patties just waiting to be used.  I just basted them with bbq sauce every few minutes while they cooked and they were delicious.  The onions were pretty straightforward and a very nice topping for the burger.  My husband declared it was the best burger he had ever eaten and mentioned several more times how much he liked it.  He is not a blue cheese fan so he did not put the sauce on his, but I did and it was so tasty.  My daughter was able to put it together while I did the onions and it turned out great.  In fact I am eating the leftovers on my salad for lunch today.   While I grilled the burgers she mixed up the frosting.  It came together nicely and quickly and tasted really good.   One other thing is that I didn’t do the graham cracker crust in the bottom of the cupcake, I don’t really care for a bunch of stuff in my cupcakes (and I may or may not have read the instructions thoroughly enough).  I hope you get the try these!

Luckily I had a lot of help!

awful picture, hope it doesn’t make you lose your appetite, but it was tasty!

This week Sept 1st:

Grilled Summer Veggie Sandwich Pg. 92
Tabbouleh Pg. 77
Fruit Pizza Pg. 120

Also, I want to say

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO
AUDREY & ASHLEY!!!!

Love y'all!!!! 

Happy cooking all!!!!

Audrey's Oven-Roasted Barbecue Brisket

I think my pictures speak for themselves.... I followed the recipe, but used an 8lb. brisket as that is the smallest that I could find.  Very easy to get ready and into the oven.  I used a sturdy disposable foil pan, so that I could just toss it afterwards, which worked great! I did cook it the day before we were going to eat it.  Once it cooled I did take off the fat and poured the beef liquid into a couple of containers without separating the fat.  It worked really good doing that, as the next day the fat had all risen to the top of my containers and I could just scrape it off, nice :)  The next day a couple of hours before dinner, I got the sauce started.  Lots of  ingredients, but I had all of them ;)  Once it was simmering, I sliced up the meat and then got it in the oven with the sauce on it.  The recipe didn't specify the oven temp or whether to put the foil back on, so I started my temp at 275, like we cooked it at the day before, but ended up increasing my temp to 300.  That was fine.  I also covered it for the hour and then I took the foil off and let cook like that for about 15 minutes.  That all worked fine for me.  We used medium sized flat rolls and toasted them in a skillet with a little butter and then put the meat mixture and some of us put a slice of cheese on our sandwich.  We all thought that the brisket had really good flavor.  Some found it a bit rich, but very tasty.  I served it with coleslaw and chips.  I think this would be great to fix for a group get together.  I also think that it would taste good over mashed potatoes like they also suggested.