No Noodle Lasagna
I had a great weekend this weekend. My aunt came in from Florida, so I went to Dallas to see my family. I had so much fun spending the days shopping with my mom and her sister. My mom and aunt are so cute when they are together. They are three years apart and they share the same birthday. I loved all the reminiscing that I got to do and hear this weekend. On top of all the fun, this was a great shopping weekend. I think we hit every Marshalls and TJ Maxx in the city of Dallas. I got lots of cute clothes to wear to work. I even got a cute pair of earrings. I may have to blog about them later.
When I got home, I needed to cook my meal for the week. That worked out so well last week. I am only trying to maintain my weight, but I ended up losing a couple of pounds, too! (I usually like to plan everything by ear, but I guess planning ahead works out sometimes.) I decided to go for a no noodle lasagna. This is the hardest recipe that I’ve attempted and it really wasn’t so bad. I found the recipe off the Dashing Dish website when looking at Pinterest.
Ingredients:
For Noodles:
5-6 Zucchini
Salt
Pepper
For Meat Mixture:
1.5 lb. Ground Turkey
1 Large Diced Onion
2 Cups Chopped Broccoli
2 Cups Chopped Cauliflower
2 Cups Chopped Spinach
1Cup Chopped Mushrooms
1 Jar of Spaghetti Sauce
1 Clove of Garlic (Minced)
1 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Pepper
For Cheese Mixture:
16 oz. Cottage Cheese
1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese (Grated)
3/4 Cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Slice up the zucchini into strips. Spray cookie sheet with cooking oil. Put zucchini on sheet, add salt and pepper. Bake in oven at 425 for 5 – 10 minutes on each side.
Chop all of the vegetables and mix them together.
Brown the ground turkey
Put all of the vegetable ingredients, meat, and the spaghetti sauce together in a really large skillet and cook until the vegetables begin to get soft.
Put a layer of meat sauce on bottom, put a layer of zucchini in a casserole dish.
Add a layer of cheese mixture on top of the zucchini.
Add another layer of zucchini, then another layer of meat.
Top with parmesan cheese, cover with foil, and put in the oven at 450 for an hour.
Take off the foil and put back in the oven to brown the cheese for about 2 – 5 minutes.
I think I let it brown too long, but it still tastes really great!!
Crockpot Chicken Fajitas
I got to go to another UT game this weekend. It was so much fun. UT played New Mexico and it was a shut out game. While I was there I proceeded to eat a hot dog AND a sausage wrap. After the weekend, I noticed the scale wasn’t being too kind. I know it wasn’t just the game. I’ve been snacking more and eating nachos almost every day for the last week. My friend told me I should think about preparing my meals for the week on Sunday or Monday and then I have no excuse to not eat healthy. I usually use the excuse that I was starving by the time I got home from work, so I HAD to eat whatever was the fastest to make, aka nachos.
Since I’m really not a cook, I like to rely on my crockpot. Knowing that one of the guys on my group texts gets REALLY angry about us doing crockpot or baked fajitas, I decided that I was going to make crockpot fajitas just to annoy him. When I told him what I was making, he sent me the dictionary definition of fajitas and said I was making a roast. No matter what they technically are, I really liked what I’m calling my “crockpot chicken fajitas”!
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 large white onion chopped
1 Tbsp. chopped garlic
1tsp. dried oregano
1tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 can of rotel
Additional Ingredient Options:
Low carb tortillas
Guacamole
Sour Cream
Shredded Cheese
Anything else you like on your fajitas
Put all the ingredients in the crockpot.
Cook on high for 4 – 5 hours.
Slice the chicken into strips
Put sliced chicken, onion/tomato mix, cheese, sour cream, guacamole (or whatever else you like on your fajitas) on a tortilla and eat up!
Italian Lemon Chicken
I love an easy recipe! I think this could be the easiest one I’ve made yet. I put the Italian Lemon Chicken in the crockpot and when I got home, the house smelled SOOOOO good!!! Once I ate it, I found out that it tasted just as good as it smelled!!!
Ingredients:
1 cube of butter
3 lemons (juiced)
2 packages of Italian Dressing Mix
Chicken
I threw all the ingredients in the crockpot. The chicken was even frozen.
Crockpot was on high. I was surprised that there was a lot of juice in the crockpot after cooking it a few hours. Chicken is done when it hits 170 degrees. It took about 3 – 4 hours.
YUM! Seems like I should have thought to make a vegetable or something to eat with my chicken…but I guess I will have to learn how to do that another day!
Practicing for the Fourth
Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve started contributing to random parties that I’ve been invited to. Before that, I just graced everyone with my presence. Maybe that is why I’m not invited to a lot of parties…hmmmm…. Well, now that I’m becoming domestic, I’ve been trying to remedy that. Fourth of July is coming up, so I get to test my party etiquette. I looked everywhere for a pretty red, white and blue layered alcoholic punch to bring, but I could only find non-alcoholic ones. So, I decided to make these pretty strawberries instead. They turned out ok, but I think I can do better on the actual day of the party.
Ingredients:
DRY Strawberries
White Chocolate
Blue sprinkles
Vegetable Oil
Put white chocolate and a tiny bit of vegetable oil in a bowl. (I used too much vegetable oil, so I suggest using it sparingly.)
Microwave the chocolate for about a minute. Once it’s hot, stir it up until it’s smooth.
Get a bowl of blue sprinkles. This bowl was too small. I ended up getting a bigger one and filling it up. You’ll use more sprinkles than you would think you’d need.
Dip the strawberry in the white chocolate, then dip it in the blue sprinkles, then wait until the chocolate hardens to eat. YUM! I’m pretty sure these will be a hit at the party!!
Braised Hoisin Beer Short Ribs
Now that I have my crockpot, I had to cook something in it. My first meal had to be short ribs. I think the crockpot was probably invented just to cook short ribs. I found this recipe on Food.com. It was probably the easiest short rib recipe that I found. I prefer the recipes that involve me throwing things in a pot and leaving it. I’ll make one of those next time. I’m going to buy a crockpot cookbook on my iPad, but I’m not really sure which one is the best. If anyone has one that they like, feel free to let me know!
Ingredients:
3 lbs short ribs
salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
10 – 12 garlic gloves, smashed
1 inch piece gingerroot, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
12 ounces good ale
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/2 – 1 cup hoisin sauce
Season the ribs with salt and pepper. Brown the short ribs. Remove the ribs and pour off all but a couple tablespoons of the fat.
Sauté the ginger and garlic, once it’s sautéed pour the beer over it to deglaze and then turn the flame off.
Put the browned short ribs in the crockpot
Put the sautéed garlic and ginger on the ribs
Pour beer and vinegar on the ribs until it’s covered.
Cook in the crockpot for about 2 1/2 hours.
Add Hoisin Sauce and put in the pre heated oven (300 degrees) for 30 minutes.
Put on a plate and serve with your favorite vegetables. YUM!!!
BBQ chicken
I love making stuff in the crockpot. It’s so easy to throw everything in there and then forget about it. I’m really not the type of cook that wants to make a fuss. I saw this recipe and really wanted to try it because it involved coke in the ingredients. I rushed out to the store and bought all the ingredients, came home and started preparations to cook the chicken. The only thing I didn’t factor in is that I have a really small crockpot. I couldn’t get the chicken to fit in, so I had to have Mike cut off the legs and wings to make it fit. Then, since the chicken took up all the room, the other ingredients didn’t really fit either and it ended up overflowing. After I got the majority of the ingredients finally in the crockpot, I turned it on and left it for a couple hours. I’m not sure what possessed me to go look at the progress, since that is a little more work than I was planning to do, but when I checked I noticed that the crockpot wasn’t even working!!! OMG!! It was all just sitting there marinading I guess. I moved the crockpot to another plug and changed the setting to high and it miraculously started working, so it all worked out in the end!
Ingredients:
Onions
Lemon
BBQ Sauce
Coke
Whole chicken – (or one with no legs or wings works too!)
Cut up the lemons and onions
Put the lemons, onions and chicken in the crockpot
Add BBQ sauce and coke
Cook until the chicken is ready. Probably about 4 – 6 hours.
This looks pretty pitiful, but it’s really tasty!
Mike said he made the best bbq sauce ever by using all the stuff the chicken was cooking in and adding a bunch of other stuff, but I have no idea what he added.
Quick dip
Today I had the opposite problem than I had the other day. I have chips, but I have very little cheese. When I make nachos, I have to use A LOT of cheese. I still had some sour cream left over from the bean dip, so I made my favorite easy to make dip:
Ingredients:
Sour Cream
Pace Picante Sauce
Shredded cheese
You can use whatever amounts you like.
Put Sour Cream in a bowl.
Add Picante Sauce, I like Pace Medium.
Add shredded Cheese and mix it up good.
Dip chip and eat. YUM! I like this dip with my nachos too. Sometimes I don’t add the cheese to the dip.
Warm Bean Dip
I think if you work around a lot of women, a pot luck is bound to happen. We were at training yesterday and the group decided that if we did a pot luck today and worked through lunch, we can get out early. I jumped all over that because we are supposed to be doing four day work weeks and today is supposed to be a day off anyway. Plus, I’m a morning person and by the end of the day I’m tired. The only issue I had with it is that I don’t live very close to a grocery store, so last minute pot lucks are not easy for me. I decided that I would make something that WOULD be easy for me, so I chose this bean dip recipe that I saw on Pinterest. The original recipe was found at the life at a loft house blog. Since I didn’t get home until late yesterday, I got up early this morning to make my bean dip. I hope it’s still hot by the time people want to eat it, but I kind of doubt it will be.
Ingredients:
1 8 ounce package of softened cream cheese
1 cup of sour cream
1 pkg. of taco seasoning
2 16 ounce cans of refried beans
4 cups of shredded monterrey jack/cheddar cheese
pre heat the oven to 350.
Mix the sour cream and cream cheese
Add in the two cans of bean dip and mix it really well
Add in the taco seasoning and mix it up
Put the bean mixture in a 9X13 baking pan with cooking spray.
Sprinkle cheese on top and then put in the oven (at 350 degrees) for 25 – 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and/or a little brown.
Serve with chips!
Brie Bites
As usual, I was looking on Pinterest at all the delicious looking food and found a recipe for Brie Bites. I love brie, so this seemed like a match made in heaven for me. When I looked at the recipe up close, I felt like they looked kind of bland, so I made some adjustments. I’d say that this is the first recipe that is mostly mine. I figured everyone loves bacon, so I added that and apple to the recipe and got rid of the pecans. I was going to make these for one of the parties yesterday, but I think it’s better that I had the opportunity to try them out first. I’ll be bringing these to future party events because they are GOOD! Mike said he would add something spicy to the mix, maybe cayenne pepper or jalapeño peppers, but I don’t really like spicy.
Ingredients:
Phyllo tarts
bacon
brown sugar
apple
brie
Make some bacon bits
While bacon is cooking, put the phyllo tarts on a cookie sheet
Add brie to the phyllo cup
Top the brie with about 1/2 tsp of brown sugar
Top that with apple
Top that with bacon, put in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes or until the brie is melted.
Let cool and eat!
crockpot beer chicken tacos
Since there is just two of us, eating a whole chicken is a week long process. So far I’ve really enjoyed the crockpot beer chicken that I made the other day. I have said it before, everything tastes better in a tortilla. I decided this is a good time to test that theory out by putting the beer chicken into a tortilla with cheese. My theory is still right. This makes a great little taco and was a great leftover meal!
Ingredients:
Chicken
Cheese
Tortilla… I used wheat tortillas because that is all I had.
Microwave for 1 minute. Then eat!
Fabulous after FIFTY 