Lasagna cups

"Why don't you just put it all together in a pan like normal lasagna?"  Because then it wouldn't be fun, would it, Justin?  Why do boys ask so many questions anyway?  I made these for a night when we were having the Havicks over for dinner...my old college roommate, her hubby Joel (fun fact: theirs was the first wedding I was ever in), and their two adorable chillins. Kids need entertainment, right? Why not make lasagna fun!  These turned out great, especially since I didn't burn them.  I checked on them early, thank goodness and they were perfectly done....otherwise, we wouldve been ordering pizza.  Don't judge, I've done it before.

These would also be perfect servings for a party, and I think they're just adorable looking to boot!  These have been "pinned" on my http://www.pinterest.com/ board for quite a while, so I'm glad I got a chance to try them...

1 package wonton wrappers
1 container low fat ricotta cheese
1 package shredded mozzerella cheese
Fave pasta sauce (I like to add meat to ours so would normally make some spagetti sauce with mushrooms, onion, and ground beef, but I used my batch of canned homemade pasta sauce which made this very simple.

Super spray (yes, that's a real cooking term in my kitchen) your cupcake tins with nonstick Pam or you'll be prying these suckers out with your fingers...and that's no fun.  Layer one wonton wrapper on the bottom of each cupcake hole..

...then layer one dallop of ricotta...

...followed by another wonton wrapper, and fill the whole rig up with your meaty sauce...

and top with shredded mozzerella, throwing some italian seasoning on there if you are feeling zippy...

Bake for 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees, and please keep your eye on them so you don't give them the near death experience that I did...they would've been inedible had I left them in for even a few more minutes. But instead (and yes again, I will point out that I am no professional photog), they came out heavenly! And so cute to have individual lasagna servings....

Remember the rule? If the leftovers get killed, the recipe is a winner.  These puppies were no losers!

Sausage stroganoff

It's Justin's turn again!!  My main man made dinner last week since I was preparing dinner for the following night we were going to have guests and doing other odd jobs in the kitchen....I guess he got hungry because he donned his apron and dug right into making dinner for us.

This is no ordinary apron, and if you are below the age of 18, I would feel better if you stopped reading here!  :)  He loves this apron because my Aunt Vicki and Uncle Mike sent it to him a few months ago, and it's been handed down in Mike's family for quite a while. Vicki was inducted into the family officially when Mike's dad scared her with what was underneath the towel and we've had such fun times getting my girlfriends to accidentally touch it or get a glimpse of it while grilling or camping.  It's homemade and is some of the cheapest (albeit crude...hey, we're not old yet) fun we've had this summer! Not too realistic looking from the side view but if you get a quick sighting out of the corner of your eye, you'll be surprised at the gasps that come outta  you!

On with the recipe! Stroganoff is one of his specialties but this recipe was a little different, and turned out quite well I might add. We didn't have any hamburger in the house, so as any hungry man would do, he used italian pork sausage instead of walking out to the deep freeze to get the correct ingredient.  When I do this, I create cooking disasters....when he does this, it just works for him.  It actually worked better, and we decided that italian sausage is the way to go with stroganoff from here on out.

1 lb italian sausage
1 bag no yolk egg noodles
1 family sized can cream of mushroom soup (98% fat free)
1 cup fat free sour cream
1 can mushrooms, drained
1 onion, diced
1 T garlic powder (we like the stuff so you may want to use less)
salt and pepper to taste

Pretty easy from here on out....Boil your noodles according to the package.  Brown your meat...

...and then add the onions and mushrooms to saute a bit. After draining this mixture, add the mushroom soup and sour cream before adding garlic powder and salt and pepper and then heating it all through again.

Add the sauce to the noodles after draining and you have got yourself one of the most quintessential comfort foods we make in our house.  We served with garlic bread and devoured...BOTH of us had seconds!

Southwest salad

Aunt Kris, you are saving my life with your recipes when I don't have time to be cooking or am on vacation! Everything you post for me looks so yummy, I'm sure people will find your recipes as appealing as I do! Here's the next edition from the kitchen of my Auntie Kris! :)

Here's the recipe: one 16 oz bag frozen corn- thawed and drained, one 15 oz can black beans- rinsed and drained, 1/2 cup diced black olives, 3/4 cup fresh salsa (refrigerated kind- I drain the excess juice before adding it, otherwise it ca...n dilute the vinaigrette), 2 Tablespoons fresh cilantro- chopped, 1 & 1/2 to 2 teaspoon garlic red wine vinegar, 1-2 Tablespoons olive oil (I lightly drizzle this, so this is a pretty good gestimate, but it doesn't take very much- just enough to create a light vinaigrette with the vinegar, not drown it in oil- I'd err on the side of less than more), 1 teaspoon cumin, salt and pepper to taste. Mix all ingredients together and refrigerate overnight or at least 2-3 hours before serving. You can control the level of heat by the salsa you choose. I'm not a fan of super spicy foods that burn my tongue so I generally use mild, medium at the most, but you may like it hotter. Enjoy!

Pepperoni logs

I sort of threw these together for a Jamison family get together due to a lack of planning.  I know...me? Lack of planning for food parties? I know what I'm making for events at least a couple weeks ahead of time and am usually so excited, I make it a few days before the event if possible.  But this came at a busy time where we had made plans for Friday night, we were tailgating all day Saturday (which I also made food for), and went straight to the pot luck on Sunday....my crockpots were being used for the tailgate.  What to do, what to do?

Well, I happened to see some string cheese and egg roll wrappers in the fridge and decided to throw in some pizza sauce and pepperonis just to see what happened.  I did make a taco salad as well, so that if this blew up in my face, I wouldnt be known as a total failure at least.  I have made these baked cheese sticks before too, and they were similar enough that I was pretty confident the added ingredients would only bring these up a notch.  Here's what you need:

package of string cheese
your fave pizza sauce
package of turkey pepperoni
egg roll wrappers
olive oil

There you have it.  It's actually pretty self explanatory from there.  You cut the egg roll wrappers up into quarters.

Squirt a little pizza sauce on there.

Put a pepperoni down.

Cut the string cheese sticks into thirds. Place one of the thirds on each.

Brush with olive oil around the edges so they stay shut, and roll those buggers up, tucking the sides in as you go.

Put on a greased baking sheet, and either freeze till we needed them like I did, or bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes (keep an eye if they start oozing cheese, nobody likes a cheese-less log). 

Sorry for the photo quality, my camera was dead from the weekend so a cell phone pic will have to suffice. I will say that you have to be sure to serve them right away when they're out of the oven and hot.  The people who were nibbling on them piping hot were raving but when we sat down to eat, it was like a chunk of string cheese was stuffed in an egg roll wrapper...which is exactly what happened. We took the leftovers home and ate the whole rest of the pan when they were hot so I can vouch that the temperature makes a huge difference on these. Serve with pizza sauce or ranch for dipping.  It's times like these that I am thankful to be a food hoarder and be able to throw together two dishes for a potluck without making one trip to the store! 

Broccoli cheese soup

So this is kinda cheating.  I don't make this from scratch...not even slightly.  But I had to pass this on to you so you could go buy it....ok, I'll wait till you get back.
Who doesn't love cheese soup? I think it's Justin's fave if I were to nail him down on a soup commitment.  I will say this is not diet soup, so I apologize if I got your hopes up for it being low-cal.  But you know how when you're sick and you want soup, but you don't want to make it from scratch? This was how I discovered the bagged cheese soup.  Stopped at the store on the way home to get some kleenex, some meds, and some soup...came out with this.

I just follow the directions on the package (which you only need 8 cups of water to make, by the way) and it's done in 10 minutes...seriously.  I have also been known to add a couple slices of real diced ham (not the lunchmeat stuff) since we have Wilbur frozen in the deep freeze, to give the soup some girth (did she really just use the word girth to describe food? Yes, she did.) and some staying power.  I made this for tailgating this weekend since it's going to be chilllllllllly (except it wasn't chilly at all, it was legit hot out for the end of October)!!  Nothing warms ya up like a bowl of soup and crackers...and even though it was warm out already this did get demolished so I would say that's a good sign!

Cat food dip

Don't ask me why it's called that.  It looks nothing like cat food, smells nothing like cat food (thank goodness), and I hope it tastes nothing like cat food (don't ask me how I know that).  But that's what I call it.  When we were younger, we would sometimes have this alone for dinner...no wonder I am a chip-aholic!  I loved those nights...mom would make it in the microwave instead of the crockpot, so you could do that if you so choose.  I serve this as an appetizer and/or tailgating food so I like to keep it warm in the crockpot.

I'm sure most of you have already made this dip, and if you haven't then you have to have tasted it at some point in your life.  If not, I feel for you.  I guess it may be an Iowa/midwest thing because my friend Amanda from the South thinks this is the best thing she's stumbled across in Iowa, and I thought it was a pretty standard dish.  But when made with homemade salsa, you betta buleev this rates pretty high on my dip-o-meter.  The only issue there is the dip got a little runny since the homemade stuff is a bit more liquid-y (is that a word?) so I would use more cheese or less salsa...whatever you prefer.  With only 3 ingredients, why would you not make this right meow?

1 lb hamb (browned)
1 block 2% velveeta (diced)
Salsa (as much as you want, as hot as you want, I used my fresh salsa from the garden that I had to clear out to beat the first frost)

Throw all that in a crockpot, and let it melt all it's lovliness into one ingredient....mmmmmm, cheesy! Beef in the bottom, cheese after that, and salsa drizzled on top.  Not sure if that's the order it has to go, but that's the way I do it...why change now?? Done and done...ladies and gentlemen, start your dipping!

Crockpot caesar chicken

Quick post Thursday! This was a simple, SIMPLE crockpot dinner (you know how I love those) that was a little different than usual...no cream of whatever soup at all! Plus I had fresh basil and tons of tomatoes on hand so this moved right to the top of my recipe stack!

2 cups Caesar salad dressing (Ken's is the shizz!!)

1 cup sweet Italian dressing
half an onion
2 t Italian seasoning
2 t sweet basil
2 T sugar (I left this out)
1 can Italian seasoned tomatoes (I just had plain canned tomatoes so I added a bunch more Italian seasoning)
Chicken breasts (I used 3 breasts for this amount of sauce)

Place chicken breasts into crockpot with a liner.  Mix all other ingredients together and pour over the top of the chicken. 

Cook on low for 6-8 hours and serve over no yolk egg noodles (or on high for 3 hours which is what I did).  You can choose to thicken the sauce the last 30 minutes with some corn starch, but I skipped that step. I just added the noodles to the crockpot after they were boiled, and shredded the chicken, and let it all simmer in there together all stirred up for about 15 minutes, so the starch from the noodles thickened the sauce right up to perfect!  Justin has steadily been working on these leftovers, so I know that's usually a good sign even if he doesn't comment on a meal the first time around. If the leftovers sit in the fridge without nibbles gone for a few days....it was a flop! Very scientific guage, huh?