B.B.C.T.R.W.S.

Can ya' say Y.U.M.

Today at work I had some downtime and decided to come up with something yummy for dinner in my head. I thought about what we had in the fridge and pantry and ended up with this, Baked Bruschetta Chicken with a Tomato Red Wine Sauce (B.B.C.T.R.W.S.) Ok, cool... That sounds really good. Now what?

When I got home from work today, I got to work on dinner! This was rather awkward considering the AT&T UVERSE repair man was here AGAIN. I guess were like family now since he's here so often. Maybe I should've invited him to join us?

Anywho, back to the Baked Bruschetta Chicken with a Tomato Red Wine Sauce (officially the longest recipe title in existence). 

- 2 Cloves Minced Garlic
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 3/4 cup halved Cherry tomatoes
- Red Wine
- One boneless skinless chicken breast

- Italian Bread Crumbs
- One average size tomato
- Freshly grated Parmesean (we buy huge wedges from Costco & they last forever!)

Step One:

Sauté two cloves of minced garlic in EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) in a medium sauce pan until fragrant.

Step Two:

Add 3/4 cup halved Cherry Tomatoes to the pan and let simmer for a couple of minutes... Add a splash of the red wine of your choice and allow it to cook down.

Step Three:

Once the wine has cooked down and the tomatoes are soft, add a couple teaspoons of flour to thicken the sauce and stir to combine.

Step Four:

Add one piece of boneless skinless chicken breast into the pan and allow it to cook for just 30 seconds to a minute on both sides. Add chicken and sauce to a small casserole dish (preferably with the tomatoes on the sides and top). Cover with three thinly sliced tomato rounds, freshly grated parmesan and basil.

Step Five:

Bake at 350 degrees for 18 minutes. Once the 18 minutes is up, cover the chicken breast with Italian bread crumbs and broil on high for 2-4 minutes or until brown.

Step Six:

EAT! Once you serve the chicken, there will be sauce left in the pan . Use a spoon and pour all the yumminess over the chicken breasts.

Enjoy!

A Serial Killer, The Farmer's Market and Muffins

I know, I know... it's been ages since the last time I posted something here.  For the past few weeks, I've been overwhelmed with a few different things (cough, Dexter, cough) and it's been keeping me quite busy.  A few weeks ago, Patrick and I were bored and decided to start watching Dexter Season 1 on Netflix... flash forward a month and we're almost completely caught up through Season 5.  Dexter is the best show I've ever watched.  I won't go into detail about it, but I have a sick obsession and I don't think I'll ever get over it.  I am Dexter drunk. 

Now that I've thoroughly explained my lack of blogging...

Yesterday and couple of girlfriends and I went to the Farmer's Market in Downtown Dallas.  I don't remember ever having been there before, and it was so neat!  Local farmers setup booth after booth of fresh produce, homemade jams and jellies, honey and even salsa.  I ended up coming home with a bushel (at least I think it's a bushel... what is a bushel?) of the biggest jalepenos I've ever laid eyes on, a couple of farm fresh tomatoes, strawberries, homemade garlic and sundried tomato linguine and Mayhaw Jelly.  YYUUMM! After getting home, I realized we already had a large package of strawberries in the fridge, soo I figured I had better come up with some creative uses for strawberries so they wouldn't go bad.  This takes me to what's next...

I made Strawberry Nutella Muffins.  Oh My Gosh.

 I used this (slightly adapted) recipe and they turned out perfectly!

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder (I used Baking Soda)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1/3 cup buttermilk (I used Skim Milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
1/3 cup Nutella
Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling on top of muffins (Optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or grease well. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.
3. In a small bowl, combine canola oil, egg, buttermilk, and vanilla together. Use a fork or whisk and mix until well combined.
5. Incorporate the wet ingredients into flour mixture. Add slowly and gently stir, you don’t want to over mix. The batter will be thick. Carefully fold in the strawberries.
6. Fill each muffin cup half way with batter. Next, add a small spoonful of Nutella to each muffin cup. Cover the Nutella filling with the remaining batter. Sprinkle each muffin with turbinado sugar.
7. Bake muffins for 17-20 minutes, or until muffins are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the pan and let cool on a cooling rack.

Taco Quiche

We have more taco meat then you could ever imagine.  Five one-pound bags to be exact.

A couple of weekends ago I hosted (with the help of some lovely ladies) my best friend Nicole & her fiance's couples shower.  It was more perfect than I had of hoped it would be and I'm so thankful for all of their friends and family for helping make the evening so wonderful!   So... we had a taco bar for dinner.  I bought eight - yes, EIGHT pounds of ground beef.  My wonderful husband cooked it all up (and it was delicious!) and we served it straight out of our fancy-schmancy crockpot.  I figured that eight pounds would be just enough for 30 people.  Haha...

**note to self -- ALWAYS underestimate party food!

Anyways, being that we have SO much taco meat in our fridge/freezer, I've had to get creative with meals we can have.  Last week we had taco pasta which was pretty good.  Today, we had taco quiche.  It was scrumptious.

One pound browned taco meat (The recipe called for sauteed onions and green chiles, but we leave that kinda stuff out in this household:) 

Half a cup of milk -- I used reduced fat

Half a cup of sour cream -- reduced fat, again

One cup of shredded cheese -- Monterrey Jack 

Half a cup of Bisquik

Two eggs

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Cover the bottom of a greased pie dish with taco meat, cover with cheese

Combine eggs, milk, sour cream and bisquik and pour over the top of meat and cheese

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until set

ENJOY :)

Cake-astrophe

So... This past Sunday we celebrated Father's Day with my mom's side of the family.  I volunteered to bring the dessert for the party. Being that this was one of my first family responsibilities as a married woman, I wanted to make something really special. 

I trekked to Kroger's on Sunday morning after a late night and bought all the ingredients I needed to make a french vanilla & white layered cake with homemade whipped cream and fresh fruit.  I baked four cakes, made fresh whipped cream and Patrick sliced up a ton of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.  I cut all four cakes in half, so I was left with eight 8" rounds (and if I'm being honest, one of the cakes didn't quite make it out of the pan!  I thought I had Crisco-ed it enough, but I guess not.)  So, I then started layering... cake round, whipped cream, cake round, fruit & whipped cream, cake round, whipped cream, etc, etc. etc.  Once I finished layering the entire cake, I topped it beautifully with the fresh fruit and covered the whole thing in the whipped cream.  It was beautiful.  I even used my cake brand-spankin' new cake stand and everything! 

Once the cake was ready, we were out the door & headed to my aunt and uncle's for BBQ! 

We made it to Green Oaks & 360 in Arlington before the Cake-Astrophe occurred.  I mentioned something to Patrick that was a little surprising, he looked towards me, I saw the cars in front of us braking and I said, "Babe!  Watch out!"  Which is when he slammed on the brakes and the cake slide OFF the cake stand and onto the floorboard of Patrick's new Ford Fusion.  All I could do was laugh.  Half of the cake is in a trashcan in Arlington, and the other half was, thankfully, still delicious.

We all made a joke about it, but it was still a bummer to show up to the party with a crumbled, mass of cake.