AWESOME Recipe Website!

So I just discovered SuperCook.com and I'm HOOKED! It's the best thing since sliced bread! Ever found yourself with nothing planned for dinner and no idea what to make with what you have in your pantry/refrigerator? Yeah....me too.

Well this is our answer to this problem! All you do is enter the ingredients that you have on hand and it will automatically search tons of recipe websites and collections and tell you what you can make! The more ingredients you enter, the more results you get!

When I started I put in that I had chicken, goat cheese & sun-dried tomatoes and POOF! It suggested a "Goat Cheese & Sun Dried Tomato Stuffed Chicken" recipe that sounds DELISH!

I also LOVE that it saves your "ingredients" that you enter for each time that you log on. You don't have to keep reentering your "staple" items every time because it remembers what you had before!

Other recipe websites {such as allrecipes.com} have the ingredient search option BUT they don't search other websites too. This is the first one I've seen that searches multiple sites for you.

I'm super excited about this new discovery! What a great website!

What's for Dinner? 1/7/2010

Venison Chili a la Alex
Alex just made up the recipe for this and he's too lazy to type it up, so sorry about that. He says he might be willing to give it out by request. :)

And more "Communion Cornbread"

And "Layers of Love Brownies" are cooling as we speak for dessert.

Perfect football watching food. ROLL TIDE!**

**Please note, I know I "should" probably cheer for University of Texas since they are also in the Big 12 and they are also from Texas. But....I can't. It just goes against every bone in my Aggie born, raised and graduated body. My apologies (but not really). :)

What's for Dinner? 1/6/10

Crockpot Pork Stew served over Brown Rice
This recipe is a bit more work than I normally like for crockpot recipes. Crockpot recipes to me should be "throw in the pot and go" so it annoys me when they require you to brown off the meat first or saute the veggies first. However, my husband is still on block leave after his deployment so he had the time to do all the prep work today.

I do have a sneaking suspicion that you could skip the steps of browning the meat and sauteing the veggies {if you're really lazy like me}. I think if you upped the cooking time to 8 hours on low the veggies would soften enough and the raw meat would brown. I'm going to try it next time we make it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Also, next time we'll use a different cut of pork. The boneless pork butt that we had in the deep freeze was just waaaaayyyy too fatty for our liking. Plus, the slow cooking of the meat means that you can still get the tender, juicy meat factor even with a super lean cut of meat, like tenderloin.

To wrap it up, this was a great stew for a cold night and we'll definitely make it again {with the aforementioned changes to the recipe}.



"Communion Cornbread"
FYI, if your cornbread mix package expires in 2008 and it is now 2010, it will not "be fine" like you and your husband think it will. It will instead look like this:And your husband will dub it "Communion Cornbread" because it did not rise at all and is basically unleavened cornbread. It still tastes fine, but it's not ideal. I recommend heeding the expiration date on cornbread mix. :)

What's For Dinner? 1/5/2010

Chicago-Style Hot Dogs w/ chips


We took inspiration from this recipe and put what toppings we each wanted on our dog. We simmered the hot dogs in beer, which I thought was cool.


It was a perfect no-cook dinner night. :)

What's For Dinner? 1/4/2010

Today I had to go back to work after a week and a half off for Christmas and New Year's. My husband, however, did not have to work. Being the amazing husband that he is, he did things like laundry, dishes and grocery shopping all day long. Then, to top it all off, he cooked dinner for me.

What's that you say? Why yes, I am the luckiest woman on earth. I have a husband who is handsome, helpful, caring AND the boy likes to cook {and he's really good at it}. Cha ching! I hit the jackpot. ;-)


Seared Skirt Steak with Balsamic Cherry Tomatoes
Here's a link to the recipe on Men's Health.

Pico de Gallo Stuffed Avocado Halves
He just bought a container of pre-made pico de gallo and stuffed it inside the avocado halves.

This dinner was SO SO SO SO SO delicious!!! I couldn't stop raving about it!! And suprisingly, I actually didn't think I was really going to like it....but oh my goodness. YUM. And Alex said it was super easy to make, too. I've already told him that this one needs to hit the regular rotation every now and then.

New Segment: What's For Dinner?

So many of you know that I started out my blogging career by writing a food blog. Shortly before Alex deployed, the food blog went the way of cassette players {if you don't get my metaphor, that means I abandoned it}.

I had intentions of picking it back up after the dreaded deployment date, but then I found myself eating things like cereal or Easy Mac for dinner every night. Not exactly blogable stuff there, ya know what I mean? I was somewhat baffled by how I could go from LOVING to cook to debating whether it was even worth it to get out the skillet to fry an egg for dinner. How does this happen?

Pretty much the moment my husband set foot back on American soil, my desire to cook shot back up again. That's when I realized that my love for cooking is 100% tied to him. Cooking for me isn't fun unless you have someone to share it with.

Perhaps it's sad and somewhat pathetic that I can't find the joy in it on my own. I'm sure feminists the world over are rolling in their graves right now, but I like serving my man. :::Gasp!:::

So to make a long story short, the food blogging urge has hit me again like a mack truck. Not to mention, I have this super cool new camera that takes amaaaaaaaazing pictures, even when the lighting is bad. It's a picture perfect scenario to start blogging about food again, I tell you!

Therefore, I'm going to start featuring a new segment called "What's For Dinner?" {Creative, huh? That's why I'm in marketing....the creativity just oozes out of me.}

I love reading about what people eat. It just fascinates me. I can't really explain it, but it inspires me to read what other people eat for dinner every night. I recently read a book called The Gastronomy of Marriage in which Michelle Maisto writes about what she and her husband ate for dinner during their engagement, and how food affected their relationship. Sounds boring, right? But it's not, at least not to me! I highly recommend the book if you're A) newly married or about to be married or B) if you're a foodie.

But now we're getting off topic. {I ramble too much...SUM IT UP, ASHLEY} I'm starting a new segment in which I will attempt to blog about what we eat each night in our house. The good, the bad and the ugly. Even if it's Easy Mac....or Taco Bell. I can't promise that I will be able to commit to blogging every day, but if I have to skip days I will at least try to mention what we had on the days that I missed. {This may be a very bad idea}

So below is my first official "What's For Dinner?" post. I hope you enjoy it. And please leave a comment to let me know what you think!

What's For Dinner? 1/3/2010
Chicken Cordon Blue w/ Ranch Roasted Potatoes
This was what I like to call an Oh-Crap-Meal where you have nothing planned and no time to grocery shop. So I scrounged around and came up with this meal, which actually turned out really nicely!

No real recipe here, but I'll try to walk you through it: Pound out chicken breasts to thin them out a bit. Spread some Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese on the chicken (I used one wedge per breast). Then place two slices of deli ham on each breast. Roll the chicken up and then secure with toothpicks. Roll the chicken around in Egg Beaters (or a beaten egg or two) and then coat in Panko (or regular) breadcrumbs (I did this shake 'n bake style in a Ziploc bag). Place the coated chicken rolls on a rack placed on top of a baking sheet and then bake at 400 degrees until done (I think mine took about 20-25 minutes).

For the Ranch Roasted Potatoes, cut up some red potatoes into bite size pieces and place in a large bowl. Drizzle some oil over the potatoes (about 1 tablespoon?) and then sprinkle Ranch Dressing Mix (out of a packet) and s&p on them to taste. Toss the potatoes around in the bowl to evenly distribute the flavoring. Spray a baking sheet with Pam and then put the potatoes on it. Spread out in a single layer on the sheet and then bake at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, flipping them once during cooking.

Voila! That's all it takes for a cheesy, crispy, ranchy dinner. Yum!

Deployment Carbonara

I've eaten a lot of pasta during this deployment. It's easy, it's filling, and you can make it in small portions. At first I mostly just ate pasta with olive oil, salt & pepper & parmesan cheese but after a while I started experimenting with other simple options.

I absolutely LOVE Spaghetti Carbonara....to me it's basically like an adult macaroni & cheese. What's not to love?!? When I feel like a traditional Carbonara I make this recipe that I featured on my old food blog. But one day I was craving Carbonara and didn't have any bacon or parmesan cheese. What I did have was goat cheese so I experimented and ended up loving the result!

In this case I used Lemon Goat Cheese, which gives the pasta a great lemony flavor but you could use any flavor of goat cheese! Or, if you just have plain goat cheese and still want lemon flavor you could add a squeeze of lemon juice to the pasta.

Lemony Spaghetti Carbonara {aka Deployment Carbonara}
Source: me

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. spaghetti, half a package {I use whole wheat}
• 1 egg
• 2 oz. lemon goat cheese, half a package {or any flavor goat cheese you prefer}
• Salt to taste
  
• Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Procedure:

Boil water and cook spaghetti noodles according to package directions.

While pasta is cooking, crack the egg into a small bowl and beat well with a whisk. Crumble the goat cheese into the beaten egg and then mix well with the whisk. It's okay if there are still lumps of goat cheese...just get them incorporated together. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to the egg mixture. Set aside.

Once pasta is al dente, drain water and then IMMEDIATELY place pasta back in the hot cooking pot. Quickly pour the egg & cheese mixture into the hot pasta and immediately stir to combine. Timeliness is key here because this is the only way you are "cooking" the eggs. If you don't do this quickly you will be dealing with raw eggs in your pasta...not good.

Add more salt & pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Makes 3-4 servings...depending on how big your servings are. :)

Libby wanted some Carbonara too.

Rainy Day {Healthy} Soup

This past weekend, we experienced a monsoon where I live. It rained all weekend...nonstop! Which was good, because we needed it! We were experiencing a bit of a drought. AND that means less watering of the lawn that I had to do. {For what it's worth, lawn watering and maintenance is one of my most hated "husband" jobs that I have to do while he's gone.}

I really *love* rainy weather, provided I can stay on my couch all day long. But rainy weather also really makes me want soup! I found this recipe for White Bean & Sausage Soup in my most recent edition of Food Network Magazine and thought it fit the bill perfectly for a rainy day.

I made a few modifications to make it a super-healthy, too! It originally called for escarole but I couldn't find it in my grocery store so I substituted kale, which happens to be a really really healthy cabbage-like green. See the below excerpt from wikipedia for proof:

Kale is considered to be a highly nutritious vegetable with powerful antioxidant properties and is anti-inflammatory.^[2] Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium. Because of its high vitamin K content, patients taking anti-coagulants such as warfarin are encouraged to avoid this food since it increases the vitamin K concentration in the blood, which is what the drugs are often attempting to lower. Kale, as with broccoli and other brassicas, contains sulforaphane (particularly when chopped or minced), a chemical believed to have potent anti-cancer properties.^[3]

So on your next rainy day, enjoy a big bowl of this hearty and healthy soup!
Sausage & White Bean Soup

1 tsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4-6 links of sweet Italian turkey sausages, squeezed out of casings
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
3-4 cups chicken broth (depending on how soupy you like it)
1 head of kale, (remove stems and slice up the leaves into bite size pieces)
1 parmesan rind (cut off the end of a parmesan block)
1 can of white cannelini beans, drained & rinsed
1/2 cup of grated parmesan, plus more for sprinkling on top
salt & pepper

Cook the sausage, garlic & red pepper flakes in olive oil, being sure to crumble the sausage with your spoon as it cooks. Add the chicken broth, kale, and the parmesan rind; simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the kale is tender. Add the can of drained beans, 1/2 cup of grated parmesan, and salt & pepper to taste. Simmer until the beans are heated through and then serve. Sprinkle grated parmesan on top of each bowl.