Parsley Rosemary Pork Ribs

So despite having all the chicken, I found this recipe and desperately wanted to try it as it sounds delicious.

Hardware:

Crockpot
Cutting Board
Veggie peeler
Sharp knife


Ingredients:

Boneless pork ribs
Potatoes
Carrots

Parsley
Garlic powder
Paprika
Rosemary
Salt/pepper

What to do:

It's a very simple prep and recipe

Peel and cut potatoes into bite size pieces. I used 6-7 medium potatoes and covered the bottom of the crockpot with them. Next lay the pork rips on top of the potatoes.

Peel and cut carrots. The original calls for baby carrots -- why spend the money, get regular carrots and chop them into baby carrot sized pieces. I cut the thicker ends in half, and then arrange them around the ribs and potatoes.

Sprinkle the veggies and rips with paprika and garlic powder (be easy with the garlic). Then with chopped parsley and rosemary. I couldn't find fresh rosemary so I used dried and did my best to chop it in with the fresh parsley I was able to get. The dried rosemary tends to "jump" a bit .. but being careful you can do it.

Leave in the crockpot for 8-10 hours on low... you house will smell great.

chicken, pounds and pounds of chicken

I've been hit by a bug to freeze as much as possible, not sure if it's due to my budget or due to the cold weather finally hitting us, but when I saw a sale on chicken breasts -- which is kind of my main staple meat right now, I jumped on it... 20 pounds of it be exact.. and then I had to figure out what to do with it.

Once I took all the fat off I had roughly 18.5 pounds of chicken breasts to freeze. So what I did was divide it up. I had the bowl for the ones that were going to be left as whole breasts, one for what was going to be ground and one for the breasts to be cut up. When de-fatting the chicken there are the "wings", little pieces of meat that are really more fat than meat and it's a royal pain to just take the fat off, generally I just cut them off and discard them, however, for the grinding I would take the ones that didn't have a lot of veins left and throw them into the bowl to be ground with the chunks. Chicken is normally a very dry meat so a little bit of fat is ok with this.

What I ended up with were 3 packages of 4 whole breasts. 2 packages of chunked chicken, and 6 packages of ground chicken. The ground chicken is divided up into 2 different kinds. Plain ground chicken (2 packages) and 4 ranch chicken.

The whole breasts were divided into the three packages of 4 breasts each -- easy division with about 3/4 of a breasts per meal. The the chunked chicken I can use for chicken bites or tenders or whatever -- they are decent sized pieces that will be easy to pound out flat if I want to.

The largest portion of this was the grinding -- yayyy for kitchen tools and my mother's foresight. When I asked for a kitchen aid mixer last year I was certain I wouldn't ever need any of the additional tools that go with it. My mother, being her normal "you'll want it eventually" also got an attachment kit that included the meat grinder, juicer, and slicer/shredder attachments. Never again will I denounce the need for more kitchen gadgets.

The biggest lessons learned with the grinder attachment: use the course grinder die. The fine is way to fine for grinding it up.

Now you may be asking what the heck is ranch chicken. It's simple as you're grinding the chicken add in your homemade dried ranch dressing -- cleanup is a pain as the powdered milk in the mix sticks to the inside of the grinder attachment.

Ranch dressing mix

1 C powdered milk
dried chives
basil
oregano
garlic powder
dried minced onions
salt/pepper

The ground chicken packages are ziploc baggies... about 1 1/2 C of ground chicken, spread out thin with as much air taken out as possible. Lay flat in the freezer to make nice neat packages.

While I'll never reach my mother's capacity to freeze foods (until I have a space where I can have a giant upright freezer like hers) It's a start.

Ranch Chicken Bites w/Red Rice

So it's been awhile since I updated this. I've made a lot of good things, some are failures, mainly I've been repeating a lot of recipes, but this is a new one.

Hardware:
Large Pot
Frying pan
Tongs or spatula
Wet dish
Dry dish
Plate
Knife
Cutting board
Saran wrap
Meat tenderisor

Ranch Chicken Bites -- this is for 5 servings (lunches)

2 chicken breasts - cleaned and cut into pieces, try for 5 each
Ranch dressing
Seasoned BreadCrumbs
Olive oil

Start my prepping the chicken breasts, clean off the fat and cut into pieces -- depending on size you should be able to get 5 or 6 decent sized pieces out of each. On the clean side of your cutting board lay out a piece of saran wrap, place piece of chicken on one half fold over other half of saran wrap and pound out flatter.

Once all the pieces have been flattened, put ranch dressing in your wet dish and bread crumbs in your dry.. dip in dressing, dip in breadcrumbs and place on plate. Heat your frying pan with olive oil and once hot place chicken pieces in and cook until done, some of the breading will fall off but it's ok.

Red Rice

This is a discovery done quite by accident and may take an extra day of prep if you don't have frozen chopped tomatoes.

Rice --I use brown long cook rice
Frozen tomatoes
Basil

Cook rice according to package for the amount you want.. the directions call to simmer it for 20 minutes, in the last 5 minutes or so drop still frozen tomatoes into the rice -- the head from the rice causes the meat of the tomatoes to burst to they dissolve into the rice, if you didn't peel your tomatoes all you have left is tomatoey rice and the skin from the tomato which you can pick out.

Stir in a teaspoon of basil, salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with a good helping of rice and two pieces of the chicken.

Potato Bread

This is for 1 loaf, I usually double or quadruple it; depending on how I feel

Hardware:
mixer -- with bread attachment
bowl
spatula
pot
loaf pan(s)

Ingredients

1 C whole wheat flour
1 C mashed potatoes
1/2 C lukewarm water
1/2 C water
1 pkg active dry yeast
2 t sugar
3 C bread flour
1 t salt
3 T butter

Make mashed potatoes -- you can either use instant for a creamier potato or use real potatoes your choice

I use rapid rise yeast so I don't do the blooming process, however, if you are using active dry you'll need to: head milk and water in a saucepan to lukewarm, sprinkle with sugar and yeast and set aside for 5 minutes.

I put the flour, potatoes, yeast and milk, salt and butter into mixer and combine until just blended.

Knead for a few minutes until the dough is smooth -- about 8-10 minutes. This will be sticky so you might need extra flour to knead in. Put the ball of dough in a lightly greased (I use a smidge of olive oil on a paper towel) bowl and allow to rise.

Once risen, punch down and divide into loaf pans if doubling the recipe and allow to rise again.

Preheat oven to 400. Once the second rise is done, bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden brown.

March - Lasagna soup

Hardware:

Large soup pot or stock pot
cutting board/knife

Ingredients
1 lb Italian sausage
2 onions chopped -- I only used 1
garlic - pre-minced to taste
oregano
bay leaf
basil
red pepper flakes (optional)
2 T tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes
1 med bell pepper diced (optional)
8 oz chopped mushrooms
1 C fresh spinich
6 C broth/stock
pasta -- I used a box of rigatoni

brown sausage until throughly cook and drain -- set aside

In stockpot (can do this while sausage is browning) sweat onion, garlic and add oregano and mushrooms (peppers and pepper flakes if using). Once cooked add sausage when browned and tomato paste.

add in tomatoes, broth and bay leaf -- let this simmer for about 30 minutes

add in pasta, spinish and cook until tender (about 10 minutes) remove bay leaf

add in basil and season with salt/pepper to taste

top with ricotta cheese or other cheeses if you desire.

March - Italian Porkchops

Hardware:
bowl, baking sheet/casserole dish
utensils

Ingredients

1 T mustard - favorite kind
1 T olive oil
Italian seasoning
Pork chops
mozzarella cheese

Mis mustard, olive oil and Italian seasoning. Coat pork chops. Place on greased pan/casserole dish. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes. Sprinkle cheese on top of chops and then bake for an additional 5-10

I served this with mashed potatoes and steamed veggies

Feb - Sleezy Cheezy Chicken

Hardware
microwave safe bowl and spoon
cutting board and knife
large casserole pan
food processor

Ingredients

2 T butter (might need more depending on the amount of chicken)
2 cloves garlic - minced
1/2 C bread crumbs -- used part of a loaf of bread -- about 4 pieces
1/2 C grated cheddar cheese
2-4 T grated Parmesan cheese (I used more)
Italian seasoning

Preheat oven to 350

In food processor mix bread, Italian seasoning and parm cheese. Once in crumb form add 1/4 C of cheddar cheese and set aside in a bowl.

Melt butter and garlic together

Cut up chicken into strips, dip in butter/garlic and then dredge in bread crumbs and lay in casserole dish.

drizzle any remaining butter/garlic over chicken, I sprinkled more parm cheese over them at this point and then some more bread crumbs.

Bake for 45-60 minutes or until juices are clear

I served this with rice and steamed veggies.