Ropte Christmas Extravaganza

As a newbie food blogger, and with all the stresses of a crazy holiday schedule, I did the best I could with food pics, but I'll admit - I failed miserably at getting any of the "this is how you make it" shots.

I don't know where else you are supposed to post myriads of pictures of yummy holiday goodness, so I figured - why not my food blog?

The Food

As always, we prepared a feast to feed the 5,000 for Christmas! We had pulled turkey and pork from Vinny's BBQ in Dakota City...

...and then added all sorts of delicious sides, such as crockpot corn, cheesy potatoes...

...homemade mac & cheese, baked beans...

...a veggie tray, Millionaire Macaroni Salad...

...Tang Fruit Salad, Elicia's cranberry butter cake...

...and more goodies than possibly imaginable!



I figure it's really only fair to share the one recipe that truly stood out, in my humble opinion. And no - it wasn't one I made.

Ever since the fun, old-fashioned Ropte Christmas, I've been craving one really sweet treat, no thanks to my sister-in-law, Elicia. The ONE, probably absolutely worst dessert I could possibly crave: Cranberry Cake with Hot Butter Sauce



I absolutely do not claim this recipe, nor do I endorse it whatsoever for its health content, because to be completely honest with you - it's ridiculously awful for you! But if you want something that will "wow" the masses, this is the one for you!

So here it is, in all its glory:

Cranberry Cake with Hot Butter Sauce

Cake:
2 cups all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
2 cups fresh cranberries

Sauce:
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 cup cream or half and half
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 13 by 9 inch glass baking pan
2. to make the cake, sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Combine butter and sugar in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs. Add milk alternately with the dry ingredients, starting and ending with dry ingredients. Stir in cranberries. Transfer to pan. Bake 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
3. To make sauce, combine all ingredients ina saucepan over medium low heat and cook 10 minutes or until sugar is melted, stirring frequently. Pour hot sauce over cake. Sauce should soak into cake, but it may take a while. The cake should rest for at least 2 hours before serving.

Can substitute blueberries, blackberries or raspberries in place or cranberries.

Chicken Enchilada Chili

Mark and I attend a Bible study on Sunday evenings on Max Lucado's series - Fearless. The study is a 6-week series, and tomorrow night (a night later than planned) is our final evening. At our last study, we decided to do a "soup night", and meet a little earlier at 6pm.

I was thinking through soup recipes I had in store oO(chicken tortilla, chili, potato, creamy butternut squash), but decided to try a new one: Chicken Enchilada!

I scoured my recipe box and all my recipe books looking for the recipe I had misplaced, and came up short. So I went to the web, and upon my first google search came across a recipe with the exact same ingredients that I recalled, so I went with it. Thank you Stephanie O'Dea of CrockPot365 blog for this great recipe!

disclaimer: I apologize in advance that I didn't take any pictures of this recipe, but hey - give a girl a break - I had to send in my lens for repair, so all I have is my super close-up 55-200mm lens, and it's tough to get good shots up close from so far away.

This was one of the easier recipes I've made with shredded chicken, so I was pretty stoked about that! Basically, I just threw all the ingredients in the crockpot and stirred them together.

Ingredients:
1 lg can enchilada sauce
1 lg can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 lg can diced tomatoes
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
2 tsp chili powder (or more)
1 tsp cumin
2 lg chicken breasts, poached (a.k.a. boiled) for 20 minutes with bay leaves

I'll have to comment on how it turned out, but for now, it's sitting in my crockpot liner in the fridge. But wowza does it smell good even now, and looks delicious!

RAVE - "Clean"? Alfredo Sauce

If you weren't aware, in the past 6 weeks, I've done 2 bouts of a special 10-Day Cleanse program that my good buddy, Beth Young, put me (and some other ladies) up to. In those 20 days (separated by a good 3 weeks), I've dropped 9lbs, and feel pretty great! The struggle, however, has been trying to find recipes to make that don't taste like "clean" recipes.

I'm ecstatic to have found a great blog with lots of great recipes for "clean" stuff! I found this particular recipe while searching for a great, "clean", healthy alfredo sauce. I know you're thinking, "Humdawg, you're delusional - alfredo is in no way, shape or form 'clean'", and you're right! But this...this is!

So here is this incredible recipe, thanks to Tiffany from www.thegraciouspantry.com. Of course, I modified it to use ingredients I normally have on hand (basil, fresh garlic).

Ingredients:

1 lg container cottage cheese * (she recommends 4C)
1/2 C Kraft parmesan and romano cheese *
I did not add the milk or garlic powder as Tiffany did.
I did add chopped fresh basil and minced garlic to taste.


*I was supposed to use the organic kind, but I'll admit that my small-town grocery store didn't carry any, so I bought the non-organic stuff, which makes the recipe a little less "clean".

Directions:

You combine all the ingredients in a double-boiler (or in my case, a metal bowl on top of a pot of boiling water, and let it all melt together, using a hand-mixer to diminish the cottage cheese chunks. You can't let it heat too fast or the cottage cheese will separate, which would be gross. I think had I added the milk, it might not have been quite so stringy when I blended it, but it was INCREDIBLE, and reheated just fine as well.

I poured this over some penne pasta with grilled chicken sauteed with mushrooms, onions and broccoli. It was better than any entree I've had at Olive Garden - better than any alfredo sauce I've had that I can recall, and it's BETTER for you than any alfredo sauce too!

I apologize, yet again, for the lack of pictures, but the good news is they are working on my lens!! Hopefully it will be back soon!

Apple Chicken Stew

A few months ago, my buddy Ang told me about this great recipe she found on Allrecipes.com for Apple Chicken Stew. I'm always a sucker for combining fruit and meat, but Mark is always a little more unsure about it. This one sounded a little more minimum on the fruity, sweet taste, so I decided to try it out after the Toro Employee Sale this morning.

So here's the recipe, with hats off to Carol Mathias from Lincoln, NE for posting the recipe on AllRecipes.com.

The Ingredients

I'm going to start out by separating the ingredients into 5 categories (and 6 steps): The veggies, the meat, the fruit, the spices and the sauce

The Veggies

You combine all the following in the crockpot: cubed potatoes, sliced carrots, sliced celery and sliced red onion.

The Spices

Combine the salt, pepper, thyme and caraway seed. Sprinkle half over the veggies.

The Meat

Cook the chicken in the olive oil...

...then put the cooked chicken over the veggies in the crockpot.

The Fruit

Put the peeled, diced apple over the meat in the crockpot.

The Sauce

Combine the apple cider and cider vinegar, then pour over everything in the crockpot.

Yeah, I failed to take a "finished product" pic, or a pic for this step. Ooops!

The Spices (again)

Sprinkle the rest of the spices over everything in the crockpot. Add the bay leaf.

Turn the crockpot to cook on high for 4 hours.

Eat it :)

Fiesta Bowl

If you haven't noticed lately, I've been cooking a lot. The problem with cooking and baking a lot is that you end up eating too much and feeling kinda crummy afterward.

I've decided to join some friends in a 10 Day Cleanse, where I'm only allowed to eat foods that don't have junk in them. (i.e. cook with lean meats and lots of veggies, and stop eating so much of it!)

This, of course, poses a problem for me, when 80% of my recipes are probably not so healthy. Of course, there are some great options that ARE healthy (i.e. This Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe), but I always struggle to find the time and willpower to spend that much time in the kitchen when I'm already hungry!

Suddenly, it came to me - a friend of mine emailed me a recipe a while back that sounded like some sort of Mexican dish with black beans (score!) and shredded chicken. I looked it up, and here's what I had to go on:

"Saute peppers (red, orange, green) and onions in pam olive oil flavor. Add black beans and corn. Throw them in between two whole wheat tortillas with low fat cheese and non fat sour cream. Yum."

So, while I modified it a little bit, here's what I ended up with.

The Recipe

1 large chicken breast, poached and shredded
1 large yellow pepper, diced
1 medium white onion, diced
3 large mushrooms, diced
1 can black beans
1/2 pkg frozen corn
Salt, pepper, chili powder, red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper to taste while sauteeing

Putting it All Together

You start by poaching a chicken breast like so:



While you're waiting, you then dice up all your goods - pepper, onion and mushrooms, and saute it in olive oil spray like so:



And then, the dreaded shredding of the chicken:



Once the goods are good and cooked, you add in the black beans and corn, let it blend in for a minute or two, then add that shredded chicken and the seasonings, to taste.



Once it was heated through, I threw it over a bed of tortilla chips...



...then tossed on a little cheese and a bit of salsa. Delicious!!



I added a little chicken broth to keep the leftovers moist and let it simmer a little longer, since the leftovers will be killer! My plan for tomorrow is to throw a little of this between two tortilla shells with a little cheese to make a little quesadilla - and I can't wait!

I have no idea what the name of this recipe is, so I'm making it up lol

Chicken Tortilla Soup

DISCLAIMER

I'm going to start by putting a disclaimer on this puppy: IT WILL TAKE YOU FOREVER TO MAKE THIS!!

And it's not that the recipe is complicated - it absolutely is not. But when you're dicing 6 different veggies, and shred 2 large chicken breasts, it's just tedious, and well...it takes time. So if you have 2-3 hours to make this, go for it - you won't be sorry! But if you're looking for a quick soup, look elsewhere.

Backstory

I decided to try this the first time a couple years ago when I was expecting my Mom and sister in town to celebrate my 26th birthday. I thought it'd be nice to have a pot of soup on for supper that day, so I found this recipe on SparkRecipes.com (again - a GREAT resource for healthy recipes) - thanks sparker AUTUMNINNY.

The Recipe

2 lg chicken breasts, poached and shredded
5 small carrots, chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large orange bell pepper, diced
1 large green bell pepper, diced
1/2 large yellow onion, diced
1 (28oz) can crushed tomatoes (or 3 1/2 C chopped fresh tomatoes)
1 (32oz) box chicken stock
1 small package frozen corn
3 finely chopped chipotle peppers (REMOVE THE SEEDS!!!)
1 (15oz) can black beans
salt and pepper to taste

Topping (optional): corn tortilla chips and shredded Monterrey jack cheese

The Prep Work

Remember that part where I said this recipe took forever and a day to make? Yeah, the prep is the biggest part. I started by dicing and dicing and dicing for what seemed like hours.

The carrots


The 2 different bell peppers, onion and chipotle peppers

Let's Get Started

First, I poached (a.k.a. boiled) the chicken breasts for 20 minutes in a boiling pot of water with salt and a few bay leaves.


While I was waiting for the chicken breasts to cook through, I sauteed the carrots in 1 Tbsp olive oil for 10 minutes in a large skillet, until they were nice and soft.


I then added the peppers and the onion and sauteed in yet another Tbsp olive oil until they were nice and tender.



Once the chicken was poached (i.e. done boiling), I got to work shredding it.


When everything was cooked nicely, I added it to a large stockpot, along with the shredded chicken, crushed tomatoes, corn, black beans and chicken broth.



You let it simmer pretty much as long as you feel like. I generally only let the flavors blend about 20 minutes or so, but I don't think longer would hurt.

You really won't be disappointed in this, but WHOA does it ever take time to make.

Chicken Pot Pie

With all the pies I've been making lately, it was only a matter of time before I decided to put more than just fruit inbetween those flaky crusts. I came across this recipe for Chicken Pot Pie while flipping through my Lipton Soup Mix Recipe book I picked up a while back at a book fair at work. I decided that with only 4 ingredients (besides the crust), it was worth a shot!

The Ingredients

2C cubed, cooked chicken breast
10oz pkg frozen mixed vegetables
1 pkg Lipton Golden Onion Soup Mix
1 1/4 C milk

The Process

I started out by making my favorite, super-simple double crust recipe from my Betty Crocker Cookbook.
I combined the ingredients, (2 1/4 C flour, 3/4 C shortening, 3/4 tsp salt, 8Tbsp water), split it into 2 parts, rolled the first into a sloppy circle, placed it over the pie pan, and put it aside.


I then took a large chicken breast and sliced and diced it.

And then I put it in a pan with some olive oil to cook until no longer pink.


And then, of course, there was the ever-so-important sauce: milk and soup mix packet. I boiled it for a minute.

Once the chicken was all cooked up nicely, I combined the chicken cubes with the frozen mixed vegetables, and voila:

Once the sauce was all thick and delicious, I poured it all over the chicken and veggies.

Then I did the roll the crust out part again, topped the pie with it, and crimped the edges. Oh, and put a few slits in the top.

I then fed it to the Kelvinator at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

And then the Kelvinator gave it back up, looking stellar!


The full menu for the evening included a yummy salad and some fresh Rhodes dinner rolls: