Flour Tortillas

I LOVE it when you go to a Mexican restaurant and they bring you butter and tortillas.  They are delicious.  The problem is when you crave them at home.  Store bought tortillas don't taste very good, especially when you simply role them up with a bit of melted butter.  Gross.  I informed Nick that it bothered me how simple of a snack it is, yet it is impossible to have the fresh taste like the restaurant one's.  An hour later we had fresh, homemade tortillas.  It didn't take Nick but a minute or two to look up a chewy type version online.  They were really easy to make and took about 45 minutes.  We have made them 3 times since our first time now and they get easier to make each time.  We served them to family who are in town last weekend with white trash dip and boy was it a hit!  Hope you love them as much as we do!!!

Ingredients:
2 Cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3/4 Cup lukewarm milk

Directions:
*In a large bowl, mix the flour and baking powder together.

*Add the oil and salt to the warm milk and mix well.

*Slowly mix the milk mixture into the flour mixture.

*Work it into a dough, it will be sticky...

*Pour some flour onto your counter.  Spread it out.

*Put your dough onto the counter and knead it.  (Kneading dough is where you take your hands and put them into fists.  Now push your fists from the center of the dough out.  Rotate where you are and continue to push out the dough.  Then grab the dough and fold it over onto itself...if you don't understand this, google how to knead...  ;)  Its a fold and press sort of motion...

*The stickyness will be gone mostly now (after kneading).  Put the dough back in the bowl after you have kneaded it for about 2 minutes.

*Cover the dough with a damp cloth.

*Let sit for 15 minutes covered.  It will not rise, but it needs to sit for 15 minutes covered.

*Divide your dough into 8 equal sized balls.  Set them apart from one another so they are not touching.  Cover them with a kitchen towel.

*Let them sit covered for 20 minutes.

*After 20 minutes, place a bit more flour onto your counter.

*Take a rolling pin and roll each dough ball into a 7 inch square.

*Turn a pan on the stove onto medium heat.

*Do not spray it with baking spray, it won't stick...

*Cook the tortilla in the pan for about 30 seconds on each side.  They blister on each side when the side is cooked.

*After cooking each side for 30 seconds, place it onto a plate.  Cook the rest of the tortillas the same way.  Enjoy!

All You Need is Wine

Just because I never have pictures taken of me, I had to post this one.  It ain't too shabby of a pic!  AND, it sort of deals with food... hahahaha!

And look at my glass!!!  I made it!  :)  Yup, etched my name into my wine glass.  

Stuffed Chicken with Goat Cheese and Basil

Here is another amazing recipe, courtesy of my hubby.  When he makes dinner you KNOW its going to be good!  I know many of you might look at the ingredients and go "um, I don't think so."  Honestly, you will be sorry. The jalepeno's add a mild heat, the goat cheese (which is SO creamy and a very mild cheese) is amazing, and the basil is so sweet.  Oh, its to die for.  This has just made it to the top of my favorite things I have ever eaten in my whole entire life list.  Its up there, amazing.

Ingredients:
2-3 Chicken Breasts (small one's, or 1 huge one)
6-8 Strips of bacon
1 Pkg fresh basil (must be fresh)
1/2 Pkg goat cheese (you could use other cheese but  I don't recommend it)
2 Shallots (yes, those small onion things)
1/2 Large jalapeno

Directions:
*Cut your shallots into small pieces.

*Put a tablespoon or two of oil into a saucepan and turn on medium heat for a minute or so until it warms up a bit.

*Put your shallots into the pan and cook until they are translucent (about 5 minutes or so).

*When they are done cooking, put them in a bowl off to the side.

*If your chicken breasts are big/thick (ours were, we buy them at Albertsons in the meat section and they are HUGE), slice them in half.  If you used those bagged chicken breasts from Walmart of such (in the frozen section) no need to slice in half.  Put a piece of saran wrap on a cutting board and then place the thin chicken breast onto it.  POUND it with anything you have (meat beater or hammer...).

(See, HUGE)

(We cut it directly down the middle so we had 2 thin pieces)

(Pound it down thin)

(ta-da)

*Line a baking sheet with tinfoil.  Spray it down with baking spray.  (Or use parchment paper like we did)

*Take all of your chicken (once they are nice and beaten down thin), and place them on the tinfoil/parchment paper.

*Here is what your next ingredients look like:

*Take your goat cheese (or another cheese if you prefer) and cut it into small pieces.  Lay it on the chicken.

*Slice you jalapeno into thin slices

*Take your jalapeno slices and place them on top of the cheese.

*Now place the basil leaves on top of the jalapeno slices.

*Place your shallots on top of the basil leaves.

*Get some toothpicks ready.

*Take your bacon strips and lay one out.

*Roll your chicken up.

*Take your rolled up chicken and roll it onto the bacon stips so that the bacon runs around the chicken.

*Secure the bacon with toothpicks. (This picture is of one of the tiny chicken pieces we used for the kids chicken.  You can see how nice it is rolled though)

*Do this to all of the chicken pieces.

*Take your bacon wrapped chicken and brown it a bit in your pot of grease from the shallots.

*You only want to brown it up a bit.  (2-3 mins or so, flipping them)

*Do each of the chicken pieces, then place them back onto the parchment paper baking dish or tin foil baking dish.

*Pre-heat your oven to 350*F.

*Put your chicken into the oven and bake for 20 minutes until fully cooked through.

*We served ours with rice and broccoli.  It was delicious!!!!!!!!!!

It was a huge hit with the kids too!  We did not put shallots or jalapeno's into their small one's however.

Chicken Spaghetti Casserole

I was reading the Pioneer Woman's cookbook that my good friend Mara bought me when I ran across this recipe.  I really liked the thought of it (especially since I have tons of spaghetti in my pantry).  I liked most of the ingredients in it too, but here is my version of her recipe.  I changed it up some, of course....  Anyways, it was surprisingly really DELICIOUS!!!  A mild spice to it (which you wouldn't know by looking at the picture).  And once again, the food is so much yummier than my pictures are...hence the name of my blog!

Ingredients:

2 Big chicken breasts (or 3-4 of the bagged frozen small ones)

1 Lb spaghetti

2 Cans cream of chicken or mushroom soup (I used 2 chicken)

2 Cups shredded cheddar cheese 

1/2 Small onion

1/3-1/2 Green pepper

1 Tsp Lowry's seasoning salt (I paid $1.07 for it at Target)

Pepper to taste

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions:

*Put your chicken into a large skillet with water (or into a large stock pot with water...stock pot would be easier...)

*Boil the water/chicken for about 25 minutes.

*While the chicken is cooking, empty the 2 cans of soup into a large mixing bowl.  

*Add 1 1/2 cups of cheese into the soup and mix.

*Dice up your green pepper into tiny pieces.

*Chop your onion up into small pieces  too.

*Pioneer woman puts her onion and pepper into the cheese and soup mixture.  I put mine into a small pan with a bit of oil and cooked it for a minute or two to take the raw onion flavor out.  I hate raw onions.

*Put your onion/pepper mixture into the cheese and soup mixture.  Add the Lowry's salt, pepper, and cayenne to it.

*Once the chicken is done, pull it out and set the chicken on a plate off to the side.  

*Remove 2 cups of the chicken water broth.  I only had 1 cup left.  Next time I will use more water when boiling the chicken.  If you don't have 2 cups of water, open a can of chicken broth and add enough to get you to two cups.  I poured the rest of the chicken broth into my pan and then filled the pan up with water again so I could cook the pasta.  If you don't have a can of chicken broth, don't freak out, you will be fine.  

*Boil water OR rest of the chicken water if you have any OR water with the rest of the can of chicken broth (like me).  You want to cook your pasta now, so do whatever you can/need to to cook your pasta.  No need to stress about how you cook it. 

*Break your pasta into 2 inch pieces.

*Cook your pasta until al dente.  Not typically an "al dente" fan, but in this case you want your pasta to not be fully cooked.  I stopped cooking my pasta a few minutes before it was fully cooked/soft.  (I cooked my pasta in my chicken skillet.  If you want more space, put it into a bigger pot).

*Shred your chicken with two forks.

*Add the chicken and the 2 cups of chicken water/broth to the soup mixture.  Stir well.

*Add the pasta to the soup mixture and mix well.

*Spray a big casserole baking dish down with cooking spray.  (I needed to use two dishes...)

*Pour your mixture into the 1 or 2 dishes.

*Cover with the remaining shredded cheese.

*Place in a pre-heated oven at 350*F.

*Bake for 35-45 minutes.  I did mine for 40 minutes and it was perfect!  Nice and bubbly!