Eggnog French Toast – Christmas Breakfast Traditions

Tags

Breakfast, Christmas, Cooking, Easy, eggnog, Elf, fast, Food, french toast, recipe, texas toast

  
My husband started our Christmas morning breakfast tradition. He makes us a wonderful eggnog French toast every year. It is so easy, but so tasty. The eggnog gives the dish a distinctive Christmas flavor that sets it in your memory. It tastes like Christmas!!!

If you’re looking for something memorable, yet quick and easy to make this is the perfect Christmas breakfast or brunch dish!

How do you make it?

• Fresh Texas Toast bread (NOT the seasoned frozen kind, the plain fresh type)
• Eggnog (We use lowfat)
• Fresh nutmeg
• Powdered sugar (optional)
• Maple syrup (NOT OPTIONAL!!! I need syrup and lots of it! As we learned in the movie Elf, it is one of the main food groups!)
• Butter

Step 1 – Dip each side of Texas toast in eggnog

Step 2 – Cook toast in pan or on griddle until golden brown

Step 3 – Sprinkle with fresh nutmeg, powdered sugar, drown in maple syrup, top with some butter

Step 4 – DEVOUR!!!!

See! Easy as 1,2,3,4!

Merry Christmas!!!

Lemon/Artichoke Chicken and Rice With Asparagus – Easy One Pot Meal

Tags

Artichoke Hearts, Asparagus, Chicken, Cooking, Easy, Food, healthy, one pot meal, recipe, Rice

  
I do love to cook, but some nights I’m just not in the mood. I still want something tasty and healthy to eat though. Last night was one of those nights. I just didn’t feel up to spending a lot of time standing in front of the stove or doing much of anything. I was feeling lazy, OK?!?

Here’s where a one pot meal in my handy Dutch oven comes in! It was too late to use the slow cooker, so I decided to throw a bunch of yummy stuff in my Dutch oven and slide it in the oven.

Lemon Artichoke Chicken with Rice and Asparagus

1 ¾ cup brown rice

1 cup fat free chicken broth

¾ cup white wine

¼ cup lemon juice (fresh or bottled)

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breasts

2 garlic cloves, pressed or chopped

1 – 15 oz can quartered artichoke hearts

1 tbsp capers

¾ – 1 pound asparagus, cut into bite size pieces (I had white asparagus on hand, so I used that. It tasted great and my family didn’t realize the veggie was even in the dish. However, it didn’t provide much color to the dish, making it look rather one note. If you’re not trying to be sneaky about your veggies, green asparagus would add some nice color to the dish)

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put rice and all liquid in put first and give a stir making sure all rice is covered in the liquid. Next, add all of your other ingredients. Put the lid on the oven, put the pan in the oven, bake for 1 hour 15 minutes and voila! I did pull it out of the oven and stirred it a few times.

You’ve got your protein, starch and veggie all in one pot! Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Pasta – Super Quick and Super Tasty!!!

Tags

Cooking, Cream Cheese, Easy, Food, pasta, Ravioli, recipe, slow cooker, spinach

  
  

So my evil sister posted this recipe on Facebook. She’s not really evil! She’s actually pretty awesome, but she posts these fattening recipes! She is much better about going to the gym than I!

Anyway, this sounded good, so I thought I would give it a try. It was delicious!!! I forgot it was tortellini, so I went with ravioli. I also didn’t have the Italian style tomatoes, so I added fresh garlic and basil. I have a ton of homemade chicken broth in my freezer, so I decided to use that rather than buy vegetable broth. And as I usually do, I try to use reduced fat or fat free products. My grocery store doesn’t have non-fat cream cheese, so I went with the reduced fat.

I guess I complicated the recipe a bit, but it was still super easy and extremely flavorful! My recipe made aout 6 servings. We ate it with a green salad on the side.

Slow Cooker Pasta

3-8oz containers frozen ravioli or tortellini (I used a combo of chicken ravioli and cheese ravioli) 

1/2 salad size bag of baby spinach, chopped

1 -28 oz can crushed tomatoes in puree

1 – 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, not drained

2 cloves garlic, pressed or diced 

4 large fresh basil leaves diced

3 cups broth, I used homemade chicken broth

8 oz reduced fat cream cheese

Put all ingredients in slow cooker. I made sure there was some of the tomatoes on the bottom as a base before adding the pasta. I did stir during cooking a couple of times. 

Mangia bene!

Caprese Chicken – A Delicious, Fresh Chicken Recipe

Tags

caprese, Chicken, Cooking, Easy, Food, healthy, lowfat, recipe

  

What should I make for dinner??? The age old question of cooks everywhere! So I had some chicken thawed out. I had this beautiful, fresh basil plant sitting in my kitchen window. I also had some organic Roma tomatoes on hand. I was thinking a Caprese inspired chicken sounds great!

A Caprese salad is usually slices of fresh tomatoes with high quality motzarella and fresh basil. I just decided to top my chicken with this tasty combination. 

This delicious dinner was rounded out with a side of brown rice and green salad topped with radishes, onion and more tomatoes.

Caprese Chicken

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breastss

Olive oil spray

Pepper

Garlic salt

Balsamic vinegar

Chopped fresh basil

Sliced tomato

Shredded Fat-free Mozzarella Cheese(Or you can use a higher fat version. I was just trying to keep it low-fat.)

Spray a baking pan with olive oil. Place the chicken in the pan and spray lightly with olive oil. Season the chicken with pepper and garlic salt. Sprinkle basil over the chicken. Place tomatoes on top of chicken and then drizzle balsamic vinegar over tomatoes and chicken. Top the chicken and tomatoes with the motzarella cheese. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes or until chicken is cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees and the cheese is well melted.

Mangia bene!

Swedish Meatballs – A Cheat that Makes this Meal a Breeze!

Tags

Cooking, Easy, Food, healthy, recipe, seasoning packet, Swedish Meatballs

  
 Don’t judge me, but sometimes I do take shortcuts with my cooking. As long as something is delicious, I don’t feel every last thing has to be from scratch. Plus, if you’re cooking for a large group of people it can be very helpful to have a few tricks up your sleeve!

Yesterday, we were having our typical family dinner. My older daughter and her husband come over for dinner and sometimes they bring friends with them. It’s a great time! I also wanted to cook dinner for a friend that has medical issues and can’t cook for her family.

I decided to make a huge batch of Swedish meatballs, as my friend had requested it and it’s been a long-time family favorite. I have found the McCormick seasoning packet shown in the photo to be a great resource making delicious Swedish meatballs easy to mix.

I was tripling my batch, so I used 3 pounds of ground turkey and 3 of these seasoning packets.  One part of the packet is seasoning that you mix with the meat. I then formed all my meatballs. I put them in a oven-safe casserole dishthat was sprayed with non-stick spray. With so many meatballs to cook, I decided to bake them instead of pan frying them. This also used a lot less oil. I baked them at 375 for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile I used the other part of the seasoning packet to make the sauce.

I wanted to make sure I had plenty of sauce, so I supplemented the packet recipe with non-fat sour cream,  Worchestershire sauce and a little instant brown gravy mix to keep it thick.

Once the sauce was mixed and thickened, I added the baked meatballs to the sauce and stirred, so they were well covered and let them simmer in the sauce for 5-7 minutes. I served the meatballs and sauce over whole wheat fettucine noodles. It was delicious and my famly devoured every last meatball!!!

So check out some of the various seasoning packets available in your local grocery store. They can make a delicious dinner a little easier to make!

Balsamic Vinaigrette Recipe – An Easy to Make Low-fat Dressing/Marinade

Tags

Balasamic Vinegar, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Cooking, Dressing, Easy, Food, healthy, low-fat, marinade, Olive Oil, Quick, salad, Salad Dressing

  
The great thing about making your own foods, rather than buying them, is you know EXACTLY what is in the food. You get fresher, healthier foods with less chemicals. You can also more accurately track the nutritional values of the food.

Today I thought I would share my super-easy to make Balsamic Vinaigrette recipe. It’s so tasty and versatile. In addition to using it on green salads, I’ve used it on my Southwestern Layered Salad (see previous post for recipe) and as a meat marinade on both chicken and beef.

Another great thing about this recipe, is that you can adjust the oil to vinegar ratio to fit your taste or fat content desires. I usually go 50/50, but at times I do use more vinegar to lower the fat content. Balsamic vinegar is such a mild vinegar, you can get away with doing this and still get good flavor.

Balsamic Vinaigrette

Note: My recipe is based on the size of my salad dressing container. Adjust quantities to suit your needs.

3/4 cup olive oil

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 crushed and chopped garlic clove (I use my garlic press)

1 tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped (can substitute 1 tsp dried basil, but fresh is best!)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Put all ingredients in your container, shake or whisk vigorously and enjoy!

Tip: When dining out, don’t be afraid to bring your own salad dressing. Dressings can be a diet killer! I do this all the time. I just order my salad with no dressing or dressing on the side. I take a little teasing, but hey! They don’t have to wrestle my bod into jeans!!!