SuperBowl...too much food for too few people

So as you can imagine I cooked A LOT of food yesterday for superbowl, and I was so exhausted (we were out late for a friends birthday the night before) that once I was done cookings I passed out before I even got a chance to take pictures.  Lucky for you there was SOOO much food that we have tons of leftovers for lunch today

Chinease Chicken Salad:

So we call this Chinease chicken salad in my family, but there is nothing chinease about it except that you use two packages of ramen noodles, and MSG.

 

Ingredients

2 pkgs. Top Ramen chicken flavored noodles 

3 chicken breasts, cooked 

1/2 head shredded cabbage 

3 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds 

3 tbsp. toasted sliced almonds 

3 tbsp. sugar 

3 tbsp. lemon juice 

6 tbsp. oil 

1 tsp. Accent 

1 tsp. salt 

1 tsp. pepper 

1/2 c. chopped green onions, tops too

Directions

Remove soup packets and set aside. Crunch up dry noodles and place in large bowl. Add cabbage, onions and chicken (chopped). Mix in another small bowl sugar, lemon juice, oil, accent, salt and pepper and contents of the two small soup packets. Mix well. Add sesame seeds and pour dressing over all. Mix thoroughly and cover.
Let it set for 24 to 36 hours before serving, tossing it several times. Scatter toasted almonds on top before serving. Do not cook noodles. You can vary this salad by using shrimp flavored soup and putting in baby shrimp, or omit meat and serve vegetarian. Serves: 10 to 12.

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Any salad that needs to marinate is a good salad.  This is my favorite salad of any salad and also probably the most unhealthy salad that can be generated.

Chicken and Dumplings and Divine Intervention

I've never had chicken and dumplings.  I mean I ate it once two weeks ago but it was from a can from Progresso and was an unfortunate choice.  The dumplings were super gross just like mushy dough.  Well there was an episode of "Cooking for Real" on a few days ago where she made chicken and dumplings and it didn't look awful.  There is also a recipe for chicken and dumplings in Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc At Home which looked amazing!  And wouldn't you know it, when looking on the cooking light website for tasty, low calorie, low cost dinners there is YET AGAIN another chicken and dumplings recipe.  All right fine!  The culinary gods have spoken...I will make chicken and dumplings!  So I went with the well reviewed low calorie version of this dish. Might as well because if I make the unhealthy, probably amazing Thomas Keller version version I don't know that I would like or ever eat the healthy one!  Anyway here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 8  ounces  skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 3/4  cup  (1/4-inch) diagonally cut celery
• 1/2  cup  (1/4-inch) diagonally cut carrot
• 1/2  cup  chopped onion
• 1/8  teaspoon  dried thyme
• 3  parsley sprigs
• 1  bay leaf
• 3  cups  fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
• 2.25  ounces  all-purpose flour (about 1/2 cup)
• 1  tablespoon  chopped fresh parsley
• 1/4  teaspoon  baking powder
• 1/4  teaspoon  salt
• 1/4  cup  1% low-fat milk

Preparation

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan; cook 4 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm. Add celery and next 5 ingredients (through bay leaf) to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Return chicken to pan; cook 1 minute. Add broth to pan; bring mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes.
2. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, chopped parsley, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Add milk, stirring just until moist. Spoon by heaping teaspoonfuls into broth mixture; cover and simmer 10 minutes or until dumplings are done. Discard parsley sprigs and bay leaf.

Amazing!!! SUPER good!  The dumplings cook IN the broth so you don't need to dip bread in the broth because its already in there.  It was really cool when I dropped the dough in the broth because of the baking power the dough actually rises as it cooks!  And the middle of these little dough balls, once fully cooked, aren't all soggy in the middle just really good!  I also doubled the amount of chicken in the recipe...I mean I do have a MAN for a husband and I'm pretty sure he would frown upon a soup based dinner with only 4 oz of chicken.

Heath also doesn't like soup for dinner.  I don't know what it is but he just doesn't so I made something extra for him just in case soup wasn't gonna cut.  Bruschetta!  I love bruschetta and this stuff I made was sooo good and I didn't use a whole lot of olive oil so in my opinion that means it wasn't that bad for you!

 

Ingredients

• 4 Roma Tomatoes
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp jarred minced garlic
• 1 tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
• A good squirt of bottled lemon juice
• Pinch of kosher salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Roasted Garlic Bread (La Brea Bakery)

Preparation
Preheat over to 375 F
Chop and seed tomatoes.  Mix all ingredients minus the bread in a bowl and set aside.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Slice the bread into 4 half inch thick slices and place on the foil.  Toast the bread in the oven for 5 minutes or until the undersides has a nice golden brown toast to it.  Spread the tomato mixture over the toast. Eat.  Enjoy!

No money to eat out, pulled chicken sandwiches at home

So just one day after starting this blog my laptop computer decided to lay down and die.  So for the next couple of week my husband and I decided we need to stay home and save money so I can get an awesome new computer that wont die on me during grad school. 

So lunch time for me mean tasty sandwiches at home after school.

So I used the CookingLight pulled chicken recipe.  Its a good recipe to make one day and then keep it in the fridge for a few days, to eat when there's nothing else in the apartment.

3  tablespoons  ketchup
1  tablespoon  cider vinegar
1  tablespoon  prepared mustard
1  tablespoon  molasses
3/4  teaspoon  chili powder
1/2  teaspoon  ground cumin
1/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
1/8  teaspoon  ground ginger
12  ounces  skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch pieces
4  (2-ounce) sandwich rolls, cut in half horizontally
12  dill pickle chips

1. Combine first 9 ingredients in a medium saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and cook, stirring occasionally, 23 minutes or until chicken is done and tender. Remove from heat; shred with 2 forks to measure 2 cups meat. Place 1/2 cup chicken on bottom half of each roll. Top each with 3 pickles and top half of roll.

Nutritional Information*

Now the calorie count for this is 294 calories and I think that a little high for 3 oz of chicken and some ketchup especially since we used this super low calorie buns.  What this recipe is missing is the tangy creamy cole slaw on top.  I hate coleslaw but man do I like it on top of pulled pork (alright chicken).  So to make up for this minor oversight and because I have room to spare in the calorie department I added a tablespoon of Runny Ranch Dressing (though I didnt water it down as much so it didnt run all over my plate.)  With a side of sea salt and vinegar potato chips this is a pretty dang good substitute for a meal out!

*

Calories: 294

Fat: 6.5g (sat 1.5g,mono 2.6g,poly 1.4g)

Protein: 22g

Carbohydrate: 35.6g

Fiber: 1.8g

Cholesterol: 71mg

Iron: 3.1mg

Sodium: 698mg

Calcium: 105mg

Who says you shouldn't drink and fry?

So on Saturday night we had a few friends over for game night.  Unfortunately for our livers the game of choice quickly became beer pong.  For those of you unfamiliar with beer pong please refer to the bottom of the post*.

 So after umpteen games of beer pong it appears to be 3 in the morning and we are hungry for some gooey cheesy delivery pizza.  Apparently pizza delivery companies do not deliver at 3 in the morning.  So what is the appropriate alternative?  Deep fried string cheese of course! 


Amanda's Amazing Beer Pong Fried Cheese

Half a package of string cheese (or as many string cheeses that are left over in your fridge)
Panko bread crumbs
1-2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
2 tablespoons of corn starch
1/2 cup of milk
4 tablespoons of flour (just keep about a cup around I'm not really sure how much I used)
Paprika
kosher salk
Cooking oil (like canola)

Fill a medium sauce pan about half way with the cooking oil to about 400oF on a candy thermometer or until things really bubble when they get dropped in.

In a bowl whisk the cornstarch, 2 tbsp's of flour and  milk together.  Add more flour by the tablespoon until you get a batter thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, I would say a little runnier than pancake batter.  Add a a couple of dashes of paprika and a good pinch of kosher salt.  In another bowl combine the panko bread crumbs, the Italian seasoning and another good 1-2 pinches of kosher salt.

Unwrap the cheese sticks and cut them in half.  Dip the cheese first in the batter and then in the bread crumbs making sure to cover up as much of the cheese as you can.  Bare cheese will ooze out in the frier.  If the batter isnt thick enough to coat the cheese add a little more flour, if its too thick at a little more milk.  Once coated in the bread crumbs drop them into the oil.  Watch the first batch closely.  I typically only drop in 1-2 cheese sticks at a time to avoid them sticking together.  When they turn a golden brown color they are ready to be removed and drained on paper towels.  Don't let them set on the towels too long, sometimes the cheese will ooze out and stick to the paper which no one wants to eat.  Repeat with the rest of your cheese sticks.

Serve immediately with ketchup and runny ranch dressing.

Runny Ranch Dressing

My husband LOVES his ranch kinda runny like you get at restaurants thick enough to coat a french fry but not so thick to have stiff peaks.

1 Hidden Valley Ranch BUTTERMILK packet
2 cups of mayonaise
water

Mix the mayo and the ranch packet in a jar, attach the lid and shake.  Add small amounts of water until you get the consistancy he likes...serve with fried mozzerella sticks

Note: We used reduced fat mozzarella sticks and I think those work better because I think they are stringy-er.  And the reducded fat makes it .... less horrible for you?


*Beer pong is played on a folding table with ten red plastic cups lined up on each side of the table in triangle formations. 2-3 cans of cheap beer is distributed amongst the 10 cups (20 cups and 4-6 beer total for the table).  Each set of 10 cups belongs to a team of two , and each team member gets on shot per turn.  The object of the game is to throw a ping pong ball from yourside into your opponents cups.  The first team to clear the other teams cup wins!  The losers also have to drink the remaining cups on the winners side.  There are more rules and stratagies that I don't want to go into, sorry.

Home Made Fried Treats!

Can't call it deep fried du jour without a little deep fried thrown in.  Well not deep fried, but oven baked!!  Sorry for the lag in posting, our laptop decided it no longer wanted to be part of the family and I've been avoiding using the desktop, c'est la vie!

On Friday night I was having a rough day and my dear sweet husband decided he wanted to make me dinner, chicken cordon bleu.  If you havent made this tasty little dish you should really try it some time.  He improvised with the recipe a little bit:

2 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1 egg
2 cups of italian seasoned bread crumbs
2 slices of ham
2 slices of swiss cheese

tooth picks

Pre-heat oven to 350 degress.

Place the chicken breast between two sheets of plastic wrap, spraying water on the top side of the chicken and the top side of the plastic wrap (this will help keep the chicken from tearing when you whack it!)  Then smash the chicken up with a rolling pin, or a flat sided meat tenderizer (even a cast iron skillet in moving in one direction works.)  Lightly season your chicken with salt and pepper.  Crack egg in a shallow dish and use fork to break up the yolk.  Place bread crumbs in a second shallow dish.  Dip one chicken breast into the egg, then into the bread crumbs making sure to coat evenly.  Transfer this chicken breast to a plate, and place one slice of ham and one half slice of cheese on it.  Roll everything up and secure it with two toothpicks.  Do the same with the second chicken breast.  Spray cooking spray on a cookie sheet and place the chicken breast on it and into the oven for 30-35 minutes, until the internal temperature has reached 160 degrees.  Place another half slice of cheese on top and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.

Remember the toothpicks!!  They sort of blend it so don't forget to take those out.  So that was my yummy, not too terribly unhealthy dinner on Friday night!  ENJOY!!