Chicken Taco Salad

Taco Salad, remade.

 

When I was young,  my mother made taco salad all the time.    Ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, pinto beans, Catalina dressing and Doritos.   We had this version of taco salad almost weekly.

When I married and became the “cook” I began making the salad too.

It’s very kid friendly, it’s easy to assemble and made with ground chicken it’s healthier.

This salad is also yummy, meat free.

Very simply….

• 1 pound of ground chicken, browned
• 1 head of lettuce or one bag of salad mix
• 1 tomato diced
• 1 cup of shredded cheese (more or less at your preference)
• 1 can of pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups of Doritos, (placed in a bag and broken up into small pieces *but not crushed*)
• 1/3 cup + of Catalina dressing, I make my own.  Recipe follows..

To make the salad, add all the ingredients (except the dressing) into a bowl.  Mix well, slowly add dressing until the salad is covered, but not drowning.

Catalina Dressing

Makes about 2 cups of dressing.

• 1/3 cup ketchup, any brand
• 1/3 cup of white sugar or 1/4 cup of honey
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup onion , grated
• 2/3 teaspoon paprika
• 1/3 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 2/3 teaspoon (to taste) salt and pepper

Place all the ingredients except the olive oil into a blender or food processor, pulse or blend until smooth.

Slowly add the oil, while continuing to blend.  Place into a mason jar or other container.  Store left over dressing in the fridge.  Shake before using.

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Slow Cooker Monday, this week in FAIL

Cream of Leek and Potato soup

I wanted to make something that could be made for meatless Monday or could be made Vegan.

I decided to make Julia Child’s recipe.

I made a few small changes. Instead of water I used homemade veggie stock, I used little potatoes instead of large russets and I did not peel them & I used half & half instead of heavy cream and sour cream.

• I cooked the soup in my slow cooker on High for 5 hours
• I used my immersion blender to make the soup creamy
• The soup was perfectly creamy without the milk products added to it. *Stop here for Vegan*
  
• I added the half & half to the soup and allowed it to cook on low for 1 more hour.

The soup was not entirely successful. Two of us liked it, two of us hated it so much that we only ate salad for dinner.

Hopefully Allie has a more than 50% successful post for us today.

Please join Allie and me by linking up your new or previously posted slow cooker adventures!

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Related articles

• Slow Cooker Apple-Pear Butter (adashofdomestic.wordpress.com)
• Slow Cooker Monday, Breakfast Style (adashofdomestic.wordpress.com)
• Slow Cooker Attempt #1 (myreciperesolution.wordpress.com)
• Last Chance Winter Soup (blendedgoodness.wordpress.com)
• Southwestern Red Bean Vegetable Soup (challengeu2cook.wordpress.com)

Slow Cooker Monday, Breakfast Style

Hello! Happy Monday! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

I am happy to report that we did take down Christmas over the weekend. Yeah!

Please join Allie and me for Slow Cooker Monday. You can add your slow cooker recipe to the link up.

Today, I have a great winter breakfast for you.

Slow Cooker, Overnight Oatmeal.

• 2 cups of Steel Cut or Irish oats
• 7-8 cups of water (I use 8 cups for creamier oatmeal)
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 3/4 cup of dried cranberries, raisins, blue berries or other dried fruit

I spray my slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray. Then add all the ingredients, stir, place the lid on and cook for 6-8 hours on low. The longer you cook it the more creamy the oatmeal.

Before the water was added.

Fully cooked and totally yummy!

Once the oatmeal is cooker, I place 3/4 cup portions into small plastic containers. I get about 8-10 serving portions per batch. I place the containers into the fridge and in the morning (or anytime someone wants some oatmeal) all they need to do is warm it up.

Have a super Monday.

Slow Cookin’ Monday…….

I’m going to talk about beans this week.  I think that beans are one of the items that I almost exclusively cook in my slow cooker.  It’s the easiest way I know to cook a big ‘ole pot of beans.

The rest of my posts this week will be Thanksgiving related.  I’m not going to talk about how to carve a turkey or the best ways to make mashed potatoes.

I am going to talk about what to do with your left over turkey.

If you’re linking up with Allie and me for this installment of Slow cooker recipes, please follow the link below to add your recipe post to the collection.

Make sure to check out Allie’s Vegan Pea soup, it looks mighty tasty!

For this week’s slow cooker post I’ve made Mayocoba Beans.

Here is a little background on Mayocoba beans.

This information is from Wikipedia.

“Yellow beans

Sinaloa Azufrado, Sulphur, Mayocoba, and Peruano (also called canary) are types of yellow beans.

Peruano beans (also called canary beans) are small, oval, yellow-colored beans about 1/2 inch (1 cm) long with a thin skin. Peruano beans have a creamy texture when cooked, and are one of the top-selling beans in Mexico City.”

These beans will need to be soaked overnight.  Some dried bean-ey things like peas and lentils don’t need to be pre-soaked.  Here is a link to a useful guide for prep-ing  dried beans, peas and lentils.

I pre-soaked a 2 pound bag of Mayocoba beans.   Once the beans were soaked, I placed half of them (about a pound) into the slow cooker and the other half I placed into two freezer safe bags for later use.

Later, these beans will be put to use.

The beans I have frozen will be useful for other recipes. You could also cook the whole bag and then freeze half of the fully cooked beans.

Mayocoba beans are great with rice or great for making  Frijoles Refritos (refried beans).

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of mayocoba beans, pre-soaked and cleaned
• 1 medium onion, chopped (about 3/4 of a cup)
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp of salt (or more to taste)
• enough water (or homemade veggie stock) to cover the beans.  I used 1/2 veggie broth and 1/2 water (6 cups total)

I am cooking my beans in my slow cooker on HIGH for 7-8 hours.  If you wanted to convert this recipe for stove top cooking you will need to cook it for about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.

Once the beans are ready, serve them with rice.

Or… make refried beans.

To make refried beans, add 4 TBSP of vegetable oil to skillet.  Add the beans to the skillet and add 2 TBSP of the cooking liquid to the skillet.  Mash the beans with a potato masher or the back of a large cooking spoon.  Season to your taste.

           

Simmer until the beans reach the consistency you want, add more cooking liquid as needed.

Enjoy your homemade refried beans.

Cranberry Apple Sauce

Apples and Cranberries, they're good friends

Allieand I are teaming up again this week to bring you slow cooker recipes. We hope that you will join us.



Follow the frog link to add a your new or previously posted slow cooker recipe to our link up.

A big thanks to Lavender and Lime and The Hoot Eats for joining in on the last link up!

I’m a fan of cranberries.

A big fan of cranberries.

I make home-made cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I used my homemade cranberry sauce to make a festive holiday banana bread.

I like making apple sauce in my slow cooker, sure it takes longer than making it on the stove top, but I love that my apple sauce can cook all night while I’m sleeping.

I decided to add cranberries to my apple sauce for a fun, fall flavor.

Because I added cranberries, which are tart by nature, I’m adding brown sugar and apple juice. I want sweet cranberry apple sauce, not a bowl full of pucker.

Cranberry Apple Sauce

slow cooker style

The ingredients:

• 2 pounds of apples, diced and mostly peeled
• 2 1/2 cups of fresh or frozen cranberries
• 2-3 cups of brown sugar (depending on how sweet you like it)
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 6 ounces of apple juice

What to do:

• Place the apples and cranberries into the slow cooker
• add the spices, mix well
• add the apple juice
• cook on LOW for 10-12 hours (I like to cook mine overnight)

Cooked for 12 hours

• allow to cool for at least 2 hours, I place my cooked fruit into the fridge. My slow cooker has a removable crockery piece, so I remove it and place it into the fridge.

drain off the syrup-ey sauce

• Once the fruit is cool, drain off the sauce, I save my sauce for other things.
• Add the fruit to a food processor in batches and process them until they are at the smooth-ness level you prefer.

process them until smooth

• Store in the fridge for 1-2 weeks. The apple juice allows for the up to 2 weeks storage. My apple sauce never lasts that long though.

jar it up, for cuteness

The sauce is creamy and airy. We really enjoy it and if you try it, I hope you enjoy it too.

Nom..Nom..Nom

Meatless Monday….3 bean soup.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!   We’ve had a wonderful weekend here in central Texas.    The Texas State Fair opened on Friday, we’re planning to visit the fair tomorrow (Tuesday).  My children have Monday and Tuesday off this week, for the fair and a teacher in-service (6 weeks grade entering day).

On Sunday (yesterday) I decided to make 3 bean soup for Monday dinner.    I’ve got a repair man coming to fix my drippy ice maker today, so it’s won’t be a good day for cooking.

I’ve said it before, but it bares repeating…. I am not great at meal planning.  I usually have some sort of loose plan in my mind of meals to make, but I rarely plan more than 1 or 2 days in advance.  Horrible?  Yes.

Sunday morning  I decided to make bean soup, but I had not soaked my beans overnight.  OOPS!  I decided to throw caution to the wind and make soup without pre-soaking my beans.  Crazy right?

Fo Shizzle….that’s how I roll.

Monday’s meatless soup can become a meaty soup on Tuesday night, since I am going to be tired after my day at the fair.  Hopefully I will not gorge myself on fried Kool-aid, fried bubblegum and fried beer. 

This soup is wonderfully flavorful and so worth the extended time it took to cook it.  11:00 am to 4:00 pm cooking time.

*you could make this soup in the slow cooker, place everything into the slow cooker and cook on high for 6-8 hours, low for 8-10(+) hours*

Ingredient list:

• 4 cups of dried (mixed) beans.  I used a mixture of Organic Navy Beans, Organic Great Northern Beans and Organic Cranberry beans.
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 green and 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 6 cups of veggie stock
• 2 cups of water (plus more if needed) I ended up with 4 cups of water in my soup.
• 2 tablespoons of minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons of garlic salt
• 1 package of sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 pinch of red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon of parsley

What to do….

Place 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a cast iron pot.  Saute the onion, garlic, and peppers until soft.

Add beans, spices, stock, tomatoes and water to the pot.

Bring the mixture to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer low and slow (stirring every so often) for about 4 hours.

If you need to, add more water or stock to the pot.  I ended up adding about 2 cups of water during the cooking time.

*You could totally cook this a lot quicker if you pre-soaked the beans*

 

 

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I’m making a whole wheat cornbread to enjoy with the soup. 

Are you meatless this Monday?  What are you making?

Caramelized Onion Relish

This week is the 4th week in the canning link-up Allie and I are hosting.

I almost made brandied cherries…next time….maybe.

I had a busy cooking weekend.  I bought a small army of onions and jalapenos on Saturday.   I made more Jalapeno Relish and Candied Jalapenos.  I also made Slow-Cooker Caramelized Onions via Andrea- From the Bookshelf-’s recipe.

15 small jars of jalapeno-ey goodness

Busy, busy and boy did my eyes water a lot over the weekend with all the onion and jalapeno slicing.

Since I had more onions than I needed to make the Slow Cooker Caramelized Onions (which I separated into 4 meal sized serving portions and froze).

I decided to look for an onion canning recipe.  Easier said than done.    Onions and canning can be tricky business.  Without something acidic in the recipe (like vinegar) you need to pressure can the onions.  Pressure canning is not something I have ventured into yet.  The pressure canning cook times are LONG, and I am concerned about the issue of Botulism.

I wanted to do something a little different this week.  Something with wine, something with onions.

I decided on a sweet, savory onion relish.

Since this relish has balsamic vinegar in it, it is water bath can-able.

To see our canning link up from previous weeks… Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3

I’ve had Onion relish as an appetizer.  It’s great on burgers or with steaks.  According to My Pantry Shelf  (where the recipe I used came from) it is great on pizza too.

adapted from My Pantry Shelf and The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving

My adaptions are in purple

Here is what you will need to make Caramelized Onion Relish:

4 large red (I used yellow) onions, peeled and thinly sliced

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon of celery seed

1/2 teaspoon of turmeric

1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice

2 cups dry red wine

6 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper (or to taste)

Place the onions in a pot, over a medium heat.  Add the sugar, celery seed, turmeric and pumpkin pie spice.  Stir the sugar and spices into the onions.

         

Cook the onions for 30 minutes or until onions are soft, browning and caramelized. Mine took 45 min to cook down.  My onions were very moist.

Once the onions are cooked down until most of the liquid has evaporated, add the wine, vinegar, salt and pepper.

  

Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer the mixture for 15-20 minutes until the liquid has reduced and it begins to thicken. Mine took about 40 minutes to reduce and thicken, but I made a double batch, so that might be why it took longer.

Prep your canning jars: sterilize the jars and warm the lids. 

Ladle the relish into the hot jars, making sure to leave 1/2 inch of head-space.

   

Wipe the jar rims and place the lids onto the jars.

Process the jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes (for half-pint jars) or 15 minutes (for pint jars).

Allow jars to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing the them from the water bath.  Place the jars on the counter top to rest overnight.

Check the seals on the jars and store them in a cool, dry place for up to 1 year.

Now it’s your turn!  Link up your canning post.  New post, old post it matters not.  Allie and I would love to see what you’ve been canning!

My three squashes and the end of summer

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  Here in the United States and Canada, today is a holiday.  It’s Labor Day.

If you’re not from the United States or Canada, here’s a little info on the holiday. This info is via Wikipedia and Answers.com

Labor Day.

The first Monday in September, observed as a holiday in the United States and Canada in honor of working people.

Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer.

In high society, Labor Day is (or was) considered the last day of the year when it is fashionable for women to wear white.

I’m not sure if September will mark an end to the dog days of summer, but it’s supposed to be the end of summer.

 

  That also means, the end or near the end of summer squash, so Friday when I went to the Farmer’s Market I picked up a few varieties of squash.

 

The yellow/green squash are over sized 8-ball squash I think. Think zucchini squash.

The green pumpkin shaped squash is Kabocha squash.  Allie at Forgotten Beast  blogged about this squash last week.  It is a winter squash, not a summer squash.

The white squash are Pattypan squash. Funny little things aren’t they?

Here is a cool resource page for squash.

 

I hope you have a wonderful day!  I’m off to swim and enjoy the holiday!

Maple Raisin Baked Apples

It’s not fall here yet, but I still love baked fall-ish desserts. What’s more yummy and fall-ish than baked apples?

Okay, pumpkin pie sure….but…back to the apples.

My kids are not entirely fond of the whole “Meatless Monday” thing. Today they asked if we were going to do “Meatless Monday” all year-long. Um, Yep. I explained (again) why we were meatless. I explained the benefits to our bodies and the environment. They remain UN-impressed. So, one strategy I have employed is an enticing dessert.

Hello enticement

Here’s what you’ll need.

• 4 apples
• 1 cup of maple syrup
• 1 cup of raisins
• 1 TBSP of pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar

What to do.

• Pre-heat oven to 400 deg. F
• wash and core the apples (I used an apple coring tool. It leaves a lovely hole all the way through the apple. Try not to core your finger while coring the apples… UM OUCH!)
• Spray a baking pan with non-stick spray

• place apples into the baking dish
• fill the hole in the center of the apple(s) with raisins
• drizzle the maple syrup over the apples
• sprinkle the pumpkin pie spice over the apples
• pack the brown sugar into the hole with the raisins (as much as you can) sprinkle the rest over the apples

Cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes, or until the apples are bubbly and soft.

Next time I make this, I am going to peel the apples before I bake them. The skins were soft-ish, but not soft enough.

I served the apples with a single serving sized portion of vanilla ice cream.

Kids ~VS~ Veggies…

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! We had a very nice weekend. School starts today. This is bittersweet. While I am glad to have a little time to myself to chill out, shop or clean…I will miss them. A lot. Since I’ve got kiddo on the brain, I have a kid-centric post for you today.

Do you have picky people to feed? Do you struggle to get your family to eat veggies? I do.

When my son was 5 or 6 he was so averse to eating any green vegetable he would gag, choke, and flail. He told me all green things were evil.

Fun times at dinner.

Ah. Fun times.

He’s 13 now, and while he usually no longer flails he still is not fond of many veggies. A recent gagging episode with rainbow chard reminded me of the not so good old days.

Despite the picture below, Veggies are NOT evil.

Well, except for Brussel-Sprouts. They are pure evil. Little green balls of evil.

Here are a few things I have done to get my kids to try new veggies…….

• Try to get the kids involved in the veggie choices. I have found that kids are more likely to eat something if they helped pick it out.
• Have the kids help in the cooking process. Just like allowing them to help pick the veggies, allowing them to help in the cooking process will sometimes make them more willing to eat the veggies.
• Introduce the veggies in an unexpected way. The first time my kids tried black-eyed peas was in Texas Caviar. They still are not super fond of eating black-eyed peas unless they are in Texas Caviar, but they will give it a try now. They frequently ask for Texas Caviar and will gobble it up any time I make it.
• Offer a few options, ask them to try a little of each. We have found that they are more open-minded about trying new things when there is a veggie they like on the table too.

A few things that you probably NEVER want to do…….

• Never force your child to eat an entire serving of a veggie that they do not like. It’s frustrating for you both and I have found that they are less open about new veggies if you force one on them.
• Never use a veggie as a punishment threat. Okay, this sounds funny, but I did this.

Picture this, I’m at the grocery store with two wild-things. They are running amuck. I (in the past) have been guilty of picking up a can of beets and telling them if they do not behave the beets are coming home with us. To be a main dinner feature. Yep, I did that. More than once. *sigh* So, it’s no surprise that it has been hard to get my kids to eat beets. You know, because I made them seem like a punishment.

So, don’t make veggies a punishment. Learn from my mistakes. Ha!

How do you get your kids to eat veggies?