Pinterest!

It's taken me a while, but I finally picked up on the Pinterest craze. Being an obsessive bookmarker with near several hundred recipes alone waiting for me to cook, it is just the thing to help me organize and, more importantly, visualize what I am planning on cooking. So far I have made several new recipes that I found via pinterest- some good, some not so good!

It's really a shame that I love to read blogs so much, but find myself so incredibly unmotivated to keep up with my own blogs!

I am trying to get back in the habit of meal planning and trying out new recipes more often. So far, so good. As I blog I will try to keep all the new recipes in a similar format. All of the recipes will have a link back to their original format. I will note modifications I made to the recipes below the original and post my thoughts on how it turned out. Here are a few for your reading- and tasting- pleasure!

Italian Crockpot Chicken

Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

"Baked" Potato Soup

Crockpot Cream Cheese Chili (coming soon!)

Corn Dog Mini-Muffins (coming soon!)

I also have a few fun recipes I cooked during the holidays that I will post soon also!

Italian Crockpot Chicken

Italian Crockpot Chicken

Ingredients:

2-4 frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts

1- 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese (let sit out to soften)

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 pkg. italian dressing seasoning (the dried kind in the packet)

Directions:

Stir the cream cheese, cream of chicken soup, and seasoning together in the crockpot. Cook for 30 min on low to let cream cheese soften and stir. Put chicken in and cover with the mix. Cook on high 4-6 hours until chicken is cooked and fall-apart tender.

Serve over rice, noodles, or mashed potatoes.

What I did different: I used boneless skinless chicken thighs (got a killer deal at BJs the other day- $1.49/lb!). They are on the smaller side so I think there were 8 total in mine. One can of soup looked like it just wasn't going to cut it with that much chicken (and my crockpot is pretty big) so I added an extra can of soup. I also opted out of the rice since it's not my favorite and used egg noodles instead. I modified the recipe above to also include mashed potatoes as a serving option. Sounds good to me!

How it turned out: Jason loved it! I thought that it was a bit on the salty side, but the noodles helped to cut it some. The chicken thighs were super moist and tasted great! When I make it again I'm thinking about using 1 can of cream of chicken and 1 can of cream of mushroom just to mix it up some. I may also cut back on the Italian seasoning some too- that is where a lot of the salty flavor came from I'm sure. I served it with steamed broccoli on the side. Looking forward to having this in our regular meal rotation!

"Baked" Potato Soup

Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

5 lbs. Russet Potatoes, peeled and chopped into cubes

1 lb. ham, cubed (air-sealed pkg. of cubed ham will work)

1 1/2 cup chopped onion

1 1/2 tsp. minced garlic

48oz. container chicken broth

1/4 cup butter

2 1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/4 tsp. pepper

1 cup whipping cream

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

Combine first 8 ingredients in large crock pot. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. Mash mixture until potatoes are coarsely chopped and soup is slightly thickened. Stir in cream

and cheese. Top with additional cheese and.or sour cream if desired.

What I did different: I used red potatoes with the skin on- for no good reason other than that's what we prefer! As for the ham- I am not a pork fan at all, but I knew that a lot of the flavor of the soup would come from it, so I used some ham TVP (textured vegetable protein) out of our food storage. The flavor was great, but the texture of the cooked "ham" was a deal breaker. In the future I will try it with turkey bacon or maybe some turkey ham. For my own future reference TVP has no place in the crockpot!

How it turned out: This recipe was a huge hit with Jason. He definitely has strong opinions about food so I was glad that he liked it! It was very thick and creamy- a nice hearty meal for a cold winter day. Ok, so it only got down to 40 that day- I'll take it as payback for the endless summer that plagued me up until the 41st week of my pregnancy :-) Will definitely make this one again!

Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

4-6 frozen chicken breasts

1 bottle Market Pantry (Target) Hawaiian BBQ Sauce

1 can crushed pineapple

Mix ingredients in crockpot and cook on low heat for 6-8 hours. Serve over rice.

The author of the blog that this pin came from originally has since deleted the post containing the recipe, but it was super basic and looked great so I decided to give it a try. We love chicken. We love BBQ sauce. We love pineapple. We did not love this recipe! I think there are 2 main reasons that this did not turn out well. In my crockpot experience I have learned that some BBQ sauces taste much better than others after slow cooking. In general honey and hickory sauces do better, while plain BBQ sauces tend to taste a little more "over-done" or almost a bit burned after 6+ hours of cooking.

This particular sauce had bits of fruit in the sauce- hence the "Hawaiian" label. It also had some kick to it which intensified greatly after its time in the slow cooker. The end result was a very moist and tender chicken, but the sauce had become a bitter, spicy, mushy disaster.

I will definitely try this recipe again, but will we use our tried and true Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce and will try pineapple chunks instead of crushed to make the sauce less mushy! Looking forward to giving it another go and seeing how it turns out next time. Cooking is always an adventure!