Category: MISC

75 cent KITCHEN MAKEOVER

Do you want to make something pretty for really cheap too? I had this plain, small and kinda ugly dish on the sink edge for the sponge and scrubbers.  Living with 2 men, I have to tell you they don’t keep it very neat.  Now get your head out of that gutter, one of them is my uncle.
At my house I have a small cake stand that I use, but they are pretty hard to find so I decided to make my own.  So I went to my local thrift store and found these 2 things a mismatched candle holder for 50 cents and pretty salad plate also 50 cents, but on 75% clearance that day.  Then I picked up some of the new Gorilla glue, the clear kind, but still strong as a gorilla, go figure.  I washed both pieces and dried them well.  I put the gorilla glue on the candle holder and then applied it to the back of the salad plate and allowed it to dry well.

And voile’ a new pretty stand that has room for everything!

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REDNECK CUPCAKE WARS~BBQ CHICKEN CHILE CORNBREAD REDNECK CUPCAKES

Recently my buddy Dave over at My Year on the Grill “invented” the Redneck Cupcake.  Pure genius I tell you!  He is also trying to win Project food blog.  Go check it out and vote for him.
I do like the “cake” part on the bottom – so much easier to eat!  The “cake” envelops the meat and the cheese oozes and goozes down into the meat.   It was also my birthday last week and my mom sent me a box full of “goodies”.  Among those goodies were these awesome muffin tart baking cups that require no muffin tin and are larger and flatter than the average so once again they are easier to eat. I may try those next time, but this time I think in order to qualify as a “redneck” cupcake they must be made in leftover birthday wrappers.
Dave and I are both believers in using all your leftovers as he demonstrates with his Redneck Cupcakes.   My recipe uses all the small tidbits from when you skin your Rotisserie chicken.  I use absolutely everything from my rotisserie chickens including the bones!

BBQ CHICKEN CHILE CORNBREAD REDNECK CUPCAKES makes 15-18 cupcakes

2-3 cups Rotisserie Chicken pieces
1/4 cup favorite BBQ sauce
Havarti cheese slices or Vermont White Cheddar, quartered
  • Toss chicken pieces with BBQ sauce and set aside for an hour before preparing muffins.
  • Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  • Prepare the cornbread and fill baking cups 2/3 full.
  • Drain chicken pieces of excess sauce.
  • Top with a layer of meat.
  • Top with a very thin slice of cheese.
  •  Bake 20 minutes or until cornbread tests JUST done with a toothpick or until cheese oozes and goozes into the chicken pieces.
Wouldn’t these make awesome football food?  Don’t forget to join us Sunday for 
Tailgating Time will be posted every Sunday at noon and open all week for you to add your football favorites. We’ll play each and every week until Superbowl Sunday. I can’t wait to see what you’ll be bringing!
It’s Tailgating Time!
HOSTED BY:
Martha at Seaside Simplicity 
Tamy at 3 sides of Crazy 
Lyndsey at Tiny Skillet

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Aztec Chicken with Fresh Pico de Gallo

Oh yes, chicken again!!  Here’s a healthy meal full of fresh ingredients and tons of flavor!
 
I love finding new marinade for chicken.

Dress it up and you can have your chicken a million different ways!

I loved this way!

I devised this from several different recipes and it turned out really good!
I finally put my tomatoes and peppers to good use! I made a rockin’ pico de gallo!

I bought 2 tomato plants and 1 pepper plant this year. They have all been doing very well. But all I usually do with them is add them to quesadillas or salads.

This turned out great and I can’t wait to make it again!


Check out the Our Krazy Kitchen pals who have entries in Project Food Blog!  Please take a minute and vote for them!  Vote quick!  Polls close tomorrow the 23rd!

Dave – My Year on the Grill
Heather – Girlichef
Joanne – Eats Well With Others
Kristen – Frugal Antics of the Harried Homemaker
Min – The Bad Girl’s Kitchen

Aztec Chicken Recipe 

1 1/2 pounds boneless chicken
1 tablespoon oil
4 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
3 tablespoon cilantro
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Combine oil, garlic, onion, cilantro, paprika, cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper in a food processor. Save a bit of the mixture for while cooking. Pour the rest into a large baggie with the chicken, mix and let marinade for a few hours.

Grill or pan fry chicken until done, brushing with reserved sauce. Serve with Pico de Gallo.

Rockin’ Pico de Gallo
1 pound tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup onion, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
Salt and pepper

Mix everything together and refrigerate until ready to use.

Total calories for chicken = 970 calories
Total calories for pico de gallo = 140 calories

6 servings = 185 calories per serving with pico de gallo

Aztec Chicken with Pico de gallo and Cilantro Rice = 456 calorie dinner

This makes a lot of Pico de gallo but I put a bunch on my rice too!

Check out the Cilantro Rice recipe on Debbi Does Dinner Healthy.

SO I HAVE A QUESTION????????????

Are you a Facebook fan? Do you play Facebook apps? Do you Twitter? Have blogs become passe’? This is a debate that some of my friends and family have been having or rather are having on an ongoing basis. Is you day being eaten up by computer time?

I ask all these questions because there seems to be a trend going on in the blog world. Comments appear to be disappearing all over the place. Participation in contests and memes appear to be diminishing.  Viruses are piggy backing on facebook apps and even google search engines. So is it because you are all glued to computer games or is it like any other journaling, it just loses its appeal after a while? Or is everyone out bar hopping and singing karoke? I’d love to hear what your take is?

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And the Winner of the CSN gift certificate is………….

True Random Number Generator 
7 Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Just to remind you, CSN Stores has over 1 million products and that number is constantly rising. Not only is their product catalog growing but they’re adding new stores like www.luxebycsn.com. You can literally spend all day looking for the perfect product at CSN.stores.  Thank you CSN.stores for being so generous to the blogworld and allowing help spread the word.

Tammy will receive a $55 gift certificate to use
as she wishes at any of the CSN.stores websites.

Disclosure: I did not receive any type of compensation for this post. CSN stores is sponsoring this giveaway and will handle prize fulfillment. All opinions are my own and I was not influenced to post them.

PORK CHOPS MARSALA

Remember when I researched scampi?  And decided that scampi is not just for shrimp? Well, I got to thinking about how we get into cooking/eating ruts.  Are you in a rut?  We are sometimes even with me always trying new recipes.  I started analyzing the flavors we like and those we don’t.  Then I started wondering how I was going to transfers those like into new recipes.  I realized I don’t really need “new” recipes, I just need to “trade” out some ingredients.  This eventually led to me thinking about Chicken Marsala, one of our very favorite flavor combos. Adn that Marsala is not just for chicken.
To get you started here is a little Marsala history.

Marsala Wine Information
Marsala is the west section of Sicily, the island near the foot end of Italy. In 1798 the Sicilians managed to substitute their own wines in place of the standard rum in an English naval shipment. In those seafaring days, something had to be done to wine to allow it to last the long ocean journeys. Brandy was added to allow the wine to last longer, and to be more resistant to temperature changes. These were called “fortified wines”.

Once the British had a taste of Marsala, demand grew quickly. In the United States during Prohibition, things became even more interesting. The typical Marsala bottles made the wine look like medicine. People found that getting Marsala was less risky than other types of wine. While not as popular now, it is still used quite frequently as a cooking wine in Italian dishes.

Marsala uses the following grapes: 

  • white skin/berry grapes: Grillo, Catarratto, Inzolia and Damaschino for golden and amber Marsala
  • dark red skin/berry grapes: Pignatello, Calabrese, Nerello Mascalese, Nero d’Avola for ruby red 
Marsala is made in the “solera” tradition – a melding of years. First, a keg is filled with wine from the current vintage of grapes. Subsequent years with similar tastes are placed in kegs above the first. When liquid is drawn out of the bottom (oldest) keg, it is refreshed with liquid from the next keg up, and so on. In this manner, the taste remains the same throughout the cycle, and every bottle you get has (potentially) some liquid from the very first vintage.

Types of Marsala

    * Fine: 17° alcohol, aged >1 yr
    * Superiore: 18° alcohol, aged >2 years
    * Superiore Riserva: 18° alcohol, aged 4 years
    * Vergine Soleras: 18° alcohol, aged 5 years

Marsala was traditionally served between the first and second courses. It is now also served, chilled, with Parmesan (stravecchio), Gorgonzola, Roquefort and other, spicy cheeses.

Marsala Substitutions
I regularly get email from casual wine drinkers who come across a recipe for chicken marsala or veal marsala and want to know what other alcohol they can substitute instead. I *love* both of these dishes. Here’s the issue. Imagine you had a recipe for making orange juice and you wanted to substitute lemons instead. They’re both citrus! However they taste very different. So you’re no longer making orange juice, you’re making lemon juice now.

The same thing is true for dishes with marsala. It has a very specific dish. Sure, you could make chicken with chardonnay, or chicken with cabernet, and they might be tasty. But they are no longer chicken marsala. The flavor will be completely different. So at that point you could call it “chicken with wine” and be happy. If you want chicken marsala, then you need to find marsala, so that it tastes like marsala.

Pretty much any regular wine shop will have marsala bottles on their shelves, along with the port and sherry. Again marsala doesn’t taste like port and sherry 🙂 But that’s the type of wine it is. So I highly recommend that you take a run to your local wine shop, grab a bottle of marsala and enjoy! It lasts a long time because it’s fortified. Chicken and veal marsala are really yummy, so you’ll want to make it several times. It’s one of those staples of cooking, like having lemon juice in your fridge.

If you have serious issues with alcohol, I’m afraid there is not a non-alcoholic marsala flavoring. Note that any recipe calling for “Marsala” means this wine. Marsala is the name for this wine.

Sweet vs Dry Marsala
I get emails from cooks asking which they should use – sweet or dry marsala – in a recipe. It’s like saying you have a recipe which says to use cheddar cheese and you have mild cheddar and sharp cheddar and medium cheddar, and which should you use. You can use any of them. They are all cheddar, they will all provide a cheddar flavor. If you like mild cheddar better, you might go with that. But if you’re not a cheese fanatic you might not even really notice the subtle differences between for example mild and medium cheddar flavors when they are in a dish.

So it definitely is to taste 🙂 Do you like sweetish chicken dishes? Do you like non-sweetish chicken dishes? Are you even going to notice the difference which is that kind of subtle variation? Who knows, you might not even be able to taste any difference since both are going to taste “like marsala”. Undoubtedly you’re not going to make chicken or veal marsala only once in your life if you like it, you’ll make it every few weeks. So make it one time with the sweet and one time with the dry, and see if you can even notice any difference. Or, I suppose, have someone else add in the marsala and not tell you which they used and see if you can guess 🙂 It might be you can’t even tell which is being used, in which case it’s not worth worrying about. Use whichever one you have more of.

Storing Marsala
Marsala is a fortified wine – this means they add hard alcohol to it. This also means that, just like you can keep opened (sealed) bottles of vodka and rum on your shelves, you can also keep an opened bottle of marsala around. Yes, the flavor will gently deteriorate over time, but it won’t go from wonderful tasting to awful tasting in three days. You probably won’t even notice the flavor difference after a month or two. Still, I’d suggest drinking it all within three to four months (or cooking dishes with it). When you cook with a flavor, you get a really concentrated version of that flavor. So you want really tasty, yummy marsala flavors – not sort of stale, stagnant marsala flavors. I am very much a fan of eating food that you really enjoy, and savoring the flavors!

Marsala is fortified, so you do NOT have to store it in a fridge or take any special measures. Just keep it in a cool, dark area like any other oil or wine. Marsala will not “go bad” – it won’t turn dangerous to drink – but its flavors will fade over time.

PORK CHOPS Marsala

  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 4 boneless pork chops – 1/4-1/2  inch thick
  • 2 slices thick bacon, diced
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 1 small white onion
  • 2 cups frozen green beans
  • 1 cup sliced mushrooms
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup Marsala wine
  • 1/4 cup sweet cooking sherry
  1. With a mortar and pestle grind the oregano. Sift together the flour, salt, pepper and oregano. Coat the chicken pieces well.
  2. In a heavy skillet, heat butter. Add the bacon pieces and stir fry for several minutes.  Slice onion into rings and separate. When butter is hot, saute’ onions until just caramelized.  Add the mushrooms and green beans and saute until cooked through. Set aside and place pork chops in skillet and brown on both sides about 5 minutes per side over medium heat. Remove and set aside.
  3. To the skillet, add the wine, lemon juice and sherry. Stir, reduce heat, and cook for about 10 minutes until the sauce is partially reduced and begins to thicken. Return chicken breasts to the skillet. Spoon sauce over the chicken. Cover and cook over low heat for about 5-10 minutes or until chicken is done.

Save Room for Dessert…Cinnamon Mocha Pie with Orange Essence Whipped Cream

Last week, I took the non-chocolate route with raspberry pecan crumble bars.  So, I definitely thought it was time for chocolate again, yes?  The recipe is from Christmas with Southern Living 2003.  This pie has always been one of my favorites, as I adore all things chocolate, and with the addition of coffee and whipped cream, well, it’s a win-win!  My little twist is the orange flavor added to the whipped cream; it’s certainly optional, but oh so delicious! This pie is sheer indulgence.  There is no other way to describe it.  Dense with fudgey chocolate flavor.  Heady with the fragrance of cinnamon.  Luxuriously sinful with a dollop of whipped cream that’s just kissed with a hint of orange.  And, best of all, deceptively simple…enjoy!

Cinnamon Mocha Pie
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 tablespoon instant coffee
2 oz unsweetened chocolate squares, chopped
2 oz semi-sweet chocolate squares, chopped
3 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 recipe all butter pastry, fitted into 9″ pie pan
1 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon orange zest, plus extra for garnish
1 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons powdered sugar

Prepare pastry and place pan into freezer while you prepare the filling.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt butter and add instant coffee.  Stir in the chopped chocolate and continue to stir until chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.  Remove from heat, set aside, and allow to cool.
In another bowl, beat eggs and sugars until slightly frothy.  Add cooled chocolate and vanilla.  Stir in flour and cinnamon.  Pour mixture into prepared pie shell.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until filling sets.  Allow pie to cool to room temperature (the pie will cut better) and serve with whipped cream and a dusting of orange zest.

Whipped Cream with Orange Essence
Whip cream until soft peaks form.
Add 1 tablespoon zest, juice, and powdered sugar.
Continue to beat until firm peaks form.
Use immediately.

Adapted from Christmas with Southern Living 2003

CHICKEN MARSALA

Chicken Marsala

  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – pounded 1/4 inch thick
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 small white onion, sliced into thin rings and then separated
  • 1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced thin
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup Marsala wine
  • 1/4 cup sweet cooking sherry
  1. With a mortar and pestle grind the oregano. 
  2. Sift together the flour, salt, pepper and oregano. 
  3. Coat the chicken pieces well with the flour mixture.
  4. In a heavy skillet, heat oil and butter.  
  5. When oil and butter is hot, saute’ onions and mushrooms until just caramelized. 
  6. Set aside onions and mushrooms and place chicken breasts in skillet and brown on both sides about 6 minutes per side over medium heat. Remove and set aside, but keep warm.
  7. To the skillet, add the wine, lemon juice and sherry. Stir, reduce heat, and cook for about 10 minutes until the sauce is partially reduced and begins to thicken.
  8. Return onions and mushrooms to the skillet. 
  9. Plate chicken breasts.
  10. Spoon sauce over the chicken.
  11. Cover and cook over low heat for about 5-10 minutes or until chicken is done.

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ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL????????????

We are – we’re HUGE fans!  We do a count down in August to pre-season every year and never miss a game when at all humanly possible!  Well, it’s that time of year again! Football season is already 1 week old and that means it’s time for tailgating at the games, serious football food and game day buffets.  Bring over your best appetizers and your biggest appetite and oh don’t forget the Brewskis to go with it all.  I like mine really cold please with a side of lime!
Tailgating Time will be posted every Sunday at noon and open all week for you to add your football favorites. We’ll play each and every week until Superbowl Sunday. I can’t wait to see what you’ll be bringing!
It’s Tailgating Time!
HOSTED BY:
Martha at Seaside Simplicity 
Tamy at 3 sides of Crazy 
Lyndsey at Tiny Skillet
Would you like to be a host of Tailgating Time too? 
Leave me a comment here with your email or with Martha over at Seaside Simplicity so we can send you the code and add you to the host list – more exposure, more links, more football food!
And don’t forget today is the last day to enter the $55 CSN giveaway here at 3 Sides of Crazy.  
Today is the first day to enter the $65 CSN giveaway over at Seaside Simplicity.  You  have to go to http://www.allcoffeetables.com/ and then come back either here or over at Seaside Simplicity and leave a comment saying which one is your favorite AND then link up a recipe to Tailgating Times. You are only eligible to win if you do both.  The winner will be announced at next week’s tailgating time.