Idea Queen Tips & News

We tried out a fun new recipe the other night, and I just knew it was going to be a hit. My picky son still wouldn’t eat much of it, but I never know what he will or will not eat (his tastes seem to change by the hour, so don’t let that stop you from trying this!).

What you’ll need:
Boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1-inch strips
1 cup (8oz) sour cream
Garlic salt
Onion salt
Paprika (optional)
Potato chips, crushed

Take your sour cream and mix with spices in one bowl. Put your potato chips in another bowl. (For those familiar with making any kind of breading, the sour cream is the liquid part, and the potato chips are the coating). Warning - you WILL get messy. The original recipe says to “dip”, but you just can’t without getting your hands down in it. My suggestion is to drop in as much chicken as possible into the sour cream, get it coated, then drop them into the potato chips one by one.

Once coated, place them in a large baking dish that’s been greased. Drizzle with 1/4 cup melted butter. Bake for 30 minutes at 400*, or until chicken is no longer pink.

This was an AWESOME recipe that I’ll be using again!

My daughter loves to watch Food Network. Actually, she just loves food in general. At six, she’s informed me she wants to be a chef when she grows up, that is, if her pop star career doesn’t take off. He he.

I’ve been mulling this idea over for awhile, thinking I’d love to give her a head start on this career. It worries me a bit, since living in the middle of nowhere it’s not like we have a whole lot of opportunities for gourmet cooking. The closest we have to a fancy restaurant is Applebees and Red Lobster. Still, I think she might go far if given some encouragement.

I was poking around the other day, and came across a website called Spatulatta.com, which focuses on cooking with kids. They have videos and recipes, as well as fun things to make that encourages healthy eating. This is pretty important to us, since she is a little overweight (like I said, she loves food!).

I’m going to spend a little more time looking around the site, but I think this will be one site we visit often. I’ll be getting her more involved in the kitchen when I cook, in hopes that some day she’ll be a famous chef. Even if this career choice doesn’t hold until adulthood, cooking is still a great skill for anyone to have, and one very cheap, very useful hobby!

For Christmas I got a brand new kitchen toy - and I LOVE toys for the kitchen. An omelet maker! My kids were quite happy to see this, as previous attempts at making omelets were a bit sad. Out of all the things I can make in the kitchen, omelets just aren’t one of them.

But this little toy is just FANTASTIC. We tried it out for the first time last night, scrambling up four eggs and adding a few tasty ingredients (cheese, garlic salt, and cilantro……sounds a bit odd, but it was actually very good). I was just amazed how fast it cooked and how easy it was to slip them right out of the wells.

Now I like omelets alright, but in order to get full use out of this, I’m on the hunt for other ideas. I’m a bit nervous as this is meant for eggs, but I”m sure there are other things we could cook in it. I’m especially interested in using this along side our bread maker, such as with some type of dough mixed with breakfast goodies.

If you have an omelet maker, I’m open to ideas and recipes! For now though, I’ll be playing with different omelet recipes to see what I can come up with. After all, there is a hundred different ways to create an omelet.

Yesterday my daughter and I had planned to spend a day together cooking. We were going to watch the Food Network in the morning and find something tasty to make, then go to the store and pick up ingredients. The weather, unfortunately, had a different idea. When we woke up we were greeted to freezing rain, so had to change the original plan.

We did watch the Food Network as planned, but more for ideas on things we could create with what we already had in the house. When I saw someone making calzones, I knew those would be easy enough to tweek to our liking. Plus my aunt had given us a whole lot of pepperoni over Christmas (my uncle brought home 25 pounds of sliced pepperoni, so we ALL got some!).

I have no idea what the “real” recipe was on the Food Network, because I wasn’t paying attention. But here’s our version of it, which came out quite nicely.

First I grabbed our pizza crust recipe which is used with the bread machine. This recipe you can also make by hand, but requires you kneed it for 5 minutes then let rise for about 40 mins. I find it much easier to make in the bread machine on the dough setting.

In case you’ve  missed this recipe on the blog before, here’s my tasty pizza crust recipe:

Homemade Pizza Crust
3/4 c warm water
1 Tbl olive oil
1 Tbl brown sugar
1 tsp Italian seasoning (no garlic, yet, or it will not rise)
1 Tbl dry milk
2 1/4 c. white flour (we use unbleached)
1 tsp active dry yeast

Now usually this crust is suppose to be rolled out and baked for 5 mins at 425*, but I never do because we have what I call “mountain pizzas” and the crust gets too crispy because it needs to bake longer. When making the calzones, of course you don’t want to roll it out and bake it first. No, you’ll want to roll them out into little ovals instead, add your toppings then fold them up.

There were a few mistakes I made yesterday. First off, I only split the dough into 3 sections. I probably could have gotten 4 or 5 calzones out of that dough because it was pretty thick on the bread.

The second mistake I made was going by the original dough temp and cooking it for 20 mins. It wasn’t burnt by any means, but the crust was a bit crispy. So I would suggest knocking down the temp to 375* or 350* and still baking it for 20 mins. Probably less time if you have thinner crust.

Regardless of the minor mistakes I made, these were still pretty darn good. All we added for toppings was Italian diced tomatoes, pepperoni, cheese, and mushrooms. If you have a bigger family, the crust recipe can be easily duplicated to make more crust OR you can just make slightly smaller calzones. You probably want them good sized though or else it will be slightly difficult fitting in all the toppings, so I would suggest only splitting the dough into 4 pieces.

Enjoy!

I was at the store yesterday, trying to decide if I wanted to bake anything this year for Christmas. I really hadn’t planned on it, since my best friend is pregnant and not in the mood to bake. Last year we did the “big plates of assorted goodies”, which was fun with two of us, but I wasn’t about to do it alone.

Then I saw the chocolate almond bark.

Last year I made cookies & cream truffles, my ABSOLUTE favorite. They were somewhat of a pain, but ohhhhh so worth it. Basically you just take Oreos, crush them up, then mix with cream cheese. Roll them into little balls and freeze them, then heat up the chocolate almond bark and dip.

Actually they aren’t that hard to make, it’s just a matter of dealing with the almond bark which can be quite messy.

Now since I had this huge package of chocolate almond bark, I decided I might as well make some more chocolate covered stuff. This would include raisins, pretzels, and whatever else I can get my hands on that might taste good covered in chocolate (I tried dried fruit last year - not my best idea).

If you have any suggestions for what else might be good to dip, I’m all ears!

I’ve been pulling out recipes tucked away lately, deciding to try some new dishes. While some have been absolutely horrible, there’s been others which were really good with some tweeking.

A new favorite of ours is “Grilled B&T Sandwiches”. The original recipe title was Lasagna Sandwiches, but I have no idea how they thought it was anything like lasagna. This was more of a cheesy BLT, minus the lettuce. Either way the kids LOVED it!

What you’ll need:

Sandwich bread
Bacon
Tomato, sliced
Sliced Mozzarella cheese (I bought a brick and sliced it)
Sour Cream (about 1/2 c)
Onion (about 2 TBS, or one slice)
Butter

Mix the sour cream and onion together according to your taste. Spread on bread. Cook bacon and add at least 4 slices to each sandwich, followed by 2 slices of tomatoes and one slice of cheese. Butter the outside of the bread and cook in pan on med heat until cheese is melted (this part is similar to cooking a grilled cheese sandwich)

The original recipe had us melting the butter in the pan and then grilling the sandwiches, but the bread was much too soggy in some places. Best to cook it like you would a grilled cheese sandwich, putting the butter directly on the bread so it cooks right.

These were absolutely awesome, and we’ll be adding it to our regular recipes!

No worries, I’m not throwing any recipes on you. Nope, I think we all have enough for the time being. I don’t know where they all came from, but my drawer is absolutely stuffed with various meal ideas (and for some reason, an abundance of dessert recipes I will NEVER make).

That’s why I decided to do something last night that was long over due. I sat down with a small stack, pulling what I thought we might try over the next week or two. But I didn’t stop at just pulling out a few recipes - I wrote down a list of ingredients we would need as well.

See, this is how we get into a rut. When I go to the store, I rarely take a list. Most of our favorite recipes I know by heart, and can remember exactly what I need. For example, if I think “I’ll make pizza sometime this week”, I’ll pick up a few bags of cheese (even though we ALWAYS have some type of cheese on hand), pepperoni, and whatever else trips my trigger (sausage, hamburger, whatever…..based on what I feel like making). The crust I make and the sauce too, usually out of Italian diced tomatoes we always keep on hand as well.

Well, I’m tired of making the same thing. I’m also tired of picking up various meats (like chicken breasts), thinking “I’ll figure out something to make with this”. Not a bad idea, but I always end up making the same thing based on what we always have in the  house. *YAWN*

So that’s why I sat down last night and made a list. What’s funny is, I didn’t have to write down a whole lot of “extra” ingredients, since I already had a lot in my kitchen. But I’m excited to try these new recipes, and possibly share a few we liked!

It seems my pizza sauce changes every time I make homemade pizza. Am I being creative? Nope, just making due. Once in a great while I’ll have a “real” sauce to use, but most of the time I use what I’ve got in the kitchen.

Pizza Sauce #1
This might sound a little weird, but sometimes I use mild salsa or spaghetti sauce. It really is quite good to use spaghetti sauce, and I did this for quite a few years before I learned how to make homemade sauce. Just use it like you would normal pizza sauce!
Pizza Sauce #2
Italian diced tomatoes or tomato paste straight from a can is what we’ve been using the most lately. The Italian version is a chunky sauce you don’t have to add anything to, but the plain tomato paste needs a few spices (I use garlic salt, basil, and oregano). Just don’t make the mistake I made last night and add too much garlic salt! A tsp of each spice is more than enough.
Pizza Sauce #3
The completely homemade version that requires tomatoes. Cut up your tomatoes and mush them up as good as you can.  Add your tomatoes and spices in a sauce pan, then bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn the heat down to low and let simmer until you have a thicker paste. (The longer you boil it, the less juices you’ll have - I usually get tired of waiting and use it a bit on the chunky side).

So there you go! The next time you are making pizza and need sauce, you have several different options to chose from. Enjoy!

Last night for supper I was being a bit lazy. We had plenty of food, but everything I could have made seemed to be missing an ingredient or two (like tacos we can’t have without sour cream, which we had none of). So I had to do what usually I do best - improvise.

Having sausage and everything to at least make some rolls to use at the biscuits, I decided we could have biscuits and gravy. Only we didn’t have the gravy, and that’s a recipe I never have mastered. I dare not even try, I just know I’ll end up with a huge mess. So I had to substitute it with something. I just about used alfredo sauce, but just as I was reaching for it I spotted something better. Cream of Mushroom Soup.

Yup you heard me right, I used cream of mushroom soup as a gravy. After the sausage was cooked I just added it right to the pan with a little milk and flour to get it “just right”. Oh and of course a bit of salt & pepper. Add the pepper slowly though, that sausage adds a kick all by itself.

It was a slightly different biscuits and gravy recipe than we’ve had in the past, but still good just the same. Might be something we make again since it was actually pretty simple and uses stuff we have on hand most the time.

We call this particular recipe “Half spaghetti”, because it doesn’t use spaghetti sauce but it does use tomatoes. It’s almost like a very thin spaghetti sauce, which is why we call it “half”.

All you need to do is cook the spaghetti like you normally would, drain, then add a can of Italian diced tomatoes.  These cans are generally cheaper than spaghetti sauce, which is why this recipe is a cheap version of “real” spaghetti.

Enjoy!