Apricot Chicken

Ingredients
* 1 lb chicken, cut up
* small bottle Italian salad dressing
* small jar apricot fruit preserves
* 1 envelope onion soup mix

Directions
1. Mix the preserves, dressing and soup mix in a bowl.  Add the chicken and mix to combine.
2. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes.
3. Serve over rice, if desired.

Notes
I toyed with changing the name but I was given some good advice - simple and straightforward.  My concern is that if you see are turned off by the sound of apricot preserves in your dinner you might not give this a chance!  But I suggest you do give this easy dinner a try...my kids loved it!

Zoodles (more of an idea than a recipe)

Ingredients
* zucchini
* salt

Directions
There are many different suggestions as to how to make these, but here is what I did:  julienne the zucchini and sprinkle it with salt in a colander (to draw out some of the moisture).  I left the zucchini with the salt while I brought some water up to boil.  Then blanch the zucchini for one minute.  Drain (but don't rinse or you'll cool off the zucchini).  Serve however you'd like!

Notes
I've tried these with tomato sauce and with chicken stir fry...both have been fabulous!  I will definitely be making these often.  I mean come on - how fun is it to twirl your veggies around your fork?!?!

There are many posts out there on how to prepare your zoodles, but here are three good ones I came across!
Primalist Zoodles
Zenbelly Zoodles 
Nom Nom Paleo

April 12, 2013

I suppose we should just cut to the chase....no keeper recipes this week.  To be honest, we only tried one new dish, and although it had promise, and good flavor, the sauce just needs some tweaking.  Buffalo chicken mac & cheese was a hit at the dinner table, but I think it could use some improvement.  Rather than share the version we made on Thursday, I will try it again in the coming weeks and hope to have a fabulous recipe for you!

Do any of you have a great buffalo chicken mac & cheese you'd care to share?  Drop me an email at monkeysinthekitchen@gmail.com

Happy Cooking!

April 5, 2013

Another really busy week with little time to cook...but we were on a pumpkin muffin spree!  I think we baked pumpkin muffins 4 times this week...sometimes mini, sometimes standard sized.  We made them from a mix, and then we took out some pumpkin from the freezer and baked Grammie's favorite completely homemade pumpkin muffins (including the processed fresh pumpkin!).  They were absolutely delicious.  And honestly, the hardest part is actually assembling all the ingredients and measuring everything, which was done in no time at all.  So, if you have the ingredients on hand (and yes, canned processed pumpkin will absolutely work!), throw these together, and you won't be disappointed!

Hannah requested taco burgers this week, which sounded good to everyone (thanks again, Melissa, for turning us onto this recipe a few years ago!).  I had everything needed to cook these except we were out of taco seasoning.  Not feeling like running to the store I did a quick search and found a recipe on Allrecipes that had almost 3000 reviews!!!  Something rated 5 stars with that many reviews was definitely worth trying.  It worked great for our taco burgers.  We are looking forward to trying it out in traditional tacos sometime this week or next.

Happy Cooking!!!

New Recipes
Grammie's Favorite Low-fat Pumpkin Muffins
DIY Taco seasoning

Grammie's Favorite Lowfat Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 2 large egg whites
* 1 cup pumpkin
* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 1/3 cup low-fat plain or vanilla yogurt
* 1 tsp vanilla
* 1 cup AP flour
* 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
* 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp cinnamon
* 1/2 tsp nutmeg
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp salt

Directions
1. Mix the wet ingredients (brown sugar through vanilla).
2. In a second bowl, mix the dry ingredients (AP flour through salt).
3. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.
4. Put batter into prepared pan of your choice.  For a loaf pan, bake 45-50 minutes.  For mini muffins, bake 14 minutes.  For standard muffins, bake 23 minutes.  Be sure to check for doneness before removing from the oven.
5. Let cool in the pan for 5-8 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Notes
Liam made these with Grammie to bring to preschool this week - and his young classmates couldn't get enough!  Many of them wanted a third mini-muffin!  These also might be great if you mixed in some chopped walnuts or pecans.

DIY Taco Seasoning

Ingredients
* 1 tbsp chili powder
* 1/4 tsp garlic powder
* 1/4 tsp onion powder
* 1/4 tsp  dried oregano
* 1/2 tsp paprika
* 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 tsp black pepper
* 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, optional

Directions
Mix all the ingredients together!  3 tbsp of this mix would take the place of one store bought package.

Notes
We ran out of taco seasoning when we were going to make taco burgers this week.  So, since we had such good luck with making our own fajita seasoning, I decided to make the taco seasoning.  I found this recipe on Allrecipes and it worked really well!  I did leave out the crushed red pepper flakes, but if we were using it for traditional tacos I would likely add it if we had it on hand. 

March 29, 2013

It has been spring break around here...and it looks like perhaps the spring weather may finally arrive in time for the weekend!  What did we do over the break, you ask?  Hmm...a little oral surgery and recovery for our dear daughter was the main action.  Not much fun, but necessary, and she hates missing school, so this was the best possible time to get it done.  Thankfully she is now on the mend!

Over the weekend and early in the week I did try a few new things, and we had some success! Ground turkey chili mac was a big hit, and the pretzel crusted chicken was an excellent change of pace as far as "shake n' bake" type recipes go! 

Easter is coming up and if you are like us, you may have some left over ham.  You might want to try Hurry Up Ham...so easy to throw together, and usually every loves it.  Ham works wonderfully well in quiche, too!  And remember, ham freezes very well, so I like to chop my left over in recipe portion sizes so when someone here suggests Hurry Up Ham I already have it ready to go.  You can also make soup with the ham bone, or you do what I did last year...I freecycled it!  I know what you are thinking...freecycle the ham bone?  Well, I didn't want to make soup, and I hated to throw it away.  I posted it on freecycle, and had 6 people offer to run over and pick it up from me!  Think about it...you'll probably find someone more than willing to take it off your hands!

This coming week will be the 2 year anniversary of the blog...can you believe it?  Wow!  I must say that it has been a wonderful outlet for my love of cooking.  We are no longer stuck in a dinner rut, that is for sure.  Some of the recipes we've tried out have become our new favorites that we have time and time again.  In fact, we just had chicken enchilada soup last night, and we make pancakes (either these or these) almost every weekend!

Perhaps we will have a new dessert recipe next week...the kids haven't decided what we should make for Easter dessert! As for other new meals...not sure, though I did pick up some whole wheat flour so I will probably try my hand at whole wheat bread! Stay tuned!

Have a wonderful week, and happy cooking!

New Recipes
Pretzel Crusted Chicken 
Ground Turkey Chili Mac