Spicy Ricey Chicken Burritos

I really enjoy food with a little kick to it. Here's a quick and easy recipe that I concocted the other day while trying to prepare dinner without having to go to the store.

Spicy Ricey Chicken Burritos

Ingredients

• 1-1 1/2 lbs of chicken breasts (depends on how many mouths you're feeding)
• Cumin Powder (lightly dusted over the chicken - to taste)
  
• 1/2 sweet onion (slivered)
• 2 cups - shredded cheddar
  
• Chopped jalapenos, to taste (start with a tablespoon and keep tasting)
  
• Large tortilla shells
• Cooking oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 cups of cooked white rice
  

Directions

• Start your rice (either the conventional way or in a rice cooker - I recommend the Rival 6 cup rice cooker)
  
• Saute chicken, onion, and cumin in a saute pan until chicken is cooked through and onions are transparent.
  
• Drain, then simmer chicken and onion mixture
• In a sauce pan, add milk, cheese, and jalapeno sauce - bring to a boil then remove from heat.
  
• Combine jalapeno cheddar sauce and chicken/onion mixture.
  
• Cover and cook on low for another 20 minutes.
• When you're ready to serve it up - add one layer of rice and one layer of the chicken/onion/meat cheese mixture.
  
• Top with additional cheese, sour cream, or any of your other favorite condiments.
  

I served the burritos with this cornbread recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Grandmothers-Buttermilk-Cornbread/Detail.aspx

** I added about 2 Tablespoons of honey to the above cornbread recipe. It made the bread nice and moist!

Heartwarming Food

Whenever I'm making a pot of spaghetti, I'm always taken back to Sunday afternoons at my grandparent's home.

When you think of a big Italian family sitting down to a meal together, you probably picture exactly what I remember at grandma and grandpa's. Their dinner table was long and extended to the length of the room. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and whoever else happened to be there when the meal was ready sat down to ate. They took great care to prepare pasta, meatballs (grandma and grandpa always sparring about the correct size of meatball), bread and salad each week. I can remember the table lined with RC Cola cans and grandma in her apron - always being the last one to sit down to eat. I sat quietly at the end of the table on my stool...just observing all of the grown-ups and all of the wonderful things they had hanging on the wall.

It was an experience that I love and memories that I will always cherish. Grandma and Grandpa have been gone for more than twenty years now; and, oh, how I wish I could see them today. I wish I could show them love and kindness through a heart warming meal like they did for so many others. Although they are physically gone, I am reminded of them each time someone comes through the door close meal time and I instinctively ask, "have you eaten yet?" I absolutely love sharing meals with my family and others around the dinner table. It's the one time of the day when we all get to look at each other, pray together, and have genuine family conversations. I highly value meal time and look forward to it each and every day.

Here's the recipe I use to make spaghetti in a hurry. It's not the big production that grandma and grandpa put on, but it's heartwarming and delicious all the same. :)

Quick Spaghetti

Ingredients

• 2 - 15oz Cans of Tomato Sauce
• 1 - 6 or 8oz Can of Tomato Paste
• 2 - Paste Cans of Water
• Minced Garlic (About 1 Tablespoon or 2 Cloves)
  
• Salt, Pepper and Basil to Taste
• Romano or Parmesan Cheese (about a handful)
  
• Fresh Mushrooms [[optional]]
  
• Onions (Slivered) [[optional]]
• 1/4 Cup - White Sugar
• 1-2lbs - Ground Beef/Chuck
  

Directions:

• Brown Ground Beef/Chuck
• While Beef/Chuck is browning, slice the onion (I slice it in really thin slices straight down (so you have a circle of onion after you've sliced it...then slice the circles in half so your slices look like C's). When the beef/chuck is brown or almost brown, throw in the mushrooms and onions. Continue browning the meat until the onions are see-through.
• Drain and rinse all then return to pan
• Add sauce, paste and water - stir
• Add all salt, pepper, garlic, basil, sugar - stir
• Cook on high until sauce mixture boils
• Once boiling, turn sauce down to simmer (or low) and let cook about half an hour.

Serve over pasta and enjoy :)

Raise your hand...

If you are nervous and/or weirded out about cooking a whole chicken. If you were here in my living room, you'd see my hand raised and waving with great enthusiasm. I've cooked a lot of chicken parts, but I've only finagled a whole chicken (from its uncooked state) one time. I guess I've just never taken the time to figure out what needs to be pulled out, dissected and so forth. Also, I really just don't care and feel that I've found an easier (and maybe even tastier solution).

Next time you're in the mood some for home-cooked chicken goodness, but don't have the time (or the desire, like myself) to mess with a whole chicken stop at your local grocer and pick up a rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chickens are delicious and inexpensive! I can pick one up for $6 or less. It feeds the whole family and we usually always have leftovers. For $6, the rotisserie bird well out weighs the price of buying one of his raw counterparts and taking the time to do whatever it is you have to do to make things right.

If you're in a real hurry, you can even usually pick up some tasty side items from your grocer's deli - mac & cheese, potato salad, pasta salad are usually all there and available. Don't forget to pick up a pound of tapioca for desert as well. :) If you just want to pick up the chicken and make a side at home, try baked my baked garlic mac & cheese recipe (below) always a crowd pleaser. :) I've also included a recipe for the chicken leftovers (below). Enjoy your dinner!!

Baked Garlic Mac & Cheese

Ingredients

• 2 cups of shredded cheddar
• Handful of crumbled feta cheese
  
• 2.5 tablespoons of melted butter
• 1 tablespoon (or so) of minced garlic
• 8oz of large elbow noodles
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• Few twists of pepper from your pepper mill (to taste)
• Milk

Directions

• Preheat your oven to 350
• Boil the noodles (about 6min), drain
• Pour noodles into a 2-2.5qt baking dish
• Add garlic, salt, pepper, melted butter and half the cheddar - gently stir to combine all
  
• Once combined, top the mixture with feta cheese and the remaining cheddar.
• Pour milk into one corner of the pan and fill until you see the milk around the edges of the mac & cheese mixture (about 2-3 cups).
  
• Bake in preheated oven for one hour. If you notice the cheese browning too much, cover with foil.

Chicken Potpie ((easy!!))

Ingredients:

• Left-over cooked chicken
  
• Shredded cheddar (1/2 cup or so)
• 1 can of cream of (whatever) - cream of chicken works well.
• Mixed veggies (I prefer the large mixed veggies - Normandy Blend) You can buy a giant bag at Sam's Club that will last you for quite a while.
  
• 1 can of crescent rolls
• Onion salt and pepper to taste
  

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350
  
• Steam veggies until they are tender (an easy way to steam veggies: fill a large 4 cup measuring cup with veggies; add water up to the 2 cup mark then microwave for 5 minutes)
• On the stovetop, heat soup and cheese until you get a nice creamy cheese sauce
• Mix the veggies, chicken, soup, onion salt and pepper into a pie plate
  
• Bake in your preheated oven for 30 minutes
• While the veggie/chicken mixture is cooking, open your cresent rolls.
• Roll the entire can of rolls into a ball, then roll out into a circle large enough to cover the pie plate.
  
• Once the veggie/chicken mixture is done, cover the mixture with your rolled out dough.
  
• Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
  

Enjoy :)

Kitchen Mishap Turned Fabulous!!

Welcome to my blog! I'm a self-proclaimed foodie who writes for a living - isn't it only natural that I would have a food-related blog? I come from a long line of people who love to eat, cook and consider feeding others a sign of love and comfort.

A little bit about the foodie writing this blog - I'm a work-at-home mom with two small kids - this often makes dinner time a challenge, but I'm finding new ways to manage it all of the time and I look forward to sharing those breakthroughs with you. :)

I'm going to kick-off my blog with a kitchen mishap turned fabulous that happened to me just last night...

Since I'm a work-at-home mom, the Crockpot is one of my very best friends! I'm able to prepare meals ahead of time and work during my kids' nap time instead of cooking. Last night I was planning to have short ribs. I was going back and forth about what to do with them. Finally, seeing that it was 1 o'clock and my chance to cook something on High and have it ready by dinner was dwindling with every second, I decided to start browning the ribs. I browned them off in my skillet and threw them into the Crockpot. I covered the ribs (generously) in brown sugar and then poured in beef broth to ensure supreme meaty tendernous! No one likes dry pork, right?

I put the lid on the Crock, cleaned the kitchen and returned to my routine. About 4:30 I went to check the ribs. I lifted the lid and thought..."huh...they look cooked (forgetting I browned them), but why am I not getting blasted in the face with steam...?" I felt the side of the pot..."uh oh......" I turned the Crock on and definitely forgot to plug it in.

I made a quick trip to allrecipes.com and looked up how long to cook short ribs. Two hours seemed to be the common answer. I quickly dumped everything that was in the Crock into a baking dish (including the broth). I covered the dish tightly with foil and let them bake. About an hour and 45 minutes in, I turned the oven down to 250 because we had to make a trip out. They cooked at 250 for another hour and they were ready and delicious when we got home. The meat literally fell off the bone as I lifted them out of the baking dish.

I served them with leftover baked mashed potatoes from the night before (see recipe below). My husband and our friend, who was joining us for dinner, absolutely loved them. My husband asked how I learned to cook pork so well..I smiled and said.."It's kind of a funny story..."

Cheesy, Garlicky Goodness Potatoes

Ingredients

• 8 red potatoes
  
• Garlic (minced) a few cloves worth or to suit (I love garlic).
  
• 2-3 cups of shredded cheddar
  
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Milk
• Butter (about 4 tablespoons)

Directions

• Scrub your potatoes then chop them into quarters
• Boil the potatoes until they pierce easily with a fork
• Drain the potato water and transfer potatoes to a mixing bowl.
• Add butter, garlic, salt, pepper and half the cheese to the mixing bowl
• Mix the potato/seasoning/cheese combination until it contains few lumps
  
• Add milk (half a cup or so...to your desired level...I like my mashed potatoes a little firmer than some).
  
• Mix again to your desired lumpiness or non-lumpiness
• Transfer potatoes to an oven safe baking dish 9x13 or a little smaller will do.
• Add the rest of the cheese to the potatoes
• Cover with foil and bake at 350 until heated through and the cheese is melted on top.