Top 16 Recipes of 2016

Ah, long time, no see everyone!

Yes, it's the 2nd to last day of our Oregon trip and I've finally found a few moments to write. It has been Busy with a capitol B! We've been going non-stop, but man, it has been fun. I'll save pictures for when I do my Oregon or December wrap-up but we've basically been on what I like to call a "Food and Drink Tour" of Oregon. Seriously! We've travelled to Southern Oregon to dine at a couple of places in Ashland. We've stopped at a restaurant in Eugene. We've traveled to Portland to visit family and wine-taste with friends. There was a boozy breakfast in Albany. We saw "Holiday Office Party" in Corvallis. Drove the backroads through Independence. Had a wine-and-hor-dourves night with some of my biggest blog fans (Hello Glaeser family!) I can safely say I've seen the entire I-5 corridor of Oregon on this visit 😁

Recipe Redux: Chicken & Dumplings

Late last Thursday night, I was awakened by a clap of thunder on the house. I bolted upright in bed as Gizmo and Mariota scurried their furry bodies underneath the covers. I looked over to where the hubby normally lays, sighed, straightened the covers up around my neck, and laid back down. 

Things are going haywire at the plant lately, leaving the hubby's supervisor with no choice but to man the station 24 hours a day. Needless to say, this has resulted in the hubby working some of those dreaded night shifts. And left me home alone on a stormy night.

Pesto Zoodles with Grilled Chicken & Burst Tomatoes

Today, folks, might actually be a sunny day!

Indeed, I've been (impatiently) waiting for a sunny day for almost a week now. The hubby worked his tail off last weekend to finish the patio and the garden area out back for our rained-out 4th of July barbecue. The area frankly looks amazing, and I've had no chance to take pictures of it all week thanks to clouds, rain, and general gloominess. But not today! It's finally sunny, and I plan on taking full advantage of that. And I can't wait to share the results. The hubby is truly a miracle worker.

25 Side Dishes

Hey hey! We've got a holiday weekend coming up y'all!

The Memorial Day Holiday weekend is upon us. I don't know about you, but ever since we moved to Kentucky, Memorial Day has been spent with the hubby's family. The hubby's cousin and his wife drive in from out of town, and we all gather together for a family barbecue. This time, the hubby's cousin and his wife are bringing their new baby girl for everyone to meet! We are excited. The weekend is promising to be very sunny, right now they are forecasting a high of 90º. Whew! Good thing the hubby's-cousin's-wife's-mother (whose house we party at) has a pool. The pool is the best part of the get-together, at least as far as all the nieces and nephews are concerned :-)

Slow Cooker Salsa Verde Chicken Tacos

Fire up those slow cookers y'all!

There's so many things to love about this recipe. For one, you make it in the slow cooker. One of my absolute favorite cooking methods. Especially for things like taco meat. Two chicken breasts in the slow cooker kept me and the hubby fed for 4 days. If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have invented another recipe with the taco meat. As life would have it though, I devoured tacos for 4 straight days. 

It. Was. Glorious!

There's nothing better than savory shredded chicken, piled high with creamy avocado and cheddar cheese, all topped with a cool, crisp salsa verde and tucked neatly in a fresh corn tortilla. This is taco heaven! :-)

25 Tomato Recipes

Happy Monday! 

Wowsers, did this weekend fly by or what? I just can't even, I don't know where it went. I'll start with my doctor's appointment on Friday morning-

So, that appointment... It was first thing in the morning, 8 am. I was the surgeon's first patient of the day. Now, most of the surgeons I've seen, they start by asking me questions and conclude by giving me an exam. And truth be told, the exams are usually quite gentle. Painless. This surgeon started the appointment by giving me an exam. Somehow he managed to locate the exact evil spots on my back. Not only did he locate it/them, but he pressed insanely hard into them.

Naan Pizzas with Chicken, Asparagus, & Egg

Yes. You want this. Right now. For breakfast. For lunch today. For dinner tonight. Eat it for every meal! One bite and you'll be in love :-)

I love flatbread pizza. Does it get any easier? I love homemade pizza dough just as much as the next person, but there's something to be said about a meal that's ready in minutes vs. a meal you had to plan all day. And these pizzas really did take just minutes. I used leftover rotisserie chicken, because, hello, it's me. I seem to always have rotisserie chicken in my fridge. Pair chicken with leftover roasted asparagus from the night before, and pretty much the only work you will have to do will be making a couple of sunny-up eggs.

Chicken Bacon Orzo Soup

Here in Kentucky, winter is about to give what I suspect is its last gasp. I even woke up to a dusting of snow this morning. Judging from the future forecast though it looks like after this next week, the weather will break. No more nights in the 30's with the fear of frost. Days in the high 60's, low 70's. The garden will flourish. Our privacy fence of densely populated trees at the edge of our property (which lose their greenery every winter) will fill out with leaves again. And chicken soup that warms the soul will lose just a smidgen of its appeal. 

Chicken with Creamy Dijon Mushroom Sauce

I love a good saucy chicken. 

BUT- it must be done correctly. For one, it must be cooked properly. Overcooked, dry chicken takes me back to my college sorority days when the cooks would serve us dry, flavorless, season-less chicken. The kind where you chew, and you chew, and you chew. There's no end reward. You end up with a dry, ball of mush that you eventually force down your throat with a large gulp of water.

And then you never want to eat chicken again.

25 Rice Recipes

Rice. I love rice. It's a simple, affordable, and versatile grain product that's very familiar to most Americans. You can fry it, and come up with fried rice or even pan-fried rice cakes. You can bake it inside stuffed peppers, or casseroles loaded with veggies. You can serve it with a saucy stir fry with the sole intention of using it to soak up that sauce. One of my favorite ways to eat rice? In a bowl with a little soy sauce drizzled over it. Simple. Yet delicious. I credit rice with helping our budget when we first moved to Kentucky. Due to its low price, I added rice to a ton of dishes and served it often in our first years in the bluegrass state. We still eat a lot of it, even though things are much different these days. I wish I could get the hubby to enjoy brown rice, but you can't win all the battles :-)

Creamy Chicken, Potato, & Kale Soup

This is truly one of those soups that came about by me throwing stuff in the pot. I'd picked up a rather large rotisserie chicken after getting a steroid shot one day. Because who feels like cooking after that, am I right? It's pretty much routine for me to throw the chicken carcass into the crockpot and make broth out of it the night we have it. So there I was. I had leftover chicken. I had freshly made chicken broth. It also happened to be the day after the Super Bowl, which meant I also had a bunch of potato innards on hand from the Potato Skins the hubby and I had devoured on our holiday. 

Chicken. Chicken broth. Very soft, almost mashed potatoes. What would you do? 

I chose soup!

Enchilada Stacks

-with chicken, black beans, spinach, and pepper jack cheese

Just call me "The Globetrotting Eater"!

I'm doing pretty good this month. An Asian recipe, a Greek recipe, a cupcake recipe (you gotta throw one of those in every now and then), and now a Mexican recipe. I'm spanning the world over here! 

Variety is good, yes? I think so. I know lots of people who eat the same foods, day after day, year after year, for their entire lives. Never getting outside the box. While it's true, I could and do eat certain foods everyday (hello turkey sandwiches!), I need diversity. There's something amazing and life-changing about discovering a new food that you've never tried before. It's almost like falling in love.

Kung Pao Chicken Zoodles

I'm joining the zoodle craze.

Sure, February doesn't seem like the right time of year to start, um, zoodling, but it cannot be helped. I was catching up on reading the blogs I follow last month, in the evening and after a couple of glasses of wine. One of my favorite bloggers, Lindsay from Pinch of Yum, featured a recipe using spiralized veggies and that was all she wrote. I've had a spiralizer on my Amazon wishlist for months, but something clicked.  I had to have it. I wanted spiralized bell peppers, and cabbage, and most importantly, zoodles. The wine clearly muddled my thinking, and before I knew it, I'd already clicked "purchase" on Amazon.

Does this happen to anyone else late in the evening when they have a nice wine haze going on? I swear. Luckily, the contraption was only $30. It could have been worse :-)

Plus, the zoodles! Ohhhhhh, the zoodles...

Top 15 Recipes of 2015

Happy New Year's Eve!

Unbelievable that it's the last day of the year. I feel like I have been on vacation this week (much needed after Christmas Cookies) with my slacker posts. Indeed, it's much easier to post round-up's and articles about reading and summing the year up. I was going to post this yesterday, but alas, it was my birthday friends! Yep, this ol' girl turned 29 again... Or maybe a little more than that. Haha.

25 Pasta Recipes

Hey-o!

Happy Day-After Christmas folks! Did everyone have a great holiday with lots of friends and family? We sure did! Due to the holiday festivities yesterday, there was little time for blogging. The hubby and I have been go, go, GO! for the last couple of days. I'm definitely feeling it, and am ready for life to slow down just a bit. We've got our niece and nephew staying the night with us tonight, but come Monday, I should have some alone time. We aren't even planning anything for New Year's Eve, thank goodness. At the top of the list of my least favorite holidays you would have New Year's Eve. I'm always so-done with the holidays and usually 5 lbs overweight by the time it rolls around. This year, we are staying in. The more you progress into your 30's, the less you care about going out. Missing out on something. Not being in the pictures the next day. All the things that mattered so much in your 20's? Eh. I take em' or leave em' now.

Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup

Is there a more perfect time for a slow cooker recipe than at the holidays? I think not. After all the shopping, gift wrapping, check-book balancing, cookie baking, and making sure the hubby's not falling off the roof-ing (hehe), there's not a lot of energy left for cooking. Back when the hubby and I lived in Portland, this wasn't such big deal. We had many (quick) options for feeding ourselves somewhat healthy. We were within 5 minutes of Whole Foods, walking distance of of handful of restaurants, and had a kitchen drawer full of menus from restaurants that deliver. Ah, the old days. Today though? Our grocery store doesn't offer the options of Whole Foods (fresh salad bars, amazing hot soups, made-to-order sandwiches), we are within a 20 minute drive to the nearest restaurant, and delivery? That's a no-go. I cook a heck of a lot more here in Kentucky that I ever did in Oregon, which in itself has positives and negatives.

Chicken Fajita Casserole

Chicken Fajitas? In casserole form?

You mean, no screaming hot plate of peppers and chicken to burn my hands on? No constructing-every-portion-as-you-go? And, if you aren't constructing fajitas along the way, does that mean no extraneous plates of toppings lying around that you will eventually have to wash later that night?

If all that hasn't convinced you, how about this? Layers of tortilla, Spanish rice, smoky chicken, and sautéed peppers and onions, all tied together with a super-cheesy queso sauce?

Yep. You had me at queso :-)

Chicken, Spinach, and Mushroom Melts

I love sandwiches. Love, love, love them. Before this summer and my guacamole-a-thon, I had been on a sandwich kick for a long time. A long, long time, eating a sandwich every day for lunch. I can't explain this behavior, it just is. I get stuck on something, and then I eat it. And eat it, and eat it, and eat it. Pretty much until I'm sick of it. So happened with my turkey sandwich. Here's the thing about my sandwich kicks- they last a long time and they always come back. When I lived in Oregon, I spent most of 2009 on a sandwich kick. The building I worked at had a cafeteria where I found the most magical turkey sandwich. I ate it almost every day that year. Yep, I'm that weirdo. 

Recipe Redux: Chicken Stroganoff

Time for this month's Recipe Redux! This month, I'm taking on one of our house favorites, Chicken Stroganoff. Beef Stroganoff is a childhood favorite of mine, and one that my mother made often. However, the hubby and I don't eat a lot of red meat. And if I have steak in the house, you can bet I'm not disguising it under stroganoff. So, we substitute chicken. Looking back at my original pictures, it was time for an update-

I'm always surprised what pictures lead people to my website. Shockingly enough, often times it's really old recipes. Like this one. I first posted Chicken Stroganoff on May 7, 2012.  Just in case you might have forgotten, here's what was happening the world when I first posted this recipe:

Soy & Citrus Marinated Chicken

I have found THE marinade.

The marinade above all marinades, the one that will make your toes curl and your mouth do the happy dance. It adds flavor. Saltiness. Moisture. And, it's oh-so pretty.

This happened on a typical weekend day for me and the hubby. True to form, we'd gone for a run and come home to collapse on the couch. Normally, we grab something while we are out to eat (usually beer and pizza, ahem), but we had decided to come home instead. I have a habit of always asking the hubby what he wants me to make for dinner. He has a habit of telling me to make whatever. He's notoriously non-committal when I needle him for suggestions. Not that day.