Recipe 10: Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas

Chicken and cheese...I don't know of any two other foods that are more loved in this house. So, when I came across a recipe for cheese quesadillas, I couldn't help but write it down on my list of recipes to try. 

As with the pizza recipe, Kevin grilled the chicken breasts. I'm not quite brave enough to do anything other than hot dogs and burgers, mainly for fear of overcooking or under cooking poultry. Kev and I have had food poisoning...that's all we needed to make us both almost paranoid when it comes to food prep.  I followed Mark's recipe almost completely, except for omitting the diced chilies and I think I doubled the cheese. I had them ready and waiting to mix in, but chickened out.  We tried different variations: the boys had chicken and a mixture of taco cheese, and cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. Kevin added scallions and red peppers, and I added salsa straight to the quesadillas, along with the scallions. I paired it with yellow rice and the whole dinner turned out to be really great!! My favorite was Kevin's choice...the red pepper made it so much more flavorful, just enough tart and sweetness.  On the side, we had mild salsa (can't have enough of that either) and low fat sour cream.  Yumm.....

Next time, I would like to add in the chile, just to try it. I also found that I only need to make half the recipe....oh, and I'll remember to use the large burner, not the small. One quesadilla was quite cooked in the center, and not so cooked on the outer edges.  I'll blame that on my tired brain not thinking ;)

Recipe 9: Fresh Tomato Salsa

I love me some salsa. Tons of it. Give me a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of mild, even medium salsa and I'm in heaven. When the recipe for quesadillas that I made this evening (see next blog) called for salsa, I took it as a chance to make my own.

Now, part of the problem of being a novice cook is that you don't always predict how things taste. I mixed together the fresh tomato / salsa fresca / pico de gallo ingredients into my favorite bowl: tomatoes, a jalapeno (my first!), onion, garlic, and fresh parsley. I do have to admit that it looked beautiful. I was so excited I even texted my husband boasting how pretty it looked in the bowl (and I can now understand how people can think food is pretty).  I poured in the tablespoons of lime juice, swirl it around with my rubber spatula, grabbed a bite....and spat it back out. I don't know what in the combination made it taste so badly, but it honestly tasted like grass (I'm guessing the lime juice).  I thought it was just me and when Kevin came home, he even cringed. I let it sit overnight, thinking the flavors had to come together, but when my mom came to care for our toddler in the morning, she even had to ask what the horrible smell was.  Let's just say it made it straight to the compost pile.

So, while this recipe experiment didn't pan out to what I had hoped, I did get more practice. I cored and seeded a tomato and jalapeno pepper for the first time...and I can't wait to plant the pepper's seeds soon!  I may give this recipe another shot and this tie puree it in the Magic Bullet blender.  Until then, I'll stick with the jar stuff....

Recipe 8: Ziti with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

I'll be honest...again. When it comes to cheese, I don't have much experience. I know the basics of cheddar, mozzarella, pepper jack, American, Parmesan, and provolone....even some ricotta and feta. So, when I flipped through the cookbook to find my five meals I'd try this month, I came across this recipe.  It was cheese with cream sauce. Sounded good and what can go wrong with cheese and sauce!!

When I went grocery shopping, I once again had to ask where in the world to find what I was looking for. I didn't have a clue if it was block, soft, crumble, wrapped, or in a for that matter, in a can. (Ok, this one not really) With the help of the deli lady who thought I was crazy, I found where they stashed all the specialty cheeses...which is pretty cool. I'm definitely learning more about our grocery store. (Just when I thought I had it memorize aisle by aisle...seriously.) And, because I don't have a problem asking anyone anything, I didn't lose any pride either ;)

Now, on to the recipe. I'll just start by saying that I loved it. My children loved it. And, my hubby, the household chef, gave it a thumbs up.  My favorite part of the recipe is the amount of time it took; 20 minutes total and it made more than I thought!  I followed his recipe (easy!!) and then I ran into scary, uncharted territory: adding seasoning as needed.  I ran a few ideas by Kevin and he suggested parsley and agreed with my choice of garlic.  Sprinkle on a little more Parmesan, because there's no such thing as too much cheese in our house, pair it with Texas garlic toast, and voila! We had one yummy dinner. It was a completely new taste for us; different but good.  Even the smell was different. It had that distinct feta-family cheese smell. The only thing I'd like to look into is matching this with some sort of meat, because it's hard for us to just eat noodles. That'll come later on.

Our older son set up our front porch, so we had this delicious dish al fresco in the beautiful 69* Florida evening. Wonderful!!

Recipe 7: Homemade Pizza

It's Valentine's Day!!  So, to make dinner with the family even more special, Kevin and I thought that making a collaborative dish would be wonderful. While going through the recipes last month, homemade pizza came up and we both thought it would be great. Flash-forward to today: He was responsible for the sauce and the toppings for his pizza; spaghetti sauce is one of his specialties so it would be interesting for him to try pizza sauce. I was responsible for the dough and the toppings for my pizza.

As my dough sat to rise, Kevin's sauce simmered on the stove and I browned mild sausage for my pizza. It smelled SOOO good in our house!! But, I wasn't sure how it would all come together or how the dough would be: would it be soft and undercooked or would I burn the heck out of it?

Kevin's chicken, pepper, onion pizza: before

I rounded out two discs of dough (I found that I LOVE working with dough by hand!) and they each made a surprisingly large size pizza, larger than a Tombstone pizza at least! The last time I used my pizza stone for pizza, it came out soggy, so I used Mark's olive oil/baking sheet method. I brushed olive oil on the pan and on the whole surface of the pizza, then poured on Kevin's sauce, and layered on mozzarella cheese, sausage, and pepperoni on half (older son doesn't care for it). Kevin created his favorite pizza: grilled chicken, fresh green peppers, and onions...and tons of cheese.  Before I put it in the oven, I literally said a prayer for it to turn out decent. Oh yes, I really did.


And, my prayer was answered.  Not only was it decent, it was delicious!!! Crust, toppings, sauce, cheese were all perfect! It was sooo good. I was so happy I did things right on the first try I literally did a happy dance in the kitchen.

So, Valentine's Day dinner was wonderfully delicious and I'm one happy and full girl. Can't wait to take my leftovers to school tomorrow!!! :)

April's pepperoni and sausage pizza:after

Kevin's pizza: after. YUM!

Recipe 6: Oven-fried chicken

It's been a crazy few weeks lately, so I'll admit that we had to lean on fast food a bit and we cooked less. I did manage to cook this meal about two weeks ago and procrastinated writing the blog. Oops. And, I'll also admit that the picture was taken in my leftovers container. Oops again. I promise I'll be better next meal...which I'll write about in two minutes, haha!

This meal wasn't too bad. the oven-fried chicken was good, but the homemade bread crumbs just didn't pan out. They became soggy in the middle, but I did forget to put the Parmesan cheese in the mix, so maybe that had something to do with it. I added Italian seasoning to the crumbs and that worked well. The taste to the dinner was good; just something was up with the texture. On the second shot, I plan to make sure to put in the cheese and I'd love to try the Japanese bread crumbs he suggests...just hoping someone around here carries it!!