What's Cooking?

Crock Pot Cafe Rio Chicken

Cooked some of this chicken yesterday and have it in the fridge ready for some quick meals.

Guiltless Alfredo Sauce

Just made a batch of this Alfredo Sauce. Yummy stuff. Added some sauteed mushrooms over angel hair pasta. Quite a tasty meal.

What's for dinner?

I've gone through my food board on Pinterest and chosen some recipes for the week. Not sure when I'll make everything, but hopefully I'll get to all these:

Beer Crockpot Chicken
Sweet and Spicy Bacon Wrapped Chicken
Guiltless Alfredo Sauce
Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin
Bacon Mushroom Quiche
Spaghetti

That's my plan for the week. Hopefully I can stick to it.

My version of Chicken Parmesan

My son loves my chicken parm. It's not what you'd get in a fancy restaurant or even in a not so fancy restaurant. It's what you get when I cook . I hate measuring ingredients so there are no measurements here. Use as much as you think you'll need to feed your family. Today, I used 2 chicken breasts, one 24oz. can of sauce and a box of noodles.
My easy Chicken Parm
boneless skinless chicken breasts
Parmesan cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Spaghetti sauce
noodles
olive oil, garlic powder and Italian seasoning.

look at all that brown goodness!

because it's not chunky 

Cut your chicken into pieces. I like bite sized pieces, but you can cut your's any size you want them or you can leave them whole. It's all up to you. Season the chicken with garlic and Italian seasoning. You can add salt if you want, but I don't. My favorite thing to season the chicken with is some of that mix you can get that you put in olive oil to dip bread into. You know what I'm talking about. Stuff is good, but if you don't have it just use Italian seasoning. Brown your chicken in olive oil. Once your chicken is browned, put it in a casserole dish and sprinkle it with some Parmesan and Mozzarella cheese then pour your spaghetti sauce over it. I use Hunt's Four Cheese Pasta Sauce. You could make your own or use your favorite jar sauce. Add more cheese on top and pop it in the oven at about 350°. Cook it until the cheese is all melty, bubbly goodness.  Cook up some noodles (we like angel hair) and serve it up hot and delicious.

Please don't look at the burnt stuff on the casserole dish!

Can you see the steam? 

Buffalo Chicken and Potato Casserole

I've been hanging out, wasting loads of time on Pinterest for awhile now. I've pinned many recipes, diy projects, crafts, decorating ideas and on and on and on. I've tried a few of the recipes and found some keepers and at least one that wasn't so great. Friday afternoon I decided to try this Buffalo Chicken Potato Casserole since I love me some Buffalo wings. It was good. I'll definitely make it again.

Recipe from : Holy Cannoli Recipes via Pintrest

1 1/4 lb. boneless skinless chicken breast cut into 1 inch pieces
1/3 cup buffalo sauce (I used Texas Pete hot sauce)
6 cups shredded potatoes (I used frozen hash browns)
1 cup Ranch or blue cheese dressing
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup cheddar ( I used more, cause you can't have too much cheese!)
1/2 cup panko crumbs

Preheat oven to 350° F., spray a 9 x 13 dish with cooking spray.  Pour the buffalo sauce over the chicken and stir it together. Put sauced chicken in single layer in your dish. In a bowl, mix together the dressing and soup add the potatoes then stir in the cheese. Spread this mixture over the chicken. Top with the panko crumbs. Cover with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes, remove foil and bake for another 20 to 30 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

I used the blue cheese dressing and it was good, but next time I'm gonna try the ranch dressing. I also used probably a cup of cheddar cheese and I had to kick the oven up to broil to brown the panko crumbs a little.

One other little tidbit...I learned today that to get that nice degree symbol up at the top of your number you hold the alt key and type in 0176. How about that?

Yummy

Meatball Sliders

We wanted something a little different to eat and decided on these meatball sliders that I pinned on Pinterest a few days ago. They were super easy to make and hit the spot. This is definitely a keeper. A little confession, I didn't make these. My son was the chef last  night. Makes it even better.

P is for Pizza!

P is for Pizza, and it's best when my mama makes it. I love home made pizza. I can make the sauce and put the pizza together, but I can never get the crust as thin and crispy my mom's. Maybe I don't knead enough, or I knead too much, but the dough is never quite what I want it to be. The sauce that I make is so very tasty, a little sweet but not too much. My favorite has pork sausage, mushrooms and plenty of cheese! Nothing quite like a home made pizza to make me over eat!

E is for Eggs!

So this A to Z blogging challenge is just that a real challenge. I've noticed some blogs are going with a theme, all recipes or writing tips, or well just a theme. I didn't limit myself to a theme, but I'm going back to food today.

Eggs, I love eggs. Boiled eggs...isn't Easter coming up soon? I'm so over those flimsy plastic eggs filled with candy. When I was a kid we had real Easter eggs that we  colored them with PAAS egg dye. They weren't fancy usually they were pretty pale because we were too impatient to leave them in the dye long enough. They also were uneven because you had to turn them and we never got it quite right. But man those were fun times and I love eating me some Easter eggs. Now you have all those plastic eggs filled with candy, or just plain old candy eggs. Could that be one reason kids are getting fatter? We certainly didn't eat boiled easter eggs until we were stuffed. A couple and we were done. Candy filled eggs and candy eggs. Kids eat them until they puke! Parents need to get off their lazy asses and color some eggs and get rid of all those candy filled eggs!

C is for Chicken

Day three of the A to Z blogging challenge and I'm really enjoying myself. I've already increased my followers and I've found some awesome blogs to follow myself. Loving this challenge so let's get on with my 'C' post.

I love me some fried chicken! And I just discovered that Publix supermarket has just about the best fried chicken that I've eaten. Now, my very own fried chicken is pretty tasty, what makes Publix' fried chicken better is the fact that I don't have to handle raw chicken or clean up my stove and find something to do with all that  oil that I fried the chicken in. If I was gonna fry me some chicken tonight I'd soak my chicken in buttermilk, while it's soaking I mix up some flour with  a little garlic powder, salt and pepper   and put it in a big ole plastic bag.  Then I drop the buttermilk soaked chicken pieces in the bag ( a couple at a time)  and shake it all up. Then I drop it in the hot grease in a cast iron skillet and fry it without moving it around too much. I't's good stuff. But so is the fried chicken from Publix!

The week in review

How did my week go? Overall it was a pretty good week. Went shopping on MLK day and had a wonderful lunch with my bff. The kids were in a pretty good mood at school this week. A few incidences, but no real problems. I can't decide if I like working with the little ones in pre-k or if I'm liking the older 4th and 5th graders. what I do know is that I need to brush up on my math skills if I'm gonna help them though. I'm really afraid that I'll tell them something wrong. You know they do things a lot differently now than they did when I was in 4th and 5th grade. I don't want to mess up. Take my cues from the teachers and hopefully everything will be okay.

I'm still reading The Girl Who Played with Fire and loving every minute of it. Not sure if I like it more than Tattoo, but it's equally as good. Right now, I'm missing Salander, but I know she'll be back.

Cooking today and it's smelling good! Baked tilapia with rosemary and feta cheese, lima beans and candied sweet potatoes. Yum

Snow day!

yep, it's a snow day here in Middle Georgia though I'm not sure that's snow out there. It's more like an accumulation of sleet and frozen rain. No one has driven down my street, but I live on a cul de sac so you don't really have alot of traffic. I hope that folks are home staying warm and safe and not out running the roads. By the way, a big negative goes out to Geico the gecco made their employees risk their lives by going into work today. Way to go Greedy Geico. Got the white beans in the pot with a ham bone and looking forward to a lazy day. They say the weather is gonna get worse before it gets better. Might there be another day off work tomorrow? Never can tell