A Great and Easy combination: Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers and Garlic Parmesan Pull Apart Bread

A few months ago, at the Moms4Moms group I attend at Faith Community Church one of the specials was on kids helping in the kitchen.  A recipe on the handout was Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers, it is a great one to have in your menu plan and my girls have each helped make it.  I’ve even taken the recipe on the road and shared it with my Mom and one of my Aunts and Uncles when I was in Texas recently–they loved it too.  The only catch to the recipe is that it takes an hour in the oven.  So you have to plan a little in advance.

Then a friend posted a recipe for what looked like a delicious, easy bread from The Virtuous Wife on his facebook page and I thought….hmmm….that might be good with the Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers.

So this weekend, I tried them together and Y-U-M.  I served some fruit and it was an easy meal that pleased everyone at the table.

Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers

In a skillet brown and then drain:

• 1 lb ground beef

Add to the browned and drained ground beef:

• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 can chopped stewed tomatoes (or diced if that is all you have…but stewed is a better flavor.  I chop them right in the can using kitchen shears.)
• 1 large green pepper chopped
• 1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice (I prefer Uncle Ben’s)
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

Transfer to a greased 2 quart casserole dish

Cover and bake at 350° for 1 hour or until the rice is tender

Uncover and sprinkle with

• 1 c shredded cheddar cheese (or whatever kind of cheese you have on hand…mozzarella would be good, Italian blend or even colby-jack)

Return to the oven until cheese melts.

(This is a recipe you could prep the night before or even earlier in the day and then pop into the oven when you get home.  It could take a bit longer to warm but not too much.)

 

Garlic Parmesan Pull Apart Bread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (but if you are cooking the Inside-Out Stuffed Peppers your oven is already at 350°!)

Place in a bundt pan:

• 1/2 stick of butter

Put bundt pan in oven and let it melt.

While the butter melts, cut into quarters:

• 1 can of refrigerated Grands biscuits (each biscuit will be cut into 4ths)

Toss the biscuit quarters in a bowl mixed with:

• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning

Once the butter is melted, add the biscuit mixture, sprinkling with any cheese and garlic that gets left behind in the bowl.

Bake at 350° for 20-22 minutes until golden brown.

Turn out on a dish (you may need to run a knife down the sides a bit) and enjoy!

It was light and fluffy and even warmed up well when we had leftovers.

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Grilling Goodness: Chicken-and-Fruit Salad

The absolute best thing about our house is the ability to have dinners on the deck on a gorgeous evening.  Tonight was one of those evenings.  The trees still aren’t green in our view but the evening was perfect nonetheless.  We fired up the grill too in order to make another new recipe from the “Southern Living Ultimate Quick and Easy Cookbook” that I checked out from our library (I’m going to have to purchase one of these as I’ve rechecked it now three times and I want to copy way too many of the recipes.)

Not the best picture of our deck but this gives you a glimpse at why it is so wonderful. This was from the end of April last year. Our deck is up in the trees.

 

Chicken-and-Fruit Salad

Plan Ahead- Chicken and Pineapple need to marinade for 6-8 hours.

Place in a ziploc bag:

• 4 to 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I like to prick my chicken with a fork to help the marinade ooze into the chicken a bit more)
• 3/4 cup of Lawry’s Santa Fe Chili Marinade with Lime and Garlic (the recipe calls for a lime and garlic marinade….this was the closest I could find!)

Seal the chicken in the ziploc bag and chill for 6 to 8 hours, turning occasionally.

Cut into fourths:

• one cored fresh pineapple

Place the pineapple into a ziploc bag and pour 1/4 cup of the marinade over the pineapple. Seal and chill for 6 to 8 hours.

Ready to Grill:

Remove the chicken from the marinade and discard the marinade.

Drain the pineapple.

Grill chicken 5 to 6 minutes on each side or until done.

Grill pineapple 2 to 3 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile:

Wash and prepare:

• 1 head of romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
• 2 cups of strawberries, halved
• 1 cup of raspberries

Once the grilled items are cooked as needed, cut chicken into strips and the pineapple into bite-sized pieces.

Arrange the lettuce, chicken, and fruit into bowls.

You could toss the fruit with some of the marinade before adding to to the salad or just let each person add extra marinade as desired.  We just added as desired as my girls don’t really care for dressing on their salad.

This was a great dinner and easy to prepare.  Everyone left the table happy….even the extra child that joined us for dinner!

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Enchilada Casserole- Slow Cooker

Here is another “near” magic pot recipe that we tried tonight.  It is a vegetarian dish that also earned 4 smiley faces from our family of four.  It is intended to be prepared in a smaller slow cooker ( 3 1/2 quart) but it worked fine in my big slow cooker.  If I have more than four mouths at my table it would be easy to double this one.  I made this exactly like the recipe out of the Southern Living Ultimate Quick and Easy Cookbook except that I used a 15 oz can of corn rather than an 11 oz can of mexi-corn.  I just hate to pay more for that!

Enchilada Casserole

Stir together in your slow cooker:

• 2 Tablespoons chopped green chiles
• 3/4 cup chunky salsa (I used Pace’s mild version)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can yellow corn
• 1 10 oz can of enchilada sauce (I used Old El Paso’s Green Enchilada sauce)

Cover and cook on Low for 4 hours

Stir together in a bowl:

• 1 Tablespoon green chiles
• 1 package corn muffin mix (8.5 oz box version)
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 Tablespoons chopped roasted red bell peppers

Spoon the batter evenly over the bean mixture in the slow cooker (well, mine was more like glop it on top of the enchilada mix)

Cover and cook on Low for 1 hour and 20 minutes or until cornbread is done.

Sprinkle over the cornbread:

• 1 1/2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese (or mexican blend as I did….hmmmm….maybe I didn’t follow the recipe exactly)

Cover and allow the cheese to melt

Serve with sour cream if desired.

Obviously the spicier your salsa the spicier the dish.  I was cooking for mild-mouths so we made it more tame.  I served it with Ranch Style Beans, a green salad and apple slices.

Enjoy!

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Chicken Lasagna Florentine- Slow Cooker

Magic Pot Alert!  Yep, this one is a dump and go kind of recipe….my kind of slow cooker meal.  It gets four smiley faces from my family of four.  The only thing you have to plan for is to be home for the first hour of cooking as you cook on high for one hour and then reduce it to low for the next 5 hours. *  I found the base for this recipe in a Southern Living Ultimate Quick and Easy Cookbook that I checked out from a local library.

Chicken Lasagna Florentine

Combine in a large bowl and stir well:

• 2 cans of cream of chicken soup
• 10 ounces of frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed dry (I used frozen from Trader Joe’s and didn’t need to drain and squeeze)
• 2-3 cups of diced, cooked chicken (I used some shredded chicken that I had in the freezer, you could also use the Tyson’s diced cooked chicken)
• 8 ounces of sour cream
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1 Tablespoon of Penzey’s Mural of Flavor (a mix of spices, dried shallots, onion, garlic, lemon peel, citric acid, chives, orange peel)  If you don’t have this, one variation I found online has 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg.
• salt and pepper to taste

Place in a larger slow cooker, coated with cooking spray (or maybe one of those liners would be good)

• 3 uncooked lasagna noodles, breaking the noodles in half, to fit in the slow cooker. (will need 9 noodles in all for the layers)

Spread one third of the spinach mixture over the noodles.

Sprinkle over the mixture

• 2/3 cup mozzarella cheese

Layer

• 3 more noodles (breaking as needed)
• half of the remaining spinach mixture
• 2/3 cup mozzarella cheese

Top with the remaining noodles, mixture, and cheese.

Cover and cook on High for 1 hour

Reduce to Low and cook for 5 hours or until the pasta is done (mine was fine after 5 hours)

* Note: I did search around before posting this and see that someone did this same base recipe on Low for 8 hours and said it was fine—that way you don’t have to worry about the High/Low switch.

 

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Stuffing Cups- Easy one for Kids in the Kitchen

Want to help your kids learn to cook?  (AKA….do you hope in the near future to be able to say “child of mine, I’m running late today.  Will you please make dinner and have it ready when I get home.”?)  Then, like other parenting tasks we need to train them so they can know what is expected of them.  This recipe was an easy one for my 7 year old to help me with this week.  We ate it as our main dish but you could use it as a side to a roasted chicken too or rip up some of that roasted chicken and mix some into the stuffing prior to baking the stuffing cups in the oven.

If you are training your child to cook, remember to stay close by and offer assistance and guide them….nothing ruins dinner more than a trip to the ER.

Stuffing Cups

Heat oven to 350º

Melt in a large skillet on medium heat:

• 1/4 cup butter

Add to melted butter and saute until crisp-tender (about 5 minutes):

• 3/4 cup chopped celery
• 1/4 cup chopped onions
• pepper and salt to taste

Stir in and bring to boil:

• 1 1/2 cups water

Remove from heat and stir in

• 1 6 oz package of stuffing mix for chicken (like Stove Top)
• 1/3 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 egg, beaten

Mix lightly

Spoon into 8 greased muffin cups.  (I was able to get 9 good sized muffins out of it actually)

Bake 10 minutes or until the stuffing cups are heated through.

Note: We did not have any leftovers and there are just four of us.  So you may want to double the recipe if you have any boys over the age of 9 in your family or more than 4 people.  You could also put in some shredded, cooked chicken in the stuffing mix prior to spooning into the muffin cups.  This would make it go further and be a more hearty meal in itself.  These are also easy to wrap up and send to school in lunches—good portion control.

 

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Easy Slow-Cooker Jambalaya

I made this today and it was a great meal to come home to after church.  It didn’t taste like a “crock pot” meal either!  I was able to prep most of it last night and then got up this morning and threw it in the slow cooker. Below is how I prepared it in stages.  We ended up cooking the shrimp and rice before adding it into the rest of the dish (which is different from how the recipe originally said to do it…but I just don’t trust a slow cooker to get my shrimp cooked fully in a short amount of time).

The night before:

Chop and place into a tupperware-type container

• 1 large onion
• 1 large green bell pepper (seeded of course!)
• 3 stalks of celery

In a prep bowl combine:

• 1 Tablespoon Creole seasoning (or Cajun)
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano

Make sure your meats are defrosted:

• 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 pound smoked sausage
• 2-3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs (next time I will cut these in half so they are easier to serve)

Set out:

• 1 -28 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 cups of canned chicken broth OR make your broth and place in the refrigerator until ready to mix things up
• Rice to prepare (cook 1 3/4 cup rice)

Morning of making the dish:

• Cut sausage into 1 1/2 -2 inch slices
• Chop your garlic cloves
• Layer in the slow cooker:
  • 1/3 of the Vegetables
  • 1/2 of the Chicken
  • 1/2 of the Sausage
  • 1/2 of the seasoning mix
  • 1/2 of the garlic
  • 1/2 of the Broth
  • 1/2 of the tomatoes
  • Repeat layers
  • Top with vegetables

Set the slow cooker on low and cook for 5 hours.

Before I left for church I got the rice going (1 3/4 cup rice).  After putting the rice into the boiling water, I turned the burner off and left the pot on the burner.  The rice was ready when we got home.

We boiled water and cooked the shrimp right after we got home.

Then we put the rice and the shrimp in the slow cooker and kicked it up to high while we got everything else ready. (About 30 minutes)  If you don’t think it is warm enough for you, throw it in a large pot on the stove and warm it until the rice is heated up.

We served it with bread, salad, and apple slices.

It makes a ton so you can easily serve 8 people.

We will be having this one again and inviting people over after church—I love a good Sunday afternoon dinner.

Enjoy!

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Chicken with green beans and potatoes- Easy all in one dinner

Tonight we had a dinner that is a favorite of my handsome fella.  I posted the recipe back in January.

http://beckinpa.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/all-in-one-dinner/

While I was preparing it, I thought of something that I did not write in that original post.  This is a great one for Moms who work away from home to add to their meal rotation. 

Why?

1. It is a snap to prepare ahead of time.  You can throw this together in the morning in 15 minutes tops and that includes the clean-up.  Simply get it all in the baking pan and cover with foil.  Place it in the refrigerator until you get home.
2. No fuss baking.  When you get home, throw it in the oven (covered with foil) and turn the oven on to 375.  Set your timer for 1.5 hours and go get into some comfy clothes and help the kids with their homework.  When the timer goes off, uncover and let it cook for 20 more minutes.  Make sure you prep any fruit or other sides you may want to include.
3. Easy to clean up.  Since the dish was all in one and I only cut up apples to go with it, tonight the clean-up was so easy.  One pan to clean and everything else was in the dishwasher

Use it on a night you know you will be home around 4/4:30 as it takes about 2 hours to cook.

This is also a good one if you need to run someone to dance or soccer practice and will be gone for a while.  I started our dinner at 3:45 and ran our youngest to dance class.  I removed the foil right when I got home, it finished cooking,  and we were eating by 5:45.  I was glad for the easy clean-up as then I needed to run our oldest to her dance class!

Enjoy.

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