Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Weekly menu for May 18-24

Here's the menu for this week:

Friday, May 18: Chili
Saturday, May 19: Crockpot Shredded Pork with Red Slaw
Sunday, May 20: Out
Monday, May 21: Leftovers
Tuesday, May 22: Peanut Sauce Stir Fry
Wednesday, May 23: Tacos
Thursday, May 24: Pork Chops and Asparagus
Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Buffalo Chicken Wings

Sometimes the simplest things to make are also the tastiest. Such is the case with Buffalo Chicken Wings. Pretty much all you have to do is bake some chicken wings, pour sauce over them, and devour them until your lips are on fire from the spicy sauce. You don't even need cooking skills to enjoy this meal.



We prefer the Original Frank's over the Buffalo Wing Sauce based only on the ingredient list. If you don't mind the few extra ingredients in the Buffalo Wing Sauce, this recipe is even easier. Simply open the bottle and pour over the cooked wings.

Buffalo Chicken Wings
Slightly adapted from Frank's Red Hot

Ingredients:
Chicken Wings (You can buy these frozen or fresh, just be sure to remove the tips if they come included.) We plan on an average of 7 wings per person.
2/3 cup Frank's Red Hot Original
1/3 cup butter

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Place wings on cookie sheet covered with parchment paper and bake for 45 minutes.
With ten minutes remaining in the baking time, combine Frank's and butter in a small pan over medium heat.
Place the finished wings in a bowl and pour the sauce over them and stir.
Serve and enjoy!

Weekly menu for May 11-17

I realize this is coming way late in the week, but here's what we've been eating the past few days.

Friday, May 11: Bunless burgers (these got pushed back a day from last week)
Saturday, May 12: Noodless Alfredo
Sunday, May 13: Red snapper with mango salsa, salad and couscous (Mother's Day meal)
Monday, May 14: Chicken wings
Tuesday, May 15: Beef curry
Wednesday, May 16: Cauliflower pizza
Thursday, May 17: Chicken thighs
Friday, May 11, 2012

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

As I mentioned last week, there's really only two meals I'm semi-responsible for putting on the table. The first being Spaghetti Sauce, and the other are these Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas.

We served these with fresh tomatoes and cilantro. And a Corona Light
because it was Cinco de Mayo and we're cliche like that.
I've been eating them for years, as this is another recipe that's been passed down to me from my mom. I again have no idea where they came from, although for some reason I feel like I've seen it in one of my cookbooks. Taste of Oregon rings a bell.

Regardless of where it originated, these enchiladas are delicious. In fact, because of these bad boys I no longer have a desire to ever eat the standard red-sauce variety ever again. It's not that the standard version is bad per say...these are just that good.

These do take a bit of time to make, so I recommend assembling them the night before if it's a week night.

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
An All Meat and No Potatoes original

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
1 cup sour cream
1 can of cream of chicken and mushroom soup
1 can of diced green chilies
1 1/5 cups of Mexican blend cheese
9 soft taco size tortillas
2 jalapenos (optional)
1/2 medium onion (optional)
5 mushrooms (optional)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium sized pot, boil the chicken until cooked thoroughly. Shred into small pieces and set aside.
While the chicken is cooking, saute jalapenos, onion, mushrooms or whatever veggies you like. Once cooked, set aside to let cool.
Meanwhile, combine sour cream, soup and green chilis. Add the vegetable mixture once cooled. Set aside approximately 1 cup of the sauce mixture. In the larger portion of sauce, add the chicken. Often times I don't quite use the full amount of chicken so use your judgement here.
In a tortilla shell take one or two spoonfuls of the chicken mixture and sprinkle with a pinch of cheese before rolling it up. Place in a 9 x 13 pan and repeat until you run out of the chicken mixture. This seems to be about 8 or 9 tortillas.
Once all the tortillas are in the pan, cover with the remaining cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Weekly Menu for May 4 – 10

This week's dinner plan is full of delicious standbys in our household. Stay tuned later this week for a post on the Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas.

Friday, May 4: Salmon with homestyle sweet potatoes
Saturday, May 5: Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
Sunday, May 6: Pot roast with mashed potatoes
Monday, May 7: Barbecue Chicken thighs with cottage cheese
Tuesday, May 8: Ground Beef Tacos
Wednesday, May 9: Steak with mushroom fish sauce
Thursday, May 10: Bunless Burgers
Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Spaghetti Sauce

I should probably come clean about something. Despite the fact that I have this food blog, I don't actually do much cooking. I help out, and take care of the dishes, but the real chef in the family is my husband. He's really the one making all of these delicious meals I keep talking about. There are about two exceptions to this: Spaghetti Sauce and Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas (which I'll post about next week). These were really the only two good recipes I brought into this marriage, so I'm more likely to be in charge of these over anything else we eat.

The spaghetti sauce recipe comes from my mom. She's been making it for as long as I can remember. We've slowly adapted it to our own recipe, since the original involves a couple packets of Lawry's spaghetti sauce packets (full of crap like modified food starch and hydrolyzed soy protein). It's easily just as good, and far better for you. It's also extremely cheap to make and makes about 12 servings of sauce. Be sure to clean out some freezer space before making this dish. We find it freezes best in the glass quart canning jars.

We've been serving this over zucchini noodles, making it full of nothing but healthy vegetables and some protein from the meat.



Spaghetti Sauce
An All Meat and No Potatoes Original

Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 pound italian sausage
1 large onion
1/2 head garlic
10 mushrooms, sliced (or more based on personal preference)
80-90 ounces of crushed tomatoes (Check Costco for a big ol' jar for under $3!)
1 teaspoons kosher salt
Cracked pepper - a few twists
1.5 teaspoons thyme
3 teaspoons basil
2 teaspoons oregano
4 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic power

Directions
In a large dutch oven or deep pot, fry the ground beef and italian sausage. When it's almost down, add onion and garlic. Saute until onion is soft.
Add tomato sauce and spices. Mix everything together, then add the mushrooms.
Simmer for one hour, stirring regularly.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Weekly menu for April 28 - May 3

Here's what we've got cookin' this week!

Saturday, April 28 - Cauliflower crust pizza
Sunday, April 29 - Out
Monday, April 30 - Orange chicken
Tuesday, May 1 - Spaghetti
Wednesday, May 2 - Pork chops
Thursday, May 3 - Shepherd's Pie