I had a dream and it involved Chicken, Avocado, and Lime. So, it's not very surprising that the next day I was on Google looking up recipes that included those 3, and was dairy free. And I was successful, finding this recipe at myrecipes. So here it is, with a few tweaks that I did, and a few more I plan to the next time I make this.

Cilantro-Lime Chicken with Avocado Salsa

Ingredients

• Chicken
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro (I think dried would work just as well)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

 Salsa

• 1 cup chopped plum tomato (about 2)
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
• 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
•  2 avocado, peeled and finely chopped

Preparation

1. To prepare chicken: Pound chicken to about 1/2-3/4 inch thickness. Combine first 4 ingredients in a large bowl; toss and marinate several hours or preferably over night. Remove chicken from marinade; discard marinade. Sprinkle chicken evenly with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Grill on your barbeque grill.
2. To prepare salsa, combine tomato and next 4 ingredients (through pepper) in a medium bowl. Add avocado; stir gently to combine. Serve salsa over chicken. Might want to double the amount of salsa, as it is incredibly yummy.

Now on the myrecipes site, they pictured this as being served over rice. But in going with another person's comments about this recipe we tried it over lightly seasoned spaghetti squash. WOW! There were no leftovers, our girls were loving it!

Bake you spaghetti squash, halve it, scrape out seeds, fluff flesh to look lie spaghetti, season with a small amount of margarine, onion (powder or minced), garlic (powdered or minced), salt and pepper.

I wish I had remembered to take a picture, so in your mind see a plate, generous serving of squash, chicken breast on top, and then beautiful salsa over all of that.

This is a little bit of a pricier meal, and is best in Spring/Summer time. Enjoy!!

Lizzy's Easter Cookies

Yum! This is my own recipe. It started with trying to make a combination snickerdoodle (without the cinnamon) and a chocolate chip cookie (without the chocolate). It might still need a bit of tweaking, but we enjoy it very much.

Lizzy's Easter Cookies

• 3/4 C Butter or Margarine
• 1 C Brown Sugar
• 1/2 C Granulated Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Cream of Tartar
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 2 1/2 C Flour
• Starburst Jellybeans

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Cream together the butter and sugars.
Add in eggs and beat well.
Mix in baking soda, cream of tartar and salt.
Add in flour.

Now at this point you have two options. The fast, sloppy and not quite as good tasting (but still good) and the way more time consuming but less mess and yummy.

So first the fast way.

Mix in the Jellybeans, about  100-150 is what I like. It's about 3 per cookie. 

Line baking sheet with parchment paper. (Very, very important, or your baking sheets will be a mess!) Drop cookie dough by spoonfuls. The size I do has about 12 per sheet. Make about 3 dozen.

The better way, if you have the time.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper (makes for easier cleanup in case any of the jelly beans accidentally touch the pan). Drop by spoonfuls onto the sheet. Flatten the cookie a bit. press about 3 jelly beans into the top of each cookie. 

Cook for 10-15 minutes. 

 

Zucchini Pecan Waffles

So I just have the list of ingredients, we just use the regular instructions of waffles. (Like separating eggs and beating egg whites, and what order things go in.)

Zucchini Waffles
* 3 C Flour
* 2 tsp Cinnamon
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1/2 tsp nutmeg
* 2/3 C Sugar
* 2 C Zucchini--shredded
* 1/2 C Oil
* 2 eggs
* Peel of 1/2 of an orange--Zested or see helpful hints.
* 1/4 - 1/2 C Pecans (can sub walnuts, but pecans are better)
*1/4 C Milk (this might be different due to altitude. Add slowly till right consistency.

Helpful Hints
--Make sure Waffle Iron is well oiled otherwise it sticks.
--Spread thin on Waffle Iron as these puff like mad. If you use the amount you are used to you'll end up with 2" high waffles.
--Peel an orange with a vegetable peeler, careful not to get too much of the white inner peel. Put in chopper (I use my mini chopper) with nuts. Chop till small (almost granual, like think of grinding your own whole wheat on the biggest setting).
--You can replace the zucchini with just about any squash, but what spices and nuts changes.
--Makes a great breakfast for dinner, a great brunch, a great middle of the night snack, okay really it's great at any time
--Make a double batch. =)

Hamburger Extender

Now I could tell you that this recipe will help save you money. And maybe it does, I haven't priced it out. But my guess is it comes out pretty close.
We like meat in our house. I admit it. We will never be vegetarians. I just start twitching if I think about never having bacon or ham again. But one thing we agree on. We don't need to use as much meat as we do. So I was pretty excited when someone pointed me to the ground beef alternative at Veggie Converter. I've done a few tweaks to make it more what we want.
Anyways now anything that we use ground beef for we use half ground beef and half of this rice/lentil mix. We have even successfully made hamburgers with it. We have changing to buying 80% beef, because this mix does not have much fat, and so if you don't have a higher fat content hamburger you have to add oil of have it stick completely to the pan. So without further ado...

Rice/Lentil ground Beef Extender

• 2 cups Brown rice
• 2 cups Green lentils
• Water
• 4 tablespoons Montreal steak seasoning
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup dehydrated mashed potatoes
• 1 cup rolled oats

Directions:
Boil rice, lentils and steak seasoning in water until slightly soft . Drain any excess water, if necessary. Combine with remaining ingredients. And you're done.


This makes a whole lot. I store it in quart bags in my freezer. then when I make dinner I grab a bag of ground beef and a bag of this mix.


Does it taste the same as just plain ground beef? No. Does it still taste pretty darn good? Yes.


Enjoy!

Technique notes for next attempt:
8 cups water.
Start the rice first and half cook it. Then add the lentils. Slightly overcook. Proceed as normal.

Mmmm...Leftovers

You know the best part of having a roast? Leftovers! You may not agree with me, I used to hate leftover roast. But then we found a few recipes in an old 1950's cookbook that call for leftover roast. One of our favorites is

Meatloaf in a Blanket

• 1 onion chopped
• bacon drippings, or butter, lard, etc.
• 2 cups finely chopped cooked potatoes (right from your crockpot roast)
• 1 1/2 cups chopped cooked beef 
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk (of whatever variety, we do Soy with this recipe)
• Salt and Pepper
• Baking Powder Biscuit dough (made with 2 cups flour)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F
Brown onion in drippings, add potatoes, mix well. Combine everything else in skillet except dough. Heat thoroughly, making sure egg is cooked.
Roll biscuit dough into rectangle 1/2 inch thick. Shape hot meat mixture into a loaf in the middle of the dough. Draw dough up over mixture to form a roll (one big honking roll). Press edges together. Slash top a few times.
Place on baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes.
Serve with a Mushroom Gravy


This takes a few times of making it to start making it look pretty. But it is yummy. We will throw in carrots as well if we have some leftover from our roast.

Yes, we now make roast so that we can have leftovers. We also will double to triple this recipe. The part you cook in a skillet, will look sort of like a very large omelet with not enough eggs. Where the name meatloaf came from I don't know. (Except it is meat, in a loaf, hmmmm.) We also like making this for the missionaries if we are feeding them and sending them home with the leftovers. Without the gravy it travels really well and can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Stuffed Pepper Casserole

I love stuffed green peppers. Love them. When we were first married I'd make them about once a month. After we had our first child it was more like once a year. After our second, I realized that I missed them soooo much, but that they were just too time consuming for me. So I tweaked things, and made it into a casserole, with a few less steps.

Stuffed Pepper Casserole

Ingredients

• 3 large Green Peppers, diced
• 1 lb ground meat (I usually use sausage or hamburger)
• 1 large Onion, diced
• 1 14 oz can of diced tomatoes (or maybe it's 14.5 oz, whatever normal regular size)
• 1 14 oz can of spicy tomatoes (there was a store here that used to sell a diced tomatoes with green chilis that was fabulous!)
• 1 1/2 C rice (I use 1 c white rice, and 1/2 c brown)
• 2 C water
• Worcestershire sauce
• basil
• oregano

1. In a frying pan cook together meat, onion, and about 1/3-1/2 of the green peppers. Cook until meat is browned. 
2. Add in tomatoes (undrained), water, and rice.
3. Add seasoning. I really don't measure, but I would say I use between 2-4 T of Worcestershire, depending on mood. And about 2 tsp each of basil and oregano. 
4. Stir together, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, cover and let cook until rice is tender. Between 15-20 minutes. 
5. Preheat oven to 375. (I do this as I add the seasoning, because my oven takes forever to heat up).
6. Spray with oil a large casserole dish. Mine is glass. 
7. Layer bottom of dish with the rest of the green peppers (bet you thought I forgot about them).
8. When rice is done, add into the dish. 
9. Cover with foil. Cook for 30 minutes.

Yummy!

The reason I split the green peppers is because I like the meat flavored with them (and if you get sausage in Western NY you know you HAVE to cook it with peppers and onions, or it doesn't taste right). But I still want the crunch of the green peppers, that you wouldn't get if they had all been simmering in the pan the whole time. 
I also used to stir the second half of the green peppers in, but it was hard because my pan wasn't big enough. Now I like it this way. I can guarantee that everywhere is getting the same amount, and it takes me seconds compared to minutes to do. Plus it's an easy, fun job for a child to do. 
If you aren't milk free I suppose you could melt cheese on top, but seriously it's very flavorful and the cheese just masks the flavor. 


This is great in December. It's red and green.

Work in Progress: BLT Soup

A few years ago I had BLT soup in a restaurant. And I loved it! I searched online for similar recipes. I found BLT soup recipes, but none that were like the one I had. So fine, I'll just try to figure it out myself.
The biggest problem I am having is it coming out too sweet from the soy milk. I think I'll try it with a different milk, just haven't decided which to try next.
Now, alot of the time I don't measure, and this is one of those times. So bear with me.

Ingrediants:

• 1 lb bacon
• 1/2 - 1 head lettuce, I like green leaf, but any will do
• 6 tomatoes, or use some grape, or roma, or use less with a larger tomato, only rule is it to use fresh, not canned
• bacon drippings
• parsley
• salt and pepper
• crushed red pepper
• flour
• milk alternative (I used soy, but as I said too sweet)

Fry bacon, reserve the drippings. Shred lettuce, and dice tomatoes.
Using bacon drippings and flour make a roux. Season with parsley, salt, pepper, and a small amount of crushed red pepper. Add milk. Simmer, until milk begins to thicken a bit.
Add bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes. Cook for awhile. It can be ready in 5 minutes, or hold at a low temp for an hour.

Enjoy.!