Aunt Dorie’s Chicken Cheese-It Casserole
This is a tried and true comfort food recipe the girls loved – who now are sharing with all their friends. Most of the items are shelf stable and can be purchased in advance, on sale 😊 Ingredients: Chicken (see below ~2 cups/more if you prefer)* Box of Elbow Macaroni 2 cans of Cream of Mushroom/Chicken/Celery soup (you can mix/match to your taste) ½ can of milk Sharp Cheddar cheese for grating Box of Cheese-Its *Chicken – roaster chicken or whole stewing chicken or 3 chicken breast halves (skin on, bone in) or ~4 chicken thighs (skin on, bone in) Instructions: Stew chicken and reserve water and set chicken aside to cool. Boil elbow macaroni in chicken stock from stewed chicken (or water if using a Roaster chicken) and drain when just al dente. Shred into...
Black Bean Burgers
The below recipe can easily be doubled (tripled, etc.) to feed more folks but is ideal for 3 Black Bean burgers (which freeze well for future use). Black Bean Burgers – 3 burger recipe Ingredients 1 can low sodium Bush’s Black Beans – rinsed VERY well and set onto a cookie sheet covered in paper towels for 15 min. to dry 1 egg 1 T all-purpose flour 2 scallions, chopped 3T cilantro (other fresh herbs to taste) 2 cloves garlic, minced ½ t each of cumin and corriander 1 t hot sauce ¼ t each of salt & pepper ¼ cup or ½ oz. of Tortilla chips, chopped to rough meal consistency Directions Whisk egg and flour, add scallions, herbs, garlic, and spices. In a food processor, chop tortilla chips, add in black beans to combine. This will be a dry consistency. Combine...
Seafood Chowder
Don’s Chowder Don has never made a seafood chowder before (other than Captain Ed’s…that’s another story). But tonight he cooked up a FANTASTIC chowder. Ingredients 3 cups of milk (we used 2%) 1 8oz pack of cream cheese 2 cloves of garlic 1 cluster of green onions (mince everything) 2 whole carrots, minced 2 ears of corn (use canned or frozen corn if fresh not available) 1 big potato, sliced small (1/4 inch chunks). 1 handful of parsley 3 big pinches of black pepper 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper 1/2 pound shrimp 1/2 pound bay scallops 1/2 pound crab meat 1/2 cup of minced red pepper (we like small sweet pepper) 4 strips of bacon Red Pepper, chopped (we like a couple mini-sweet peppers) Chicken broths as needed Directions Heat up milk and...
Fried Rice
Don used to try making fried rice for years when the kids were young. But he never got the hang of it, and gave it up (other than ordering it out, which was always a bit salty). Tonight Don was wondering what to cook for dinner and looked into the fridge. There was some grilled chicken thighs from the previous night, a bunch of veggies, half a cup of cooked jasmine rice, among other things. Then it hit him…let’s try fried rice. Inspired from a cooking show that featured fried rice the previous night, he tried to replicate the experience. It came out GREAT. Keep the skillet hot, and just keep adding things and stirring. It should not be sitting there slowly cooking on a medium heat, that was one of my old mistakes. The cutting board was next to the...
Slow-Cooker Pork With Noodles
This is based on a Food Network recipe. It made a FANTSTIC pho-type meal. It’s a long prep time because of the slow cooking, which we did in a crock pot, but it was well worth the wait and made a good amount of left-overs. We used wide pho noodles for our recipe. We also finished the rim of our bowl with Don’s Hot Sauce, which REALLY brought the meal together. Usually with pho we like a chili-garlic sauce, but Don’s citrus hot sauce worked perfect. Ingredients: 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth 1/4 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup Chinese rice wine or dry sherry 3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar 4 cloves garlic, smashed 1 2 -inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced 2 pieces star anise Kosher salt 3 pounds boneless pork shoulder (Boston Butt) 1 head bok...
Don’s Hot Sauce
On the top of Don’s “List of things I want to cook” is his own home-made hot sauce. This is his first attempt, and the results were great. The goal was to make a citrus-based, medium heat sauce. This was a ‘eat once it is done’ sauce. In the future he’ll work up a more complex sauce. The orange was from a local tree, and the lemon from our own tree (until our orange tree begins producing). Everything else is from Publix. Ingredients: 20 dry Arbo dry chilis 2 dry ancho chilis 1 cup white vinegar 2 TBS agave sugar 1 tsp onion powder 1 tsp pepper 1 tsp salt Juice from 1 orange (we used a local valencia) Zest from 1 lemon (we used our own lemon tree) 5 large garlic cloves Directions: Put all the ingredients into a blender or food...