Hearty Chili

It's kind of a 'blah' day today...The perfect day for some homemade chili.

Now, I think everyone who makes chili has a tried and true recipe. The one they grew up eating, the one that has been handed down. And don't get me wrong, I have one like that too. Its delicious. It makes me think of home and cold winter days. But when I opened my freezer and saw that I only had one pound of ground beef...and a whole bunch of ground venison, I decided to scour the net and find something new to try.

I found a ton of recipes and after reading all of them and looking through my cabinets I decided to just sort of...well combine a few of them. What I ended up with and is now simmering on my stove smelling delicious is what I'm going to call 'Hearty Chili'.

Hearty Chili
(Recipe and photos by Busy Nothings)

1 lb ground beef
1 1/2 lbs ground venison
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 (28-oz) can whole tomatoes
1 (28-oz) can diced tomatoes (I used the can with the Italian herbs in it)
1 (6-oz) can tomato paste
1/4 C chili powder
3 T. cumin
1 1/2 t. garlic powder
1 1/2 t. onion powder
3 green onions, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 (12-oz) lager style beer (I used Killians)
1 lb BACON! (Told you it was hearty!)
3 cans dark red kidney beans.
salt and pepper to taste

Brown the ground meat with the onion and garlic. Add the tomatoes and stir. Add all the spices and the green onion, bell pepper and beer. Stir. Cook bacon in a skillet and crumble. Add to the chili. About 30-45 min before serving add the kidney beans. Salt and pepper to taste!

One of the things I like best about chili? Its insanely forgiving. Don't have a whole onion? No problem. Want to change up some seasonings? It'll still be fine. It's one of the easiest, tastiest things you can make.

I like to serve mine with some corn chips (like Fritos) cheddar cheese and sour cream. DELICIOUS!

Pizza again!

Pepperoni and Black Olives this time! I used the same recipes posted in an earlier post but I just had to share a picture this time!



And here is a picture of my Tornado enjoying a slice!

Banana-Coconut Bread

When I woke up this morning and walked into the kitchen, the first thing I saw was the three very ripe bananas sitting on my microwave. And then I thought banana bread! I normally don't have bananas that are ripe enough to make bread with. They don't last that long. My son loves his 'naners'.

So once my errands were done for the day I got to work.

I found this recipe on For the Love of Cooking a while back and its been festering in the back of my mind ever since. I love banana and coconut together! The original recipe makes muffins but I adapted it to make a loaf.

It's baking right now as I type this and my kitchen smells wonderful. The cinnamon smell is mouthwatering.

Banana Coconut Bread
Adapted recipe and photos by BusyNothings.
Original recipe found on For the Love of Cooking

1 1/2 cups of flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 stick of butter (6 tbsp) melted
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cups of sugar
1 large egg
2 large very ripe bananas
3/4 cup shredded coconut plus more for sprinkling on top.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat loaf pan with cooking spray.
In a small mixing bowl combine first four ingredients. In another, larger bowl, whisk together vanilla, sugar and egg. Add melted butter to sugar and egg mixture and mix well. Smash the bananas and add to the batter as well as the coconut until well combined. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until ingredients are just comibined. Don't over mix the batter. Pour batter into loaf pan and sprinkle some coconut on top.
Bake in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes or until tester inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.



Note: Since this recipe was adapted from a muffin recipe, the loaf won't be very tall. Next time I'll be making them as muffins.

An omelet experiment

I was reading over on Our Best Bites and checking out all their wonderful recipes. Being very new to the food blogging world, I only recently discovered their blog but it has quickly become one of my favorites. My favorite thing about it? How real these women are. There is no pretense.

Another thing I love? How they use real ingredients. There's no...wheat germ or gluten-free stuff.* Or splenda. Or margarine. Two real women using real ingredients that you don't have to go out and scour every single one of your local grocery stores to find.

Anyway back to my experiment. If you read a few posts back I made omelets for breakfast. Ham, cheese and green onion omelets. Well I made another one for my lunch today. What can I say. I like omelets!

I was browsing through Our Best Bites and found this recipe for Baked Breakfast Taquitos. And it gave me an idea.

Now I like to cook, but I've never really experimented with different ingredients. I pretty much see a recipe and make it, sometimes adjusting it to our personal tastes. So when I read the section about scrambling the sour cream right into the eggs I went 'I need to try that!'

So today, with my son watching Shrek in the other room quietly, I decided I'd try it in an omelet.

So two eggs and about 2 Tablespoons of sour cream and a little salt and pepper went into the pan. It wasn't as...fluffy, I guess. It seemed flatter. But it smelled great.


Once it was done I flipped it in half and slid it onto my plate. And tasted it. WOW! Was it as fluffy as my normal egg and milk omelet? No. But the taste was amazing. It was rich and...rich...ok it was really really good. I can't wait to try this with actual scrambled eggs, because I'm sure that the cooking method has something to do with it. I'm sure they'll be light and fluffy and tasty.


*I'm not dissing cooking like this. Not at all! I have several friends with food allergies so I know that sometimes people need to cook gluten-free etc. But for those of us who aren't it sure gets frustrating to not be able to find ingredients like this when we don't have the need for them.

Southwestern Pizza

Sunday night dinner? Southwestern PIZZA!

I fully intended to make BLT's. Honest. But I had one leftover chicken breast...and some green onion...and black olives...and next thing I knew I was getting out the pizza dough recipe.

I've only made homemade pizza a handful of times. This is something that I sincerely want to remedy. The three of us looooove pizza and its really not that difficult to make.

My crust recipe came from Allrecipes and I followed it to a T.

Pizza Crust
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water, and let sit for 10 minutes.
Stir the salt and oil into the yeast solution. Mix in 2 1/2 cups of the flour.
Turn dough out onto a clean, well floured surface, and knead in more flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Place the dough into a well oiled bowl, and cover with a cloth. Let the dough rise until double; this should take about 1 hour. Punch down the dough, and form a tight ball. Allow the dough to relax for a minute before rolling out. Use for your favorite pizza recipe.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). If you are baking the dough on a pizza stone, you may place your toppings on the dough, and bake immediately. If you are baking your pizza in a pan, lightly oil the pan, and let the dough rise for 15 or 20 minutes before topping and baking it.
Bake pizza in preheated oven, until the cheese and crust are golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.
**Thank you Jay from allrecipes.com!

The original sauce recipe also came from Allrecipes

Pizza Sauce
(modified recipe by me! Original recipe from allrecipes)
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
6 fluid ounces warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
2 tablespoons honey
3/4 teaspoon onion powder
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
salt to taste

Mix everything together in a medium sized bowl and allow to sit for 30 minutes to allow the flavors to blend.

Once my dough was done rising on the pizza pan, I topped with the deliciously delicious sauce. I then added a TON of mozzerella cheese. I had raided my fridge earlier and had one left over chicken breast from my fried chicken I had made the night before. I chopped it up and put it on top of the mozzerella cheese. I then chopped up two green onions and some black olives and put them over the chicken.

To give it a little more of a...cheesy flavor, I shredded some monterey jack and some sharp cheddar. I popped it in the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes and it was beautiful!

I served with salsa, sour cream, and sliced avocado. My husband has already asked for this again and between him and my brother-in-law there was only one piece of pizza left!

This was so easy to put together and I had all of the ingredients already in my pantry. I will be making this again soon!

Liz

**OK...I took some pictures of this but...they didn't turn out so well! It looked sooo good but it was dark out and my pictures looked very unappetizing...so I won't be putting them up. Next time! :)

Omelets!

Breakfast this morning? Ham, sharp cheddar, monteray jack, and green onion omelets!

This weekend we have my youngest brother-in-law staying with us, and while he's here he is going to help the hubby with a building project. I thought I'd make a hearty omelette for each of them to start them off.

I taught myself how to make an omelet a few months ago, and, in the event that there are others who don't know how I'll put it here!

Normally I use two eggs but the fact that these guys were hungry had me grabbing for three.

Omelets
3 eggs
2 T milk
salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 C. chopped ham
1/4 C. shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 C. shredded monteray jack cheese
2 T. chopped green onion
1 T. vegetable oil

Scramble eggs in a bowl with milk, salt and pepper. Heat oil in your skillet over medium heat. Once hot, pour eggs into the skillet. As the eggs cook, push the cooked egg slowly towards the middle of the skillet,* letting the uncooked egg drain to the outside. Once the egg is no longer runny, add your cheese, green onion and ham to half of the egg. Fold in half and place on a plate and enjoy!

*I have found that using a rubber spatula works the best for this.

Obviously, you can use any fillings you want in your omelet. My hubby loves mushroom, bacon, and green bell pepper in his sometimes :)

Lemon Cream Cupcakes!

Today, I had the urge to bake. Now, you must understand. This urge doesn't come very often. Don't get me wrong, I like to bake. But cooking is more of my thing. Maybe it has something to do with too much baking as a young teen? Who knows. But for whatever reason, I don't bake often.

I poked around online for a while, trying to find something that didn't use cocoa powder (I'm all out! :( ). I asked some friends and got a very quick 'Cupcakes!' in response. Cupcakes!

I don't think I've made cupcakes since last Thanksgiving...when I baked and frosted about four dozen to take to a party...and I think only three got eaten. Hey, its hard to compete with a pumpkin cheesecake on Thanksgiving.

So I scoured my ever-handy and favorite Allrecipes and found this!

I'm a sucker for lemon.

I pretty much followed the recipe but for the lemon rind as I don't have any. I also halved the recipe...there are only two adults and a toddler here...there's no call for 30 cupcakes! :)

They came together so beautifully and quickly. The batter was so nice and thick. The sour cream is such a nice touch.


Lemon Cream Cupcakes from Allrecipes.com
(recipe and photos by literarymiss. Original recipe from allrecipes.com)
1/2 C. butter, softened
1 C. sugar
2 eggs
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 3/4 C. all-purpose flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 C. sour cream

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla; mix well. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and add to butter mixture alternately with the sour cream. (Batter will be thick). Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups with 1/4 cup of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes then move to wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Lemon Cream Frosting
1 1/2 T butter, softened
1 C. + 2 T. powdered sugar
1 T. lemon juice
1/4 t. vanilla extract
1 1/2 t. milk

Cream together butter and sugar in a small mixing bowl. Add lemon juice, vanilla and milk. Beat until smooth. Frost cupcakes.



**ok. I made these following the above recipe. The cupcakes are wonderful! But I will never use this frosting again. It was way too runny and I had to add way too much powdered sugar to make it thick enough to frost. It ended up way to sweet and I ended up scraping it off! Buttercream Frosting next time with some lemon extract!

Liz