Currently Browsing: general ideas
Oct 8, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Oct 8, 2011 in general ideas, kid friendly, vegetables | 5 comments
I am lucky to have a really well seasoned cast iron skillet. I don’t use it nearly enough as I could have, but the one thing I love about it is that you can start cooking something on the stove (brown some chicken for instance) throw some veggies in there and just pop it in the oven.
MANY years ago, I made Dutch oven pancakes similar to this recipe in the skillet and they turned out amazing. Way before I started to blog or could have taken a picture of it.
For this recipe, it takes about 2 minutes of prep and the oven does the rest.
Ingredients:
5-6 red potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut into chunks
1 tablespoon canola oil
salt and pepper and paprika to taste.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, add the cut up potatoes and oil and seasonings and stir until well coated. Put those into the cast iron skillet and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until nicely browned and when pierced with a fork, they are soft and cooked through.
I did check on them a few times and stirred the potatoes around so that they could brown on all sides.
They turned out so great. For any leftovers, you can heat these back up with some peppers, add a cooked fried egg for a great breakfast hash.
Later on today I have taped Kelsey’s Essentials Cooking show on The Cooking Channel because her whole show features recipes you can make in a cast iron skillet. Check out her menu of what she is making HERE
Do you have a cast iron skillet? What do you like to make in yours???
Sep 3, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Sep 3, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, general ideas, pasta, potluck, sauces, vegetables | 7 comments
Hi everyone! It’s been a super busy week and I haven’t had time to post new stuff! The first few weeks of school are always hectic, keeping track of 3 kids at 3 different schools – making sure what things they have going on, it’s crazy!
But, one highlight this week – my baby is in 4th grade and do you know what that means?? She gets to decide if she wants to play an instrument. 
They had an assembly at school, she came home and declared she wanted to play the saxophone!
We went to the open house and she tried some instruments…
She tried the cello:
And in the end….she went with the CELLO! Great job Claire!
So now on to my fire roasted tomato sauce. I make pasta every week, because its cheap and feeds a big family. Having 2 teenage boys I count them as 2 servings, and my husband will most likely have 2 servings, so even though I have a family of 5, I cook for a family of 8!
I do the majority of my shopping at Aldi .
When I was there over the weekend, I noticed they had fire roasted tomatoes for only .89 cents a can!
So I decided my sauce this week would be with that.
Fire Roasted Tomato Sauce
1 28 oz. can of tomato sauce
2 cans fire roasted tomatoes
1/2 green pepper
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
2 baby orange peppers
1/2 large white onion
5 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon oregano
splash of Worcestershire sauce
2 links Italian sausage, casing removed
I almost always add just a little meat to my sauce. Not a ton. 1/2 pound of ground beef, or ground chicken, or a few links of Italian sausage.
Directions:
In a cast iron skillet, add a little olive oil and add the Italian sausage. Break it up and cook until browned on all sides.
Meanwhile in a large blender. I add everything else. All the veggies, the cans of fire roasted tomatoes, the tomato sauce and spices. Blend until its all smooth.
By the way, this is a great sauce to make towards the end of the week, just throw in veggies left over in your fridge, no one will know what you put in there! I’ve even been known to add fresh spinach into the mix, but make sure you don’t put too much or else the sauce will be green and then the jig is up – your family will know you crammed healthy stuff in the sauce!
Add the pureed sauce into the skillet with the Italian sausage and cook for about 20 minutes on low/medium heat.
That night I made bow tie pasta. The sauce was delicious, kind of smokey from the fire roasted potatoes. Everyone had seconds.
And lastly – what do you think of the new layout for Slim-Shoppin??? After almost 4 years of the same look, it was time for a FRESH look!
There are a lot of things I am still learning about this template, it’s got a lot of bells and whistles, so I will be tweaking things here and there. The one thing I did notice is it takes a few seconds for the page to upload everything, so please be patient with that
OK, time to enjoy the weekend. My niece is getting married tomorrow so we’ll be seeing lots of family we haven’t seen in a while, so I am looking forward to that.
Have a great weekend!
Aug 20, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Aug 20, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, bread, chicken, Dinner Idea, general ideas | 5 comments
As I type this, its totally pouring outside right now. 
Last night the weatherman said it would rain, but only a little bit and late afternoon. The rain started around 10:30 and over an hour has gone by and its still pouring
It always bums me out when the weather is bad on the weekend, because I think of the gorgeous days during the week, when I am stuck inside at work, and then when you get a day or 2 off and the weather sucks – that is no fun.
PLUS, it’s the air and water show in Chicago this weekend! I don’t know if it will go on today or what?
And, my local farmers market was hosting a corn roast today too, but I didn’t want to go out and stand in the rain to do that.
So, I may have to get busy in my kitchen
Over the last week, I’ve helped my two sons completely over haul and deep clean their rooms in preparation for the school year starting next week. Have you ever cleaned teenage boys rooms? Its gross. My older sons way of cleaning his room is shoving as much stuff under his bed and in his closet.
So now my daughter asked if we could do the same thing to her room this weekend! I do enjoy purging stuff and becoming more minimalistic. I occasionally read a quirky and cute site called Fly Lady who has great tips on being organized.
Andrea has some great back to school tips. And Robin Sue of Big Red Kitchen always has great tips for back to school and packing lunches – her newest thing? Using small mason jars for packing her kids lunch!
So last weekend, I made another batch of artisan bread in 5 minutes. All you need is a big bowl, flour, water, salt and yeast, and a wooden spoon!
You can’t mess this bread up. So I made 2 loaves, and then I made chicken breast sandwiches for dinner. How cool is that?
For the chicken sandwiches, I just grilled some chicken, made turkey bacon, and a little bbq sauce and cheddar cheese. SO good!
And with the leftover dough, I made garlic bread pizza (just rolled out some dough into a circle), added a little olive oil and fresh garlic and garlic powder, bake at 450 for 10 minutes, and cut into squares. I served that with pasta.
OR, you can make skillet bread pizza (just cook the pizza on a skillet) cook for 5 minutes on low, flip, cook another 5 minutes, add your toppings, top with a lid and let the cheese melt.
And, if you’ve made it down this far – check out a give-a-way on my friend Sueson’s blog for a VIP coupon to Mamma Chia Juice drink for free! Leave a comment on her site, or tweet about it, or link it to Facebook for more entries
What is Mamma Chia? A new health drink, low in calories (110 calories) 10 grams of fiber, 4 grams of protein, 2000 mg of Omega-3′s, 9 grams of sugar (from Agave) and Gluten-Free and Vegan. You can buy these at health food stores or at Whole Foods in the refrigerated juice section. These taste amazing!
It’s still raining out – but I’m not going to let that prevent me from having an awesome weekend!
If you have kids, when do they start?
And I BIG SHOUT OUT to my brother Charlie’s daughter Sarah is leaving for college today. GOOD LUCK SARAH – your first care package will be arriving soon!!
The post was featured on Yeastpotting
Aug 16, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Aug 16, 2011 in breakfast, eggs, general ideas | 6 comments
Any time you buy fresh cilantro in the store, it comes in such a huge bunch that if you are just making it for one recipe – what are you supposed to do with the rest of it?
I made salsa over the weekend which I added fresh cilantro to.
I made my “goulash” recipe for dinner last night which I added some cilantro to. You can see the recipe here. This is what it looked like:
One of the things I wanted to know is how to store it so it doesn’t get all gross in a few days. I knew I’d find an answer on Simply Recipes. She suggested cutting off the bottoms, putting it in a glass jar with a little water, cover loosely with a zip loc bag and store in the fridge and it will last up to 2 weeks like that (just change the water every few days).
So this morning when I was figuring out what to make for breakfast, I knew I wanted an egg, I saw the cilantro, and cooked brown rice and an idea was born!
Serves 1
1 cup cooked brown rice
2 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 green onion, (whites and greens) chopped
1 egg
Penzy Spices Breakfast seasoning
fresh cilantro to taste
In a small skillet, I fried the egg with a little olive oil, then chopped it up with the spatula. Next I added the carrot and green onion – to be honest I would have added more veggies if I had them – and cook for a couple of mintes. Then add the brown rice, and breakfast seasoning, I just added maybe a teaspoon and cooked that until the rice was heated through. Sprinkle the top with chopped fresh cilantro.
All I can say is that I could eat this every day.
And if you are my friend Christina – disregard this post because she HATES cilantro!!
Aug 13, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Aug 13, 2011 in chicken, Dinner Idea, general ideas, party food!, pasta, potluck, Side dish | 2 comments
Last weekend I used McCormick’s chipotle marinade to make grilled potatoes. which turned out great.
I didn’t really plan my dinners that much this week, I knew I just had things on hand to put something together. One night this week as soon as I walked in the door, my kids ran up to me and said like they normally do “What’s for dinner?”
I said “something with chicken!” I took 3 chicken breasts out of the freezer, defrosted them and cut them into chunks.
In a large skillet coated with a little olive oil, I started browning the chicken. I was looking in my pantry and saw the chipotle seasoning mix and decided to add that to the chicken.
I was thinking about what to make as a side dish, when I saw I had spiral pasta and was thinking if I could make a sauce, add the chicken and cooked pasta?
Once the chicken was almost cooked through, I added 1 cup of chicken stock and 1 cup of skim milk mixed with 1/4 cup of flour to thicken the sauce. Cook for a few minutes and then add the cooked pasta – reserving some of the pasta water if you want to thin out the sauce.
The result? YUM! No leftovers of this meal, which I always consider a success! Sprinkle with shredded cheddar cheese if you want.
If I had green onions, I think adding some chopped green onions on top and maybe a little bit of crumbled bacon would have made this even more deluxe!
Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts, trimmed of all fat and cut into chunks
1 tb. olive oil
1 packet McCormick seasoning (chipotle)
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup skim milk
1/4 cup flour
1 box spiral pasta
cheddar cheese to sprinkle on top
salt and pepper to taste
The seasoning is spicy – but it is less spicy making the sauce. My kids liked the heat, but it wasn’t too much where they couldn’t eat it.
Who loves watermelon? It’s my favorite summer fruit. Look at how pretty this melon was when I opened it up!
Have a great weekend? What are your plans?
*I just found a new blog – meet Rachel – she’s lost 85 pounds – check out her weight loss story and before and after pics here!! Great job Rachel!!
