Homemade Chicken Potpies
There were two things that got me thinking about making homemade individual-sized chicken potpies. One, getting a set of ramekins for Christmas and two, the book Eat This, Not That.
One of my hubby’s favorite freezer staples is Marie Callendar’s frozen Pot Pies. I could have read the label and figured out how horribly high in fat and calories these are, but I chose not to. After we both saw the facts in black & white in the pages of Eat This, Not That we both agreed the frozen potpies were banned from our house. Read this book. It was a huge eye opener for both me and my hubby, but even better are the suggestions for substitutions they make (hence the Eat This part of the book) that are quite surprising.
In an effort to use more of my kitchen gadgets that tend to get forgotten when shoved to the back of a cabinet, I pulled out my still new set of ramekins and successfully made 4 wonderful potpies for dinner last night.
Ingredients:
1lb chicken breast
1 cup red potatoes, cubed
1/4 cup water
2 cans (10 3/4oz) reduced fat cream of chicken soup
1/4 cup Italian dressing (I used Kraft Tuscan House)
1 package (2 cups) frozen mixed vegetables
1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
parmesean cheese
1 container of Pillsbury Grands flaky biscuits
salt, pepper and seasonings to taste (I used chopped, fresh thyme)
4-6 ramekin or individual-sized casserole dishes
To cook chicken: Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Season chicken liberally with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Bake for 15-20 mins. Allow to cool slightly. Cube chicken.
While chicken is cooking – place potatoes in a microwave safe bowl, add water. Cover and microwave 5-7 minutes, or until fork tender. Drain and set aside.
In a large saucepan add chicken, potatoes, soup, dressing and vegetables. Bring to a boil, then reduced heat to med-low, cover and simmer 3 mins. or until vegetables are heated through. Stir in sour cream, salt, pepper and any other seasonings to taste at this time, and cook until heated.
Fill each ramekin 3/4 of the way full with soup mixture. Sprinkle with parmesean cheese.
Stretch one biscuit over each dish. Press biscuit dough along edge of dish to seal. Cut 1 or 2 small holes in dough to vent.
Bake potpies in a 350 degree oven for 14-20 mins. or until biscuits are browned and baked through.
Playing in the Kitchen
In an attempt to save money and because we now live in a tiny little town without many options for eating out, I’ve been cooking a lot more at home. For the most part I love cooking, however I get tired of the same old recipes I keep going back to time and time again. I constantly watch Food Network and I get daily e-mails from various websites with lots of different recipes to try. So I decided to step out of my comfort zone this week and try a couple new recipes.
The first is Sausage and Tomato Rigatoni from Kraft Foods. I absolutely love this website and their ideas for very simple meals with ingredients I almost always have on hand. Oh and they send out a free magazine quarterly with all kinds of great recipes. Go to Kraft Foods to sign up 🙂
Anyway, the rigatoni dish was delicious and a new comfort food recipe for my collection. The Italian sausage gave the dish a lot of flavor on it’s own. A few things I changed or added:
– I added about a teaspoon of garlic powder to the Italian sausage as it browned
– After adding the onions and tomato paste I added 1/2 cup of water to thin out the sauce. It was just too thick and wouldn’t come to a simmer
– After the pasta was done I reserved 1/4 cup of the pasta water and ended up adding that with the dressing because the sauce was still quite thick
-I wasn’t able to find fresh parsley at the ghetto grocery store by my work so I used dried instead. It probably wasn’t as good, but with all the other flavors going on it wasn’t really missed either.
And last night we had some of hubby’s family over for dinner. Luckily we had no over dramatic conversations or heated arguments. And everything turned out dinner-wise so I’m calling it a success. We were celebrating two birthdays so I made a Malibu Rum Cake. I saw the recipe a long time ago in one of the Sandra Lee Semi-homemade Cookbooks and figured last night was a good time to try it out. From tasting the batter I could tell it would be a nice change from the typical carrot cake we typically have for birthdays around here. It was a hit! . So much so that there aren’t a whole lot of leftovers. I guess that’s a good thing though. The last thing I need to be tempted with is a bunch of alcohol soaked cake 🙂
Preparing for Lazy Days
I’m not sure why, but I have the urge to be in the kitchen – a lot! Maybe it’s because Fall is finally here and with the cooler weather it’s a little easier having the stove/oven on during the day. Maybe I’m just feeling the need of comfort food with the cooler days and nights. Maybe it’s because I’m living the single life for the next 7 days and I don’t have to listen to anyone bitch about the mess I’m making or leaving in my cooking-frenzed wake. I think it’s really more of me being lazy the last few weeks and not wanting to cook after a long day at work. Whatever it is it’s been the reason for the many hours I’ve spent in the kitchen this weekend.
So, I decided since I’d be home alone for the next week or so I would make a bunch of freezable meals so when those lazy days strike or I forget to pull chicken/pork chops/hamburger out for dinner in the morning I can just come home and pull a pre-made meal out of the freezer that just needs to heat up in the oven while I get out of my work clothes and give the dogs a little love (because they act as if they haven’t gotten any attention from their dad who’s home most days with them – poor neglected dogs)
My list of meals includes: enchiladas, baked ziti, eggplant gratin, chili and eggplant rollatini. Oh and I made a quiche last night for my dinner and leftovers for the rest of the week. Hubby’s not crazy about breakfast stuff for dinner and since he wasn’t here it was a good night to have quiche for dinner 🙂
My goal for today was to do enchiladas and eggplant rollatini. I started with the eggplant and didn’t realize how time consuming it was. It was nice spending the afternoon in the kitchen, but I wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in the kitchen too so the enchiladas will have to wait until later this week. (I would be taking pictures of all this yummy-ness but hubby took my camera with him hunting.)
Even though I spent a lot of money at the grocery store yesterday, I’m thinking it will be worth it, both for our checking account and our waistlines. At least I know what goes into the foods I’m making and I substitute low-fat anywhere I can. I hate to think about how often we’ve eaten out (mainly fast food) the last few weeks and we don’t make the healthiest choices at the places we go.
Thank goodness we now have an extra freezer. In the past I could never make too many meals or double recipes to freeze for future use because our space was so limited. Now I really have no excuse.
Yummy Cupcakes
A co-worker brought me a recipe a couple months back and asked me if I’d be willing to bake them and bring them into work. I was very flattered that she thought so highly of my baking skills, but told her I’d need to borrow a cupcake pan to make them in. Guess what was sitting on my desk the next day – yep, a 12-cup cupcake pan. With my dinky 6-cup pan I’d have plenty of cupcakes.
The recipe is Carrot Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting. I’m usually all for store bought cream cheese frosting, but I put in the extra effort for this recipe. I was still trying to impress my co-workers with my mad baking/kitchen skills after all. It’s not a low fat recipe by any means and it’s got lots and lots of sugar. But really, the carrots and pineapple are healthy enough, right?? The only modifications I made was to the frosting. I used reduced fat cream cheese and only 3 cups of confectioners sugar. And there was enough frosting left for a couple batches of this recipe. Or enough leftover to make yourself sick by taking little spoonfuls of it here and there. Yes, I’m a sweet-freak and I know it!
Hubby helped me in with the frosting and thought the vanilla made it an ugly brownish color. He proposed food coloring – like green or orange. After much hesitation I agreed to orange because of his rationale – “Carrots are orange. Or they have green tops.” He wasn’t giving up so the frosting turned out a light orange color. Only a boy who isn’t a baker would suggest turning cream cheese frosting a different color. Regardless, they tasted wonderful!
Quiche Recipe
Since I have a little time I thought I’d type up the quiche recipe I came up with for Easter (see previous post):
Ingredients:
1 frozen deep-dish pie crust (making homemade pie crust is just too much work)
3 eggs, beaten
Handful of baby spinach, chopped
2 green onions (white & green parts), sliced thin
3/4 cup chopped ham
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup half & half
3/4 cup grated Swiss cheese
3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground pepper
dash of nutmeg
dash of garlic powder
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
Follow instructions on pie crust package to cook the crust only. (For mine, I let it sit at room temp. for 10 minutes to thaw. Then I used a fork to poke holes all over it. I baked it at 425 for 10 minutes or just until it started getting brown.)
After done baking the crust, heat oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit). Mix together eggs, spinach, onions, ham, milk, half & half, salt, pepper, nutmeg and garlic powder. In a separate bowl toss the cheeses with the flour. Add cheese to the egg mixture and mix until combined. Slowly pour the mixture into warm pie crust.
Even though I used a deep dish pie crust I had enough left over for a couple mini quiches if I had made homemade pie crust.
Bake the quiche between 30-40 minutes depending on your oven. When a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean it’s done. Let sit 10-15 minutes before cutting. Foil can be placed around the edge of the crust if it’s getting too brown too quickly. Nothings worse than burnt pie crust.
This was great the next morning for breakfast too. I heated it up for a minute at 70% power in the microwave. I also used a fork to poke holes all over it so it heated more evenly.
Yum!
A Little Bit of Everything
I haven’t been cooking much during the week lately so I decided to go all out last night with homemade enchiladas. A little time consuming, but well worth it.
The last few times I made enchiladas I used flour tortillas because you don’t have to fry them first. I forgot that step last night and had the first tortilla fall apart on me.
Next I made banana nut bread to use up some bananas I had hanging out in my freezer. I used the recipe out of the red & white checkered Better Homes & Garden cookbook. An old classic, but a classic for a reason. I have a tendency to over mix bread dough, leaving me with very dense and heavy bread. Last night I used my electric mixer instead of my Kitchen Aid mixer and I think the bread came out much better this time.
My house smelled so good last night 🙂 Although I love eating bread right after it comes out of the oven, I let this one sit over night like the cookbook says. A few seconds in the microwave and dollop of butter and it tasted just as good.
In knitting news, I have been knitting, just not very much. After getting all that yarn a couple weeks ago you’d think I’d be knitting non-stop. Nope. I think it’s because I’m working on a pair of socks that are a basic (i.e. boring) pattern. I love how fast they knit up, but it’s just stockinette. But I did get one done Friday night.
They are for another cousin, who I was visiting a couple weeks ago. (Knit Picks Cape Cod yarn) One down, one to go. I started casing on for the second sock last night but got distracted by my kitchen.
And finally, I’m back on track with working out. My back isn’t completely healed, but good enough for me to lift light weights and get through my step classes. Hubby and I have done a very good job at cutting out fast food and eating better at home, with the exception of the two items up above 😉 I’m not totally depriving myself. The weather has finally gotten a little warmer so we are walking the dogs a little more frequently too. It’s slow progress, but better than the nothing we did most of the winter.
Happy Day Light Savings!
jenamyjen 