Three-Cheese Pasta Bake

From Southern Living (I found it on Pinterest)

This delicious variation on traditional macaroni and cheese is easy to prepare and perfect for weeknight family dinners and weekend entertaining alike. Add cooked chicken, shrimp, or sausage (we added sausage) to the pasta bake and serve with a green salad and fresh vegetables for a hearty, well-rounded meal.

Yield:Makes 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients:
1 (16-ounce) package ziti
2 (10-ounce) containers refrigerated Alfredo sauce (Butoni- in the fresh pasta case)
1 (8-ounce) container sour cream
1 (15-ounce) container ricotta cheese
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese

Preparation:

Prepare ziti according to package directions; drain and return to pot.Stir together Alfredo sauce and sour cream; toss with ziti until evenly coated. Spoon half of mixture into a lightly greased 13- x 9-inch baking dish.Stir together ricotta cheese and next 3 ingredients; spread evenly over pasta mixture in baking dish. Spoon remaining pasta mixture evenly over ricotta cheese layer; sprinkle evenly with mozzarella cheese.Bake at 350° for 30 minutes or until bubbly.

I bought two smaller disposable pans and instead of using a 13x9 pan used two small pans, one to cook tonight and one to freeze. This is something I've started doing to save time. :) I'm going to serve it with a spinach salad.

What's for Dinner: Bacon Ranch Chicken

Tonight I'm trying another recipe from the Crockin' Girls website. It sounds yummy and hopefully it will make dinnertime a little easier tonight. It only took a few minutes to put together and would have gone quicker if I wasn't juggling two kiddos and lunchtime all while doing it!

Bacon Ranch Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 tbsp real bacon bits
1tsp minced garlic
1pkg ranch dressing mix
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
egg noodles

Combine bacon, garlic, ranch dressing mix, soup, and sour cream; mix well. Pour over chicken in the crock pot. Cook on high 3-4 hours. Then shred the chicken and put back in the pot and add the egg noodles; mix together.

We'll see how it turns out!

Slow Cooker Potato Soup

Today I'm trying a recipe that a friend of mine put on her Facebook page, or maybe it was Twitter... it's a lot of prep, so next time I think I'll do that part the night before. However, the smell is unbelievable. Lots of people reviewed this as being delicious so we're looking forward to dinner!!

From the web:

Slow Cooker Potato Soup

Prep Time 20 Minutes (or longer if you're a slow potato peeler like me)
Cook Time 8 Hours-10 Hours on Low

Recipe Description

This is a souped up (ha!) version of a slow cooker potato soup recipe that I had. I felt like it could use a bit more lovin’ – so I added more to it! It’s a fave in our house (and friends LOVE it too!) Serve it with some of Pioneer Woman’s The Bread (on her site) – and for an added bonus, sprinkle a bit of parmesan on top of the bread before baking and it’s DIVINE with the soup!

Ingredients

8 cups Diced Potatoes (peeled) I bought a 5 lb bag of yukon gold and used about 80% of the bag
½ cups Diced Carrots
½ cups Diced Celery
3 cans Chicken Broth, 14 1/2 Oz Each
1 can Cream Of Chicken Soup (10 Oz. Can)
1 Tablespoon Parsley
2 teaspoons Salt
1 teaspoon Pepper
1 clove Garlic, Minced
½ pounds Bacon, cooked and crumbled
5 Tablespoons Flour
1 package Cream Cheese (8 Oz. Package)

Preparation Instructions

In a large slow cooker/crock pot, combine all above ingredients, minus the flour and cream cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. (You can opt to add the bacon at the end as a “garnish”, but I always just throw it in at the beginning.)

Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or until potatoes are done.About an hour before you serve the soup, add the cream cheese. Stir until blended. (The cream cheese adds a whole ‘nother dimension to this soup…so wonderful!)We always like our soup thick, so you can scoop out about a cup or two of the soup into a separate bowl. Add the flour, whisking constantly to avoid any lumps. Then as you are stirring the soup, add flour/soup mixture back into the slow cooker. Replace lid and allow the soup to cook for another 20-30 minutes (or until you’re ready to serve).

You can repeat the last step of the flour/soup if needed to get the thickness desired.

Verdict:

This was DELICIOUS! It made a lot and we loved the way that it made the house smell all day long. Next time I'd add a little less pepper and then add it when served as needed. The only thing that this was missing was a blizzard outside (and I'm not sad about that!). It's the perfect winter soup. I highly recommend making this!!

Bacon-Wrapped Apple BBQ Chicken

This Christmas I got a new, and much bigger crockpot so I'm excited to try some new recipes and post about them! Last year I started blogging about what I was cooking and then got pregnant and NOTHING seemed appealing so I certainly didn't want to write about food (I couldn't even stand the smell of most food!) I recently came across a website through Facebook called The Crockin' Girls or www.crockingirls.com and this came from there. I made it with a few modifications:

1. no lemon juice (I have a severe lemon allergy, I hope excluding this doesn't ruin it)
2. I cooked it for 4 hours on high (I only had 4 hours before dinner)
3. I used precooked bacon (It was all we had in the house)

We will see how it turns out! I'll post a verdict later.

Bacon-Wrapped Apple BBQ Chicken
3-4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup BBQ sauce
1-2 apples, peeled and grated
1 lemon, juiced
6-8 slices bacon

Directions:
1. In small bowl, combine BBQ sauce with grated apple and lemon juice.
2. Place chicken breasts in base of crock pot, pour BBQ/apple mixture over the chicken. Wrap 2 pieces of bacon around each chicken breast. Set to low and cook for 8 hours.


The website says to serve with sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or rice. I think that we'll probably opt for rice because that's what we have in the house but I'd love some sweet potatoes!

Verdict:

This was not my favorite but we might try it again. I made a LOT of modifications on this one because I wasn't planning on making it and so I had to use what I had in the house. In the future I think I'd use a sweeter BBQ sauce than I had on hand and also use raw bacon (I used precooked for the recipe). Also, a honey crisp apple would probably bring a lot of flavor. We'll see. It was super easy! One thing that I learned was that I hate using a manual grater. I never use it but I thought it would be faster than using the food processor (when you consider the cleaning). WRONG! I should have just used the food processor to grate the apple. Oh well! Live and learn!

Macaroni Taco Bake

Since I've been pregnant, I've really neglected this blog, mostly because at the beginning of the pregnancy I was so turned off by all food and so I got out of the habit. However, now that we're almost done, I'm trying to freeze some things we can make easily after baby GIRL comes! This magazine has had a bunch of stuff I'm going to try.

Tonight we tried this recipe from the Taste of Home: Church Suppers magazine tonight. Believe it or not, I found the magazine at the Lowes' checkout! It was good, and my husband said to cook it again. I liked it enough to make again, especially because my 2 year old gobbled it up!


Macaroni Taco Bake

2 packages of Macaroni and cheese dinner mix
1 lb ground beef
1 cup chunky salsa
2 cups crushed tortilla chips
1 can 2 1/4 oz ripe olives drained (we skipped these)
2 cups shredded mexican cheese blend
Sour Cream, optional

1. Prepare mac and cheese according to the package directions. Meanwhile in a large skillet cook beef until no longer pink; drain. Stir in salsa and set aside.

2. Spread macaroni into greased 13x9 baking dish. Layer with beef mixture, chips and olives; sprinkle with cheese/

3. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until heated through. Serve with sour cream if desired.

What's For Dinner: Saucy Chicken with Mushrooms

Hello and Happy 2011!

I got two great crockpot cookbooks for Christmas, one from my husband and one from my sister. I thumbed through both of them briefly and found a bunch of new recipes that we'll be trying as I try to keep up the energy to try new things. One of the things that's cool about the book that I'm cooking from today is that it will give you a recipe on how to prepare some meat then give you 3-4 simple (non crockpot) recipes that you can use the meat in for a quick meal. Very cool.

The book that my husband got me is "The Ultimate Slow Cooker Book" put out by Better Homes and Gardens.

Saucy Chicken with Mushrooms

Ingredients

8 oz fresh button mushrooms, quartered
6 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms stems removed, and caps sliced
4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (about 1.5 lbs total)
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 0.7 oz packet Italian dry salad dressing mix
1 10.75 oz can condensed golden mushroom soup
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 of an 8oz tub cream cheese spread with chives and onion
Hot cooked rice or angel hair pasta
Snipped fresh chives (optional)

Directions

1. In a 3.5-4 quart slow cooker combine button and shiitake mushrooms. Top with chicken. In a medium saucepan melt butter over medium heat; stir in dry dressing mix. Stir in soup, wine and cream cheese. Still until the cream cheese melts; pour over chicken.


2. Cover and cook on a low heat setting for 4-5 hours.

3. Serve chicken and sauce over hot cooked rice. If desired, sprinkle each serving with chives.

Unfortunately, when I went to the store they only had one type of mushroom so I got enough of one kind to equal the total amount of the mushrooms that it called for. I'm hoping that this doesn't damper the recipe too much.

Later, I'll post a verdict!

What's For Dinner: Swiss Chicken Bake

This is a recipe that someone put on my friend's Facebook wall when she said that she had boneless chicken breasts and needed some ideas what to do with them. We tried it and now it's in our rotation.

Swiss Chicken Bake

Ingredients

3-4 boneless chicken breasts
1 can cream of celery soup (you could also use cream of chicken)
1/2 cup milk
2 slices of Swiss cheese per chicken breast
1 stick of butter (I always feel like this is a lot of butter, but it does make it yummy)
1 package of stuffing (like stove top or pepperidge farm stuffing cubes)

Directions

Preheat oven 350.

Take chicken and pound with tenderizer then season with salt and pepper.

Spray 13 x 9 pan with non stick cooking spray. Place chicken in pan.

Cover chicken with Swiss cheese slices.

In a separate bowl combine soup and milk into a sauce. Pour sauce over chicken and cheese.

Melt butter in microwave.

Pour stuffing cubes over the chicken. Top with the butter.

Cook in over for about 45 minutes.


Enjoy!

If you have any ideas about how to cut out the butter but get a similar flavor, please share, I'd love to know!