Category Archives: Recipes

My Eggland’s Best Birthday Brinner, Bacon Devilled Eggs & a Giveaway!

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Veronica

Last month, Eggland’s Best contacted me to see if I would like to participate in the “Eggland’s Best Double Dozen” in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month, to help raise awareness and funding for the fight against breast cancer. To participate, I would host a brunch or brinner party using their eggs and blog about it. Well, Dennis’ Aunt Dorothy is a breast cancer survivor and so I would have agreed simply because they offered to make a $100 donation in my name to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, but they sweetened the deal even more by sending me a box of goodies, including free egg coupons, and a gift card to pay for all my ingredients! It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. :)

I decided to host a brinner party for my birthday with the money and free eggs they supplied me. I got enough coupons to give to all my guests, and to make all my egg-y dishes. Since the weather has been so nice, I decided to have an outdoor dinner and though it rained the day before, the weather behaved itself in honor of my birthday and was quite nice the day of the celebration!

The only problem was that I started dinner too late, forgetting the sun sets earlier in fall, and we ended up eating most of the meal by moonlight! Learn from my mistake, and be prepared with candles if your outdoor dinner party runs late. I have to say, though, it was a relaxing and unique experience. You will see from the photos that I had less and less daylight as they become more and more terrible. I apologize for that!

The first thing I made was poppy seed crescent rolls, which calls for four eggs. It’s a recipe I’ve been holding onto for a few years which comes from the recipe box of none other than my heroine, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Did you know she has a cookbook?

I’m sorry to report they were disappointing. Everyone said they were “good,” or “OK,” and I agreed. If I hadn’t put a lemon glaze on them, they wouldn’t have been worth eating. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t good enough to share the recipe. But they did turn out pretty!

I got the hashbrown casserole and two spinach-ricotta quiches in the oven and while they were baking, I shot some pics of my birthday “cake,” a Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte, which I topped with good-quality raspberry preserves because I adore the combination of dark chocolate and raspberries.

I’ve made this once before for Dennis’ birthday long before I was blogging, and I’m happy I finally made it again so I could take pics and share the recipe. It is just outstanding. Creamy, melt-in-your mouth rich chocolate, the texture lightened with whipped eggs (6 of them, which is why I chose this for my brinner–because I could use so many of the Eggland’s Best eggs in it!) and butter. And those are the only ingredients! This is for the serious chocolate lover. It’s like eating a slice of chocolate truffle or mousse.

I did a fall tablescape because of the time of year, and I saw this cornucopia and had to have it in honor of my blog’s name. :)

After shooting this, we added two more chairs, just in case you counted the plates and were wondering why the chairs didn’t add up. :)

And in honor of my blog’s Thankful Thursdays feature, I just had to have this pumpkin too!

I am thankful that breast cancer does not run in my family, and that my husband’s aunt survived it with flying colors! She seems even healthier now than before the cancer, and she is an inspiration!

By the time the quiche was done, the sun was nearly set so the following photos are awful! Here is the spinach-ricotta quiche,which I wasn’t overly impressed with anyway so I don’t regret not having great photos to blog the recipe with.

The hashbrown casserole (à la Cracker Barrel) was another story! This was my favorite dish of the evening. It’s been a long time since I’ve had it at Cracker Barrel, so I’m not sure how close this was in taste but without comparing the two, I thought this was incredible. So creamy and cheesy. Oh, yums. Thankfully there was a tiny bit leftover so I was able to snap a picture at home the next morning in better light for when I share the recipe!

I didn’t bring the veggies out until later, so here is a picture of my plate before they were added. You can see I also have meatballs on my plate, and they’re the same ones I bring to almost any party. I have the recipe here. The cups, though not filled yet, later housed iced coffee with sweet cream, which I made by combining a can of sweetened condensed milk with a cup of heavy cream. Yums.

I finally took off my apron so you can see my shirt. I wore my hot pink tank top underneath an Aerosmith (who just happens to have a song called “Pink!”) net shirt in honor of breast cancer awareness month and the purpose of the party.

Here is the only photo which hints that we ate vegetables! I just nuked some Green Giant steamers and we poured them out onto our plates. We couldn’t see anything anyway, and we were kind of like barbarians in the dark, as you can see from the devastation of the table. LOL!

After all these photo shenanigans, I realized I forgot to serve the bacon devilled eggs! I ran in and brought them out and forced everyone to take them, despite their full stomachs. Although I was sure these would be the winning dish of the evening, I guess devilled eggs are either a love ’em or hate ’em thing, even if they have bacon in them. I love devilled eggs and along with the others present who did too, I loved these! The bacon and cheese really made the filling good enough to eat with a spoon as a meal. :) I took this photo of the leftovers in better light:

Bacon Devilled Eggs

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

10 eggs
1 cup mayonnaise (I used homemade Miracle Whip)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (I used regular)
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (I used 1)
8 slices bacon, fried crispy and crumbled into tiny pieces (um…I used a lot more :) )
1 cup cheddar cheese, finely shredded
Salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce to taste
Smoked paprika for topping

Hard boil the eggs and cool completely. Once cooled, peel them, then slice in half, placing the yolks in the bowl of a food processor. Plate the egg whites on a serving platter. Add the mayonnaise, mustard, and vinegar to the egg yolks, and process until smooth. Add the bacon and cheese and process until combined. Season to taste.

Transfer to a small Ziploc bag and snip off the corner to use as a piping bag. Squeeze filling into each egg white half. you will have a lot of filling so be generous with it. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Sprinkle with paprika just before serving.

Recipe source: Cairns Manor

OK, now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. As the title of this post suggests, I have a giveaway for you! Eggland’s Best is offering to award one of my readers with a prize pack which includes:

2 Free EB Dozen coupons (Any variety- classic, cage-free, or organic)
1 Free EB Hard Cooked and Peeled variety coupon
4 EB ramekins
1 EB apron
1 EB whisk
1 EB spatula
1 EB egg timer
1 EB eco bag
1 EB plush egg

If you would like to enter to win, leave an inspiring comment below, or share how you contribute to raising awareness or funding for breast cancer.

For additional entries you can do one or all of the following, and be sure to leave a separate comment for each, letting me know you did (or already do) it.

Like Veronica’s Cornucopia on Facebook
Like Eggland’s Best on Facebook
Subscribe to Veronica’s Cornucopia by email or RSS feed (email subscription box is in upper right corner)
Sign up to send at least one piece of mail this week for The Postcard Project (you must add your name on the spreadsheet for this entry to count)

Drawing will end Friday at 11:59 PM, and winner will be announced Saturday along with the winner for this week’s Postcard Project prize. Good luck!

Update: This giveaway is now closed. Congrats to Britany!

43 Comments

Posted in Life, Side Dishes and tagged bacon devilled eggs, birthday brinner, Breast cancer, chocolate, Chocolate truffle, double dozen, eggland's best, laura ingalls wilder, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, recipe, Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Bookmark the permalink.

Cranberry Chicken

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Veronica

Before I get to today’s post, I want to do a quick update for The Postcard Project. People have started signing up but I want to encourage everyone that is participating to add your name to the list. Many have told me they are sending mail but aren’t on the list yet. The list is where I’ll be drawing from for the prizes! Oh, did I forget to mention there are prizes at stake? My blue ribbon chocolate chip cookies, to be exact! I’ll be drawing at random from those signed up each Friday this month (winners will be announced each Saturday), then at the end of the month I’ll award a batch to the person who sent the most mail. So you have a chance to win whether you’re sending 1 letter or 100! Every letter makes a difference, especially to the person who receives it. This project will never take over the focus of my blog, but I do intend for it to be ongoing. I’ve already started on my own goal and it has been so fun writing to people I rarely correspond with. I can’t wait to share some of the funny cards I got with you guys. In the meantime, I give you Cranberry Chicken! :)

*****

Pinterest. Have you heard of it? Bloggers have been annoying me with their urgings to get on there for months and I fought it hard, not wanting yet another reason for internet addiction in my life. Even when I was getting 15,000 views a day on my blog (which is not the norm, I can tell you) because of people “pinning” my cupcake bites on Pinterest, I did not sign up. I was steadfast and strong in my resolve. But then a personal friend sent me an invitation to join, telling me I “had to do it” and I guess she was right because I did it, despite myself. It was almost like some evil force in the universe overcame me and made me forget all my reasons for not wanting to. An evil force named Tracy. Oh yeah, girlfriend, I just called you out! :)

So, what does this have to do with cranberry chicken, you might ask? Well, if it weren’t for Pinterest, I would never have made this cranberry chicken! I bookmarked it ages ago and forgot about it because I never go back to look at things I’ve bookmarked. But when I signed up with Pinterest, I decided to use it instead of bookmarking things and I transferred all my favorites into boards on Pinterest. This chicken was one of the first things I transferred and I could barely remember marking it. And I made it the same week!

I don’t know if this is how everyone uses Pinterest, but I “pin” things, mostly recipes, that I want to try in the future and it is so much more useful to me than bookmarks. I can categorize things and then I see a visual picture to remind me of what I wanted to do and when I click the picture, it brings me to the web page I got it from. It’s very handy, but it is also addicting because I can spend an hour looking at everyone else’s pins and repinning them to my own boards for future reference. Handy and evil!

OK, so let’s talk chicken. This recipe is another super-simple one with just a few ingredients and fantastic flavor. It doesn’t have an overwhelming cranberry flavor, in fact the only cranberry taste comes from the whole cranberries themselves because the sauce has onion and Catalina dressing in it to make a flavor all of its own. It’s a little sweet, a little tangy, and a lot delicious. Dennis and I both give it two thumbs up!

Cranberry Chicken

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 (8 oz) bottle Catalina or French Dressing
1 (1 oz) envelope dry onion soup mix
1 (15 oz) can whole-berry cranberry sauce
6-8 boneless, skinless chicken pieces (breast halves and/or thighs)

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a large casserole dish with oil and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the dressing, soup mix, and cranberry sauce and whisk together until blended. Pour enough of the sauce in the dish to make a thin layer, then place the chicken in a single layer on top. Pour the remaining sauce over the top, making sure all the chicken is well-coated. Bake, uncovered, for 1- 1 1/2 hours. Serve over rice, ladling extra sauce over the top.

Recipe source: Very Culinary

14 Comments

Posted in Meats and tagged chicken, cooking, Cranberry, cranberry sauce, easy, Home, onion soup mix, Pinterest, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Easy Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Veronica

Last fall, I posted a recipe for a skinny pumpkin spiced latte that I became addicted to, making it almost every morning. Now that I have a big jug of cold-brewed coffee in my fridge at all times, I realized how easy it would be to make an iced pumpkin spice latte. This is perfect right now because fall is in the air, but isn’t quite here yet, so you can enjoy your fall flavored coffee over ice until the cold really hits, then start heating it. This really couldn’t be faster or more simple (and delicous!).

Easy Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 cup milk (any kind)
1/4 cup cold-brewed coffee concentrate, or to taste
2 tablespoons pumpkin butter,* or to taste
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Add ingredients to a wide-mouth glass and blend with an immersion blender until foamy. Add ice and enjoy! If you don’t have a stick blender, put everything in a regular blender blend until smooth and foamy, then pour over ice in a tall glass. Garnish with whipped cream, if desired.

If you want to know what I drizzled on top, here it is:

I bought this last year and I’m not sure if it will return this fall, but it is a great syrup and probably could even be used in place of the pumpkin butter in this latte.

*Veronica’s note: To make your own pumpkin butter, add 1/2 cup of brown sugar and two teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice to every cup of pumpkin puree you use. Cook over medium heat in a saucepan, stirring oven, until very thick. I think I cooked mine half an hour. Be careful, it bubbles and spatters! I like to help it create a steam vent so that it doesn’t bubble as much, and stir every minute or so, so it doesn’t start scorching on the bottom. If you make a large batch, you’ll be set on lattes for a while!

7 Comments

Posted in Beverages, Breakfast, Lighter Fare and tagged cold-brewed coffee concentrate, easy, iced coffee, latte, pumpkin spice. Bookmark the permalink.

Pumpkin Pie Baked Oatmeal

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Veronica

I’m atoning for my sins of last week: fattening, nitrate-filled chili-cheese dog casserole, decadent red velvet cake with a pound of butter and over a pound of cream cheese in it, and beef roast slathered with high-sodium cream of mushroom soup and onion soup mix. I felt I owed myself, and you, a healthy reprieve.

I usually don’t like labeling my recipes “healthy” or unhealthy” in the title (although I have been known to do so) because that’s not how I want you to think of them. If something is healthy, I want you to think about how delicious it is, not how healthy it is. And if something is unhealthy, I don’t want you to focus on that either, I just want you do enjoy your splurge. So, I’m not labeling this as “healthy” in the title, but I am telling you right now it’s pretty darn healthy.

First of all, it’s naturally sweetened from three sources: apple cider, maple syrup, and honey (because it’s sweeter and because I was running low on maple syrup). Second, it’s packed with fiber from the pumpkin and the oats. It’s even got a little protein from the eggs (and the oats)! I did use a smidgen of butter, but I’m not one who thinks of butter as unhealthy, especially in meager amounts. It could easily be left out if you want to reduce the fat.

Now let’s talk about the important stuff: the taste. It’s all well and good to eat healthy foods, but who wants to eat them if they taste terrible? Not me, and there’s no reason to when healthy food can (and should) be just as delicious as unhealthy food. These baked oats are perfectly sweet, with a great spiced pumpkin taste, very soft and creamy, with a nice nutty crunch from the pecans. Served with a drizzle of maple syrup over the top, it is a breakfast treat that is good enough to make your mouth so happy that you forget that you’re doing your body good as well.

Pumpkin Pie Baked Oatmeal

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup apple cider
2 eggs
½ cup milk (any kind)
¼ cup honey
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ¾ cups rolled oats
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a deep-dish pie plate or a casserole dish with oil; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin, apple cider, eggs, milk, honey, maple syrup, butter, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla until smooth. Stir in the oats, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.

Pour into prepared dish and sprinkle with pecans. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until set. Serve hot with maple syrup or honey.

Recipe source: adapted from The Other Side of Fifty, as seen on Betcha Can’t Eat Just One and Little Bit of Everything (this one’s really making the rounds!)

If you have leftovers, they will slice a lot nicer and will resemble a piece of pie more when served. You can even serve this cold, though I do like it better hot! If you want the oatmeal to be more firm so that you can slice it like pie after removing it from the oven, you’ll have to do some tweaking to reduce the amount of liquid and maybe add another egg.

16 Comments

Posted in Breakfast, Lighter Fare and tagged baked, baked oatmeal, baking, diet-friendly, healthy, naturally sweetened, pumpkin pie, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Chili-Cheese Dog Casserole

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Veronica

I’m just going to go ahead and apologize right now before I go any further. I’m sort of on a comfort food (i.e. high calorie, delicious, and unhealthy food) kick right now, perhaps because the weather is getting cooler, and there is absolutely nothing healthy about this. Actually, you could make it significantly healthier depending on what type of ingredients you choose to use (low-fat turkey chili, nitrate-free turkey hot dogs, reduced fat cheese, whole wheat tortillas), but I’m not going to lie and tell you I made any of those choices. This is pure, delicious, evil.

I really had no choice. The recipe, which originates from Allrecipes, has been haunting me for three years now. I first ran across it on MySpace when a friend, Kimberly V., blogged the recipe. Then Debbi blogged the recipe a few months ago, reminding me that I wanted to try it. I prefer to eat healthy & lighter meals to balance the decadent desserts I make (and eat!) on a much too regular basis, so I had been fighting it the whole time, trying to forget I ever saw it. But I finally buckled under the pressure of Debbi’s delicious pictures.

I’m not going to lie and tell you I regret it, either. Like I said, pure, evil, deliciousness. And it can’t get any easier than this!

Chili-Cheese Dog Casserole

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

2 (15 oz.) cans chili with beans
1 (16 oz.) package hot dogs
8 (8-inch) flour tortillas
1 (8 oz.) package cheddar cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 425 F. Spray a 9 X 13-inch baking dish with oil and spread 1 can of chili over the bottom . Roll up hot dogs inside tortillas and place in baking dish, seam side down, on top of chili layer. Top with remaining can of chili and sprinkle with cheese. Cover baking dish with aluminum foil and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Serve hot.

*Veronica’s notes: I have no idea what size my casserole dish is, but I know it’s a couple inches smaller on each side than a 9×13 and the dogs fit perfectly in it. I found my chili didn’t go very far, so I added a can of salsa-style fire roasted tomatoes & green chiles in puree to the top along with the chili. A can of Rotel, as Debbi used, would be perfect. I highly recommend shredding your own cheese to get a magnificent gooey melt. If your cheese is going to come into contact with the foil you place on top, generously spray the foil on one side with oil and place that side down over the pan, otherwise the cheese will stick to your foil and come off when you remove it.

Recipe source: Allrecipes

34 Comments

Posted in Main Dishes, My Favorites and tagged chili cheese dog casserole, easy, fast, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Red Velvet Cake

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Veronica

This is the red velvet cake I was telling you about that I won a blue ribbon for at this year’s state fair. It not only won a blue ribbon for the red velvet cake class, but won second best of all cakes turned in for judging from all classes! So I guess you could say this one is a winner. :)

I get 95% of the recipes I use from the web, mainly from other food blogs, but when I saw the recipe for this red velvet cake in Dam Good Sweet, I knew it was the one I had to use for the state fair competition. I could tell by reading the ingredients that it was going to be killer, and I was right!

Most recipes use white vinegar in addition to the buttermilk, which can cause the crumb to be coarse because there is too much acidity for the baking soda to neutralize. I learned this from Rose Levy Beranbaum, who has a red velvet cake recipe in Rose’s Heavenly Cakes that I almost used, but decided not to since the amount of cocoa she used was the usual paltry two tablespoons. After learning about the vinegar, however, I knew what to look for in a red velvet recipe and this one passed the test: buttermilk only.

**Update: upon re-reading Rose’s explanation of why she used buttermilk only, I see I was wrong about the vinegar. She said that baking soda neutralizes the acidity of the buttermilk which makes a coarser crumb on the cake. She uses only baking powder to keep the acidity in the cake high, thus making the vinegar unneccessary. So it’s not the acid that makes the crumb coarse, it’s the lack of it caused by the soda neutralizing the acid. So this cake DOESN’T pass her test, but now I’m thinking of making it again with baking powder only and seeing if it makes the color brighter and the crumb finer.**

This recipe has a whopping half-cup of Dutch-processed cocoa, which is more than any other red velvet recipe I’ve found, and it gives the cake a nice devil’s food flavor, far superior to the other from-scratch red velvet cakes I’ve made, where the frosting was the best part about them. With this one, the cake itself is just as good as the creamy frosting. In fact, the flavor is very similar to the Duncan Hines red velvet cake mix. This is the only cake I’ve ever made that came as close to a cake-mix taste. (Some might see this as not ideal, but cake mix cakes are my standard for the best cakes.) It is not as moist or light as the Duncan Hines red velvet, but it is still very, very good.

Dutch process cocoa has a smoother and deeper chocolate flavor than regular cocoa powder, which means while it makes the cake taste incredible, it also affects the color, making it a deep red. (I was racing against the sunset to shoot these pictures and due to the low light (and my lack of a good camera & photo editing program), the color of the cake appears darker in the first photos than it really is. The actual color is closer to these last couple photos). The deeper color doesn’t bother me, but if it bothers you, you might want to go with Rose’s recipe, which is a very bright red.

Red Velvet Cake

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

For the cake:
3 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 (1 lb) box light brown sugar (about 2 ¼ cups)
3 tablespoons red food coloring (about 1.5 oz)
2 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 ¾ cups buttermilk, room temperature

For the frosting:
1 ¼ pounds (2 ½ packages) cream cheese, room temperature
1 ¼ cups (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 (2 lb) bag confectioners’ sugar (about 7 ¼ cups)

To make the cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans; set aside. Sift flour with the cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and set aside.

With an electric mixer, cream the butter with the brown sugar, food coloring, and vanilla on low to combine. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high and beat until aerated and pale, about 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium and add the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition and using a rubber spatula to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as necessary. Reduce the speed to low and add one-third of the dry ingredients followed by half of the buttermilk. Repeat, finishing with the final third of the dry mix. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl and divide the batter between the two prepared cake pans, spreading it out as evenly as possible.

Bake until tester inserted in center comes out clean and center of cake resists slight pressure, about 40 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then run a paring knife around the edges of each pan to release the cake from the sides; invert the cakes onto the cooling rack. Cool for 1 hour, then wrap each cake in plastic wrap for at least a few hours.

To make the frosting: Beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla together with an electric mixer on low speed to combine. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until aerated and light, about two minutes. Stop the mixer and add a few cups of the confectioners’ sugar, incorporating it into the cream cheese mixture on low speed until combined. Repeat with the remaining sugar, adding it to the mixer in two additions. Once all of the sugar is added, increase the speed to medium-high and beat until fluffy, about 1 minute.

To assemble the cake: Unwrap and cut the dome of the tops off the cakes. Break up the cake domes into a food processor fitted with blade attachment and process to crumbs; set aside. Slice each cake in half horizontally to make four layers. Ice between layers of the cakes then over the top and sides. Press the crumbs into the sides of the cake. Refrigerate at least two hours before serving.

Veronica’s notes: 1) I omitted the vanilla from the frosting because I’m used to working with much thicker frosting and didn’t want to thin this recipe any more than it already was. This kept the color lighter and the flavor didn’t seem to suffer for the omission. If I’d added it, I’m afraid it would have squooshed out between the layers as I added them, making the appearance of the finished frosted cake not as pretty. The icing did squoosh out a bit even without the vanilla, but would have been worse with it. 2) I had trouble with the cake crumbs because they were very moist and stuck together pretty badly once I processed them. I had to add a couple tablespoons of flour and process until incorporated to get them to turn into smaller crumbs. 3) I left this cake in it’s original two layers for the fair, and it made things a lot simpler. If you don’t have a lot of experience with layer cakes, I’d suggest making it two layers instead of four. 4) I had about a cup of leftover frosting after making this cake. If you like to make cake pops like I do, freeze the extra in a tub for your next cake pop/ball project. I use 1/3 cup of frosting per batch, so this will make three batches of cake pops for me.

Recipe source: Dam Good Sweet

136 Comments

Posted in Cake & Frosting and tagged blue ribbon, cream cheese frosting, first place, from scratch, Kansas, recipe, red velvet cake, state fair. Bookmark the permalink.

Basic Crockpot Beef Roast

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Veronica

OK, I just want to warn you that this recipe includes two of the Midwestern housewife’s pantry staples that most foodies seem to abhor: cream of ___ soup and dry onion soup mix. So if you are against such things, go ahead and just close this now before I get you too riled up. Because I’m going to use them, and I’m not going to apologize for it.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way! This is yet another homestyle meal that Teri taught me to make, and it’s so simple and easy! You may be scratching your head, wondering why I’m bothering sharing this recipe with you, because you’ve been making something similar since you lost your first tooth, but I’m hoping there are others out there who never learned how to make a delicious and tender roast. This is for you! And for those who know how to make a delicious and tender, yet complicated roast, and need a backup recipe for busy days.

Growing up, my mother never made a single pot roast. Which is weird, because it’s something her own mother made almost every time we visited. You how you grow up watching your Mother and thinking, “I’m never going to do that when I grow up?” Well, I think my Mom did that with her mother’s cooking. Because Grandma was all about the homestyle cookin’ and Mom was all about the weird healthy food. Bowls of lentils. Fish stew. Salad sprinkled with Spike in lieu of dressing, which was forbidden. Some of her food was delicious, like her chicken chili, but most of it I couldn’t tolerate, and that was probably the only reason I was thin as a child. I refused to eat most everything she served us for dinner. I think the school lunch program saved me from starvation. It’s so sad, because if I ate all those foods now, I know I’d love them. The stubborn ignorance of childhood!

Wow. Talk about getting off-subject. Let’s get back to the roast, shall we? As with anything cooked in a crockpot, the meat is rendered extremely tender during the slow-cooking process and the broth from the roast combines with the soup to make a nice gravy to coat everything. Teri recommends serving the roast with fresh bread and I chose to make rolls out of my favorite honey oatmeal bread, but would have gone with my favorite rolls of all time if I’d had milk. Any fresh bread will do the trick, though–you just need something to sop up the gravy! :)

Basic Crockpot Beef Roast

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 (3-5 lb) roast (Teri recommends one with fat marbled throughout for moisture)
Meat seasoning/butt rubb/seasoned salt to taste
1 (10.5 oz) can cream of mushroom soup
1 (10.5 oz) can cream of golden mushroom soup
1 (1 oz) envelope dry onion soup mix
2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
1 lb bag baby carrots
8+ stalks of celery, trimmed and cut into thirds

Sprinkle meat with seasoning of choice and sear in a non-stick skillet over high heat on all sides. Meanwhile, place vegetables in bottom of crockpot. Once meat is seared, place on top of the vegetables. Spoon the soup over the top over the meat and veggies, then sprinkle the soup mix over that. Cover and set on low all day (about 8 hours).

Check it out yo! Remember the Fairy Hobmother who gave me a $50 gift card to buy a blender? Well, I decided I needed a new crockpot much worse than a new blender (my old one didn’t even have a knob and took two days to cook anything), and this roast was the first thing I made in it. I got the Hamilton Beach Set ‘n Forget 6-quart Programmable Slow Cooker. I’m in love! You can program it by setting it for a certain amount of time, or you can stick the thermometer probe through the top into the meat and program it to turn off once the meat comes to the right temperature, or you can put in on manual mode and just let it heat/warm until you turn it off. It even has a snap-tight lid, making it perfect for mess-free travelling, which would have come in handy when Teri put one of the roasts we made in her trunk and it fell over during transit onto her brand new Bible! She says she now has an official “preacher’s wife” Bible because it’s stained with pot roast juice. haha!

Did the Fairy Hobmother visit any of you guys? Do tell what you got!

34 Comments

Posted in Meats and tagged basic, carrots, celery, cream of mushroom soup, easy, homestyle, onion soup mix, pot roast, potatoes, recipe, simple. Bookmark the permalink.

Chuncheon Chicken Wings

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Veronica

This is my third month participating in the Secret Recipe Club, a club started by Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin’, in which everyone is secretly assigned another participants’ blog and you choose one of their recipes to make and post. On reveal day, which is today for my group, everyone posts their recipes and gets to see who had their blog and what recipe they chose! Fun stuff!

This month I was assigned to Koreafornian Cooking, which consists mainly of Tammy’s excellent cooking videos. All the recipes, whether on video or typed, are Korean fusion dishes. The blog’s tagline, “Korean cooking with California flare,” is quite apt!

Since football season is officially upon us, and chicken wings are a popular choice for game fare, I chose to make Tammy’s Chuncheon Chicken Wings. Chuncheon (pronounced Choon-chen, as far as I can tell by hearing Tammy pronounce it in the video) is the capital of Gangwon province in South Korea, and she was inspired by their popular dakkalbi dish to make these wings. According to Tammy, dakkalbi is diced chicken marinated in a gochujang (chili pepper paste) based sauce, and then stir-fried with sliced Chinese cabbage, sweet potato, scallions, onions and tteok (rice cake). So she used the sauce in this dish as a marinade for wings served with the typical blue cheese dressing and celery in America, and voila! Chuncheon Chicken Wings, a truly Koreafornian fusion recipe, was born.

Though I searched high and low, I could not find the gochujang (Korean pepper paste) anywhere! I asked the ladies at the Asian market what I could use instead, and they said sriracha wasn’t as salty or hot (whoa, Nelly, that stuff must be smokin’!), but it could work. I really wanted to use the gochujang, if not just to see what it tasted like, but the wings turned out really lovely even with the sriracha (a Thai chile sauce) that wasn’t intended.

I changed the recipe a bit more by replacing all the sweetener (she used sugar and honey) with honey and upping it by a couple tablespoons. Fearing the heat, I left out the chile powder, but wish I would have kept it in because we like spicy food and while these were spicy, we could have handled the extra heat. The heat using sriracha only is about as hot as regular buffalo wings, so if you want to make it spicier, do add the chile powder.

The last change I made was one that might not be necessary if you use the gochujang, but with the sriracha (or maybe it was the wings, which had been frozen, or maybe it was the extra honey), the sauce became watery after a few hours of marinating and didn’t stick well to the wings when I baked them. They were looking pretty pale and sad, so I dumped the remaining marinade to a saucepan and cooked it with some cornstarch to thicken it, then brushed the wings with it, which did the trick. They were red and pretty, just like Tammy’s Chuncheon wings!

While my spicy-sweet version probably tastes nothing like the dakkalbi served in Chuncheon that inspired Tammy’s original recipe, they still were very good. I detest buffalo wings, but I loved the flavor of these, and they were a winner with Dennis, my wing man, too. Meaning to only have a few before dinner, he ended up eating 14 wings and turning those into his dinner. So yeah, I’d say they were a success.

Chuncheon Chicken Wings

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

Dakkalbi Sauce
¼ cup gochujang (Korean pepper paste) or ¼ cup sriracha
2 tablespoons hot chile powder or hot paprika
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
¼ cup honey

4 lbs. chicken wings
1 bunch celery stalks
1 cup blue cheese or ranch dressing
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds for garnish (optional)

Put all the sauce ingredients in a gallon freezer bag, seal, and shake/knead to mix. If you purchased your wings in a bag and defrosted them in the fridge, be sure to pat/squeeze each one between paper towels to dry them. Add the the wings to the bag, seal, and massage to coat the wings with sauce. Refrigerate and allow to marinate for at least ½ hour (I did three hours). Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place wings on a foil-lined & greased baking sheet with a rim (reserve extra marinade). Bake for 25 minutes.

While wings are baking, wash celery and cut the ends off, then cut into strips. Chop strips into thirds. Place them on a large plate along with a bowl of dressing.

Pour extra marinade into a saucepan and whisk in a teaspoon of cornstarch. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, reduce heat and simmer for a minute or two until thickened. When the time goes off for the wings, remove from oven and turn them over using tongs. Brush the wings with the thickened sauce and return to the oven to bake for another 10-20 minutes, or until no longer pink in the middle.

Once wings are done, arrange them with the celery on the plate and serve!

Recipe source: adapted from Koreafornia Cooking

Be sure to click the blue linky man below to see all other secret recipe club posts today! I know it says there are 0 links, he’s a big fat liar, don’t believe him! Just click and you will see the truth. :)

23 Comments

Posted in Asian, Meats, Secret Recipe Club, Snacks & Appetizers and tagged chicken wings, Chuncheon, extra hot, football games, Korean, spicy. Bookmark the permalink.

Chicken Noodles

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Veronica

Back in July, my friend, Teri, came over for a pie crust lesson and we made four different pies with four kinds of crust (single, single pre-baked, double, and double lattice-top). Then in August, I went to her place and she taught me to cook some simple homestyle meals–the kind my hubby was raised on and that seem to be a foreign language to me. My brain goes “fish stew, curried caulifower, red beans and rice, shrimp scampi,” and his brain goes, “steak, pot roast, fried chicken, chicken pot pie.” Our brainwaves needed to be synched up and Teri was up to the challenge of teaching me how to cook like the Midwestern housewife I am. Except I’m not a housewife, really, since I work, but you get the point.

We made several of her family’s favorite meals and she taught me to make chicken noodles almost as an afterthought without a recipe. The only chicken noodles I’ve ever had are those at our family reunion every year brought by someone I’m not even sure I’m related to, and I was excited to learn how to make them because they are one of the dishes I enjoy most each year. I just LOVE me some egg noodles. Something about their texture…I adore it. Thick with some bite to them and they soak up all the yummy flavor of whatever you cook them in, in this case, chicken!

As the title indicates, there isn’t much to this recipe. Pretty much just chicken and noodles cooked in broth! I did add (too much) turmeric because I wanted to give them a yellow tint but I went overboard, as you can see. The above picture are the leftovers from the batch Teri and I made, with no turmeric added, and the other ones are mine, which I added 1/2 teaspoon to, so I’d recommend just a pinch at a time if you want yours to have a little extra color. I also added thyme to mine because I love the flavor of thyme with chicken, but if you want classic chicken noodles, just stick with the recipe and don’t go rogue like I did.

This is a very simple recipe and even the noodles go pretty fast. If you want to go a slower and more flavorful route, you can boil an entire chicken, which will also give you your own homemade broth.

Chicken Noodles

Printable recipe
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2 (32 oz.) cartons chicken broth (8 cups)
4 chicken bouillon cubes
3 lbs. skinless, boneless chicken breasts
6 eggs
¼ cup cold water
2 teaspoons salt
4-5 cups all-purpose flour

Pour the chicken broth into a stockpot. Add the bouillon cubes and the chicken breasts and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until tender and no longer pink in the middle, 5-10 minutes. Turn off heat & remove chicken from broth onto a plate to cool.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, water, and salt. Stir in enough flour to form a stiff dough. Flour a surface to roll the dough out on and pull off small chunks of dough at a time (about 1/6 of the dough) with floured hands to roll thin. Use plenty of flour on the outside, adding more as you roll so it doesn’t stick to the surface or rolling pin. Use a rotary mincer or pizza cutter to cut the noodles and separate them onto a plate.

You’ll have about 6 batches of noodles this size. It’s important to do them in batches instead of all at once to prevent them from clumping together when adding them to the broth.

After you’ve cut your first batch of noodles, turn the heat back on your broth to bring it to a boil. While waiting on that, shred the cooled chicken your fingers or two forks. When you’re done shredding the chicken, the broth should be boiling. Reduce heat to medium and sprinkle the noodles over the top, stirring to keep them separated.

Continue pulling off chunks of dough, rolling them out, separating the noodles and adding them to the simmering broth as you finish each batch. Once all the noodles are in, stir in the chicken and heat through before serving. The only broth remaining, which will not be much, will be thickened from the flour on the noodles, which is what you want, but you can add more broth if there’s not enough liquid to finish all the noodles. The noodles will thicken even more upon standing.

*Veronica’s Note: you can add a little turmeric to give the noodles more color, not more than ¼ teaspoon.

*Disclaimer: this post contains an affiliate link and I will earn a commission if you choose to purchase the herb mincer I linked to. :)

21 Comments

Posted in Main Dishes, My Favorites, Side Dishes and tagged comfort food, egg noodles, homemade chicken noodles, homestyle, old-fashioned, simple. Bookmark the permalink.

Healthy Slow Cooker Meat Sauce

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Veronica

Dennis and I have been eating out a lot now that I work through the dinner hour. I finally got fed up with the unhealthy food and the weight gain we’re both experiencing, and decided to cook up enough real homemade food on my days off to last us for the week. This meat sauce was the first thing I threw together, and Dennis was in heaven!

https://i0.wp.com/a4.l3-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/106/e4b697be95db4cacb0b570413a915d69/l.jpg

This is an old picture from 2009 but I had to include it. Dennis eats everything with chopsticks-he's obsessed!

I’m not completely back on the healthy bandwagon, but this meal is a good start. The sauce is hearty, flavorful & robust, and very low in fat. I chose to sweeten the sauce mainly with carrots, and you may find this balances the acidity of the tomatoes enough for your taste, but I decided to add some agave nectar to mine to sweeten it a little more. You could also try upping the carrots to 2 cups.

Serve this over whole wheat pasta along with a salad and you’ve got a nutritious, delicious meal!

Healthy Slow Cooker Meat Sauce

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 pound bison, venison, or lean ground beef
2 links mild Italian turkey sausage, casings removed
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 (14.5 ounce) cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes
1 ½ cups finely shredded carrots (about 4 medium carrots)
2 (8 ounce) cans tomato paste
2 tablespoons agave nectar or sugar
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon basil
1 tablespoon garlic salt
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
¼ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
Salt to taste

In a large skillet, cook the meat and onions until the meat is brown and the onions are tender. Add the minced garlic and cook another minute. Do not drain unless you used meat with a higher fat content. If you used the suggested meat, you will have a little broth in the pan with only a tiny amount of fat, which I like to leave for flavor.

Meanwhile, add the undrained tomatoes and carrots to a 4-quart (or larger) slow-cooker and puree using an immersion blender (if you don’t have an immersion blender, do this with your regular blender). Stir in the tomato paste, agave nectar, oregano, basil, garlic salt, bay leaves, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, and pepper. Stir in the meat mixture and cover.

Cook on high for 5-6 hours, or low for 10-12 hours, stirring caramelized sides back into the sauce. When complete, stir well, fishing out the bay leaves, and add salt to taste. Serve on top of your favorite pasta.

Recipe source: inspired by The Cooking Photographer