Balsamic Chicken

Balsamic vinegar and I have had a long love affair, dating back to my time in New York.  My roommates and I frequently ate at a restaurant called Bianca and I always ordered the balsamic poached chicken.  It was wonderful and it's something that I really miss.  I've tried a couple of times to recreate it but have never pulled it off.  I think it's probably an old family recipe that requires many hours of cooking and a few secret ingredients.  Even though this isn't quite the same, here is a great balsamic chicken recipe.

Pork Chops and Rice

Pork chops and rice is a dish my mom has been making since I was a tiny little kid.  Dad and my brother loved it because it's stick-to-your-ribs man food.  I hated it and gave Mom all kinds of grief every time we had it for dinner, flat refusing to eat anything.  Eventually I agreed to eat the rice.  I later agreed to eat the pork chop, but only with a heaping helping of ketchup.  Now I love it so much that I almost requested it for my birthday dinner.  It may sound bland, but, trust me, if you like pork, you'll love it.

Quick Banana Pudding

Mom doesn't make banana pudding often, but when she does it's fabulous and gone in a flash.  She had a very complicated recipe that involved preparing her own pudding from scratch, but ditched it after making my Aunt Lisa's version.  Here's how she does it now.

Spicy Mustard Salmon

I love salmon, but it's rare that I get to cook it because Mom greatly dislikes fish and we generally eat our meals together.  However, she doesn't eat lunch, so when I'm not substituting (like today), I try to prepare fish for lunch.  This is a great Asian-ish recipe that includes soy sauce, garlic, and spicy mustard.  Really, how could that combination of ingredients taste bad?  I hope you enjoy it!

Chocolate Pie

 

Based on the advice of the local weathermen, we planned on being snowed in today and tomorrow, which, of course, means dessert consumption.  This week we chose chocolate pie as our sugar victim.  It's another of those classic family recipes that is always fabulous.  Enjoy!

Chicken Tetrazzini

Chicken tetrazzini is another of our traditional family dishes.  Both of my grandmothers prepared it when they were hosting a crowd.  It's pretty cheap eating, as the cost of the ingredients is low and it makes a lot of food.  It's a creamy, cheesy casserole that I'm perfectly happy eating on a regular basis.  Here's our recipe.

Curried Corn Chowder

After Mom's experience with the massive ice storm of 2010, including 10 days without electricity, we over-prepared for this week's snow storm.  Before the storm hit, Mom cooked pots of beans and chicken and dumplings, both things we could reheat in the fireplace if the need arose.  Fortunately we did not lose electricity at any point this week and have passed the time being snowed in reheating both of those lovely dishes in the microwave and eating in the warm comfort of our home.  Five days in, I'm tired of both beans and chicken and dumplings, so I decided to be adventurous and make a new curried corn chowder for lunch today.  It turned out well.  It's spicy and filling, making it perfect for this cold day.

Balsamic Kale with Garlic and Onions

I know this is surprising for my family, but the star of this dish isn't the roast, but the kale.  Since reading all the New Year's articles on resolutions, healthy living, and "super foods," Mom and I had been curious about kale.  We finally manned up and invested the necessary $0.98 to try some.  It was a good investment.  We've been eating it like crazy women ever since.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

This is the world's best chocolate cake and has been my birthday cake since I was old enough to tell Mom what I wanted.  I wish my mom or grandma could take credit for the recipe, but they can't.  It comes from an old cookbook from the '40s or '50s that first belonged to my Mam-Maw and now belongs to my mom.  The author of this recipe is Mrs. Mae Brewer of Riverside, Oklahoma.

My Mam-Maw - a good cook and a total hottie

Even though my family can't claim this recipe, it has been part of our family gatherings forever.  Every time my grandparents had company, Mam-Maw made this cake.  And because Mam-Maw wanted everyone to like everything she cooked, she would put pecans on top of one end of the cake and leave the other half without nuts.  If only that trait hadn't skipped a generation.

Every time we have a "special occasion" meal at our house, I request this cake.  It's chocolatey, with a little cinnamon, very moist, and dangerously tempting because we walk by and grab "bites" every time we're in the kitchen to get coffee or water. 

I really can't stress how much I love this cake.  If I'm ever in a position to choose my last meal, this is all I will request.  It's the perfect combination of tasty food and great memories for me.  I hope you enjoy it!

Fudgy Brownies

A friend made a special request for a brownie recipe, so I don't have a picture of these at the moment.  This is my grandmother's brownie recipe.  It's the brownie recipe that I grew up eating and I still make it any time I think I need a brownie.  It's fudgy, chocolatey, and just incredible.  Enjoy!

Spinach and Bacon Quiche

 

I don't care what diet I'm on, I will always eat quiche.  And like so many other recipes I've shared, I think Mom's is the best.  We just made it for the first time since I moved home and it lived up to all the hype I'd created for it in my head.  I've happily eaten it for breakfast and lunch the past three days.  It's also much less difficult to make than I thought it would be.  For some reason I thought it was one of those complicated precision dishes.  It's not.  Any cooking rookie can pull it off.  Here's the recipe.

Split Pea Soup

It's time for this week's "substitute soup" - the soup I prepare every Sunday in anticipation of having to grab lunch as I run out the door on my way to school, where I work as a substitute teacher.  Of all the soup recipes I've shared so far - the spinach parmesan, the butternut squash, the roasted pepper - this is my favorite.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Last year at school a couple of my roommates made stuffed bell peppers.  They were very good but at the time I wasn't much of a vegetable person, so it never occurred to me to make them again.  Then I evolved into a vegetable lover, the grocery store put bell peppers on sale last week, and I stocked up.  I made the pepper soup again but we still had a lot left, so we decided to try to make stuffed peppers.  They were delicious.

Creamy Salted Fudge

Over the past several months I've been an avid Weight Watchers follower.  The major flaw with me and any diet plan is my deep, unwavering love of chocolate.  It has been the wall between me and thinness forever.  Of course, the beauty of Weight Watchers is that it doesn't deny you the things you love, but teaches you to prepare them in a more healthful way.  This recipe is the perfect representation of that characteristic.  This fudge doesn't have any fake sugar or nasty aspartamey aftertaste.  In fact, nothing about it tastes "diet" or "healthy."  I love it and it is the perfect tamer of my chocolate cravings.

Spicy Spinach Parmesan Soup

 

Here's another delicious soup recipe.  The inspiration for this recipe came from the Pioneer Woman's website, but I've altered it for taste and to be more health conscious.  It's delicious.

Goulash

Beef goulash is another of those recipes that sounds disgusting but tastes delicious.  We eat this very frequently during the fall and winter because it's the perfect cold-weather food.  Suck it up and try it, even if the sound of it grosses you out.  You'll thank me later.

Butternut Squash Soup

To everyone's horror (mine included), I've been substitute teaching this year.  Just like when I was a kid, I rarely eat in the lunchroom, so I have to be prepared to pack a lunch any day of the week.  One of my favorite things to take in my lunch is soup, so I've been experimenting with all different kinds.  This butternut squash soup was especially tasty.

Cinnamon Pecan Quinoa with Berries

I cooked breakfast this morning and, in an attempt to start the day off in a healthy way, I prepared this wonderful batch of quinoa.  For those of you who don't know what quinoa is (I didn't until that magical grocery store, Trader Joe's, introduced me to it last year), it's a South American grain.  Mom calls it "hippie food" but she has been willing to eat it since her beloved Yahoo Homepage told her it's the super grain.  Also, it's not exotic - it's available in either the rice or bean aisle at the Wal-Marts in Chickasha and Duncan, and all of us who shop there know just how unadventurous the selection is at those stores.

Pinto Beans

There is nothing simpler than a pot of pinto beans.  Though I love beans and cornbread now, I spent my childhood hating it.  Unfortunately for me it was Mom and Dad's favorite, so this was a dinner that we had at least twice a month.  I have, however, spent my adulthood making up for all the pots of beans that I missed.  I crave pinto beans, cook them often, and request that Mom cook them even more frequently.

Pumpkin Scones

First, enjoy this recipe, as it's the last sweet recipe that will be posted for some time.  Remember how I said in my last post that Mom and I are being healthy this year?  Well, we fell off the wagon in a serious, serious way with these scones.  Now we've decided we won't bake again until my birthday in February.  I guess we'll have to see how long that lasts.

The wagon-falling began innocently enough.  We had some leftover pumpkin from Sunday morning's pumpkin pancakes and didn't want it to go to waste.  You can do a lot of things with pumpkin, many of which are probably healthy, but, as you all have surely figured out by now, that's not how we roll at the Lindsey house.  We made double-frosted pumpkin scones.  They're INCREDIBLE and I suggest you don't make them because you can't not eat them.  I also suggest you go to the kitchen, prepare them now, and enjoy them for breakfast tomorrow morning.  I promise to be sympathetic when we run into each other at fat camp.

White Chicken Chili

I wish I could take credit for this recipe but I can't.  It came to me via my Aunt Janie, who found it on the side of a can of Great Northern beans.  It's still share-worthy, though.

White chicken chili is great because it's cheap, easy, tasty, and pretty healthy.  Mom doesn't care for it because of the cumin, but she was kind enough to help me make it yesterday, showing me how to add flour to the onion mixture to make a proper rue. 

Cold Oven Pound Cake

This is a classic Mom recipe.  She has been making this pound cake for longer than I've been alive and it's fabulous.  We've been talking about it quite a lot recently and she finally made it today after seeing Paula Deen make something similar this morning.  It was a very pleasant surprise when I got home for school this afternoon.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Brother Jason and his iPad came home for the weekend.  He downloaded an awesome app called Talking Tom, an animated kitty cat/voice recorder that repeats everything said in an adorable, animated kitty kind of way.  Mom and I loved it and it became Mom's vanity accessory for the weekend.  During the football game, while yelling terrible things at the 18-year-old kids that play for OU, she had it on her lap, repeating everything she said.  Tell me she's not adorably nuts.

Onto the food - every fall, Mom buys one tin of the Williams Sonoma pumpkin pancake mix and having it on Sunday mornings is a real treat.  However, because no one in our house has much self control, the mix is usually gone within a month.  We finally decided to stop being slackers, relying on others to prepare the food we can surely prepare ourselves, and find a recipe of our own.  Here's the recipe we have come up with to cure the pumpkin pancake craving.

New Year's Black Eyed Peas

Inexplicably difficult item to photograph

Since we're Southern, we had to have black eyed peas on New Year's Day to guarantee good luck in the new year.  We made tacos with the leftover roast from Friday night, so we had to make the black eyed peas conform to the ethnicity of the rest of the dinner by making them into Mexican black eyed peas.  Here's how we did it.

Pot Roast with Pan Roasted Vegetables

I've already shared Mom's recipe for pot roast with mushroom gravy.  As good as that pot roast is, this recipe is my favorite.  Oddly enough, the inspiration for the recipe came from a Weight Watchers recipe, which, as you all know, is very unlike my family.  But it's so tasty that's it has managed to stick around.