Chicken Tortilla Soup

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Date: January 28th, 2013

Recipe: http://iowagirleats.com/2009/11/16/a-few-of-my-favorite-things/

Modifications: None, actually.

Time to table: 15 minutes prep, 6 hours cook time

Servings: 5 adults

Ben: Like

Erin: Love

Annie: Like

Notes: This was made way easier by the fact that we had shredded chicken in the freezer leftover from a previous meal, so I literally woke up and dumped everything in the crock pot (I chopped the veggies the night before). Crock pot meals are obviously handy on weekdays, and this one worked out great. Annie particularly enjoyed crushing chips into her soup.

Annie eating chicken tortilla soup

Posted in black beans, cheese, chicken, corn, garlic, green chilies, onion, tomatoes | Comments Off on Chicken Tortilla Soup

Burrito Soup

Burrito Soup

Date: January 1st, 2013

Recipe: http://ellysaysopa.com/2008/12/15/crockpot-burrito-soup/

Modifications: We used ground turkey instead of beef, just a personal preference.

Time to table: 30 minutes prep, couple hours cook time

Servings: 4 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Love

Notes: This soup is incredibly easy to make and tastes excellent, perfect for winter weekday dinners. We made the rice separate this time, per the update to the original post. Making the rice separately was nice for leftovers as well, as you could make fresh rice to go with the soup for lunch. Annie particularly enjoyed crushing the chips into her soup 🙂

Annie eating burrito soup

Posted in black beans, cilantro, corn, crockpot, garlic, onion, rice, soup, sour cream, tomatoes, triple love, turkey | Comments Off on Burrito Soup

Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Sauce

Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Cream sauce

Date: December 28th, 2012

Recipe: http://www.annies-eats.com/2012/12/05/shrimp-enchiladas-with-roasted-poblano-sauce/

Tortillas: http://www.annies-eats.com/2011/11/01/diy-flour-tortillas/

Modifications: I only used one adobo pepper in the sauce because I didn’t want it as spicy for the toddlers.

Time to table: 45 minutes

Servings: 7 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Like

Notes: Ben and I were both home last week while the kids were in daycare, so we each spent part of a day making a more elaborate meal than normal. His was the cassoulet, and this was mine! I wanted to try my hand at making tortillas, and then I also made a dessert that was part of Ben’s Christmas present from me, so I was pretty much in the kitchen the entire day. I am my own worst critic after I’ve spent so long on a meal – I did REALLY like these, but they weren’t quite as saucy as I prefer enchiladas (perhaps because they sat out with the sauce on before baking for awhile) and because my tortillas weren’t very uniform they were kind of ugly too. The tortillas were actually pretty easy, but I do not have (nor do I want) a discerning enough palate to appreciate the flavor of homemade tortillas vs store bought. I will gladly pay $3 to not spend an hour making dough, individually weighing dough pieces, rolling out and frying each one. Fun to do once, definitely, but the taste wasn’t much better to me than the ones we buy. I LOVED the filling of these – shredded cabbage, carrots, and spinach with shrimp sounds super odd but it was a great mix and with the creamy sauce was awesome. I’m not typically a huge shrimp fan, but it worked well in these. We’ll definitely have these again! (except try to cut some steps since this did take FOR-EV-ER – not a weeknight meal, for sure). I think you could prep the veggies for the filling in advance, roast the poblanos and chop in advance, and then it’d come together quick enough to be made on a weeknight.

Lots of photos of this process…

Flour Tortillas
Dough for tortillas

Flour Tortillas
Rolled out as thin as I could make it

Flour Tortillas

Flour Tortillas
Finished tortillas

Roasted Poblano Peppers
Roasted poblanos

Shrimp enchilada filling
The filling

Roasted Poblano Cream sauce
Roasted poblano cream sauce

Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Cream sauce

Twix Trifles
Dessert – kind of meh because neither pudding tasted like I felt like it should (aka, like the stuff from a box) but I call it a win because I successfully made caramel, and hey – can’t go wrong with this much sugar and cream and chopped twix no matter what!

Posted in cabbage, carrot, cheese, cilantro, Mexican, onion, poblano pepper, shrimp, sour cream, spinach | Comments Off on Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Sauce

Cassoulet

Cassoulet

Date: December 27th, 2012

Recipe: Page 492-493 of “How to Cook Everything”. The steps below are a summary, this dish is hard to screw up, so don’t worry about being too exact.

  • Soak the beans overnight the day before
  • Place the soaked beans into a pot with water just barely covering the beans and bring to a boil
  • Add the carrots, onion, garlic, and tomatoes to the boiling beans
  • While the beans are cooking, slice up your meat to your desired size.
  • Roast the meat in the oven at 450, shaking the pan occasionally to unstick the meat
  • (At this point I added a couple tablespoons of corn starch to the beans, to thicken them up. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water before adding it to the hot beans.)
  • When the meat is done roasting, mix it in with the beans. Keep the fat if you like.
  • Top the bean/meat mixture with a mixture of bread crumbs and parsley.
  • Bake the entire pan for 15-20 minutes to brown the bread crumbs.
  • Eat it.
Here is the ingredient list in photo form:
Cassoulet ingredient list from "How to Cook Everything"

Modifications:  I tweaked the ingredients a bit for this:

  • Only used 1 pound of beans
  • Cut out the lamb entirely as there was already an abundance of meat
  • I didn’t use any slab bacon as the butcher didn’t have any. I don’t think this was a big deal to be missing.
  • I used a little vegetable stock in the beans, rather than just water.
  • I added corn starch later on to thicken the beans.

Time to table: 2 hours

Servings: Four family sized dinners.

Ben: Like

Erin: Like

Annie: Like

Notes: I was very happy with my first attempt at cassoulet, it’s a dish I’ve loved at restaurants (Meritage and Heartland) and I wanted to try to recreate it at home. The flavor turned out great and the consistency ended up right where I wanted it after adding the corn starch. Some thoughts on the process:

  • Cut back on the meat. I didn’t add all of the cooked meat to the pot as it was SO meaty. Use a little less.
  • Use pork shoulder, but slow cook it first and then cut it up. The pork was tough and fatty, slow cooking it first would make it WAY better.
  • Similarly, cook the sausages as whole links and then cut them after cooking
  • Experiment with different vegetables in the beans. Tomatoes, onion, and garlic are a good base, but you could add a variety of other vegetables after that, not just carrots.

We shared this with our neighbors for dinner tonight and still made two freezer bags for dinners in the future, so it makes quite a bit. I’m going to try this again, but it will likely be next winter before I get around to it 🙂

Baked Cassoulet

Finished product

Cassoulet

Toddler portions

Posted in bacon, carrot, garlic, italian sausage, one dish meal, onion, panko, parsley, pork, white beans | 1 Comment

Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Date: December 26th, 2012

Quinoa cakes recipe: http://www.annies-eats.com/2011/12/05/quinoa-cakes-with-poached-eggs/

Poached eggs recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-poach-an-egg-smitten-kitchen-style/

Modifications:  None

Time to table: 45 minutes

Servings: 4 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Love

Notes: These cakes were totally awesome. I made the first two a little too big, so Erin made the last 4 smaller, which worked out well for Annie. The poached egg instructions from smitten kitchen are linked to in the original recipe post, but I wanted to call it out here, as it delivered the absolute best poached eggs I’ve ever made. I can’t wait to have these for lunch today, in about 10 minutes 🙂

Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Looks like frosting
Annie with her "dinner cake"

Cake for dinner?!?

Posted in cheese, chives, eggs, panko, quinoa, shallot, spinach | Comments Off on Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Baked Potato Soup

Baked Potato Soup

Date: December 18th, 2012

Recipe: http://ellysaysopa.com/2012/10/15/slowcooker-loaded-potato-soup/

Modifications:  I didn’t peel the potatoes, duh.

Time to table: 30 minutes prep, 4-6 hours in crock pot

Servings: Roughly 6 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Like

Annie: Like

Notes: This soup was a great weekday meal if you have a little time in the morning to prep the bacon and onion/flour mixture. The leftovers were better than the initial meal, in my opinion, as it thickened up more in the fridge.

Posted in bacon, cheese, cream, garlic, green onions, onion, potato, sour cream | Comments Off on Baked Potato Soup

Squash and Bacon Macaroni and Cheese

Squash and Bacon Mac & Cheese

Date: December 16, 2012

Recipe: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2012/10/09/butternut-squash-bacon-mac-n-cheese/

Modifications:  None

Time to table: About an hour prep, 20 minutes baking time

Servings: At least 6 adult servings – it fills a 13×9 pan

Ben: Love (leftovers just “like”)

Erin: Love (and I loved the leftovers too)

Annie: Love

Notes: This was a delicious mac and cheese – I can’t ever decide if I prefer stovetop or baked mac and cheese, so I’ll continue to try many versions to find out 🙂 I do like when mac and cheese has SOME vegetables in it to make it seem slightly healthy, and squash is perfect because it basically blends right in with the flavor. This one did take quite a while, so it wouldn’t be a good weeknight meal unless prepped in advance.

Annie at dinner

Squash and Bacon Mac & Cheese

Posted in bacon, cheese, milk, one dish meal, onion, pasta, squash, triple love | Comments Off on Squash and Bacon Macaroni and Cheese

Crockpot Lentil Veggie Stew

Crockpot Lentil Stew

Date: December 4th, 2012

Recipe: http://weelicious.com/2011/01/02/crock-pot-lentil-veggie-stew/

Time to table: 30 minutes + 8 hours cook time

Servings: 2 dinners

Ben: Dislike

Erin: Like

Annie: Like

Notes: I really didn’t like this meal, though apparently we’ve had it before. It was just too bland for me and theres is literally zero fat in the meal, which makes it feel a little empty. I will say that its incredibly healthy and Annie liked it this time around. We froze the leftovers for another dinner, maybe Erin can use it some night when I’m away 🙂

Posted in carrot, celery, chard, crockpot, garlic, leeks, lentils, one dish meal, onion, tomatoes | Comments Off on Crockpot Lentil Veggie Stew

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

Pasta with tomato cream sauce

Date: November 20, 2012

Recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/09/pasta-with-tomato-cream-sauce/

Modifications: I sort of halved the recipe because we didn’t need that much (just used half an onion, one can of tomato sauce, etc)

Time to table: 20 minutes

Servings: 2 adults, 1 toddler

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Love

Luke: Loved chewing on some broccoli

Notes: This is a super simple, quick pasta dish – we’ve had it in the past and it’s always a hit. Can’t go wrong with a bunch of cream and cheese!

Luke eating broccoli

Annie eating bread

Posted in basil, cheese, cream, garlic, parmesan, pasta, tomatoes, triple love, vegetarian | Comments Off on Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard

Chili with squash and chard

Date: November 9th, 2012

Recipes: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Black-Bean-Chili-with-Butternut-Squash-and-Swiss-Chard-234146

Modifications: None

Time to table: 50 minutes

Servings: 6 adults

Ben: Like

Erin: Like

Annie: Like

Notes: We’ve made this before and as with many recipes Annie was much of a fan in her younger days. We had the neighbors over this time and everyone enjoyed the meal. I especially like that it tastes so good, but is also a rather healthy meal.

Mia and Annie eating dinner

Annie and Mia at the little kid table.

Posted in black beans, chard, garlic, onion, squash | Comments Off on Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard