Slow Cooker BBQ Meatballs

The first half of this recipe is from The Slow Cooker Bible- Your All-in-One Guide to Successful Slow-Cooking

Ingredients

• 1 pound of ground beef
• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 3 tbsp. bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp. dried onion flakes
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper

Mix all of the above ingredients together in a medium bowl. Form meatballs 1 inch in diameter. Place in a pan and bake for 18 minutes.

Additional Ingredients

• Barbecue Sauce
• Montreal Steak Seasoning

Once meatballs are browned in the oven, remove and carefully mix meatballs into about 1 cup of barbecue sauce. Place in slow cooker and cover with an addition 1/4-1/2 cup of sauce and top with the steak sauce seasoning.

Cook on Low for 4 hours.

We ate this one along with mac n' cheese.

Side Dish: Garlic Cheese Rolls

I'm not a fan of the typical spaghetti sauce. So when I make a spaghetti dinner I mix up the noodles in an Alfredo Mushroom sauce by Bertolli that I buy from Jewel. I love it and that's what we had for dinner tonight. We also used whole grain noodles, which taste pretty good and are much healthier (which balances out the Alfredo sauce which isn't all that good for you)!

Rather than having garlic bread, I changed things up and tried out something new. It was based off a picture I saw on Pinterest for Garlic Cheese Rolls. I couldn't find an actual recipe that I liked, so I made my own. Day 7, here we go...

Day 7- Side Dish: Garlic Cheese Rolls

INGREDIENTS

• Pizza Crust
• Butter
• Garlic Powder
• Sliced Pepper Jack Cheese (mozarella would make more sense, but I'm using up the Pepper Jack from yesterday's quesadillas)

RECIPE

1. Cut pizza dough into circles about 1 inch thick. Place on a buttered cookie sheet or pizza tray and smash down the center to create a bowl.
2. Put a small slice of butter into each bowl that will melt when put in the oven.
3. Cover each dough in sliced cheese.
4. Sprinkle just a dash of garlic powder onto each bowl.
5. Bake for about 10 minutes at 375.

Before it's cooked



After

Chicken Quesadillas

This is not my most creative of meals. I started out with the intention of making fajitas... then I switched to enchiladas... but really what I wanted all along was a good old quesadilla. Plus, by the time I got home from class at 7pm, I was ready to cook something easy and familiar and the quesadilla is what I decided to embark on. It's not the most visually appealing of my meals, but don't judge a book by it's cover!!

 

 

 

Day 6: Chicken Quesadillas

 

Earlier this morning I marinated chicken for this fajita/enchilada/quesadilla recipe. Here's what the marinade involved:

• Juice from one lemon (I realize a lime would have been ideal- but a lime didn't already exist inside our refrigerator)
• Cilantro
• Cumin
• Chile Powder
• Red Pepper Flakes
• More cilantro
• Parsley

 

The marinated chicken turned out to be tasty. We had some chicken bits left over and Matt and I both just ate them plain. I can't emphasize enough how much better this meal was with the marinated chicken!

 

 

You probably already know how to make quesadillas, but just in case...

  

INGREDIENTS

• Soft flour tortillas
• Cooked chicken
• Pepper Jack cheese with jalapeno bits (or Monterey Jack, of course)

 

DIRECTIONS 

• Cut up the chicken into cubes and cook on a frying pan. When finished, place off to the side until you're ready for it again.
• Heat up the tortillas on the frying pan, flipping every ten seconds or so, until it starts to bubble.
• Add cheese to each tortilla and chicken bits (on only half of each tortilla) and continue to cook without flipping
• Once the cheese seems almost all melted, fold over half of each tortilla making "sandwiches".

 

Your quesadillas are then ready to eat. I folded the tortilla over before the cheese was fully melted, because it was starting to look burnt. Even so... they didn't really taste like I burned them, they just tasted done.

 

 

 

We enjoyed these with a side (or appetizer) of chips and salsa.

Creamy Mustard-Sauced Chicken

This recipe is based off of one I found on letsdishrecipes.com via a post I saw on Pinterest. I've been planning this recipe all weekend and now finally got to try it out. I'm normally not a fan of mustard on sandwiches and such, but as part of this mixture to season the chicken I thought it was delicious.

Day 5- Dijon Chicken

Begin by seasoning the chicken with pepper and any dry herbs. Saute it over the stove. About half-way through add any fresh herbs you would like to include. I used sage and rosemary.

When chicken is fully cooked, place chicken on a separate dish and begin to make the sauce in the same pan you just used.

To make the sauce, just whisk together the following ingredients for about 2-3 minutes.

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 3 tbsp. Dijon Mustard
• Oregano

Pour over chicken and enjoy!


Serving Suggestions
I poured the sauce over the chicken in a shallow bowl, because it turned out less creamy than I was planning. There was a lot of extra sauce, so I poured some of the excess in a mini-serving bowl and dipped pieces of chicken in it as I was eating. I served it with the same crock pot- corn on the cob recipe that I used last week.

Day 4: Jalapenos are Lethal

Recipe for the Day: Jalapeno Pepper Steak

Warning: Wash your hands thoroughly after handling jalapenos before itching your eye! Will cause dangerous burning. !!!

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of flour
Salt
Pepper
Jalapeno Peppers (I used 3)
2 tsp Worcestshire Sauce
Pepper Steak

• 1 bought about 1 lb of Pepper Steak to make a meal for two
• In a large shallow bowl,I poured the flour and added a dash of salt and a generous amount of pepper.
• I then took the pepper steak, which was already cut into strips, and I put it in the bowl and mixed everything around until all the steak was coated. I then placed it in the crock pot.
• I then cut the jalapenos into strips, not including the seeds. Add them to the crock pot.
• I then put about 2 cups of water, 2 tsp of worcestshire sauce, and then sprinkled on some garlic powder and onion flakes that weren't entirely necessary.

I cooked on high for five hours and then spread it over a casserole dish filled with rice to make a nice little beef mixture.

Special Note: Matt loved this meal and said it was his favorite this week. I, however, thought it was disgusting! I hope you'll agree with Matt and not me!!

Day 3: "Not-Parmesan-Chicken" and Crock Pot Corn on the Cob

My plan all day was to try a really easy parmesan chicken recipe. I could have sworn we had a half-full container of parmesan cheese in the cabinet.

But it turns out we're fresh out, which means breaded chicken is on menu for this evening!

First things first- corn on the cob in the crock pot.
At around 1pm I buttered two cobs of corn and lightly coated it in parsley.
Next I wrapped them each tightly in tin foil and placed them some-what verticalled in the crock pot. I filled it with water so that the water covered a little less than half of the corn.
I left it in there on low for about 4 hours.


The chicken was real simple, too (simple seems to be my thing).
I dipped six chicken legs in eggs and coated them with Italian Style Bread Crumbs.
I placed each of them snuggly in a small casserole dish.
I chose dill weed as my choice of spice for the day... for no other reason than I hadn't used it in awhile. I suppose just about any spice on our rack would have worked fine. I put a solid amount of dill weed on each chicken leg.

This cooked in the oven at 400 degrees for 60 minutes. I carefully flipped the chicken every twenty minutes.

Last time I cooked a similar meal it turned out awful, because I didn't let the breadcrumbs cook long enough.

Day 2: Spicy Shrimp Stew

Woah was that spicy!

Ingredients used:

• Chicken Broth
• Shrimp
• 3 Jalapeno peppers
• Red pepper flakes
• Curry
• Cumin
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Juice from 1 lemon

Matt and I could hardly eat it without our eyes watering... it was SO spicy! I enjoyed it though quite a bit.

It was pretty easy to make, just throwing it all into the crock pot and stirring occasionally. I had class at 4pm, which made it a good meal that I could let cook while I was away.

Bread in the oven! Time to go check on it!

Day 1: Lemon-Salmon with Rosemary

Today I become a chef.


I just picked my first fresh batch of rosemary, thyme, and sage today from my little window-sill herb garden. What's on the menu for dinner, you ask? Lemon-salmon with a few sprigs of rosemary. I'm excited about actually having a meal that looks the part... and these fresh herbs I think are key.

I wasn't sure exactly what to do with these leaves, seeing as though it's my first time. So I google-imaged a few pics and watched a few youtube videos and decided to pick as many branches as I could... sealed the herbs in a few ziplocs... and have them neatly lined up in our freezer. Crossing my fingers that this is the "right thing to do".

I've also washed my hands about seven times since I finished these preparations and my fingers still smell like herbs. I'm enjoying that.

Before we get into the actual recipe, you should know that I am not a cook. I have been married now for just shy of two years (yes, I still consider myself a newlywed) and have yet to find a knack for this cooking business. It's especially tough working full-time and trying to learn something SO BIG. So I'm using my summer off from teaching this year to take risks in the kitchen, document them, and figure this cooking thing out once and for all. I hope you'll join me on this journey and try a recipe or two out for yourself.


Recipe 1:
Ingredients:
1 lemon
A few sprigs of rosemary
Salmon

I layered a oven-safe dish with tin foil and sliced up the lemon into about 4 full slices.
Then I placed each piece of the two pieces of salmon over 2 slices of lemon and placed it all on the dish. I always seem to have trouble with food sticking to the dish or tin foil, and I felt these lemon slices solved that problem.

Then I chopped up the rosemary (or you could use dry rosemary) and sprinkled it on top. This added some flavor, but mostly it just made it look pretty "official".

I then cooked it all for about 25 minutes and it was done! Cooking the salmon on top of the lemon gave it a TON of lemony flavor. The lemon just sizzled amazingly while cooking the the salmon absorbed it all quite nicely.

This was easy. No matter your ineptitude at cooking, I assure you this one is cheap and painless!