Chili Pg. 84

Last night I made the chili dish. With no prep work or pulling things from my pantry, It took me 40 minutes, I had set the timer out of curiosity. :)

I had never used chilies in adobo sauce, and don’t think I ever would again to me it was a strange sweet with an underlying smokey taste. I would use maybe habenero or something for some kick and flavor rather than the chili in adobo. I also thought the chili was too soupy so I had to add a little flour to thicken it up.

For us, the chili was a little too sweet and the adobo sauce was really all we could taste. We prefer a spicy chili.

With that being said, it wasn’t the worst dish I’ve ever had. In fact, paired with some corn chips, a little cheese and sour cream garnish my husband and I had two bowls. However in the end, my husband asked that I never make this dish again that he was much happier waiting several hours while it cooked in the Crockpot than this quick dish. I ended up throwing the rest of the pot out.

Saged-Rubbed Pork Chops MINUS the warm apple slaw

We eat pork chops about once a week and I usually overcook them.  I thought I'd try cooking hers with bone-in chops.  They were yummy, but I still over cooked them :( 

I didn't cook the warm-apple slaw- didn't some appealing to me, but I served this with sage and thyme roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus.

Yummy!

Chicken Pot Pie with Phyllo Crust

This was delicious!  The first homemade chicken pot pie I had made was Pioneer Woman's and we loved it!  But it is full of fat! 

I loved using fresh vegetables- I added carrots- and just a bit of heavy cream.  The taste and spices were delicious!  My little guy loved it too!

I'll be making this one again!

Fish Tacos with Chipotle Cream

My husband loves salmon...and dislikes other white fish.
I love white fish...and dislike salmon.

So, whenever I can find a recipe that we both like- we eat it quite a bit.  Our staple fish taco recipe is from a friend from college- not sure where she got it from- but we LOVE it!

http://wearinggackeysapron.blogspot.com/2009/03/outside-of-chicken-box.html

Thought we'd give Ellie's a try since it is very similar, just with a different sauce.  I only used one chipotle pepper and it was a bit too spicy for us- but I liked the marinade she used on the fish.

In the future, I will be doing my original fish taco sauce with her fish marinade!  Think it will go nicely together.

Crispy Chicken Fingers with Honey-Mustard Sauce (p. 200) and Parmesan Mashed Potatoes (p. 262)

Well, this is going to be my first somewhat negative review on a couple of Ellie's recipes. I loved the idea of the crispy chicken fingers, and I will be trying them again, but NOT with Corn Chex. Maybe I did something wrong, but they were not crispy at all (even though I let them sit on the baking sheet as the recipe suggested) and we just didn't like the taste of the Corn Chex. As for the parmesan mashed potatoes, they really didn't seem that different from regular mashed potatoes to any of us. I'm not sure that 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese is really enough to make an impact on the taste buds. On the upside, the honey-mustard sauce was excellent! Sweet and tangy from the mixture of the dijon and the honey - definitely worth throwing together for dipping or as a sandwich spread!!

Peppercorn Pork with Wine Sauce (p. 196)

After reading Carissa's review of this recipe, I decided we had to try it right away and she was right - it was incredible!! Easy to throw together and just delicious. I used a lot more dijon mustard and pepper than the recipe called for - one teaspoon of dijon just didn't seem like it would be enough for me (I LOVE mustard!), and we weren't disappointed. I did the wine sauce with a red wine and my grown-up tasters (my mom and hubbie) both liked it very much. I would be very interested to try it with a white wine next time - and there will most definitely be a next time with this recipe. :)

Balsamic Chicken with Baby Spinach and Couscous, p. 205

This recipe was very yummy and got a thumbs up from all of my tasters. :) I will say that it took me closer to 30 minutes to prepare it (not 15), and I think I would like to try it again with something other than couscous. It was just a tad boring and dry, even with the yummy balsamic sauce - so I was thinking it might be good on a bed of risotto?

Balsamic Chicken.... P. 205

I had made a similiar chicken to this not to long ago but it didn't have the spinach or the couscous. We liked the other one so I thought I'd give this one a go since all the side were in the meal! We also ate some Tx Toast with it...yummy.

I will say it did NOT take 15 min! Maybe if you had staff doing the prepping and cleaning up but there are to many steps using the same pan to get it done that fast.

We enjoyed it, even Isaiah like the couscous and tomatoes!! The only thing I did different is I put my chicken in a breadcrumb mixture with parm cheese...this is how the other recipe did it and I liked that about it. I didn't egg coat it just put the chicken right in the breadcrumbs. I think this added to the goodness!

Sesame-Teriyaki Chicken Thighs p. 209 and Maple-Mustard Chicken Thighs p. 212 as well as Sugar Snap Peas with Miso Sauce p.247

I had lots of chicken thighs in my freezer so was looking for recipes to use them up - with hurricane season upon us, you never want too much stuff in your freezer!!

Made the teriyaki sauce from p. 197 which was really easy as was the chicken recipe. We all liked this chicken and I would make it again.

The sugar snap peas with miso sauce were really good and I will make these again and again. The most difficult part is finding the white miso paste - don't carry at my local Krogers so I headed off to my local asian market - H Mart on Blalock. Of course they had about 15 different varieties of miso paste and since I don't really read Japanese I just picked one! I think it was $4.95 for the smallest package and it is a lot of miso paste! Need to find more recipes that call for this but it definitely had a great taste with the snap peas - don't think you should skip this ingredient!


The maple-mustard chicken was super easy but not a repeat recipe. Didn't like the maple taste with the chicken and my kids did not like the looks of the grainy mustard! I served with sweet potato fries and edamame radish salad.



My daughter and her bestie wanted to be photographed for the blog! For some reason they feel they are famous when their picture appears on this blog - how could I say no?