new recipes

I have never been very good at following directions.  I tend to like improvisation.  Because of this, any time I try a new recipe, the outcome is always a toss up.  This week I tried two new recipes and both turned out great, though both got a bit of my personal touch.  Whether you follow the recipe exactly, or make it your own, both are worth trying.

The first recipe is called Lazy Lasagna and I claim absolutely no credit for it.  The recipe comes from Katharine over at Just a Thought.  She is always posting great recipes (not to mention great posts about other things), so I encourage you to take a moment to visit.  I am sure that this recipe would have been perfect exactly as written, but since I don't use jarred spaghetti sauce (I can my own tomatoes, so I prefer to use them), I decided I could just make my own, like I normally do.  It would have worked fine if I had realized that I was out of tomato paste BEFORE I started cooking.  I did follow Katharine's suggestion and use ground turkey instead of ground beef and honestly couldn't tell the difference.  The results tasted great, but took longer than it should have because I had to wait for Ronnie to stop by the grocery store on his way home from work.  Still, the dish itself was delicious and got rave reviews from all of my family, kids included ... which, not surprisingly, is unheard of with my experimental dishes.  I was thrilled and will definitely be adding this to my arsenal of menu choices, though I do think I will reduce the amount of pasta, since counting carbs is a big deal at our house these days.  Thanks for sharing, Katharine!

The second dish came from one of my new(er) friends, Rosanna.  It is called Comforting Chicken Noodle Soup.  Yes, I know that I live in Mississippi and I am aware that it is summer, which means that we voluntarily live in an oven, but my youngest son asked me to make chicken noodle soup, so I figured that was a good enough excuse for making soup in the summer.  (As a side note, my Mama expressed her confusion about why it is taboo to eat soup in the summer anyway and I have to agree with her ... we eat most of our food hot anyway, so what does it matter if it is soup?  Good question, Mama!)  Anyway, back to the soup.  I'll give you the recipe first and then tell you how I personalized it.

Comforting Chicken Noodle Soup
8 cups water
8 chicken bouillon cubes
6 1/2 ounces medium egg noodles
2 cans cream of chicken soup
3 cups cooked chicken
1 cup sour cream

Bring water to boil with bouillon cubes.  Add noodles; cook uncovered until tender - about 7 1/2 minutes.  Do not drain.  Add cream of chicken soup and chicken.  Heat through.  Remove from heat; stir in sour cream.

Again, I am sure that this recipe would be just fine on its own, but I have started making my own cream of chicken soup, so I used that and instead of water and bouillon cubes, I just boiled the chicken and used the broth (after it cooled, with most of the fat removed).  Other than those things, I followed the recipe just as it is written, except that I added some of the hot broth to my cold cream of chicken soup and stirred it in a separate bowl until it was smooth before adding it all back into the boiling soup on the stove.  Again, the results were quite tasty ... even my hubby, who HATES to eat soup in summer, liked it.  He and I had a preview tonight, but it will be the main dish for lunch tomorrow and hopefully the kids will like it, too!  Ideally, this is where I would thank Rosanna for sharing her recipe, but since she doesn't blog (or read them, as far as I know) I'll have to settle for actually thanking her face to face the next time I see her ... though I do think I'll send her a link, just as a teaser! ;-)

Just for the record, as much as I enjoy cooking and trying new dishes, it always seems that I make a bigger mess when I cook something new.  I'm not sure why that is true, but I do know that I must thank my wonderful husband for cleaning up my mess while I put all of LB's clothes in her new dresser tonight!

the salsa recipe that isn't really mine

This week in my daybook I shared a picture of veggies roasting in the oven for salsa and a couple of people asked about the recipe so I thought I'd share it with you today.

First, in the interest of full disclosure, this is not "my" recipe.  My sister-in-law brought this wonderful salsa to our family's new year's gathering at my parents' house.  I could have skipped all the other food and just eaten the salsa ... I'm telling you, this stuff is addictive, so be prepared.  It is a little time consuming to make, but very much worth the effort.

I just knew that Rebecca had spent hours testing and coming up with the perfect recipe since she always has great ideas for new things.  So, she surprised me this time by just giving me the website where I could find the recipe.  I have made the salsa a couple of times, as has another one of my sisters-in-law.  We have each made adjustments to meet the tastes of our family, but the basic recipe is still the same.

I have to tell you that the first time I made the recipe I was too cheap frugal to buy the roma tomatoes that it called for, which was a mistake.  The results were still quite tasty, but just not the same.  I am looking forward to this summer when I can try out the recipe with different types of fresh tomatoes - hopefully some from my own garden.  Until then, if I am going to take the time to make the recipe, I will splurge on the good romas ... which I actually found for a decent price at Sam's Club.

One piece of advice if you are going to make this salsa ... read the comments below the recipe on the website.  I found lots of good information about customizing the salsa to individual tastes.  For me, I don't really like the tomato skins, so I removed some of them before blending.  Another great tip is to cut and core the tomatoes before roasting, this seemed to simplify the process of handling the hot veggies.  I also really like the flavor of cilantro and cumin, so I upped the amounts of these two ingredients slightly.

I happened to be watching one of my favorite chefs on tv last night - Rick Bayless.  (I am sure you were expecting some food network personality, but this show actually comes on Create  ~ a PBS station.)  He was actually talking about salsas and how in Mexico they aren't so much for chips and dip as they are condiments for various dishes or even used as an ingredient in the dishes.  His daughter, who is often on his show, make a mac-and-cheese dish with salsa that actually looked pretty good.  He made another salsa that he used as a topping for grilled fish ... all these ideas make me wish my kids liked actually liked salsa.  I am planning to use some in a baked chicken and rice dish ... I guess the boys will just have to eat PB&J that night.

You can find the recipe for my salsa on the allrecipes.com website. 

Thanks, Rebecca!