Creamy Ham and Potatoes

Yes...I know...it's been almost another month. It's been busy on the home front! Ya'll are beginning to think I never cook, aren't you? Well I do...I just never type. I mean to, honest. I thought I was going to have an awesome ham and bean soup recipe a few days ago. But, well, it was so NOT awesome we had mac & cheese instead. Big "F" for Failure there.
But we're not here to talk about the failures, we're here to talk about the successes. And this one was definitely a success, and will be added to my tried and true list.
This is another plan-ahead, use the crockpot recipe.
Here is your list of ingredients:

• 4 medium red potatoes, thinly sliced
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped (I just used one big one)
• 1 1/2 cups cubed fully cooked ham - great way to use up leftover ham!
• 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon ground mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of celery soup, undiluted (and it was good with the celery soup, but I think next time I'll try the mushroom)
• 1 1/3 cups water
• 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese, optional (which I totally forgot to do, but it was fine without)

Night before:

Slice the potatoes, chop the onions. Mix together & store in the fridge. Cube ham.

In the morning:

Layer potatoes, onions and ham in crock pot. Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in flour, mustard, salt and pepper until smooth. Combine soup and water. Gradually stir into flour mixture. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes or until bubbly and thick (You might be able to do this the night before as well, I wasn't sure how much it would thicken up even more overnight in the fridge. But if you want to try it, go for it!). Pour over ham. Cover and cook on low 8-9 hours (or until potatoes are tender). Sprinkle with cheese before serving, if you remember.

This was a great dish and it was great for heating up for lunch the next day at work.

Enjoy!

Zesty Chicken Tortilla Bake

Yes, I know, it's been a MONTH since I posted a recipe. I have a whole STACK of them here waiting for me to have time to enter them. At work, they're making me, well, work, and at home we're in the throes of potty training. You wouldn't think that would make life chaotic, but it does.
Make that extra-chaotic.
And then there are nights like tonight. According to this recipe, it should take 35 minutes plus whatever time you need to cook your chicken, if you're not using leftovers (which I wasn't). So like, 45 minutes, tops. And I really think, in a perfect world, it would have. But it is not a perfect world, and it took nearly 2 hours. Well, the recipe itself didn't take 2 hours, but once you add in LIFE, all together we're talking 2 hours.
We ate way later than I like to, but I will say, when we finally did eat, the food was darn good. I had every intention of taking a picture before we scarfed it down, but by then we all were so stinkin' starving there was just no time to find the camera; by then the hubby and the boys would have inhaled it and I would have got nothing!
Enough of that. Let's get on with the food....

Your ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Miracle Whip dressing
• 1/2 cup flour
• 3 cups milk (Problem #1...we were out of milk. The Boys, who were home all day, knew this, but didn't think that maybe I should know. I didn't discover we were out until well after I'd dealt with Problem #2, below.)
• 1 package (8 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese (divided)
• 1 1/2 pounds of chicken breasts, cooked and cut into 1-inch pieces (Problem #2...when I called The Boy to get chicken out of the freezer, he couldn't find it, so didn't. Apparently I hid it under the bucket of ice cream. And his arms don't work so he couldn't lift it up and check underneath it. So I had to wait for the chicken to thaw.) You could also use a bunch of leftover chicken.
• 1/2 cup salsa (slight Problem #3...I only had 1/4 cup. I substituted 1/4 cup taco sauce for the rest. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to my new jar of salsa.)
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (Okay, that was Martha Stewart talking. I say, a palmful of dried parsley. Who has fresh parsley? Not me....)
• 16 taco-sized flour tortillas

Mix the Miracle Whip and flour in a medium saucepan with a whisk until well blended. I had to use a fork to get the gobs out from in between the wires a few times, which truly I wasn't too impressed with, but I think it may have been the whisk more than it was the gunk. Add about 1 cup of milk and stir until blended, then add the rest and continue stirring until well blended. Cook and stir on medium heat until the sauce comes to a boil and thickens, which at this point, seemed like forever but was probably, oh, 7 or 8 minutes. Stir in half the cheese. Reserve one cup of the prepared sauce.

Add the chicken, salsa and parsley to the remaining sauce and stir until well blended. Spoon 1/3 cup of the sauce/chicken mixture down the center of each tortilla and roll up. I just used a big spoon and eyeballed it; actually using a measuring cup just seemed like it would be really messy to me. Place roll-ups seam side down in baking dish. The recipe I have says to use 2 11x8 inch pans. I don't have 2, so I ended up using 3 pans all together. It also doesn't say to spray the pans, but I did, and I'm glad of it, so I would recommend you do too. Top evenly with the reserved sauce and remaining cheese.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes.

I served this with corn. Everyone gave this a thumbs up. Not the corn, the tortillas.

Enjoy!

Award-Winning!!

Well, I thought no one ever read this blog, but apparently I was wrong...as I was just nominated for having such a 'brillante' blog, by White Kitchen, who, I think, has an excellent blog (and excellent taste in blogs!) as well. Now it's my turn to nominate seven blogs. Here are my nominations:

1. My Vintage Kitchen - It's the watermelon pickles. Never heard of them, I find them fascinating.

2. A Year of Crockpotting - I love my crockpot! This site (c)rocks!!!

3. I think I have a recipe for that... - an Australian blog I stumbled upon. I just like seeing what they eat over there. Because I've never been there. And I'd like to go. And I'd like to know what I can expect to eat, if I ever DO get there.

4. What Recipe? - A blogger after my own heart, with a nice organized spice cabinet. Note to the DH: See, I'm no freak just because I organize my spices alphabetically! I'm sure he could come up with many other reasons why I'm freak, though...

5. Beck's Recipes - Everything I've seen on her blog sounds so good.

6. Dinner on a Dime - With the price of everything rising these days, it's good to have some economical, but GOOD, recipes on hand.

7. Crista's Kitchen Creations - Because of the peach enchiladas. I mean, YUM.

Congrats, winners! Here are the rules:
1. Post the award logo on your page.
2. Link back to the person who awarded you.
3. Nominate seven other blogs, and add links to their blogs.
4. Make sure your nominees know they’ve won!

Cheesy Meatball Subs

These were so incredibly easy and I can't believe I never thought about making them sooner. A co-worker mentioned making these, and shortly after I ran across a recipe for them. This is similar to the recipe I found, though not exact, because really, it's a 'play it by ear' kind of thing.
Here are my ingredients:

• 2 cups spaghetti sauce
• 4 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
• 24 ounces frozen meatballs
• 8 crusty buns (I just used a package of 'sub' buns, but something crustier would be better, like a mini Italian loaf or something)
• shredded mozzarella cheese

Combine spaghetti sauce and parmesan cheese in a large skillet. Add meatballs. Stir gently to coat. Bring to a boil.

Simmer 8 minutes or so until meatballs are heated through. Stir occasionally so that they all get heated!

Spoon onto buns and sprinkle with cheese.

This recipe could easily be cut in half or adjusted to how ever many sandwiches you need.

Crispy Baked Pesto Chicken

This recipe was my first foray into the world of 'pesto'. Turns out we like it....it is garlic-y, after all, and we all like garlic. This is a very simple recipe; only takes about 35 minutes. Perfect for a weeknight.
So, here we go. Here is what you will need:

• 4 small boneless skinless chicken breasts - about 1 pound (though I actually had about 2 1/2 pounds. It's an easy recipe to adapt to more chicken though.)
• 1 pouch chicken seasoned coating mix (like Shake 'N Bake, for instance. I used a store brand though because it was cheaper. Tasted fine.)
• 2 tablespoons pesto (no store brand here. They didn't have any. It was a little pricey for the size jar it was. But no worries, it'll go far. It doesn't take much. And I've already used more because it was so yummy.)
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat chicken evenly with coating mix. Place in baking dish.

Bake per directions on coating mix box, or until chicken is cooked through (when it registers at 170 degrees in the thickest part).

Top chicken evenly with pesto. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake an additional 5 minutes or so, until cheese is melted and lightly browned.

This was SO GOOD. I served it with green beans (the princess loves green beans!) and a rice dish.

Country Vegetable Beef

I made this the other night for the whole fam damily. I questioned one particular step, which you probably will too, when we get to it, but it turned out just fine. This is by no means gourmet (but then, what have I posted so far that is? - Nothing!) but it was good. Good enough to be gone when the meal was over.
So let us begin:

*2 cups water
*2 tablespoons cornstarch
*1 pound ground beef
*4 cups frozen mixed vegetables
*2 packages beef flavored ramen noodles - with seasoning packets

That's it - five ingredients - EASY. So easy my son finished it up for me when my parents stopped over unexpectedly when I was in the middle of it. Anywho, this is how you throw it together:

In a small saucepan, mix water, cornstarch and seasoning packets. Stir constantly over low heat until mixture thickens. (I actually did this part last, thinking that way the mixture would still be hot when I mixed everything together. I don't think I really needed to.)

In a frying pan, brown and drain beef. Add vegetables and cook until tender. This is the part I questioned. There's no liquid for the veggies to cook in. I really wasn't sure about this part. But I worried for nothing. The veggies were fine.
Once the veggies are cooked, add the gravy and stir.
(Next time I make this I will add chopped onion to the beef as I brown it. Onion adds just a little more flavor that we like, though this was good without it.)

Cook noodles in water according to package directions and drain.

Now, you have two options.
Option 1: Serve gravy over warm noodles. (per the original recipe)
Option 2: Mix the noodles with the gravy and serve. (per, well, ME. That's what we did and it was delicious)

According to the recipe this makes 2 - 4 servings. But please, we're talking about 2 packages of noodles, 4 CUPS of veggies, and a pound of burger. It served the 5 of us. It was gone when we were done, but we were also STUFFED.

Cashew Brownie Pizza

Okay, I know, this was originally a blog for dinner items. We've been doing a lot of grilling so no new recipes. Last night we had Sesame Pork - okay, but in the words of my son, "It was okay, but not a 'keeper', Mom."
Okay then.
So as I eat the leftovers of my 'Okay, but not a Keeper' Sesame Pork, I decided it was time to expand the blog. No cooking blog is complete without CHOCOLATE. So here is my first entry in the dessert category.
I've made this quite a few times; most recently for the hubby to take to work for his office buddies. They liked it so much a GUY actually asked for the recipe.
So here it is:

BROWNIE
1 package (21 ½ ounces) Pillsbury Traditional Fudge Brownie Mix
1/3 cup water
¼ cup oil
1 egg
2 Tablespoons flour
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (maybe a little more so you can taste test as you go. You wouldn't want to put "bad" chips in your dessert)

*Now, I totally screwed up and bought a brownie mix that was too small. Worse, I didn't notice until I had all the rest of the ingredients mixed in with it. So I figured, what the heck, I'll throw it in the oven anyway. It was flatter and less 'brownie-chewy' than normal, but apparently still good.

TOPPING
2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 can (10 ounces) cashews (again, I'd get extra; you want to taste test.)
½ cup hot fudge ice cream topping

Heat oven to 350. Line 15” round pizza pan with parchment paper. In bowl, combine brownie mix, water, oil, egg and flour; beat 50 strokes by hand. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour brownie mixture on parchment paper. Spread into 14” circle. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. DO NOT OVERBAKE. Remove brownie from pan, do not remove parchment paper. Let cool completely.
Combine cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth. Spread evenly over brownie. Sprinkle cashews over cream cheese mixture. Microwave fudge topping on high for 45 seconds or until warm. Drizzle over cashews.

*this was originally from a Pampered Chef flyer I received many years ago.