The Zoo and Sour Cream Chicken

This weekend seems like it flew by but it’s been really fun/busy. The biggest adventure we had was going to the zoo with our little nephews which was a blast. My favorite animals were the elephants and the giraffes. The boys liked the Tigers and the birds (mostly the random Peacocks running around the zoo).

Jace and I with Noah by the Elephants

Jake, Marci, Noah and Owen 

I cant help but laugh at Owen's pose

Jace and I by the Rhino's 

Love Noah's excitment in this picture

Owen's new best friend 

Our monkey pose.

Saturday was rainy and cold so we weren’t able to get much yard work done like I wanted but it was my little sisters first Prom so I went and helped her get ready. So weird to picture her going to dances. Saturday night after we got her sent off to Prom, Jace and I went to the Bountiful temple with my parents to go to a session. It was the first time I had been back to do a session so it was good to go and hear everything again since the first time was awhile ago. After the temple we went to dinner at Chili’s with my parents and little brother which was great.

Paige and her prom date

Getting ready to go to the temple (notice my cute new Target dress I found on sale for $20!) 

This picture cracks me up-Jace was cold Fridy night watching movies so he wrapped himself up in our orange fuzzy blanket and wouldn't share with me.

Sunday we had church and then for dinner over here. I made one of Jace’s favorite meals, Sour Cream Chicken.

Sour Cream Chicken

Karen Lewis

Ingredients:

1 large package of chicken

1 container of sour cream

1 cup mayo

2-3 cans of cream of chicken

1 bunch green onions

2 tsp. lemon juice

2-3 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

Trim the chicken and cut into half if large pieces. Season the chicken with garlic salt, onion salt, paprika, salt and pepper. Mix all other ingredients together for sauce and spread over chicken. Cook at 350 degrees for 1 ½ hours covered with foil. Take foil off and cook for another 15 minutes, serve over rice.

I forgot to take a picture of the Sour Cream Chicken but its defiantly delicious. My mom always made this for us growing up and was all of our favorites.

Poppyseed Chicken/Apple & Spiced Pecan Salad

So I was in the lunchroom today at work and had some reheated Poppy Seed Chicken and a friend asked me to send her the recipe. I went and looked on my blog almost positive I had posted it somewhere and realized I’ve never posted this recipe! I can’t believe I haven’t because this is probably one of my favorite recipes! Jace loves this and begs me to make it all the time. So here it is.

Poppy Seed Chicken

Kensley Rowland

Ingredients:

6 chicken breasts boiled and shredded (check out this post for a fast way to shred chicken!)

2 cups sour cream

2 Tbsp. poppy seeds

1 stick butter melted

2 cans cream of chicken

Topping:

3 tubes Ritz crackers (crushed)

1 stick of butter melted

Directions:

Boil chicken and shred. Add all ingredients to a bowl with the shredded chicken. Take the Ritz cracker and butter mixture and spread ½ of the mixture onto bottom of casserole dish. Cover with the sour cream/chicken mixture and top with the remaining Ritz crackers. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes covered and another 30 minutes uncovered.

Poppyseed chicken

This is fairly quick and easy but so yummy. I usually end up making extra pans and freeze them since it freezes really well. It also reheats amazingly.

I made this Sunday night this week since I had to take dinner to a family in the ward. I also ended up bringing them a yummy salad and some rolls both of which the recipes I got from my mother in law. Sorry I didn’t really take any pictures!

Apple & Spiced Pecan Salad

Janalyn Olson

Ingredients

6-8 cups assorted greens (anything but Iceburg)

¾ cups crumbled feta cheese

3 green onions, thinly sliced

1 large red-skinned apple, diced

Dressing

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

¼ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon salt

Dash Tabasco sauce

2 tablespoons sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

**Whisk together dressing ingredients

Spiced Pecans

3 tablespoons butter

1 ½ tablespoons sugar

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped pecans

Over medium heat, melt butter in a pan and add sugar, spices and salt. Add pecan pieces and stir until well-coated. Continue to cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until sugar caramelizes and pecans darken slightly in color. Transfer mixture to a paper bag to cool. Shake bag occasionally to break up pieces.

Assemble salad ingredients & top with cooled pecans. To avoid browning apples, can be added directly to dressing or diced just prior to serving. Toss salad with dressing and serve.

The rolls my mother in law kinda made up but they were so yummy!

Cinnamon Sugar Rolls

Janalyn Olson

Ingredients:

Butter

24 Rhodes Rolls

Cinnamon Sugar

Powder Sugar

Vanilla

Milk

Directions:

Unthaw Rhodes rolls and cut into ¼’s. Roll each one into melted butter and then cinnamon sugar mixture. Place in pan that has been coated in butter. Sprinkle remaining cinnamon sugar mixture on top. Let them rise and then cook at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown. Make icing mixture with ½ the bowl of powder sugar and ½ a stick of softened butter. Add 1 tsp. vanilla and milk to make icing. Ice the rolls while hot and serve!

Shred Chicken-Chicken Alfredo Lasagna Crockpot

So I’m still without an oven/stove (Jace is ordering replacement parts to the control board this weekend and hopefully fixing soon!) I looked through the 365 Days of Slow Cooking by Karen Peterson cookbook (it has all crock pot recipes). I have tried quite a few out of this cookbook (introduced to me by my sister in-law Marci-thank you!) And most have turned out pretty yummy. I tried the Chicken Alfredo Lasagna and it was ok, a little bland but pretty easy.

Chicken Alfredo Lasagna

365 Days of Slow Cooking-Karen Peterson

Ingredients:

6 lasagna noodles, uncooked

1 (16 oz) jar Alfredo sauce

2 T water

¾ cup chicken cooked and diced/shredded

8 oz. cottage cheese or ricotta cheese

1 cup mozzarella cheese

Break 2 noodles to fit into bottom of slow cooker. Layer a third of Alfredo sauce, half water, half of chicken over the noodles. Spread half of cottage (or ricotta) cheese and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Add another layer repeating with everything. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 hours.

Like I said it was just ok, I wasn’t crazy about it-defiantly needs a little more flavor. I hate the flavor of Alfredo sauce from the jars so I need to add more flavor to that and I think possibly even a little flavor to the chicken. One thing I did try with this recipe is shredding chicken in my Kitchen Aid mixer. I had been told by my sister in law, Marci that you can shred chicken really easily in the Kitchen Aid food processor. But that is a lot more parts to take out and clean then the mixer so while I was on Pintrest one day I found this link. (Number 21) I’m sure lots of people already knew this but I didn’t and I tried it and it was the greatest thing ever! It was so quick and easy and shredded perfectly. I was pretty excited about it.

What the chicken looked like after shredding and the attachment I used.

Food and Finals

So the holidays really makes me want to cook. My mom is such a great cook and always made tons of goodies and homemade meals for us, especially around the holidays. So over the last few days I’ve been cooking up a lot of comfort food.

The other night I made some Spicy Buttermilk Chicken, another recipe from our good family friend Carol Kalar.

Spicy Buttermilk Chicken-Carol Kalar

2 ½-3lb cut up frying chicken (I just used regular chicken breasts)

1 ½ cups buttermilk

¾ cup flour

1 package dry Italian salad dressing

¼ tsp pepper

½ cup butter

Dip chicken in buttermilk and roll in flour seasoned with dressing and pepper. Then it says to melt the butter in frying pan, add chicken and bake covered at 350. I melted butter in the microwave, brushed my baking dish with it then placed the chicken in the pan and just baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes covered the turned chicken over and baked for another 30 minutes uncovering the last 10 minutes. It turned out good that way so I would do it again.

I served it with baked potatoes and cornbread. I got the idea from my mother in law Janalyn when she had made it a few Sundays ago. I love Z Tejas cornbread at the Gateway mall and this tastes very similar to it.

Z Tejas Copy Cornbread-Janalyn Olson

Use 2-3 cups cornbread mix (I used Marie Callenders mix)

1-2 cups yellow cake mix

Handful of corn

Mix and add water, egg, milks, etc. according to directions on cornbread box. (I just made mine until I liked the texture of the mixture). Then pour into pan and bake according to cornbread box or until golden. It turns out so yummy and really moist.

Because I’ve been studying for finals all week (just took one this morning and have only one more to go tonight!) I’ve been craving goodies to snack on while I study away so I decided to make some Fudge this week as well. I love this recipe from my mom.

Fudge-Karen Lewis

3 cups sugar

¾ cup margarine

2/3 cup-6 oz. evaporated milk

2 6-oz. pkg. chocolate chips

1 jar marshmallow cream

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

1 tsp. vanilla

Combine sugar, butter and milk. Bring to boil. Stir 4 minutes over medium heat. Stir in chocolate chips. Add marshmallow cream and vanilla. Beat until well blended. Pour into greased 9X13 pan. Its just like the recipe on the back of the marshmallow cream bottle.

Now that I’m so close to finals being done I’m getting excited for the break. I’m excited to get everything all wrapped up for everyone, get the house all together and go to my mom’s to make some cookies and goodies for the upcoming week! After tonight nothing to worry about since 98% of my shopping is done and then no school for awhile! Can’t wait for Aunt Paula and everyone to come visit us soon either. I love the holidays! J

Backsplash

Ok so this last weekend was a little crazy and I’m just now getting around to writing about it. If you read my last post you know that my dad had a heart attack and is ok now, but since my mom and dad were down in Vegas dealing with that, Jace and I had my siblings Paige and Ridge for the weekend until they got home Tuesday night. We had also decided we wanted to get backsplash up so we were in the middle of that project with them there.

My parents left for Vegas Thursday for a work thing so I had Paige and Ridge over Thursday night for some Crispy Cheddar Chicken that I found on this blog it was pretty easy and everyone really liked it. I served it with some rice and then just easy Pillsbury biscuits. Then Kami, Dillan’s girlfriend took them to my parents house since she was staying with them until Saturday.

Then Friday night Jace and I met up with Paige, Ridge, Kami and her sister Taylor at Panda Express. After Panda Jace and I went to Lowes to get backsplash supplies. On the way home is when I got the call that my dad was in the hospital. Kami stayed with the kids over night since I called to check on them Friday and they wanted to stay there for the night so they didn’t come over until Saturday evening after hanging out with friends. So Saturday we started the backsplash. We previously had a small granite slab as a backsplash that we weren’t crazy about so we first had to rip that off then started the process of putting up the new backsplash. (On a side note-I went to Smiths first and bought gift cards to Lowes so I could get the gas points!) We got 90% of the backsplash up by Sunday and just now have the grout left to do.  This week’s been so crazy so we haven’t gotten to it but will hopefully finish it up Saturday since everyone is coming into town next week for Thanksgiving.

The kitchen ready to go...

Jace hard at work, I like how concentrated he is on the backsplash

Progress! 

Over the weekend Jace also decided to start building and put up some much needed shelving in the garage. He stepped off the ladder and twisted his ankle pretty bad on a 2X4. His ankle swelled up pretty bad but he said its starting to feel better (he wouldn’t go to the doctor of course).

See how swollen the right ankle is

Over the weekend I did make some “Gratitude Journals” for my visiting teachers. I figured since its Thanksgiving it’s a good time to try and write down once a day, one thing we are thankful for. I did this a few years ago and made myself write down every night for a year one thing I was thankful for (November shouldn’t be the only month we remember what we are thankful for). I’m wanting to start up another one now and these turned out so cute I need to make one for myself! They were super easy. Just need some glue, ribbion, cute scrap booking paper and a journal.

Supplies 

Finished product

Other than that not much going on for us. Just busy with work and trying to get everything ready for the holidays. I will be sure to post pictures once the backsplash is all done with grout and everything. I’m pretty excited since it makes such a drastic difference in the kitchen!

Last night I made some Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos. It’s a recipe I got from my cousin Natalie Burt when we visited her in Colorado. It was so yummy.

The chicken mixture 

Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos

Natalie Burt

1/3 c. (3oz) cream cheese
1/4 c. green salsa
1 T. fresh lime juice
1/2 t. cumin
1 t. chili powder
1/2 t. onion powder
1/4 t. granulated garlic
3 T. chopped cilantro
2 T. chopped green onions
2 c. cooked, shredded chicken
1 c. grated pepper jack cheese
6 inch corn tortillas

I made mixture and then baked on a cookie sheet at 350 until bubbly.

If you want to freeze these, you can place the unbaked Taquito in a single layer of a baking sheet and place in the freezer for 2 hours until frozen to hold shape.  Then transfer to a freezer safe container and they will keep for up to 3 months.  To bake, follow the same instructions, increasing the baking time by 10 minutes.

Last night I also decided to make my Christmas glass block from Ben Franklin. I had made a pumpkin version for Halloween and thought it was cute/easy so I decided to do one for Christmas. It turned out pretty cute I think. Again total cost was about $25 from Ben Franklin.

Supplies...

Finished product. Took me about 15-20 mintues.

First week of October...

So yesterday was a pretty crazy day but I feel like I got a lot accomplished. So I had planned to bring dinner to a lady in the ward whom just had a baby boy who unfortunately ended up passing away. Its so crazy what can happen in life so even though it didn’t feel like much, it felt good to bring them some dinner. I knew I wasn’t going to have time to do everything Tuesday night so Monday night I made the Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes I found on The Sister Café Blog http://www.thesisterscafe.com/2011/10/pumpkin-spice-cupcakes-cinnamon-cream-cheese-frosting (one of my favorite to find new recipes on). Then I also decided to cut, cook and shred all my chicken Monday as well so I would just have to do frosting and combine everything Tuesday. It was a good idea because everything ended up taking a little longer than I anticipated. But I ended up making Poppy Seed Chicken (again thank you Kensley Rowland!), Apple Pecan Salad from my mother-in-law Janalyn Olson and I even talked Jace into making some Cinnamon Sugar Bread for me. We got everything ready and were able to take everything over there. It was good to see how at peace their family was with everything. It was very impressive and comforting. (I forgot to take pictures before I took everything over so these are pictures of what I made for Jace and I-and Jace was to impatient to wait).

Poppy Seed Chicken  

Jace's Cinnamon Sugar Bread 

Apple Pecan Salad 

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting and my cute little Halloween cupcake decorations from Target :)

So then we came home and I cleaned up the kitchen (which became a disaster). Jace failed to tell me at one point during our cooking session that he was melting butter and taking it out of the microwave so I ran into him and butter all over me, the cabinets and floor-not pretty so I didn’t take a picture! Then I decided to make my cute little Halloween Light Block I had seen in the advertisement for Ben Franklin. The project was surprisingly not that difficult. I think it took me longer to find everything in the store than to put it together.

Supplies from Ben Franklin (all in all I think it was about $25) 

The end product. I think its cute! 

In the kitchen by my ghost and Halloween picture frame.

Also going back to the weekend, it was General Conference so of course we watched that. Friday (long story short) Jace and I picked up a boat then I had a test Saturday morning for school so we picked up some Chili's to go and I studied all night long. Then Saturday Jace wanted to go try out the boat. So we just went to Willard Bay then he went to Priesthood and then we meet up with his dad and brother for dinner. Then Sunday I made homemade waffles (no pictures). We relaxed and then went to his mom’s for lunch in between sessions. It was a great weekend and very nice to relax. 

Don't be deceived by the photos. It was pretty dirty and needed a lot of buffing, waxing, shampooing, cleaning and loving... 

On the lake October 1st in Utah is pretty nice :)

One last side note-I love Kohls, I was in there yesterday and found these cute little guys so had to buy them for my nephews. (Yes the purple one is kinda girly for a boy but I knew Noah would like the fluffy dog!) All in all it was a pretty great weekend and good start to October. But now the snow and cold is going to start coming in :( I will post some of the recipes I do have on my computer now and the others I will have to put up later.

Waffles-Karen Lewis

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cup flour

3 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

2 beaten egg yokes

1 ¼ cup milk (use more milk than recipe calls for, make sure batter is fairly thin before folding in egg whites)

2 stiffly beaten egg whites (fold in last)

*Optional 3 Tbsp. sugar; 1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

Pour ¾ cup batter into waffle iron and let cook until waffles are golden brown.

Apple & Spiced Pecan Salad-Janalyn Olson

Ingredients:

6-8 cups assorted greens (anything but Iceburg)

¾ cups crumbled feta cheese

3 green onions, thinly sliced

1 large red-skinned apple, diced

Dressing:

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

¼ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon salt

Dash Tabasco sauce

2 tablespoons sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

Whisk together dressing ingredients

Spiced Pecans:

3 tablespoons butter

1 ½ tablespoons sugar

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped pecans

Over medium heat, melt butter in a pan and add sugar, spices and salt. Add pecan pieces and stir until well-coated. Continue to cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until sugar caramelizes and pecans darken slightly in color. Transfer mixture to a paper bag to cool. Shake bag occasionally to break up pieces.

Assemble salad ingredients & top with cooled pecans. To avoid browning apples, can be added directly to dressing or diced just prior to serving. Toss salad with dressing and serve.

Thats all I have for now. Enjoy!!