Strawberry-Nut Bread (Southern Living 1979)

I made this bread for a double baby shower.  It wasn't a huge hit, but there were so many other tasty things that I think this bread was easily overshadowed.  Little Man tried it tonight, though, and said it was awesome.  :-)

I knew there would be plenty of other food at the shower, so I decided to half the recipe for only one loaf.

Strawberry-Nut Bread (Adapted from Southern Living 1979)
1.5 cups white whole wheat flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 T ground cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 T canola oil
1 cup fresh strawberries, cut into chunks about 1/2-in in size
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Combine dry ingredients.  Add eggs, applesauce, yogurt, oil, strawberries, and pecans.  Stir just until all ingredients are moistened.
Spoon batter into well-sprayed 9-x 5- x 3-inch loaf pan.  Bake at 350F for 60 minutes.  Cool in pan 5 minutes; remove to wire rack to cool.

Lindy

Lindy - Menu Plan 2/16/2014

Baseball season has begun.  K-Man is Little Man's coach, and the first practice was Saturday.  As in the day after Valentine's Day.  Little Man complained that it was too cold.  I was thankful that I "had" to stay home with Little Miss and Roo. Little Man doesn't have school tomorrow, so my parents offered to watch the kids, so that K-Man and I wouldn't have to take any extra time off.

Since the kids aren't home, I didn't plan anything for today.  There was a diaper shower for two girls in my small group at church, so I did make Strawberry-Nut Bread from Southern Living 1979 last night for the shower.  I'll post on that later.

I'm planning to make Baked Egg Rolls for dinner tomorrow night making up my own recipe - using these three for inspiration: 1, 2, and 3.

On Tuesday, we'll have Pot Roast with Sour Cream Gravy (Southern Living 1979) - K-Man's pick.

Leftovers on Wednesday.

I'll make Ravioli Lasagna on Thursday when I have Audry's kids here.  I'm hoping that those two boys will like it okay.

More than likely, leftovers on Friday, too.  If no leftovers, then I'll make Ham-Cheese Quiche (Southern Living 1979) that Audry picked for us to try this month.

Saturday night, we're doing our monthly sisters' (and their families') dinner.  I'll be making Cheesy Sour Cream Enchiladas (Southern Living 1979).


Linking up with Org Junkie.


Lindy

Chicken in a Garden (Southern Living, 1980)

Lindy picked this one for us - THANK YOU!!  It was really good and really different for us.  We both like the flavor profile, but don't usually cook it, so it was nice to have the excuse.  

 

This was was very involved.  I was glad it wasn't something we had to do after working all day, but I think you could have it ready to go ahead of time (everything chopped and chicken marinating) to make it easy.  We stayed somewhat close to the original recipe, other than eliminating a few things (somewhat by accident).

Chicken in A Garden

2 Chicken breasts, cut in strips

1/2 tsp garlic

3 tbls Vegetable Oil, divided

2+ tbls Soy Sauce

3 tbls cornstarch

1/2 tsp pepper

1 green pepper, cut in strips

1/2 onion, cut into strips

1 pkg frozen edamame peas

1/4 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp ginger

3/4 cup chicken bouillon, cooled

10 oz petite diced tomatoes

Egg Fried Rice 

* combine chicken with garlic poweder, 1 tbls oil, 1 tbls soy sauce, 1 tsp cornstarch, salt, and pepper.  Set aside to marinate for at least 20 minutes.  

* Make the chicken bouillon (combine 1 chicken bouillon cube with one cup boiling water - set aside to cool).  You only need 3/4 cup, but the cube requires a full cup.

* Pour remaining oil in pre-heated wok.  Add peppers, cook for 2 minutes.  Add onion and pea pods; cook additional 4 minutes.

* Remove veggies and add chicken to wok.  Cook chicken until done.  

* While chicken is cooking - combine remaining soy sauce and cornstarch; stir in sugar, ginger, and cooled chicken bouillon.

* Once chicken is cooked - add the bouillon mixture and the veggies back to the wok and cook until thick and bubbly.  Serve over rice.

During cooking... I was pretty excited we actually had a wok!

The final product!  (I even used the china dishes so it didn't look so brown on our everyday dishes!)

It was good.  The pea pods weren't quite cooked, but that could just be the pea type we used due to the lack of options when we purchased.  I think fresh peas would work MUCH better.  We also needed more pepper.  This was a leftover recipe from last week and the peppers we had went bad.  We only had one good one, so that is what we used.  The same thing happened with the tomatoes we bought - they were bad, so we used canned tomatoes.  Whoops.  (I guess that happens when you don't follow your menu plan...).  You may notice, we didn't use celery.  You could.  It might be good, I just don't love it and didn't need it for anything else; so we didn't waste the money on it.  

All in all, we are looking forward to making this one again.  We will be using fresh peas and 3 peppers the next time.  4 stars for sure.  

- Chery 

Moist Potato Pancakes (Southern Living, 1980)

Audry gave me the choice of the Moist Potato Pancakes or the Potato Puffs which are both on page 36 of the 1980 Southern Living cookbook.  I have a confession to make - I am terrible at cooking potatoes.  I don't know why or what potato curse we have, but if a recipe says cook the potatoes for an hour, in our house - we make it at least 2.  An hour will just leave us with a raw potato.  Doesn't matter the time limit, what kind of potato, what you do to the potato - we have to double (or even triple) the time.  So, I guess you might say we are overcoming our potato curse?  Or at least, we're working on it. 

After some minor debate, Chris and I chose the pancakes.  Mainly because the puffs were to be chilled for one hour.... that is not always feasible on a week day night (and with our history regarding potatoes - that would just take WAY too long once cooked to then have to chill).  So, we opted for the pancakes.  It seemed the safer choice.

Even cutting this one in half it still made A LOT of pancakes.  We pretty much followed this one to a "t", substituting cornstarch for AP flour and adding some crushed red pepper.  I even used all of the salt and added some pepper to the raw potatoes (I kept thinking my grandmother, M.R., would be proud!).    

Notice how the recipe doesn't tell you HOW to cook the potatoes??  After much debate, I ended up just grating and cooking in the skillet.  I may have done it a backwards way, so please, if you know a better way - I am all ears!

Moist Potato Pancakes

2 med. potatoes, shredded and cooked

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1/4 chopped onion

2 tbls cornstarch

1 tbls melted margarine

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

* Grate potatoes, add salt and pepper, and then cook in skillet until done.

* Remove from heat and add egg.  Gradually adding milk until almost batter like, not too soup-y.   Add remaining ingredients and let stand for 10 minutes.  

* Drop batter by spoonfuls in a hot, lightly greased skillet.  Flatten into a pancake and cook until browned on both sides.

The grated potatoes - pre cooked.  

The potato batter...

Cooking...  

Finished!  We had these as a side with chicken, but Chris had them by themselves for a late night snack the next night.  Very filling.  Very good.  Pretty easy.  Well, if we didn't struggle with potatoes, it would probably be very easy - but as it was, we came out alright.  These were, obviously, hashbrown-esque.  Perfect for the BBQ chicken we had as the sauce helped the potatoes.  Chris had them with ketchup for his late night snack.  All in all, not bad.  Probably not going to do this one again on a weeknight, but that is just because of our potato curse.  We gave this one 3 1/2 stars.

- Chery

Chery - Menu Plan 2/16/2014

This week is all about Southern Living!!  In no particular order...

Chicken in a Garden, (Southern Living '80, pg. 18)

served with Egg Fried Rice (SL '80, pg. 19)

Cheesy Spinach Lasagna (SL '80, pg. 32)

Cheesy Vegetable Chowder (SL ' 80, pg 25)

Herbed Fish & Potato Bake (SL '80, pg. 34)

Chicken and Green Noodle Casserole (SL '80, pg. 32)

As is our custom, we have some left over recipes that didn't get made last week (Chicken in a Garden, namely).  We did make the Chicken in a Garden today (Sunday), but more on that one later!  

I think I may have said this before, but, Southern Living was full of good recipes in February of 1980!  We should be in for a good week.  

- Chery

Audry - Menu Plan 2/16/14

Last Week's Recap:
Sunday: We went out (like I mentioned in last week's post) - BUT the mattress we ordered and was promised to be delivered tomorrow is NOT coming until this Friday! So much for the paper chain countdown. 
Monday: breakfast. I realized this week I'm not the only one who requires breakfast for dinner at least once a week. The hubs special requested it. Actually, he special requested waffles. I gave Junior a lesson in waffle making and also made some cheese eggs and sausage.
Tuesday: Sweet and Sour Pork. This was the major winner this week. Everyone liked it. It was easy enough, but I'll need to plan in more time to make it in the future...or be sure we're not having it on a church or sports night.
Wednesday: Tostada Pizza (a Southern Living pick from Chery)
Thursday: Chicken-in-a-Hut our family style (This is a recipe Chery introduced to me, but we've adapted it to be more liked by the boys.) I made chicken-in-a-pot during the day and took out some for the dinner and froze the rest to use in the future.
Friday: I made heart-shaped pizzas. I used this crust. It was good, but the hubs has yet to deem it the best crust ever. The search continues! The boys and I made Easy Roll-Out shortbread during the day to celebrate Valentine's day. 



This Week's Plan:
Sunday: Breakfast
Monday: chicken noodle soup with leftovers from Chicken-in-a-Pot
Tuesday: BBQ Beef Sandwiches (Lindy's pick for us from 1981)
Wednesday: leftovers and add in something like macaroni and cheese
Thursday: The Hubs has won a major award so we'll go to the banquet, leaving the kiddos with my sisters
Friday: hamburgers or BBQ pork from the freezer (So we can use the rest of the hamburger buns)

 I hope you have a great week!

~Audry

Tostada Pizza (Southern Living 1981)

I had a long discussion with myself about this one. I know know know know know my boys hate refried beans. I'm not sure why they have such a strong aversion to them, but it exists. I was thinking they would reject this meal on a whole simply because of the existence of refried beans. 

I tried to think about other ways to make it, and thought I could just do salsa as a "pizza sauce" and then I figured I should just make it according to directions. It's good for the kiddos to try something new and I knew that The Hubs and I would both eat it.

The original recipe:

 

I changed it up just a little bit. I made the taco seasoned beef the week before and froze it. (I bought 2.5 pounds when I made Cheesy Bacon Burgers. Used half on the burgers and went ahead and made up the other half for this.) However, I didn't have a packet of taco seasoning so I went to the internet and did something like this. I threw in some brown sugar, cumin, chili powder...I think some salt and black pepper too. And then more cumin. Because how can you have too much cumin? No measuring of course. Just throwing.

The other day, The Cat ran in the house. (It's only allowed in on special snowy and/or way below freezing occasions). I threw it out. I told the boys about throwing The Cat out. Two days later The Hubs told me about something Junior did. Junior had picked up and thrown The Cat as though it was a ball. His defense for his actions? That I had done it. I guess I should be more careful with my words.

Hmm...After I lovingly placed the ingredients in for the seasoning and made the ground beef, I allowed it to cool and then froze it. There. That's better.

When I was making it, I realized I would have like a half cup of baking mix left. I went ahead and made the crust a bit larger. I also mixed some salsa in with the refried beans. The rest was pretty much according to directions. Minus the fresh vegetables on top of the pizza. I served it with a salad instead.

The crust before baking:

 

 

The final product:  

  The Hubs said it was good enough to have again. I think if I did it again, I would use taco sauce or salsa as the "pizza sauce" and skip the refried beans. It was good, but almost kinda pasty. I think it would be even better without that component.  

~Audry