Parmesan Roasted Potatoes

Who doesn't love potatoes?? Something is definitely wrong with you if you don't love a good potato! A perfectly cooked and salted baked potato with a steak, or mashed potatoes.....delish! Well, I know we all try not to eat as many potatoes these days, but I think once in a while is okay. Trust me, would I lie to you?? I don't like to serve them the same way all of the time so I was really excited when I found this recipe. I actually can't remember if one of my friends on the Food Network told me about this one or my favorite site for recipes, allrecipes.com. Let's just call it my recipe, shall we??

These turned out really nice and were so flavorful. A great addition to any meal. Oh, and super simple. Here's what you need to get started....

• 9-10 small baby Dutch yellow potatoes or little new potatoes
• 3-4 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Garlic powder, to taste
• Sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, to taste
• Fresh chopped parsley, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil a large pot of water and boil the potatoes for 4-5 minutes. Remove from water and let cool. Or you can steam in the microwave, which is what I did. Once cooled, slice into quarters and combine with olive oil, garlic powder, sea salt and black pepper as well as the Parmesan. Mix thoroughly and place in a baking dish that has been sprayed with olive oil cooking spray.

Place into the oven and roast for 20-25 minutes. Remove from the oven and taste, season with sea salt, cracked pepper, or garlic powder if needed.

 Garnish with fresh chopped parsley. Enjoy.

Pillow Butter Mints

Okay, now I know I've gone off the deep end.....I made BUTTER MINTS!! Yes, you heard me correctly.....I didn't buy them, I made them! Is that crazy or what? I still can't believe I made them, but it was super simple and they were melt in your mouth delicious! I will be making these for my next party, or just the next time I'm bored. Do you want to know how to make them too?? I'll bet you do, so here you go....

1 box  10x sugar

5 T butter, softened

2 T heavy cream or half and half

2 t mint extract

1 drop of food coloring (optional)

Combine all ingredients with a mixer or food processor. I used my stand mixer. Blend until dough comes together and forms a smooth ball.

Break off a golf ball size (or slightly larger) section of the dough and roll into long thin roll (as shown).

Slice into 1/2 inch pillow mints. Isn’t that cool? Now they look like the ones you get in restaurants or in a bag at the store, but you actually made them! How cool is that??

Dry for several hours at room temperature. Store in airtight container in the refrigerator, or freezer for up to 3 months, with wax paper separating the layers.

Makes about 100 pillow mints. I shared these with several girlfriends and everyone agreed they were a little bite of heaven. Melt in your mouth delicious!

Use the food coloring if you want to make for baby showers or other fun occassions. I left mine white, you know, all natural and organic for me. :-)

Enjoy!!

Hot Chicken Salad

Who says Paula Deen can’t come up with a healthy recipe once in a while? There isn’t even one stick of butter in this recipe!  All you Paula haters out there, give it up. Find something better to do. I love me some of Paula’s cooking. Most of it might not be the healthiest, but I’ll bet it’s the best tasting! I “like” my friend, Paula, on Facebook. And since we’re close like that, Paula posts recipes and this one caught my eye one day…..Hot Chicken Salad. Now doesn’t that sound tasty? And the picture looked pretty darn tasty too. As Paula says, “you eat with your eyes first” . This one looked pretty and made me hungry.  It is topped with potato chips. Yummy! Of course, I tried to make ours a little bit healthier and used Baked Lays instead of delicious regular potato chips. Feel free to go all the way with the regular chips. To tell you the truth, I think it would have tasted better with regular chips, but it was still yummy.

Okay, and if I’m going to be honest with my friends on my blog, Paula didn’t really make this recipe healthy, I did. I still love her though. I used reduced fat sour cream instead of mayo. Mostly because I can’t stand mayo and it makes me gag to think of eating it! But hey, if you like mayo, go for it. I’m sure you’ll love this recipe with or without the mayo.

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked chicken breast meat, cubed
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1 small onion
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup mayonnaise (or sour cream)
• 1 cup grated sharp Cheddar
• 2/3 cup crushed potato chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 13 by 9-inch baking dish with vegetable oil cooking spray.

Saute’ onion and celery in a tablespoon (or more) of olive oil until soften – this is really an option step. If you like your chicken salad really crunchy, you can skip this step and just combine in a bowl with the other ingredients.

In a large mixing bowl combine the chicken, celery, almonds, salt, pepper, lemon juice, mayonnaise, and cheese. Place the mixture in the prepared baking dish. Spread the crushed potato chips on top. Bake for 20 minutes, or until bubbly.

Sounds pretty easy, right? It was super simple and full of flavor. My husband loves cold chicken salad and he liked that this was a lot of the same flavors he loves…..except for the mayo. :-)


Give this one a try! I hope you enjoy it as much as Paula and I do.

Delicious Jambalaya

Okay, this is one of my all-time favorite dishes! I know, I know, I say that a lot, but I have been making this one for many years thanks to a friend of  mine (Susan). We lost touch for a few years, I lost the recipe in a move, so no more jambalaya for me! I’ve been sad about this for many years and couldn’t find just the right recipe. I like my jambalaya with lots of tomato flavor and this one was just the perfect combination of that. All I could do was dream of it…..until she found me on Facebook! Thank you Facebook and thank you Susan for finding me. Of course, it’s great to be back in contact with her, but it’s awesome to have my jambalaya recipe back in the cookbook! What a sweet reunion.

There is a good deal of chopping in the recipe so make sure you have the time when you start making it. You can really use whatever meat you like, but I love this one with a combination of shrimp and kielbasa. You could use also use ham or chicken, but if I were you, I’d stick with the shrimp and kielbasa.

Sorry I don’t have pictures to show you the process. I was so excited to be making it again that I just took one when I was finished and as you can see, I didn’t do a great job with that either. I’ll be making this again soon so I’ll update this post with more pics.

Ingredients:

3 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup each chopped onion, green onions, celery
3/4 cup green pepper, diced (I like using red or yellow peppers)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups chicken broth
2 cans stewed tomatoes, chopped (I used the ones with italian seasonings added)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp each pepper, cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves
1 cup uncooked rice
1 bag of frozen shrimp (about 25-30 medium)

1/4 lb kielbasa or cooked, diced ham

Directions:

Heat butter in large heavy skillet over low heat. Stir in onions, celery, green pepper, kielbasa (or ham) and garlic. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until onions are tender. Stir in broth, tomatoes, parsley and seasonings. Cover. Bring to a boil. Add rice gradually, stirring with fork. Simmer, covered for 20 minutes or until rice is tender. Mix in shrimp. Cover. Simmer for 5 minutes longer. Yield: 6-8 servings.

This is such a flavorful dish. I’m sure you are going to love it. I usually double the thyme and garlic because I like tons of flavor so you might want to start off with the correct amount, taste and decide for yourself.

Delish!

Blueberry Lemon Crumb Bars

I have really starting loving blueberries this year. I guess because I started baking more, but mainly because they are just delicious. You’ll see on this blog that I’ve made an awesome blueberry pound cake, scones, muffins…..I feel like Bubba on Forest Gump naming all the ways you can use blueberries. It's so true though. Who knew you could make so many delicious things with blueberries?? Well, you're lucky you have me to lead you in the right direction....to the land of blueberries!

This could be a delicious breakfast treat or a yummy dessert. I had friends over for dinner and served it as dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Of course, I had my ice cream on the side. I don't like things touching, but that's for another therapy session. Let's get back to the crumb cake.....

Here's what you need to get started:


Ingredients

1 cup white granulated sugar (for a lower fat version, use ½ c splenda and ½ c sugar)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsalted butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
zest of two lemons
 
Filling

4 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 cup white sugar ( I used ½ c Splenda)
3 teaspoons cornstarch


Directions

1.Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Spray a 9×13 inch pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2.In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, salt, lemon zest and baking powder.

3. In a small bowl, whisk the egg and vanilla together until combined.
4. Use pastry cutter or your food processor to blend the flour mixture with the butter and egg/vanilla mixture. I find the easiest method is to grate very cold butter into the mix.  That way I didn’t have to get the food processor dirty!

After mixing the butter in with the dry ingredients, the dough will be crumbly (really an understatement, it is VERY crumbly). Pat half of dough into the prepared pan. Remaining half will be used as topping.

5. In another bowl, stir together 1/2 sugar and cornstarch. Gently mix in the blueberries and coat with mixture. Sprinkle the blueberry mixture evenly over the crust.

Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until top is slightly brown. Cool completely before cutting into squares. Enjoy!

Garlic Monkey Bread

 

A picture of pure beauty!

 

OMG!!! I found this recipe on Pinterest and started drooling as I was reading it. I love me some garlic bread and this garlic bread is made like monkey bread?? How cool is that? I first learned how to make the cinnamon monkey bread in Home Economics class in high school. Thank you Mrs. Sheets.  Man that was some good stuff and fun to eat too. Well, you wanna know what’s even better??  Make it savory, individual servings and throw a bunch of garlic and butter on it. Delicious! Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention how easy this is to make. I made this last weekend when I had friends over for dinner and we all loved it. My friend, Alan, loved it so much that I had to send the rest home with him. It was probably gone in a day! This would be awesome served with a big ole bowl of pasta or tomato soup. Mmmmmmmmm……it would actually be good served with anything!

 

Let’s get started with the best garlic bread you’ll ever taste…..

 

2 (7.5 oz) cans buttermilk biscuits

6 Tbl. butter, melted

4 cloves garlic, minced (feel free to add more for better flavor. I used 5)

2 Tbl. dried parsley flakes (I only had fresh so I used that)

1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese

plus 2 Tbl. to sprinkle on top

 

Cut each biscuit into 4 pieces and place in a bowl, like so....

 

 

 

Combine remaining ingredients and pour over biscuit pieces. Gently toss to evenly coat. Use a greased 12-cup muffin tin and place 6-7 pieces in each cup.

 

 

Sprinkle remaining 2 Tablespoons of cheese over the top. Bake at 400 degrees for 12-14 minutes. Serve warm. Makes 12.

Could that be any easier?? Make these, you’ll thank me later!

Can I have a bite now?? Yummy!