Channeling My Nonnie....

My grandmother, Nonnie, was one of the best cooks I've ever known. She was a cook of the 1950 and 60s when it was important to use each grocery item to it's fullest potential, often making an onion, or a pound of ground beef serve two different purposes. Freezing, stretching and "doctoring up", in her words. I learned how to cook, in part, from watching her. Her process was "a little of this, a dab of that" and it wasn't uncommon for her to stray from a recipe and use "to taste" more than one time when writing it out to share with her friends. SO SO many of her "old faithful" recipes, like deviled eggs and orange roughy went un-written and I kick myself to this day for not asking her to write them down while she was here. When she passed away, I was fortunate enough to receive her Recipe Box containing years and years worth of traded, clipped and hand written recipes, something that was more special to me than my other cousins receiving a piece of her jewelry. Cooking was just one of many things that made Nonnie and me kindred spirits....

Tonight I made a recipe for Stuffed Bell Peppers that I found on pinterest. The finished product, ended up amazing, but I found myself going through the process and tasting, dabbling and adding my own spin on the actual ingredients and quantities. When I finished the last taste of the mixture, it TASTED like Nonnie, if that's possible! I have no idea how I somehow stumbled upon a random combination of ingredients that she would have used, but I swear that somehow she channeled through my fingers, into my spice cabinet and controlled each dash until it was up to her standards.

Now, I realize that "Cooking from Heaven" may not be the world's next best-selling cookbook, or even a plausible concept, but I like to think that I shared a little kitchen bonding time with Nonnie this evening. And because of that, I decided to make sure the recipe was written down to share with any and everyone from Nonnie and Me. :) Enjoy!

Stuffed Bell Peppers
1lb ground beef
2 8oz cans of tomato sauce
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2c white rice
1/2 c sugar
1tsp salt
2tsp creole seasoning (or more "to taste"-- I have no idea how much I actually put in :) )
1/4tsp pepper
1/4c Italian Blend Cheese
4 large green bell peppers, rinsed, de-seeded and with the tops cut off

1. Make white rice according to package directions
2. Brown ground beef with onion and garlic and drain
3. In mixing bowl, combine 1 and 1/2 cans tomato sauce, and the rest of the ingredients (besides the peppers) and mix.
4. Stuff bell peppers with mixture and place in an 8x8 baking dish
5. Mix the last half can of tomato sauce with 1/2 can of water and pour over the peppers, making sure that the bottom of the baking dish gets covered.
6. Cover peppers with foil and bake at 375 for an hour.

Random Recipe Friday is BACK!!!

OMG ya'll I have been MAJORLY slacking on posting in my old age... Sorry bout that! My computer crashed and I've been workin my ass off. Anyway, I made some SWEEET ass chicken chili and I have to share with you. It is totally in line with my "being economical" section, cause it makes enough to feed pharoh's army, and is perfect for freezing.

Kickin' Chicken Chili
Ingredients:
2 cans cream of chicken soup (reduced sodium if i can find)
2 cans navy beans or cannellini beans undrained
1 can original rotel drain half
1/2 c sharp cheddar,
1/2 c chopped onions (opt)
1 pkt of white chili seasoning mix, (or last night i used 2/3 pkt of regular chili mix and that was phenomenal too)
2-4 chicken breasts, or 2 cans chicken
Put all this in a pot or crock pot and heat for a few hours. Serve with sour cream/cheese if you wish.

Serve with: Corn Souffle. 
1 can regular corn
1 can cream corn
1 stick melted butter or margarine
1 box jiffy cornbread mix
Mix all ingredients together and bake in a greased casserole dish for 30-35 min at 375.


This traditional take on cornbread and chili is cheap, sweet, savory and so hearty. You can serve the corn souffle on the side, but I'm kinda partial to mixing them all together, in true southern style.
Enjoy!

Random Recipe Friday #4

So I'm definitely not a huge meatloaf lover, but this caught my eye on a recipe site and turned out to be DELICIOUS. Definitely worth a try, even if you're not generally a meatloaf fan. Excellent with mashed potatoes or as a sandwich.

Turkey Meatloaf

1 lb turkey 

¼ c milk

½ cup Italian breadcrumbs

2 eggs

Salt and pepper to taste (I didn’t need any, but add if you want)

1-2 tsp minced onions

1-2 tsp minced garlic

Sharp Cheddar cheese (a handful. Maybe ½ cup? I didn’t measure)

2-3 tablespoons Honey BBQ sauce (didn’t measure this either)

Mix all these together and put in a GREASED loaf pan. Top with ketchup. Bake at 375 for 45 min-1 hr.

Random Recipe Friday #3

Turkey Taco Casserole

This one's great for keeping the carbs/cals down, and a breeze to make. Freezes great too!

1 lb ground turkey
Tones Taco seasoning to taste (if you can't find tones you can use whatever brand, but Tones is the shit.)
1 chopped green pepper
1/2 chopped onion
1/2 jar salsa (more if you want)
1 can black beans
2% cheese, cheddar or mexi blend

Sautee Turkey, pepper and onion in a pan until turkey is brown. Drain Turkey if nescessary, but most of the time you don't need to. Add taco seasoning, black beans and salsa. Transfer to casserole dish and top with cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes!

If you're not being a "Healthy Holly" this goes great with chips or tortillas, and regular white Mexican cheese. Also, great to serve as a dip. This recipe is a TRUE multi-tasker :)

Random Recipe Fridays (a few days late)

Sorry Guys I've totes been busy-- Here's last Friday's recipe:
My single/couple food staple recommendation this week is frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts. These are so economical and perfect for single portions. I live on these.

Quick/Healthy Italian Chicken

1 egg
flour to coat chicken in
2 chicken breasts
1 can diced italian tomatoes ( i try to get no salt added)
1-2 cut up zuchhini or squash
1/2 packet of Italian seasoning (should be in w/ the chili seasoning, etc)
1/2 cut up onion (opt)
1/4 bar of cream cheese or neufchatel, cut into pieces (opt)


Bread Chicken with egg and then lightly coat in flour ( you can skip the breading if desired, i just like it better), set aside
In pan with olive oil, butter, veg oil (whatever you have) sautee the zucchini and onion until they start to be translucent.
Add chicken and brown a couple of minutes on both sides
Reduce heat to med-lo, add tomatoes (drain about half of the juice), seasoning and cheese.
Let simmer for about 15 minutes.
Serve over Pasta if desired, but it's great on it's own if you're looking to skip the carbs!

If you don't have time do do it in a skillet, you could skip the breading and dump all this in a crock pot and leave on Low 7-8 hrs, or High for 4-5.

This looks, smells and tastes like you've slaved over it.  Don't tell anyone-- Or hey, if you're serving this to company, double the recipe, serve them some wine first and they'll definitely never know you did this in 20 minutes :)  I'd pair this with Pinot Grigio, contrary to my blog title.....

Random Recipe Fridays

I've made a couple of recipes lately (made up in my head, no cookbook allowed) that were so good I had to ask myself, "Self?! Did you really make this?" If Paula Deen and Rachel Ray had a baby, I would have been it...So i thought i'd share. - I'm thinking that I'm going to start a weekly tradition- Random Recipe Fridays, especially geared toward singles, as i'm finding that its a challenge to cook for one (or two) and make the most of the food you buy. So here goes:

CB's Most Excellent Squash Casserole

4 yellow squash, cut up

1 small onion (yellow or sweet, whatever floats your boat)

1/2 can cream of chicken soup

4 oz sour cream

3/4 sleeve of Club Crackers (mine were reduced fat and that was just fine. normally I would use ritz, but club turned out to be excellent.)

4tbsp butter (i used margerine)

sharp cheddar cheese

Sautee squash and onion in butter until soft and translucent. Add cream of chicken soup and sour cream, cheese to taste and club crackers while still in skillet. Transfer to casserole and top with cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 min.

(Ps- this makes a small casserole. i got about 3 servings out of mine. would definitely double for a family or company)

Here's Random recipes #s 2 and 3- This one came about because I am trying to be as economical as possible lately (aka I'm poor). One night I made turkey burgers and had no desire to eat 3 in a row as leftovers, so I froze two of them and prayed for a good idea on how to re-use. It came to me in the form of "oh uhhhh the only things i have at my apartment are pasta, spaghetti and alfredo sauce and two turkey burgers and I don't get paid til Wednesday". And so was born a reallllyyy flavorful, interesting and all around YUMMY version of spaghetti (like I might not ever want to make it any other way than this, not to mention, it cost me zero dollars-- my favorite part) Below is the 2-fer recipe for those of you who need to stretch the paycheck :)

Turkey Burgers

1 lb of ground turkey

teryaki sauce

crushed up ritz crackers, breadcrumbs or whatever you have

1 egg

season salt

garlic powder

Mix all these together, make patties and pan fry, basting with the teryaki. Makes 3 large burgers or 4 small ones. I served with a coleslaw mix tossed with poppyseed dressing. You could put this on the side or on top of the burger. Plus- coleslaw mix keeps fresh forever, and tastes great with different kinds of dressings. Def a good single person buy.
** Note: if you didn't want to make turkey burgers, you could make this mixture into meatballs and add to the spaghetti immediately.**

Ballin on a Budget Turkey Burger Spaghetti

1/2 box of angel hair pasta (or whatever's in your budget pantry at the end of your paycheck)

1/2 can of spaghetti sauce

1/2 can of light alfredo sauce

2 leftover turkey burgers

Combine spaghetti and alfredo sauce and turkey burgers and heat over med-lo, about 15 min. If you froze them-I'd recommend de-frosting in microwave for about 2-3 minutes, after that they should break up pretty easily in the sauce with a spatula. Boil noodles, you know the drill. Top with parm if you have it, but trust me- you totally won't need it.

Enjoy!