Sweet and Sour Chicken

Tonight we had Sweet and Sour Chicken in honor of the Chinese New Year.  I did a Pinterest and Google search of a few different recipes and then kind of modified a couple of those to make this.  I used this sauce recipe  and, instead of breading my own, I used this chicken.

It's the Perdue Simply Smart and it's our current favorite chicken.  It's all natural, the ingredients are all easily pronounceable, it's low in fat, and it's just darn good!!  The husband has it every.single.night for dinner.  He's one of those odd people who can do that with out getting completely sick of a food.  I think his whole menu consisted of 6 different foods before I met him and I like to think that I have opened his eyes and expanded his horizons to all of the yummy food goodness out there. He insisted he hated garlic, until he found out I had been sneaking it in his food for years, he insisted he hated Chinese food until I made him try some back when we were dating and now he loves (at least some of) it, he insisted he hated bagels until I forced him to try them, and he wouldn't let a tomato come within 3 feet of him.  Still can't get him to like pickles or olives (of any color) though.

I digress....

I cooked the chicken for it's regular time and while that was cooking, I steamed some shredded carrots and assembled the sauce from the recipe linked above.  Once the chicken was done, I just cut it up in pieces, poured the sauce over it, and put it in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350 while I made the rice and got the dinner table ready.

This was a HUGE hit!  Everyone loved it!  Overheard from the 9 year old during the course of the meal, "This is awesome!"  "This chicken is delicious!"  "You should make this a lot more often."  "My favorite part of it is everything!".

The 20 year old had 2 big helpings and said she loved it as well.  Even the 6 year old, who despises (and I'm not exaggerating) chicken ate the piece I served him.  He even said it was better than other chicken, but made sure I was still well aware that that didn't mean he actually liked chicken. I scarfed it down myself and would have had seconds but I wanted to save some for the husband to try when he got home.

Any meal that doesn't get whines and moans goes on the regular rotation so this will certainly be one of those!

Pizza Rolls

Tonight we had Pizza Rolls, or I guess they're really called Pepperoni Rolls, for dinner.  We changed up the original recipe a bit.  I used the Pillsbury refrigerated pizza crust instead of the frozen bread dough, even though I still have 4 loaves of that in the freezer from when we made the Braided Spaghetti Bread, and we used turkey pepperoni, so no cool big deli slices for us.

This was fast and easy to put together.  I stuck it in for 10 minutes, then checked on it.  It was lightly browned on the outside so I cut into it to check that and the dough was still raw, cheese not melted.  The bottom was getting pretty dark however, so I moved it up a rack in the oven and stuck it back in for another few minutes.  I'm not sure how long, because I actually forgot about it, and when I went to check on it, it was really brown.  I was a bit worried dinner was ruined and we'd be calling up the pizza delivery guy but figured I'd at least try it and see if it tasted burned before I threw it out.  It wasn't bad!  It was actually pretty good.  The inside dough was just cooked so if you're going to use pizza dough for this one, it seems like the outside has to be pretty dark before the inside will be cooked enough.

Everyone liked this and had seconds.  We'll probably have it again in the future.

Caramel Cream Cheese Dip

One of the treats we had during our New Year's Eve party was this Caramel Cream Cheese dip. We actually had it for the first time a few nights earlier when we had some friends over but it was so yummy, and such a hit, that it was requested again.

It's super super easy with only 3 ingredients and takes about 3 minutes to make as well.  I topped ours with the Enjoy Life chocolate chips instead of the toffee chips to make it safe for everyone.  I also used light brown sugar instead of dark as that's all we had.  The original recipe says that dark gives a richer flavor but we thought it was great with the light!

I had apples, graham crackers, bananas, and pretzels to dip in it and the 3 year old had gluten free pretzels, gf animal crackers, and fruit for his.  We pretty much finished off the whole thing between just the 5 of us...so good!  I have a feeling this will become a stand by for get togethers and parties at our house.

Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Balls

So when I said that I couldn't have chocolate in my last post, I lied just a bit.  I can have the Enjoy Life allergen free chocolate chips.  I just don't use them a lot for baking, more to keep on hand for a quick chocolate fix, as they're kind of spendy at around $5 a bag.  Found these amazing little Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Balls on Pinterest and I figured I would splurge for a treat that we all could eat.  I substituted Glutino gluten free pretzels for regular pretzels so this was 3 year old safe too.  Not the cheapest treat between the chocolate chips and the Glutino pretzels but the end result was oh so worth it!

The trickiest part to these was rolling the peanut butter balls.  I did as the recipe says and chilled my fingers with cold water but that would only work for maybe one ball and then I'd have to re-chill.  As someone in the comments suggested, I then tried chilling the "dough" before rolling it.  I took advantage of the weather and just set the pan of them out on our front porch for about 45 minutes.  That helped, but it still was tricky.  I finally figured out that keeping my fingers wet after chilling them under the cold water was the trick to getting the balls to stick easily. (my husband would be giggling like a teenager reading this post.)

Aside from the little, minor problem of rolling the peanut butter balls, this was another easy recipe and these things are DELICIOUS!  So so so good!  The 3 year old LOVES them and I love that I've found another gluten free, safe Christmas treat for everyone to enjoy.  The biggest problem with these will be having them last until Christmas, even if it is only a couple of days away!

Even though he's already had a couple, when the 3 year old just saw me upload this picture he said, "Can I have one of those?"  A hit!  And now the 5 year old is alerting me that the 3 year old is "stealing the chocolates" so that's my cue. : )

Braided Spaghetti Bread

I had super high hopes for this recipe. One of my favorite restaurant meals is from a little family owned place, near where we lived when we were first married...Spaghetti Pie from Panino's. Yum! This Braided Spaghetti Bread reminded me of that and my mouth was watering just thinking about it.

First, let me say, do not plan this meal for an afternoon that you have errands to run and can't be around to babysit the thawing, rising dough like I did. Having never done anything with frozen bread dough before, I mistakenly thought that I'd only have to set it out on the counter to defrost and didn't realize there was more to it than that. Thankfully the 20 year old was around to help watch it and it all worked out with just a little bit of stress added to my day. (I'm feeling the need to apologize for the crappy cell phone pictures on these posts. It's all I have to use right now.)

The assembling part was pretty easy, although I'd recommend parchment paper. It wasn't the easiest getting the assembled braid moved from the counter to the baking sheet. Please forgive my messy braid, I was working quickly as I had to be out the door in 5 minutes to pick up a Craigslist purchase (again, better not to plan this one when you have running around to do) so I kind of just threw it together.

Now, I've said this before, but I sometimes wonder if my children were really birthed by me. Pasta, especially spaghetti, is one of my favorite things in the world. I chose spaghetti for my birthday dinner for about 15 years in a row. I always wanted mashed potatoes as a side dish but my mom always said no. I think they'd go great together!

But anyway, my 2 older boys do not care for pasta (except in mac and cheese) and really don't care for spaghetti. Craziness I tell ya! But the 5 year old said "Mmmm" about his and ate it without too much prodding. The 9 year old said it was "better than regular spaghetti" but still needed a lot of "Eat your dinner!"'s to finish it. My fellow pasta fan, the 20 year old loved it and had two helpings. I thought it was decent. Not quite the BEST MEAL EVER that I was hoping for, but pretty good. It was a bit too doughy or bready for me. I'd probably have some extra sauce for dipping next time and add more cheese. One can never have too much cheese.

We may make this again, if only because I now have 4

more frozen loafs of bread dough in my freezer to use up, but I don't think it will become a staple in our house.