You are not going to believe what we made

Oh how we have craved these!!! Oh how I  was scared outa my mind with the thought of these being home made. WHY? Cause this momma has never baked using active dry yeast. I make things semi home made..... not from scratch bread like stuffs. OH EM GEE my mind was seeing a huge ball of dough engulfing the kitchen devouring my kids and ohh look it just ate the Chihuahua. OR ...The thing I knew was more likely gonna happen ... I would just kill the yeast and we would be pretzel less.

 

BUT

 

IT DIDN'T HAPPEN LIKE THAT AT ALL!!! Happy dance time!!!! whoa whoa ... whoa whoa!! 

 

We , my girls and Dragon , had so much fun making these. It is work but VERY worth it.

 

So here is the receipt we used from taste of home. You need to make these too !!

 

 

 

Ingredients

• 1 bottle (12 ounces) amber beer or nonalcoholic beer
• 1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 4 to 4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 10 cups water
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• TOPPING:
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon water
• Coarse salt

Directions

• In a small saucepan, heat beer to 110°-115°; remove from heat. Stir in yeast until dissolved. In a large bowl, combine butter, sugar, 1-1/2 teaspoons salt, yeast mixture and 3 cups flour; beat on medium speed until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough (dough will be sticky).
• Turn dough onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.
• Preheat oven to 425°. Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide and shape into eight balls. Roll each into a 14-in. rope. Starting at one end of rope, loosely wrap dough around itself to form a coil. Tuck end under; pinch to seal.
• In a Dutch oven, bring water and baking soda to a boil. Drop pretzels, two at a time, into boiling water. Cook 30 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon; drain well on paper towels.
• Place 2 in. apart on greased baking sheets. In a small bowl, whisk egg yolk and water; brush over pretzels. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pans to a wire rack to cool. Yield: 8 pretzels.

 

 

 

 

 

Chicken Pillows

Hello my freaky darlings!! Do you stock up on meat items that you can place in the freezer for you to use when the summer heat has made your AC run and the sight of your electric bill turns you into a babbling mental mess?  I knew I was not the only one!!! Oh and keep repeating Autumn is almost here ... it does help with the panicing.

So I happened to be looking into my freezer taking stock of what I had to help cut back on the grocery list this week and saw the bag of leg quarters. Ooooo what can I make with this little bargain. I KNOW!!!

 

Chicken Pillows

 

Ingredients-

 

2 cans large flaky biscuits , IE grands type

4 cans cream of chicken soup ... 42 oz total

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

5 cups cooked shredded chicken

1 cup onion mix. Found in freezer section of store. Contains diced onions,celery, bell peppers and parsley.

2 13x9 baking dishes

 

Directions-

 

preheat oven to 350 degrees

 

warm onion mix in microwave and toss into shredded chicken

 

roll each biscuit into the size of a tea saucer , as close to 6 inches as you can

 

place a golf ball sized amount of chicken mixture into middle of biscuit. Close by pinching the ends together and making a dumpling looking pillow. Place into greased 13x9 baking dish.

place dish into oven for  8 min.

 

While the pillows are getting toasty in the oven ...Open cans of soup and mix together in a bowl.

Take the pillows out of the oven and evenly ladle the soup over top of them. Place back into oven and allow to cook for 25 min.

 

Top with shredded cheese and allow to cook for another 10 min.

 

Serve with mixed veggies on the side for a deconstructed pot pie vibe.

 

Serves 8 with left overs for work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Sweet and Sour Pork

Hello from my kitchen. *grin*

 

So our grocery store had an awesome sale on country style pork ribs and we took total advantage of it. Made a lot of new dinners and some old with a new twist. This is the first of them.

 

Sweet and Sour Pork over Rice

 

 

Ingrediants-

 

onion mixture, found in freezer section. contains diced onions, bell pepers, celery and parsely

1 small bag of sliced carrots

3 lbs pork , cubed

Sauce ingrediants

 8 to 16 servings of rice , I make enough for lunch leftovers but you do not have to

 

You can add pineaple, water cahsews and even baby corn to this if you like.

 

 

 

We cooked our ribs low and slow in the dutch oven for 4 hours in the sweet and sour sauce but I would suggest only adding half the vinager it calls for, if you use 1/2 c it will make the meat VERY tart. You WILL NOT reuse this sauce for the vegtable cooking stage.

 

Sweet and Sour Sauce -

3/4 cup sugar

4 Tbsp ketchup

1/2 c white vinegar

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp minced garlic

 

Directions-

 

Once the meat is cooked. Dice it into small bite sized peices and set aside.

 

Add onion mix and a small amount of butter to dutch oven or stew pot and stir till it softens.

Add in sweet and sour sauce and carrots. Let this come to a bubbling boil.

Add in meat and turn heat down to simmer.

While this mixture is simmering cook your rice by following the directions on the package.

 

Serve by placing a bed of rice onto plate or in bowl and laddle the meat and suce mixture on top.

 

Feeds 8 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fajita Caserole

So how many of you have larger familes like we do? Well then you know that serving fajitas to each of them can get costly. You are in luck though. Dragon and I happened upon making this as an act of desperation.... We thought we had two packages of tortillas when we only had one. Opps!! What we ended up with was a meal that was VERY good. AND it cut the cost of traditional Fajitas by 1/2!!! Now do not get me wrong nothing will replace the original but this comes in a good 2nd and comes in 1st with the budget.   I hope you enjoy!


Ingrediants-

8 oz cream cheese
16 oz sour cream
2 14.5oz cans of fire roasted diced tomatoes
2 29oz cans refried beans
2 packets taco seasoning
3 bell pepers any color
6 chicken breasts shredded or 1 rotis chicken
20 flour tortillas
4 cups shredded cheese

Directions-

Slice bell peppers to a finger width wide and sautee them in a small amount of butter. While those are cooking start with making the layer mixtures.

Cut 12 tortillas in half and leave 8 for the middle of your layers. Of course look at your pan and cut them to fit as you see fit as well.

Cream cheese mixture - warm cream cheese. Add sour cream and 1 package of taco seasoning. mix till smooth.

Warm beans with 1 can of the tomatoes stir till well mixed

Toss shredded chicken with 1 can of tomatoes and 1 package taco seasoning  



Depending on your dish ... if you can get two layers in great if not use the mixtures to make it single layered.

- spray two 13x9 casrerole dishes lightly with cooking spray
- spread a small amount of cream cheese mixture on bottom of pan
- place a layer of fl tortillas
- spread a layer of the beans
- spread a layer of chicken
- layer 1/4 of the bell peppers
- dollop the cream cheese
repeat layers if you can
- top with cheese
Bake for 30 min at 350 degrees   serves 8 with leftovers for work lunches

 

 

 

 
 
 

 
 

Moving to Alaska ... not really but I wish

I have come to the understanding that I really dislike summer ..... A LOT. Ok hmm that is still kinda harsh. Ok  how is this ....I dislike any outdoor temp higher then 85. There that kinda helps me sound less of a whiny baby.... a little *sticks tongue out*. I know what you are thinking.... but Christi you would hate the freezing cold too. Meh ... maybe but I can function in the cold. It is the heat that makes me , and others in this house, less fun to live with. LOL! Grouchy and lazy and just BLAH. So to end my little whine fest .... COME ON AUTUMN!!!

School has started and life is back to our routine. We are adding an extra class to our day, kinda, ... cooking. It is more a weekend thing and more of an extra credit really but I want the girls to take it seriously so I am conducting it like a class. Today we made pretzels. It is a learning class for me too. LOL! I have never used Yeast that I had to activate before. Needless to say that with our twisted sense of humors there was a lot of " It's ALIVE!!!" being said. Harli even made a video out of the picture she took of the dough when it doubled in size. Of course she posted it on my facebook page.I think we did good. We could have left them in to darken more but we were scared we were going to burn them. I am sure we will get it perfect with practice. We will be doing them again cause we want hamburger buns. Yes Yes Yes!!!

 

 

Something else I have been up to is crocheting by number or crochet by word... goes by both names. In short I took a graph , counted it out by line and am now working it up. Here is a pic below to help you understand. I have really been having a blast making it and I look forward to making more of them. May be one day I will get gutsy and make one out of a photo. As soon as I am finished with it i will be posting the pattern for sale online for whom ever would like to make one too.

 

 

For now I am going to get to work on typing out the three receipts I am behind on for you guys. Then it is grade papers time and back to work on the other project I am working on .... sock monkey pillow pet.... another DDC original. Excited!!!

 

TTFN my freaky darlings!!!