Sour Cream Chicken

Incredibly easy and incredibly delicious. A whopping 4 ingredients go into this meal. I found it the other night while searching through Tasty Kitchen. I should have taken a picture - next time.

Ingredients
4 skinless boneless chicken breast (I only used 3)
8 oz container of sour cream
10.75oz can of cream of chicken soup*
1 cup French fried onions

Directions
Place chicken in a baking dish. Mix sour cream and cream of chicken soup and pour over chicken. Bake at 350 for about an hour. Cover with fried onions the last ten minutes of cooking.


*I started making a homemade cream of chix substitute so it's healthier, in terms of knowing what the heck you're eating. It's very simple and I usually make it in the morning or afternoon so when I make dinner I just grab it from the fridge. I found it over at my trusty Bless Us O Lord.

Cream of chix substitute

2 T butter, melt in pan

2 T flour, add flour to pan

2 t chicken bullion

1 cup milk, slowly add chx bln and milk to pan. Stir until thick and bubbly.

Sloppy Joes

Dan had a hankering for Sloppy Joes last night. We didn't have a can so I looked in my cookbook and there was a homemade recipe for it. I thought it would turn out gross as I normally don't care for this sandwich but it was good. I would definitely make this over buying a the canned stuff.

Ingredients:
1 lb lean ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
8-oz can tomato sauce
2 tbls water
1 to 1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp garlic salt
Dash of hot sauce (I omitted but Dan put on his)

Directions:
In a large skillet cook ground beef, onion, and sweet pepper until meat is brown and vegetables are tender. Drain off fat. Stir in tomato sauce, water, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic salt. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, for about 5 minutes. Serve on rolls, buns, or bread.

Incredibly Easy Chicken and Noodles

I've never made this recipe and was taking it to a family in need from church so I had Dan try a bowl and it was a hit. It's cheap. It's makes a lot. And it's GOOD! I served it up with a slotted spoon for the more traditional gravy-ish chicken and noodle instead of soupy. This is definitely going on our go-to meals list! A great find as the winter weather draws near.

INGREDIENTS
1 (26 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
3 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
2 cups diced, cooked chicken breast meat
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon seasoning salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 (9 ounce) packages frozen egg noodles


DIRECTIONS
In a large pot, mix the cream of chicken soup, cream of mushroom soup, chicken broth, and chicken meat. Season with onion powder, seasoning salt, and garlic powder. Bring to a boil, and stir in the noodles. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes

Cowboy Beans

Martin learned about this style of beans from a janitor at Central Catholic.

-1 can (or however many cans you want) baked beans
-1/2lb (or however much you want) ground beef
-a good sprinkling of any spices you desire--I use Tony Chachere's cajun spice

Cook up the ground beef in a big pan, add the beans, add the spices, stir until hot. You could probably add onions as well, and probably jalepenos too. I've never tried either, but they seem like they might fit, I dunno.

Today we made a HUGE pan of this, and it was our lunch! And it filled us up so much, we didn't feel like eating dinner!

Beer Bread

I know I'm about the last person to discover this, but thanks to our friend Mary and the fact that this can literally be thrown together in five minutes, this has become a household staple.

3 c flour
3 T sugar
1 12 oz. bottle or can or beer

Mix it all together, dump it into a loaf pan and

Bake 40-60 minutes @ 350 degrees.

When it's been baking for about 20 minutes, melt a couple tablespoons of butter and drizzle over the top, then continue baking the rest of the way.

This stuff is amazing, not to mention amazingly easy. We've found that Honey Brown makes a tasty loaf. I haven't done much experimentation with different beers, but I've read a few fun things on the internet about which ones make extra yumminess. This bread makes excellent toast and excellent pub-style sandwiches. It's GREAT for leftover potroast, steak, corned beef, or deli pastrami. It also makes a fabulous soup companion!

Really easy pork chops

I went to the store yesterday and bought some butterflied pork chops. They were delicious. I didn't do any measurements, but I don't think the recipe below needs to be precise. The kids loved them, and so did Jim and I.

4 butterflied pork chops (you could probably use regular ones)
2 eggs
2 handfulls of dried breadcrumbs
a couple of shakes of garlic powder
a few sprinkles of shredded parmesean cheese
a few drizzles of extra virgin olive oil.

In bowl #1 mix the eggs to make an egg wash.
In bowl #2 combine breadcrumbs and garlic powder
Dip pork chop in egg, then breadcrumb mixture. Lay in 9x13 greased pan.
Drizzle olive oil over the top of all pork chops.

Bake 375 for 45 minutes. Sprinkle with the shredded parmesean cheese. Bake 15 minutes more.

Delicious. I served with roasted asparagus, fresh strawberries and some white rice.

Salmon Burgers...just keep swimming, just keep swimming..

So, Andrew was in a for a brief weekend visit, and when I say brief, I picked him up at midway at 730pm friday and he had to fly out at 330 on sunday, so itwas like a day and a half. Not much time after being apart for 4.5 weeks, but much appreciated nonetheless. We'll see each other for five days in 3 weeks, so we can't be too sad. However, me trying to look on the bright side doesn't seem to keep me from getting mildly depressed anyways. So upon returning from the airport and moping around the house for a few hours, I decided to get my cooking on. It seems to cheer me up and certainly puts my mind on something else. Or at least it satisfies one craving...

I usually put music on when I cook, but this tiime, I needed more visual distration, so I put on Barefoot Contessa. Watching TV and cooking is a tad tricky...but salmon burgers are easy.

Salmon Burgers - makes four patties
1 can (15 oz) salmon
3/4 cup Italian breadcrumbs
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Fresh parsley chopped (or shredded, whatever your method)
2 egg whites

Mix all ingredients in a bowl with hands. Make patties. Put in a frying pan with a little olive oil and cook till browned.
that's all folks. easy as pie. i really hope I am not forgetting an ingredient...i'm doing this from memory at work.

Side notes: We happend to have fresh grilled salmon that needed to get uesd up so I used that instead of canned, which is perfectly acceptable. The egg whites are what keep the patties held together, make sure you get as much egg white as your can without getting the yolk. Yes, it's a lot of garlic, but man does it taste good...

In case you're wondering, in the Barefoot Contessa I was watching while cooking, she made bleu cheese burgers on the grill, east hampton clam chowder (which I am going to attempt to make as well...) guacamole salad, and ice cream shakes.