Crockpot Sundays: Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken

It's that time of year again. I have not seen the top of my kitchen table in well over a week and papers, notebooks, journal articles, textbooks, pens, highlighters, empty coffee cups and microwave popcorn bags have all been strategically placed around my kitchen in my attempts to make it through the last month of the school year. No time to sleep, let alone eat or cook, as essays and midterms come due one after the other with what feels like no end in sight! With that, I decided to start "Crockpot Sundays!" What better way to end one week and start off the next than with a big ol' pot of slow cooked food. Bonus for students, you can set it in the morning and work all day through. It'll be ready by suppertime and great for midnight munchies as you work into the wee hours of the night on that paper you put off until the last minute!

So, my first Crockpot Sunday meal? Salsa chicken. I had seen this recipe pop up a lot on the internet and there are few things I love more than salsa! It's great for students on a budget too. Too large chicken breasts fed three for dinner and there was enough leftovers for a lunch or two during the week. A great way to stretch those university dollars.

1. Prepare the crockpot! Throw in:

-Two chicken breasts, or more if you are feeding a bigger crowd. Don't be afraid to play around with the amounts in this recipe if you like more or less of something. Crockpotting isn't rocket science!

-One can of creamed soup, any flavour you like, although I would recommend cream of chicken or mushroom to get that real creaminess.

-Salsa, at least one cup, but I love the stuff and dump as much as I can in there!!

-One package of taco seasoning, found in the taco section of your grocery store!

2. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Once the chicken is cooked, shred it using two forks. This part is really easy and fun. I added a can of beans at this point to beef it up, another way to stretch that university buck!

3. Just before serving stir in some sour cream and cilantro. This stuff is great because you can eat it on practically anything, rice, pasta, pitas, wraps, taco shells, buns...The possibilities are endless and make it a very versatile dish for the starving student.

Happy Eating!

Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti

MmmmMmmm! I gotta say, for anyone who hasn't tried spaghetti squash yet, you don't know what you're missing! I whipped this up for the boyfriend last night for dinner and he was a little sceptical, as he has never tried any variety of squash, but he loved it! It's a great healthy dinner too if you're trying to get back on the path to healthy eating after the holidays, but just can't commit to rabbit food. I make it with a meat sauce to punch up the flavour, but if you're a vegetarian it makes a nice meal with a vegetable based sauce and salad. Also great if you're watching your carb intake.

Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti

Ingredients:

Extra virgin olive oil

Spaghetti Squash, halved and guts removed

1 lb of lean ground beef or turkey

1 onion

1 green bell pepper

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 can of tomato pasta sauce

Directions:

Drizzle a little EVOO on the cut side of your squash. I like to hit it with a little salt and cracked pepper. Bake in the oven, cut side down on 350-375 F for 45 mins or until the flesh is soft. To make the spaghetti squash look like spaghetti, take a fork and scrape out the flesh. It will peel off in strands similar to spaghetti.

While the squash is baking, brown your ground meat in a large stock pot. Add diced onions, green peppers and garlic, cook 5-10 minutes. Add the tomato sauce and simmer until the squash is ready.

I like to serve this meal directly in the squash, like a little bowl. It makes for a nice presentation. You can vary the sauce and add anything you want too. Extra tomatoes, mushrooms or other veg, sometimes I even throw a bit of garlic sausage in to beef it up!

Hope you enjoy and happy eating!

Hot Dog Craze

Is it just me or has there been a recent explosion of hot dogs into the culinary world? Well at any rate, it's certainly a delicious explosion! I thought I would write about this recent phenomenon in honour of my favourite hockey team's Wiener Wednesday nights!! If y'all live in the Edmonton area you ought to get out to an Oil King's Wiener Wednesday before the end of the season to see what all the hype is about!! $2 dogs and the entertainment ain't bad either!

www.oilkings.ca

Another place you simply must check out if you live anywhere near Alberta is Tubby Dog in Calgary. I stopped in a few weeks ago based on word of mouth from a friend how amazing it is and I was not disappointed! They have all kinds of crazy concoctions of dogs there! Everything from a chili and coleslaw dog to a PB & J and Capt'n Crunch dog. I wasn't so brave as to try the latter, but it is now tradition for us to stop in every time we are in Calgary and have a Tubby Dog!

www.tubbydog.com

Tubby Dog is also a restaurant that is going to be featured on one of my new favourite shows on the Food Network, "You Gotta Eat Here." Make sure you check it out! Following the trend of hot dog restaurants, I just caught Dougie Dog's on Dragon's Den the other night, not to mention they've been making headlines as the innovators of the world's most expensive hot dog! A $100 dog that requires you to order 24 hours in advance so that they can prep the ingredients! I don't think I'll be spending $100 on street meat any time soon, but it's definitely a place on my "to eat" list!

$100 Hot Dog at Dougie Dog in Vancouver

All this excitement over hot dogs has got me ready to jump on the doggy bandwagon myself! I think one of my next culinary adventures will have to be an experimental trip into the world of wieners! 

Happy Eating!

Cran-Apple Crumble

Cran-apple crumble, because who doesn't love an apple crumble! And what better way to use up those apples that are starting to turn. I often buy apples in a 5lb bag, but sometimes they just don't get eaten up fast enough and I hate throwing produce in the garbage. So, I try to use it up in inventive ways!

Crumbles are one of the most delicious ways to use up that fruit that probably won't see it through the weekend. You can start with your basic apple crumble and add in just about any other fruit that you want to use up. I bought a couple of bags of fresh, almost a little too fresh, cranberries at discount after Christmas and threw them in the freezer to use later. This was the perfect opportunity to pull them out and use them up! If you have berries that are about to spoil in the fridge, wash em up and throw them in! Pears are great too!

I usually make a Bisquick version of apple crisp because it's so fast and easy. You can even bake it in the microwave in less than 10 mins! This weekend however, I was out of Bisquick mix, so I decided to try something new and found this recipe on allrecipes.com, which has become my new mecca of recipe websites! The cornflake topping seemed a bit bizzare to me, but it is actually delicious! Think your morning breakfast cereal and fruit, kicked up a notch! The only thing I would recommend is cutting the sugar by about half, especially if you plan on eating for breakfast or brunch, as it is super sweet!

You can pretty much eyeball this recipe and tailor it to your likings. Want more fruit, add more fruit! Heavy on the crumble, double the amount! It's pretty easy and a no fail!

Cran-Apple Crisp



Ingredients

• 3 cups chopped, peeled tart apple
• 2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup crushed cornflakes
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons butter or stick margarine, melted

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine the apples, cranberries, sugar and flour; spoon into a 2-qt. baking dish coated with nonstick cooking spray. Combine the cornflakes, pecans, brown sugar and butter; sprinkle over apple mixture. bake at 350 degrees F for 35-40 minutes or until top is golden brown and filling is bubbly.

Bisquick Microwave Apple Crisp: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/microwave-apple-crisp/ace23080-1e39-4a6d-85f3-6c798c43cf72 

Colorful Cabbage Soup

Colorful Cabbage Soup

Ok, so it went from being a couple degrees shy of the positive side of the theomometer to -30, not including windchill in less than 24 hours. There's only one solution when that happens: SOUP! And seeing as I had a couple of baby heads of cabbage in my fridge, an impulse buy from the farmer's market, I decided to try and make a cabbage soup. I know what you're thinking, "Cabbage soup? Ick!" It actually turned out pretty delicious. I ended up eating two big bowls in one sitting! It's the type of soup that you'll find yourself craving the next day while you're standing in below zero temperatures waiting for tardy transit. Best of all too, it's low in calories and is said to have certain mystical "healing properties." Either way, there is nothing like a good 'ol bowl of pipping hot soup on a cold winter's day to warm you up!

Colorful Cabbage Soup
(tweaked from AllRecipes.com)

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1-2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 1-2 medium carrots, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 quarts water
• 4 teaspoons chicken bouillon (homemade stock if you have it is even better!)
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
• 2 baby heads of cabbage (I used one green and one red, gives a nice color composition)
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can Italian-style stewed tomatoes, drained and diced

Directions

1. In a large stockpot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Stir in onion, celery, carrot,  and garlic; cook until onion is transparent, about 5 minutes.
2. Stir in water, bouillon, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then stir in cabbage. Simmer until cabbage wilts, about 10 minutes.
3. Stir in tomatoes. Return to a boil, then simmer 15 to 30 minutes, stirring often.

Baker Faker: Coke Float Cupcakes

I've recently started baking. Now, normally I'm not a baker. I'm a cook. I'm horrible at baking and always have been. I once baked cookies that were burnt and undercooked at the same time. AND I used a box mix! I can not bake to save my life...until I discovered cupcakes. And when I say cupcakes, I really mean cake mix from a box used to make cupcakes. I know it's cheating. I know it's not real baking, but like I said, I'm not a baker. And one day I'm sure I'll have children that I will have to produce emmaculate looking baked goods for at last minute bake sales and school events.

Enter Coke a Cola Float Cupcakes. Coke a Cola has an assortment of summer recipes out right now, all of which make use of, you guessed it, Coke a Cola! I wasn't really attracted to any of them and some of them sounded a little off, until I noticed this beauty of a recipe. I thought I'd give it a whirl since it used a cake mix as the main ingredient. I figured how hard could it be! And if I failed, well, then I've only wasted a box cake mix and not a whole lot of my time.

I dumbed down the recipe a lot! Again, I'm not a baker! If you want to find the full version recipe it's on the icoke.ca website. Good luck and kudos! For myself, I simply mixed the cake mix as directed, subsituting Coke a Cola for the water in the recipe and baked the cakes according to the directions on the box. The modification is in the icing section of the recipe. They have a recipe to make Coke a Cola butter cream icing, but I thought "Hey! I've got some icing in the fridge, I have some leftover Coke a Cola, let's just mix 'em together". Voila! Quick and easy Coke a Cola icing!

Now, I found this recipe to be all about the presentation. You have to put the whip cream and cherry on top! It's nothing without it. I did this for a group of kids and added the whip and cherry right before I served it. They were drooling as I "whipped" (had to use the pun) them up. And they loved them! I mean, who wouldn't love a cupcake with icing AND whip cream AND a cherry ontop. And I did make them all say "pretty please with whip cream and a cherry ontop" before they got a cupcake!

This recipe got me thinking too. You could use pretty much any flavor of pop and do a variation on these. I think I'll try a cream soda or root beer float next. Or maybe use an orange Crush and make some kind of vanilla creamsicle cupcake....