Two Marinades

I have lots of baggies of chicken leg quarters in my freezer. I decided to make some marinade to dress up a couple of them. When I want a no-fuss, no-work meal, all I have to do is cut away the bag, dump the frozen block into the crock pot, and cook it all day. Thanks CrockPot Lady for the idea!

Each marinade is poured into a quart freezer bag with two chicken leg quarters and a quarter cup of water.

Teriyaki Marinade (the one on the left)
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. black pepper

Fruit Ginger Marinade (the one on the right)
1/4 cup pineapple juice
2 tbsp. apricot jam
1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. lemon zest (or 1/2 tsp. lemon extract, or 1 tbsp. lemon juice)
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. salt

To make/use either marinade, combine all ingredients. Pour over chicken in bag. Add 1/4 cup water to the bowl the marinade was in, swish it around, and pour over the chicken - makes sure you get all that good marinade stuff in with the chicken. Freeze.

To cook, plop chicken and marinade into slow cooker. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup water. Cook on low 6-8 hours, or on high 4-6 hours. Serve chicken and resulting sauce over rice, pasta, or mashed potatoes - yum!

I'll post the results when I actually cook these. I look forward to it!

Rustic Garlic Onion Pizza

What do you do when you want to make pizza, but don't have enough time or any major pizza ingredients?

You make a gourmet pizza!


This recipe was born tonight out of a desire for pizza. I really wanted to make pizza, but there were a couple things stopping me. If I made a traditional yeast pizza crust, we would have to wait to eat until it was almost Zaylee's bedtime. And we had no real pizza toppings, such as pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, olives, green peppers, pizza sauce, etc.

All we had was onions. And mozzarella.

And a really good recipe for yeastless focaccia.

Rustic Garlic Onion Pizza
1 cup water
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. olive oil
(remember the focaccia I keep making? Yup - this is that recipe)

1 tbsp. minced garlic (the kind you get in a big jar and keep in the fridge)
1/4 cup thinly sliced onion
4 oz. sliced mozzarella
Parmesan
Italian seasoning

Preheat oven to 425. Grease a baking sheet.

Make crust by combining water, flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir until the mixture forms a ball. Plop ball of dough into prepared pan. Pour olive oil onto your (clean) hands and, with oiled fingers, spread the dough out flat - to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thickness.

Smear garlic as evenly as possible over the crust. Spread onion slices over garlic. Top with sliced mozzarella. Bake for 18-20 minutes. The mozzarella started getting really browned on top. At that point, I pretty much decided that next time I'll wait to add the mozzarella until later. But when we ate it, the browned cheese added a great flavor, so I'll just keep adding it at first like I did tonight.

After baking, remove from oven and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning. Return to oven and bake until Parmesan starts browning and edge of crust is lightly golden.


As I was eating this, I decided that this is the best pizza I've ever made. Of course I will always love a good saucy, gooey, topping-laden traditional pizza. But this was fancier and more gourmet than I've ever done, and it was absolutely fantastic! The uneven edges and slightly burnt onion pieces gave this pizza a very rustic feel, hence the name of the pizza.


How did the rest of the family like it? Zaylee picked all the cheese off and ate it first. Then she found the onions. She picked them off. And ate them all! Then she ate the bread. And then she took another piece. Needless to say she really enjoyed this pizza. And Thomas couldn't get enough of the crust. He confiscated Jeff's crust and wouldn't give it back. Jeff had to take another piece.

Another great thing about this pizza - not only was it inexpensive and made with random ingredients I just threw together, not only was it easy, not only was it delicious and fancy (does food get any better than all that?) - this pizza is also low calorie. I ate 3 pieces.

Pizza heaven.


Makes 8 pieces.
175 calories per piece.

The New Man in my Life

Honey, don't get mad. I hope you'll understand. I never wanted to hurt you. But there's a new man in my life.

I invited him over for lunch today. I couldn't help it - he's so good-looking! He was a perfect gentleman in every way. He smiled the whole time, and flirted outrageously. He showed a great sense of style in his white pants and yellow buttons. The red shoes were a great accent to complete the outfit. By the way, he's blond.


Zaylee and I were totally smitten. We absolutely adored him and his irresistible smile. I think we'll invite him over more often.


Zaylee had a little friend over too.


Hot Dog Men
Enough hot dogs to feed your family
Macaroni and cheese

Make a slit down the middle of one end of each hot dog; this will be the legs. At the other end, make a small slit each side; these will be the arms. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil, and add the hot dogs. Boil for about 5 minutes until the slits open up.

Serve mac and cheese on plates; top each plate with a hot dog man. Use ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise for face, clothes, buttons, hair.

And smile! These are too cute not to!

Crock Pot Breakfast Risotto

I am a frequenter of the blog A Year of CrockPotting and yesterday found a really great-looking recipe I had to try. It was called CrockPot Breakfast Risotto, and it looked like it would be really good. I put the ingredients together in the crock pot last night before going to bed (after changing the recipe around as I nearly always do!), then got up around 4:30 to turn on the pot and let it cook. Unfortunately, my little crock pot doesn't heat the same as a larger one. When we got up this morning, the rice was still hard, and the liquid pretty much unabsorbed. I finished cooking the risotto on the stove. Next time, I'll save myself a bunch of trouble by just turning on the pot before I go to bed.

Other than the problems getting the stuff cooked, we all really enjoyed this recipe. It tasted fabulous - creamy and flavorful.

Crock Pot Breakfast Risotto
2 tbsp. butter
3/4 cup rice (arborio works best, I used long-grain)
3 tbsp. brown sugar
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
Dash nutmeg
Dash cloves
1/8 tsp. salt
1 cup apple juice
1 cup evaporated milk

Melt butter in crock pot. Add rice and stir around to coat the rice with the butter. Sprinkle sugar and spices on top of rice. Combine apple juice and evaporated milk; pour over rice. Stir around a bit. Cover and cook until rice is done and liquid is absorbed. I really don't know how long this should cook. According to the recipe, you should cook it on high for 3-5 hours, or on low for 6 hours. I had mine cooking for a little over 3 hours, and it wasn't done, but that's just my crock pot. So basically, cook it until it's done.

This is good served with fruit and milk. We used some canned peaches and it tasted so great!

This makes 3 servings. If you need more, you can just double the recipe.

Crock Pot Chicken

Something about cooking chicken really slowly makes it really good. This chicken is tender and juicy, and practically falls apart when you try to get it out of the crock pot. It's delicious!

Jeff did this up this morning. I don't remember all the exact stuff he did, and he's already gone to bed so I can't ask him. So I'll just write down generally what he did.


Crock Pot Chicken

Cut up a few potatoes, some celery, and an onion. Toss with a bit of olive oil and some seasonings. Place in the bottom of crock pot.

Place a whole chicken on top of the vegetables. Top it with seasonings such as garlic powder, paprika, basil. I don't recall what all seasonings he used, so get creative - that's pretty much what he did, and it worked great!

You can add a bit of water to the pot, or not. If you do, only add 1/4 to 1/2 cup. If you don't, that's fine.

Cover the crock pot and cook on low 8-10 hours, or on high 4 to 5 hours.

Place chicken and vegetables on serving platter. Make a gravy with the pan drippings: pour drippings into a saucepan. In a small container combine about 1/4 cup milk and 1 tbsp. flour. Whisk into pan drippings and heat until thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Peaches N' Cream Dessert

June 21 - National Peaches n' Cream Day

I've been tossing around an idea for this since the beginning of the week. I didn't end up doing it exactly as I had planned, because we've had a somewhat busy day and I never got around to doing the time-consuming stuff I originally had up my sleeve. But I came up with something similar, and still quite tasty.

Since I came up with this as I was going, I will give more of a "concept recipe" than an actual recipe - telling what I did, but with no real amounts or official directions or anything. It's just a basic concept that can be changed around or played with in countless ways. This was just one of those recipes where that works better.

Step 1: Make a crust.

I had thought about doing a graham cracker crust, but we had a bag of drying-out peanut butter cookies on the counter, so I just crushed them up instead. I added a little butter to some of the crumbs, and pressed about 2 tablespoons each into two 4-ounce ramekins.

Possible variations: You could use graham cracker crumbs, or Nilla wafers, or whatever cookie crumbs appeal to you. You could even bake up a pastry crust. Instead of ramekins, you could use a paper-lined muffin tin, or a pie plate.

Step 2: Make a filling.

My original plan involved the custard filling from my Peaches n' Cream Pie a while back. It is creamy, holds up well, and is absolutely delicious with peaches. But it happens to be a little bit time-consuming, and involves heating up the stove. Today was busy and hot, and neither time-consuming nor heating the stove was going to happen. So instead I whipped up a box of vanilla pudding. I used a 6-serving box and 2 cups of milk, to make it nice and thick. After mixing, I spooned a bit into each ramekin (we now have lots of leftover thick pudding). Then I let it set in the refrigerator for one hour.

Possible variations: Use the custard filling for the pie I mentioned. Or make a cheesecake filling using a Jell-O cheesecake or your favorite no-bake recipe. Or use a different flavor of pudding. Just make sure you let it set up before moving on to the next step.

Step 3: Add the fruit.

I topped each ramekin with 3 slices of canned peaches. I didn't rinse off the syrup they came in, and it all pooled up on top of the pudding. That was unexpected, but turned out okay.

Possible variations: This is a simple one. Use fresh fruit instead of canned, or use a different type of fruit. Arrange it prettily.

Step 4: Top it with a sauce.

I was going to do some fabulously fancy and delicious sauce for this, but my imagination broke. I poured about a tablespoon of evaporated milk over the peaches in each ramekin.

Possible variations: Just about anything! I considered using sweetened condensed milk. I think that would have turned out better, but I only had one can of that, versus three or four of evaporated milk. So I used the latter. You could also try heating the syrup from the canned fruit with some corn starch to thicken it up, and pour that on. Or melt some jam or preserves and spoon it over the fruit. Or use sweetened cream, whipped or plain (this is, after all, supposed to be "peaches n' cream"). Get creative!

Step 5: Serve and enjoy!

Corn Dog Bread

Okay, this one was invented as a simple, quick, yet delicious lunch. Everyday Food Storage had a recipe for corn dogs that involved cooking corn bread with a hot dog on a sandwich maker. But I don't have a sandwich maker. I kept wracking my brains trying to figure out how I could make something similar using what I have available. Finally, I decided I would just mix hot dog pieces in with the corn bread batter, bake it like normal, and call it good!


Corn Dog Bread
2 hot dogs, cut in half lengthwise and sliced
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 tbsp. sugar
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
2 beaten eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil

Saute hot dog pieces in a skillet coated with cooking spray. Set aside. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 9-inch round cake pan and set aside.

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a small bowl combine eggs, milk, and oil. Add egg mixture and hot dog pieces all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.

Serve warm with butter, or with ketchup and mustard.

Next time I make this I will definitely use more hot dogs, probably at least four. These were good, but just needed a bit more hot dogs!