The most simple of summer dinners, four 7 oz salmon filets, a bunch of asparagus, lemon, salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to 425, and line a large foil pan with heavy duty foil. Place all your items on the pan like above and sprinkle everything with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Toss the asparagus a bit so it’s coated, and place a slice of lemon on each filet. Roast for about 12-14 minutes until the salmon is cooked through. While that’s cooking we make jasmine rice to go on the side. This is one of our favorites!
Dino footprint cookies
The boys have been doing Scholastic Learn at Home as part of their weekly learning plan, and after Aidan watched Week 2 Day 7, he asked if we could make the Dino footprint cookies from the lesson. This weekend we had a chance to make them and they are tasty and fun to make! Aidan did the majority of the work:
J helped as well (and loaned his Dino to use):
And after they were done we enjoyed them outside!
They are similar in texture and taste to slice and bake cookies, and have the flavor of a snickerdoodle. I don’t know how long they last, as ours were all eaten in two days! You could also combine it with this classic dinosaur lesson I did with the boys! Enjoy!
Week of Meals
Happy Monday! We are beginning week 2 of this weird new normal, but what is completely normal is the boys asking “what’s for dinner”, all day long. Since we are cooking at home a lot right now, B and I have been trading off meal prep, and trying out recipes. Here is what we made this week!
Marinated flank steak and twice baked potatoes.
Homemade pizzas.
Slow cooker Indian butter chicken and fresh naan.
Sheet pan chicken and vegetables.
Chicken Enchiladas
While I’m not afraid to stray from the classics, this chicken enchilada recipe is one I always come back to. It’s my Mom’s recipe and the one that whenever anyone in our extended family makes chicken enchiladas, this is the recipe they make. I have had to modify it some over the years to accommodate the boys’ food allergies. The simple fix is removing the green onions and putting them on the side. The more difficult substitution was replacing the cream of chicken. I tried this recipe out and found that it makes the perfect amount needed for the recipe (I also leave out the onion powder). I’ve attached the recipe below, with some helpful photographs.
So shred up your chicken:
Make your sour cream mixture:
And take out 1 and 1/2 cups (and have this amount of cheese leftover):
Add the sour cream mixture to the chicken:
Then put a few tablespoons of the chicken mixture in the tortillas:
Roll and place in a pan:
Cover with leftover sour cream mixture:
And cheese:
Then cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes:
Finally, uncover and bake for another 10-15 minutes until bubbly.
Chicken Enchiladas
- 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast roasted (can be made ahead)
- 2 cans cream of chicken soup (or make this recipe to substitute)
- About 1 cup of sour cream (you can add 1/2 cup more if you like sour cream!)
- 1 8oz package of montery jack cheese (you can buy pre-shredded, or get a block and grate it!)
- 1 8oz package of sharp cheddar cheese (you can buy pre-shredded, or get a block and grate it!)
- 1 can of green chilies (optional)
- 1 can of chopped olives (optional)
- 1/4 cup of chopped green onions (you can either sprinkle these on top before baking, or leave out if you have picky eaters or food allergies)
- 8-10 soft taco size flour tortillas
Directions
-
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Coat chicken with 2 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp paprika, and 1 tsp cumin. Place on a foil lined pan and drizzle chicken with canola oil. Roast chicken at 350 for 25 minutes. After chicken is cooled slightly, shred (I put it in my Kitchen Aid mixer and let it shred with a paddle mixer on low).
- Set aside about a third each of the shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheese.
- In a seperate bowl mix together the sour cream, cream of chicken soup, remaining cheddar and monterey jack cheese. Remove 1 and 1/2 cups of the sour cream mixture and set aside.
- Add shredded chicken to remaining sour cream mixture (*Tip: mix the chicken a bit at a time until it looks consistent with the sour cream mixture but not dried out, I don’t always add all the chicken).
- Warm tortillas on a griddle (or in the microwave, I use this tortilla warmer).
- Place about four-five tablespoons of mixture per tortilla.
- Place filled tortillas in a 9X13 pan.
- Spread the set aside sour cream mixture on top of the tortillas and top with the set aside cheese.
- Cook for 30 minutes covered and then 10-15 minutes uncovered until bubbly and cheese is starting to brown. Top with optional green chilies, olives, and green onions.
- Extra Tips: This is a great make ahead dish. It can be frozen for about a month and can be made a day ahead if refrigerated. The entire recipe makes quite a bit, so I occasionally make half and then freeze half. If you are cooking it frozen cook for at least 40 minutes covered in foil, and then another 20-30 uncovered. If refrigerated cook for 30 minutes covered and 15-20 minutes uncovered.
My favorite tea
My work afternoons at home consist of quite a bit of grading, lesson planning, interspersed with laundry, housework, catching up on volunteer things, etc. One of the things that I frequently do to break up the day (because your eyes do start to glaze over, after reading fifty papers), is make tea and have one of my Milk Bar cookies that I got for Christmas. My tea making has become a bit elaborate, but it’s so good, I had to share:
First, make 12 oz of almost boiling water (right before the tea kettle starts to whistle). Then, steep 2 tsp of Old Fashioned Birthday Cake Piper and Leaf tea for seven minutes in the water. Then add 1-2 tsp of local honey, 1 packet of collagen and stir. Finally, add 1-2 TBS original nutpod creamer. It’s so delicious! Enjoy it with any cookie, but a Milk Bar cookie is especially sweet:
If I really need a break, I also throw in an episode of The Crown and flip through my Magnolia Journal or InStyle magazine, and then back to grading!
Chocolate Chunk Cookies
A variation on our favorite cookie recipe, these chocolate chunk cookies are easy to put together and make just the right amount (about 24 cookies).
Chocolate Chunk Cookies
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp of baking powder
- 1/8 tsp of kosher salt
- 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 3-4 Hershey bars chopped into small size chunks
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Directions
- Cut butter into tablespoon slices and place in the bottom of the mixer. Set your egg out on the counter. Do this first then prep the rest of your ingredients
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with a Silpat mat or parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside.
- Crack egg into a small cup and whisk with vanilla.
- On medium speed cream butter for about three minutes.
- Add sugars to butter and mix until light and fluffy about 3-4 minutes.
- Scrape down the sides and then add in the egg mixture. Mix until it resembles cottage cheese (so slightly lumpy, but well mixed).
- Add all of the flour mixture to the bowl. Mix just a little by hand (so it doesn’t puff out when you start the mixer), and then mix on low speed only until barely blended.
- Stir in chocolate chunks.
- Bake for seven minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees and bake for two additional minutes. Let cool on the pan for 2 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Will keep in an air tight container at room temperature for 3-5 days. In our house they rarely last that long.
Molasses Cookies
As soon as there is just a bit of chill in the air, the boys and I jump into baking cookies. One of our very favorite fall cookies is molasses cookies and this time the boys split up the tasks with A measuring and mixing all the dry ingredients and J adding in all the wet ingredients.
Then they took turns dividing out the cookies on the pan:
And then we patiently waited for them to bake:
And they were gone in a flash! This is one of our very favorite recipes and you can find it here!
Monster sprinkle cookies
As I’ve blogged about before, these confetti cookies have been our go to weekend cookie for awhile. They can be mixed in your food processor, and now that we have a shiny, new oven I can bake them in a snap with my extra wide baking sheet. I picked up some Halloween themed sprinkle the other weekend, and decided to do a twist on our normal rainbow sprinkles.
For the majority of the cookies I used Target Hyde and Eek Monster Mash sprinkles, but I started running out at the end and used the Wilton Sprinkles. The ones with the Monster Mash Sprinkles turned out perfectly:
However, the ones with the Wilton Sprinkles:
Were a total fail:
I’m still unsure of what happened, but something in the chemical make-up of the Wilton sprinkles didn’t work with the cookies. I’d recommend buying two of the Target Hyde and Eek Monster Mash Sprinkles to do the entire batch. Overall, these are such a good cookie, and one of my favorite “lunchbox cookies” for the boys! And us!
Trick or treat mix
Our favorite game day watching snacks are either queso and chips, or candy popcorn. After a Target run this past week, I picked up some festive additions to our candy popcorn to create a fun trick or treat mix. Here are our treat mixes items (plus two bags of popped corn…I’m asking for an air popper for Christmas):
I always put the popcorn, pretzels, marshmallows, and a few white chocolates on the parchment paper first:
Then I melt the chocolate according to package directions and drizzle it all over the popcorn mix, then add sprinkles all over the top:
And voila! Trick or treat mix and Saturday college football! And a little bit of the driving range beforehand:
Happy Monday!
Chicken Alfredo
When I haven’t gotten a chance to get to Costco to pick up a pan of chicken alfredo, this Momfessional’s recipe is my new go to casserole. I edited the recipe from shells (they were out of stock at Walmart), and used mini penne pasta instead and defrosted rotisserie chicken (I get refrigerated rotisserie chicken from Costco and freeze four individual portions, if you haven’t tried this, you should!). I cooked it for about 30 minutes because the chicken was cold.
I served it with zucchini spirals, and it was delicious! B, J, and I all took leftovers to work and school the next day. This would also be a great take and bake casserole for a potluck, friend with a new baby, etc. Pair with a loaf of Italian bread and a salad and this is enough for four to six people!