Tried and true recipes, new twists on old favorites, and new dishes to expand my family's palate.
Chicken is a popular dish in our home and I’m always looking for new ways to make it.
I was watching Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade Cooking the other day when she prepared this dish. It looked simple and delicious and I decided to give it a try. One thing that intrigued me about this dish was that it was something I could throw together early in the day, refrigerate and then pop in the oven just before I was ready to start dinner. I love dishes like that!
I followed the recipe except for one small change. Sandra’s recipe called for the addition of green beans. Since there are fewer people in the family that like green beans I opted to switch out the green beans for chopped fresh broccoli instead. It worked out perfectly.
RAINBOW CHICKEN ROLL
Recipe from Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade Cooking
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Trim chicken breasts of any fat. Lay flat on a cutting board and butterfly each breast 3/4 of the way through. Lay each chicken breast on a cutting board, cover with a piece of plastic wrap, and pound to 1/4″ thickness.
Lay chicken breasts flat on a cutting board and sprinkle with seasoned salt and Italian seasoning. Place 3 to 4 strips each of the string beans, carrots and red pepper leaving 1/2-inch on the side furthest from you. Sprinkle each with 2 tablespoons cheese. Roll chicken breast up and place seam side down in a medium baking dish.
Pour marinara sauce over chicken and place in oven. Bake 30 minutes basting with the marinara sauce halfway through cooking.
Remove breasts from pan. To serve slice each breast into 4 or 5 slices and fan on the plate with additional marinara sauce on the side.
**Note: I did this early in the day, covered and refrigerated the dish, and then took it out when I was getting ready to start making dinner, preheated the oven and baked it.
And additional note: this dish took just slightly over one hour to cook in a covered casserole dish, so I would adjust the cooking time from the original recipe provided.
Enjoy!
This is my all time favorite macaroni salad, and my family would agree with me. It’s simple and easy to throw together and I make it often in the warm weather months.
The shrimp I use in this dish are the “tiny” version found in a can. Before you cover your eyes and run away from that idea I promise you they work and they work well. I’ve tried it with fresh shrimp and frozen tiny shrimp and just was not happy with the results. The canned “tiny” version is what works best and I’ve never had anyone who has tried it tell me they didn’t love this salad.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.
SHRIMP & MACARONI SALAD:
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the macaroni. Cook until just done. When done, drain and rinse with cool water and set to the side.
Dice the celery and the onion and grate the carrot and set to the side.
Drain and rinse the shrimp and set to the side.
In a large bowl add the macaroni, celery, onion, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, garlic powder and the grated carrot. Mix well and add more mayonnaise if needed. Once mixed, add the two cans of shrimp and fold in. Cover and refrigerate for an hour or two before serving.
Stir well before serving and enjoy!
Do you love soup as much as I do? I could eat soup three times a day, everyday for a month and never be sick of it.
My husband has another opinion. He likes soup, but for him it’s a lunch item accompanied by a sandwich. For me, it’s a meal. For my children it means grilled cheese, because soup for dinner has to be shared with grilled cheese sandwiches or they won’t eat it. My family is fickle and they make me crazy sometimes.
If you checked out my Smothered Roast Beef recipe from the other day, I hinted that the leftovers from that dish would be used in another recipe. This is that recipe.
And before any of you balk at this I’m going to tell you upfront that some of the gravy from that roast beef is used as the base of this soup. Don’t go thinking that is weird, gravy in soup, because if you remember that gravy was made with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup. So really, it’s only fitting for it to be in this soup. And it works. Very well, I might add.
I make this in the slow cooker and it works out perfectly fine.
BEEF BARLEY SOUP:
Place all ingredients in the slower cook leaving out the barley.
Stir well, season accordingly, cover and set to low. Allow to cook on low for 4 hours. At the end of 4 hours, stir in the barley and cover. Allow to continue cooking for an additional 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until barley is tender.
Serve up with some grilled cheese.
Enjoy!
I love making a roasted chicken, and I always try to change it up and do something different with it when I roast one.
This version is one I make when I’m pressed for time because it’s basically just a one pot meal. A few years back I saw Paula Deen on Food Network where she took a trip to France. Part of the episode showed her walking through the outdoor food markets where she visited a stand that was making rotisserie chickens. They had these racks of chickens spinning on the rotisserie and underneath the chickens, layered evenly on the bottom of the rotisserie, were potatoes. The potatoes cooked in the drippings from the chickens spinning above them. How good did that sound? Since I don’t have a commercial size rotisserie, this was the closest I could come to recreating what looked like a mouth-watering dish.
This chicken I roasted was over 7 pounds and it was the smallest roaster I could find at the store that day. I normally like a 3 to 4 pound chicken, but I didn’t have that choice. It also took longer than I expected to cook so dinner was a little late to the table on a night when I didn’t really have that much time to spare.
But, that being said, it was a very juicy chicken and ended up being worth the extra roasting time. I’ll give you a guideline recipe to follow, but feel free to add whatever spices or vegetables you and your family prefer, along with adjusting your cooking time based on the size of your bird.
ROASTED CHICKEN WITH VEGETABLES:
The following dry spices/herbs use at your own discretion and sprinkle on top of the bird and then rubbed in before baking.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Wash out chicken, pat dry and place on a plate. Rub on the dried herbs/spices and set to the side.
Begin cutting the potatoes, onions and carrots by quartering them. Break apart the head of garlic leaving each clove in it’s skin. Place the potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic in the bottom of a large roasting pan and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the chopped rosemary and sage and mix together.
Place the chicken on top of the vegetables and place on the middle rack of your oven.
Roast until the chicken is done. Remove from the oven, place the chicken on a cutting board and cover to keep warm. Allow the chicken to sit for a few minutes to lock in all the juices.
Remove the roasted vegetables to a serving platter with a slotted spoon. Carve up your chicken and serve.
Notes: Because of the huge size of the chicken I used I ended up beginning the cooking process by covering it with aluminum foil for the first hour of roasting so I wouldn’t burn the chicken or the vegetables with the increased cooking time . My chicken took a total of 2 1/2 hours to cook completely. After the first hour of cooking I removed the aluminum foil and allowed it to continue cooking until done, allowing the skin to crisp up and brown.
Fall is definitely in the air, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m still trying to cling to the last remnants of summer, while at the same time enjoying the cooler and crisp weather that fall brings.
One thing I do love about the colder weather is comfort food. By the time the end of August is rolling around I’ve kind of had my fill of grilling food every night, which is something we spend most of the warm weather doing.
I was thinking of recipes to make for something comforting for Sunday night dinner. The weather was overcast and raw out with some drizzle, so something warm and filling was on the menu.
My children love Chicken Pot Pie, and I haven’t made it in a while. I have a quick recipe for one that I normally throw together when I do make it but it’s not fantastic. Good, but not great.
I remembered visiting one of my favorite bloggers sites awhile back and seeing a recipe for this dish that I kept on the back burner of my brain to make one day. Today was the day. The blogger was Karen from Our Life in the Kitchen.
What drew me to this recipe on Karen’s site was the rustic feel of it. This was vastly different from the version I have normally made. My version has more shortcuts and is a quick fix meal. The irony of that is Karen’s version is definitely a homemade version, and took barely longer than it did for my quick version. I’m not going to share my recipe with you because it’s just not that great. I will tell you that the only two similarities my recipe had versus this one was that each used store-bought pie crusts and each contain chicken. Period.
But this version is one I will be making over and over. My family devoured it and there was nothing left. The only thing I changed was the addition of the peas. None of my kids will eat peas so I knew if I put them in I would hear complaints. As for the rest of the recipe, I followed it exactly.
Try it on one of these cool and crisp fall days. You will absolutely love it.
Want to know how to make it? Check out Karen’s blog and her Chicken Pot Pie and she will take you step by step through the recipe with her gorgeous photos. Enjoy!
