White Bean Chili

3-4 chicken breasts, cubed
1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 T. oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
1-2 small cans green chilies
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 (14 oz.) can chicken broth
1 c. sour cream
1/2 c. whipping cream

Combine chicken, garlic, oil and onion in skillet and heat until chicken is cooked. Add beans, chilies, spices and chicken broth; bring to a boil. Simmer 30 minutes. Add sour cream and whipping cream and heat through.

Alterations: You can use canned chicken and any other kind of beans that you have on hand.

Mini Meatloaves and Smashed Potatoes (with a St. Patty's Day theme)

Tonight I made these turkey mini meat loaves and mashed potatoes from Skinnytaste.com. I changed it a tiny bit, because I cannot help myself. Instead of cooking them in a mini loaf pan, I cooked them in a muffin tin sprayed with PAM. They were then personal meat loaves.

My sister and I have been making a lot of these recipes and I haven't made anything I haven't liked yet.


In fact, a couple days ago I made Pasta with Cauliflower and it was really good as well. I used four strips of bacon instead of anchovies, because I have never cooked with anchovies and I was a bit scared.

A few thoughts on salads

I didn't eat my first salad until I was 21 years old. I was a super picky eater, afraid of vegetables and things that grew in the ground. I thought lettuce tasted like dirt. But, on a trip with a teacher friend of mine I had to suck it up and eat lettuce.

And I liked it.

I still like salads - and can't ever figure out why they are always so much better at a restaurant or for take out than at home. Real food, that I cook for my family is generally always as good or better than something we'd go out and buy. But a salad - that's a tough one.

Yesterday though, I gave it the old salad try...twice.



For lunch?
Romaine lettuce
Croutons
Crispy shallots
Balsamic Vinegar and Olive Oil as a dressing

Garlic bread



For dinner?
Butter leaf lettuce
Shredded Carrots
Sun dried tomatoes
Green Onions
Wonton Strips
Grilled steak

Balsamic and Olive Oil


Both were yummy...

The Pioneer Woman: Favorite Sandwich

The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, is my new favorite food person.  I bought her cookbook and am really in love with quite a few recipes.

Last night for dinner we had the sandwich called, Marlboro Man's Favorite.  It was delish.  One of my new favorites as well.  I mean, anything that involves a ton of butter and a three year old will willingly consume scores a gold star in my book.

Try it yourself tonight.

Photo courtesy of Pioneer Woman

When a friend gives you peppers

It's already Wednesday and we haven't been to the grocery store this week.  We went on Saturday for Father's Day Feast supplies, but the basic weekly staples are elusive.  In fact, I don't even remember what we ate for dinner on Monday night.  How crazy is that!

The other day, a good friend whose got produce connections, set me up with a giant bowl of peppers.  Ooooohhhhh, peppers!  We'll be eating them for the rest of the week for sure but last nights' dinner with them was pretty tasty.

Like I said, we haven't been to the store.  All I really had int he fridge was a piece of meat (Tri-tip steak), some shallots, cilantro, and oh yeah, the peppers.

We settled on steak fajitas.  The steak was grilled and sliced thin.  The peppers were sauteed with the shallots.  Cilantro was sprinkled on top as a finishing touch.

The end result turned out pretty tasty.

The perfect onion ring

I'm a sucker for a good onion ring.  French fries are usually my first choice when going with a greasy side,  but a good onion ring?  It's part of food nirvana-land for me. 

Now, there are a few places around town to get good onion rings but making them at home has always been a challenge for me.  I've bought the packets of mix at the grocery store and made up my own recipes and nothing ever really seems to work out. 

That was, until this week.  I had buttermilk in my fridge and some self-rising flour in the pantry.  After reading a couple of recipes and knowing that I had some good onions in the crisper I embarked on an onion ring adventure.

First, I sliced those onions as thinly as I possible could.  Nothing more gross that a fat, slimy onion ring.  Next, I put the onion slices in a bowl of buttermilk and let them soak.  While they were soaking, I made a quick seasoning mix:  self-rising flour, cayenne pepper (I was brave and used a little more than I thought I should), garlic salt, some all purpose "fiesta" seasoning, salt and pepper.

How did I know if I got enough flavor in the flour?  I didn't but my rule of thumb was to make sure that the flour wasn't stark white - that the color had changed a bit because of everything I added.

So, the onion slices went from the buttermilk, to the flour mixture, to a cookie sheet covered in wax paper with a thin layer of flower to keep the onions from sticking.  Once I had most of them ready, I started to fry.

We don't fry much in our family.  In fact, we don't fry anything, but the occasional chicken finger and that's in just a little bit of oil.  Our french fries are always baked and just a few months ago we gave our fry daddy (a seven year old wedding present never opened) to good will.

I never really know how hot oil needs to be, but I just started dropping my rings in and adjusting the temperature as necessary.  One thinly sliced onion makes a lot of rings, by the way.  Once they were golden brown, I took them out of the oil, placed them on a plate with a bunch of paper towels and gave them a final dusting of salt.

Holy crap!  These suckers were good.  They were so good that I fixed them for dinner the next night and ate almost an entire onion by myself.

We ate them on steak sandwiches and hamburgers.  They were also excellent plain.  I'm not sure what to "dip" onion rings in, but they were seasoned well enough, especially the second night, that they were just super tasty all on their own.