Pretzel Breaded Chicken with Apricot Dijon Sauce

  I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!  We enjoyed spending time with family and friends, relaxing, playing with our new toys, and also remembering the reason for the season.  We went to Church on the Move's Celebrate Christmas program.  It was amazing!  It contained secular Christmas songs, along with hearing about the story of Jesus.  What that church is doing is amazing to see.  As its name implies, it's really going places.  They have so many people that they are helping and outreach into the community.  Their hearts are truly on fire for God!  As we move into the new year, (which I can't believe it's already almost next year!  Eek!!) we are going to be starting a series called "How to make 2014 better than 2013."  It's about new years resolutions and what they are usually lacking and why they fail.  Anyone had the resolution of exercising more, spending more carefully, being more productive, trying more new things?  Yeah, so did I.  Ask me how long they actually lasted....better yet, don't ask!  I'm looking forward to hearing how to include God in my new years resolution this year and making myself let go and hand it over to Him.  Who's with me??

    One of my favorite things about hosting a party is that my house suddenly has to get cleaned.  And by 'had to get cleaned,' I mean I run around cleaning like a mad lady.  I did some of the cleaning yesterday. (I even scrubbed the toilets!  But actually, now that I think about it...I did one then poured the cleaner in the other and forgot about it til just now...woops!  I'm sure it's even cleaner for having sat there for a while.  And I think I remember Husband using that bathroom last night, soo I think we're good.)  One thing I like doing while cleaning, and really it doesn't look like cleaning at all and slows me way down is going through old Better Homes and Garden, Martha Stewart and Real Simple magazines that I've let pile up and tear out the ideas and recipes that I really like so that I can throw away the rest of the magazine.  I then put the torn out pages in those clear plastic sleeves that I keep in my idea binder.  I got the idea from my parents.   

    Anyway, one of the pages I tore out was a recipe for Pretzel Chicken with Fig and Mustard Sauce.  It looked and sounded amazing!  Of course, my version didn't quite turn out the same as theirs did, namely because I used chicken thighs instead of drumsticks, but Husband and I were still pleased.  He even said this had made it to the top of his favorites of things I've cooked.  This is something I never would have thought to put together.  As I was mixing together the alternative apricot jam and Dijon mustard, I was pretty skeptical....until I tried it!  Same with Husband.  It has a kick, a zing to it when you first taste it, but the flavors somehow oddly complement each other. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did!!  The original recipe can be found here.  My version of it is listed below.

Ingredients
3 cups honey mustard flavored pretzels
1 tsp. ground Cumin
2 eggs, lightly beaten (though for this small amount of meat I think 1 egg would be enough)
2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/4 cup Apricot or Fig jam (I used Apricot)
1/4 grainy mustard (aka Dijon mustard)
Thyme Leaves (yeah..I forgot to use these and it still turned out deliciously!)

*Another difference between my version and BHG's was that I didn't have a chicken roaster like the magazine version described.  So I placed mine on a foil lined baking pan.  The online version seems to use this method.  Be sure to coat the foil with nonstick spray.  I did not do this so the chicken was hard to separate from the foil*

1. Preheat over to 425 f.  In a resealable plastic bag crunch up pretzels with rolling pin.  Add Cumin then shake to mix
2. Place beaten eggs in a shallow bowl.  Dip thighs in egg and let excess drip off.  Place in baggie of pretzels and gently shake to get chicken evenly coated.
3. Lay thighs on foil lined baking sheet after first having sprayed the foil with nonstick spray.  (This was an important step that I left out when making mine. Yes, I regretted it.)  Bake at 425f for 40-50 minutes until pretzels are a little browned.
4. While chicken is baking, mix the Apricot or fig jam and the Dijon mustard in a bowl to serve with the chicken.

  I'm usually scared of cooking chicken, namely because it seems to take forever and I'm always afraid I won't have cooked it long enough, then I'll over cook it and it will get tough and dry.  But this...this turned out as perfectly as I could have hoped for.  It was so full of flavor.  We were both pleasantly surprised.  I congratulated myself on trying a new recipe, one that I was very happy to have tried.  We will definitely be having this again.  Maybe even serve it with vegetables!!

Applesauce, Applesauce, Applesauce!

When Husband and I visited his other set of grandparents that live in New Hampshire, not only was I very excited to finally meet them, but I was also very impressed with all of the food that we had while there.  They live in a beautiful old house up in the mountains.  Their land, which is across the road from them has maple syrup pipelines that they have someone harvest and bottle.  We got to take a couple of them home with us and we have been enjoying it ever since.
  That night for dinner we had some delicious slow cooked ribs, a plate piled high with potato salad and a bowl of homemade applesauce of which I couldn't get enough!!  For breakfast the next day we had homemade waffles heaped with strawberries, whip cream and Maple syrup.  Mmm, it all makes my mouth water just thinking about it!!!  I'll share the applesauce recipe with you.  It's so easy!

Ingredients
About a dozen apples sliced and cored. (My crock pot will probably hold only 15 sliced apples.)
2 cups water
Ground cinnamon
Sugar (as always, I used Splenda)

Directions
1. Slice and core apples and put in crock pot. (As pictured above, I used a handy dandy apple corer/slicer.  Made it go by a whole lot faster.)
2. Pour water over apples, and cover.  Cook on high for 2 hours.
(The house will start to smell pretty good!)
3. Being careful to handle the hot apple slices, mash through a colander (of which I did not have so I used a strainer,) to make sure all of the skin is removed.
4. Pour apple mash into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
5. Stir in cinnamon and sugar to taste.
(For added presentation when serving applesauce, garnish each bowl with a cinnamon stick.)


ENJOY!

Sloppy Bowls

Here is a nice easy recipe for when you're trying to make a real quick but delicious dinner. (or lunch.) This is a recipe I found on Pinterest the other day while browsing.  I couldn't find the original recipe but ended up changing it anyway. (accidentally.)  It takes just 4 ingredients. 1. Pillsbury biscuits (or similar,) 2. 1 lb. ground beef, 3. Taco seasoning, and 4. Sloppy Joe Hickory Sauce. (the original called for a can of Manwhich meat.)I thought I was getting sloppy Joes mixed meat but just ended up getting a can of the sauce.)  It still turned out deliciously!!  Okay, I forgot a 5th ingredient: shredded cheese!  All I had was Italian blend and it was still really good!  Husband thought it would have been better with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.

Directions
1. Turn large muffin tin upside down and spray the bottoms of the cups.
2. Stretch and mold biscuits over the bottom of the cups and bake according to the biscuit can directions.
3. While the biscuits are baking, brown ground beef in a skillet, drain, then add taco seasoning and hickory sauce and mix it all together.
4. Scoop meat mixture into biscuit bowls and top with shredded cheese.
5. Enjoy!!

Homemade Butter

I've always wanted to make my own butter.  I think I might have made it once as a little girl, or had it sometime when I was young.  Something from my childhood got me the taste for homemade butter.  As strange as it sounds, I sometimes get cravings for homemade butter.  There's nothing quite like it.  Nowadays it's much easier to make.  (One day I will make it the manual way.)  Of course, my Grandma was the first person I called to gush to about this feat.  She shared that when she and her sisters were little, they were the butter makers.  Most of the time they shook the cream in jars, while other times they actually used the butter churn.  I opted for the modern butter church: my electric stand mixer. 

It was super easy!  The hardest part is the waiting.  But the process is amazing to see.  It only takes one ingredient really; heavy whipping cream. (2 ingredients if you want to add a little salt for flavoring.)

 Pour heavy whipping cream into mixer and turn on.  I started out on low speed.  This was a mistake.  It took forever for the cream to start thickening.  After about 30 minutes of  this (compared to the estimated 15 minutes I'd seen in other recipes,) so far all that had happened was that it got really foamy.

 I finally turned the mixer speed up to about 6 and things finally started to happen!  Peaks started to form and it started to really thicken up.
By this point, I was getting pret-ty exc-i-ted.  It was finally starting to look like butter!  From then on, things started to move pretty fast.

 The butter will start forming and clumping together and will take on a yellowish hue.  This is when the magic starts to happen.  It goes from looking like a bowl of whipped cream to a bowl of delicious, creamy butter waiting to be spread on warm fluffy rolls!

 The yellow butter will clump together and separate from the buttermilk.  (I learned from Grandma that you can save this runoff and use it later to makes cakes or anything else that calls for buttermilk.  You can save it in a recycled water bottle or any other airtight container.  It should save up to a few weeks.)

Once the butter has sufficiently clumped together, gather it all up into a ball and proceed to squeeze out all the buttermilk.  (This will help the butter keep longer.)  Run the ball of butter under cold water to rinse out the rest of the buttermilk, being sure to squeeze it all out.  For extra flavor, sprinkle a little salt over it and knead it into the butter ball.

Put the butter in a container to store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.  the 3 cups of heavy whipping cream you use should yield about one cup of delicious butter.  Use it on rolls, waffles, pancakes, rolls, muffins, crackers, toast, pancakes, waffles....(I really like pancakes and waffles...) and use it on just about anything you can think of!!  I'm taking it to Grandma's house for Sunday dinner.

Ingredients
3 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
Salt for flavoring

Directions
1. Pour whipping cream in stand mixer bowl and turn mixer on medium speed.
2. Cream will become bubbly and start to thicken.
3. Peaks will begin to form and it will be like the consistency of heavy cream.
4. Cream will take on a yellow hue and butter will start clumping together, separating from the buttermilk.
5. Gather butter together into ball and squish out all the buttermilk, rinse butter ball under cold water to remove as much buttermilk as possible.
6. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt and knead into butter ball for desired amount of flavoring.
7. Store in a container in the fridge.  Enjoy on every sort of bread product!!

Don't you feel more accomplished now, knowing you just made homemade butter??  I know I do.  I feel pretty proud of myself.  Good luck, y'all!  I know you will do wonderfully.  I have every faith in you that you will make the best butter there ever was!

Shredded Chicken Tacos

Hello, Friday!!  Friday is once again upon us! That glorious day where you count down the hours until you are free from work for 80 hours.  Or if you get off at 5:30, like I do, 79.5 hours.  This weekend, Hubby and I are going to be visiting his grandmother in Wichita. We're looking forward to the trip.  I don't think we have seen her since Christmas!!  It will be a wonderful, long overdue visit.

  To help make your weekend a little more relaxing, I am sharing one of my favorite recipes that I found on Pinterest months and months ago and have loved ever since. This will be one of the easiest meals you will have ever made.  I promise!  Throw these three ingredients in your croc pot then, as the infomercial says "set it and forget it!"  These Shredded Chicken Tacos are easy and delicious.  These make a great meal for working wifeys (or husbands that are the cooks,) or busy mothers.  It takes 4-6 or 6-8 hours to cook, (which means 4-6 hours to dance around the hou-I mean clean around the house, or craft, or antique, or play with puppy, or any number of productive time passing things!), depending on which setting you use.  It's a good hot meal perfect for the approaching cooler weather.  I hope you enjoy!

Ingredients
4-6 fresh or thawed chicken breasts
1 jar salsa (Depending on the size of the jar, I can usually get away with just using half.)
1 packet taco seasoning
Tortillas
Favorite taco fixins (lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, tomatoes...)

1. Place thawed chicken breasts in bottom of croc pot.  Pour  salsa over them along with taco seasoning.  Mix it up real well and make sure all of the chicken is coated.

2. Set it and forget it!  4-6 hours on high setting (mine is always done in 4,) 6-8 on low setting.

3. By the time the chicken is ready, it'll just fall apart when you go to shred it with a fork. Heck, it will be so tender that it will probably start shredding itself when it senses that the fork is near.

4. Pile the chicken, along with all your favorite fixins on the warmed up tortillas and enjoy!

5. Be prepared to accept the numerous praise that this meal will bring you.  It's so easy and delicious!  Not to mention it makes your house smell good as well, as if you've been slaving over a hot stove all day.  Mm-mm!

Old-Fashioned Spice Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting

And now continues my barrage of all things Fall.  When Hubby and I were in St. Louis last month, we picked up and Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Recipes book.  It goes through the process of how to prepare fresh pumpkin pulp and contains many delicious recipes!  I selected the recipe entitled Hallowe'en Cupcakes.  If you're one of those peekers and read ahead, then you can see that I only made half a batch of cupcakes and the rest into little bundt cakes using one of our wedding gifts from Grandma.  The recipe is super easy and straight forward.  Ok, actually one part was confusing to me.  The ingredients don't list butter, and yet the first direction is to cream together  the butter and sugar.  The first ingredient on the list is vegetable oil, so I just interpreted that as them meaning to say vegetable oil spread, like the Country Crock I have pictured.  The recipe still turned out deliciously!

Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable oil (vegetable oil spread)                            
 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups brown sugar                                                          
 1/2 tsp ginger
2 eggs, beaten (I forgot to beat mine!  But I'm sure they thanked me for sparing them...)
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 cups all-purpose flour
Dash nutmeg (I just shook my little nutmeg container a couple of times and called it good.)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk (I used 2%)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

Spice Cake
1. Preheat oven to 375 deg F.
2. Put on some good music- I love my Pandora station for the Civil Wars.  Great band.
3. Cream vegetable oil spread and sugar in mixer. (It will look like the consistency of wet sand.)
4. Beat in eggs.
5. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients and stir into first mix alternately with milk. (I actually poured the milk in first on accident then slowly poured the dry ingredients.  You'll want to add the dry ingredients a little at a time if you're using a mixer.  It tends to kick up dust if you put too much in at once.
6. Place paper muffin cups in muffin tins, (or spray the little bundt cups with a non-stick pray,) and fill each cup 2/3 full.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
3 oz cream cheese
3 oz butter (again, I used the vegetable oil spread...)
2 tsp vanilla
Powdered Confectioners Sugar (Enough to achieve desired consistency)
Milk (enough to thin out if need be)

1. In an a stand or hand mixer, mix together butter, cream cheese and vanilla.
2. Slowly incorporate powdered sugar.
3. Mix in milk a tsp at a time until the desired consistency is achieved.  I wanted mine to be more like a glaze, so I played around with how much powdered sugar and milk I added until I had it thin enough to drizzle over the bundt cakes. (Hubby loved the frosting!  It was his idea to make it cream cheese.  I was just going to make a simple powdered sugar, vanilla and milk glaze.  Good choice, Hubby!)

PSL Syrup DIY

Fall is in the air.  We've had such great weather this past week.  I've been able to wear scarves two days this week!  I want to celebrate this cool weather by sharing a delicious make at home PSL recipe!  It tastes just like Starbucks', though not as strong.  But that's okay by me.  I always thought Starbucks' coffee was a little strong anyway.  But this recipe is sure to please the die hards and the PSL newbies.  It contains all the usual suspects: clove, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and pumpkin.  I'll let y'all decide how close it comes to the real deal.  In my opinion, it tastes better.  Plus it's a fraction of the cost!  It just takes about 10 minutes to make if you're good at multitasking.  I had the coffee brewing while the syrup mixture heated up.  When the mixture was almost done, I started heating up the milk for the 'latte'.                                                                                                               

Ingredients
2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar (I only used 1/2 cup of Splenda and it still turned out perfectly!)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
4 heaping tbsp pumpkin puree (My favorite part!)

Instructions
1.Combine all ingredients in pot.
2. Over medium heat, stir ingredients until sugar has fully dissolved.
3. Continue heating for 5-6 minutes, but do not let boil.
4. Remove from heat and pour through fine mesh strainer.
5. Inhale the delicious fall smells emanating from the steaming pot.
6. Store in airtight container(s).

Latte Instructions
Like me, if you don't have an espresso machine there's an easy way to make a latte-like drink.
1. Brew a strong strong pot of coffee.
2. While coffee is brewing, heat a pan of milk over the stove. Don't let it boil either or it could scorch.
3.  After the milk is heated through, take a small whisk and whisk it up to incorporate those little air bubbles.
4. Pour PSL syrup into cup of coffee, then the frothy milk. Ah...
5. Sit back and relax with your favorite book, absorbing the nice crisp mornings.

                                                Original PSL Syrup recipe can be found Here.

Wrapped Asparagus

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I love Asparagus.  I can eat it cooked just about any way possible.  I've been wanting to try baked or sauteed Asparagus over a poached egg then drizzled with Hollandaise sauce (a sauce which I haven't quite yet been able to master,) or bacon wrapped Asparagus.  Bacon wrapped was the winner this weekend.  It was really simple.  The hardest part was actually waiting for the things to bake!  But it was so worth the wait.  We had them with hamburgers fresh off my hubby's grill.  Actually, I didn't start the prep soon enough and ended up having them as an after dinner appetizer.

1.  For prep, preheat over to 400 degrees F. For the Asparagus just rinse under cold water then snap off the ends.  There will be a natural snap off point, so don't worry about how far up to snap off the end.
2.  Next, lay the Asparagus out on a plate and drizzle it with Italian Dressing.  I like Kraft's salad dressings.
3. This next part will be a little messy, but who doesn't like to get your hands a little dirty?  I took and wrapped 5 stalks of Asparagus in each piece of bacon to form a little bundle.  Then sprinkled on a little ground black pepper.
4. Pop these babies in the oven for about 30 minutes and voila!
For those of you who aren't really Asparagus fans, you can't really taste the Asparagus flavor when you're done.  All I could taste was bacon and Italian dressing flavors along with a little char from the oven.  Delicious!

Good Gospel Singin' and Molasses Cookies

I had a very nice, unproductive weekend.  Everyone needs one of those now and then where they just relax and enjoy the company of others without having to do anything strenuous or anything they don't want to do.  Hubby was more productive than I was though and got some good work done on his project car.  My crowning accomplishment this weekend was a couple of batches of delicious molasses cookies to take to our church's Gospel Singing fellowship Sunday evening.

    Sunday was a really good day.  We ended up having a lazy morning where I made banana walnut pancakes for breakfast, then lounged around the house and played with Puppy until we headed out to Grandma's house for Sunday dinner. (We call it Sunday dinner, even though it's at lunchtime because once you have lunch at Grandma's then you won't even need to eat dinner.  It's that much good, filling food!)  We had two types of lasagna; Chicken and ground beef, garlic bread and green beans.  Raspberry streusel or raw apple cake with ice cream for dessert.  I checked of my little row of corn that got planted back in June I believe and I found that they'd started growing their first little tufty ears of corn!  I wish I'd planted more, but I was having a bout of craziness and only planted one row.  I had been running out of light on planting day anyway.
    Sunday evening, we loaded up my 50 molasses cookies (well really 47 because I'd taken a few out to save for Mama and Dad) and headed to church for a joint singing with the choir from Collinsville First Baptist.  We took turns singing pieces, and joint pieces and congregational singing.  It's amazing that so many people can come together all for the common purpose of praising our amazing God.  Afterwards, there was a homemade ice cream and cookie social.  I might have eaten a few too many cookies, and probably didn't really need that second bowl of ice cream... but the socializing was good!  That is one thing that I love about Olivet Baptist.  Everyone is friendly and loves God and so generous. I believe 17 gallons of homemade ice cream accumitively were brought by several different people (my Grandma included) and dozens of cookies were brought.  It was a good fellowshipping time had by all.


MOLASSES COOKIES (Made in the food processor!)
(This recipe makes approx. 2 1/2 dozen 2 in. cookies.)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar (I use Splenda)
1 egg
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 cup all purpose flour

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 
*Place knife blade in bowl.  Combine molasses, oil, sugar, egg, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and baking soda in bowl and pulse until mixed.  (In btween some of the mixing, I would run a rubber spatula along the bottom edge of the bowl to make sure all of the molasses was mixed in.)
*Incorporate 2 cups of flour a spoonful at a time.  Mix until just incorporated, but make sure there are no pockets of flour hiding in the dough.
*Place by spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet and cook for 10-11 minutes.  (I found that 10 minutes was the perfect time for my oven.)