~* Food Glorious Food *~

I've been wanting to share a few recipes with you that I've made for my family since the holidays and this blog post is about two of them.  One is an older recipe I created and we love and the other is a brand new recipe that we discovered but tweaked and it ROCKED!

The first recipe is one I've been making and improving for years.  I call it "Baked Chicken Mozzarella"

Baked Chicken Mozzarella

4 - Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
4 - Mozzarella String Cheese
1/4 cup of Pesto (homemade or store bought - for this recipe I used Trader Joe's)
1/2 cup of Bread Crumbs
Italian Seasoning (I use a local spice store's seasoning)
Cooking Spray
1 cup of your favorite Marinara sauce

Look easy doesn't it?  That's because it is!

^^^The chicken breasts I had were SO big that I was able to cut them into four portions shown below.
 

Here's where you get to pound out some aggression.  Between sheets of wax paper, pound the breast out to about 1/2" thickness. 

 

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Once you have the breasts pounded out to the right thickness, give them all a nice coating of the pesto.  Place a piece of the string cheese on the chicken breast and roll the breast around the cheese using toothpicks to secure it.

 

Here's the Italian seasoning I use from Allspice a local spice store in the East Village area of Des Moines.  Best spices and seasonings ever!

Once you have your chicken breast rolled up and secured with toothpicks, dredge them in the bread crumbs as best you can around the picks.  I like using my seasoning mixed with the bread crumbs and then sprinkle a bit more once I have the breast covered.  

 Place the breast in a baking dish that has been lightly sprayed with cooking spray.  I also spritz the breasts themselves with a bit of butter spray so they crunch up nicely in the oven.

What I can't believe I did was not get a photo of the finished product on a plate with a dollop of marinara sauce and served with crusty Italian roll and a leafy green salad with zesty Italian dressing.  I think I was too excited about digging in and eating it then I was getting that final photo.  :)

 

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The second recipe is a remake of a recipe I saw on Facebook from a website called Six Sisters Stuff, but I changed up the ingredients enough that I call my recipe inspired by theirs.

 

 

Slow Cooker Mongolian Beef

 

1 pound of whatever steak you want to buy (sirloin, flank, flat iron) - cut into stir-fry strips

1/4 cup of cornstarch

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

1/2 teaspoon of minced ginger

2 gloves of garlic (I didn't have any fresh but I had jarred minced in my produce drawer so I used that)

1/2 cup of light soy sauce

1/4 cup of Tamari sauce

3/4 cup of water

1/2 cup of brown Splenda

1 pint of fresh mushrooms, sliced or quartered

3 medium green onions, sliced

 

 



Dredge the beef strips in the cornstarch, shake off excess and place in a slow cooker that has been lightly sprayed with cooking spray.

The next seven ingredients are what is needed to make the sauce to go over the beef mixture.  Dump them all in a bowl and whisk it up.  Do you have a rasp to grate things?  I love that thing, I had it for years and can't even remember when I got it....it's one of a set of two and they have held up well.

Once you have the sauce mixed up, pour it over the beef in the crock pot and let it go!   Set on high for 2-3 hours and low for 4-5. 

 

The original recipe had carrots and my spouse is not fond of cooked carrots in things, especially his stir-fry, so my recipe uses fresh mushrooms.  Since I'm using those I'm not going to add them until the final 30 minutes of so of cooking.  They don't take long to cook and I didn't want them mushy.

 

 

The results after the low slow cooking of about 3 hours was a heavenly smell and sight of ginger, soy, beef so tender it falls apart on your fork and mushrooms cooked to just the right doneness (is that a word?)  :)

 

One of favorite things in the world is sticky rice.  I adore it and it is SO carb heavy that I don't fix it very often, maybe 3-4 times a year but this recipe was begging for it, so I made sure I had the sticky rice soaking (a major part of making it......don't forget....for at least 4-6 hours).

 

Once you steam the sticky rice and no, you don't use a traditional rice steamer....won't work...you use a stainless steel pot and a bamboo hat and no, I don't have a photo right now of ours.....I bought it at a local Asian market.  I do have a photo of the bamboo serving container I have for sticky rice that I bought when I bought the pot and hat.



Here's the sticky rice!  SO good..........I can't even......

Slice up a few green onions to top the Mongolian Beef .

Enjoy!   After a couple of weeks of slug like behavior I am attempting to get some things done this week in addition to keeping up with a very demanding business class, the biggest of which is painting a guest bathroom that has never been painted in the almost 11 years we have been in this house....and for a bathroom that is rarely used, it sure was dirty....I had to clean before painting and really clean after too....I share it once I'm done......and it's the first of two I have to do.

A Year of Stuff

It's a bit baffling to imagine that it has been 15 years since Y2K!  Time just seems to fly by when you think about it too hard and I can remember working hard at my job making sure that our computer programs all integrated seamlessly....amazing the amount of things that have happened since then...some very sad, some very happy and all are just.....life.

I imagine that 2015 will be an interesting year for us.  The husband will continue to do well in his career and have lots of opportunity, the kid will be continuing on his college education and earning a few bucks working part time, and me? 

Just not sure yet....I'm not bored, so I can't seem to focus on one thing.  I start another business class in a couple of weeks at our local community college, this one is a small business management class that I'm hoping will be valuable if I decide to start or buy a small business....but in addition to that, my immediate goals are to work on some of my home based business ideas, so that I can fund a trip for my family to Spain & Italy, so as soon as I get something   I'll be sure to post it here too!

Thought I would share on this posts what I found to be some of my favorite things of 2014 -

Movie

This movie was so much FUN!  The characters, the story and OMG....the soundtrack....total 70's.....a whogachugga, whogachugga....and who doesn't love Chris Pratt?

Book
This year it was a tie and not surprisingly, the authors are father and son.

Both books were so good and I was especially impressed with Doctor Sleep.  Forty years have passed since "The Shining" was written and at the time it was written Stephen King was a drunk and for him to write a sequel forty years later sober as seamlessly as he did was amazing.

Music
I'm an old school rock and roll chick that usually doesn't venture too far off her favorite genre of music but I'm open to exposure to other types too.  I've probably listened to more Black Stone Cherry because they had a new CD drop this year and they had other CDs I hadn't had a chance to listen to once I discovered them and their amazing CD "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" a couple of years ago.  I also liked new music from AC/DC, Seether, Foo Fighters, Counting Crows and even Taylor Swift.  :)

Food
Last year was the year of the "grilled asparagus/grilled zucchini/squash" (which I still love), but this year was the year of the "stuffed mini peppers/bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos"

We loved grilling both of these peppers and I even liked the mini peppers raw.  I was also happy to be able to get a vegetable on our dinner table without noses turned up.

Home and Décor
In anticipation of my retirement, there were a few things that we needed to get purchased in 2014 before my income was reduced.  First off last February was new appliances, well, a new stove, microwave and dishwasher.  It's been ten years since we moved into our home and the contractor put in the cheapest appliances he could (of course!).  Our refrigerator isn't as old, as we replaced it a a few years ago with a French door freezer on the bottom model.  We had a gas line run to the stove and switched out our flat top electric to a five burner gas stove.   The dishwasher is whisper quiet and the microwave is also convection, as is the stove.

In April we decided to FINALLY get a new mattress and a KING SIZE one to boot!  in addition to the new mattress, we bought new pillows....good pillows and between the mattress and the new pillows, we both have experienced much better sleep, especially the husband.  Prior to buying the mattress, he rarely slept all night in our bed because of his back problems, since then....I think he has went to his recliner maybe twice in nine months.

We also bought a new dining set and this time we bought a good one.  Over the almost 28 years of marriage we have bought cheap sets, although the last one lasted a good long time but it was most definitely showing wear.  In fact, last year I tried to extend it's life by painting it, my blog post about it is here, but the fact remained that it was time to replace.

TV
We're a big movie family so we don't watch a lot of televisions show and no sitcom type shows.  I think the only network shows that we DVR is "Sleepy Hollow" on Monday nights and "Parenthood" on Thursday nights.  We're going to be bummed when this final season of "Parenthood" ends as we have enjoyed watching it from the beginning.   Shows that we typically DVR to watch usually consist of reality competition shows such as "The Voice", "Survivor", "Top Chef", "Project Runway" with a dose of my guilty pleasure of the "Real Housewives" franchise, but I only watch OC, Beverly Hills and NY  {{hangs head in shame}}

Libations
Before anyone gets the wrong idea.....we don't sit around and drink 24/7 at our house, but I'm not going to lie and say we don't enjoy our beverages of choice, which for me is usually beer or wine with the occasional hard liquor thrown in.

This year I really enjoyed the hell out of this -

and after all of our wine trail travels......my favorite Iowa wine so far is Jasper Winery's Lucy Lane.  I cracked a couple bottles of that over the last year.

The husband on the other hand, loves to imbibe a bit in rum and tequila, specifically these -

 

I've got some resolutions and goals to share with you soon, but until then, I hope you and your families have a Happy 2015 with great things coming your way!