Owens' Recipe Reviews

I fixed the Pinapple Avocado Chicken dish and we really liked it!  The kids thought the sauce was a litte spicy and didn't care too much for the salsa on top of the chicken but they really liked the chicken.  I also fixed this when we had some freiends over for dinner and everyone LOVED it. 

I fixed the chicken berry salad with dressing last week (or was it the week before?).  I really liked everything.  Kenton didn't care for the dressing and the kids didn't like the dressing or many of the toppings.  I also served this when some friends came over for and they really liked it too.

Overall, I will fix both of these recipes again!

New Recipes

This week I chose the: 

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas, pg 28

and 

Key Lime Trifle, pg 126

Jacki’s Southwest Pasta Salad, Meat and Veggie Rub, and Berry Cobbler

I had visions of making all three of these recipes at the same meal but for various reasons I ended up making them on three different occasions.  I made the meat rub to add to burgers and I thought the version the recipe book had (add to ground beef and stone ground mustard) was quite tasty.  I would add just a little less rub than the recipe called for (1 Tbsp rub to 1 lb ground beef).  I used spicy brown mustard because that is what I had and I really liked the flavor it added. 
I made the pasta salad on a different day to take to a potluck event for mutual – I heard positive comments and it got eaten so that was a good sign.  Having said that I thought it was good but not my favorite.  I think it was just a personal choice – I prefer the more traditional type pasta salad. 
I finally got around to making the Berry Cobbler last night.  Again, it was good but not my favorite but my husband thought it was great – success!  I think I overcooked it and I would have liked it better cooked less.  I cooked it for 45 minutes and 35 might have even been enough so watch the cooking time.  I also thought it needed more berries – I used blueberries.

Rutter Kitchen-Grilled Chicken & Berry Salad & Berry Cheesecake Pops

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Here are all our pictures from our cooking night.  I started out making the Berry Cheesecake Pops the night before so that they would be ready in time.  They were pretty simple to fix.  I used a combination of all 3 berries suggested and that was a good flavor combo.  As you can see, I used little plastic cups and then poured in the ingredient layers and did the little swirl.  I then covered them with the plastic wrap that clings to anything, cut little slits in the top over the cups and stuck in the wooden craft sticks and in the freezer they went.  For the Salad we fixed all the ingredients and set them out and let everyone assemble their salads how they wanted them.  We also added some beef steak to the recipe and grilled that and the chicken on the stove top in a grill pan. Dana made the vinaigrette and said that it was simple to make.  I thought this was a fantastic salad.  I ate on it for days afterwards! The berries in the salad and then the berry vinaigrette were great together.  Everyone liked both recipes really well, so we will be making these again :)

New Recipes for July 21-27

Hello All, so sorry for being absent for a few weeks – vacations, reunions, sickness etc.  Time to get cooking again!  For this next week I have chosen:

Southwest Pasta Salad   84
All Purpose Meat and Veggie Rub   104
Berry Cobbler   125

I am planning on making hamburgers using the rub as a mix in and the pasta salad and cobbler sound like good side dishes/dessert to go along.  Hope you are all enjoying your summer.

New Recipe

Hi everyone!  I'm sorry this is getting to you all SO late!!  I just barely moved from TX to Utah (I already miss Leslee and Jenny SO much), so I have been very scatterbrained.

Since it's summer and nice and hot outside I wanted to make a weather appropriate meal.  So...

Grilled Chicken and Berry Salad pg 80

Berry cheesecake pops 124

I also saw the patriotic cupcakes on page 132 and thought they were cute but a lot of work.  I am not picking those but I thought I should point them out because they are so fitting this week and maybe some of you want to try them out. 

Happy cooking!!

Jenny's Chicken with Pineapple salsa and sweet chili

Well, I made this a couple of weeks ago, but summer has really slowed me down on blogging!  I am glad we have this week to catch up :)

We all really liked this chicken.  It had a lot of yummy flavors.  After reading Leslee's review I cut down on the curry a tiny bit.  Other than that I followed the recipe.  I ended up having to use canned pineapple, which was still good but I can imagine fresh would be really really good!  And I didn't get a chance to grill the chicken, which would add a different flavor as well.  I liked how colorful this dish was and it tasted very summer-y!

Leslee's Meals

We aren't big fish fans around my house so I substituted chicken in the fish stick recipe. It worked out well. I had to make a few more changes to make them gluten free. I just put some gf oats and rice chex in a food processor to make the bread crumbs. We ate our "chicken nuggets" with some delicious sweet potato fries (Alexia is our favorite brand). Everyone loved them!

 sorry they didn't really photograph great! 

The tandoori chicken and indian rice was another delicious meal. I marinated the chicken for most of the day and then grilled it on the bbq. The yellow rice was a favorite of Knox's. I thought it was good but the flavor wasn't as strong as I expected. Maybe I just needed to add more spices? All in all it was delicious and I will probably make this again! 

Jacki’s Tandoori Chicken and Indian Rice

I made these recipes last week – they were good!  I like curry flavor and these hit the spot.  I used chicken tenders instead of thighs and also used some tofu.  I marinated it all for 24 hours and the flavor was excellent in both the chicken and tofu.  I cooked it on a grill pan which was a little messy (marinate was thick) but oh, so flavorful.  The Indian rice was easy to prepare and was tasty as well. 

It looks like we don’t have a recipe(s) picked for this week yet so let’s just use it as a catch-up week and we will get something new posted for next week.  I still need to make the fish sticks.

Recipes for Week of June 16-22

Hello all, I am posting these recipe selections for Leslee – she is a little busy right now.  She has selected Grilled Tandoori-Style  Chicken  (94), and Indian Rice  (94).

Rutter's Kitchen-Baked Fish Sticks with Tartar Sauce

 Here's Dana prepping the fish

 Ashley & Dana finishing up prepping the fish

 Fish all ready for the oven

 Fresh out of the oven

 Johnny was our first taster :)

 Here's my plate

Our tasting group! We supplemented the meal with some popcorn shrimp, hush puppies, fries and broccoli.  We try to make our guys happy when we try new recipes ;)  We liked the fish and tartar sauce, but felt that the fish needed more seasoning, which will be easy to do.  We will probably try it again and see if we like it better then....  Dana whipped up some peanut butter cookies that were very tasty, but I forgot to take a picture :)

Rutter Kitchen-Sweet Chili Chicken with Pineapple Salsa & Peanut Butter Bars

 Here is the chicken being cooked in a grill pan.

Chicken all cooked up.

 Salsa on top and sauce on bottom.

 We tried the chicken etc... two ways.  This is using it in a salad shell with salad topped with sour cream.  That was pretty good.

 The second version is over rice.  I liked it this way the best! I thought that the chicken, salsa and sauce had really good flavors.  We used a fresh pineapple in the salsa and it tasted really good!

 Here's the Peanut Butter Bars.  We thought that they were really good, but the Oreo cookies did crumble and make a little mess, but we dealt with it ;) Here's our group.  Most really liked the recipes, but I do like Leslee's idea of trying the chicken without the curry, as that sounded good also. 



New recipe for the week of June 9th

Let's try the Baked Fish Sticks with Tartar Sauce (page 100) this week. 

Heidi's catch up

I have fixed a couple of recipes out of this new cookbook but haven't downloaded the pictures from my phone until recently. 
Here is our Sweet and Sour Chicken Stir-Fry.  We really enjoyed this and I don't believe that I made any changes to the recipe. 

 This is the Cheesy Tortellini Bake.  The kids really liked this meal. 

I have made this chicken before, several months ago, and we decided it was good but had too many different flavors in it. This time when I made it I left out the curry powder from the marinade but left everything else the same. We all thought it was really tasty! It is a pretty easy way to dress up grilled chicken!
I also made the beef enchiladas last week. We all enjoyed them but I do think I prefer their cheesy chicken enchiladas to these. I only used one can of enchilada sauce and it wasn't too spicy but did have a nice little zip to it:)
Jenny so nicely brought us some of her Peanut Butter Bars to try out. The kids loved these and they looked pretty! I agree with her that the oreos kind of ended up a mess as you tried to eat them.

Jacki’s Sweet Chili Chicken w/ Pineapple Salsa

I loved this recipe.  I like flavorful food and this dish didn’t disappoint!  The flavors were all spot on.  I marinated the chicken for a couple of hours and cooked it on a grill pan.  For the salsa I used canned pineapple because the fresh ones at the store didn’t look quite ripe.  The canned was good (and much easier) but I think the fresh would be even better.  I also omitted the cilantro because the store didn’t have any and again, it was very good without it but I like cilantro so it would be even better with it.  I diced up my red onion instead of slicing it – just sounded better that way for a salsa.  For the sauce – I heated it up before drizzling it over the chicken and salsa.  I served it over brown rice and it was perfect.  I was sad today when I polished off the last of the leftovers at lunch – yum!  The peanut butter bars look so good and I really want to make them but a whole batch of those alone with me in the house is just too risky:)  I will make them soon when I need to take a treat to a gathering or something.

Jenny's Enchiladas, Brazilian Cheese Rolls and Peanut Butter Bars

 On Tuesday I was finally able to make the enchiladas.  I also made the cheese rolls and the peanut butter bars.  It was a busy cooking day!  I had to take dinner to a girl that had had a baby and so I thought it was a good time to make all of these things...as I especially didn't want all of those peanut butter bars in my house!

The enchiladas went together pretty quickly.  I always think they are going to take forever and then don't make them very often, but then it's never that bad :)  I decided to do some with flour tortillas and some with corn tortillas.  I also decided to use cheddar instead of pepper jack to cut down on the spice.  And...actually I was a little short on some of the other spices too.  I need to pay more attention to their recipes when I am getting ready to grocery shop!  They are generous with a lot of their seasonings and I just always assume I have all of the spices I need.  Anyway, I was a little short on the chili powder and the cumin.

It made a ton of filling and I had lots left over.  We really liked the enchiladas!  Even  Avery scarfed one down, which shocked me because she is so picky.  She said they were a little spicy (they weren't IMO with the changes I made) but that she 'loved' them.  Who knew?!  My husband and I both liked the corn tortillas better than the flour tortillas.  The flour ones got a little soggy with the sauce and filling, but that could have just been that type of tortilla I was using.

The peanut butter bars, pictured in between the enchiladas, were good.  As I said, I have made them before using their blog version.  I actually prefer the blog version more.  In the blog they are the exact same except they don't have the oreo layer.  I didn't think the oreo layer really added anything to the dessert.  It was just crumbly and messy and I didn't like the texture.  Without the oreo layer it tastes much more like a Reeses peanut butter cup.  That being said, they were still yummy and nobody turned them away :)

And, our cheese breads.  I used both mini muffin and regular sized ones.  I mixed them by hand since my baby was asleep and I didn't want to wake him with the blender.  I am wondering if I over mixed them though because mine all kind of sunk in the middle.  Or maybe I didn't cook them long enough...?  These weren't my faves.  It was just kind of a texture thing for me.  But my husband thought they were tasty and my kids did too.  I have only had these one other time and it was so long ago I don't really remember whether I liked it or not!  They were just kind of chewy, but that definitely could have been my heavy hand with the whisk!

I'm hoping to get to the chicken this week before my fresh pineapple goes bad!

Rutter's Kitchen-Beef Enchiladas with Red Sauce and Brazilian Cheese Rolls

 Ashley  & Dana working on the Brazilian Cheese Rolls.

 Ready for the oven

 Beef Enchiladas fresh out of the oven

 Here's our meal ready to dish up! Ashley and Dana were having fun as usual ;)

Here's my plate of food.

We had a fun evening again fixing the recipes.  We used flour and corn tortillas for our enchiladas.  I had the corn and I thought that the enchilada was really good.  Good flavors, but the corn are a little hard to get out of the pan, at least for me.  We all worked on the enchiladas as there was chopping, simmering and assembling to do.  We had to double the recipe for our group.  Some liked the enchilada sauce on their enchiladas and some didn't.  After reading some of the reviews about the spiciness, we just used Colby and cheddar cheese and not the pepper jack.  I think that I would have liked a little pepper jack cheese in mine :) 

Dana and Ashley fixed the Brazilian Cheese Rolls.  Dana finally located the Tapioca Flour at a Health Food Store here in Sapulpa.  I couldn't find it at 2 of our local grocery stores.  They followed the recipe and did use the mini muffin pan to bake them in.  They were kind of a fun roll to fix as we hadn't had something like them before.  They were tasty and best fresh out of the oven.  We also served a tossed salad and black beans and rice with our meal.  Dana baked Banana Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies which were really good for dessert and of course we had our usual ice cream and strawberries.  I thought that they were tasty recipes, but my guys still prefer our usual beef enchiladas, as they aren't so rich. 

New Recipes for the Week of June 2nd

Hi ladies,

For this week I picked 2 recipes:

Sweet Chili Chicken with Pineapple Salsa-- pg. 96

and...

No-Bake Peanut Butter Cup Bars-- pg. 187

I hope the chicken is as delish as it looks in the picture!  I have made the peanut butter bars from their website a few times, but they have tweaked the recipe a bit for this cookbook, so I'm interested to see what I think about this version.

Jenny's Asian Lettuce Wraps and Spicy Noodle Stir-Fry

I made both of these recipes this week and thought they were both yummy! 

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the lettuce wraps, and I did take a picture of the noodles, but I am having some technical difficulties!

The lettuce wraps had a good flavor.  I was a little weirded out by the smell of the ground chicken when I was cooking it, but I got over it :)  My husband and I thought the wraps tasted pretty great and our kids were even brave and each had a couple of bites.  We must be making progress on our picky eaters here!  We had a ton of the filling left over, so the next night we had it over rice...which might sound different, but it was good!  

The stir-fry noodles were good too.  I ended up using twisty noodles, because I forgot to buy the linguine.  I know all noodles taste about the same, but somehow it was a little different using the twisty noodles.  Still tasted good, but I wish I had the linguine.  I did just as the recipe said and I thought the sauce had a really good flavor.  I added some of a rotisserie chicken to the noodles.  I probably like the Thai peanut noodles from their first book a bit better, but still thought this recipe was really tasty.  

I liked that both of these recipes were pretty healthy and light.