Chicken and Stuffing with a Creamy Sauce

Another one of those comforting dinners. It just can't go wrong and everyone always devours it! At least that's how it is here. Comfort foods always make for the perfect meal. I should really make more of them! haha!

Chicken and Stuffing with a Creamy Sauce
1 box chicken flavored stuffing mix
1 1/2C water
1/4C butter, melted
8 boneless skinless chicken thighs or as many chicken tenders needed to feed your family
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/3C sour cream

make stuffing mix with hot water and butter, set aside. In another pan add a pat of butter and brown the chicken. It doesn't need to be cooked through, just browned.
In a small bowl, mix soup and sour cream. Pour over chicken. Top with stuffing and cook for 10-15 minutes until chicken is cooked through and sauce is bubbly! Serve with your favorite veggie and homemade rolls or bread! YUM!!!!!!!

HAPPY EATING!!!!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Bars

If you get Kraft foods Food and Family magazine then you have this recipe. If you don't.....hold your horses you are in for a TREAT!!!!!!
These little bars are rich, and DIVINE!!! I made these almost immediately after getting the magazine. So yum!!! (I am substituting what I used in this recipe instead of what the recipe suggested)


Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Bars
1 pkg devils food cake mix
1 pkg (3.9 oz) chocolate fudge instant pudding
1/2C melted butter
1/2 C cold whole milk
2 Hershey's plain candy bars, chopped and divided
1 C chunky peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350. Spray 13x9 in pan with cooking spray. Mix first 4 ingredients in bowl. The mixture will be thick. Press half the cake mix mixture into prepared pan.

Bake 10 min. Sprinkle half of the chocolate on top of cake mixture. Top with peanut butter. Cover with remaining cake mixture and chocolate.
Press gently with spatula. Bake 15 minutes. Cool 1 hour. Refrigerate 4 hours before cutting into bars.
This needs to stay in the fridge after it bakes so just be prepared with room to store it.

HAPPY EATING!!!!

Homemade Poptarts

Who doesn't love Pop Tarts?????? It's a family favorite around here. We could go through a box in one sitting. Love all the flavors. However, we are trying to scale the ole' grocery bill back a bit and unless I have a killer coupon and there's a killer sale, we just don't get them like we used to. Soooooo I pondered how I could make them on my own. I stumbled upon this recipe and here you go:


Homemade Poptarts

• 1 box refrigerated pie crust-can use the whole thing or just one crust - I just used 1 this time around

• your favorite jam or jelly (I used raspberries preserves)

ICING (completely optional but we prefer the iced poptarts anyway so why not go the whole 9 yards!!!)

• Milk

• a few tsp of Powder Sugar

• Colored jimmies

Unroll each pie crust, roll out on a floured surface and then square them off, cut them into equal size rectangles. I was able to get 5 rectangles and 1 half moon shaped poptart out of my crust. Place about 1 tsp. - 1 tbs. of jam or preserve in the center of a rectangle and spread out, stopping just before the edge.

Place another piece of dough on top and using a fork, crimp the edges together to form a tight seal.

Place all of the pop tarts onto a well greased baking sheet and cook at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until golden and crispy. Let them cool before glazing. When the pop tarts are ready to be glazed mix the sugar with enough milk to make a thick glaze, spoon it over the top of each tart and sprinkle with the colored jimmies.

Crock Pot Orange Chicken

I found this recipe for Orange Chicken in the crock pot and thought I'd tweak it to our liking. The house smelled ssssoooooo good all day. This is the perfect lazy day dinner. Not much prep to do, which makes it perfect!


Orange Chicken crock Pot Style
2 pounds boneless chicken, cut in 2-inch chunks 1C flour for dredging chicken 2 large stalks fresh broccoli 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped 1 large onion, chopped in large sections 2/3 can frozen oj (no pulp) concentrate 4 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tsp soy sauce 4 tablespoons ketchup Coat the chicken pieces with the flour, and shake off the excess. Heat oil in a large skillet on the stove and brown the chicken on all sides. No need to fully cook it, just sear it enough for the flour to stick and get a nice coating. 1-2 minutes on each side. Once chicken is all cooked place in slow cooker. Add broccoli, carrots and onions.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the orange juice concentrate, brown sugar, soy sauce, and ketchup. Pour sauce mixture evenly over the chicken, and toss to coat. You can add extra juice concentrate if it's not sweet enough for you. I found that 2/3 can was perfect but to each his/her own! :O) Cover and cook on low for 6 hours, or on high for 3 to 4. Serve over white or brown rice. Mine cooked for approximately 4.5 hours on low and it was perfect. Depends on your crock pot. Check it after 4 for doneness if cooking on low and 2 if cooking on high.

We served this with pastry that I cooked in a bit of chicken stock and soy sauce. We have a ton of it in our food storage so I decided to use that instead of the rice that would normally be served with this. I seriously had to stop myself from eating the whole thing....it WAS that good!! Hope you enjoy!!

HAPPY EATING!!!

last minute lunch idea

For lunch today the youngest wanted the same ole boring bologna sandwich. That really wasn't tempting me all that much so I headed over to the pantry to see what would entice me. I saw that I had some tuna and decided to make a tuna salad sandwich. I realize most folk know how to whip out one of these but I just thought i'd share my little tweak on it today. Turned out yum and there's even some left for chip dipping later on!!

Curry Tuna Salad Sandwiches
1 egg hard boiled
1 can tuna in water, drained
pickle relish (as much as you like, I just dumped some in)
mayo
shredded cheddar cheese
salt and pepper
curry powder
garlic powder

place egg in bowl and smoosh (yes that's a technical term hahaha)in a bowl with a fork. add relish and tuna. add mayo and cheese and mix. add spices, as little or as much as you like. i just added until it tasted right. serve on whole wheat bread with spinach and viola, easy peasy lunch with a tweak!!!!

HAPPY EATING!!!!!

Fresh Black Been Salsa

Last night we went to a good bye party for a friend who is heading out to TDY at Ft. Hood. (for all you non-military folk TDY is temporary duty). He'll be gone for 2 1/2 months. So his wife through a little party for him. She asked everyone to bring something. So I made some fresh black bean salsa. The only problem with it was that I accidently grabbed the original Rotel instead of the mild. Soooo it was a bit spicey, for me anyway. The husband thought it was great. I ate a bunch of it, but paid for it later by having to sleep sitting up. Oh well, it was totally worth it. So yum!!!

Fresh Black Bean Salsa
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cans Rotal (mild unless you like it spicey), drained
1 roma tomato, cut up
1/2 red onion, chopped
a bunch of cilantro (use as little or as much as you like, me likey a lot so I added more than the average person probably would have)
2 green onions, chopped
2 generous squirts of lime juice



Mix everything together except green onions. Place in bowl and set in fridge for 2 hours. Just before serving top with green onions. The longer is sits, the better it gets!

YUM!!!!!!!!!!

HAPPY EATING!!!

Blueberry French Toast Bake

Tonight I wanted to do breakfast but we were all getting tired of waffles and pancakes. I knew we hadn't done french toast in a while so I thought we could do this. However.....tonight was opening night for college football and there was a BYU game on tv. I didn't want to spend all night in the kitchen over a hot stove making french toast. So I decided to do a french toast bake. I also happened to have blueberries in the freezer. And here you go!!! Breakfast for dinner and a picnic in the living room watching BYU play Oklahoma.


Blueberry French Toast Bake
1 whole wheat french bread loaf, sliced and stale
8 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
big dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
1C blueberries

In bowl, whisk the milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Cut bread into 1/2 inch slices and spread on bottom of 8×8 baking dish or equivalent.

Pour egg mixture over bread. Let sit for 30 minutes so the bread can soak up the custard.

Preheat oven to 350. Sprinkle with blueberries. Bake 35-40 minutes, until golden brown on top and eggs have cooked through. (Mine cooked about 38 minutes to perfection!!!!)

2 of the 3 having fun watching football!


HAPPY EATING!!!!

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

I got a hankering for some chocolate the other night and made some "catch-all" brownies. No pictures....they went really fast, sorry!!!! But I will say they were delish and ooey and gooey and super yummy!!!!

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Brownies
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup boiling water
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 bag semi sweet chocolate chips (mixed with a tbsp flour to keep them from dropping to the bottom of the pan)
1 bag mini reeses peanut butter cups chopped into fourths


Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.

In a large bowl, stir together the cocoa and baking soda. Add 1/3 cup vegetable oil and boiling water. Mix until well blended and thickened. Stir in the sugar, eggs, and remaining 1/3 cup oil. Finally, add the flour, vanilla and salt, mix just until all of the flour is absorbed.
Add chocolate chips and fold into batter.

Spread evenly into the prepared pan.

top with chopped reeses peanut butter cups.

Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool before cutting into squares.


These will satisfy ANY craving!!!!! Perfect-served with a glass of nice cold milk!!!

HAPPY EATING!!!