Orange Chicken - Quick, Easy, Delicious!

Ingredients:
2 Lbs of chicken tenderloins
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
4 Tsp lemon juice
1 Cup orange marmalade
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
Salt
Pepper

Other Utensils:
Skillet
Tongs
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Baster/brush

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Melt butter/oil in skillet. 

Salt and pepper chicken. 

Brown both sides of the chicken lightly. 

Mix mustard, marmalade, and lemon juice together - whisk vigorously for 1 minute. If you don't do it for an entire minute exactly - we will know. And the chicken police will be headed to your location. 

Remove chicken from pan. 

Drain skillet. 

Return chicken to pan and cover with orange mixture, coating chicken thoroughly. 

Cook on each side 1-2 minutes on stovetop. 

Slide into oven for 3 minutes. 

Flip chicken. Baste/brush chicken with orange sauce. 

Return to oven for 3 more minutes. 

Continue process until chicken is cooked through. Mine only took the one on each side, but every chicken is - if nothing else - a special snowflake in its own right. Only tastier than snowflakes. Way way tastier. 

Broil on low for just a few moments. To get the slightly browned look you see in the pictures above. Maybe 2 minutes on low, tops.

Remove chicken from pan and return pan and sauce to stovetop. 

Cook until sauce reduces slightly and pour glaze over chicken. 

Serve. 

I made this first with bone-in chicken thighs. They work wonderfully, too. Here's their closeup, Mr. Deville. 

But I find you have to work harder to eat bone-in chicken thighs. And, selfishly, I just wanted to eat all of them. So we tried the next time with boneless tenderloins. The result was nothing short of amazing.

I wish I would have snapped a better shot of both times I made this in the last week or two. But, seriously, it vanishes so quick - I haven't had an opportunity to!

Good luck, let me know if you make your own version and how it turns out! 

Banana Bread Muffins - Only 3 Ingredients (Gluten Free Option)

My favorite - okay, only - sister has been eating wheat free. While you do not have to eat gluten free to eat wheat free, wheat is pretty much in - well, everything. Except for gluten free flours, of course. We have been experimenting with all the different flours (I'm on a tapioca/potato starch kick lately), and we try to pick up gluten free mixes or treats when we're out to try which are best. One of the grocery stores near us had a huge selection of GF one day. She was stoked. While going to stock up the other day she was informed they were just running it as a test and they would not be carrying more gluten free products. She bought all the yellow gluten-free cake mixes that she could find, because that's all there really was left. 

So we have a lot of cake mixes. I ran across an idea for banana bread with cake mix, eggs, and bananas. We also had 3 over-ripened bananas sitting in the fruit basket at home. We thought to try to make them gluten-free and then made them into muffins. We're all about portion control. I lie, I ate two that night. We then decided to try some of them with the chocolate chips. These were, of course, even better than the "regular" ones. They're banana bread-y without being too heavy and positively divine while still warm out of the oven. 

While I'm a huge supporter of  making things from scratch when you can? I'm also a big supporter of being able to make something tasty and quick when possible, and I hate wasting fruit. So we solved all of those in one night. Bonus that we made our gluten-free. But I imagine they are just as wonderful with all the tasty glutens. 

So, try them for yourself. Let us know what you think. Go ahead, you know you want to. Go bananas. See what I did there? 

Ingredients:
3-4 ripe bananas
1 box yellow cake mix
2 eggs

chocolate chips (optional)

Other utensils: 

Bowl

Spoon

Cooking Spray

Muffin pan

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mash ripened (over is better!) bananas with fork until smooth.

Add 2 eggs and mix well.

Stir in cake mix and incorporate well.

Spray muffin tins with cooking spray.

Fill muffin tins 3/4 of the way. 

If you're adding chocolate chips I suggest adding a few to each tin and then stirring in well. You can add a bunch to the mix before pouring into the tins, but adding to the individual tin  promotes even distribution and stops you from having way too many or too little. 

Bake for 17-20 minutes or until tops spring back and toothpick inserted is clean upon insertion. 

Lemon Honey Rosemary Chicken

I made this the other night and posted it to Facebook. A few friends asked for the recipe. I have done my best to recreate it here (I stink at remembering how I cook things, at times, but really I don't think I forgot anything here..? Heh!) Here it is! It was marvelous, really. I feel like there's something wrong with saying that about your own cooking - but I suppose I never followed the rules anyway, right? 

Ingredients:
2-3 lbs of chicken breasts (I used bone in)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons honey
2 lemons
2 shallots
6-10 "stalks" of rosemary
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil cooking spray

Other Utensils:
Skillet
Tongs
Food processor (or excellent chopping skills)
Measuring cups
Knife
Cutting board
Lemon juicer


Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

Take half of the rosemary sprigs and de-leaf them. (You know that's not the technical term for any of that, right? This isn't the Food Network. This is a blog that a hungry girl is typing up...I think you'll be okay though. Just keep up, kids.)

Throw two shallots and the rosemary into the food processor and pulse for a few moments.

Juice lemons until you reach 1/4 of a cup. Try not to get yourself in the eyeball. Good luck, my friends. I'm rooting for you. 

Combine the lemon juice, oil olive, and honey. Add to food processor. Pulse well. 

Cut the remaining lemons into cute little thin circles. I made sure I had two lemon circles for each piece of chicken. They really weren't paying attention to how many they received though, those fowl are flighty sometimes - see what I did there?

Spray chicken with olive oil cooking spray. Salt and pepper. Flip after a few minutes and do the same to the other sides, of course. Again, not technical cooking skills here,people. I don't know what you were expecting. I'm sorry. Sorrynotsorry?

When both sides of the chicken look sufficiently tanned (but not Snooki orange) pour the liquid over the chicken. Stand back and enjoy the smell, because seriously? So good.

Add remaining "stalks" (Someone with culinary experience reading this is dying as I butcher what to call rosemary stuff) and lemon circles to the skillet. Make it look pretty, there will be awards appointed to the best looking ones.

Cover with foil. 

Pop into oven.

Cook for 20 minutes.

Remove pan and foil carefully. Spoon liquid over chicken. 

Cover with foil and return to the oven. The chicken, not you. This isn't Hansel and Gretel, people. 

Cook another 20 minutes. 

Remove from oven. Let sit briefly. It has been a long journey for these birds. They need a nap. Or to cool so you don't burn your mouth off.

Enjoy!

Here's where it gets weird. My sister came in from work and started eating it and said it was missing something. She ended up cutting into a whole breast and eating it that way. I was so sad to see she wanted barbeque sauce. But then I tasted it. It wasn't flavorful enough. But the chicken breasts were huge. When I went in for mine, I sliced off a few big piece of the breast and let it sit in the liquid in the pan. I added salt and pepper to taste when I removed the pieces from the pan and plopped them (lovingly of course) onto my plate... and it was divine. Try it both ways. I think you'll agree with me. I think next time I make it I will toss it into the crock pot after browning instead to let the flavors meld and marry more (equal rights for food, guys, let them marry) because the flavors were outstanding. Also if your chicken breasts aren't gigantic you may not have that same issue that we did.

This was a big experiment. So if you try it let me know what you thought and if you tried the letting it sit in the juices for a few and enjoyed it as much as I did!

Note: You don't need a food processor. You could chop and stir all of that. I'm just lazy and have an amazing "Ninja" processor. Thanks, Grandma! You have enabled my laziness.

Red Velvet Cake Cookies

 A couple of notes before I give you the recipe for this amazing cookie. 

1. I don't like cookies much. But these? These I had to hide from myself. We made them for a friend and I didn't want to eat them all.
2. I like to make most things from scratch. So I'm sure that these would be great if you made the flour mixture yourself. But when cake mixes are on sale for 98 cents? You find inventive ways to use them.
3. I can't take the credit for this as I snatched it from Mr. Food. Here's his original recipe. I just skipped the frosting. And they didn't need it, trust me.
4. Sorry there are no good pictures of them. But I couldn't stop myself from sneaking a few and I had to wrap them up right away or risk them never getting to their destination.
   They're fantastic (and easy!)

Ingredients:

1 box red velvet cake mix

2 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons water

1 cup white chocolate chips

Other utensils: 

Bowl
Spoon
Cooking Spray
Cookie Sheets
Cooling Rack

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
 
Combine box mix, eggs, oil, water and mix well. 

Fold in white chocolate chips. 

Drop by teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheets.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. 

Remove cookies from oven and allow to cool for 3 minutes or more. 

Transfer cookies to wire cooling rack until completely cool. (And try not to eat them in the process. Go ahead, I dare you.)

 

Lemon Squares - The Cheaters Edition

The other day I was missing my dad. He loved lemon squares. And food in general. I wanted to make some but didn't have enough lemons to even attempt it. After some Internet browsing we came across a lot of tips on how to do them with angel food cake mixes. Which of course I didn't have. So we made a crust (from another recipe) and crumble from a yellow cake mix and added pie filling, which had been done in the angel food cake mix recipes. I am sure I wasn't the first to come up with this idea. But I love it.  

Ingredients:
1 stick butter
1 box yellow cake mix
1 can lemon pie filling

Other utensils: 

Bowl

Spoon

Cooking Spray

13 X 9 inch glass pan

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix (room temperature) butter and cake mix together until combined well. 

Spray pan with cooking spray.

Reserve 2/3 cup mixture of cake/butter mixing.

 

Press mixture from cake/butter into the bottom of the pan to form a crust.

Pour lemon pie filling on top of the formed crust.

Spread evenly.

Crumble remaining mixture over the top of the lemon pie filling. 

Cook for 25 minutes. 

That's it. It's seriously that easy. They were delicious. I like mine cold, so I waited a few minutes and then cut out two pieces and slid them into the fridge for Mom and I to try. I can't say enough how easy and tasty they were. And three ingredients. Voila. 

We're debating on what we want to try as the pie filling next: cherry or peach. Either way, I think we hit the nail on the head with a tasty and easy way to make dessert next time we are craving a sweet treat.

Tip: I know that they have a great gluten free yellow cake mix. This could easily be a great crust for many gluten free desserts, for sure.

Sometimes you feel like a nut (and sometimes you can't have them, so you make Mound cookies instead)

My aunt is unable to eat regular sugars. She was in town for the holidays and said "I want you to make me some Almond Joy cookies, please?" But she wanted them "Aunt Lori" safe. So without sugar. Since I can't eat (and shouldn't cook with) nuts, I compromised and asked if we could make some "Mounds" cookies instead. This is what we came up with.

When we made them for her we used Splenda blend sugar and brown sugar and unsweetened coconut that we pulsed in a food processor for a moment with some splenda. With all the added sugar that probably isn't even necessary, to be honest.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups  brown sugar
4 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla
4 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups chocolate chips
2 1/2 cups sweetened coconut

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375

Grease cookie sheets

Combine flour, baking soda, salt - set aside

Cream butter and white/brown sugars together.

Beat in eggs, one at a time.

Stir in vanilla.

Stir in dry ingredients a cup at a time, until well mixed.

Fold in chocolate chips and coconut.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto cookie sheets***

Bake for 8 - 10 minutes.

Cool for five minutes on baking sheet. (Important, don't move too soon. They look cakey, still until they sit.)

Move to wire rack to finish cooling.


Okay...time for the notes. Heh.

Original recipe that we tweaked a bit called for 5 cups of the chocolate chips. If you're looking for way chocolatey? Go for it. I used 3 and each cookie still had ALMOST too much chocolate chips in it. But they'd be more "mound" like if you added more chocolate chips, for sure.

*** I used a cookie scoop. If you have one, use it! So much easier.

Also, this originally was for Almond Joys so they also added 2 cups of chopped almonds when they added the coconut and chocolate chips. If you like almonds? I would try that, too. I just can't even cook with them safely. So I took them from Almond Joys to Mounds.

Stuffed Red Pepper Soup

Yesterday we realized that we had a lot of red peppers. We had intended on making stuffed peppers, but then stuffed pepper soup sounded better. With February 4th being Homemade Soup Day - we decided to try this instead. It turned out to be a good decision. It's warm, filling, and with the turkey and brown rice, maybe even better for you than our stuffed peppers would have turned out! 

Ingredients:
1 lb. ground turkey
1 large yellow onion
3 shallots
4 medium to large red peppers
1 can crushed tomatoes
4 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon onion salt
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup cooked brown rice

Other Utensils:
Large soup pot
Knife
Wooden Spoon
Cutting Board
Strainer

Directions 

Brown turkey in soup pot.

Strain.

Return to pot. 

Dice onion, red peppers, shallots. 

Add to pan. 

 

Cook for 5 minutes. 

Add in crushed tomatoes, chicken stock, onion salt, and Italian seasoning. 

Bring to a boil. 

Reduce heat. 

Cover. 

Simmer for 30 minutes, at least. 

Cook brown rice. 

Stir in rice before serving. 

Try not to eat it all in one sitting. 

Enjoy!