Ok...maybe this is an original...maybe it's not.  I thought of the combination a couple weeks ago.  I do not know what to call it if it is an original.  If it isn't, I don't know what it's name is.  Ok.......whatever.  lol

So, what do you do??

You buy a devil's food cake mix and make the cake as directed.

When the cake is done, you poke holes in it and drizzle caramel ice cream sauce (heated up) over the cake.

You make heat and serve chocolate pudding and spread that over the cake. 

Put in the fridge and once it is cool add cool whip on top of that.

Once chilled, slice and eat....This is GOOOOOOOOD!!!!  Sorry for the bad pic...I wanted to eat it so much I didn't take the time to focus!

I got this recipe from a friend a long time ago.  I made it...I loved it.....I never made it again!??!!  Why is that??  Well, one reason is my husband is not a big fan of tortilla soup.  He prefers thick, hearty soups (is it hearty or hardy?).  He doesn't tend to like brothy soups.  Me, I just LOVE soup in just about all forms.  I.  LOVE.  SOUP!!  

Jason's Deli has a really yummy, lip sweating Chicken Tortilla Soup that is VERY yum...especially when paired with their blue corn tortilla chips.  mmmmmm  This soup is incredibly good as well and you will, likely, not be sorry you tried it.  

**Note, I had this planned on the calendar for a month, but this morning I confessed to my husband that I was planning it, but hadn't gotten the ingredients yet, so if he preferred we could do something else.  He assured me that, while it it is not his favorite, he does not dislike the soup and is find with having it for dinner.  *Whew*

So, I am making it just as my friend stated it.  I am going to make sure to clean the inside of the pepper, though, as much as possible.  While I LOVE the heat, my son......not so much.  We will be topping our soup off with freshly grated sharp cheddar cheese and crumbled tortilla chips.  I also made a dessert that I will write up next.  Pairing this with a double feature movie tonight (it is a rainy day and soup, cake, and double feature just seems to heavenly to pass up!!)!

Here's what you do:

Melissa’s Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onions
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped, and 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 regular can Mexican Style diced or crushed tomatoes
6 cups  low sodium chicken stock
1 pound seasoned shredded chicken  (I steamed the chicken breasts and than shredded)
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice (I used bottled...it was handy)
Cilantro (don't know how much and I left that out completely...Matt hates it and I am not a fan either)
Tortilla chips

Directions:
In a Dutch oven or large heavy pot, heat the oil on medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, peppers, salt,  and cumin. Sautee for 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.

Add the chicken stock and canned tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the chicken and gently simmer 10 minutes.

Add the cilantro and lime juice, and stir well. Remove from the heat immediately and cover to keep warm.
Ladle the soup into 4 or 6 serving bowls. Garnish each serving with diced avocado, crushed tortilla chips and sour cream. 


Sorry all the pics are sideways.  BUT...the soup was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!

Today, I got an email from a friend who asked how I eat food that is so high in calories and stay so thin.  My first response is...I am not thin.  My second, thought, was High Calorie?  I have never really paid attention to calories...i.e. me not being thin anymore.

I really like food.  I like food with lots of good flavor.  I try to come up with healthy food.  It has been a LONG time since I opened a can of veggies (well, except for maybe canned tomatoes).  I do not cook our chicken or veggies in oil.  On occasion I might use a marinade on the meat, but that is rare.  I tend to broil our chicken or turkey...no oil, just some spices.  If I make burgers, I use turkey meat and use my panini press that helps to get rid of oil and grease.  Fresh veggies are often grilled or also broiled with seasoning only.  But, I suppose a do make some high calorie things...yesterday I made french bread pizza........thick french bread with sauce, cheese, ham....*sigh*.

All that to say....yep....I made a high fat, high calorie meal for dinner tonight.  There is no doubt about it.  I feel bad.  I want Matt to lose weight and I make this beef stroganoff that uses 2 cans of condensed soup, red meat and a block of cream cheese (let's not mention the pasta part).

BUT, it is really good.  Ok...so my tummy is growing.  Ok....so Matt needs to run a little further tonight to burn off the calories.  What's the big deal??  *gulp*

Well, what can I say...what's done is done and my tastebuds are happy...my tummy is happy....and my stored up fat will get some new friends to play with.  :-)

Best Crockpot Beef Stroganoff

2 pounds cubed stew meat
2 cans Condensed Golden Mushroom Soup
1 largish onion diced
2-3-4 tabls of Worcestershire (this stuff is so awesome I always add more)
1/2 water
8 oz of cream cheese (the first time I made this with just 1lb of meat I still added 8 oz's, sshh don't tell my lactose intolerant hubbie)
couple of dashes of Garlic Salt (1 tsp?)
couple dashes of Hot Paprika (see I just can't believe this would be good without some sort of kick)

In the slow cooker stir in all the ingredients, except the meat AND the Cream Cheese, together. Once combined add the meat and mix together.

Cook on Low for 8 hours. Cut up the cream cheese into cubes just before serving and turn crockpot on high. Stir the cream cheese in until all combined. You might have to put the lid back on and leave for 10 minutes.

Serve however you like to serve it.  I choose egg noodles....with a side of yeast roll with butter on it (Matt doesn't get the bread).

Another Pinterest find found it's way to our table today.  I am, normally, not a fan of potatoes unless they are mashed with butter, sour cream, cheese and plenty of seasoning, but I have found I like potato soup made with hash browns.  SO, when I came across this recipe, which has hash browns AND cream cheese, I thought...gotta try it.  Now, I added a question mark to the end of the title because I have never had Outback's Potato Soup...so I have no idea what it tastes like???

My impression was a favorable one and, like so many other of my recipes, it is pretty economical and makes A LOT!!!  I told Matt tonight, who is on a diet, that though this isn't the best for him...he will have to take soup with him to work for a few days.  

I didn't do much different from the posted recipe except I accidentally told Matt to get cream of mushroom instead of cream of chicken as stated....so I had to use that.  I also seasoned mine a bit with some garlic salt.

I topped Sierra, Matt's and mine with some fresh grated sharp cheddar, dollop of sour cream and green onion...Daniel I just left off the green onion.

Here is the original recipe:

EASY CROCKPOT POTATO SOUP 

1 30oz. bag of frozen, shredded hash browns {I used Ore Ida}
3 14oz. cans of chicken broth
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1 pkg. cream cheese {don’t use fat free.  It WON’T melt!!!}


In a crockpot, combine everything EXCEPT for the cream cheese.  Cook for 6-8 hours on low heat.  About 1 hour before serving, add cream cheese and keep heated until thoroughly melted.  Serve with cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, green onions, or whatever else you think would be good!! 

Today, as you probably know by now, is Crockpot Wednesday and today of ALL days was a necessity!  I do crockpot meals on Wednesdays because I take my son to park days on Wednesday and therefore am left with little to no time to cook.  Letting my crockpot cook all day and coming home and adding some noodles or a veggie side is much easier than coming home and cooking a full meal before rushing off for church.  Today, though, I had a field trip with my son in the morning....lunch with my son....and than park day.  I never made it home.  So, I put everything in the crockpot this morning and left instructions with my daughter on when and how to put it in later.

So, some of you may look at this title and say......mushrooms?  YUCK!!  Well, my husband and I love mushrooms...my kids not so much.  I would say, make it with the mushrooms and than opt not to eat them if you so desire.

That being said....let me say one other thing (before getting to whether or not this is worth eating).  Many people have said they do not like cooking chicken in a crockpot because it gets dried out.  I generally do not have that problem (I use fully frozen breasts), and this recipe made the most moist chicken EVER.

Ok....well, that gave you a tip as to how good this tasted.  To say that it was good is an understatement.  It was moist and so flavorful.  Everyone oooooed and aaaaaaed over how moist and flavorful the chicken was.  The weird thing is...it is so simple.  Hardly any ingredients.  I love it!!  It has been officially asked to make it into the repeat category and I have to agree.

So, how simple is this:

Take 3-4 chicken breasts (I use frozen) and place into the crockpot.

Sprinkle with a generous amount of garlic salt and pepper.

In a bowl, mix a can of cream of mushroom soup with a 1/4 cup of white wine or chicken broth.  Now, I could have sworn I had some white wine, but no go so I used broth (low sodium, organic).  I am hoping to try it next time with the wine cause I like how wine tastes in food (but I hate to drink it).

Distribute the mixture on top of the chicken.

Top this with sliced mushrooms.

Cook on low for 6-7 hours.

E-A-S-Y

I served this with mashed potatoes (that almost didn't get cooked in time in my rushed time frame), but they did and made a good compliment.  I imagine the gravy would be good on the potatoes, but we were in a hurry (but not too much of a hurry to recognize yumminess.  Plates were almost licked clean before everyone scooted out the door (well, almost everyone).

Have you ever decided to make a dinner for your family, but then had serious doubts when it came time to make it? It happens to me all the time cause I like to try different things....I do not like to repeat too many things too often because I get bored easily.

Today, I made a meal that I was sure was going to flop and I was irritated with myself all day as I thought of the food I was wasting.  Times are tough; money is lean.  I just was not looking forward to it.  Upon serving it to my family, I said "I have serious doubts about this meal."  Now, to compensate...I made my kids' favorite side, zucchini chips, and some garlic toast.

Sierra was the first to try it and exclaimed that it was good....really good.  "Really?", I exclaimed.  Upon trying it myself, imagine my surprise that it was, indeed, good.  And it was SIMPLE!!!  AND.......it was made in the CROCKPOT!!!  AND..........it was CHEAP!!!  WHOA!!!!!!!

I did exactly as the recipe stated except I used frozen breasts and instead of 1/2 cup water in the stuffing portion, I used chicken broth.  I will post my zucchini chips recipe at a later date...if I haven't already!!  My kids LOVE them!!

I got the recipe from Pinterest....here is the original recipe here: crock pot recipe, take 1lb chicken (can be frozen), box of stuffing, 1 cup chicken broth, 1 can of cream of chicken, and 1/2 cup of water. layer bottom of crockpot with chicken, poor 1 cup of broth over chicken, mix box of stuffing with can of soup and 1/2 cup water and layer top of chicken with stuffing mix, cook 6-8 hours on low!

When I was a  little girl there was one dish that my stepmother would make that I absolutely loved and would beg her to make over and over again....sadly, she very rarely made it.  Chicken and Dumplings.  It was the ultimate comfort food for me and it made me feel cozy and homey.  By the time I grew up and was on my own, I had pretty much given up on having it anymore.

Several years ago, a friend of mine shared her recipe with me and when I made it I was transported back to that feeling of warmth and homeliness and I was so pleased that I could, now, make this ultimate comfort food for my family.  As a matter of fact, I make chicken and dumplings at least twice a year.

I recently came across a crockpot recipe that I thought would be worth trying and so I did.  I was not pleased with the first outcome and while I liked the second one, there were certain problems with it that have made me realize that nothing beats the original.

So...first let me tell you what I normally do:

Chicken and Dumplings, The Original

Ingredients:

a whole cut-up chicken
couple stalks of celery, sliced
small onion, diced
plenty of salt and pepper
water
dry biscuit mix (usually milk is needed for this)
seasoning of your choice for biscuit mix (I usually use garlic salt and pepper)

Take the whole cut-up chicken and put in a deep stock pot.  Put in onions and celery.  Generously put in salt (kosher works well) and pepper and cover with water.  Bring from cold water to a slow boil to slowly bring out the flavors.  Let boil for about 20 minutes.

When the 20 minutes are up, take the chicken out, but keep the water simmering.  Take a piece of chicken and remove the skin and discard.  Shred the chicken off the bone, making sure no bone pieces are left on.  Put shredded chicken in the pot and repeat with each piece until done.  At this point, I usually give the liquid (which likely looks unappetizing, oily and yellow with floating stuff...this is GOOD) a quick taste to see if I need to add more salt and pepper (which I always do).  Let this simmer for about 20 minutes.  

Prepare your biscuit mix according to package directions.  I usually buy the cheap 45 cent packages and I use 2.  Add seasoning to the mix to give your dumplings more flavor.  Drop by the spoonful into the pot and cover, letting it simmer for about 10-15 minutes.

You can serve right away, but I have learned that the longer it sits, the better it gets.  I will often prepare this at lunch time...by dinner, it is just about perfect.  The next day, it will be even better...and if you buy an extra biscuit package, you can bring your leftover soup up to a simmer, prepare more dumplings and drop those in.  Your soup will be thicker the next day, but if your kids (and husband) are like mine (let's face it, I'm just as bad), the dumplings were all likely eaten the night before.

Now, the crockpot version:  It is very similar to the above recipe, except you put chicken breasts (boneless, skinless) in the crockpot.  Because you are not using a whole chicken with skin and bone, you need to use a chicken broth.  Also, the crockpot recipes I have seen call for using canned biscuits (YUCK) and so you lose the thickening effect, so they say to add in a can of cream of chicken soup.  I tried this as written and was dissatisfied with the lack of flavor, thickness and the taste of canned biscuits.

So, I took my above recipe and made it in the crockpot instead...letting the whole cut-up chicken cook all day on low.  I felt that I needed to add that can of cream of chicken soup by the way everything was working....I turned the temperature up to high to cook the dumplings, but it still took a long time to cook.  A BIG disadvantage to this, though, was the next day.  I would have had to dump the soup into a pot to add more dumplings because I was certainly not going to go through a long crockpot process....so I ended up NOT adding more so leftovers were severely lacking in dumplings.  It was just as messy as doing it in a pot since I still had to take off skin and bones.

I have seen recipes on pinterest where they make these pretty cutout dumplings, but I have to say that I like the gloopy, spoon dropped dumplings.  They add so much flavor and thickness to the soup.

I absolutely LOVE my crockpot.  Just about everything I make in it turns out great.  The second time I made C&D, I was satisfied with the results, but I just feel that the original way makes more sense and just tastes better.  BUT, if you are in the mood for it, but lack the time....than please give the crockpot recipe a try. 

So....there is my take on Chicken and Dumplings.  

A couple weeks ago, we, as a family, went out to celebrate my birthday at my FAVORITE restaurant ever which serves the best Mexican food EVER.  Sierra wanted to try something new and opted for a taco salad.  

Now, generally I object to anyone ordering anything at a restaurant that we can make at home...especially something that is generally made better at home.  We make a MEAN taco salad.  But, it was my birthday and I decided to let it go.

When the salad appeared, Sierra began eating it and instantly exclaimed at how good this taco salad was.  My feelings were, admittedly, hurt.  How could she like it more than mine?????  I tasted it and agreed that it was, indeed, quite tasty and looked at the elements to see what was in it.

Tonight we duplicated what they did as much as we could.  Sierra said it was not quite as good as the restaurants, but she said it was incredibly good.  Of course it would not be the same, but I will say this was a great rendition of a salad.

So, here is what we did:

We browned hamburger meat.  I am, typically, not a fan of taco seasoning (I do not use it when I make tacos), but for this experiment I had a package of chicken taco seasoning that I thought would do just fine.  We only used half the package, though.

This was the only cooking needed, so next was assembly.  We took a head of iceberg lettuce (I am typically not a fan of iceberg, but this is what was used on the restaurant salad) and tore it up putting in individual bowls.  We topped that with the hamburger meat and than sharp cheddar cheese.

The restaurant salad had a dollop of sour cream, dollop of guacamole and a dollop of pico de gallo.  We LOVE our local HEB's versions of guacamole and pico de gallo, so we bought that and put said dollops (including the sour cream) on top next.

The restaurant used tortilla chips instead of a tortilla bowl, so we used that.  The restaurant also used a lime jalapeno vinaigrette, but we opted to use the olive oil vinaigrette instead (because we had it on hand).

That's it.  Simple and yummy.  It had the right amount of spice/kick and tasted fresh.  I am typically not a huge fan of sour cream, but on this salad it worked.

I still like our old version of taco salad (featured on this blog), but this one was a good alternative.  

Tip for copying a restaurant's meal:  go to the restaurant's website and look at their menu.  You can get a general idea on the ingredients used and can fill in the gaps if you think really hard.  I have done this several times and did just that in this case.  The difference in taste was simply a difference in the way things were prepared (i.e. guacamole and pico).

I have not posted in a very long time.  I have been sick with a doosy of a cold.  I have cooked a LOT, but have not had the energy to do much else.

Every Wednesday, I cook dinner with the crock pot.  My homeschool group has park days on Wednesday afternoons and, by the time I come home, I do not have time to cook and get out the door for church (especially since Daniel gets nice a dirty at each park day).  I LOVE park day and I LOVE my crock pot.

When I first started Crock Pot Wednesdays, I came across this recipe that was ULTRA easy and used FEW ingredients, so it was economical.  Upon returning home from park day on that day, I was pretty sure it would be good, but it turned out to be so simply yummy that it has made repeat visits in our house.  We all have loved it.

So, today was park day and today I made this recipe.

CROCK POT ITALIAN CHICKEN
found recipe at: Stick A Fork In It

• 2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (thawed or frozen would work.  I used frozen chicken breasts!)
• 1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1 pkg. Italian dressing seasoning
• rice or pasta

Place chicken in crock pot.

Mix softened cream cheese, cream of chicken and Italian Seasoning together and dump evenly over chicken.

Cook on high for 4-6 hours or until chicken is fully cooked and tender.

Serve over rice or pasta!  I serve it with pasta as Sierra does not like rice.

Tonight, I tried a new recipe, but, I, of course, did not stick to the recipe.  What can I say...I did not think it sounded great the way it went originally and even the blog I got it from had her own complaints about it, so I took the base and tried my own thing.  Here is the original.  And here is what I did:

Garlic Pesto Chicken:

For the chicken:
1/2 bottle of lawrys Herb and Garlic Marinade
2iheaping large spoonfuls of Pesto 
3 1/2 boneless chicken breasts

Place all the above ingredients in a bag to marinate overnight or all day long.  When making dinner, cook how you like.  Personally, I think it would be great grilled, but Matt worked late tonight, so I broiled them.

For the rest of the dish:

8 ounces of your choice of pasta (I used penne) 
2 tablespoons of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic (minced)
3+ spoonfuls of pesto
1/2 cup of chicken broth
8 ounces of tomato sauce 
1 cup heavy cream

Boil water and start on noodles.

Heat olive oil, cook garlic. Add pesto. Add chicken broth and simmer in chicken broth until half has cooked down. Add tomato sauce. Then add heavy cream (she suggested half and half and that is what I thought I had, but I had cream instead...so I used it and it was good). Simmer for 5 minutes. Toss pasta in. Add flour if it needs to be thickened (I did not do that).  I cut up the chicken and mixed it in to the pasta.

Don't be a minimalist on the pesto in this sauce...this adds so much flavor to the sauce.  I also sprinkled in some garlic salt and pepper.  I topped with some parmesan cheese.

My kids loved it.  I liked it...something needs to be changed to make it super for me....possibly the grilling of the chicken...maybe some kind of seasoning to the sauce.  

I will say this....I will use the above marinade again to use to GRILL chicken for salads or something else.  The chicken was amazing!!