What's Cooking?

It was mostly Kaleb that cooked in the last few weeks. He gets home an hour and a half before the girls.

We use a lot of chicken.

We really like  this recipe.
Crispy Cheddar Chicken
2 lbs chicken tenders or 4 large chicken breasts 
2 sleeves Ritz crackers
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper 
1/2 cup whole milk 
3 cups cheddar cheese, grated

Sauce:
1 10 ounce can cream of chicken soup
2 tablespoon sour cream
2 tablespoon butter

Crush crackers. If using chicken breasts and not tenders, cut each chicken breast into 3 strips. Pour the milk, cheese and cracker crumbs into 3 separate bowls. Toss the salt and pepper into the cracker crumbs and stir the mixture around to combine. Dip each piece of chicken into the milk and then the cheese. Press the cheese into the chicken with your fingers. Then press the cheesy coated chicken into the cracker crumbs. 

Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray and arrange the chicken in the pan. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Remove the tin foil, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the edges of the chicken are golden brown and crispy. 

In a medium sized saucepan combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream and butter with a whisk. Stir it over medium high heat until hot. Serve over the chicken. 

This recipe was off the back of a pasta box.

Bacon Ranch Chicken Skillet

1 pkg Mueller's Ziti (16 oz)

1 T vegetable oil

6 slices bacon

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast cubed

3 c chicken broth

1 ½ c milk

2 T all-purpose flour

1 pkg original buttermilk ranch dressing (.4 oz)

Fry bacon until crisp. Cool and crumble.

Cook the chicken in the oil (or use the bacon grease) in a large skillet, stirring frequently until the chicken is browned.  Add the chicken broth and bring to simmer. Reduce heat and add the ziti. Cooked covered for ten minutes or until done stirring frequently.

Whisk together milk, flour and ranch dressing mix in a medium bowl. Add to pasta and cook, stirring frequently until slightly thickened. Gently stir in bacon and serve.

Optional: add diced tomatoes when you add the bacon. 

We've been making popcorn on the stove. This is a novelty for the kids. I wish I had the long  handled popcorn pan my dad used to use for this.

On Saturdays when we have more time I let the kids make their own eggs. We generally don't have hot breakfast during the week since we eat at 5:20 a.m.!

Kaleb made maple pork chops. 

It came out really well! We used scallop cut pork.

Maple Pork Chops

1/3c maple syrup

1 T. spicy brown mustard

1/4 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1/4c breadcrumbs

4 thin pork chops or cutlets

2 t. olive oil

1/2c apple cider

3-4 Granny Smith apples cored and cut into 16 wedges

Combine maple syrup, mustard, salt and pepper in small bowl. Coat pork chops with the breadcrumbs. Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the pork and cook it for 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Add the cider and apple wedges. Simmer uncovered 5-7 minutes. Stir in the maple syrup mixture and cook 5 minutes more.

Jasmine poured the Mountain Dew for the Mountain Dew apple dumplings. We found the recipe in a book, but modified it because it called for 1 1/2 cup sugar!! We also cut the apples much thinner. Even though we cut back the cooking time by 15 minutes, ours were still a little too brown. Next time we are going to cut it back more or cover them with foil.

Apple Dumplings (our version)

2 packs of crescent rolls (regular or reduced fat)

3 apples thinly sliced (we did 16 thin slices)

One stick of margarine

½ cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

12 ounces Sprite or Moutain Dew

Wrap 4 slices of apple (or so) in a crescent roll triangle.

Roll from large end to small end

Place in 9x13 cake pan

Melt butter and add the sugar and cinnamon.

Pour over the crescent rolls.

Pour the soda over the crescent rolls.

Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes or until the apples are tender and the rolls are light brown. If they brown too fast, cover with foil.