Banana Bread

Lately, this has been a huge hit in our house! The boys and Travis are eating it up and constantly asking for more.


1 stick of butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
3-4 ripe bananas, smashed
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt



1. cream the milk and sugar, add eggs, vanilla and bananas
2. combine all remaining ingrediants and beat them in
3. bake at 375 for 1 hr in a large loaf pan (I love using the pampered chef pan for this bread)
To make this more of a desert bread, I frost it using cream cheese frosting.

All day chicken and rice

1 whole chicken cut into parts
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup warm milk
1 cup un-cooked rice
1 envelope of onion soup mix


sprinkle rice in the bottom of a 9X13 greased pan
lay chicken parts on top
mix milk and soup, pour over chicken and rice
sprinkle with soup mix, cover with foil, bake for 2 hrs 15 min. at 325

What a perfect fall dish! I serve this with green beans.
(makes great leftovers!)

Barbecue Biscuits/Muffins/Cupcakes

I thought these were really cute, and they look yummy, too! I might make them for a party one day.

http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/shannon/2008/09/barbecue-cupcak.html

Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins

1 box Devil's Food cake mix
1 can pumkin

Combine the cake mix and pumpkin and spoon into greased muffin cups.
Bake at 400 for 20 minutes
Optional: frost with cream cheese frosting.

These are amazingly good! Not overly rich.
yeilds: 18ish muffins (depending on how many helpers are licking batter while you spoon the muffins)

Nope, we haven't all starved to death!

I've been cooking, but really really lazy about posting it. This past week, I got out magazines, cookbooks, and combed the internet. I found some great recipes!!!!! We have had 2 new dishes in the last 3 days, and I have 2 new one planned for next week.

This week, we had:
Mexican Chicken Pasta

16 oz of penne cooked and drained
1 large chicken breast cooked and diced
1 cup frozen corn1 can black beans drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups queso
1/3 cup of milk
1 cup mexican cheese
1 large tomato diced
Combine queso, milk, corn and beans
pour over pasta and chicken
toss with cheese
place in oven (350) for 20 minutes or until heated.
top with tomato and serve
Yeilds : 6 servings
I'm served it with tortilla chips and salsa.

*I had rave reviews, but upon eating it as left overs travis said it was missing something, but wasn't sure what the something was.


Tonight I'm doing pork chops (one of my favorites)
I get an email daily from allrecipes.com
This past week I got a recipe for marinated baked pork chops. We are having those tonight with green beans, mashed potatoes, and apple sauce.

1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
6 pork chops, trimmed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
In a small bowl, thoroughly blend soy sauce, vegetable oil, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, brown sugar, and ketchup.
Place pork chops in a medium baking dish, and spread with 1/2 the sauce.
Bake pork chops 30 minutes in the preheated oven. Turn, and spread with remaining sauce. Continue baking 30 minutes

Chicken Dumpling Soup

I made this for the church on Sunday night; it was really good. It's not as thick as most Chicken & Dumplings, which is what I really dislike about that dish. Try this one.

2 to 3 Tbsp. cooking oil
1 large onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 stalk celery, diced
Meat from 1 chicken, cooked and shredded
4 to 6 cups chicken broth
1 cup green beans
2 teaspoons celery seed
2 teaspoons basil
1 Tbsp. parsley
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

Dumplings:
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup flour
3 eggs

Soup:
In a small amount of cooking oil, sweat the onion, carrots and celery. Add chicken, broth, green beans, celery seed, parsley and bay leaves. Simmer about 30 minutes.

Make dumplings:
Bring the milk and butter to a boil, add salt, pepper and nutmeg. Remove from heat and immediately add flour, stirring until the dough leaves the sides of the pan. The batter should be slightly thinner than play-do at this point. Incorporate the eggs, one at a time, forming a sticky dough.

Season the soup to taste with salt and pepper. Add spoon sized (I used small kitchen spoons) balls of dumpling dough and simmer until dumplings float. This just takes a few minutes.

All in all, you can cook this soup, start to finish, in about an hour. It's really, really good!

Everything But ... Soup

Yesterday was one of those days that I was freezing cold and looking to spend some time with friends. So at lunchtime I threw together a soup, and it was WONDERFUL! The best thing about it? There's not really a recipe and virtually no salt at all. Here's how to do it:

1. Open the freezer.
2. Pull out random vegetables, paying particular attention to those that rarely get eaten. I used spinach, lima beans, peas, corn, onion, zucchini, squash, green beans.
3. Open two cans of diced tomatoes and dump them (juice included) into a crock-pot.
4. Add a pinch of basil, parsley, and salt. Add about a teaspoon of black pepper and two bay leaves.
5. Put 1-2 frozen chicken breasts (still frozen) on to boil on the stovetop with bay leaves and parsley. While they cook, dump the frozen vegetables in the crock-pot.
6. Cut any "dangerously close to the trash" vegetables from the fridge and put in crock-pot. I used mushrooms, carrots, potatoes.
7. When the chicken finishes, shred it and throw it in the crock-pot.
8. Leave the crock-pot on high until everything is cooked and smelling great. I let it cook about 3 hours or so. If you use potatoes, you might want to add them in the last 45 minutes or so to prevent them from getting too mushy.

mmmmm....

I love this soup with grilled cheese or cheese and crackers. It's hearty, filling, and very good for you. It's also a great way to smuggle veggies to those that don't like them as much -- like the spinach, which cooks down so much you don't even notice it. For a little extra "girth" to this soup, add cheese tortellini, rice, quinoa, or barley.

ENJOY!