52 in 52 #33 - Homemade Chicken Fried Rice

I love chicken fried rice.  It is honestly one of my favorite things to order from any Chinese restaurant.  Other than egg rolls, but who doesn't love egg rolls?  I know that it sounds boring to say that fried rice and egg rolls is one of my favorite dishes to order, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not an adventurous eater.  I like certain things and I rarely step out of that comfort zone to test anything else. 

I wanted to figure out how to make chicken fried rice at home, because it seems like it would be easy and something that I could make quickly on a busy night when I have nothing else planned.  I found this recipe on Pinterest which made it almost seem comical how easy it looked to make.  I don't know that I have mentioned this before but thanks to Grace's generous grandmother we have been getting farm fresh eggs... they are awesome!  If you only buy eggs from the store, you forget what an egg is supposed to look like - note the awesome orange color of the yolk! 

It took a bit to prepare because you have several pieces (chicken and rice) that ultimately get combined together once they are cooked, but the combination of the items was super easy.  The result was something that tasted like it could have come from any half-decent Chinese food restaurant.  It wasn't the best fried rice that I have ever had but it was definitely something that I would make again, especially considering the ease that it came together. 

Try it and let me know what you think!

Homemade Chicken Fried Rice
Prep time: 35 mins
Cook time: 15 mins

Ingredients:
4 cups rice, cooked
2 chicken breasts, chopped and cooked
3 Tbsp sesame oil
2 cups frozen peas and carrots
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
2 eggs
1/2 cup soy sauce

Instructions:
Prepare rice and chicken.  I cooked our rice according to the bag instructions and I sautéed the chicken in a little bit of olive oil with some salt and pepper to taste.  In a large saucepan, heat sesame oil over medium heat.  Add peas & carrots, garlic and onion and sauté until soft.  Once softened, add eggs and scramble.  Add rice, chicken and soy sauce and cook for approximately 5 minutes until all ingredients are heated through. 

Serve warm. 

Enjoy!

52 in 52 #32 - Twine Wrapped Star - front door decoration

I saw this pin on Pinterest and thought this would be an awesome idea for our front door.  Too bad that the pin was actually just a picture.  I HATE that!  Give me some direction.  Help me understand how you created something that looks like this.  Don't just show me a picture and expect me to be able to create something even remotely similar.  Luckily, I knew that I didn't want the entire middle of the star covered by the twine, but that I wanted each 'arm' of the star individually wrapped. 

I have been wanting to replace our sad front door wreath for years, but Christmas decorating always gets overwhelming for me and I run out of steam usually after the tree and the mantle. 

This year I swore it would be different.  All of my children are getting older now and are starting to appreciate the season more and more and so I need to get my butt in gear and actually work on décor for Christmas. 

For this craft you will need:
- 10 paint stir sticks
- 1 bundle of thin twine
- wood glue
- clothes pins
- bells, ribbon, etc for decoration

Let me say that a nice woman at our local Lowes let me have 10 of these paint stir sticks.  I was willing to pay her for them, but according to her they were not permitted to charge for them and were only supposed to give the customer one per can of paint. 

You will first need to determine the shape and correct size of your star relative to your front door.  I had to 'cut' about 2 inches off of each stick in order to get the correct size for our front door, but this will depend on how big you want your star, how wide your door is, etc. 

Use the wood glue and glue your star together.  Remember, to glue all the 'blank' sides of the stick to one side.  I say this because I forgot and about half of the 'arms' of my star have the blue ink words on them.  Whoops.  Hold each piece together with a clothes pin while the glue is drying.  I let mine dry for multiple hours to ensure that it was fully stuck together and wasn't going to come apart in the wrapping process. 

Now, one of the things that I didn't quite think through was the logistics of how I was going to wrap the actual star in twine.  I mean, one end is loose but the other end is attached to a roll about the size of a roll of toilet paper.  Did I really think that I was going to pass that roll around and around like 400 times while this was getting wrapped?  No, I didn't... and I didn't end up doing it that way either.  I unwrapped about 15 - 20 ft at a time that way it was manageable.  I hid the knots from the beginning and when each piece got tied together in the side that I felt would be the back that way it looked better on the front. 


I wrapped all the way around the star with the twine as tight together as possible.  I went back at the end and wrapped the corners around the outside of star inside of around the stick.  It was not working out as well trying to wrap them completely around the stick, so I had to come up with a different way. 

Add your decoration of choice and hang on the door. 

Enjoy!

52 in 52 #31 - Loaded Baked Potato Casserole

Our friends Jim and Tracy made this amazing twice baked potato casserole for us when we visited them for dinner one night.  I had always heard rumors of this delicious dish but had never tasted it until that night.  It was amazing.  Creamy, cheese-y, and utterly amazing.  I mean, who doesn't love anything with bacon and cheese? 

I found this recipe for a Twice Baked Potato Casserole and decided to give it a try for myself. 

Twice Baked Potato Casserole
Prep time: 25 mins
Cook time: 30 mins

Ingredients:
5 lb potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup sour cream
10 slices bacon, cooked, drained and chopped into small pieces
1/2 cup melted butter
8 ounces cream cheese
2 cups shredded cheese
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
chopped green onions

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Boil peeled and diced potatoes until fork tender.  Drain potatoes and put in stand mixer.  Add butter, sour cream, and cream cheese.  Mix until completely combined.  Add 1 and 1/2 cups shredded cheese, salt, pepper, and 1/2 bacon.  Mix well.  Press into well greased 13x9 pan and top with remaining cheese.  Bake for 30 minutes or until cheese is melted and potatoes are heated through.  Garnish with remaining bacon and serve warm. 

Enjoy! 

52 in 52 # 30 Salsa chicken

Over the last few years, I have a new found love for making food for my family.  Before that, I was never a chef, by any means.  I was capable of making simple items like a grilled cheese or some boxed max and cheese but nothing that would have been considered from scratch or that contained more than a few ingredients.  Over time I became more and more interested in cooking.  Fortunately, for people like me, there are a million websites for beginning chefs who need even the most basic of assistance, and now there is Pinterest, which is a cook-in-training’s best friend.  Because of the internet, thousands of recipes are available to you in the click of a button. 

 

My sister pinned the original recipe for Salsa Chicken from Pinterest a while ago.  I never looked at it because the picture isn’t the most appealing photo that could have been taken of that recipe.  One day, I was bored with what we had for dinner options and decided to give it a try exactly as the recipe stated.  We absolutely loved it!  My sister said that they have served it over rice, in tortillas, or just alone with a side dish.  It is amazing with any of those options.  Our favorite way to serve it is over a homemade Spanish rice. 

 

Of course, because we are who we are, the subsequent times that we made this recipe we changed up the ingredients a bit.  Now that we have a different version we like it so much more.  This recipe originally called for sour cream to be added into it, but we changed that to cream cheese and we love that addition.  It gives the dish a creaminess that fools your body into thinking that it is super cheesy without all of the added calories of putting cheese into the dish on top of the sour cream.  We also add more than double the salsa that it calls for.  We love spicy things and if Grace wasn’t eating with us and if the babies toddlers weren’t eating out of our bowls, we would probably make it spicier.  What makes this recipe even better is that it cooks in the crock pot and is completely a ‘set it and forget it’ style meal.  This recipe is very simple and easy to assemble. 

  

Salsa Chicken

Prep Time: 10 mins

Cook Time: 4 hours

 

2 frozen chicken breasts

1 can reduced fat Cream of Chicken Soup

2 cups your favorite salsa

3 ounces fat free cream cheese

3 Tbsp Homemade Taco Seasoning**

1 can black beans

 

**Refer to this post here, if you have not made your homemade Taco Seasoning.  If you don’t intend to do that, you would substitute an entire pouch of Taco Seasoning from the store in this recipe.

 

Place 2 frozen chicken breasts in the bottom of your crockpot.  Sprinkle taco seasoning evenly over frozen chicken.  Pour cream of chicken soup and salsa on top of chicken.  Do not stir.  Cook on high for 3.5 hours.  After 3.5 hours, remove lid, shred chicken, add can of black beans, and cream cheese and stir to combine.  You can either remove the chicken from the crock pot and shred outside of the container using whatever method of shredding chicken that you prefer, or you can use two forks and shred it while it’s still in the pot.  We have done it both ways and it yields a similar result both ways. 

 

Serve over rice, wrapped in tortillas, or on its own with a veggie or salad.  We have had it several different ways and I must admit that I love it served over rice.  You can easily substitute sour cream for cream cheese and you can use the full fat/calorie versions of all items as well but we are trying to make this as healthy as possible.  You can add more or less salsa depending on how spicy you like it.  The original recipe called for 1 cup of salsa and I don’t think that you should add any less than that for fear of it being too thick or losing some of its necessary flavor. 

 

Made as our recipe describes there are 302 calories in a 1 cup serving.  This will make approximately 6 servings of 1 cup each.  This is very filling and using our Spanish rice recipe makes the total calorie count still appropriate for a calorie conscious dinner and it is very filling. 

 

Try it out and let me know if you make any substitutions as I am always looking forward to trying new variations of my favorite recipes. 

 

Enjoy!

 

-Sara

 

 

 

52 in 52 #22 Sweet Dough for the Bread Machine

So I made cinnamon rolls a few weeks ago and they were amazing.  Well, I thought they were amazing; Corry thought they were 'so-so'.  I have always wanted to have an amazing cinnamon roll recipe in my proverbial back pocket for recipes, so I kept looking. 

I looked for every kind of cinnamon roll on Pinterest and was unimpressed by most of them.  I knew that I wanted the mixture for the inside to have more than just brown sugar and cinnamon but I wasn't sure what I wanted that to be. 

Thursday night was a pretty significant ice storm in DFW, so what better to do on a Friday morning when you are iced/snowed in, than to experiment with homemade cinnamon rolls?  Corry found this recipe on Pinterest for Sweet Bread Dough that we can make in the bread machine.  It was simple to put together with basic ingredients that most people would have on hand.   

A warning:  This dough is VERY sticky.  We only used the bread machine to mix/knead the ingredients together and then we took it out to rise in the oven because we were making two batches so we would have some for this morning as well.  After the dough rose for right at an hour, I took it out and kneaded about 1/2 cup flour into each batch just to make the dough manageable enough to roll out. 

We used this recipe for both our Basic Cinnamon Roll recipe (shown above) and also our Fancy Cinnamon Roll recipe and they both turned out amazing.  This dough is not overly sweet and could be used with any cinnamon roll recipe that you would like to try. 

Cinnamon Roll Dough for the Bread Machine
Prep time: 5 mins
Mix time: approx. 20 mins - we aren't sure how long - just use the 'dough' button on your machine and wait for it to stop mixing/beating
Rise time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
3/4 cup milk
2 Tbsp butter
1 beaten egg,
2 and 1/4 cups bread flour
1/4 white sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tsp yeast

Instructions:
Select loaf size on your bread machine.  Add all ingredients and select Dough button.  Remove from machine once dough has finished kneading.  Add to well greased pan, and cover with a greased piece of plastic wrap.  Allow to rise in a warm, draft free location for an hour.  Once risen to at least double the original size, remove from pan and knead in enough flour to make dough less sticky.  You don't want the dough to be too sticky or else you won't be able to roll the dough out.  Fill with your desired toppings and bake according to instructions for your recipe.  See recipes for Basic Cinnamon Rolls or Fancy Cinnamon Rolls. 

Enjoy! 

 

Homemade Spanish Rice

Our family is a huge fan of Spanish rice.  We used to use a random recipe that my husband found and it was good but this recipe that he makes now is amazing.  It always turns out great and is very easy to manipulate the basic recipe to your liking. 

We serve this with our Salsa Chicken, with our Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas and basically any other time I can convince my husband to make it.  This is even a hit with our teenager and our toddlers.  It has awesome flavor and doesn't have too much heat.  If you wanted to increase the heat you could just add more cayenne.  This rice is awesome as well the second day.  Because it is so tender the day that you originally make it, the rice doesn't dry out when you try to reheat it. 

Spanish Rice
Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 20 mins

Ingredients:
1 whole onion, chopped
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 and 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup jarred tomato based salsa
pinch of cayenne
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
salt to taste
frozen corn
diced carrot
1 and 1/2 cup rice
2 Tbsp olive oil

Instructions:
Add oil to pan, heat and sweat your chopped onion.  Once your onion has sweated, add rice and brown to your liking.  While rice is browning, add salt, cumin, paprika, cayenne, salsa, and chicken stock to a bowl and blend with an immersion blender.  (If you don't have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender.  The idea is to get the salsa pureed a bit more.)  Add garlic to browned rice and continue to brown for approximately one minute.  Pour liquid mixture into browned rice.  Add corn and diced carrots and bring the entire pot to a boil and boil for one minute.  Once one minute has passed, turn the heat down to low, put a lid on the pot and do not open for 20 minutes.  After 20 minutes, open the lid, fluff the rice and serve.

Enjoy!  

Fancy Homemade Cinnamon Rolls