Low Cal Girlie Vodka Punch

This was one of these "shoot, what do I have in the fridge" times.

The result - a pretty delicious, sweet and pretty cocktail sans a ton of sugar and a zillion calories. In other words, brilliance!

Ingredients:

2 cups Smirnoff Sorbet Light vodka in Raspberry
2 cups Tropicana light fruit punch (10 calories per serving)
2.5-3 cups Sprite Zero (0 calories)
4-6 strawberries cut into slivers (6-8 per berry, longwise)
2+ cups of ice

Directions:
combine ingredients

Serving suggestion:
BYOB Bowling Alley

Who gives a $!&*? what food looks like

No one who knows food is meant to be eaten, not just stared at!


Below is a picture of something I made that came out very cute looking. Total presentation value.




But guess what. It doesn't mean squat because this meal STUNK!
I mean really bad in a few different ways.


This meal had all the makings of a success: chicken, Velveeta, broccoli and biscuit. I decided to make mini "pot pies" in muffin cups and made 3 hugs mistakes:
1 - Did not season the chicken, which mattered thanks to #2
2 - Did not seal in the biscuit (if it was even possible) because the cheese bubbled up and out of each cup, all over my pan and not at all where I needed it to end up
3 - Paper baking cups don't work for this

So, to make this attempt at food even edible, I melted more cheese (plus milk, plus American) and poured it over everything.

So dearest cooks, if you fail miserably at something, call it a lesson and move the hell on. Because boy oh boy can something so seemingly fool proof go seriously wrong when you get "an idea!" for dinner. This is a very important skill that all cooks must have is to take in stride your rare (in my case) screw up.

Cooking with babies

I do not have kids and I do not pretend to know what working, home-keeping women with them do to survive but I wanted to share this...

Last weekend when I was meal planning before grocery shopping, I asked the hubby "if you were at a restaurant that served anything right now, what would you order?"
He thought a moment and said "chicken with prosciutto on top." So I decided, okay, let's do it. And while we're at it, lets make it in a creamy cheese sauce and add spinach.
I thought to myself 'what kind of cheese' and called to mind Oliver Garden commercials and the word "Fontina." Not that I have a clue what fontina is relative to other cheeses (taste, melt ability, ease of finding in the store...), but whatevs.

So I get my ingredients, which included whole wheat penne (Thanks to what was served to us at a friends house last weekend, that part was fresh on my mind.) Then due to my schedule this week, I determined that I would be making this dish Thursday night.
I'm also a nut for one-skillet type meals, so I chopped (ehhem, hubby chopped) the chicken into pieces the night before.

The plan was chicken, butter, oil, light cream, fontina cheese, spinach and the prosciutto in the pan.

The unexpected was a request to babysit my nephews - 3 and 9 months. No biggie, they're good kids.

My mom reminded me of this one key thing: the baby is now mobile. He can crawl and stand, so watching him is way different. I look around the house and decide that while's its not officially baby proof, it's not that UN baby proof. (side note: babies will show you exactly how not baby proof your house is.)

So here I am, attempting to cook in my kitchen while the baby finds ways to get into trouble in the living room and dining room and the 3 year old uses my legs to hide during his game of "pretend to be afraid of the dog" who by the way kept trying to eat the baby when she wasn't busy chasing around the 3 year old.

So yes, I attempted to cook with 2 kids and a dog running around.

Beside the recipe/anecdote below I leave you with one heartfelt suggestion - cook your face off before you have mobile-aged children!

Directions:
cook smushy roasted garlic and chicken breast piecess in some fake butter and EVOO
Add in some light cream and chopped (softened in the mic if you want) fontina
Add in ripped spinach
Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste
Wish you had some "bacon or something" to add
Remember the whole idea of this meal was the prosciutto
Laugh because clearly the distraction of children made you forget
Add in ripped prosciutto
Cover and simmer a bit
Serve over cooked whole wheat pasta


Forget to take a picture for the blog and take one of your leftovers the next night instead.

Enjoy!

Make your own pizza

Okay, you don't have to make dough from scratch... or buy that weird, preservative-laden looking ready-made crust. Just go into the frozen food section of your grocer, look around the frozen pizza, pasta and garlic bread. There, on the bottom shelf! A one or two pack of a dough "ball".
Get that and follow directions for thawing. I suggest giving yourself plenty of time.

Oh, and invest in a decent pan. This is my fav:
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14748520

Good luck spreading/rolling/fighting with the dough to get it large and flat. This I still have not figured out yet. What I do know is that it's best to make it bigger than your pan, then rolling or scrunching the excess to make a thick outter crust. It also can fake deep dish with the pan above, as I accidentally did this past Christmas Eve.

Did I mention that home-made pizza has been our Christmas Eve dinner for 3 years running? This cute little picture must be from the first time (2009) because by now we're married and not nearly as cutesy.

Back to pizza.
Do the dough.
Do sauce (can of Cento pizza sauce for a buck anyone?)
Or not (slices of tomatoes instead)
Do the cheese (finely shredded mozz, despite my mom's observation that finely shredded is harder to eat with your hands out of the bag)
Do the jazz:
Fresh basil (cover with cheese so it doesn't burn)
Grilled chicken
Ham and bacon
Italian Seasonings Galore
Garlic (powdered, fresh or shit - roasted if you have time)
EV Olive Oil
Broccolli


This is not a recipe. Shoot it's barely a how-to. Just a suggestion. Make it!

Dip it, Dip it Good!

4 things happened to me in the past week or so.
2 different people asked me when I'd be blogging again and 2 other different people asked me for 2 of my dip recipes.

Genius, I though, I shall blog about dips!

The Best Spinach Dip Ever is totally not original but whenever I bring it somewhere, people marvel. And I'm talking 7 years ago and 7 months ago - always always a hit.
Most notably, I attended a golf pros and tennis hoes party in New York, at a great friend's apartment and made this dip. She and other party goers raved as though I had invented something spectacular. Nope, its a back of the box recipe.

But hey, if you don't look on the back of that box, you'd never know it so here goes:

Best Spinach Dip Ever
1 8oz container of sour cream (fat free isn't a good idea here)
1 cup mayo (light is fine if you'd like)
1 envelope dry veggie soup mix (if you get Lipton, it's on the back!)
1 frozen brick of chopped spinach, thawed and drained.

Step 1 - thawing and draining spinach is quite a trip, esp if you attempt to do it in hot water. Just don't. Either let it thaw over time or take the packaging off but leave the "box" closed and nuke. Then drain by squeezing the box. Strainers don't work.

Step 2 - Mix all ingredients in a bowl

Step 3 - Serve with bread or crackers.

My personal favorite, a big, dark, round loaf of pumpernickel bread, hallowed out into a bread bowl. Yum!


Taco Dip
1+ lb ground turkey (or beef if you must)
1 can refried beans
1 hard taco kit (or packet of taco mix and fav tortilla chips)
1 bag of finely shredded Mexican Blend Cheese (thank you shop rite for inventing this)
Optional - sour cream, salsa, guacamole, diced tomato, etc

Step 1 - Brown meat and flavor with taco seasoning as directed
Step 2 - Layer meat, beans, cheese, repeat in small glass bowl
Step 3 - Microwave such that beans heat and cheese melts (not very long)
Step 4 - Top with optional goodies mentioned above
Step 5 - Open chips or break hard taco shells

Dip and enjoy.

This is basically a twist to taco kit night that I guarantee you'll love. Espeically if taco kit night happens too frequently in your home

Why my mom didn't like it

A little while ago, there was an evening that I didn't have super awesome dinner plans.

I tossed some chicken breasts into a pan with garlic powder and looked around the kitchen. There I saw a few boxes of stove top stuffing and decided, what the heck, why not make that as a side dish?

The back of the box caught my eye - Bruschetta Chicken bake, or something like that. It required not much more than the chicken and stuffing mix - just 1/2 cup of water, some mozzarella cheese, fresh garlic and a can of diced tomatoes. Oh and some basil, but I was able to skip that.

I didn't go into the recipe expecting much. After all, it was a 30 minute, back-of-the-box recipe and would probably be bland. It was worth a shot.

After making it - and loving it - I did what any self-respecting, independent woman would do: I called my mom.

It only took about a week for her to make the recipe at home but surprisingly, she didn't like it. What could be the issue, I wondered.

Aha! When I cook, I tend to triple the amount of garlic called for. And I didn't have plain diced tomatoes, I had a basil-and-something flavored can.

So I tried again, to see that the first go wasn't a fluke. It wasn't.

1 - Lay Chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces in a casserole dish.
2 - Sprinkle with garlic powder and Italian seasoning.
3 - Top with as much shredded mozzarella cheese as you think looks good to you.
4 - Mix stuffing mix, 1/2 cup water, undrained can of diced tomatoes (flavored variety) and lots and lots of fresh garlic, chopped as small as your patience will allow. Or just mash em up in one of those nifty garlic presses.
5 - Add more garlic than you just did, for good measure.
6 - Toss the stuffing mixture on top of the cheese covered chicken and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, or until chicken is done.

The lesson this time is that when you're making a back-of-the-box recipe, or any for that matter, don't be afraid to throw your own style in. There's a reason that even spaghetti tastes better at a restaurant, and the key lies in fresh garlic. I'm going out on a limb and guessing my mom followed the recipe verbatim. Me on the other hand, I've always liked to march to my own beat. Or my own spice combo.

The official recipe, courtesy of Stove Top plus my renegade spice usage:
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained - Use a flavored variety
1 pkg (6 oz) stove top stuffing mix, chicken flavored
1/2 cup water
2 (that means 6 or more) cloves garlic, minced
1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
1 tsp dried basil leaves (I skipped this)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:
1 - Heat oven to 400 degrees. Stir tomatoes, water, stuffing mix and garlic just until stuffing mix is moistened.
2 - Place chicken in 13x9 baking dish, spring with basil, top with cheese then stuffing mixture
3 - Bake 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked through

Enjoy! But only if you put your own flavor to it

Best Beef & Vegetable soup ever... made with leftovers

So,
I made a roast again. Beef in a pot - aka "pot roast."
That was Thursday night or so. By Saturday, we were snowed in and I wanted nothing more than to take the leftover roast and create a pot of hot soup.

That I did and it came out INCREDIBLE!!

Ingredients:
Leftover roast, cut into small bits
~6 cups beef broth
~4 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 can of basil/spiced diced tomatoes
1 bag of frozen veggies (I used steamers, corn/carrots/peas); thawed
~1/2 box elbow macaroni or small pasta of choice; cooked al dente
1-2 Stalks celery

Directions:
Heat all ingredients in a large pot. Noodles were only partially cooked and thus will get fully cooked (or over cooked, so be careful) during heating.

This seriously came out delicious. I was stoked!
It was a little too flavorful at first, perhaps tangy because of the flavored diced tomatoes so I decided to toss in celery to neutralize. You may want to use plain tomatoes. (Where did I get to smart to have the idea to toss in celery to soak up some of the flavorness? No frickin clue!)

Enjoy!