White Bean Stew with Swiss Chard and Tomatoes

Well, after I said I wouldn't post, I typed this recipe up to email to my cousin and I figured that I should just post it because it's SO GOOD.  If you're looking for a low-calorie, VERY fresh tasting meal, this is just right!  It got an A+ from myself and my husband. 

2 lbs Swiss chard, large stems discarded and leaves cut crosswise into 2-inch strips

¼ C extra-virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

¼ tsp. crushed red pepper

1 (26 oz) can diced tomatoes

1 (15 oz) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

Add chard to a large pot of boiling water and simmer over moderate heat until tender, 8 minutes.  Cool slightly, then drain, squeezing out excess liquid.

In the same saucepan, heat oil over medium-low heat, and cook garlic and crushed red pepper until garlic is golden, 1 minute.

Add tomatoes and bring to a boil.  (I didn’t drain them because the recipe didn’t say to.)  Add beans and simmer over moderately high heat for 3 minutes.

Add the chard and simmer over moderate heat until the flavors meld, 3 to 4 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Yeild: 4 servings

I found this recipe in People Magazine and I'm so glad I tried it.  Here's a little picture montage of when I made it for the first time:

Ready to begin...

 (Yes, I used navy beans the first time I made it just because that's what I happened to have on hand.)

Boiling the chard...

Looking tasty!!

The finished product...

And, it's a hit!  :)

ENJOY!!  :)

A Little Lull

So...yea.  I said I would post soon and that was practically a month ago!!  I've been in "purge" mode with my house and in many ways, my life, lately (post to come on the other blog about that), so it's only fair that I be honest about this blog.  It was a passion of mine and cooking is STILL a passion of mine.  However, I just don't have the time to commit to it right now.  I look back at recipes on here all the time, so I'm going to keep it up for as long as I can (why not take up a little bit of cyber space??) and I might post here in the future.  I just wanted to let you know so you don't feel the need to take any of your precious time checking for new recipes from me.  :)  

Thanks for reading and ENJOY your life daily.  :)

Where Did I Go??

I've been a little too busy to post anything the past couple of weeks, as I'm sure you've noticed.  I do, however, have a HUGE stack of recipes sitting next to my computer and they are all ones that I've tried.  SO, once I get a chance, I'll sit here and post post post so you can see what we've been eating for the past couple weeks.  Let me say that we've tried some REALLY yummy things and my kids have even been going ga-ga for some of these dishes so stay tuned!!  :)

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

I love love love the chicken lettuce wraps from P.F. Chang's restaurant, so I was thrilled to come across this recipe in my "stack o' recipes".  I found it in Taste of Home magazine a couple years ago and it turns out to be a Katie Lee recipe.  I figure that I like her meatloaf so much, I'd probably like her lettuce wraps, too!  First off, you have to know that she calls these "lettuce cups" and uses a narrow lettuce (like romaine or butter lettuce) for the "cups".  I wanted "wraps" (and I was also in a hurry at the grocery store), so I just purchased a head of iceberg lettuce and carefully pulled the layers apart.  I also thought this would be good as a salad, so I chopped up some iceberg, too, and that's how I ended up eating mine.  It was super good and got an "A" from my hubby, too!  Okay, onto the recipe...

Prep Time: 25 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Yield 6-8 servings (as lettuce cups) --- this pretty much fed my husband and myself as a regular meal.

1 packet stir-fry seasoning powder
1/4 cup water
2 T. soy sauce
2 T. lime juice
1 tsp. sugar
1 T. canola oil
1 lb. ground chicken
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup water chestnuts, diced
2 T. scallions, thinly sliced
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1 head of romaine or butter lettuce (inside leaves only) for the cups (or, as I was mentioning before, this is quite a versatile dish so do what you want with it)
For garnish: mint, cilantro, bean sprouts, chopped peanuts


In a small bowl, combine the stir-fry seasoning, water, soy sauce, lime juice and sugar.  Set aside.


Heat oil in skillet over medium heat.  Add chicken meat and cook until browned (breaking the meat up as you cook it), about 10 minutes.  Add red pepper, water chestnuts, scallions and red pepper flakes and cook 5  minutes more.  Stir in stir-fry seasoning mixture, and cook until liquid evaporates (about 2-3 minutes).


Serve in lettuce cups garnished with mint, cilantro, bean sprouts and peanuts.

I would have liked to find bean sprouts for this but as I mentioned before, I was very hurried at the store, so I only bought cilantro.  This also used up a package of ground chicken from my freezer which was awesome.  I had never bought a packet of stir-fry seasoning before and ended up finding it by the ethnic foods section of my grocery store, so keep that in mind as you're looking for it. 

Here's how my "salad"/lettuce wraps turned out and it was SO delicious. 

Can't wait to try this again and it makes a great summer-time dinner.  Enjoy!

Risotto with Chicken & Asparagus

Awhile back, I was looking for some great "put-together-and-freeze" meals---much like they make at Let's Dish.  My idea was to have a bunch of mommy friends over and we'd all put together meals for our families.  I ended up finding this blog that is written by a mom with the same ideas as myself.  I ended up printing a few recipes from her site but this is the first that I've tried.  I decided to post this to my blog, too, because I did this a little differently---I didn't freeze it ahead of time.  I just made it fresh.  Okay, here's the recipe that I used: 

(If you want the freezer version, please check out the other blog.)

3 cups cooked chicken breast, cubed
1 cup instant rice (uncooked)
3 T. chicken base (found by the broths in your local store)
2 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 black pepper
2 tsp. olive oil
1 cup fresh asparagus, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1 cup bacon, cooked and crumbled
4 ounces cream cheese


Combine chicken, rice, chicken base, garlic, pepper and olive oil in large skillet.  Add two cups of water to the skillet, cook on low-to-medium heat for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is cooked.  Stir cream cheese, asparagus, red bell pepper and Parmesan into the rice mixture.  Cook for 5 minutes, or until the cream cheese is melted and the vegetables are crisp tender.  Sprinkle with bacon before serving.

Trying to stick with my resolution of using things I already had in my cupboard, I used frozen asparagus that I already had and the only things I had to buy were red pepper and chicken base (which I have never used before).  I feel like I used a million pans while making this dish, just because I had to cook the bacon beforehand (I was out of the fully-cooked kind that I normally like to use for things like this) and I cooked the chicken in the crock pot during the day to save time.  When everything was cooking, it smelled SO AMAZING.  I couldn't resist taking a little taste test before I put the veggies in the skillet and everything tasted so good.  HOWEVER, the end product was very salty to me.  I have never had a Let's Dish meal before, so I'm not sure if they lean on the salty side of the pallet but this specific dish was quite salty.  So, I suggest cutting the chicken base and the Parmesan by a third, therefore using only 2 T. of chicken base and 1/2 cup of Parmesan.  I hope this makes it less salty so the flavor of the dish stands out  more.  All in all, I'd like to make this again because it has everything in it that I love.  Enjoy!!

Turkey Burger

One of my guilty pleasures is reading a weekly tabloid magazine and I often rip out recipes that the magazine features.  This time, I found a turkey burger recipe by chef Reed Alexander and I just so happened to have a pound of ground turkey waiting to be cooked.  I was also quite interested to try this recipe because it calls for the use of a food-processor, which I do not have.  I do, however, have a really big (and very intimidating) new blender that can apparently chop and blend anything, so I decided to give it a go!

Here's the recipe:

1 portobello mushroom cap, stem and gills removed, chopped
3 T. chopped parsley
2 T. chopped carrot
1 T. chopped onion
1 lb. lean ground turkey
2 egg whites
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. pepper
canola oil spray
4 buns (recipe makes four burgers)

(The picture in the magazine also showed the burger with tomato and avacado on it, plus I put some mayo on mine, and it also said that cheese would be tasty on the burger---maybe Swiss or American.)

- Pulse the first four ingredients in food processor for one minute or until well-combined.
- In a bowl, mix the turkey, egg whites, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and vegetable mixture.  Divide into four patties and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
- Preheat grill to medium heat.  Spray with canola oil.  Grill patties 4-5 minutes.  Rotate quarter turn and grill an additional 4-5 minutes.  Flip burgers and grill 5-7 minutes more.  Place on buns and serve with desired toppings.

So....let's talk about this ground turkey, shall we?  I normally would buy the Jennie-O brand from my local grocery store, but I happened to buy a pound from Trader Joe's for the first time.  When I combined all the ingredients with the turkey in a bowl, the whole concoction was pure mush.  Like "won't even stay together in a patty" mush.  I definitely refrigerated it because I thought that would keep it together more (which I think helped a little bit) but I was worried that it was even too mushy to grill.  So, I told my husband that he had the night off from grilling and ended up cooking these on the stove in a big skillet.  I'm glad I did because they ended up firming up as they cooked at it all turned out okay.  I would try a different brand of turkey next time and see if that is better because I'm sure they taste really great when they are cooked on the grill.  That said, on the stove, they were delicious as well!  My 6-year old just recently decided that he likes regular hamburgers so I kind of tricked him by not tell him that he was about to eat a turkey burger.  He loved it!  It was a hit with everyone and the kids had no idea they were eating so many vegetables with their burger.  My husband said that he likes these even more than traditional burgers because they have SO much flavor.  I think this is definitely going to be a summertime favorite in our house! 

Here's a bad picture of my burger before I ate it.  (The avocado was perfectly ripe but the horrible camera-phone picture created a lot of shadows on it.  Boo.)

Enjoy!!

Santa Fe Chicken Enchilada Soup

Last week, I decided that I wanted to make something with the can of black beans from my pantry so I went on allrecipes.com and found this recipe.  It was submitted by Philadelphia (the cream cheese company) and called for a container of one of their new "cooking cremes", which I have been meaning to try.  Besides the cooking creme, I already had everything in the recipe...

I also had to run out and get some cilantro, which was totally worth it.  (We love love love cilantro!)  Okay, enough chatter---here's the recipe:

4 (6 inch) corn tortillas, cut into strips
1 teaspoon oil
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 (10 ounce) tub of Philadelphia Santa Fe Blend Cooking Creme
1 cup milk
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed
1 (11 ounce) can corn with red and green bell peppers, drained (aka "Mexicorn")
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
1/4 cup chopped cilantro


Directions:
- Heat oven to 400*
-Toss tortilla strips in oil; spread into a single layer on baking sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until crisp, stirring occasionally.
-Meanwhile, cook chicken in large nonstick saucepan sprayed with cooking spray on medium-high heat until chicken is done (about 8-10 minutes), stirring frequently.  Stir in cooking creme, milk, beans, corn and tomatoes.  Simmer on medium-low heat for 6-8 minutes or until heated through, stirring frequently.
-Serve soup topped with tortilla strips and cilantro.

So...of course I did a few things differently, as I usually do.  :)

First, I already had a bag of white corn tortilla chips that we are trying to eat up, so I did not make the tortilla strips like the recipe calls for.  I have, however, made them in the past and they are super easy and super delicious so I do recommend making them if you don't have tortilla chips on hand.  Secondly, I cooked the chicken in the crock pot for this one and then just transferred it over to a smaller pot on the stove when it was closer to dinner time.  A couple reasons why I did this:

1. In soups like this, I love when the chicken is more pulled/shredded than chunky.  Probably just me, so go ahead and cook it like the instructions tell you to if you want.

2. It's so easy to cook chicken in a crock pot!  I put the whole chicken breast in there with some water and chicken bullion and let it cook for about four hours on low.  By then, all I had to do was break it up a little bit and it was ready to go!  Once the chicken was transferred to the stove, it seriously took about 10 minutes to get the soup ready.  Talk about awesome!! 

Here's a little peek at the end result.  I put cheese on mine, and didn't add any chips. 

By the way, the soup wasn't spicy so even my toddler had two helpings of it.  And don't skimp on the cilantro!  It really does add a delicious flavor so it's well worth making a trip to the store if you don't already have some.  Enjoy!!