Chicken Spaghetti

I love this yummy dish!!

2-3 Chicken breasts boil in water with a bouillon cube. Remove chicken once cooked through and cook
a 16 oz package of spaghetti in the same water. In a separate pan saute 1 chopped bell pepper and 2 chopped celery stalks. Add 1 - 15 oz can of Italian stewed tomatoes and 4 oz of El Pato (or use tomato sauce if you don't want it spicy). Let simmer for 5 minutes. Shred Chicken. Place undrained spaghetti in a 9x13 pan with shredded chicken and vegetables. Cook in the oven at 300 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Remove from oven and stir. Add 1 1/2 C of cream. Fork into pasta mixture. Top with Cheese. Bake until cheese is melted.

One Pot Taco Salad

We love taco salad but since there were so many little hands at our table growing up my mom always did the one pot taco salad. It made it much more simple to feed everyone and to clean up afterwards.
I love this - the whole thing but my husband doesn't love the kidney beans. You can use black beans if you prefer.

One Pot Taco Salad

1 - head of romaine lettuce chopped

1 bag of tortilla chips broken uo

 1/2 lb of ground beef or turkey seasoned with taco seasoning

handful of grated cheese

 1 - 15 oz can of kidney beans

1 - 15 oz can of olives

tomatoes chopped

This is where I usually stop but it is a very flexible meal and you can add these other ingredients to your liking. I love the avocados in it but I don't usually have them on hand.

avocadoes chopped

can of corn

green onions chopped

grated carrots

spinach leaves

Dressing:

8 oz of sour cream

8 oz of Western or French salad dressing

Mix together and pour over above ingredients! Yum!

Recipe for Disaster

1 - 2 year old

1 box of cake mix

All the will power in the world!

Wednesday - What's for dinner

You can serve whatever you can find with this cornbread and your family will thank you. Open a can of chili or soup. Make an enchilada casserole or a pot of beans. This is the yummiest cornbread. It is like cake... really...delicious.
At a family gathering my brother picked up a leftover piece off one of the kids plates and then he promptly went over to the pan and scooped up every piece that was left, crumbs and all, onto his plate.
It is that good. Whatever you serve with it will be that good too.

Chanda's Corn Bread
1/2 C Butter
1 C Sugar
4  Eggs
1 - 14 oz can creamed corn
1/2 C Shredded Cheese
1 C Flour
1 C Yellow Corn
4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt


Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs. Stir in corn and cheese. Mix together dry ingredients. Mix wet and dry ingredients by hand. Spread in 9x13 pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. When you put the bread in the oven to cook reduce the heat to 300 degrees. Bake for 45 minutes. 

Monday must - easy cake recipe

There are always those days and activities that you need a delicious cake for. I fell in love with this recipe at a family party. It is yummy and the best part - it is so simple with limited ingredients.  It is also another way to use up your aging bananas! This recipe comes from Josh's Aunt Garna.

Garna's Banana Cake

1 box of yellow cake mix

1 large vanilla pudding(I have used banana flavor before)

1/2 C oil

4 eggs

3-4 mashed bananas

1C nuts (optional)

Mix ingredients and bake in a bundt pan for 30 -40min at 350 degrees.

I like to put mine on a cookie sheet and bake it for 20 min. Then you can have squares. 

Frost with a butter cream or cream cheese frosting! Yum!

Valentine Monster Cookies

When I was a little girl, i had a t-shirt that had Cookie Monster and a recipe for cookie monster cookies on it. What i wouldn't give to find that vintage treasure!! Fortunately, i still have the recipe and it is delicious. We originally didn't try the recipe because we didn't believe it was a real cookie recipe because it has no flour, boy are we glad we finally did!
We will call them valentine monster cookies because we will use our valentine M&M's for my daughters valentine party!

Monster Cookies
6 eggs
2 C Brown Sugar
1 C White Sugar
1 1/2 t Vanilla
1 1/2 t Karo Syrup
1 C Butter
3 C Peanut Butter
9 C Regular Oatmeal
2 C M&M's (Or you can do 1 C Chocolate chips and 1 C M&M's)(I personally like about 2 1/2 C's)
1 T and 1 t baking soda (this is optional - in the cookies pictured above there is no baking soda. If you add the baking soda it makes the cookies spread out more)

Mix all ingredients together and scoop onto a cookie sheet. If you don't use baking soda you might need to press them down with a fork before you cook them. If you add the baking soda they will flatten out on their own.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

This recipe makes a lot. You can only do half the recipe or you can make it all and freeze some.They freeze well and are yummy frozen or thawed

Kiddie treats

Peanut Butter Balls

This has been a family favorite for years. Great for using food storage!

1/2  C of each of the following - give or take to your liking

peanut butter

honey

Powdered milk

Mix together and roll into balls. Place on a plate and put in the freezer for 30 minutes. Yum!

Healthy trick - you can add a scoop of flax seed meal to these. It doesn't change the flavor it only adds a little crunch and all the benefits of flax!

If you use the all natural peanut butter this is a no sugar treat.

After you have made them so many times you can just kind of eyeball the amounts and then you don't have to dirty any measuring cups!! That is the best.