Spicy Sausage Pasta

This was really good.  I mean, really, really good. Probably my second favorite Pinterest recipe. Simple to make with easy ingredients.  Here is the recipe for Spicy Sausage Pasta.  Her blog is great.  Lots of  awesome recipes. 

 

 So, here's a few pics of my cooking the Spicy Sausage Pasta.

 

 

Ingredients

 

 Sausage and onions

Adding liquids and pasta

Finished dish.

Very yummy and freezes great.  Try it!



Homemade "cream of" soup mix

 

Do you like to cook with cream of _____ soup? I did. Loved making casseroles with the stuff.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm slowly adapting to the Clean Eating idea of eating.  I'm down 17 pounds since Thanksgiving.  Yeah, I know, such a small amount of weight and such a long period of time.  But you know what?  This is the 1st time I've been below 200lbs in almost 10 years.

 

Anyway, back to the point.  When I looked at a can of cream of soup, the sodium content alone made me stop using it.  Also, unless you find a really good sale or buy store brand, the stuff ain't cheap. 

 

I saw a few different versions of homemade cream of soup mixes on Pinterest so I thought I'd give it a try.  Here is where I found the recipe I went with.   

 

 

 As you can see I made a few exchanges due to choice and lack of listed ingredients.  The sodium free chicken (and beef) bullion I discovered some time ago is awesome.

  

Throw it all in a bag or airtight container.

 

Conversion.

 

Nice consistancy.

 



 

 

Made my chicken and noodles with it where I would have used Cream of Chicken soup.  The only difference was the lack of all that sodium.  But for my high blood pressure, that's a necessity.  Sorry about the steam effect, lol.

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

Homemade Pockets



 

 

I used to love those pocket type frozen snacks from the freezer section.  I stopped eating them for a while for whatever reason and picked some up one day when they were in sale 2 boxes for 3$  I figured what the heck, I'll have them on hand for a quick lunch.  Then I had one.  The pepperoni pizza I think it was.  All it was was a big lump of dough with some pizza flavored smear in the middle.  There was no filling.  I ate the rest only because I wasn't going to throw them away.

 

So then I thought, why don't you make your own?  I know I'm trying to stay away from processed food, but I had a can of biscuits in the fridge that I wanted to go ahead and use. I also made a huge crock pot of meatballs and sauce a while ago and needed to use them all up because they were just hanging out in the freezer.  Well, as you can see, the rest is history.

 

 

I defrosted them and mashed the meatballs into a mixture. 

 



 

These were the biscuits I had.

 



 

Does popping the can scare the bejeezus out of anyone else?

 



 

Spread them as this as you can and put half a slice of cheese in the middle.  I had sliced mozzarella in the fridge, but you could use shredded.  If I had had shredded I would have mixed some of it in with the meat mixture then some on bottom and top.

 

 

Put some meat in the middle and top with rest of slice.  Just make sure you don't put too much or it will split the dough.  If you get a hole in it, it's very hard to get it to stick back together and stay.

 



Gather the tops and smoosh them up as tight as you can so they stay and bake for the amount of time it says on the biscuit can.  Line your cookie sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray for easy clean-up if one does open and spill out.

 

They turned out really good.  As you can see, the one on the bottom opened a little and you can see the cheese.  No biggie.

These went in the freezer and when I wanted one, I took it out the night before and let it thaw.  Then put it in the microwave for about 2 minutes and then the toaster oven for a few to finish it off.  They weren't as good as fresh out of the oven for obvious reasons, but  a heck of a lot better than pockets of flavored goo.

 



 

The possibilities of filling is endless and plan to do this again with a homemade pizza dough.  Philly cheese steak, pepperoni pizza, Buffalo chicken, chicken enchilada.  You could even do a sweet version with maybe apple pie filling, berry cobbler.

 

 

 

 

Bread

 

I want to make bread.  I need to make bread.  I've never made bread.  Until now.  I've tried a couple recipes and failed.  I don't have a stand mixer (which I hope to remedy soon) or a bread maker which seems to come in handy when it comes to making bread. 

 

The other day, I made bread.  The recipe I used is here.  I'm not going to list recipe because you can find it in the link, but I will share some pictures.

 

Ingredients

 

 

After mixing and going for 1st rise

 



 After rising for hour and a half

After 2nd rising in loaf pan

 

Baked bread

 

1st slice

1st bite of soft, warm bread with butter.  Success tasted so good!

 

I'm not sure what happened the first couple of times but this recipe worked for me.  Next time I might just skip the honey because I don't really want it sweet which this one was.  Not saying that's a bad thing, I'm just looking for more of a whole wheat sandwich bread.  Come to think of it, this would be a perfect bread for French Toast!  Anyway, bread success!

 

 

 



Homemade Dog treats

Dog treats are pricey, especially the good quality ones like chicken tenders and dried sweet potatos.  I don't know why the sweet potatos are so expensive, it's not like it's a rare item...  On that note, I need to learn how to do my own sweet potatos...

Anyway, there's a million ways to make dog treats.  Here's a great page that shows you how to Make Your Own Dog Treats.

If you are going to do this though, and maybe come up with your own recipe, it's a good idea to review the foods that dogs can and cannot have.

So, here's mine that I've done for a while.  I used to make them for Aspen all the time.  I was out of cookies for Calli and after browsing the pet section in the local store, I thought to myself, maybe I should start making these for Calli. 

As I was getting my ingredients, Calli got a little curious and joined me in the kitchen.

So here we go...

 2 cups wheat flour

1 cup oats (doesn't matter what kind)

2 egg whites

1 cup chicken broth - I use a low sodium organic broth (water is fine too)

1 tbs olive oil

flavoring - this time I used 2 jars of Beech Nut Sweet Potato & Turkey baby food - you can use cheese, peanut butter, bananas, or other types of baby food.  Just adjust your liquid according to what you use.
 

 

 Mix everything together in a bowl and drop onto a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

You can make them whatever size you want.  The consistancy should be about that of chocolate chip cookie dough.  Since there's no butter and minimal oil, you can put them close together since they will not spread.
 

 

 Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, take them out and flip them.  If you have more dough you can put this on the same cookie sheet.  Since they are set, you can put the first batch right next to eachother or even on top if you need to.

Go for another 30 minutes.  When the time is up, take off the 1st batch and flip the second and go for another 30 minutes.

 

This is where you have to decide if these are good enough for you and your pup, or you wand a more dried out crunchy cookie.  I like a dried out crunchy cookie.
 

I did give Calli a bite just to see how she was finding the treat so far.
She approved...

 

 Break them up in smaller pieces if you want to and bake at 200 degrees for about 3 hours.

Finished product

Needless to say, Calli also approved of the finished product.

 

Have fun with the variety! 



Pot Stickers

I love Chinese food.  And Japanese food.  And Korean food.  And Filipino food.  OK, if it's the general category of Asian, I like it.  My favorite is "House Special Lo Mein."  Yes, I know that many dishes served at your local Chinese joint are considered "Americanized Chinese Dishes, " and that's fine.  There's nothing like thick noodles, crisp veggies and salty chicken, beef and pork.  Take me to a buffet and I'll get kicked out.  "You go home now!" (name what that line is from)

Anyway, I recently conquered a challenge, one of my favorite foods - pot stickers.  I've never been good at any foods that require filling and sealing and then cooking.  This time, I figured, I'll try.  If I fail, I fail... If I succeed, I succeed.  And... I succeeded.

This is a recipe that really has no measurements.  I probably looked at 10 different recipes on the net and came up with my own.  *Disclaimer - If the following strongly resembles your recipe let me know and I will credit.

 

 

Ground chicken - I used about half that package

savoy cabbage

ginger

shallot

green onion

soy sauce

oyster sauce

pepper

store bought wrappers

(ignore the shrimp, lol)

 

I cooked the chicken.  Most of the recipes have you fill dumplings with raw meat, but I felt more comfortable cooking it first.  You can do either, I don't know that it makes that much of a difference.

 

Chopped about a cup of the cabbage, a garlic clove, 2 stalks of green onion (only the green part), and a shallot.  I personally hate biting into ginger, no matter how little a piece, so I diced about 2 inches of ginger and used my garlic press to kind of "juice" it.

 

I took the chicken and everything but the cabbage and pulsed it in the food processor to make it a little more even in texture.  While doing that I added about a ts of oyster sauce and 2 ts of soy sauce and a few shakes of pepper.

 



I ended up with about a cup of cabbage to a cup of the meat mixture.

Once mixed up, I started my dumplings.

 



 



Wet the edges and put about a ts of filling in the middle.  Fold over and seal the edges.





 

I didn't get too fancy on the first few.  I was just happy that the seal was holding.  But then I thought I'd try to pleat them.  I'd watched a couple videos on YouTube and actually did it!  (BTW, this guy rocks!  His cooking videos are very helpful and he's hilarious! runnyrunny999 )

 

 

 

Not beautiful, but did it.  They got a little nicer as time went on.  This batch made about 20 potstickers.

 

 

The cooking process that I used was as follows:  Put a little oil in a non stick pan and fry pot stickers until golden brown.

When browned, (and you have to be careful at this point because you're adding water to hot oil.  I actually used a paper towel to wipe between them to get some of the oil out) add about half an inch of water to the pan and quickly put a lid on to steam.  Steam until the water is almost gone and take lid off.  Then, cook until water is gone.  At this point I kept swirling the pan around so they didn't stick.

I saw some people did the opposite and steamed or boiled first and then pan fried but apparently they stuck really bad. 

 

Anyway, my end product.  Really good but I probably won't make them very often.  Very time consuming so I might make once in a blue moon and freeze the batch.  BTW, sorry about the messy plate but I forgot about taking an individual picture until I was on my last one...

 

Chicken Nuggets

Yay! Pictures are working again! 

 

Ok, so here's something that will really blow your socks off.  At least mine went flying...

 

Homemade chicken nuggets.  The "Mc" version, if you will...

 

Yes, I've made chicken tenders out of chunks of breast meat breaded and fried.  This is different though.  These have almost the same consistancy as the "Mc" nuggets.  As my first attempt and a grease splattered eye later (will explain), these were fantastic in my opinion.  Adapted from Homemade Chicken Nuggets 

 

 

Ground chicken (the OP ground their own chicken breast meat but I have no way to do so.)

Spices - I used garlic and onion powder, parsley salt and pepper.  I think there is a lot of room for different spice mixtures to use here.

Flour

2 Eggs

Cornstarch (my choice, not OP)

Oil for deep frying

 

 



Mix chicken and seasoning together

 

 

Make teaspoon sized balls out of chicken

Mix flour and cornstarch together and beat egg.

 

 

Dip balls in flour and then egg, then flour again and press into nugget shapes.  Meanwhile get oil to about 350-365.

 

 

Once all nuggets are done and oil is ready, start dropping nuggets into oil.

 

***OK, here's my disclaimer - I do not have a deepfryer.  I have a small saucepan that I used because I can get the oil deep enough in it to deep fry.  First batch I put in was going well until one of the nuggets had some moisture I guess where flour wasn't coating and grease started splattering and little mini fires started on my coils. I also took a splatter to the right eye as I was trying to control the mess.  I got through the first batch (pictured) and got them out and turned the heat down a bit.  After that, I was fine.  They turned a nice golden brown after 6 or 7 minutes with some turning in between. 

 

 

Done nuggets

 

 

Inside of nuggets.

 

They do look a lot like "Mc" nuggets and as far as I can report, taste a little better.  But that's just me.  I made a little Siracha Mayo to dip in and they were awesome.

 

Healthy?  Well, still deep frying something isn't the healthiest, but if you're craving something like this, it hit the spot for me...