Happy Thanksgiving - Better Late Than Never!

I hope everyone had a marvelous holiday with family and friends.  Please leave a comment telling me how you celebrated. 

We have a tradition of going to my Aunt's house (about 40 minutes away) the day after Thanksgiving for our celebration.  Thanksgiving Friday we call it :) This allows everyone to go to their in-laws to celebrate on Thursday, BUT mine are in Michigan, boo!

Soooo.... Thursday we watch football and lounge around in our sweats.  Timmy went out for Black Friday that night (to a store that opened at midnight) but he won't tell me where he went as it was to get a gift for me I believe.  I went to sleep. haha.

Friday we drove down to my Aunt's for our celebration - 26 people total, our largest yet.  I was in charge of all of the appetizers.  I made sausage and cheese balls with BBQ dipping sauce, cream cheese truffles with crackers, and smoked salmon bites. 

Here is a pic of my spread (minus the sausage balls which were at the other end of the table and I forgot to take a photo of). 

Hope every one's day was great! Tell me about it and whether or not you braved "Black Friday"!

Food
Sausage Cheese balls - double the meat, seriously. 
Cream Cheese Truffles - I would only make the green onion kind rolled in parsley when I do these again
Salmon Bites - these were amazing and gone in like 10 minutes - I JUST realized I forgot the cucumber haha, a tip, cut a hole in the corner of a ziploc bag to apply the sour cream, it just makes it prettier :)

Tutorial Tuesday - Chinese Chicken Morsels

The hubs and I tried out a new recipe last night and it was too delicious not to share. 

History: the hubs and I are on a budget trying to pay down our debt to secure our future, soooo.... we are trying to figure out ways to save in areas such as groceries.  We found a book at a yard sale called "Once a Month Cooking" which basically is a plan for you to cook one day a month (and shop one day a month), make various foods out of one set of supplies/groceries, and then freeze the food to cook later that month.  I don't want to make large amounts of any recipe we have never tried, so we are trying out a few of the recipes to see if we like them first.

The first recipe we tried was this one, called Chinese Chicken Morsels.

Serves 4

Ingredients:
- 1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breast
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup soy sauce (we use La Choy which is gluten free)
- 1/4 cup dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
- 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
- 1 cup of regular uncooked rice

Steps:
1) Combine all ingredients except chicken and rice, mix thoroughly. 
2) Cut chicken into one inch cubes
3) a: If you are eating this the same night or the following day, put chicken into marinade bowl and let sit for at least 30 minutes.  b: if you are freezing, put chicken and marinade in a one gallon ziplock and freeze

Cooking/to Serve:
1) If frozen, thaw out marinade.
2) Remove chicken from marinade and place evenly on a broiler pan.  Broil for 7 minutes placed about 4-5 inches from the flame. Remove from oven, turn each piece over and brush with marinade.  Broil for additional 4 minutes.
3) Meanwhile, put marinade into small saucer and heat up (note - this is do at your own risk as it did contain uncooked chicken - I did this step at simply brought to a boil and then simmered for a bit to ensure that it would be safe to eat). 
4) Cook rice according to packaging.
5) Spoon rice onto plate, cover with chicken and pour marinade onto dish for extra flavor. 

This was easy and delicious.  The hubs made me promise that I will make it again.  Here is a pic (courtesy of my super spectacular image quality cell phone - ha!).  Enjoy!

If you try out this recipe, be sure to post a comment and let me know what you thought!

Go-to meal: Impossibly Easy Chicken 'n Broccoli Pie

This is one meal that is a go-to for me when I want to cook something yummy, cheaply, and quickly. It is Betty Crocker's Impossibly Easy Chicken 'n Broccoli Pie.  It's also surprisingly relatively low-calorie.  I of course substitute the Bisquick with the Gluten Free Bisquick as recommended on the glutenfreely.com website. 

Enjoy the photos and here is a link to the recipe and nutritional info.

Getting the oven ready.

These onion goggles really do work!

Ingredients all ready!

Ready to put 'er in.

Voila!

Recipe for Peach-Basil-Onion Salad

Since my post on Monday I have received several emails requesting the recipe for the salad.  My disclaimer is that this is NOT my recipe, but from the June 2011 edition of Martha Stewart Living. 

It is delicious and we made it again Tuesday night with some peaches I got from my great friend/masseuse, Connie.  The second time I made it I didn't really measure anything, more eye-balled it.  Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any comments/questions or if you added something that you just loved and wanted to share with me :)

Peach-Basil-Red Onion Salad
Toss 3 peaches, sliced 1/2 inch thick, with 1/4 red onion, very thinly sliced, 1/2 cup fresh basil (leaves torn if large), the juice of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, and some freshly ground pepper.  Drizzle with 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil. 

Serves 4
Per serving: 81 calories, 0 g saturated fat, 3 g unsaturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 13 g carbohydrates, 140 mg sodium, 1 g protein, 2 g fiber

Enjoy!

Dinner 6/26/11

My husband and I have decided (like we have many other times, lol) that we will once again make an effort to eat more healthy meals when we are at home.  Last night was the first home cooked meal with this goal in mind and I am quite pleased how it turned out.

Pictured above is our meal of shrimp lettuce wraps and a peach-basil-onion salad.  You can also see the bottom of my glass of lemonade with vodka and mint. 

It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I thought we could enjoy a fresh summery meal on the back patio.  I had jotted down some notes of my first edition of Martha Stewart Living (June 2011) courtesy of my friend Jenny, which had some splendid menu ideas.

I made the summer mayonaise which I coated the shrimp with and we then wrapped in butter lettuce.  I also found the peach-basil-onion salad recipe from the same magazine.

Martha also had a recipe for a delightful lemonade and suggested the addition of mint and vodka for a cool cocktail.  We have a fully blooming lemon tree in the backyard, so the husband picked about 20 lemons, juiced them, and then I got to work on following Martha's easy-to-follow recipes.

The meal was a complete hit.  The only change for next time will be that we will BBQ the shrimp with some seasoning first as it needed just a bit more flavor.

The summery mayo made A TON - I was so amazed that making your own mayo was so easy by the way.  I made tuna for my husband and I for lunch today and we will have some Tuna salad for dinner tomorrow. 

Thanks for reading and I definitely recommend both recipes. 

Game Night and Recipe Reviews

Last night's game night was a hit! All the food turned out pretty well and everyone seemed to have fun.  Guests left around midnight.

See my prior post here for links to all recipes.

Pulled pork - well Walmart (don't even get me started on my Walmart rant) only had ONE type of pork - so I had to work with it - it was a bone in pork shoulder - 10 pounder.  Unfortunately it didn't yield a lot of meat and it wasn't the most tender meat making it a PITA to shred, but it tasted fine.

Tim's ribs turned out pretty well, but may have been cooked a tad too long.

The chex mix was the only thing I didn't love. It was a little too sticky. Although it tasted okay, the stickiness made it less appealing.

The fruit kabob and dip was scrump (yep, my own abbreviation for scrumptious).  The dip was absolutely divine, I could eat it plain with a spoon.

The punch was marvelous.  Even the pregos enjoyed it and the non-pregos enjoyed adding the little extra vodka.  It was so tasty that you couldn't even tell that it had vodka in it - making for a lovely headache today.

The upside down pineapple cake shots were a perfect touch.  They were spot on so a big THANK YOU to my coworker for that suggestion.

The macaroni salad turned out really well.  I don't usually enjoy macaroni salad but I really liked the addition of bacon - let's be honest, how can anything with bacon be bad?

The upside down pineapple cake was good as well, although we barely had enough for everyone - it really serves 9 and we had 15 people.  It could have been cooked a tad longer (it was a little moist) but everyone gobbled theirs up and we served it with vanilla ice cream.

I did find the recipe for the appetizer I mentioned in my previous post, pineapple wrapped ham with cherries on toothpicks - all displayed in a pineapple.  I thought it was a great touch to my Hawaiian themed night.  Check out the recipe here.

Here a couple photos of the food and layout.  Thanks for reading :)

 macaroni salad

pulled pork

ribs

drink station

appetizers

drink and appetizer table set-up

Menu Planning for Friday's Game Night

I am hosting a game night at my house on Friday (a group of my friends and I are in a group and we take turns monthly hosting a game night, it's quite fun really). 

I have decided that my theme will be Hawaiian.  Yes, I know this theme has been done before, but mine is only loosely Hawaiian based, and we're running out of available themes goshdarnit!

Yesterday I worked on the proposed menu (which is of course subject to change at any time).  Here is what I have so far:

1) Pulled Pork with Hawaiian Rolls (pulled pork recipe courtesy of my lovely friend Kim's mom). This recipe is the easiest and tastiness thing ever.  You just put your pork roast in a crockpot, pour a liter of orange soda over it and let it cook all day.  Afterwards you take it out and shred it and combine it with your choice of BBQ sauce (I use Kraft original as it's gluten free).  I know it sounds strange, but it's marvelous.  Trust me, try it.

2) Ribs (Tim is in charge of not only finding a recipe but also cooking these). 

3) Macaroni Salad found at Buns In My Oven's blog here. Note I will use rice noodles for the macaroni to make this a gluten free dish.

4) Fruit kabobs with pineapple dipping sauce from General Mills found here.

5) Maui chips and dip (haven't quite nailed down the details of the dip yet and this is pending my review of the chips to determine that they are gluten free).

6) Pineapple Upside-Down Cake for dessert from Betty Crocker found here (using Betty's fabulous gluten free cake mix).

7) Pineapple shots for my signature drink which consists of Stoli vodka mixed with pineapple juice and a tidbit of grenadine - this is a recipe from my coworker, so we will see how it plays out. 

8) Volcano punch with no alcohol, you can find the recipe here.  I will be putting the vodka on the side as two of my friends are pregnant so I want to have an option for them.

9) Tropical chex mix also from General Mills found here.

I had also seen a cute appetizer idea that involved sticking toothpicks into a pineapple but for the life of me I cannot find the link.  Hopefully I printed out the recipe and can add it later. 

Oh and for our game we will be playing "What's yours like?". 

Should be a fun night.  A review of the aforementioned foods and the night overall to come sometime this weekend.  I will try to remember to take pics as well!