Well hello everyone!  I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah/New Years/Valentine’s Day!  Before we get to the business at hand – food!! – the blog stats were absolutely INSANE today, like biggest day ever insane!  I have no idea why or how, but it’s awesome!  Some of it has been Pinterest, but almost 200 of the hits came from Facebook and my “Easy Weeknight Pasta” post… weird, but awesome!  Alright, it’s been a while, so let’s get back into the swing of things shall we?

When Matt and I moved to Phoenix, I discovered so many new restaurants!  There are always the great local places, but I’m always a sucker for a good chain restaurant.  I had always heard about Chipotle, but never tried it.  Luckily (or unluckily?), there was one about 2 blocks from our apartment.  It was love at first taste!  I always loved the burritos at El Diablo in Missoula because of their cilantro lime rice, so I was excited to have that burrito in a bowl (no more tortilla in my teeth!).  The only problem with these burrito bowls… they were gigantic and so unbelievably unhealthy.  Ok, fast forward to about a month ago… I’m browsing Pinterest, which I do quite often, and I see this recipe for crock-pot chicken that sounds very yummy!  As I’m reading through it, the flavors remind me of Chipotle… and that’s when the lightbulb goes off!  I could totally make this and make my own cilantro lime rice and have my own Chipotle at home and in the portions I want and the fat content I want!  I was super jacked!  Can you tell?!  And what better day for something like this than Super Bowl Sunday?!  Football and crock pots go together like… oh forget it, let’s see it!

DIY Burrito Bowls

So instead of giving the traditional list of ingredients, I’m going to break this down a little differently:

Chicken:

2-4 chicken breasts
1 jar of salsa
1 can of black beans
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tbsp cumin
1/2 tbsp minced fresh garlic
(you can also just use 2-3 tablespoons of premixed taco seasoning instead of the spices)

Throw all of those ingredients into the crockpot for about 4 hours on low. When the time is up, you can literally take two forks or just a wooden spoon and shred the chicken up. Cook it for another hour or so.  You might have to add a little water during this last stage, depending on how hard your crock pot cooks on low (mine is a little out of control at times)…

While the now-shredded chicken is finishing its last cooking cycle, mix up the rice.

Cilantro Lime Rice

2 cups long grain white rice (uncooked)
4 cups of water
Juice of 1 lime
2 tsp salt
6 tbsp fresh, chopped cilantro
2 tsp olive oil

Cook the rice as directed on the package (water/rice measurements may be different, plus I made the 4 servings ratio because I wanted leftovers for lunch). In a separate bowl, mix the lime juice, salt, cilantro, and olive oil together. Once the rice is done, stir it all together.

Now it’s time to put it all together! First, put down a bed of the cilantro lime rice. Top that off with the chicken mixture, some shredded cheese of your choice, guacamole, pico de gallo, and sour cream, and there you have it! You can top it off with a little green leaf lettuce for a little crunch.  Sidenote: I made my own guacamole using Tyler Florence’s Ultimate Guacamole recipe, which is seriously divine.  In fact, now that I’m talking about it and looking at the recipe, I’m craving it….. yummmm!

I hope you guys have fun recreating this recipe!  You could totally do this with pork tenderloin or a beef roast too!  Do your own thing – don’t be afraid to experiment with it!

Happy Dishing!
~Des

Oh. My. Lord. What a slacker I have been! My poor blog has been so neglected! Blame it on being too busy, blame it on being lazy, blame it on whatever you want – the fact of the matter is I haven’t been good about blogging and for that I apologize!  Time to get back into the swing of things!

So where have I been you ask? Oye, what a whirlwind the past couple months have been! As I mentioned, Matt and I were living with my sister, but we have since moved into a townhouse of our own that we absolutely adore! It is about 15 minutes away from work for both of us, so that is perfect! “Wait, work for both of us you say?” Yep, that’s right. I am now gainfully employed! After about a year of being a stay-at-home puppy mom, I figured I should probably find a job.  I ended up getting a job at a hospital in the area in the imaging department (x-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, MRIs, etc.).  Long story short, I schedule exams for patients and doctors offices.  It has been a LOT to learn, but I’m starting to feel like I am getting the hang of things.  This partially explains my lack of blogging – I just don’t seem to have the time during the week, and on the weekends, I’m catching up on housework that I don’t have time for during the week.  Now that the holidays are here, I will be cooking more and starting on my food gifts, so there will be more blogging!  No more of these long hiatuses (if that’s a word)!   So now let’s get back to the food!

Turkey leftovers are everyone’s nemesis.  Don’t even try to deny it – you cook that big ol’ bird and look at the leftovers and the carcass with all its yummy scraps and think ‘now what the heck am I supposed to do with all of this?!’.  Soup, silly!  Make soup!  That is the quickest way to get rid of 90% of it (but save some for sandwiches of course!).  I received this recipe last year from one of Matt’s former coworkers after she brought a big pot of it in and Matt raved about it.  When he tried it, it had ham in it, but I thought I’d give it a whirl with leftover turkey.   It is the BEST!  Be warned, it makes a ton of soup, so plan on freezing a big container of it.

Turkey & Wild Rice Soup

3 cups cooked wild rice (follow package instructions – 1 cup uncooked rice, 2 cups of water)
1 large onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 rib of celery, diced
2 cups of turkey
1 stick of butter
1 cup of flour
6-7 cups of chicken broth
1 cup half & half
Salt & pepper to taste

Saute the onion, carrot, celery, & turkey in butter for about 5 minutes until the onions are translucent. Stir in the flour and continually mix so it doesn’t burn. Slowly add in the chicken broth and keep stirring to keep the flour from clumping. Add the cooked rice, and heat to a boil to thicken. Simmer for 10 minutes to warm through and add the half & half just before serving. Don’t let it come to a boil after you add the half & half. Serve with some warm bread and enjoy!
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This soup is your classic comfort food. It is so creamy and yummy and just perfect for the cold, rainy Seattle day we had today. It’s a really quick recipe, but the wild rice can take 45 minutes or more so be ready ahead of time for that. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do! Now go get rid of that leftover turkey! Happy Holidays!

Happy Dishing!
~Des

Let me just preface this blog post by saying that Matt dubbed this his favorite dessert I have ever made him. Ever. It’s that good. So good that I had some for breakfast! Don’t judge me – it’s fruity and bread-like, which is no different than toast with jam on it! And I’m just going to continue to tell myself that!

Anyways… there is this really cool store near where we live that has all fresh, yummy stuff (like a mini-Good Food Store for you Missoulians). They are always advertising their amazing, fresh, local peaches on signs by the road, so of course I had to stop. I already planned on making a peach cobbler, that much was for sure! Well… yesterday I was sitting outside on the deck in the back yard and noticed that the blackberry bushes were FULL of big, beautiful blackberries! I had heard of peach blackberry cobbler before and decided to give it a whirl. I did some recipe digging and settled on the Pioneer Woman’s Blackberry Cobbler recipe. (This may come as a shock to some of you who know what a food blog lover I am – I didn’t discover the Pioneer Woman’s blog until the beginning of this year! Crazy right?) I didn’t have self-rising flour on hand, so you’ll notice a difference in recipes there.

Peach Blackberry Cobbler
(adapted from The Pioneer Woman)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 cup fresh blackberries (frozen are fine too – just be sure you thaw and dry them good)
1 cup fresh peaches (see above about frozen)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9×13 baking dish with butter. (You could go smaller to make it a little thicker, but you’ll have to increase your cook time a little bit.)

Rinse the blackberries and dry on a paper towel, then peel and pit your peaches and cut into cubes.

In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup of the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the milk and combine. Add the melted butter and whisk until smooth. Pour the batter into the greased baking dish. Scatter the top with all of the blackberries and peaches. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of sugar over the top.

Bake for about 1 hour or until the edges are crispy. When you have 10 minutes of cooking time left, sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Serve warm with ice cream – YUM!
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Just writing this is making me want to go have some cobbler for lunch! I’ll try and control myself… I definitely used more than 1 cup of each fruit – probably more like 1 1/2 cups. This recipe is more of a buckle than a cobbler to me (What’s the difference you ask? A cobbler has more of a biscuit topping with fruit on the bottom – a buckle has the cake on the bottom and then the fruit is put on top like this one and when it’s baked, the fruit sinks to the bottom). Whatever it’s “technical” name is, it is phenomenal!

Happy Dishing!
~Des

Hello friends! I just got back from a week in Missoula with wonderful family, great friends, and, of course, yummy food! As much as I love to cook, it was nice to have every meal cooked for me! The no cooking streak continued until Sunday, and, after almost a week and a half with no cooking on the brain, I wasn’t feeling too creative. After going through the cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer, I decided on hamburger helper. Wait! Before you judge or think “Food out of a box?! From Des?!”, it wasn’t the actual Hamburger Helper – it was my version, which is so easy and so much better!

Homemade Helper

1 lb turkey burger
1 onion, chopped
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup milk
1 cup sour cream
Assorted spices (see description)
Egg noodles

Boil a pan of water and cook the noodles til “al dente”. Brown the burger with the onions until meat is done and onions are translucent. Here is where the “assorted spices” come in: I just kind of grab whatever sounds good to me and sprinkle it in (probably 1/2 tsp or less of each). This time it was Alpine Touch, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, Johnny’s Seasoning Salt, dry parsley, and chili powder. I definitely used more of the Alpine Touch & Johnny’s than anything else. I know it sounds like a lot of spices, but you can definitely use whatever sounds best to you. Dump in the can of cream of mushroom soup, fill the soup can with milk, and pour that in too. Let this mix cook for about 20 minutes on low heat (while the water is coming to a boil and the noodles are cooking). Add in the 1 cup of sour cream, mix well, and then add in the cooked noodles. Stir this all together and serve!
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This is another dish I picked up from my mom over the years, except I added the sour cream in to give it a more “stroganoff” taste. She doesn’t like to cook things from a box, and neither do I as we’ve learned from previous posts. Why cook from a box when you can use fresh ingredients and make it exactly how you like it? (Plus it is SO much better!) We both do a similar dish, but with tuna (aka Tuna Helper). So next time you’re at the grocery store and you reach for that boxed helper, STOP! and think of this recipe and how much better you could make it with your own ingredients and imagination!

Happy Dishing!
~Des

I have heard from sooo many people over the years that they don’t really like to cook chicken very often (especially white meat) because it always tastes so boring. C’mon people… really? That’s so not true, so knock that off! I love cooking chicken! Whether it’s in a recipe like I’m about to post or just coated in a lemon pepper marinade, topped with cheese and baked in the oven, it isn’t boring! Granted, white meat doesn’t absorb as much flavor as dark meat, but it’s far from boring. Next time you have that “chicken is boring” thought, make the following recipe or yesterday’s recipe or this one or this one. Your mind will be changed, and I won’t have to rant in my blogs

Chicken Adobo

Chicken of your choice, skin off (I usually do legs & breasts)
1/2 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (add more or less depending on your preference for spiciness)
Fresh green beans, ends snipped off
Rice

Put the first 8 ingredients into a large electric skillet. Heat on medium high heat for 10-15 minutes, turning the chicken once halfway through. Reduce heat to low, simmering for 2 hours, turning the chicken ever 45 minutes or so. Note: Don’t let the chicken cook too hard or else it will come out VERYYYY salty – you want it at about 200-250 degrees on the skillet setting. Add the green beans about a half hour before serving and increase the temperature to medium low (300 degrees) after 15 minutes. Serve over rice and enjoy!
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This is one of my favorite dishes!  I made it with instant white rice this time, but I prefer brown rice.  The flavor of this dish can very GREATLY on the amount of crushed red pepper flakes you put in, so just know, a little goes a long way!  I’ve had the spice level of this dish get away from me just by adding “one more pinch”. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I do! It was originally going to go on my “Favorite Recipes” page, but it’s too yummy to just throw on a separate page! Nobody puts Chicken Adobo in the corner

Happy Dishing!
~Des

A few years ago, my friend Audra invited all the girls over for dinner. She is a phenomenal cook, so when you get a dinner invite from Audra, you don’t turn it down. She made this pasta that was soooo yummy – I had to have the recipe. Once I saw how easy this dish was, I knew it would become one of my go-to dishes.

Easy Cheesy Pasta with Chicken, Spinach & Tomatoes

1 box of pasta (penne, bowtie, etc.)
1 large can of diced tomatoes with juice
2 8 oz. bags of shredded mozzarella cheese
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 onion (more or less based on preference)
1/2 bag of fresh spinach
2 medium chicken breasts

Boil the pasta in salted water until al dente.

Cut the chicken and onion up into bite size pieces. Saute in butter and olive oil with the garlic until the onions are translucent and the chicken is cooked. Combine the pasta, chicken mix, cheese, can of tomatoes, and spinach in a large bowl until mixed well. Pour into a large baking dish and bake until slightly brown on the edges. Serve with some yummy bread & enjoy!
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I adore this dish! It’s so easy to just throw together, but it tastes like you slaved over the stove for hours! So go ahead and tell everyone it took you hours – it will be our little secret, k?

Happy Dishing!
~Des

It was my sister’s birthday yesterday! As she was told by a coworker, she is 21 with 20 years experience… love that!  I haven’t been able to celebrate her birthday with her in YEARS since she lives in Washington and I was in Montana, so I wanted to do something special today.  The only downside to this is I tend to spend wayyy too much time planning.  I started last night and finally decided on dinner about 12 hours later… with a little help from my niece.  I had decided on something shrimp-y, and it was a toss-up between baked shrimp scampi and coconut shrimp.  Coconut shrimp won (but don’t worry – baked shrimp scampi will show up at some point)!  I didn’t want to deep-fry the shrimp because it just gets heavy that way (and talk about a huge mess!), so I found a good way to bake them instead!  They don’t get as crispy and brown as they do when you fry them, but they’re still just as good!

Coconut Shrimp with Sweet Orange Chili Sauce

2 lbs jumbo shrimp, peeled & deveined
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
4 eggs
1 cup flour
Salt & pepper
Sweet Orange Chili Sauce (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix together the panko and coconut. In another bowl, beat the 4 eggs. In a third bowl, mix the flour and salt & pepper. Dredge the shrimp in the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumb/coconut mixture and place on a baking sheet that you have sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. (I had to mix up more of the breadcrumb/coconut mixture as I went along because it got so saturated with egg and messy) Repeat until you have coated all the shrimp. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the shrimp are a vibrant pink and the coconut is a light toasty brown. (You’ll probably need 2 baking sheets for all of these little nuggets!)

Sweet Orange Chili Sauce

1 6 ounce jar of orange marmalade
1/4 cup sweet Asian chili sauce
1 lime, juiced

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl and keep at room temperature.
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These shrimp were YUMMY! (The leftovers are in the oven reheating for lunch as we speak…) I served it with a Parmesan & Herb Orzo (recipe to follow). The sweet Asian chili sauce is in the Asian section of the grocery store. I found it pretty easily in Safeway, but the bottle is HUGE. More for next time I guess…. As far as cost goes, the most expensive thing here was the shrimp… I just bought one of the bags of frozen shrimp and it was $18 for 2 pounds. (In hindsight, I should have gotten the fresh ones… they were around $8/pound I think… oh well, live & learn!) Everything else was only a few bucks. The giant bottle of sweet chili sauce was $5, but, like I said, I can totally use it again (stir-fry, baked chicken, coconut chicken fingers….).

Parmesan & Herb Orzo

2 1/2 cups orzo pasta
1 clove of garlic, minced (1 large clove, or 2 small – I used 2 small ones)
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (or any Italian cheese mix you want – I used Mario Batali’s Tre Formaggio from Safeway)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper

Cook orzo as directed on the package. In a large bowl, mix the cooked orzo with the remaining ingredients and serve warm or chilled. (I served it warm and the cheese was all melty and gooey!)
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Several recipes I looked at for this style of pasta dish called for about 1/4 cup of chopped red onion, but I omitted that since neither Matt or my niece like onion that much. Other recipes I found called for shallots instead of onion. You could also make this with basil instead of parsley and it would be just as yummy! Cost here was less than $10 for all ingredients.

So Happy Birthday, big sister! I’m so happy I was able to spend your birthday with you & spoil you with a yummy dinner! Maybe I should start planning now for next year! What? Too soon?

Happy Dishing!
~Des

When I told Matt we were having baked ziti for dinner, he said “Sounds great!… what’s a ziti?” To most people, pasta is just simply pasta… the different types and names don’t matter. The long ones are spaghetti, the tubed ones are penne, the curved ones are macaroni.  So not true!  There are SOO many different names and types of pasta! I won’t begin to get into it here because that would be a very long post, and quite honestly, I don’t even know all the different pastas… but next time you’re at the grocery store, branch out! If a recipe calls for spaghetti, try thin spaghetti, or vermicelli, or fusilli (that’s a fun one!). If it says penne, use rigatoni, shells, or farfalle (bow-ties). The type of pasta you use isn’t going to ruin the dish (unless you try to make lasagna with macaroni… that could be strange). This is especially fun if you have kids – plus you can sometimes find colored pasta (Wacky Mac is a great brand)!

So this post is about ziti… ziti isn’t anything fancy. It is just a plain, tubed pasta with straight edges (not to be confused with penne which is usually textured with angled edge). I’ve just always thought the name sounded fun! You could totally use whatever kind of pasta you wanted with this dish, but it tends to stay together better with a short, rounded pasta (penne, ziti, rigatoni).

Easy Peasy Baked Ziti

1 pound of ground turkey or beef or Italian sausage
1 jar of red sauce (your choice)
1 box of ziti pasta
1 cup of parmesan cheese
1 1/2 cups of mozzarella cheese

In a medium-sized saucepan, brown the ground meat. Add in the red sauce and simmer on low for a half hour so the meat can absorb the flavor of the sauce.

When the sauce is ready, boil a large pot of water on the stove and add the pasta in when it is boiling. Cook the pasta until it is al dente (still a little chewy) and drain. Put the pasta into a 13×9 baking dish and carefully mix in the meat sauce. Stir in all but a handful of the parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, and top the dish with the remaining cheese. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for a half hour, removing the foil after 20 minutes so the cheese can brown up and get bubbly. Serve with some yummy bread and enjoy!

So I know what you’re probably thinking… isn’t this just spaghetti with different pasta, baked in an oven? Well yeah, basically, but with the pasta being slightly undercooked, it absorbs the flavor of the meat sauce and the cheese gets all melty…. it’s super yummy! This is an easy weeknight dish when you’re short on time, or can be nice enough for Sunday dinner!

Happy Dishing!
~Des