Chicken Noodle Soup

So my son is crazy. He'll eat cold plain tofu, frozen chicken nuggets, and the fat off the top of his Yo-baby yogurt. But he won't eat things that most kids eat, like potatoes. And for his birthday, when given the option of having any meal he could ever want, he asks for chicken noodle soup. And it wasn't a fluke either; it's what he wanted for his last birthday dinner too. So here is the recipe for his favorite meal.


1 lb chicken breasts
3-4 ribs chopped celery
4-5 chopped carrots
4-6 oz quartered mushrooms
10-12 cups chicken broth (or water with bullion)
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp pepper
1-2 cloves minced garlic
1 small onion minced
egg noodles


Boil chicken in chicken broth. Remove and cut up chicken. Skim any foam off the broth. Add vegetables and spices. Boil until vegetables are almost tender. Add chicken and egg noodles. Cook until noodles are done.


I actually love that he likes this, because it is one of my less labor intensive meals. You can also make this with turkey (like after Thanksgiving).

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas

I have two recipes for this dish; one from my mother in law and on from a friend in college. I don't follow either of course, although I do reference them to make sure I don't leave any ingredients out (I totally forget the olives all the time and then am very sad when it comes out of the oven). Here is my own version of the recipe.

2 - 2 1/2 cups cooked chopped chicken
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 pint sour cream
1 sm can diced green chili peppers
1 small can sliced olives
2-3 chopped green onions
4 cups shredded cheese (I use Colby jack or Cheddar)
8 soft taco size tortillas


Combine soup, sour cream, peppers, onions and 2 cups of cheese in bowl. Remove two cups of mixture and add to chicken. Fill tortillas with chicken mixture. Place in 9" by 13" pan. Add olives to remaining soup mixture and spread over filled tortillas. Top with remaining cheese. Bake for 30-40 minutes at 350.

I love these and my husband inhales them. Too bad my son refuses to even taste them. I was sure he'd eat them as he loves olives, but he wouldn't even pick those out! He ate a lot of green beans tonight (our one side dish as I have been refusing to make salad as our fridge is currently in the garage and it's way to hard to haul everything to make a salad into in the house and then back into the garage-hey I'm pregnant so I'm allowed to be a little lazy, right?).

Cottage Pie

Last night we had cottage pie. Cottage pie is from England and uses ground beef filling with a mashed potato topping. It is also often called shepherd's pie. But I've always heard that it's cottage with beef and shepherds with lamb, and since I strongly dislike lamb, cottage pie it is!

Filling

1 tbl oil
1 onion minced
2 carrots diced
1 celery stick diced
1 1/2 lb ground beef
2 tbl flour
1 1/1 c beef broth
1 tbl soy sauce
1 tbl Worcestershire sauce
2 tbl tomato sauce
1 tbl tomato paste
2 bay leaves
2 tsp chopped fresh parsley

Topping

1 1/2 lb potatoes
1 oz butter
1/2 c milk

Cook onion, carrot and celery in oil over medium heat until softened about five minutes. Add ground beef and cook through. Drain fat. Add flour and cook for another two minutes. Add beef broth, tomato sauce and paste, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and bay leaves. Simmer over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove leaves and stir in parsley.
For the topping, peel and thinly slice potatoes then boil until cooked through. Drain and mash with butter and milk.
Heat oven to 350 and lightly grease a two quart casserole dish. Put the filling in and top with potatoes. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.


I think this is a nice warm comfort food and I love it, as does my husband. My children both turned their noses up at it, but then, when they hate potatoes, what should I really have expected! I served it with salad, that being all I had energy to do after making it and cleaning the mud off my children before dinner!

Oatmeal Cookies

I cook a lot. I like to cook. I don't bake so much. Cakes and cookies don't do a lot for me. Bread does, but I stink at making it. Therefore, I don't modify baking recipes. I have a few I like and use and I don't vary from the written recipe at all. Because then it might not turn out. And I would be really irritated that I went to all that time only to mess it up. So, when we moved into our new house and I couldn't find anything (including my white sugar) and I wanted cookies, I got a little desperate. I knew what I had on hand and what I wanted in the cookies (oats and lots of brown sugar) but I couldn't find any recipes online that came even close. At this I had to resort to making up my own recipe. I do have some concept about what certain ingredients in cookies do, so taking this and my general knowledge of the proportions in my other cookie recipes, I came up with these:


1/2 c softened butter
6 oz brown sugar
1 egg + 1 yolk
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 oz wheat flour (preferably wheat pastry flour, it's ground more finely)
3 1/2 oz white flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
7 oz old fashioned oats
optional chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs. Add dry ingredients and vanilla. Add chocolate chips if desired. Dough will be sticky. Drop by spoonfuls onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees, turning sheet halfway through. Transfer to rack and cool.

Highly modified ground beef stroganoff

This started as an, "I don't want to cook dinner tonight" recipe I found. Meaning it was supposed to be a very simple and fast dinner. I couldn't do that though. It's not as complicated as the dinner I had planned to make, but more so than the original!

1/2 lb ground beef
1 cup very mashed beans
2 tsp minced garlic
1 cup sour cream
salt
pepper
1 recipe mushroom sauce (or one can cream of mushroom soup)

Brown beef over medium heat. Drain, rinse and return to pan. Add garlic and cook for a couple minutes. Add mashed beans and cook a few more minutes. Add mushroom sauce, sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. Heat through and serve over egg noodles or rice.



Mushroom sauce (credit: Beatrice Ojakangas) better known as a cream of mushroom soup substitute (use in place of one can)

4 tbl butter
1/2 lb mushrooms (you can use less, I only had about 1/4 lb)
1 small onion diced
1/4 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 c beef broth

Melt butter in medium sauce pan. Add mushrooms and onion and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add flour, salt, and pepper, stirring until mushrooms are coated. As beef broth slowly, stirring constantly to thicken sauce. Cook until desired thickness is achieved.



As this was supposed to be an easy dinner I served it with frozen green beans and corn. In different bowls because each child wanted a different vegetable. Go figure.

Faulty Memory

As I have a crummy memory (and always have), I thought that if I started blogging about my meal plans and recipes, I might actually remember them. And then I will hopefully be able to replicate some of what I have done! So really, this blog is totally for me. As in I don't really care who reads it because it's just recipes and notes on them.

So if you're nuts enough to read my ramblings, have fun!