Garlic Rosemary Pork and Garlic Rosemary Chicken

I've never cooked with rosemary before because it just looks... woodsy and smells... Christmasy. Those are two traits that I've been afraid to cook with until now. I practically got an entire rosemary plant through Bountiful Baskets so I figured I better try it. I LOVE ROSEMARY! It's amazing! It does smell Christmasy and is kind of like how I imagine chopping up pine needles would be, but holy cow! I love it! Here are the two recipes that I tried with it and I am HOOKED!

Garlic Rosemary Pork

4 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
4 large cloves of garlic (I did a couple more:)), pressed or chopped
1 tsp salt

Combine the above ingredients, rub over pork (I used a pork roast... don't ask me what kind, I'm not that knowledgeable about my pork roasts just yet), put it in the crock pot on low and cook until done (3 hoursish). When it's about done start boiling some potatoes for mashed potatoes. The roast I used was way lean so I didn't have to skim the fat off for the gravy. I just poured the juices in a sauce pan, mixed about 2 Tbsp flour with 1 cup hot water making sure that all the flour chunks have been dissolved, poured it in the juices and boiled until thick. I don't like my gravy thick because these juices were way strong of the herb, garlic and salt so I didn't boil this for too long.



Garlic Rosemary Chicken

1 3.5 pound roasting chicken
4 sprigs of rosemary (I will actually use 6 next time I make this)
4 large cloves of garlic
Salt (this measurement is not specific because you will need about a Tbsp for the inside of the chicken and more for the outside)

Preheat oven to 400.

Chop up two sprigs of rosemary and all the garlic together. Pour a heaping Tbsp of salt inside the bird (this seasons the breasts). Place the other two sprigs of rosemary inside the bird and tie the legs together. Rub the outside of the bird with the garlic and rosemary mixture, place it in a baking dish breast side down, wash your hands THOROUGHLY then sprinkle salt over the chicken until well coated (salt just enough but not too much, you can always add more salt later but you can't extract it, but really I don't think you can possible over salt the outside of the chicken). Cover the  chicken in aluminum foil and place it in the oven for an hour. Take it out and check the temperature to see if it is 180. If not, place it back in the oven for another 20 minutes until the temperature of the meat (not the inside cavity of the bird) reaches 180.

Take the chicken out, allow it to cool 10 minutes (you can be making gravy with the juices during this time if you like using the same gravy steps as I did above). Peel the skin off and start cutting away at your chicken. My husband and I loved this chicken so much that this was all we ate for dinner one night. We just stood around the stove picking apart the chicken, dipping the pieces in the juices. Mmm. I think I'm going to make this again tomorrow!

Shredded Chicken with Green Peppers and Carrots

I will be making this for dinner tonight so I figured I might as well add this one next. Prep for this meal is a CHORE and takes forever it seems (honestly only like 30 minutes but sometimes that's too much). The great thing about this recipe, though, is you can prepare everything in the morning or the night before when you have time to cut everything up, then just throw this all together in the amount of time it takes to cook the rice. I got this recipe from the American Heart Association's cookbook so I can't take any credit for it. I haven't even added my own flare to it because it is just that good the way it was written.

3 Chicken breasts, frozen (it's easier to cut when frozen... trust me... read on)

4 tsp Corn starch

4 tsp Soy sauce

1 Tbsp Dry sherry (now, I don't drink so I just use cooking sherry... not sure what the difference is but because I don't drink I don't really notice any difference:))

1 Egg white slightly beaten

5 Tbsp Olive oil (actually, I have changed this recipe slightly because this is a lot of oil to use, no matter how good this oil is for you, it's still oil so I only use like 2 Tbsp)

1 Carrot, shaved with a peeler then sliced (or you can grate it, doesn't really matter)

1 Green pepper, thinly sliced

1 tsp Fresh ginger, thinly shredded

1 tsp Sugar

2 Tbsp cold water

First of all get some rice cooking. I most often use calrose rice but sometimes I'll use brown. For the calrose (sticky) rice rinse 2 cups of rice under hot water. Once the water runs clear pour the rice in a medium sauce pan, add 3 cups of water, bring it to a boil, cover it, lower the heat to lowish and cook for 20 minutes. I have the worst luck with rice cookers so I just don't even bother trying to find one that will work for longer than a month. For brown rice I soak 1 cup for about 10 minutes, drain and rinse, bring 2 cups of water to a boil, add 1 tsp butter, a dash of salt, then add the rice, reduce the heat to lowish, cover and cook for 45 minutes. It comes out nice and fluffy every time. 

Mix 2 tsp corn starch, 2 tsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp sherry, and beaten egg white in a medium bowl. Slice the chicken paper thin, this is where the frozen part comes in handy because it is so much easier to slice a frozen breast super thin than it is a thawed one. Put the chicken in the soy sauce/corn starch mixture and let stand 30 minutes. 

While that is marinating slice the carrot, pepper, and 1 tsp ginger. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmery. Add carrot, cook 1 minute, then add the pepper and cook an additional minute. Remove the veggies from the pan. Add another Tbsp of olive oil, wait until it shimmers then add 1 tsp ginger. Saute for ginger for 30 seconds then add the chicken with the marinade. You can strain out the juices but there is never enough for me to strain out so I don't bother. Cook until the chicken is all the way cooked through then add the veggies, 1 tsp sugar, and 2 tsp soy sauce. Mix 2 Tbsp cold water with 2 tsp corn starch then add it to the pan and cook another minute until thickened.

Spoon this mixture over the rice and you have a super yummy, super healthy dinner!

6 Layer Eggplant Lasagna

It took me a while to figure out an awesome lasagna recipe that I liked, then once I found it I added roasted eggplant to it and the yumminess got even more amazing! I will slowly add pictures as I make these, but for now here it is: The Most Amazing Lasagna Recipe You've Ever Tasted!

9 Lasagna noodles
1 pint Cottage cheese
1/4 c Parmesan cheese
1 egg
8 oz Mozzarella cheese
1 lb Ground beef
1 quart Spaghetti sauce
1 Eggplant, roasted
Salt

Start by roasting the eggplant. Preheat your oven to 425, slice the eggplant as thin as possible, spray your cookie sheet with Pam, lay the eggplant on the sheet, drizzle with olive oil and very lightly sprinkle with salt. Flip them over and repeat the olive oil and light salt. Place the cookie sheet in your oven for 10-15 minutes, or until it starts browning, then flip the eggplant and cook the other side for another 10-15 minutes until brown. When the eggplant is done decrease the oven temperature to 350.

Meanwhile start boiling some water for the lasagna noodles. Once the water is boiling add about a teaspoon of salt (this is the only chance you have at flavoring the noodles) and a slight drizzle of olive oil (to prevent the foamy starch from boiling over and making a gluey mess on your stove top.

Add the lasagna noodles and cook until they are soft (I don't like to crunch into my noodles so I cook them for a longer time).

While those are boiling and the eggplant is roasting start browning the ground beef. Add a dash or two of salt. When the beef is browned add the quart of spaghetti sauce just until heated through, no need to boil or anything.

While all those things are going on (talk about multi tasking, just make sure your timer for the the eggplant works!) mix together the cottage cheese, egg, and Parmesan.

Now comes the layering part. I use a square Pyrex dish so I have to trim the noodles down, but this works out great because my 1-year-old loves to just sit and munch on plain noodles. Divide the cottage cheese mixture in half, the eggplant in half, and the Mozzarella in thirds. First add a layer of the beef and spaghetti (this will act as a non-stick surface for the noodles so no Pam required), Second a layer of noodles (3 to be exact), Third a layer of eggplant, Fourth a layer of the cottage cheese mixture, Fifth a layer of Mozzarella, Sixth a layer of the beef and spaghetti. Repeat. Now add the remaining 3 noodles to the top, top with the remaining beef and spaghetti and the rest of the Mozzarella. Cover in tin foil. Cook in the 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, remove the foil and cook for another 10. Remove from the oven and let cool at least 10 minutes before cutting into it or else you will have lasagna soup:).

Bacon-y Bok Choy

Today's adventure is going to be to try bok choy for the first time. I've never had it, but got it in my bountiful baskets this week (I got the Asian pack). I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I can already tell that this will be a regular in my household, I mean, come on, it calls for BACON, GARLIC, ONIONS, and RED PEPPER FLAKES!!! This recipe is already a winner in my book. I got this from allrecipes.com. I will probably make adjustments to this later, at which time I will add them to this post. But until then here's the recipe:

1/2 pound chopped bacon
2 pounds regular bok choy
1 tsp olive oil (this is necessary because it increases the smoking point of the bacon grease so your kitchen isn't full of smoke while you're cooking your onions, garlic and red pepper flakes)
1/2 small red onion, chopped
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp minced garlic
salt to taste
2-3 tsp soy sauce
1-2 chicken breasts, sliced thin and either grilled with just salt or cooked in a small amount of soy sauce
Rice

Fry bacon over medium heat until crispy. Remove bacon and all fat except for 1 Tbsp. Add olive oil, onion, red pepper flakes and garlic. Cook and stir until onions are tender. Add bok choy, place lid on pan, cook for 3-5 mins, remove lid and cook and stir until bok choy is tender but crunchy. Stir in bacon and season with salt.

My variations are in blue. Next time I will add chicken and eat this over rice. It was great as a side dish. I grilled up some chicken too and just ate it on the side but next time I might add it in. Oh, and it absolutely needed soy sauce!

Dinner ideas

I decided that I need to keep track of all the dinners I make and their recipes. I have all my recipes in different places and sometimes I have the scour the internet to find them again and thought, "Why not start blogging on my food blog again?" I had stopped because this just wasn't a priority, but when I started doing Bountiful Baskets again and got all kinds of cool ingredients to experiment with I just couldn't help myself but start this up again, at least to have all my favorite recipes all in one place that I can share with others. I'll be adding recipes one by one, and hopefully labeling them well. It's going to be a slow process but this will also help me with meal planning so I can look through adds, see what meats and such are on sale, then use my blog to plan meals for that week using whatever is on sale (meat-wise... doing bountiful baskets I get produce for 50% the cost they would normally be in the grocery store so I won't really have to pay that much attention to the price of produce).

Here it is.... FINALLY!

I have had soooooo many people ask me what our menu is going to be for the next 4 months that I decided to make it its own blog:)! I also decided to start this food blog because ever since my discovery of the Food Network I have loved cooking and experimenting with new recipes. Lance and I are very experimental when it comes to our food.

Anyway, having this all planned out makes it so that I know exactly what I'm going to buy when I go grocery shopping so that I don't end up buying something then throwing it away because it's expired or something. I've only listed the main dishes because our fruits and veggies for the meal will totally depend on what's in season. Another thing, we've only planned our meals for Monday-Friday with Saturdays being Lance's days to grill and Sundays being leftover days. I will include recipes. I am definitely not one of those people who keeps recipes from others because it's a family secret or something, that's just being selfish!

Here's January-February. I'll try to update each Sunday. Some things are very repetative substitute any of your favorites. I'll also be including side dish recipes like my favorite roll recipes that I usually make on Mondays because those are the days that I have the time.

January 5-9

Cheesy potatoe soup

Enchiladas

Teriyaki chicken with stir fried veggies

Chicken rollups

Lasagna

January 12-16

Beef stew

Rice and gravy with meatballs

Rice-a-roni with grilled chicken

Sloppy joes

Taco soup

January 19-23

Sweet and sour meatballs on rice

Baked potatoes with pot roast

Baked tillapia and rice

Spaghetti and meatballs

Beef stroganoff

January 26-30

Fajitas

Chicken and gravy on rice/mashed potatoes (whichever sounds better)

Chicken rollups

Sloppy joes

Mini pizzas

February 2-6

Cheesy potatoes

Fajitas

Pasta-roni with grilled chicken

Sweet and sour meatballs on rice

Chicken and gravy on rice/mashed potatoes

February 9-13

Beef stew

Spaghetti and meatballs

Enchaladas

Teriyaki chicken with stir fried veggies

Lasagna

February 16-20

Taco soup

Rice-a-roni with chicken

Tillapia with rice

Beef stroganoff

Rice and gravy with meatballs

February 23-27

Baked potatoes and pot roast

Chicken and gravy on rice/mashed potatoes

Tacos

Ham fried rice

Chicken rollups

Beef Stew (still a work in progress)

1 1/2 lb roast (I prefer a rump/chuck roast, but really any roast will do, even brisket)
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can tomato soup
2 cans water (more if you like)
1 package Lipton beefy onion soup mix
4-6 carrots peeled and sliced
4-5 potatoes peeled and diced
Olive oil

Turn crock pot on to be warming up if you choose to cook this in the crock pot (it makes my life easier). Dice the meat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in a preheated pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Brown the meat (if I'm using a rump roast or brisket I hardly brown it at all, but if I'm using a roast with better marbling/more fat, then I brown it more).

While meat is browning pour cream of mushroom soup, tomato soup, water, and soup mix into crock pot, as well as the carrots and potatoes. Just brown, do not fully cook the meat. When browned pour in crock pot. I usually give it 5-6 hours to cook. You can easily do this in your oven or on the stove top, just make sure the meat is cooked:).