Cheesy Chicken Rollups

I don't know why I don't follow my gut more. Like when I start making a recipe and think of a way that might be better, but then choose not to make it that way. This recipe is perfectly delicious as is, but I found that working with the chopped chicken was tougher. Next time I make this, I will cook chicken tenderloins and cut them to fit the crescent rolls. That way there's more substance than the chopped chicken that fell out everywhere. Other than that, I would keep this recipe the same. I doubled this so we could have leftovers, below is the recipe for 1 batch.

Cheesy Chicken Rollups
From Plain Chicken

1 can crescent rolls
1 large chicken breast, cooked and chopped
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x13 baking dish.
2. Combine the cream of chicken soup, milk and cheese. Pour 1/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the dish.
3. Place some chopped chicken on an unrolled crescent roll and top with 1 teaspoon of soup mixture. Roll up and put into the dish.
4. Repeat with remaining rolls and cover with remaining soup mixture.
5. Sprinkle some extra cheese on top is desired (I did!).
6. Bake for 30 minutes.

Meatball Stew

On cold winter days you need warm, hearty meals. This past weekend it was around -16 degrees here, and yesterday it rained and was 50 degrees. Get your act together New England! Anyways, we didn't have the ingredients for pot roast this weekend, but I did have ingredients for something pretty similar. I just replaced the roast with meatballs, and it also takes less time to cook. I omitted the onions and celery, but if no one in your family opposes them I would keep them in.

The one thing I would change is cooking the veggies for the full 4-5 hours alone, then adding the cooked meatballs in and cooking another couple of hours. After 5 hours, My potatoes and carrots were not cooked through and I ended up removing them and heating them in the microwave and putting them back into the crockpot. Way more work for a meal that I wanted to set and forget. Other than that, I knew it may not be filling enough for Dan as is, so I made mashed potatoes to serve it over. I don't recommend doubling up on the starches here. You can eat it as is, like a stew, or leave out the potatoes, and keep the carrots, onions and celery and serve over egg noodles. You can use this recipe a few different ways.

Also, don't mind my picture. I forgot to take one at my first serving, so I took one of my messy plate during my second serving. The below recipe is how I made it, not including my suggestion of cooking the veggies first.

Meatball Stew
From Pocket Change Gourmet

1 pkg. frozen meatballs or homemade, cooked (about 20 meatballs)
4 large carrots, peeled and chopped
3 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
4 stalks celery, sliced
1 can tomato soup
1 can beef gravy
1 envelope onion soup mix
2 tsp. or 2 cubes of beef bouillon
1 cup water

1. Place chopped veggies in a crockpot.
2. Pour remaining ingredients (other than meatballs) in and combine.
3. Add meatballs, mix, and cook on low 4-5 hours until veggies are tender.

** To prepare on stove top, combine all ingredients in a stockpot. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to low and simmer for an hour or until veggies are tender.

Garlic Bread Pizzas

Ever need a recipe that will come together in minutes? And not those, "dinner in under 30 minutes" recipes, I mean minutes, like, 8-10 minutes. Here's one.

Okay, so these alone aren't really a meal unless you eat all of them, but pair them with a salad and you can have any easy meal in no time at all.

I have to give credit to my cousin's girlfriend for this recipe. She brought it to one of our family potlucks and everyone loved it. When we were invited to watch the Superbowl at my in-law's (yes, and I'm just now getting around to posting it), we had little time to prepare anything. We grabbed the ingredients for these and made them at their house right before the game started. They really do take a matter of minutes if you want cheese or pepperoni pizzas. If you want sausage (which we used some) then you need to brown the sausage first. If you want veggies, you'll want to sauté them a bit first. But, if everything is prepared in advance, then you still have dinner in a matter of minutes.

Garlic Bread Pizzas
from Jen

1 package frozen garlic bread slices
Pizza sauce
Shredded cheese
prepared desired toppings

1. Cook garlic bread according to package directions. Leave oven on.
2. Top slices with pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings. Bake for a few minutes until cheese is melted and all is heated through.

Honey-Garlic Skillet Shrimp

Tonight was a first in our kitchen. After Dan ate, he went to the store and bought ingredients for a SECOND ROUND of dinner. I didn't try to stop him, and I can't blame him, because these shrimp really were that good. And they are the easiest shrimp to make. Shrimp and 4 ingredients most people always have on hand. While I was making round 1, I wasn't sure how they would come out. I've made a few marinated shrimp recipes where they came out kind of bland. Not this one. They were full of flavor eve after being marinated for only 15-20 minutes and they are pre-frozen shrimp. And the shrimp was on sale! If you marinate these for even longer they would have an even more intense flavor. Next time around I want to try these with fresh shrimp and marinate them longer.

Seriously, this recipe was just bonus after bonus. Not to mention that I made a batch of brownies and Dan also brought home some ice cream, so round 2 even gets a brownie sundae dessert. Happy Monday!

Honey-Garlic Skillet Shrimp
from The Cooking Jar

1 lb. shrimp, de-veined and tails on
2 tbsp. soy sauce
4 tbsp. honey
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. minced garlic
canola oil for cooking

White rice for serving if you'd like. I suggest adding veggies to make it a really full meal.

1. Combine the soy sauce, honey, ginger and garlic. Pour half into a large plastic bag with the shrimp and let marinate for 15-30 minutes.
2. In a large skillet, heat a small bit of oil over medium-high heat.
3. Add the shrimp and cook on each side for a few minutes. Turn the heat down and let the sauce thicken up a bit as the shrimp continue to cook.
4. Serve the shrimp over rice and drizzle with remaining sauce.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bread

As everyone knows (well, everyone who reads my baking posts), I don't eat a lot of baked goods. I also never eat an entire bunch of bananas, which works out well for making breads and muffins. As good as plain banana bread is, I tend to like to make "flavored" banana breads. Well, yes, banana is a flavor, but you get my point...

My usually stocked pantry has been running out of some items lately, so I had assumed I'd be making a plain old banana bread. I was even running low on chocolate chips. However, I found this recipe, and had everything for it, which made me one happy baker. I made this earlier this week. I had a couple of slices for breakfast, and then brought the rest to work. Needless to say it was gone in under 5 minutes after I put it in the staff room. This recipe is a keeper.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bread
from Back for Seconds

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter + 2 tbsp. for the topping
1/2 cup canola oil
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. baking soda
1 and 3/4 cup flour

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the peanut butter, oil, bananas, cocoa and sugar until well combined. Add the eggs and milk and mix. Mix in the baking soda and flour until just combined.
3. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 40-50 minutes. (Mine took about 65 minutes...)
4. Let cool completely. Remove from loaf pan.
5. Once the bread is cool, heat the 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and pour into a small plastic bag (like a Ziploc). Cut a corner of the bag to make it into a piping bag and drizzle the peanut butter over the bread.

Creamy Ham and Peas Pasta

I made something with peas in it that Dan ate!

Okay, well he ate a couple and pushed most of the others aside, but I'll take it a step towards converting him into a veggie lover! I made this recipe early last week, but haven't gotten around to posting it until now. Being back to work has me really learning to manage my time and juggle getting out of work at 5 (yeah, longer day now) and feeding, changing, loving Peyton while getting dinner made and prepping for work stuff. I've been into finding easier recipes and prepping stuff the night before if I can, which I did for this meal. It's very simple to make and came out really well. I love a good hearty (unhealthy) creamy cheesy pasta. This isn't cheesy, but the creaminess was perfect and it had more flavor than I expected. I thought we had mustard at home, but we didn't so I used some ground mustard. I just whisked into the cream. The recipe below includes the mustard as intended.

I have planned out our meals for the month, which grocery lists ready to go so I can shop on Sunday and not worry the rest of the week. I've been mixing in some new recipes like this one with some easy basic meals like chicken and veggies or steak and cheese. So far I've got a good system down. BUT, Peyton can't move around too much yet...we'll see how this goes when she's mobile...

Creamy Ham and Peas Pasta

1lb. pasta
1 small onion, chopped
2 tbsp. butter
3 cups chopped ham
1/4 cup white wine
2 cups heavy cream
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 cup frozen peas

1. Cook pasta according to directions.
2. While pasta is cooking, start your sauce. Sauté the onions in the butter until translucent. Add ham and continue cooking to heat through.
3. Add white wine and cook until liquid reduces slightly
4. Whisk together the cream and mustard and add to ham and onions.
5. Slowly add the Parmesan cheese, stirring.
6. Add peas and cook until they are warmed through.
7. Add sauce to pasta and serve.

S'Mores Trifle

Another Christmas has come and gone. It was a fun first Christmas for Peyton with lots of Christmas parties and events. While I did do a bit of cooking, I didn't document most of it. We were busy and Peyton really likes to wake up from a nap right when I'm in the middle of cooking something, so the clean-up and photo at the end get rushed...or forgotten. I did manage to snap a couple of photos of this prepared. It was a huge hit!

Usually I bake for the holidays, but this year I looked for really simple recipes. I made some easy gingerbread fudge and cookie dough fudge (completely forgot to take photos), my cheesy potatoes, a creamy corn side dish, this, and a mint lush desert for different parties. We had two stops on Christmas Eve, two stops on Christmas day, and then two more parties over the weekend. We were busy, busy, busy, but we enjoyed every moment!

If you make the brownies and pudding ahead of time this recipes comes together very quickly. The trickiest part (if you can even call it tricky) is "toasting" the marshmallows. Like I said, if you prepare each layer ahead of time, this comes together in a matter of minutes. I recommend having you brownies made, pudding made, graham crackers crushed, and mix the whipped topping and marshmallow cream before hand. Then it's just some layering and toasting and you're done.

S'Mores Trifle
from Mom Endeavors

1 box brownie mix, prepared according to package
2 small boxes instant chocolate pudding, prepared the quick way
1 package from a box of graham crackers, crushed
1 container whipped topping
1 small container marshmallow cream (Fluff if you're from New England!)
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 Hershey bar

1. In a trifle dish, place half of the brownies, cut into chunks. Top with half the pudding then top with half the graham crackers.
2. Combine the whipped topping and marshmallow cream. It may be a little chunky and that's okay. Spread on top of the graham cracker layer.
3. Repeat with remaining brownies, pudding, graham crackers and marshmallow.
4. Place the mini marshmallows on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Set your oven to broil and place them in the oven. Leave the door slightly open and don't go anywhere. They take maybe 30 seconds to "toast". Remove and let cool briefly.
5. Top trifle with broken Hershey bar pieces, toasted marshmallows, more graham crackers if desired.
6. Chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.