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.   

Since summer is on its way out lets get one more burger in with the BBQ bacon sliders with crispy shoestring onions on page 106 and a S'mores cupcake on page 131.

Question...

Hi ladies...and gents?? I have a question for all of you. I'm making the BBQ brisket this week and the recipe calls for a 4-5lb brisket and says the day before serving you bake it for 5 hours. At the store I went to the only brisket left was 2.6 lbs (which is still a lot of meat and perfect for my size family) so I bought it. I'm just going to half the recipe but does that mean I half the bake time???? I don't want to dry it out or anything. Did anyone try using less meat? Just thought I'd ask!

Jenny's BBQ Brisket and Key Lime Trifle

A few days ago I made the BBQ Brisket and the Key Lime Trifle.  They were both really yummy!

I did the BBQ Brisket just as the directions said.  I cooked it the day before and then made the sauce and reheated the meat the next day.  I don't always love BBQ sauce.  I don't like it if it's on the thick side and super sweet.  But this was a runnier sauce and not overly sweet so I thought it was really good.  I could even stand to have it a bit more spicy, but since I was making dinner for another family and I also wanted my kids to eat it, I didn't dare add more spice.  I don't know if my husband was super starving that night or what, but he said it was one of the best briskets he ever had!  I wondered about cooking the brisket with no liquid to begin with, but it turned out so moist and tender and there was quite a huge amount of drippings in the pan.  The brisket sliced up so nicely the next day.  I was very pleased with the outcome.  I did use yellow mustard instead of dijon.  I don't love the flavor of dijon and was worried it would be too strong.

I only made enough of the trifle to take to the other family, and so I just had a tiny taste of the lime part.  It was delish!  Yum!!  It is very, very similar (almost the exact same) as the recipe for Paula Deen's banana pudding, which is also delightful.  For whatever reason our Kroger's was completely out of heavy cream and I wasn't about to go to another store, so I just used cool whip in its place.  I also decided not to put the coconut in it in case they didn't like it.

I would make both of these recipes again for sure :)

New Recipes for the Week of Aug 18th

Hey ladies,

Sorry I have been MIA for a while.  We were out of town for a month visiting family.  So sad that summer is almost over!  But it will be good to get back to routine, and I can catch up on this blog!

I need to take dinner to a gal this week and so I picked a couple of recipes that make a lot of food and that are hopefully sort of kid-friendly:

Oven-Roasted Barbecue Brisket- pgs. 154-155

Key Lime Trifle- pg. 126

***Just a little note on the Brisket- I read through the recipe and for their recipe they want you to cook it the day before serving and then refrigerate overnight to prepare the next day.  Not sure how much it would affect the taste to just do it all in one day, but just plan accordingly I guess :)

****Okay, I just saw that the Key Lime Trifle was already picked.  Sorry!  I missed it when I was gone.  Maybe we can just do one new recipe this week and then catch up on some others...

Rutter Kitchen-Grilled Coconut-Lime Skewers, Peanut Dipping Sauce & Mango Rice

We started out by marinating our meat that morning.  I bought chicken breasts and shrimp to use.  We weren't sure if everyone would like the taste of the coconut milk, so we marinated a batch of the chicken in teriyaki sauce and a batch of chicken and shrimp in the recipe marinade.  That night, Ashley cooked up all the meat and  shrimp skewers which took awhile, but she stuck with it ;) I worked on the Mango Rice which was not difficult as it mostly just involved a bit of chopping and simmering.  Dana fixed the Peanut Dipping Sauce and that was also pretty simple.  I followed the recipe for the marinade and we marinated the meat for about 8 hrs.  We used a grill pan on the stove top, so it did take awhile to get all of the skewers cooked.  We compared the two varieties of the chicken and we did prefer the one with the teriyaki marinade.  We didn't find the recipe marinade very flavorful, so that was a surprise.  I'm interested to see other reviews on the marinade to see what all of you think of it.  Maybe we did something wrong.  The meat all got eaten though ;)  We all liked the Peanut Dipping Sauce.  Very tasty and not too peanutty! We wanted to make the Thai Spring Rolls also, but I couldn't find the rice paper wraps at my two grocery stores.  We'll keep looking though, as they looked very tasty.  I followed the recipe for the Mango Rice.  I used cilantro instead of parsley and that tasted good. I forgot green onions at the store so we didn't have those.  I thought that the rice tasted good, but I was surprised that it wasn't a stronger flavor.  Maybe the green onions would have helped with that.  It was fun to try the different recipes, but we they are probably not ones that we will cook again.... 

Rutter Kitchen-Fresh Tomato-Basil Pasta & Baked Zucchini Fries

It was my turn this week to pick the recipes, so I thought that we should use produce that was available this time of the year.  For the pasta sauce we used fresh peeled diced tomatoes. After thinking about it for a bit, we also ran them through the food processor, since we prefer that texture over the chunks of tomatoes.  It was a good choice for us we discovered. We followed the recipe except used thin spaghetti pasta instead of the angel hair pasta.  I will say that it took awhile to cook the sauce down so that it was thick enough.  I think that if you wanted to, you could use canned diced tomatoes, if you didn't want to mess with the fresh.  I fixed the meatballs from our cookbook authors previous cookbook, as our guys like a little meat with their meal ;)  We forgot to add the fresh basil at the end.  We'll just have to cook it again and try it :)  Ashley and Dana fixed the Zucchini fries and they followed the recipe, except we couldn't find any crumbly Parmesan cheese, so we just had to shred our Parmesan up real fine and that worked.  The fries were pretty simple to make and we liked the fact that they were baked and not fried.  Both recipes were a hit with everyone, so we will definitely be making them again!

New Recipes

Hello! I feel like I have been a bit MIA the last few months since we were out of town! I'm slowly catching up and will have lots of reviews to post this week. For the new recipes I chose the Mango Rice (118) and Grilled Coconut- Lime Skewers (90). They suggest using the leftovers for the Thai Spring Rolls (91) so I will go ahead and add that too. Hopefully that will be an easy one since everything is just about all made the day before.