Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Russian Chicken Stir Fry

1 or 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts - cut unto cubes or slices
onion - sliced
peppers - a little of each color, sliced
mushrooms - sliced
envelope of chicken OXO
worchestershire sauce
soya sauce
garlic powder
seasoning salt
oregano
ginger
Russian Dressing

Throw chicken and onions into frying pan. Sprinkle with spices and sauces. Fry, stirring often, til cooked. Throw in peppers and mushrooms. Continue to fry and stir til tender crisp. Throw in some Russian dressing, as little or as much as you want. Stir to mix. Either spoon unto tortilla shells or serve over rice. Yummy!

Monday, June 2, 2008

Menu Plan Monday - June 2

Today's meals are over and done with so I don't have to worry about them, but here are some possibilities for the rest of the week.

Chili and rolls - at DD's request
Chicken Nachos and wings - let's see if I actually get to it this week
Lasagna and Caesar Salad and garlic bread
Fish and Brewis
Liver and Onions and fries
Beef Roast and vegetables

Wonder how I'll make out in sticking to it this week?

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Review of past week's menu

I think I may try writing a review of the past week's menu's on Sundays. We'll see if I actually stick to it.

Here's how I fared with the planned, or possibilities, I listed for the past week:

The Chicken Nachos, Goulash and Tacos didn't happen. I forgot to buy the lettuce and tomoatos for the tacos. We just weren't in the mood for the other two. Maybe this coming week. We'll see.

In place of the chicken nachos we had a chicken breast stir fry and rice. one again it was an experimental recipe where I just threw a bunch of stuff together. I'd post a recipe but I really don't know what I used. It's scary. I'm becoming my mother. I remember complaining to her when she did that because it made if very hard for me to get a recipe from her. :)

In place of the goulash we had another one of my experimental meals. Seems like it was almost a full week of that. I needed to use the ground beef and didn't know what to do with it. I finally decided to use it to make a mixture to throw over fries. Hmmm...what could I call the recipe? I'll have to think of a name and then I'll post it.

We never did get to BBQ the Pork Chops. It rained almost every day, so I ended up just doing them in the oven one day, and I kind of experimented with a recipe. It was a hit so I'll try to remember to post the recipe one day this week.

We did have the Shake 'n'Bake Chicken and mashed potatoes. That's a simple no brainer meal as I use a package of mashed potatoes, as DD prefers it over real mashed potatoes.

I'm in the process of cooking the Traditional Sunday cooked dinner now. I know it will be a hit.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Menu Plan Monday - May 26th

First of a review of last weeks' meals, which ended up being quite different from what I had planned here.

The Russian Chicken stir fry is always a hit, and I need to remember to post the recipe. It's really quite easy. I'll try to remember to link the recipe here when I post it.

We did have fish on Wednesday but instead of doing it in the oven we borrowed a deep fryer and had deep fried fish and fries with Mom's famous sauce. I'll try to remember to post and link recipes for those too.
Thursday we had meatballs and rice. Once again a family favorite and I need to remember to post the recipe for the meatballs.

Last week at Dewey's Treehouse I read about a fast and easy Mac and Cheese recipe that I decided to try out. DD loves Mac and Cheese but I seldom make it because it's so much work and takes so many pots. I was hoping this was going to mean she could have it more often. Well, it was not a hit! It was more like KD than our homemade Mac and Cheese and DD was terribly disappointed. I did add some steak sauce and mustard to the recipe hoping to make it taste more like our but it didn't work. After we ate what we wanted for supper I ended up experimenting a bit to see if I could save the day. I put the leftovers in a casserole dish, topped it with crushed crackers, grated cheese, parmasan cheese, and paprika and put it in the oven for about 45 minutes. DD ate this the next day and said it was much better, so I may try the recipe again and make a few adjustments. We'll see.

Saturday I made BBQ chicken pizza and it was yummy!

Sunday I made fast and easy Chicken and gravy, which I have to post a recipe for, and deep fried fries and onion rings, as we still had the deep fryer we had borrowed.

Sooooo...very different from the plan for last week. Oh well. Such is life. :) Look like I have my work cut out for me posting all the recipes too. Hope I remember to do that.

On to possibilities for this week. :) Today is over and done with. We had left overs. For the rest of the week I'm just going to make a list of possibilities without assigning days to them

Tacos
BBQ Pork Chops, baked potatoes, caesar salad
Chicken Nachos
Goulash
Shake 'n'Bake Chicken, mashed potatoes
Traditional Sunday cooked dinner


I wonder how much this menu will change. :)

Sunday, May 25, 2008

BBQ Chicken Pizza

Crust
Dissolve a small package, or 1 Tbsp, of active dry yeast in 1 cup of warm water. Add 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2 Tbsp vegetable oil and 2 1/2 cups of flour. Mix til all combined. Knead on floured surface adding more flour as needed til it feels right. Place in bowl, cover and let rise for a while, the longer you wait the more it will rise. We accidently bought multigrain flour last time we bought flour and I think we are all growing to like it. It adds a nice texture and taste to the pizza crust.

Topping preparation
While the dough is rising, chop 1 boneless skinless chicken breast into small cubes and throw into frying pan with a bit of oil. Sprinkle with seasoning salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, onion powder, chicken OXO envelope, worchestershire sauce, and soya sauce. Fry til chicken is cooked. Chop up some red, green, yellow, and orange peppers, and some mushrooms. Grate some cheese.

Putting the Pizza together
Stretch dough to cover a greased pan. Spread BBQ sauce on top, as much or as little as you like. For our last one we used Chicken and Rib BBQ sauce and it was yummy, but any BBQ sauce will work. Sprinkle the cooked chicken over top, then the vegetables, and last of all the cheese.

Cooking
Bake in 450 oven for about 12-15 minutes.

Yummy. yummmy, yummy!

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Doctored Chicken Noodle Soup

1 envelope chicken noodle soup
1 envelope chicken or beef OXO
1 onion
1 carrot
1 potato
a handful of spaghetti noodles broken into small pieces
seasoned salt
pepper
garlic powder
oregano

Fill a medium saucepan with water and place on stove to boil. Pour in both envelopes. Chop onion, carrot and potato and throw in. Throw in broken spaghetti. Sprinkle spices to taste. Simmer until vegetables and noodles are soft.

There's nothing like Chicken Noodle soup when you have a cold or flu, but we like ours doctor up a bit. I've been downing this stuff all this week hoping to drive a bug away. :)

Monday, May 19, 2008

Menu Plan Monday - May 19

We are now totally sick of ham! Here's a review of last week's menu:
The Linguine with Saucy Ham and Peas was a flop. DS thought it was okay but DD and I did not like it at all. It was totally tasteless. It may be because I guessed at the amount for the spices because I forgot to write down the measurements when I copied the recipe and I was too lasy to get the book out and look it up. I doubt I'll try it again to find out, but we'll see.
Because I couldn't find any perogies anywhere in town the Perogy Ham Casserole was out so I made the Cheesy Red Rice. Once again DD was not impressed. I was slightly impressed, and once again DS loved it. I think DH would like it too but he was out of town so I may make it again some time so that he can try it.
I loved the Ham Pinwheels! DD was slightly impressed and DS thought they were pretty good. I think they would make a great finger food to take out some time or to serve when friends come over for the evening. Very fast and easy to make. I will make it again.
I ended up making 2 homemade pizzas - one normal pizza meat pizza and one chicken ranch pizza. They were both yummy.
I thoroughly enjoyed my homemade baked beans. I simply followed the recipe on the package of beans. I'm really the only one in the family that loves baked beans so everyone else just endured them. :)
Everyone enjoyed our traditional Sunday cooked dinner with chicken and all the fixins.

Today I made hash with the leftovers. It was pretty good. I also made a pot of homemade chicken soup for dinner. I have a terrible head cold and I was hoping it would help.

Now on to plans for the rest of the week:

Tuesday - Russian Chicken stir fry or wrap
Wednesday - fish of some sort, probably oven deep fried
Thursday - Something with ground beef - probably lasagna
Friday - BBQ if the weather is nice, though this could be moved to the first nice day for it
Saturday - Sweet n sour chicken and rice
Sunday - traditional Sunday dinner but this time with roast

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Menu Plan Monday - On Tuesday May 13 :)

I completely missed Menu Plan Monday last week because I was out of town for most of the week. I'm late posting this week because yesterday was my eldest son's 20th birthday and I was busy getting back on track from being away so long and whipping up a meal of his favorites for him. Soooo...I'm a day late but I'm trying to get back on track.

First of all back to a review of the last menu I posted. The leftovers on Monday were enjoyed by all. The Honey Baked Chicken was a major big hit! I served it with Mom's Fancy Fried Rice. A yummy meal all round. Wednesday was homemade Mac and Cheese with Winning Weineers. The basic recipes are from Company's Coming Lunches cookbook, but I make some minor adjustments. I'll probably post them one of these days. Thursday was homemade spaghetti, especially for my husband, and served with Caesar salad for especially for my daughter. Some day I'll get around to posting my recipes for these. Friday we hit the road and that was the end of my cooking for a week. As you can see I didn't stick to the plan I posted but I seldom do.

As I mentioned earlier, yesterday was my eldest son's 20th birthday. A tradition at our house is that the birthday person gets to plan the meals for their birthday, or else I just plan the meals so that they get to enjoy some of their favorite foods on their birthday. DS still lives at home and I love that he does, but he's out the door before 7 in the morning and works until about 6 in the night so the only meal I had to worry about for him was supper. He is a pleasure to cook for because he loves everything but I know that ham and salads are among some of his favorites. I seldom make either so I decided to make both for him for his birthday, along with his traditional favorite birthday cake - homemade peanut butter cake with peanut butter icing. The cake and icing recipe are in Company's Coming Cakes recipe book. The ham was just a toupie that I cooked with a bit of water. I like ham with sauce but his favorite way to have it is just plain. The salads he likes are my mom's traditional potato salads - egg, beet, mustard, vegetable, and also a macaroni salad. I can't make them as good as my mom but I do the best I can. He assures me I do a good job, but we both know it's not really as good as Nan's.

Today I was searching the recipe books for recipes to use up the left over ham. I found 4 interesting recipes. I may try at least one of them some time this week. I was planning on making one of them tonight but then I realized that it would just be me and little one tonight as two are out of town for the rest of the week and two had a supper meeting tonight. I ended up cooking a couple of chicken legs using my own modifications to the Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken recipe. I didn't grill it but threw it in the oven in a casserole dish with a few additional spices. It turned out pretty good. I served it with Minute Rice.


So, here are some tentative plans for the rest of the week:

Wednesday - linguine with Saucy Ham and Peas from Company's Coming Cook For Kids Recipe book

Thursday - Cheesy Red Rice or Perogy Ham Casserole - both from Company's Coming 4 Ingredients Recipe Book.

Friday - Homemade Pizza and maybe some Ham Pinwheels from Company's Coming Cook For Kids Recipe book

Saturday - Baked Beans and rolls

Sunday - Chicken and vegetables

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Mom's Fancy Fried Rice

1 Tbsp oil
1 chopped onion
chopped peppers of all colors :)
chopped mushrooms
soya sauce
1 egg
1 box of Dainty Fried rice
1/2 cup water
1 - 2 cups of Minute Rice, depending on how many are eating
1 - 1 1/2 cups of water, depending on how much Minute Rice is used
1 envelope OXO
garlic powder
seasoning salt
cumin

Put the oil in the frying pan. Fry the onions a bit before throwing in the peppers and mushrooms. I don't use whole peppers but just some of each color because we like all the different peppers. Sprinkle with soya sauce. Break egg into frying pan and scramble fry with everything already in there. Open the tin in the Dainty Rice box and pour the rice into the frying pan. Pour in half a cup of water and spice mix in box. Throw in Minute Rice, 1 cup of water and envelope of OXO. Fry while stirring it all together until water is all absorbed. Sprinkle with garlic powder, seasoning salt, cumin, and more soya sauce to taste.

I know it sounds weird to just ignore the directions for both the Dainty Rice and the Minute rice and throw everything together like that in a frying pan but it really works. It's a trick I learned from my mom. It's less work than doing it according to the packages and it also has the extra bonus of dirty less pots. We like the combination of the two different rices and its more economical than using two packs of Dainty rice.

My oldest DS loves this rice. He raves about it every time I make it and says he could eat it all alone with nothing else.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Menu Plan Monday - April 28th


First a review of last week's fare:

The Meaty Chili was a hit, as always. DS ate leftovers with nacho chips one evening for a snack. It was our first time trying the Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken and it was a big hit. The kids raved about it. We'll definitely have it again. Had a slight change of plans Wednesday and ended up having oven fried battered fish and fries. I'm not a lover of fish but I can eat battered fried fish smothered in my mother's famous sauce. DS loves fish and I really cooked it for him. Shake and Bake chicken served with rice was the fare for Thursday. I had planned something else but didn't have the ingredients for it but we all like Shake and Bake so that was okay. We ended up having our BBQ on Friday, but we didn't actually BBQ. I cooked steaks with mushrooms and onions on the grill inside and did baked potatoes in the microwave in this neat little bag my mom gave me last year. Saturday I finally got around to the homemade pizza. I tried out a new recipe for Ranch Chicken Pizza that I came up with inspired by some other recipes. You can read all about it here. We will definitely have it again. I completely forgot about the Homemade mac and Cheese last week so I'll have to try to remember to do it this week.

Now on to possible plans for this week:

Monday - leftover cooked dinner with gravy, thanks to my mil
Tuesday - Honey Baked Chicken II
Wednesday - Homemade Spaghetti
Thursday - stew
Friday - Mac & Cheese
Saturday - pizza

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ranch Chicken Pizza

I use Crystal's pizza crust recipe.

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
oil
envelope of chicken oxo
seasoning salt
garlic powder
worchestershire sauce
soya sauce
some chopped peppers
1 chopped onion
chopped mushrooms
ranch dressing
mozza cheese

Put a small bit of oil in the frying pan. Chop the chicken breast into small cubes. Throw in frying pan with oil. Sprinkle with oxo, seasoning salt, garlic powder, worchestershire sauce, soya sauce. Fry until the chicken is cooked. A chopped onion can also be fried with it. Because DD doesn't like onion, I cook the onion separate with a little soya sauce.
Spread pizza dough on pizza pan. Spread ranch dressing on top of dough, as much or as little as you want. I used a fair bit because DD loves ranch. Sprinkle cooked chicken and onions on top, I just put the onions on half of it. Sprinkle peppers and mushrooms on top, I only put the mushrooms on half, once again because of DD. I like to use just a small bit of each kind of pepper - green, red, yellow and orange. Top with grated cheese. Cook in 425 oven for about 15 minutes. Yummy!

We tried this for the first time tonight and we loved it! It was partially inspired by this Buffalo Wing Pizza recipe. Knowing how much DD loves ranch dressing I thought it would be worth a try but I didn't like the idea of using chicken nuggets, blue cheese dressing or hot sauce. I went searching for other pizza recipes using ranch dressing and found this Veggie Ranch Pizza recipe. I was impressed with all the positive feedback for the recipe but I didn't like the idea of carrots, broccoli and cauliflower on a pizza. I decided to take what I liked, add what I wanted and make my own recipe. This is what I came up with and it was a big hit! We will definitely have it again.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Corn Casserole

Ground beef
envelope onion soup mix
garlic powder
pepper
12 oz tin of corn
mashed potatoes

Put ground beef in frying pan. Sprinkle with onion soup mix, garlic powder and pepper. Stir and cook til browned.

For mashed potatoes you can either peel and boil some potatoes and mash with butter or you can use a box of mashed potatoes. The last time I made it I used a box of Betty Crocker butter and herbs mashed potatoes. I used both envelopes in the package. We really, really liked it with this.

Pour the meat into the bottom of casserole dish. Pour corn on top of beef layer. Put mashed potato on top of corn. Put in 350 degree oven for about half an hour.

This is a favorite in our house.

Menu Plan Monday - April 21, 2008


First a review of last weeks plans:

The Slow Cooker Pot Roast was a hit. We will have it again. I love whole meal recipes for the crock pot that mean you don't have to mess up any more pots. :)
Corn Casserole is always a hit in our family. Its fast and easy. I have to remember to post the recipe here soon.
Lasagne is another one that is a favorite here. DD is the only one that's not real fond of it, but I make up to her for that by serving caesar salad, which she loves, with it.
Instead of chicken and rice I decided to make use of the fajita kits that DH had bought by mistake when I sent him to the store for taco kits a litte while back. It's the first time I had the fajita kit. It was okay, but we'd just as soon have our own version without the kit.
We didn't get to the burgers and fries last week. We ended up going out of town.

Okay, on to plans for this week!

Monday - Meaty Chili
Tuesday - Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken
Wednesday - Homemade Pizza - using Crystal's recipe for pizza crust that I found a while ago. It is great! I had given up making homemade pizza because I couldn't get the crust right, but she has me making homemade pizza again, and loving it. ;)
Thursday - Chicken and rice
Friday - Homemade Macaroni and Cheese
Saturday - BBQ

Meaty Chili

1 onion
some red, green, yellow, orange and green pepper
ground beef
fresh mushrooms
a couple of envelopes of beef OXO
seasoned salt
garlic powder
pepper
soya sauce
28 oz tin of diced tomatoes
28 oz tin of kidney beans
12 oz peaches and cream corn
8 oz tin of tomato paste
1 cup ketchup
worchestershire sauce
2 tbsp chili powder

I lightly grease my frying pan and put it on to warm while I chop up the onion, mushrooms and peppers. I just use a small section of each kind of pepper, not whole peppers. I throw all this into the frying pan with the minced meat and sprinkle with oxo envelopes, seasoned salt, pepper, garlic powder, and soya sauce. I cook this until the beef is nice and brown.

Meanwhile, in a big pot I throw in the diced tomatoes and then I mash them, because we don't like big chunks of tomato in it. Once the tomatoes are mashed I throw in the kidney beans, corn, tomato paste, ketchup, chili powder and a sprinkle of worchestershire sauce. Then I stir it all together.

When the meat is well browned I drain it and then throw it into the big pot with the tomato mixture. I often then sprinkle some more garlic powder, seasoned salt and pepper and maybe even more chili powder to taste. I leave this on the stove simmering for about half an hour or so.

***This is my personal adapation of a recipe from Company's Coming Lunches, a recipe book well worth buying. There are lots of wonderful recipes in there.

A New Plan

I started this blog as a place for my family to share recipes, but nobody seems interested in doing that so I'm changing my plans. This is now going to be where I share my recipes.

I recently started participating in a Menu Plan Monday blog meme started by The Organizing Junkie. She invites people to post their menu plans for the week on their blogs on Monday and then post to the Mr. Linky for that week on her blog saying that you've done so. It's fun to check out different people's recipes and get some new ideas to try.

I've decided to use this blog to post the recipes for some of the things I post in my menu plans. I will still try to remember to include tags in the recipes so that the tags ca serve as an kind of index in finding recipes. I think I will also start posting my menu plans here rather than on my other blog.

I'd love to hear from you if you decide to try one of my recipes, or if you have a suggestion of a recipe for me to try.