Week 3 - Giants vs. Eagles plus Ben's Birthday Continues!!

Today is going to be a big day of food!  We have company visiting and we are also celebrating Ben's 30th birthday, so I am making him lots of food for football today!!!  I will update this as we go ...hope you are hungry!

Our day started with breakfast....and I made waffles on my waffle maker.  This is not much of a recipe to share, but I always use my blender to blend the ingredients together. We topped our waffles with strawberries and it was delicious!

My next task was to make guacamole.  Ben brought home an avocado from work and I've always wanted to make guacamole.  I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com that looked easy http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/guacamole/detail.aspx

I used my mini food processor to chop up the onions, tomato and cilantro.  I left it in the fridge for a little over an hour to get cold.  I served it with lime flavored tostitos and pita chips. I will definitely make this again!

For dinner, I used another crock pot recipe that has become a fast favorite of ours.  I got this recipe from Flavors by Four, which they adapted from Tasty Kitchen Blog http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/main-courses/hawaiian-bbq-pulled-chicken-sandwiches/. I followed this recipe a bit differently - Cook on high (8 hours) or low (4 hours). At the end of those times, take out the chicken and shred it with a fork.  Then put the chicken back in the crock pot to soak up the juices for at least 30 minutes.  Serve as a sandwich or you can also try it over rice.

For a side dish with dinner, I made my mom's famous cole slaw.  This is one of the EASIEST recipes ever and it tastes YUMMY!! You need 1 bag of shredded cabbage, 1/4 cup of white vinegar, 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of mayonnaise - add this all together and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. I some times let it stay in the fridge over night too, which is fine as well. Feel free to add raisins or other things you may like to the cole slaw as well and enjoy!

The other side dish was onion roasted potatoes. This recipe we got from Lipton - we used 1 envelope Lipton® Recipe Secrets® Onion Soup , 4 medium all-purpose potatoes, cut into large chunks (about 2 lbs.) and 1/3cup vegetable oil. Toss all ingredients together and bake at 425 for 35 minutes or until potatoes are tender. They were yummy!

The finished dinner product - Voila!!!

Fall is here! Week 2 Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken with Biscuits

I picked this recipe because it reminded me of chicken pot pie, which we LOVE.  We usually just buy the boxed version and throw it in the oven on nights that we don't have time to cook.  This recipe looked easy enough so I figured it would be great to try for Sunday Funday!

I found this recipe on Real Simple.com; Here is the link http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/slow-cooker-creamy-chicken-with-biscuits-00000000052389/index.html

I made a few alterations to the recipe.  If you haven't figured it out by now, I like recipes that are EASY :)  Instead of using chicken thighs, I picked up some chicken tenderloins at the store since they are always cheaper. I omitted the onions and celery and just started with carrots and flour (I put the carrots and flour in a plastic bag to toss so that they were coated evenly).  I placed the full tenderloins on top of the carrots and added the seasonings.  I had a small amount of pinot grigio left in the fridge, so I used that for the wine. 

After about 2.5 hours on high it started bubbling so I turned it down to low since I wasn't planning on eating for another 2 hours.  I made the biscuits using Bisquick, but may try the frozen ones next time.  I added the cream, peas and a can of corn to the chicken about 20 minutes before I planned on serving dinner.  The chicken was so soft it just fell apart!

I used a bowl and placed biscuits at the bottom and topped it with the chicken and vegetable mixture. Then I topped it off with more biscuits.

It was really tasty!!  I will definitely make this again!!!

September 11 - Opening Day!

I can't believe football season is really here! This years season will be even more enjoyable now that we are living in our new home with our awesome kitchen!  I had some help with today's meal from my friend's food blog - "Flavors by Four."  I took her recipe for Slow Cooker Chicken & Bean Chili and made it my own http://flavorsbyfour.blogspot.com/2011/01/slow-cooker-chicken-bean-chili.html.  To start, Ben doesn't like any types of beans (they just aren't his thing), so I only included peppers, tomato and corn with the chicken.  I followed the recipe until I got to the part where I had to add brown sugar.  My brown sugar was not working with me to well, so I skipped that step and hoped it wouldn't make a big difference in the taste of this dish.  Instead of shredding the chicken before serving I just cut it up into smaller pieces for easy eating.  I served this delicious recipe over rice and topped it with shredded cheddar cheese. 

Stay tuned next week to see what we come with!