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Matzo Ball Soup

adapted from Budget Bytes

INGREDIENTS
1 lb chicken, cut into strips or bite-sized pieces
4 carrots, cut into thin rounds
4 ribs celery, halved lengthwise and diced
1 yellow onion, diced small
2 cloves garlic, ready to press or minced
8 cups chicken broth
sprigs of dill
olive oil
salt & pepper

3/4 cup matzo meal
3 T oil
3 large eggs
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
pepper

DIRECTIONS
Prep all your ingredients then start your matzo ball mix.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and oil. Then add meal, salt & baking soda. Combine to create consistent dough. Refrigerate for 25 minutes.

In a large soup pot, heat olive oil and add carrots, celery, onion & pressed or minced garlic. Saute for 5 or so minutes until the onion is translucent and soft. Season with salt & pepper.

Add a couple sprigs of dill and the chicken broth and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Once the 20 minutes are up, add your chicken strips to the soup and increase heat to medium. As the soup comes to temperature, make your matzo balls by rolling pinches of dough in your hands. They should be no larger than ping-pong ball sized. Keep in mind, they will expand as they cook! I like mine to be about 1.25 inches in diameter.

Once the soup is simmering, add in the matzo balls. Depending on their size, they will require about 15-20 minutes to cook which should give the chicken ample time to cook thoroughly as well without making it rubbery.

Add a sprig or two of dill to serve and ENJOY! Deeeeeelish.

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Chicken Lettuce Wraps Chopped Salad

2016-06-16 11.56.16Sorry this isn’t the best photo. I will try to replace it later with something more glamorous. But as a big part of this blog is to catalog the recipes that the family has deemed favorites, I want to get this UP.

To be perfectly honest, only the adult members of the family are gaga over this recipe, but both kids like it well enough. Tabby prefers to eat the chicken and dressing separate from the salad and add ranch or ceasar dressing (her faves) and Ben mostly just likes the chicken, but I think as they get a little older, they’ll come to love it like we do.

The original recipe comes from Skinny Taste and we make very few tweaks.

Ingredients:

SALAD DRESSING

  • 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons grapeseed or canola oil
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • 
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1/8 tsp kosher 
salt and pepper

CHICKEN

  • 1/2 cup hoisin sauce
  • 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 4 teaspoons Sriracha sauce (or more!)
  • 
4 tablespoons less sodium soy sauce
  • 
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
  • 2 pounds ground chicken
  • (2) 8 ounce cans water chestnuts, drained and diced
  • 1/4 cup chopped unsalted peanuts

SALAD

  • 6-8 cups of mixed lettuce, chopped
  • grated carrots (optional)
  • random additions like snow peas or chinese noodles (optional)

 

Directions

In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, oils, honey, ginger, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste to make dressing. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the hoisin, vinegar, Sriracha, soy sauce, and ginger. Set aside. Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Spray with cooking spray then add the chicken and cook until browned and cooked through, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the water chestnuts and peanuts to the pan. Pour the reserved hoisin mixture on top and cook for 1 to 2 minutes to heat through.

Remove from the heat and set aside. We like this very well when the chicken is fresh from the stove and even better when it’s been chilled in the fridge – very refreshing!

To serve, combine lettuces, carrots and any other additions. Top salad with chicken mixture and drizzle with dressing and toss.

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Mini Chicken Pot Pies

2013-09-10 11.59.12

Right now, with life the way it is, I love any recipes that fit the following criteria: 1) healthy 2) kids love 3) quick and 4) freezable!! So when I saw a recipe for “Chicken Pot Pie Cupcakes” I had to try it. And fast forward 3 or 4 months, I actually did! I had to make some swaps and sometime later, maybe, when life isn’t quite as nuts, I’d love to swap the cream of soup for actual FOOD, but these are tasty and have veggies my kids are dying to eat, so not too shabby, even if it wouldn’t pass muster with Michael Pollan.

Mini Chicken Pot Pies

  • 2 cans of refrigerated biscuits – the ones I buy are 8 per package and somewhere around that mark should work
  • 3 cups cooked chicken breast, diced (see my note below about cooking chicken breasts for use in recipes)
  • 2.5 cups frozen mixed veggies
  • 2 cans cream of mushroom soup or this delighful DIY times 2
  • 1 cup 2% shredded cheddar
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • onion powder
  • garlic powder
  • S&P

These are ridiculously easy to make. Heat the oven to 400.

Lightly oil (olive oil mister time!) the bottom of your muffin tins. Then take each biscuit from the can and split it in half so that you have two thinner hockey-pucks. Press each half biscuit into the sides and bottom of the muffin tins, making little pie crusts.

In another bowl, combine your chicken, soup (or alternative), veggies, cheddar, basil, thyme and onion powder and garlic powder to taste. Add salt if you need it (you probably don’t, thanks, Campbells!) and pepper also to taste. Spoon some of the mixture into each crust. I easily got 32 cupcakes out of my chicken mixture, but I suppose this could vary slightly. If you find you run out, you could add some more veggies.

Bake for 10-15 minutes and enjoy! If you have chicken that’s already cooked, you can have this in the oven (at least one tray) in 10 min or less. The leftovers are great for kiddo lunches, mommy and daddy lunches or freezing.

I got 32 of these out of the recipe. MyFitnessPal calculates them at around 125 calories apiece, a little heavy on the carbs, but otherwise quite healthy. Three is a very filling meal.

A word on cooking chicken: a lot of people encourage you to “poach” your chicken, basically cooking it in a shallow pan of water for 15 minutes. I find this to make chicken icky, oddly anemic looking and most importantly, flavorless. When I want cooked chicken for recipes (pizza, salads, pot pies), I dice it and then cook it with just a little olive oil and salt and pepper. I suppose it’s a smidge less healthy for you, but it is way more flavorful and very quick. Do an entire family pack at once and you can use it over the course of a week or freeze for easy meals later.

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Crockpot Green Curry Chicken

greencurryThere is little I like better than coming home from work and having dinner waiting. And if it’s healthy, delicious food that the whole family likes? Purrrrfect. This meal really hits the sweet spot for us. I adapted theoriginal recipe comes from this post and it has quickly become a family favorite, especially for Miss Tabby, the impetus of this whole project.

Crockpot Green Curry Chicken

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
  • 2 medium onions roughly chopped
  • one head of garlic, minced
  • 2 15 oz cans lite coconut milk
  • juice of 2 limes
  • 4 oz green curry paste (we use Thai kitchen)
  • 1/4 C brown sugar
  • 2 t salt
  • 1 t black pepper
  • 2 T cornstarch
  • 32 oz frozen stirfry vegetables
  • rice to serve if desired

Directions

This is a great spot to use the food processor if you’re so inclined. I take both onions, quarter them and toss them in the food processor with the cloves of garlic and pulse a few times. That makes prep pretty darn quick. Otherwise, chop, mince like normal.

Place the chicken in the bottom of the crockpot and throw the salt and pepper on it. Mix it up a bit. Then mix up the coconut milk, lime juice, curry paste, and brown sugar and pour it over the chicken. Cook on high for 4-5 hours.

About 30 minutes before you want to eat, stir in the frozen veggies. Also, this is a great time to start your rice!  Then mix the cornstarch with about 2 T water and then mix that into the curry. Continue to cook until the vegetables are warmed and the sauce thickens.

Serve yummy veggies and meat over a little rice. Mmmmmm

 

This has a little kick to it, kind of on the back side, but it’s not really spicy (i.e. both kids like it). You could definitely spice it up with some thai chiles if desired. In any case, it is

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Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps

Well April is almost done and so is my fourth cookbook, Great Food Fast. I have nothing but praise for this cookbook. I loved the full-color photos of EVERY recipe. I love the organization (by season!) and I loved the food. I actually tried EIGHT recipes from this (yay, made it!) book.

and for the finale … Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps. Continue reading “Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps”

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Chicken Caesar Salad

I debated even posting this recipe because we strayed so far from the original in Great Food Fast that it was really more of an inspiration than a recipe we followed. The original recipe called for making your own caesar dressing. I’m all for that, but we ended up making these for lunch and somehow homemade caesar is less appealing after hanging out in the breakroom fridge for a while, so I grabbed some stuff we had in the fridge and used that instead. I also try not to keep mayo (an ingredient in the dressing) in the house. It’s an ethical thing seeing as I hate mayo. But in the end, this is a really tasty and darn quick meal and I wanted to share it because it’s something that I love but never think about making. Maybe now you’ll think to make it too.

Chicken Caesar Salad

  • 4 oz Italian or French bread cut into 3/4 inch cubes (about 4 cups)
  • 3 T olive oil
  • coarse salt and ground pepper
  • 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 18 – 20 oz romaine hearts
  • caesar dressing (either from a bottle or scratch – I’ll add that below)

Heat oven to 375. Place bread on a rimmed cookie sheet and drizzle with 2 T olive oil and season with S&P. Toss to coat. Bake, tossing now and then until golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat remaining tablespoon of oil over high heat in a skillet. Throw in your chicken and season with S&P as desired. Cook until a bit browned on the sides, stirring now and again with a spatula, about 3-4 minutes in all. Set aside.

Prep the romaine by slicing crosswise in 1-inch ribbons. Wash and dry (spin cycle). Toss with croutons, chicken and dressing. Enjoy!

If you want to make the dressing from scratch, Great Food Fast does it this way: put 1/4 C fresh lemon juice, 1/4 C reduced fat mayo, 1/4 C grated parm, 2 anchovy fillets and 1 small garlic clove in your blender and blend until smooth. Honestly, it sounds great, even with that evil mayo and I would love to try it next time.

This was also a great way to use up the extra bread left over from making the kids Berry French Toast this weekend. I already had the oven on from making the sugar cookies (they were the base of the fruit pizzas) and so I finished up the french toast and tossed in the croutons then stored them in an airtight container until we needed them. Just remembering to do little things like that makes putting together dinner (or lunch for the next day) so much easier!

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Chicken Caesar Chalupas

We had such a nice weekend. It is rare that our weekends aren’t jam-packed with crap we must get done, but this one just had a handful of little events planned with longer stretches of nothingness going on in between. Friday I took the kids to the Zoo with my mom. It was a beautiful day and we had a wonderful time. Afterward, we went downtown and had lunch at Euclid Hall with my sister.

Saturday morning I got up and went running with my pal J … we pounded out 9 miles on Clear Creek and got good and caught up – we hadn’t seen each other in a long while. Matt was supposed to have come along as well, but unfortunately Ben woke up in the wee smalls throwing up everywhere. I hate it for him – he just got over a cold only to have this icky tummy bug hit him. He seemed mostly recovered yesterday, but had it on the other end all day today and was generally a bit lethargic.

Today was even more low key. We went to a birthday party in the morning, hit the grocery store on the way home, had naps and worked around the house a bit. The start of Dayligh Savings is kind of messing with our heads and when we suddenly looked at the clock and it was almost 6:30 we knew why our stomachs were grumbling.

We whipped out the ingredients for Iowa Girl Eats’ Chicken Caesar Chalupas (found via Pinterest) and had them ready in a flash. We let the Sunday Dinner be a bit more low key and ate at the coffee table while we watched old episodes of Scooby Doo. Everyone enjoyed them, except Ben who is confined to BRAT until he recovers some more. They were very tasty and a good format for many meals, very similar to the tortilla pizzas we make routinely. We used ingredients on the healthier side of things (low carb tortillas, 2% cheese, lite salad dressing) to keep them on the lighter side.

Chicken Caesar Chalupas

  • tortillas
  • chicken breasts, chopped into bite-sized pieces
  • lemon pepper + salt
  • cooking spray
  • Caesar salad dressing
  • shredded mozzarella
  • romaine lettuce, chopped
  • tomatoes chopped

Directions

Heat oven to 400. Spray baking sheet with cooking spray. Spray skillet with cooking spray and heat on medium high. Season both sides of chicken with lemon pepper and salt. Brown chicken in skillet until done. Cut tortillas into wedges (scissors work great!) and place on cooking sheet. Spray tops with cooking spray and bake for a couple of minutes until toasty. Top tortillas with a bit of dressing, chopped chicken and mozzarella. Return to oven and bake a couple more minutes to melt cheese. Serve with romaine and tomatoes for scooping.

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Check out all the other great Pinteractive Projects on Nannette’s site!
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Buffalo Chicken and Blue Cheese Meatloaf

So the first time I made this recipe, I didn’t get to eat it. About 5 minutes into its sojourn in the oven, our power went out. And stayed out for 3 hours. I could have just pulled it out and stuck it back in the fridge maybe, except that I was so distracted by the power outage that I didn’t think of it until after we’d abandoned ship and gone to dinner and come home again. Doh! Luckily it wasn’t too hard to make so I made it again.

This was probably the recipe I was most excited to try from the Biggest Loser Family Cookbook: Buffalo Chicken and Blue Cheese Meatloaf. Matt is a huge fan of buffalo chicken wings and while I don’t like the wings, I do like the sauce and we’ve made many yummy variations using chicken and buffalo sauce, usually with blue cheese including salad and pizza. We hadn’t tried meatloaf though and I’m SO glad we did. It did not disappoint.

Continue reading “Buffalo Chicken and Blue Cheese Meatloaf”

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Grilled Chicken Parm

Matt is a Chicken Parmesan connoisseur. It is his litmus test for any Italian restaurant. So I was a bit nervous to make this no-breading chicken parmesan from Biggest Loser. Though we all agreed there is a special place in our hearts for the yummy breaded variety of chicken parm, this was an excellent option and certainly one we can have a bit more frequently since it is easy and healthy!

I opted to serve mine over a bed of roasted spaghetti squash, the kids had the usual spaghetti, and Matt did a mixture of the two. On the side, we served steamed green beans topped with marinara – it’s a combo I hadn’t had before, but it was very tasty and of course easy. One of these days, I would like to work on perfecting a marinara sauce recipe, possibly to can in the summer when tomatoes are in season. But not today – today it was Classico bought in bulk from Costco. At least I don’t have any Italian ancestors rolling over in their graves. Just the German ones who can’t believe I hate sauerkraut and don’t drink beer. Continue reading “Grilled Chicken Parm”

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Chicken Minestrone

Well the month and our experiment with The Zone is almost up as is my whirlwind tour of Zone Meals in Seconds cookbook. It’s been … interesting. I’ve done well on The Zone, losing about 9 lbs, which for a month is pretty good (and technically, I still have ’til Friday for my four weeks to be up, and I’ll be Zoned until then). I can’t say it’s something I feel like I could live with permanently. I like a bit more wiggle room in my life … I like food, good food, way too much to be this restricted, but I think it put me back on track with what I know to be healthy and reinforced some good lessons. Lean meat, healthy vegetables, less starches, little sugar, good fats.

The cookbook itself was a meh. Let’s say a 4 out of 10. This book had two kinds of recipes … one was real recipes as we think of them, the other, just thrown together ingredients. They were both a mix of awesome and blech! with a few meh … thrown in there. My samplings:

  1. Tex Mex meatloaf – seriously tasty; I’ve recommended this to a few people and it was very well received
  2. Salmon Tagine – loved the spinach, but the Salmon was just so-so
  3. Apple Spice Oatmeal – protein powder completely screwed up the texture; edible, but not yummy
  4. Moroccan chicken stew – ICK. Way too much of the cream of soup.
  5. Zoned Apple Muffins – These were good, but not great. Not a ton of flavor/taste.
  6. Mexican chicken chili – not so much a recipe, just a list of things to throw together in a bowl; pretty tasty though
  7. Blueberry and banana creme freeze – pretty tasty, even liked the sour cream in here – may post this one later.
  8. Chicken Minestrone – quite good!

Anyhow, more about Chicken Minestrone. This is one of those recipe that I don’t even really consider to be a recipe because there’s just not much to it. Just a couple of raw ingredients, the rest from cans or the freezer section, but I know a lot of people struggle with even this and it could be a gateway recipe, so I will post it. It really is tasty and super healthy. This makes 4 4-block meals (a TON of soup)

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of cubed frozen chicken
  • 1 10 oz package cut green beans
  • 1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 qt low sodium chicken broth/stock
  • 1 jar marinara sauce
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2-3 zucchini quartered and sliced
  • 3 T EVOO
  • dried oregano and basil

Directions

Heat the EVOO in a dutch oven. While the oil is heating, cook the green beans to about 75% done in the microwave. Add the chicken, garlic, zucchini, green beans and herbs to the dutch oven and cook until all are warmed through and fragrant. Add the kidney beans, broth and marinara. Stir to combine and bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

 

I really enjoyed experimenting with this cookbook this month. It’s not one that I expect to turn to often but it gave me a couple good new recipes. Next month will be The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook.