French Onion Dip

Jason has been craving French onion dip recently- wait, isn't the pregnant spouse supposed to have the cravings? :-)  Instead of picking up my normal go-to Heluva Good dip I convinced him to let me make some for him to try.  I've made it before and he wasn't impressed, but this time I had a trick up my sleeve to hopefully please the man palate- bacon!  It worked! He has raved and raved over the dip since I made it and has asked me to make it again more than once.  It's super easy and cheaper than buying the pre-made stuff, making it a winner in my book.

French Onion Man Dip

Ingredients:
16 oz. sour cream (I prefer Daisy brand and I am not a fan of reduced/low-fat/fat free dairy products.  I'm willing to cut corners in other places to make up for it.)
1 packet Lipton French Onion dry soup mix
3-4 tablespoons of crumbled bacon (I used what we had leftover from salad toppings in the fridge.)

Directions:
Mix, grab your favorite chips, and dip away!

Note: May use a little less than the whole packet of soup depending on how onion-y you like your dip or increase/decrease the bacon depending on your preference.

Quick, tasty, and easy- the way I like everything in my kitchen!

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!

Tater Tot Casserole

Don't know why (could be my meat&potatoes kick), but recently I got a wild hair that I wanted to make a tater tot casserole. I had a rough idea of what I wanted it to consist of so I hopped online and started shopping around for recipes. I never found one that matched exactly what I was looking for so I slopped together some ingredients, made some compromises, and VOILA! When I say slopped together I mean it too- which is unfortunate for trying to re-create recipes sometimes. Even when using recipes I tend to ignore measurements and guesstimate and taste-test when possible. I will do my best to put this into recipe format.

Disclaimer: I never said that this recipe would be healthy or pretty. Tasty is what we are going for here. That is all :-)

Tater Tot Casserole

Ingredients:
1 lb. ground meat (turkey or chicken in our house)
4-5 dashes worcestershire sauce
1 can cream of mushroom soup
3-4 tbsp. sour cream
~1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1- 1 1/2 lbs. frozen tater tots (depending on size of baking dish)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees (or tater tot cooking temperature as directed on bag). Pull bag of tater tots out of the freezer and sit to the side while preparing casserole. Brown ground meat and add worcestershire sauce while cooking. After meat is done, set to the side. In a medium bowl combine soup, sour cream, and milk- whisk until blended well. Add meat to soup mixture and stir. Put meat/soup mixture in bottom of baking dish and spread evenly. For a thicker meat layer use a 8x8 dish. Sprinkle grated cheese on top of meat. Top with tater tots- spread out so they do not touch, about 1/4-inch apart. Bake for ~25 minutes, a few minutes longer if you want your tots crispier.

Serve with green beans or peas for a complementary green veggie!

Note:
If cooking for more people or if you want more leftovers, double amount of meat and increase soup mixture by 50%. If using a rectangular baking dish amount of cheese and tater tots will not need to be increased.

Tomato Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

olive oil
butter- if you're feeling naughty :-)
1 medium onion
garlic to taste
sea salt
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1 can tomato sauce
~1 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Heat olive oil in pan. Add a smidge of butter to hot oil if desired (if you use salted butter, omit sea salt from recipe). Add onions to oil, add garlic (I used granulated garlic) and saute on medium until onions are soft. Add diced tomatoes and saute for 2-3 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low and add tomato sauce and cream. Simmer on low to medium-low heat for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

Serve over tortellini, or toss with your favorite pasta. I like whole wheat pasta in a shape that really grabs the sauce like a rotini or fusilli.