February 17, 2012

With the flop of last week, I am glad to report there are three keepers tonight! Ribs, fruit salsa, and muffins...what are you in the mood for?

Last week I tried a chicken recipe in my new pressure cooker, and it ended up a little dry. Chicken is a bit tricky in that way...cooked well it is delicious and moist. But a little too long and it gets so dry! Needless to say, I think the pressure cooker is designed for cuts of meat that are cooked well in traditionally slow and long cooking recipes. So...I stumbled across a very easy sounding ribs recipe and thought it had great potential. My two big rib eaters gave the dinner a big thumbs up, so it is on the list tonight! Ryan has already thought of a way to tweak it further when the weather warms up a bit, but he thought they were great for indoor "dead of winter" ribs! They were tender, falling off the bone, and since we used our families favorite bbq sauce, they tasted great.

On Saturday morning I felt like treating the kids to something a little special, but didn't really want to have to wait too long or run out for any special ingredients. In my basket of recipes I had a one called Snickerdoodle Muffins. One of the best parts of this recipe...it only makes 8 muffins!!! Jackpot! These are muffins that are begging to be eaten fresh from the oven, so having a small batch makes so much sense. The muffins themselves were good, but when you dipped them in melted butter and rolled the top in cinnamon sugar....excellent!!! You guessed it...these were voted a keeper after the first couple of bites. Additionally, we thought a lot about my father-in-law that breakfast since he adores Snickerdoodle cookies. I think the next time he is in town we'll have to make these for him!

And finally...have you become addicted to Pinterest yet? I ignored it for a while, but one of my sisters encouraged me to check it out, and then of course I encouraged my other sisters to check it out...and now we are all on it. There are great ideas for everything and anything, but I have found some fun food inspiration. So far I have been mainly "pinning" the ideas to my board, but I did try a fruit salsa recipe that I saw. It looked great, and when I read the ingredients I just happened to have all of the fruit it called for on hand! I was called to make it, and glad I did. The kids thought it was fun to eat with the baked cinnamon chips, but I thought it was also great as a fruit salad. I made it a second time this week just as a fruit salad. I will admit that the original recipe called for a bunch of extra sugar and more preserves than I used, so I left that out, and it was still delicious! Give it a try! Given that it is Girl Scout Cookie time, it was nice to have some fresh fruit salad in the fridge!

Next week Ryan will be tied up for a few dinners, so we may resurrect Sloppy Joe's and breakfast for dinner...not sure how many new things I will get a chance to try, but I am sure I'll find something!

Happy Cooking!

New Recipes
Pressure Cooker Ribs
Fruit Salsa
Snickerdoodle Muffins