Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Chopped Salad with Raspberry Vinegarette Dressing

Yesterday evening, my allergies were totally bothering me, and I was not feeling like cooking dinner.  A funny thing happened, though...I went to Publix and encountered their surprisingly delicious Apron Simple Meals sample.  What got me was the chopped salad.  I had most of the ingredients at home and I did a little substituting (Rick hates blue cheese) and came up with this healthy addition to our steak and potatoes night!

Chopped Salad with Raspberry Vinegarette Dressing
Ingredients
1 romaine lettuce heart, finely chopped
1 cup shredded cabbage (I used it from a cole slaw bag)
2 green onions slicesd,
Crumbled Goat Cheese
1/4 cup flavored, sliced almonds
Fat Free Raspberry Walnut Vinegarette

Directions
Place all ingredients (except dressing) in a bowl.  Toss with desired amount of dressing and serve.

Enjoy!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Swiss Chicken Casserole

It is finally, finally, finally getting cooler here in the Lowcountry, and I am happy to report that I have broken out the crock pot for the first time in forever.  I've been dying to use it for a couple of weeks now.  Recently, I downloaded an app on to my iPhone that has just crock pot recipes, and I've been browsing it for something new to make.  Rick and I have been feeling a little burned out on the food we've been eating lately, and this recipe was totally different than our regular fare.  We served it with our favorite green beans on the side. 

I took the original recipe and made some changes (of course!).  It smells like Thanksgiving as it cooks.  My biggest complaints about it is how much sodium it has.  That's the problem with using canned soup, and I think that the next time that I make it I may go with using the lower sodium version of the soup.

Here's what I did


Swiss Chicken Casserole
Ingredients
6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
6 slices of Swiss cheese
1 can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom with Roasted Garlic Condensed Soup
1 box of Stove Top Savory Herb Stuffing
1/4 cup low fat milk
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
Cooking spray


Directions
Spray crock pot with cooking spray.  Place chicken breasts on the bottom of the crock pot.  Top chicken with cheese slices.  Mix milk and soup in a bowl together, and then spoon over cheese.  Next, add the stuffing on top of the soup mixture and drizzle melted butter over it.  Cook on low for 8 hours.


Enjoy!

Friday, October 22, 2010

This week's meals

When I first started blogging, it was easy to keep the blog active because I was adding recipes as soon as I cooked them, but honestly, we don't do that many new and exciting things every week. In order to keep my blog active, I've decided to reflect back on what I've had at the end of the week.  This way, I can also "re-share" some favorites that you might have otherwise missed.  Here are the highlights of the week.


On Sunday (10/17), we had NY Strips with baked potatoes.  Ya gotta enjoy the end of grilling season while you still can!  So yeah, unlike the recipe I linked to, we were outside. 


On Monday, it was old school spaghetti night!!!  What more can I say?  I baked it this time, and we ate it for lunch all week!!!

On Tuesday, we had crab legs cooked with Old Bay and dipped in my favorite HT Crab Sauce!  If you have a HT near you, you gotta check it out.  We had some leftover potatoes from Sunday (baked a couple of small ones then) as the side.

Tonight, we are going to get takeout because we've both had a rough day and neither has the energy to do anything else.  I'm looking forward to a quiet night on the couch.  I wonder if I'll make it to 10:00 tonight before I fall asleep.  

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Seared Pork Chops with Spicy Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

To go with the Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp, we went with pork chops (they were on sale at Publix!).  I found this recipe on myrecipes.com which seemed like a winner to me because it not only had the chipotle peppers, but it was also paired with green beans.  You know what that meant!  Oh yeah, we made our favorite green beans, too!  The pork chops turned out really good, but we weren't that impressed with the sauce.  The pork chops had our favorite, favorite steak seasoning on them, so how could we go wrong??? (Other than overcooking them of course!)  I felt like sauce needed something else.  If we make it again, I think I'd try adding a couple of cloves of garlic.  Here's what we did...

Seared Pork Chops with Spicy Red Pepper Sauce
Ingredients
  • 4 pork chops (about 1/2 inch thick)
  • 2  teaspoons  25%-less-sodium Montreal steak seasoning (such as McCormick Grill Mates)
  • 1  cup  bottled roasted red bell peppers, drained
  • 1  chipotle chile, canned in adobo sauce
  • 2  tablespoons water
  • 1/2  teaspoon ground cumin
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Directions
Sprinkle pork evenly with steak seasoning. Heat one tablespoon of olive oil large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. . Add pork to pan; cook 4 minutes. Turn pork over; cook 3 minutes.

While pork cooks, place bell peppers and next 3 ingredients in a blender; process until smooth.

When pork has finished cooking, place around 2 tablespoons of sauce on a plate and then top with the pork chops.  Serve with the green beans!
Enjoy!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp with a Chipotle Ranch Sauce

Last night, Rick and I had planned on grilling out, but instead, we decided to stay indoors.  It's starting to get darker earlier and a wee bit cooler, too.  I wanted to do something with some shrimp that I needed to use, and I was also leaning towards doing something with the canned chipotle peppers that I've had in pantry for a while.  After browsing foodnetwork.com and myrecipes.com, I decided to wrap my shrimp with bacon and broil them.  For the dipping sauce, I wanted to make something similar to the chipotle ranch sauce that they have Longhorn.  Man, I miss that stuff.  By combining ranch dressing, light sour cream, and a little bit of the chipotle peppers, I made an awesome sauce!  Rick loved it, and I can see us having this one again!  By using a pound of shrimp and a whole package of bacon, we had enough to enjoy tonight, too!  Here's what we did...

Bacon Wrapped Shrimp with a Chipotle Ranch Dipping Sauce
Ingredients
1 pound 21-25 count shrimp, peel and deveined
1 package of low sodium bacon
5 Bamboo skewers
1/4 cup lite sour cream
1 cup ranch dressing
1 1/2 tablespoons diced chipotle peppers from a can with adobo

Directions
Soak the bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes. While the skewers are soaking, combine the sour cream, ranch dressing, and chipotle peppers in a bowl and mix.  Cover and refrigerate until time to serve.

Preheat broiler (or grill if grilling).  Take the bacon and cut all the pieces in half.  Cook the bacon in a large pan until halfway cooked.  Wrap the bacon around the middle of each shrimp and skewer.  Place 5 shrimp on each skewer. 

Broil (on a foil lined baking sheet) or grill for 5 minutes per side until shrimp is done.  Serve with sauce and enjoy!

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Comfort Food

I had a rough week.  It definitely had some high points like going to dinner with the Peds Rheum Family (well, at least that's how I like to think of them!) on Thursday night at Blossom downtown.  Yep, I drug Rick downtown after work for dinner.  It's a miracle that either one of us made it back over the Bridge, but it was for a good cause.  Dinner was delicious (of course).  I had the shrimp and grits as my entree, and at the urging of Dr. Silver, Rick and I split the most delicious dessert I have ever had that wasn't chocolate.  We had red velvet bread pudding!  Words cannot describe how wonderful it was.  I was totally stuffed, but I still managed to eat almost half of it!  Definitely a perfect comfort food.  I would KILL for that recipe!  

In my own kitchen, I made one of my favorite comfort food dishes after a rather stressful day at work on Tuesday.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to make for dinner that night or even if I really wanted to cook.  Rick had suggested pizza, but I wasn't in the mood for that either.  After searching the local grocery store fliers, I realized that sea scallops were on sale, and I immediately thought of one of my favorite comfort food recipes from epicurious.com for Sea Scallops with Mashed Potatoes.  The original recipe calls for tarragon, and I'm not a huge tarragon fan.  In the past, I've subbed rosemary, but Rick's not a big rosemary fan.  This time around, I decided to add garlic to the sauce to give it a little something extra.  As always, it was delicious!!!


Here's what I did....


Sea Scallops with Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients
  • 2 pounds Yukon potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick), room temperature
  • 2/3 cup (or more) low fat milk
  • 12 sea scallops, side muscles trimmed
  • 1/3 cup dry white wine
  • 2 tablespoons chopped shallot
  • 2 tablespoons half and half
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
Directions
Place potatoes in a pot and cover with water.  Add salt and bring to water to a boil over high heat.  Boil until the potato pieces break easily when pierced with a fork.  Drain water.  Add 1/2 stick of butter and milk to the potatoes in the pot and whip using a hand mixer.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Set aside.  Before serving the scallops, heat over medium heat (you may need to add more milk if they start to dry out).

Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper.  Heat olive oil in a large pan/skillet over medium high heat.  Add scallops to the pan.  Sauté until just opaque in center, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to plate; tent with foil. Reserve juices in skillet.   

Place garlic and shallots in small saucepan. After garlic starts to brown, add wine and simmer over medium heat until reduced to glaze, about 3 minutes. Stir in half and half and simmer 1 minute. Gradually whisk in remaining 1/2 stick butter. Stir in reserved pan juices.

Divide potatoes into 4 bowls, top with 4 scallops, and then drizzle sauce over the scallops.

Enjoy!



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