Sunday Sides and Suppers: Balsamic Chicken

This isn't exactly Sunday, I know. I've been trying to upload videos on my YouTube channel since Saturday evening, and the process has frozen every time. I will edit this post to include the video if and when I get it to upload. The same goes for the two resolution update videos I'm behind on uploading for the same reason. (Updated January 30 to include video.)

Balsamic chicken with roasted vegetables and sweet potato.

This recipe started out as an odd idea I decided to test but didn't expect to work out. I'd seen strawberries and balsamic vinegar paired in several recipes the same way I had seen pineapple and chicken paired. Since I've learned to treat berries and pineapple in similar ways regarding spices used when baking, I wondered if pineapples would work well with balsamic vinegar.

I'm running behind.

So, you might have noticed we're past the third Sunday of the month, and January's Sunday Sides and Suppers has yet to be uploaded.

It's worse than that. I haven't even shot the thing. 

I've been sick for the last couple of weeks. This past weekend, I was so ill, I didn't want to eat let alone cook. Besides, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to watch someone who looks half dead cooking.

If I am still feeling half decent this weekend, I will shoot a late edition.

I will not be cooking cheeseburger casserole as I'd originally planned because we had to cook the beef I had the other day, and buying more at the moment isn't in the budget. But don't worry. I have a brand new, delicious, and more diet friendly recipe planned for you: balsamic pineapple chicken.

Sunday Sides & Suppers: Holiday Desserts Edition

Welcome to the third and final episode in my Sunday Sides and Suppers holiday series. This week, I'll  show you how to make five ingredient fudge, pumpkin spice chess cake, and chutney stuffed mini spice cakes or Raesh cakes as they're known in our house.

If you have trouble viewing the video, click here.

I've listed the recipes from easiest and quickest to the most involved but versatile.

Sunday Sides & Suppers: Holiday Entertaining Edition

I asked whether you would rather see main dishes or party food in last week's episode. No one answered, so I decided to compromise by demonstrating a party dish, a main dish, and one dish that can be used for either.

If you can't see the video, click here.

Sunday Sides & Suppers: Holiday Sides Edition

It's been almost forever, but Sunday Sides and Suppers is back with a brand new video format and a huge holiday edition this week where I show you how to make three hot side dishes welcome at any potluck dinner. If you have trouble viewing the video, click here.

If you missed the recipes in the video or just prefer to read instead of watch, the recipes for all three dishes, in their potluck proportions, are below.

Thanksgiving Day Tag

I mentioned the fact the girls and I were planning to make a Thanksgiving Day tag video last week. After I got home from work Monday afternoon, we did just that. You can check it out below.

If you enjoyed the tag, please let me know and take a moment to subscribe to the channel. If I can find or write some more child friendly tags, I might do them with the girls.

You got to hear the girls answers in the video above, so I thought I'd give my own answers here on the blog.

So, Thanksgiving is coming up next week.

As has probably become obvious by now, I'm still trying to find a good balance here on the blog itself after merging The Tekaran Lady, Contented Comfort, and this blog into one as well as with my newish YouTube channel. This process will probably intensify over the next few weeks or months as I get back into posting and uploading on some kind of regular basis. Things might get a bit crazy around here for a while, so please have patience with me.

Boo Bear took advantage of everyone talking to sneak HALF a pie!

I've been brainstorming, and of course considering the time of year we're in now, a lot of what I've been thinking about revolves around the holidays. I'm currently working on a child friendly Thanksgiving tag and planning to shoot a few Sunday Sides and Suppers videos featuring a few super easy but delicious gluten free sides and desserts as I start into my holiday cooking. I'll also do a couple of writing posts and/or vlogs as I get back into working on Right of Succession and start pre-writing my next project. And, of course, there are some things I may end up co-writing with Hubby regarding homeschooling and the other change ups we've had going on the past couple of months.

So, I have this odd idea...

Long time readers will know I'm one of those folks who is always experimenting with how I cook food. There's even a cookbook floating around as proof.

A while back, I was scrolling through Pinterest and later my Facebook news feed, and I kept coming across the ecard below.

Not mine! Find the original here.

Gluten Free Ginger Peach Muffins

This time of year, those of us here in the E household have a lot of trouble with allergies. Specifically, the girls experience a lot of nausea thanks to sinus and post nasal drip. 

There isn't a huge amount to be done to help them aside from trying some unpasteurized local honey to try and treat their allergies naturally. However, I was told to try consuming ginger back when I was having horrendous morning sickness early in my pregnancy with Sneak. So a while back, I tried adding a bit of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg along with just a bit of brown sugar to a regular old biscuit recipe for those spring and fall mornings when the girls are feeling puny.

Now, I haven't made a batch of ginger biscuits since we went gluten free. The GF all purpose baking flour we use does make really good biscuits, but I've been just as down as the girls when it comes to allergies so far this spring. I don't work dough with my hands when I'm having lots of trouble sneezing and what not, so I've been going with a muffin variation.

These ginger peach muffins have certainly worked well for us these past couple of weeks, this morning included.

The muffins fresh out of the oven this morning.

Sunday Sides and Suppers: Gluten Free Blueberry Almond Muffins

I'll readily admit, this is pretty much the same recipe as the Cherry Almond Muffins. I was originally thinking of an Independence Day themed Sunday Sides and Suppers with recipe variations to make red, white, and blue muffins when I decided to try them.

Then I saw how blueberries went from purple to slightly green in the batter instead of blue. So far as I can tell, this color change is a reaction with the baking powder. It does make them a tad ugly, but they taste really good. It did put the kibosh on the Independence Day themed muffin post idea though.

They taste way better than they look, I promise.

Cheesy Chicken and Rice

Today's recipe is one of those that's inspired by typical restaurant fair, cheesy chicken and rice.

If you're like us, you might like the food at restaurants but hate the price and noise. Seriously, if you have sensitive ears or the least bit of hearing loss, going out to eat isn't all that fun. Hubby and I used to enjoy going out, even though he's always had issues hearing the waiters and me thanks to a childhood injury. Then I started slowly loosing my hearing five or six years ago now, and it's just gotten sad.

Our conversations in restaurants these days mostly consists of, "What did you say?" and, "I beg your pardon." Well, they do if we're out alone on our two or three date nights a year. We each end up taking a girl and spending most of the meal answering their questions and tending to their needs when we all go out as a family. Hubby and I have given up trying to talk to one another more than absolutely necessary on such occasions. It's the same, "Can you repeat that?" and, "Huh?" as it is when we're alone but with questions and pleas for help interrupting us.

So, a few years back, I started reverse engineering some of our favorite restaurant meals. You know me though, I can never leave well enough alone though, so I made a few of my own additions. In this case, I added some veggies to my version of El Camino Real's Cheesy Chicken and Rice.

Cheesy Chicken and Rice with Side Salad

Gluten Free Cherry Almond Muffins

Yay! I'm finally back with a new Sunday Sides and Suppers!

Since we've made the move to eating Gluten Free, I've had to start rethinking a lot of our old recipes. There have been a few adaptations, and I've even started experimenting with Gluten Free baking.

When I say experimenting, I mean experimenting. There are a lot of mixes out there, but we tend to prefer the taste of basic recipes. However, cooking with gluten free flours is a lot different than cooking with wheat. It's doable, and like these muffins, you can sometimes just substitute flours. It doesn't always work, but that's another post.

Today's recipe is one I cooked up with Valentine's Day in mind. We usually don't do much if anything for the day in the E household. This is due in part to Hubby's birthday being the following day, and we'd rather celebrate that. The rest of it is we just kind of feel having a planned day to "show your significant other how much you love them" sucks the romance right out of it. Hubby and I are more likely to pick a random day to surprise one another out of the blue.

Still, it never hurts to do a little something. So in come the cherry almond muffins.

Gluten Free Cherry Almond Muffins

Going Gluten Free

We here in the E household have recently gone gluten free. Celiac Disease is something we've known about for a while, but even though Hubby has showed several of the signs for years before we met, it wasn't something we thought about until back in September. I mean, Hubby has been under a doctor's care for unintentional weight loss and being under weight for the past five years with absolutely no improvement. Even so, we couldn't think of anything else it might be until another family member with almost identical symptoms was told to try going off gluten for thirty days.

Okay, so how to I bag the granola I made without a huge mess?

I'm sorry I forgot to post this with yesterday's homemade granola recipe, but I was trying to get the post up for you before the granola was actually cool enough to bag. And I kind of didn't realize how messy it would be until I tried to put up a batch myself.

So, before you try to make your granola, line your pan with either wax paper or aluminum foil. If you use foil, make sure to grease it before you spread your granola in the pan.

After you get your granola broken up, scoop as much of it as you can into the bag with a large spoon. Then pull up the sides of the paper or foil and use it to pour the remainder of the granola into your zipper bag.

Tilting the pan instead isn't such a good idea unless you're just looking for an excuse to sweep your kitchen, trust me.

Sunday Sides & Suppers: Homemade Granola

How do you make two fresh peaches and a cup of yogurt into breakfast for four? If you have cooking oats, a bit of butter and brown sugar, a bit of flour, and some cinnamon, you bump it up with some homemade granola for quick and easy parfaits.

Parfait, it's what's for breakfast!

I discovered the hows by accident. I got distracted one morning while making oatmeal bars, and I didn't add enough flour. The results turned out too crumbly for bars, but it did make for some good granola cereal.

Homemade Granola

3 Cups Whole Grain Oats

1/2 Cup Butter

1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

1/4 Cup Whole Grain Flour

1/4 Cup Milk

2 Tbsp. Cinnamon

1 tsp. Nutmeg

1 tsp. Vanilla Extract

1/2 tsp. Ground Cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, melt butter. Whisk in brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and cloves. Add oat and flour, and stir. Add milk if needed to coat all the oats.

Spread in a thin layer onto a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for twenty-five to thirty minutes or until the oats have dried and browned.

Run a spatula under the oats to crumble, and break up any large clumps.

Keep it stored in a zipper bag for up to four days for a quick breakfast or snack.

Edited to add: I made a discovery about an hour after posting yesterday. Make sure to click here before trying the recipe to see how to bag your granola without the huge mess I ended up creating.

Apple Raisin Spice Oatmeal Bars

Today's recipe is one of our family's absolute favorites.

Long time readers are already familiar with my tendency to make these make ahead, grab and go breakfast and snack bars. They will keep for up to four days wrapped will in plastic wrap or a zip bag, and they're both good cold or warmed in the microwave for just thirty seconds. I made up a big batch yesterday, and we'll be eating them until Tuesday, if they last that long.

Apple Raisin Spice Oatmeal Bars

3 Cups Rolled Oats
1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/2 Cups Skim Milk

1/2 Cup Water

2 Medium Apples (Diced)

1/2 Cup Raisins

1/2 Cup Walnuts (Diced) *optional
3 Tbsp. Milled Flaxseed
2 Tbsp. Light Brown Sugar

2 Tbsp. Cinnamon (Ground)

1 1/2 Tbsp. Butter (Melted)
1 1/2 Tbsp. Baking Powder

1 tsp. Vanilla

1/2 tsp. Nutmeg (Ground)

1/2 tsp. Cloves (Ground)

1/2 tsp. Salt 

Melt butter in a large, microwavable bowl. Add brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt, flour, baking powder, and flaxseed and whisk until fluffy. Fold in apples, raisins, walnuts, and oats adding water as needed to moisten.

Spread evenly onto a greased cookie sheet or casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 40-55 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Makes roughly 24 servings.

Taco Bowls

Please excuse the picture on this one. My camera is awful for trying to take these kinds of shots, and we gave away all the little individual portion, oven safe bowls we received with some of the cookware from our wedding shower because I thought we'd never use them. Then I discovered French onion soup and concocted this recipe. We had to make do with a microwave. It was still really tasty, but nuking it makes it look a little...blah.

Actually this one started out as a failed attempt to make veggie burgers. The patties grilled up pretty, but the flavor and texture was all wrong. They did, however, make for some awesome low carb taco salads. So I took out the binders, and so was born the taco bowl.

Taco Bowls

1/4 - 1/2 lb. Pinto Beans (dried)
1/4 - 1/2 lb. Black Beans (dried)
1/8 - 1/4 lb. Navy Beans (dried)
1 cup Baby Carrots
2 Tbsp. Ground Red Pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp. Garlic Powder

Separate out any broken or bad beans. Wash and soak overnight. In a crock pot, cover beans with water and cook on high for four hours or on low for eight. Add baby carrots for the last one or two hours, just long enough to soften them. Drain, reserving some of the soup to moisten if needed, and place beans and carrots into a food processor. Add spices and pulse until well blended, adding the broth as needed to moisten the mixture.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line oven safe bowls with the refried beans and place on a cookie sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the beans just begin to crust. Top as desired.

Now, you don't have to use those exact bean types, though I would suggest using either pintos or red kidney beans to make sure you get an expected refried beans taste from it. This is one of those recipes I use to clear out any left over dried beans I have sitting around in the pantry.

You can top it with anything you like. The nutritional information given is for the toppings our family tends to favor: bell pepper, onion, spiced stewed tomatoes, cheese, torn spinach, and a dollop of unsweetened, plain Greek Yogurt.

It also makes a lovely bean dip if you up the spices to 3-4 Tbsp. ground red pepper, to taste, 2 1/2 Tbsp. garlic powder, and 2 Tbsp. onion powder.

Here's the nutritional information for the refried beans alone.

* Nutrition information is once again courtesy of Spark People Recipe Calculator.

Black Bean Salsa

I've had this recipe up before, but that was before I had pictures or nutrition information. So I thought I'd rerun the recipe. Besides, I've since improved it, so why not give y'all an update?

Once again, this is a very chunky salsa, and a favorite in our household. It works well as a condiment for baked chicken, steak, or a baked potato, but it works equally well to turn nachos into a meal with a little shredded spinach, grated cheese, and Greek yogurt up on top.

Black Bean Salsa

1/2 lb. Dried Black Beans
1 Large Onion (Diced)
2 Large Bell Peppers (Diced)
1 Can Whole Kernel Corn (Drained) * Optional
2 Cans Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilies (Drained)
2 Tbsp. Garlic Powder
2 Tbsp. Chili Powder
1 Tbsp. Ground Red Pepper

Wash and soak the black beans the night before. In a large crock pot, cook the beans on high for four hours or on low for eight hours. Dice the onion and bell pepper and roast at 400 degrees for thirty minutes or until tender. Drain the beans well and pour them back into the crock pot. Add onion, bell pepper, corn, tomatoes, garlic, chili powder, and red pepper. Mix until well blended and heat on high for an additional half hour. Serve hot.

Makes roughly twelve servings.

* The picture is courtesy of The Aardvark's Plumbline's Dread Dormomoo, and is shown without the corn.

Sunday Sides and Suppers

This recipe is based off a Sundrop cake. Sundrop is actually a local brand of soda, so those of you outside Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and parts of Georgia probably haven't heard of it. Think Mt. Dew with about six times the citrus flavor. Anyway, Sundrop cakes are incredibly moist, flavorful, and lovely.

I wanted something a little out of the ordinary to take to a potluck a few years back, and decided to riff off the old recipe using dreamsicles as my inspiration.

I'm afraid there's no nutritional information available for this one currently, but needless to say, this one isn't a health food.

Dreamsicle Cake

1 Box Orange Cake Mix
1 Large Box Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix
2 Tbsp. Orange Extract
8 oz. Orange Soda

Icing

8 oz. Cream Cheese (softened)
16 oz. Powdered Sugar
1 Tbsp. Vanilla

Preheat oven according to the directions on the box of the cake mix you're using. Prepare cake mix according to the directions on the box. Stir in extract, packet of pudding mix, and soda. (Note: Be careful on the soda measure. Too much added will make the cake turn out gummy. If the weather is very humid, you may want to omit an ounce or two.) Pour into two greased 8 inch round pans and bake according to the directions on the box. Let cool thoroughly before frosting.

To mix frosting, warm cream cheese for about forty-five to sixty seconds on high in the microwave, or until it can be easily stirred. Pour in powdered sugar and vanilla and blend until smooth and even. Refrigerate for fifteen minutes or up to a day in advance if covered. If you wait more than half an hour, stir before frosting.

Makes roughly 12 servings.

* The picture is courtesy of my mother-in-law, who made this one with the girls' elder cousin one afternoon this fall.

Sunday Sides and Suppers: Make Your Own McGriddles

Today's recipe is one of several copycat recipes I have. I mean, why go out and pay more for something if you can make it at home in very little time for less while simultaneously controlling what goes into your food? Now, I have to admit, having the griddle Hubby bought for us on Thanksgiving morning makes cooking these puppies up a whole lot easier than it would be if I just had the one big skillet. But it can be done either way.

They are equally good with bacon, but today's nutritional value is with the sausage since that's what is shown. Also, you can use all whole wheat flour, all plain white flour, or half and half. The nutritional information is for half and half on the flours and with skim milk and the flax seed.

Make Your Own McGriddles

2/3 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
2/3 Cup Plain Flour
2 Tbsp. Milled Flax Seed
2 Tbsp. Brown Sugar
1/4 Cup Syrup
1 Cup Milk
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
1 Package Sausage
6 Large Eggs
2-3 Ounces Cheddar (Thinly Sliced)

Mix flours, flax seed, brown sugar, syrup, vanilla, and milk in a large bowl until completely blended. Pour into rounds roughly 2-2 1/2 inches in diameter onto hot griddle or skillet. While pancakes are cooking, cut and shape sausage paddies and scramble the eggs in a separate bowl. Once all the pancakes are cooked, place sausage paddies onto the hot griddle and pour eggs into a separate skillet. (We find it helpful to either use a large skillet, or only cook half the eggs at a time.)

Allow the eggs to cook without stirring until they are able to be flipped. Flip and cook on the other side before turning them onto a plate. Use a canning jar lid or glass to cut rounds into the egg. Thoroughly drain the cooked sausage paddies and pat them down with a paper towel to remove any excess grease.

Build your McGriddles by placing egg round on top of a pancake followed by cheese and sausage, and top it off with another pancake. Makes approximately eight sandwiches with a few leftover silver dollar pancakes.