Rutter Kitchen-Mini Tostado Salads, Tomatillo Salsa & Monster Munch Snack Mix

 Roasted veggies were very simple to do for the salsa and then we just blended them up in the food processor.

 The salad mixture ready to mix up.

 Ashley finishing up the salad.

 We decided to cook up some precooked fajita meat and let people add it to the salads if they wanted it.

 Here's the finished meal.  We thought it was very good! Pretty simple to make.  We also fixed some zatarains black beans and rice to go with it.   

 Johnny sampling the candy popcorn and he liked it!

Here's the Monster munch ready to munch.  We liked it, but its a bit too rich, so we will probably stick with our regular popcorn.  It was fun to have for a special treat though.  We liked all the recipes, but liked the Mini Tostado Salads the best :)

Ok, I am filling in for Nika this week and since my husband requested pork chops appear on the dinner menu this week I will chose APPLE BUTTER PORK CHOPS (152). Since this recipe calls for CARMELIZED ONIONS (117) I will select that too. And, since this is Halloween week lets go with any of the HALLOWEEN PARTY FOOD listed on page 174-175. You can just pick whatever works for your family. I have been cooking and have several reviews to post but computer issues need to be resolved first. Hopefully soon!

New Recipe, Oct. 21

Hey ladies,

I've fallen a bit behind!  I am going to try to catch up these next couple of weeks.  Because I'm behind I am only picking one recipe this week :)

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup, pg. 146

I have a friend that raves about this soup, so it's time for me to see if it's as good as she says ;)

Kim's review

I haven't posted a review forever but I have been cooking the meals. Also, my 4 year old son was playing with my phone and let me know that I had too many weird pictures of food and so he did me a favor by deleting them! Awesome! So, I don't have pix to go along with my reviews.

Vegetable barley soup- I really liked this! The whole family liked it too. It made a ton, but it reheated really well. I used quinoa and like someone else said, If I make it again I probably won't add as much, it seem like the quinoa was dominating the soup.

Whole grain crescent rolls- These were pretty good but not my favorite. My little boys wouldn't even eat them because there was so much stuff on top and that weirded them out. They also took a really long time to make and sometimes if something takes too long I get turned off by it. I could also taste the flax pretty strong. I will probably add less if I ever make them again.

Weeknight chili- Yummy! And super easy. I followed the recipe perfectly and it turned out delicious! I'm going to make it this Friday for our wards trunk or treat and chili cook off.

Lemon cake- This cake turned out really delicious and I am not even a super lemony person. Everybody liked it the only problem was my cake wasn't perfectly level so when I poured the glaze on top a lot of it gathered in the middle, making the middle extra moist, borderline soggy! It tasted delicious with cream on top though!

Thai coconut soup- I loved everything about this soup! The entire family ate all of it! I used leftover rotisserie chicken and the whole thing came together very quickly. I will make the soup again, probably a lot!

Hopefully I don't get so far behind again. These recipes are all so yummy!

Kim

Recipes for Week of Oct. 13th

Swedish Meatballs    157

Apple-Pear-Cranberry Crisp     190

Due to recent travels I am behind on my cooking so I hope to catch up a bit this week on all the recipes I have missed.

Jacki’s Weeknight Chili

I made this when I was at Nika’s house taking care of the grandkids while she and her hubs were gallivanting around Italy of all places!  (I actually had a really fun time). Anyway, it was quick to throw together and I cooked it in the crockpot so that made it really easy. I thought it was really good and all of the kids ate it so  it was a success. I didn’t have beef broth so I substituted chicken broth.  The chili had a mild flavor so if I made it again I might add a little of  Tabasco sauce or cayenne pepper.  Served it with cornbread and applesauce.

Leslee's Recipes

Okay well as usual, lots to report on!
Mini tostada salads: I was planning to make this whole recipe on day but Sean was going to be working late so instead of making the cute little tortilla bowls I just threw it all together into a salad bowl for myself. I knew the kids wouldn't appreciate it:) Anyway the dressing was SO GOOD! I really liked it. I halved the oil to make it a little healthier and it worked great. I have used it several more times on various salads.
Monster Munch: Sweet and Crunchy Autumn Snack Mix: I had made a similar popcorn mix a few weeks ago to take to the ladies I visit teach but instead of the mix ins I just used m&ms. It was delicious so Summer and I decided to try it again and take some to her teacher and student teacher at school. The kids helped me make it one night and it was super quick and easy to make. The candy corn, peanuts and Reese's pieces were a fun addition! 

Glazed lemon cake: I made this cake with a gluten free yellow cake mix so I could try it and it turned out delicious. I followed all the other directions and ingredients. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner that night and so we had that for dessert. Everyone loved it and went back for seconds! The kids called it the lemonade cake. I actually preferred eating it with some cool whip on top to balance out the richness of it. 

Weeknight Chili: This was a good easy recipe to make. It came together nice and quickly and we ate it with fritos and cheese on top. We all liked it but I do prefer the Anita's Chili recipe we made way back when we first started this blog and I will probably stick with that one. 

I haven't made the complete S'mores cupcakes yet but I have use the marshmallow frosting recipe several times and it is so so good! It is definitely my favorite for frosting cupcakes with! 

Jenny's Weeknight Chili

On Sunday I made the Weeknight Chili.  It was actually a cooler day in Houston, so it was the right day to make it!

What was great about this chili is that it was SO fast to make.  I made the recipe just as it says, except I added an extra can of beans because one can just didn't sound like a lot.  We ate the chili with some fritos and/or rolls, and a side of fruit.  I thought the recipe was good.  But I have another chili recipe that I've been using that we really like and I would probably keep using that one.  It has a bit more kick/flavor to it.

New Recipes- October 6th

Well since we are still having some warm days here in Oklahoma, I chose recipes from Spring, Summer and Autumn.  I'm not ready for the cold weather yet!  Hope that you will all enjoy them :)
Mini tostada Salads pg. 18
Roasted Tomatillo Salsa pg. 73
Monster Munch: Sweet and Crunchy Autumn Snack Mix pg.  176

Rutter Kitchen-Vegetable Beef Barley Soup and rolls

This soup was such a nice easy recipe to make and we really liked that.  I did the prep work for the recipe, like getting everything chopped and measured and set out ready to put in the pot.  I also cooked up the ground beef and drained and rinsed it like we like it and then cooked the onions with it.  Ashley then put everything together and then kept an eye on it while it simmered.  We added 1/8th tsp. of the red pepper flakes and think that next time we'll add 1/4th tsp. instead as we would like a bit more heat.  We had time for it to simmer for about an hour before we were ready to eat.  We put in what the recipe called for and we chose the barley to use.  We added the barley as stated 1/2 an hour before eating.  I didn't have time to get all the ingredients for the crescent rolls and to make them ahead as we had a busy week, so we will cook and post about them another time.  We chose the Rosemary rolls from the Pioneer Woman's last cookbook instead and they tasted great!  We really liked the soup and the rolls and will be cooking both recipes again.  Hope that you have a chance to try these recipes out :)

 Soup assembled and ready to cook.

Ready to eat :)

Jenny's Thai Coconut Soup

This is long overdue!  But a couple of weeks ago I made the Thai Coconut Soup.  It was really good!  I thought that it was going to be super coconut-y with the can of coconut milk in it, but it had such a mild flavor.  I thought the soup in general was just a nice twist on chicken noodle soup.

I cooked my chicken in the crock pot earlier in the day, so it was really tender and moist.  After reading Jackie's review I added all of the liquid the recipe called for.  Even so, the noodles really sucked up a lot and there wasn't a lot of extra broth.  I also used the cilantro from the tube and thought it tasted fine.  My kids ate it great, so it was definitely a successful recipe.  And the soup came together so quickly.  Seriously, one of the fastest dinners I've made.  You could easily add some vegetables to it, but my kids probably ate it because there weren't any in there :)  In one of the little side notes it suggested using rice instead of noodles.  I love noodles, and thought they were fun, but I think it would be yummy with the rice too.

Tarin's Veggie Soup and Crescent Rolls

Let me start out by saying that we LOVED both of these dishes. I made a full batch of each Tuesday since the missionaries were coming to dinner and I had no leftovers. Well 2 crescent rolls, but between 4 adults and 2 toddlers, I was certain I had enough for lunch the next day.

Here were my awesome helpers :)

I made the soup with quinoa and I wish that I had done half that amount...I also put in potatoes instead of onions, and omitted the dry onion soup mix (my allergies). The flavor was delicious and I will definitely be making this again.

Now my only complaint about the crescent rolls was getting all of the ingredients. I had to go to a couple stores to find everything! But they were really good! I didn't quite half the dough evenly so half turned out normal size and as you  can see the second batch turned out monster size, but no one seemed to mind :)

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.