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!