Chicken and Broccoli Noodle Casserole

I don't know much about casseroles. My mom wasn't really into making them. We were more of a meat, starch and veggies as separate entities kind of family. But when Paul announced that he really loved broccoli I knew I needed more recipes that incorporate broccoli.
When I came across this recipes on Skinny Taste I knew I had to give it a try.

Chicken and Broccoli Noodle Casserole

 6 oz egg noodles
2 tsp oil
4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
12 oz fresh broccoli florets, chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 medium shallot, minced
3 tbsp all purpose flour
1-3/4 cups fat free chicken broth
1 cup 1% milk
12 oz cooked shredded chicken breast
4 oz shredded reduced fat sharp cheddar
cooking spray
3 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese
2 tbsp seasoned breadcrumbs

Cook noodles in salted water until al dente, or slightly undercooked by 2 minutes. Set aside.

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add garlic and cook on medium heat until golden, about 1 minute. Add the broccoli and a little salt, sauté and cover the broccoli for about 3 minutes on medium heat until the broccoli begins to soften. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375°. Lightly spray a 9 x 12 casserole dish with cooking spray.

In a large pot, heat butter over medium-low heat, when melted add the shallot and cook until soft, 2-3 minutes. Add the flour and a pinch of salt and stir well, cooking an additional 2-3 minutes on medium-low heat.

Slowly whisk in the chicken broth until well combined over medium heat; whisk well for 30 seconds, then add the milk and bring to a boil. Simmer on medium heat, mixing occasionally until it thickens (about 6-7 minutes). Remove from heat and add reduced fat sharp cheddar and 1 tablespoon of the parmesan cheese; mix well until the cheese melts.

Add the shredded chicken, noodles and broccoli to the sauce and mix well until evenly coated.

Pour into a casserole dish and top with parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs. Spray a little more cooking spray on top and bake for about 20 - 25 minutes. Place the casserole under the broiler a few minutes to get the crumbs crisp and golden (careful not to burn).

This is another recipe that I love to use the crockpot shredded chicken that I mentioned in my previous post. The hardest part of this recipe is making the cheese sauce. Once you get that trick down its a breeze. Its an easy, hearty, healthy and tasty weeknight meal.

If you had some non-broccoli fans in your house you might try swapping it out for some peas or green beans. Or maybe even spinach. Every vegetable tastes better smothered in a cheese sauce!

So ditch the cream of whatever casserole starter and cook up something fresh for your family and yourself!

Southwest Chicken Chili Mac

Back when I first started browsing pinterest I was mostly into finding ideas for dinners. Now I have a whole folder full of ideas for food stuffs and another full of ideas for sweets. I love moving a pin from one of those folders into my "tried" folder.
One of the reason I made a "tried" folder was so that I could remember that I loved this recipe for Southwest Chicken Chili Mac. I was so easy and tasty I knew that I had to put it on my list of things to make again and again.

Southwest Chicken Chili Mac
by Picky Palate

8 ounces wagon wheel pasta noodles (I have also used just macaroni noodles)

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 cup finely chopped white onion
1/2 cup finely chopped sweet peppers (or bell peppers)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 cups cooked shredded chicken breast
10 ounce can Rotel diced tomatoes, mild
1 1/2 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup corn, fresh or canned
1/2 cup white beans, drained and rinsed
1 Tablespoon chili powder
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dry Ranch seasoning from packet
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
cheese for topping

1. Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and run under cool water to stop cooking. Heat oil in 9 inch deep cast iron skillet. Add onions and peppers, cook stirring until softened about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook stirring for 1 minute. Add chicken, tomatoes, broth, corn, beans, 1 cup wagon wheel pasta, chili powder, cumin, Ranch seasoning and cilantro. Stir until well combined. Reduce heat to low and simmer until ready to serve.

It might look like a lot of ingredients but they are all pretty common, low cost items.

Another tip for this post is a how to make the shredded chicken for this meal. Throw a few thawed or frozen chicken breasts in your crockpot cook on low 6-8 hours. You can add spices like cumin, garlic powder or chili powder too. Then shred with a fork. So easy.
Sometimes I'll plan to make this and another meal that requires shredded chicken in one week, that way I can cook up a few breasts at once and then have the protein ready to go.

This meal is differently an easy crowd pleaser. Try it for kids or even some picky adults.
This post is reminding me how much I like this recipe. I might just have to put this on the menu for next week! Enjoy!

Bacon egg muffin

So just for fun a few Sunday mornings ago I decided to combine a couple of ideas from pinterest and make a special breakfast for Paul. I made a concoction that I am dubbing a Bacon egg muffin.
I unfortunately did not write down any specific measurements for this recipe. Mostly because I was just playing around in the kitchen.

Bacon egg muffin

Bisquick mix
milk
2 slices bacon, cooked and cut up
2 scrambled eggs
cheese

Cook bacon and scramble eggs. Chop up bacon and let the bacon and eggs cool a bit.
Use the instructions on the Bisquick box to make drop biscuits. I made them a bit thinner by adding a little extra milk. Pour into a greased cupcake tin. Top with the eggs, cheese and a few bits of bacon.
Bake them per Bisquick instructions. Just keep an eye on them. Remove from tin and serve warm.

They were so cute and tasty. My batch made six. So we each got three which was a pretty big portion.
This recipe would be really fun for overnight guests in the morning. Especially if they are hitting the road as soon as they get up.
I actually forgot the cheese but I want to add it the next time I make these.

You could modify these in lots of ways. Syrup for more of a pancake muffin. Or salsa and spicy cheese for a Mexican muffin.
Why not give it a go? I love to play around in the kitchen. Sometimes that's where the best recipes come from.
Breakfast is a fun and easy meal to cook. The only problem is waking up early enough to make anything before lunch!

Succulent Braised Pork

Way back in January my sister came all the way from Oakland, CA to a conference that she goes to every year that happened to be in Charleston this year. I was super excited to be able to spend some sister time together and have her see our place. I didn't know how much I was really going to see her since she did have a conference to go to after all. On the last day she was giving a presentation so I knew with all that she would be pretty busy. Just in case she had time to eat with us, I planned a few what I would call "special meals" that I would be excited to share with a guest or a sister that I never get to cook for. One of these recipes was for a braised pork shoulder which just happened to be on sale at the grocery that week.

Succulent Braised Pork
by Melissa d'Arabian

2 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 6 large chunks
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup red wine
1 1/2 cups beef stock or broth
1 bunch parsley stems, tied with string
2 bay leaves
1 cup water

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Pat the pork dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper.

In a large Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat, and working in batches brown the meat on all sides until a golden crust forms. Transfer the pork to a plate. To the pan add the onion, celery, and carrot and sweat until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic and sweat another 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 3 minutes to cook off the raw flavor and caramelize it. Sprinkle with the flour and cook another 2 minutes to cook off its raw flavor. Whisk in the wine and reduce it by half. Return the pork to the Dutch oven, then stir in the beef stock, parsley stems, and bay leaves. Add the water if liquid does not come up to the top of the pork. Do not cover the pork with liquid. Cover the pan and place it in the oven to braise until the meat is fork tender, about 3 hours. Taste and season with more salt and pepper, if needed. Transfer to a serving platter and serve.

Sorry this picture is so lame. But I was so excited to eat the pork I totally forgot to take the picture till there was only one bite left!

This meat is so tender and packed with flavor. I like to serve it with some roasted potatoes or mashed potatoes, something to soak up the delicious juices that are left in the pot.

If you need a special meal for a special guest try this one. Or just in the mood to make something tasty for yourself. It is a slow cooking kind of meal, I would suggest making it on your day off. But it is worth the time. If you can handle smelling tasty pork all day, then go for it!

Strawberry Cheesecake Bites

All right I know that pinterest is old news by now. But as I sit here and obsessively pin things I realized that I had several new recipes to post. I figured even though I have been busy/lazy with my blog its never too late to post. I wanted to get the ball back rolling with an idea I found on pinterest.

I saw these before Paul's birthday and I just knew this had to be the first thing I tried from pinterest. With strawberries coming into season in the lowcountry and Paul loving cheesecake.

Strawberry Cheesecake Bites
by SugarDeby via pinterest

1 carton of strawberries
8 oz pkg softened cream cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 sleeve of graham crackers, crushed

Wash, cut off the top of the strawberries and then core them out. Be sure to take out enough of the core to get a healthy amount of the cheesey filling inside.
For the filling: Beat the cream cheese. Add powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth.
Fill the strawberries: Use a piping bag or a zippy bag with a corner cut off. Pipe them nice and full and dip them in the crushed graham crackers.

 

Mine aren't that pretty but they were a big hit at his birthday get together. We were all stuffed full of strawberries and cheesecakey filling. They might look like small bites but between a few people it was a lot of dessert!

This pin was honestly a little laborious for me. (But I was happy to do it for Paul.)

So if you haven't checked out pinterest yet or your trying to decide if its worth signing up. Do it! They are some great ideas and its an awesome way to keep all of your ideas organized. I have a whole "board" full of ideas that I have tried, that way I don't lose the information so I can try it again and again.

Baby Shower Gift Ideas - Diapies!

So first off sorry for the unintended and unwanted hiatus from posting. But don't worry just because I have not been posting my crafting and cooking definitely does not mean that I have been idle finding and producing new ideas.

I think the first I would like to share is some excellent ideas for a baby shower gifts. (I also have another idea in progress, thanks to my mom, that I will hopefully complete soon.)

The first one I can take no credit for, my friend Jessica made these for her first baby. Probably because she couldn't find any burp clothes that were stylish enough for her little boy. Plus she is an insatiable crafter just like me!

These are what she named "Diapies"! Because they are made from pre-fold cloth diapers.

This whole process could not be simpler and more fun!
(Well picking out the fabric is my personal favorite part.)

I asked the mom to be what her nursery or baby colors or pattern preferences were. She told me "cupcakes, butterflies, pink and ponies". So this is what I came up with...

12 diapies with 3 patterned fabrics. I even remembered to laundry them before I gift wrapped them!

This is a view of them unfolded to show you how huge they are! Big enough to protect any shoulder from the occasional to not so occasional post feeding spit up. Trust me they were very well tested with my friend's baby and they work awesome. And not just for burp clothes but the random spill cleaner upper or make shift bib even. I'm sure there are tons of uses but that is all I can come up with at the moment...

Sure you could just buy the pack of pre-fold diapers and call them diapies, but without that extra cute fabric touch its just not the same.

I promise its an easy sew.

• Just cut the fabric the same with width and shape as the middle of the pre-fold with an added 1/4" sew allowance around all sides. 
• Iron under all the edges.
• Sew a straight or even zig-zag sew all the way around. 

This is so easy that its gets tedious after the first five, then its just like an assembly line production.

This will not be an unwanted gift. Even a first time mother will appreciate the need for a good set of burp clothes. And no one else will have brought any quite like it. Even if you have super crafty friends, the chances of picking the same fabric are almost 0%, really.

But I'm not done yet! I bought an extra pattern of fabric, because it was so darn cute, while getting fabric for the diapies. Then I suddenly realized, "What am I going to do with this?!"

I searched the internet and etsy even pinterest looking for ideas. Then standing in a craft store I remembered seeing a project on Little Miss Momma a while back featuring a fabric memo board. Okay I can do this. Trying to remember what I need from looking at this post about 3 months ago, I bought corkboard and ribbon and found a few cute buttons in my stash. When I actually looked up the post, it was not at all how she made it, so from there is became my own creation.

• I hot glued the fabric onto the corkboard.
• Then I crisscrossed the ribbon also securing with hot glue. 
• Then the buttons, yes I also hot glued them. 

It doesn't quite work for a plush memory board, but it is a corkboard so tacks will work. (Even though I felt silly saying it, I did warn the mom to be not to put this near the baby's crib, between the buttons and tacks I didn't want to harm her first born.)

Also I used a different color of the same patterned fabric to make her name in plush letters. 

• I just chose a font on Word that I liked.
• Printed the letters nice and big and cut them out.
• And used that as a template to trace onto the wrong side of the fabric. 
• Finally I sewed and stuffed like any old plushie.

Another cute idea would have been to make the whole alphabet in plush letters but after these three projects I ran out of time till the baby shower.

So I gave you not 1 not 2 but 3 ideas for do it yourself baby shower gifts. I expect you people to get out there and start sewing for your mom and dad to be friends!

Or at least appreciate these cute ideas and smile when you look at the adorable fabrics.

Jalapeno Chicken

This dish is infamous among our group of friends here in Charleston. There is a restaurant called Madra Rua where they serve as one of their daily specials Jalapeno Chicken.

I had heard about this for weeks when we first moved here last year and finally demanded to be let in on the Jalapeno Chicken secret. It was an experience I will never forget, especially the time one of my friends ordered extra cheese and they brought it to her in a small soup bowl! (Once you read though the recipe you might gather an understanding of why this is so disturbing.)

Anyway I made it one night after having leftover cheese dip I made for a party and it was a big hit. I think I was able to capture the general spirit of the dish with my rendition. I just had to write up the recipe and share it. Hopefully some of you out there will be able to enjoy the awesome that is Jalapeno Chicken for yourselves now!


Jalapeno Chicken

Cheese sauce:
1 block of velveeta
can of rotel, tomatoes and chiles
1/4 lb. ground beef
cumin, to taste
cayenne, to taste
paprika, to taste
salt and pepper
sliced pickled jalapenos

Chicken:
chicken breasts
salt and pepper
olive oil
cooked rice


Add velveeta to crockpot, allow to melt then add the rotel.
While cheese is melting saute ground beef in pan with tablespoon of oil. Allow meat to brown while breaking into small pieces. (A good trick is to add a 1/4 cup of water to the meat. That helps break up the meat really small which is ideal for the dip.) As it browns add seasonings, cumin, cayenne, paprika and salt and pepper. After it browns drain off any oil, then add to cheese mixture. Then add jalapenos. Mix well.

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Either grill or saute chicken breast with oil olive.

Lay down a bed of the cooked rice, then cooked chicken breast, finally spoon on cheese mixture.