back at it ~ the lake and peach cobbler

Woo hoo! It's boat time again and I am soo happy! I love spending our weekends on the lake. 

Memorial Day for our first day out this year and it was wonderful. A little too windy to go out on the main part of the lake, but we hunkered down in a beautiful cove and relaxed with some friends.

The bad thing was that I thought SPF 15 sunscreen would be enough to keep me protected from the sun's rays on our first trip of the year. Not so much! I even re-applied sunscreen, but I am a bit pink. Ok a lot pink!

We ended the day with a yummy bbq meal and peach cobbler. 

Easy Peach Cobbler

2 - 16 oz ramekins

1 can - Peach Pie Filling (18 oz can)

Biscuit topping--
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbl shortening
1/2 cup milk

Wrap a cookie sheet in foil. Split the peach pie filling between the two ramekins. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients together and cut in the shortening with a fork. Keep cutting intul the shortening is in small bits. Add the milk and stir just until the mixture is moist. Use two spoons, drop biscuit  dough balls over the peaches until the top is covered. (This will make extra dough, I made 1 biscuit on its one.) Place ramekins on foiled covered cookie seer and bake at 350 for 22-25 minutes. If you have extra to make a biscuit, it will cook in a lot less time than the cobblers. 

Serve with ice cream. I had blackberry ice cream with this…super YUM!

These were yummy and HUGE. I only ate half of mine.  And I forgot to take a picture before we started digging in. I left ours a little doughy, because that is the way my hubs likes it and I like to keep him happy!

I am still searching for the perfect shortbread cookie type crust for cobblers, but in the mean time, this was great!

Chicken Tamale Casserole - LEGIT!!

Okay, I made myself laugh by calling this recipe legit, but it was sooooo good! A lot of times new recipes do not turn out as good as I hoped, but Nick went back for a full serving of seconds, so I would say that this new recipe is a winner! The picture does not do the meal justice...

I love Mexican food. Its probably my favorite, so I like having recipes like this that have a Mexican flair. Yum. I found the original recipe on cooking light and you can find it here. I made adjustments to the recipe which are reflected in my description below.

Yields 8 Servings

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (4 ounces) preshredded 4-cheese Mexican blend cheese, divided
• 1/3 cup fat-free milk
• 1/4 cup egg whites
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 1 (14 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn
• 1 (8.5-ounce) box corn muffin mix (such as Jiffy)
• 1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
• Cooking spray
• 1 (10-ounce) can red enchilada sauce (such as Old El Paso)
• 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast (If you don't have it cooked yet, I wrote easy directions below.)
• 1/2 cup fat-free sour cream 

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. If you do not have cooked chicken, you can easily make cooked shredded chicken in about 20 minutes. Put four or so chicken breasts in a pot of water with seasoning (I used cumin, paprika, chili powder, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper) bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for 15 minutes.  Shred with 2 forks.
3. Combine 1/4 cup cheese and next 7 ingredients (through chiles) in a large bowl, stirring just until moist. Pour mixture into a 13 x 9–inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.
4. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until set. Pierce entire surface liberally with a fork; pour enchilada sauce over top. Top with chicken and add more seasonings of choice if desired, then sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven; let stand 5 minutes. Cut into 8 pieces; top each serving with 1 tablespoon sour cream.

And then enjoy this scrumptious meal. Serves 8.

Here is the nutritional information for 1/8th of the pan which is filling!

• Calories: 354
• Calories from fat: 36%
• Fat: 14.1g
• Saturated fat: 7.1g
• Monounsaturated fat: 3.3g
• Polyunsaturated fat: 1.2g
• Protein: 18.9g
• Carbohydrate: 36.3g
• Fiber: 2.5g 
• 9 Weight Watchers Points 

 Let me know if you try this!

~Court

spices and trying not to waste

First off, I really enjoy cooking and making delicious meals, so in order to do that you have to have a decently stocked pantry and a good spice cabinet. Nick and I kind of went overboard on the spice cabinet but we have everything you need, so that's a big benefit. Its amazing what spices can do for a meal. A friend recently gave us a spice mix from savory spice shop called bohemian forest rub. Wow!! Its awesome and good on a variety of things. The shop is a chain, so there are various locations (but not one in Tulsa) and here is their website savoryspiceshop.com. Its fun trying new spices-I challenge you to buy a new one this week. Smoked paprika is a good one if you have not tried it before.

One of my goals is to not waste, especially food. I hate throwing away food because I didn't eat it before it went bad or veggies start to mold in the fridge. I try to plan out meals and buy food only for that week, but plans always seem to change and one of the meals doesn't work out. So one of the things I do is go through my fridge to see what is going to expire soon and I make a meal with those items. So this last week I realized I had some brie cheese in the fridge that I bought for Christmas day. Nick and I were booths battling sinus infections on Christmas so brie was not really appealing. I did a little Google search and decided to make apple, cranberry and brie stuffed chicken.  Luckily I had everything on hand for the meal and it turned out awesome.  I served this with green beans.
Here is the original recipe and below is my version with a few tweaks to the original, I hope you enjoy!

Cranberry, Apple and Brie Stuffed Chicken

• 3 good sized boneless skinlesschicken breasts, pounded out to about  
• 1 package of brie cheese (about.55 lb pkg), remove the outer white part
• 3/4 cup of cranberries
• 1/4 apple diced small
• 3 pieces bacon
• Desired seasoning – I used seasonedpepper, salt and bohemian forest rub

In a medium size bowl mixthe brie, cranberries and apple. Take your rings off and dive in with yourhands, the best way to mix this is to knead and mix with the hands. After thisis done and the chicken is pounded a little flatter, put this mixture on halfthe chicken breast, then folder over the other half. Wrap each stuffed breastwith one piece of bacon to help hold in the mixture. Season the wrapped-stuffedchicken.  Bake at 350 degrees forabout 45 minutes.

College Football and Mississippi Mud Fudge Pie

Last weekend my Mom, Ron and Chloe came to visit us and we went to the OSU-TCU game in Stillwater. We had a great time! We tailgated, ate some yummy food, made new friends who brewed their own yummy beer and watched the game. Mom and Ron are TCU fans, as you can see in this picture. I need to get some more OSU gear, I had a Go Pokes scarf, but it got warm in the sun so I looked very neutral...

One of the fun things that my mom did for my sister and I last Christmas was get us each a subscription to Southern Living Magazine. Which is my favorite. It's fun to get it each month, drool over the home decor and recipes, then talk about it with each other. So about two weeks ago my mom was saying how she wanted to make one of the Mississippi Madness recipes in the Fall issue of Southern Living. Since they were coming to town, I decided it was a great time to try out the Mississippi Mud S'Mores Fudge Pie.

It was amazing and probably one of my favorite desserts, I'm craving some right now. It was sweet but a little salty with the graham cracker and butter crust. So delicious! I had also just bought a spring-form pan on clearance at TJ Maxx (Only $5—yeah!), so it was perfect timing to break it in with this recipe!

So here is the recipe —

Ingredients:
2 cups grapham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup butter melted
2 1/4 cups sugar, divided
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans, toasted and divided
1 (4oz) semisweet chocolate baking bar, chopped
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
4 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp salt
3 cups regular marshmallows, cut in half horizontally
2 cups miniature marshmallows
Chocolate Frosting (recipe at the end)
1. Stir together first 2 ingredients and 1/4 cup sugar; press on bottom and 2 inched up sides of a shiny 9-inch spring-form pan. Sprinkle 3/4 cups pecans over crust.
2. Microwave chopped chocolate and 1 cup of butter in a large microwave safe bowl at HIGH 1 minute or until melted and smooth, stirring at 30-second intervals.
3. Whisk flour, next 4 ingredients, and remaining 2 cups sugar into chocolate mixture, whisking until blended. Pour batter into prepared crust.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes (I start check at 45 minutes) or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Remove from oven cool on  pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes
5. Preheat Broiler with oven rack on lowest level from heat. Place pie  (in pan) on a jelly roll pan. Toss together both marshmallows' mound on pie, leaving a 12 inch border around the edge. Broil 30 seconds to 1 minute or until marshmallows are golden brown. Remove from oven,and immediately remove sides of pan. Cool on a wire rack 10 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, prepare Chocolate frosting. Drizzle over marshmallows; sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup pecans.
Chocolate Frosting
Cook  1/4 cup butter, 3 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa, and 3 Tbsp of milk in a saucepan over medium heat, whisking constantly, 4 minutes or until slightly thickened; remove from heat. Whisk in 2 cups of powdered sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract until smooth.

The Final Product. Enjoy!

-Court