Chocolate/Peanut Butter & Cinnamon/Sugar Crescent Rolls

I found the recipe for these crescent rolls on For the Love of Cooking and thought they were a brilliant idea. It's one of those things that's so simple and obvious you think, why didn't I think of that? Well, I didn't think of it but I did take credit for it!

I brought these delicious crescent dessert rolls to Kristen and Justin's Housewarming party last weekend and they were a hit. And they paired wonderfully with all the other delicious food that Kristen and her family prepared for the party. They are great for an afternoon snack or a wonderful dessert or appetizer. Try them! They are too easy and too delicious to pass up!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crescent Rolls
(recipe adapted from For the Love of Cooking)

1 tube of crescent rolls
Peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
Chocolate chips

Preheat the oven according to the package directions. Place the unrolled and separated crescent rolls onto an foil-lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Spread a layer of peanut butter on each triangle and top with chocolate chips. Roll from the bottom of the triangle to the point, ending with the point on the top and center of the roll. Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve while hot.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crescent Rolls
(recipe adapted from For the Love of Cooking)

1 tube of crescent rolls
Cinnamon-sugar*

Preheat the oven according to the package directions. Place the unrolled and separated crescent rolls onto an foil-lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle triangles liberally with cinnamon sugar. Roll from the bottom of the triangle to the point, ending with the point on the top and center of the roll. Sprinkle additional more cinnamon-sugar to the top of the crescent rolls, to taste. Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve while hot.

Enjoy!
~Layne

*Make your own cinnamon-sugar by combining 1/4 cup granulated sugar with 4 tsp cinnamon.

Housewarming Party

On Saturday, October 17th, my husband and I threw a housewarming party to break in our new home. The house was open from 2pm until 2am and we had a variety of munchies all day long. Here's a peek at the menu:


Appetizers

stuffed cold shrimp

BLT bites in cherry tomatoes

Greek-style deviled eggs

pepperoni pinwheels

tortilla chips and salsa

cheddar cheeseball with crackers

cucumber-yogurt dip with vegetable dippers

chocolate "crack" cookies

chocolate peanut butter crescent rolls

cinnamon-sugar crescent rolls

cream cheese-Fluff dip with fruit

balsamic-strawberry cups

Dinner on the Grill

hot dogs

hamburgers

Andouille sausages with roasted onions and peppers

Crock Pot Pulled Pork

This meal was another great surprise. I love cooking in my crock pot because it's so gosh-darn easy. And I love the feeling at the end of the day that dinner is done and the whole house smells good and it doesn't feel like I had to do any work to make it happen. I had tried pulled pork before but it was an on-the-bone cut of meat that roasted in the oven for hours, required regular basting, was very difficult to shred and, in the end, wasn't the greatest. I decided to try to find a recipe that included a boneless cut of meat (read: cheaper and easier) that could be cooked in the slow cooker. And voila! This made for an amazing dinner.

I found this recipe and was hoping it would be a winner. It was so easy, used mostly staples that I always had on hand (except for the pork) and was very budget friendly. My husband and I aren't really into spicy foods, so I omitted the tobasco sauce. I also omitted the liquid smoke just because I didn't have any in the house. When my husband came home from work and started drooling immediately, I knew it was a good sign. Because I didn't start this until after lunch, I opted to cook it on the high setting and planned to let it cook for 4 hours. Well, this smelled so good that we lost all control and dug in just shy of 3 1/2 hours in. Even still, the meat was super tender and fell apart when I took two forks to it. I really think this recipe is foolproof and worth a try!

Crock Pot Pulled Pork
(adapted from Prudence Pennywise)

1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. pork chops
1 teaspoon or more tabasco sauce (optional)
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)

Place first 5 ingredients in slow cooker and whisk to combine. Add pork chops and turn to coat. Cook on high for 3-4 hours or on low for 6-8 hours. Remove pork chops and use two forks to shred meat. You can use the sauce that was created as your BBQ sauce by adding the pork back to crock pot and tossing with sauce. We chose to use our favorite BBQ sauce instead but did spoon a few tablespoons of the sauce in the slow cooker over the pulled pork and tossed to combine. This just added more moisture and flavor to the pork. Slap on a bun for a very tasty pulled pork sammy!

Enjoy!
~Layne

PS: I served mine with some yummy sweet potato fries which made for a very tasty dinner combo!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love baking but I don't do much of it. It's a shame and I've been wanting to get into the habit of baking more. For a while I had the hankering to make some wonderful homemade, baked, sweet something. But what? I wanted it to have some semblance of healthfulness. Zucchini bread. Bran muffins. Oatmeal cookies. Something that wasn't all calories and fat and sugar and guilt.

When it comes to healthfulness my biggest challenge is my husband. It's not that he doesn't care about being healthy but to say veggies really aren't his thing would be the understatement of the year. I try to sneak any form of nutrition into what I cook for him but it's definitely difficult to say the least. Brad was pretty wary of the whole vegetables in dessert idea so I postponed the zucchini bread in favor of some oatmeal cookies. He had had some at a party a couple weeks prior and really liked them and I knew I could make something healthy and delicious with them. So I decided to find a recipe and play with it.

First, I wanted to eliminate most of the fat by replacing the 3/4 of the butter in the recipe with apple butter. You can also do this with apple sauce but while I'm not really a fan of applesauce, I love apple butter and had some in the house. The apple butter I used had less that half the calories and NO fat compared to the butter I was using. So I saved 540 calories and 96 grams of fat JUST by making this substitution. (This counts the whole batch of cookies, but still.) Also, because apple butter adds a lot more sweetness than butter would, I also cut out some of the sugar in the original recipe.

I also added some wheat germ to the mix. For those who don't already know, this is a great option to any baked recipe to add nutrition. I add wheat germ to pancakes, waffles, cookies and muffins. It adds nutrition without changing the flavor. One note of caution, though. When you are baking the ratio of dry ingredients to wet ingredients is important. Since it has a dry, powdery consistency, wheat germ may throw this ratio off some. To counteract this, if your mix seems too thick add more of a wet ingredient. For example, in my pancakes I add a splash more milk. In the case of these cookies, the dough was fine so I didn't need to add anything.

One last thing I do in almost all of my baked recipes is switch half of the flour needed from all-purpose to whole wheat. Again, by only switching out half the flour for whole wheat, you can maintain the flavor and texture while still dramatically increasing the nutrition.

So these cookies were absolutely the surprise of the season. I thought they would be good but since I was seriously tweaking the recipe and wasn't sure exactly what the outcome would be. To both of our surprise these were amazing! It must have been the apple butter because there was this depth of flavor that couldn't be explained by anything else. If it's at all possible, these cookies really taste like fall, not too sweet with a great mix of spices and a burst of chocolate every now and then. They didn't puff up the way most cookies do, I think because of the lack of "real" butter . They held the shape they had in their raw form and just got nice and golden. But it didn't really bother us. Really it just added to the rustic, homebaked look of them.
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Crepes of Wrath (originally from Quaker Oats)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
3/4 cup apple butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp toasted wheat germ
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups dry oatmeal
1 cup milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the flours, wheat germ, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. In large bowl, beat together the butter, apple butter and sugar until light and fluffy, at least 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla and beat well.
3. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat together until just moistened. Stir in your oats, then stir in your chocolate chips.
4. Drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto foil-lined cookie sheets.
5. Bake the cookies 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool for a bit on the cookie sheets before transferring elsewhere to cool. Makes approx. 3 dozen, depending on size of your cookies.

Ok, now I was tagged by Layne to post six things that make me happy. And, since this is a food blog, I've decided that my six things will pertain to food. :o)

Here are the rules: Link to the person who has tagged you. Write down six things that make you happy. Post the rules, tag six others and let them know you did it. Then tell the person when your entry is complete. Six Things That Make Me Happy, in no particular order. . .

1. CHEESE (what more can I say?)
2. Stuff that goes with cheese (like fruits and crackers and veggies and WINE)
3. Big parties with small hors d'oeuvres (there is nothing better than creative finger food)
4. Meat... don't get me wrong, I love vegetarians... I eat vegetarians at almost every meal!
5. Desserts that are way too rich and filling to take more than a couple of bites
6. Last, but not least, sharing food with my friends and family (awh... I know, cheesy, but true)

I'm tagging Layne, Alan, and anyone else who feels like responding. ;o)

Grilled Pesto Chicken

Brad just got his first grill for Christmas so we are grilling a lot lately. And, luckily, he loves it! I like it not only because the grill adds so much flavor on it's own, but also because it's very easy to stay healthy and low fat by grilling. On that note, I adapted this Cooking Light recipe last week and it was wonderful! By far the best thing we've had on the grill.

Grilled Pesto Chicken
(adapted from Cooking Light)

2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup basil pesto
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 tsp minced garlic
Juice of one lemon
1 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Combine the first 7 ingredients in a bowl, and stir well. Place the chicken in a baggie and add half of the sauce to the bag and. Seal bag and turn to coat chicken well. Marinade in refrigerator for 30 minutes (longer would be better, up to 4 hours but I didn't have much time).


Prepare grill. Place chicken breasts on grill rack and grill for about 6 minutes per side or until the chicken is done, turning occasionally.


Remove from grill and top with remaining pesto mixture. We served this with grilled corn, sauteed mushrooms and rolls. It was delicious. Very moist chicken and the sauce was so flavorful!

Enjoy!
~Layne

Chicken Tortilla Soup

So this is the first post that truly tested the limits of the whole hatred-of-tomatoes theme. I love tortilla soup but I'm pretty picky about it. I'm not a fan of the very thin broth-y soups that taste very much like tomato soup with taco seasoning and some tortilla chips thrown on top for good measure. For me, those soups don't have any interest or character and taste way to much like raw tomatoes to be tasty. No, I prefer the creamier versions where you can tell the flour tortillas have lent their starchy goodness to the whole soup and it really tastes like a chicken taco on a flour tortilla with all the fixin's was just blended up and stuck in a bowl for you.

Since it has been unusually cool these last couple of weeks, I've been thinking a hot bowl of soup would hit the spot. I found this recipe on Cooking Light and decided to give it a go, but of course I tweaked it a bit. Since it was our main course I added some chicken to the soup. I also decreased the tomato sauce and added some skim milk to help add a creaminess. The end result: my official taste tester (Brad, the husband) approves. In fact, he loved it. I actually really liked it too but it bordered on almost too tomato-y for my taste. Next time I may add a little less tomato sauce and a little more milk. I like to play around with ratios until I get it just right, even still I really enjoyed it. But I couldn't eat the whole bowl. No worries, Brad finished off his and mine too. And he went back for seconds and thirds, that's right, he had it for dinner three nights in a row. He just couldn't stop talking about it! I always love having his seal of approval.

Chicken Tortilla Soup
(adapted from Cooking Light)

3/4 lb boneless, skinless chicken tenders
1 whole wheat flour tortilla diced into bite-size pieces
1/2 red onion, diced
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1 cups water
1/2 cup skim milk
1 14 oz can fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 cup favorite bottled salsa
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon fresh cilantro

Optional Toppings:
shredded sharp cheddar cheese, light sour cream, tortilla chips, etc

Season chicken with salt and pepper on both sides and sear in a soup pot over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes per side. Remove from pot and slice into bite size pieces and set aside. In the same pot, add onion and saute over low heat until soft and almost translucent. Add garlic and saute for another minute or two. Then add tomato sauce, water, milk, broth, salsa and spices. Be sure to stir well and scrap up all the browned chicken and onion bits from the bottom of the pan (read: flavor!) Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10-12 minutes.


This is where I did something I have a feeling most would find strange. I tend to like my soups either super thick or pretty creamy and not really anywhere in between. So I pulled out my handy-dandy new immersion blender and blended the soup while still in the pot on the stove to make the texture nice and smooth. Of course this step is optional.


Afterward, I added the diced chicken and tortilla pieces back into the soup and simmered on low for another 2-3 minutes just to combine the flavors. (Beware: only add the sliced tortillas to the soup if it's going to be eaten immediately. We learned the hard way that if they sit in the soup too long they got real soggy real quick and I wasn't a fan.) Serve with a dollop of light sour cream and a pinch of grated cheddar cheese. I also served this soup with a spinach salad and side of black beans.

Enjoy!
~Layne