Ranch Mushrooms

This is a recipe from my Husband's coworker.  It's not a recipe that I absolutely love, but they are good.  I'm not a lover of mushrooms in plain form.  I'd much rather have my mushrooms sliced and cooked IN a dish than eat them plain.

This is a nice crockpot recipe that you can quick throw together before needing to head out to a party or event, or let cook while you get other dishes prepared for a dinner party or gathering.

Ranch Mushrooms
Recipe from: friend/coworker
2 pkgs whole mushrooms
1/2 stick of butter, cut into tablespoon chunks
1 pkt dry ranch mix

Place the mushrooms, butter pieces and then the ranch dressing into your crockpot.  You can definitely use more mushrooms if you're needing to feed a crowd, just adjust the ingredients accordingly. Cook on low until the mushrooms are fully cooked and butter is melted, approximately 1-2 hrs.

Serve & enjoy!

Baked Oven Fries

 Baked Oven Fries
Recipe from: Annie's Eats
3 russet potatoes, cut into wedges
5 tblsp vegetable oil
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Preheat your oven to 475*. Place wedges in large mixing bowl.  Cover with hot water, soaking the wedges for 10-30 minutes.  Put 4 tblsp oil onto heavy, rimmed baking sheet.  Tilt the sheet side to side to evenly coat the pan with oil.  Sprinkle the pan evenly with the salt and pepper.  You could even add some additional seasonings if you'd like. (cajun, herbs etc...)

Drain the potatoes onto paper towels.  Wipe out the now empty bowl so that it is dry. Return to the bowl and toss with the remaining 1 tblsp oil.

Arrange the wedges onto the baking sheet in a single layer.  Cover with foil and bake for 5 minutes. Remove the foil and continue to bake until the wedges are spotty brown in color, about 15-20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet after 10 minutes. Take the pan out of the oven, flip each wedge using a tongs.  Bake for another 5-15 minutes until the wedges are golden brown and crisp.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

This is a recipe that I've made over and over again.  However, I've just never blogged it.  This is great for tailgating, potlucks, or to just munch on while you're hanging around the house on a Saturday afternoon. 

It's great with celery on the side, chicken in a biscuit crackers or as pictured, with tostito chips! 

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Recipe from: a friend (this recipe is everywhere on the internet and has various ways to prepare it)

1lb shredded, cooked chicken breast

1 (8oz) cream cheese, at room temperature

1 cup ranch dressing

1 cup Franks Hot sauce

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

This recipe is really flexible because you can make as much or as little as you want.  The measurements can vary depending on how many people you'd like to feed, how spicy you want it or how mild you want it. 

Sometimes I combine everything into a large saucepan and prepare it on the stove.  For this particular day, I softened the cream cheese so that it was really easy to stir, combined it with the chicken, cheese, ranch and hot sauce and put it in a baking dish. I baked it in a 350 oven for about 20-25 minutes until the cheese was melted, and everything was warmed thoroughly.  I took it out of the oven, stirred it and put it back in for another 15 minutes or so.  Also, this particular time I put crushed ritz crackers on top.  That's not necessary and actually next time I would leave them out. 

I've also heard of adding some chopped celery when you combine all of the ingredients.  It's really good and adds a nice little crunch.  Plus, who doesn't love celery with buffalo chicken/chicken wings! :-) 

Coconut Chicken with Orange Marmalade Sauce

Chicken is such an easy and fairly cheap protein.  It makes for a great, quick weeknight meal but can be so boring at times. 

I was happy to find this recipe on a blog that I love reading, Good Thymes and Good Food.  I love that her recipes are always easy and I usually have the ingredients on hand.  I also love that she's expecting her second child around the same time that I'm due so I know that her recipes aren't too labor intensive and she likely plans her meals and preps her food while doing a million other 'Mom things' during the day/evening. 

This recipe was really good.  I don't love coconut but will eat it if its baked (desserts or used in a breading such as this). The one thing that really bummed me out was how soggy the bottom of the chicken got while baking.  I don't know if it was because I used milk instead of egg for my egg coating.  We were out of eggs and I figured milk would be a fine substitute. 

I also did not have the apricot preserves that it called for and only had orange marmalade available.  It worked, but I would definitely try this recipe again using apricot preserves to see if it's better or different. 

Coconut Chicken with Orange Marmalade Sauce
Recipe from: Good Thymes and Good Food 

Ingredients
1 egg
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup apricot preserves (or an apricot blend such as peach-apricot)
2 tblsp dijon mustard

Preheat oven to 400 and line a baking sheet with foil.

In a medium, shallow dish, lightly beat the egg.  In another medium, shallow dish stir together the coconut, flour, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Taking one piece of chicken at a time, dip into the egg and then into the coconut mixture. Pat the coconut mixture onto the chicken to make sure that it sticks. Place dipped chicken breast onto the baking sheet.  Continue with the remaining pieces of chicken.

Drizzle the melted butter over the chicken pieces.  Bake in your preheated oven 30-40 minutes until chicken is cooked through. If the chicken does not brown, place under the broil for a couple of minutes but be sure to watch it carefully!  I did not put mine under the broiler and you can see that some bits of coconut got a little dark!

For the sauce mixture, combine the preserves and the dijon mustard. Serve the sauce at room temperature.

Venison Stroganoff

This year, my Husband got his first deer while out hunting with my Dad.  He was pretty excited since it was his first deer ever.  We shared the meat with my Parents and have a supply of venison in our freezer.  He's made some jerky with it already which was so good. 

This was a really good meal and it came together rather quickly.  My Husband put it in the crockpot today while he was home from work, we took a quick nap after I came home and then ate dinner.  

Venison Stroganoff
1-2lbs of venison roast, cubed into bite size pieces
2 onions, chopped
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
Prepared egg noodles


Line bottom of crockpot with chopped onions.  Add the chopped venison roast.  Add 1/4 cup chicken stock. Cook on low for 6 hours.

Remove from crockpot.  Add meat to a medium sized saucepan.  Turn to medium-high heat and add two cans of cream of mushroom soup. Stir to combine the soup and venison meat.  Let cook at medium-high heat until well combined and no lumps are present, about 10 minutes.

Serve over prepared egg noodles.

Pumpkin Roll

I was in charge of bringing a dessert to my Husband's Grandma's for Thanksgiving last Saturday.  I was going to make a cheesecake but didn't have all of the ingredients on hand and didn't want to make a trip to the store. Not to mention, by the time I read the recipe I realized that I wouldn't have had enough time to bake the cheesecake.

This looked incredibly daunting to make but I had all of the ingredients, needed to bring a dessert and didn't have a back up plan.  It's not as intimidating as it looks, I promise.  I wish I would have remembered to take a picture of the final product, but I didn't. This isn't even that great of a picture.  When I make it again, I'll be sure to get some better pictures.

I'm actually going to bring two of these to my Mom and Dad's house for Thanksgiving on Thursday.  If you need a quick and easy dessert to bring somewhere this Thanksgiving, I'd definitely recommend this recipe.  The cake is light and moist, the filling is creamy and smooth and together, they provide a very decadent dessert.

Libby's Pumpkin Roll
Recipe from: Libby's
1/4 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup pumpkin

For the filling:
1 (8oz) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
6 tblsp butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 tblsp whipping cream

Preheat oven to 375*.  Grease a 15x10 jelly roll pan, line with wax paper and then grease and flour the waxed paper. Sprinkle a thin, cotton kitchen towel with the 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Set aside.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until combined and thick. Beat the pumpkin into the egg and sugar mixture.  Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture.  Mix until combined. Pour batter into the prepared pan.  Bake at 375* for 13-15 minutes. The top of the cake should spring back when touched lightly.

Immediately loosen the cake and turn onto the prepared towel. Give it a minute or two to start to cool off and then start removing the paper. I immediately started removing the paper as soon as I flipped the cake onto the towel but was having trouble.  I let it cool a little bit and the paper came off much easier.  The paper did not come off super smoothly, but it wasn't completely ruined either.

Roll up the cake and towel together.  Place on a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cake cools, mix up your filling.  Beat the cream cheese, powdered sugar, softened butter and vanilla together in a stand mixer until smooth. The original recipe doesn't call for whipping cream, but I added it because I was concerned that the filling was going to be too thick and not very light.  I'm very happy that I decided to add the whipping cream.

Carefully unroll the cake.  Spread the cream cheese mixture onto the cooled cake. Re-roll the cake.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour. Before serving, sprinkle the outside of the roll with the powdered sugar.

Note: I chose to cut off the ends of the cake because they were jagged and not very nice looking.