Algae Flour Does Not Equal Eggs

Here's a little life lesson for you: No eggs is always better than eggs made from algae flour.

My adventures in EoE cooking have been both time consuming and frustrating. I've been fortunate to have a friend who is well read and great at cooking food that is both delicious and allergen-free. She stocked my freezer full of meals that really made my summer 10 times easier. (Turkey and sweet potato chili? Yes, please.)

Marshmallows were safe to eat and easily available at camp . . . if only there were an ounce of nutrition, I would have been set.

We were at camp for most meals this summer, and if I forgot to pack my lunch and dinner, I was out of luck. It probably doesn't come as a shock to many people that camp food is rarely free of eggs, soy, nuts and wheat. Our food service director did her best to come up with options, and I"m so grateful to her for that. It was tough.

She also made me a birthday cake, and it did NOT disappoint.

So on the days that I was walking out the door and had zero time to pack anything, I could throw two of these frozen meals in a bag and heat them up. It was perfect.

Dessert. Kind of.

One thing that I desperately missed was eggs. I ate eggs almost every day for breakfast. This was how I got my veggies . . . I could usually get two full servings scrambled with eggs, first thing in the morning. On top of that, nearly all gluten/dairy free food substitutes include eggs.

So the day that I found an egg substitute at the supermarket was this shining beacon of hope. It boasted the ability to replace scrambled eggs. It wasn't just an egg replacer to use in recipes; it actually replaced eggs. So without even reading the ingredients, I added it to my cart.

The next morning, I hopped out of bed with plenty of time to cook before we had to leave, because: OMELET! I was pumped. As I was preparing the "eggs" according to the package's directions, I noticed this weird odor. I thought it was coming from our dishwasher, that sometimes starts to smell like rotten food when it hasn't been cleaned in a while. It took me less than a minute to figure out that it was the faux eggs. The more I mixed, the worse it got.

I dug the package out of the garbage to see what they were made of . . . algae flour. ALGAE FLOUR! Yep, that sounds about right, because they definitely smelled like seaweed. Once it was cooked, the flavor wasn't bad . . . but the texture was slimy and the smell wasn't great.

There was another time I tried to make an omelet out of chickpea flour. It did not end well.

Epilogue: I did have another EGD last week and after 10 weeks of eliminating wheat, dairy, soy and eggs, my esophagus was free of eosiniphils. There were still signs of EoE scarring, but that was normal. It was the happiest day of my whole summer, for sure.

I started to add eggs back in this week, and if it goes well, soy comes next. No matter what happens, I'm happy to be this much closer to figuring out the cause of my EoE.

It wasn't all bad. I ate A LOT of tostadas this summer.

Chicken bits in my hair

It's no secret that I love to watch TV.

Wait, no.  I take that back . . . it comes as a surprise to people who don't know me all that well, because it's a bit of a guilty pleasure that I don't advertise that much.  But if you really start to engage me in conversation, it's bound to come up and my secret is out.  Whether it be something I saw on the news or a quote from HIMYM, the truth always comes out.  Please don't judge.  Are you judging me?  If so, just keep reading, because this post has very little to do with television. 

I have a trusty DVR to keep me entertained as I work, cook . . . or breastfeed.  One of my favorite things about the first few months of my baby's life is the excuse to lock myself in a room with just her and watch whatever I'd like.  Because of my love/hate relationship with breastfeeding, this is sometimes my motivation to keep it up.  It's well documented that I think the best time of year to have a baby is right before network sweeps.

Obviously, with each subsequent child that gets more difficult.  Right now, I'm often nursing while quizzing Jack on spelling words, pondering Ben's "what if" scenarios and/or reading "Are You My Mother" to Claire for the 55,000th time.  But during those late night nursing sessions, or when Kyle's home and I get that chance to sneak away and watch something, I savor every moment.

One show I added to the lineup this time around is the Pioneer Woman's cooking show on Food Network.  I love her blog, so I was sure I'd love her show.  I can bake pretty well, but I'm not much of a chef.  Watching her in the kitchen, though, makes me think that I can do it, too.  You just throw a little of this and a little of that into the pot, give it a stir, and viola!  A culinary masterpiece!  It's truly mesmerizing. 

On last week's show, she made chicken and noodles.  As I watched her cook and create, I was inspired.  It seemed so simple. In a moment of pure stupidity, I added it to my menu as tonight's dinner.  Why would anyone with a newborn add to her menu a meal that requires more than heating and serving?  I really don't remember how it happened.  I'll just blame Hattie.

The recipe calls for a whole chicken already cut up. They didn't have that at our local grocery stores.  I probably could have looked harder and found one, but when your baby is on a feeding schedule, and your grocery shopping trips have a very specific time limit, you take what you can get.

I asked the guy at the store if it was pretty easy to cut them up.  He looked me up and down and replied, "For me?  Yeah." 

Um, excuse me?  Challenge accepted, buddy.

I asked google for information on "how to cut up a whole chicken" and found this tutorial from the New York Times Food section that made it look so simple. Just cut here, and pop there . . . it just kind of came apart for the lady in the video.  Oddly enough, it didn't do that for me.  The fat lines are not, in fact, a "grid for where to cut", and the joints do not just "appear" when I pop bones certain directions.  That tutorial is full of lies and I'm vowing here and now to never subscribe to the NY Times. 

It was a disaster.  At one point, I considered chucking the whole thing and making something else, but this chicken gave its life for our sustenance and it would be totally ungrateful to just waste it (see that right there . . . that's from watching too much Naked and Afraid).  I got the legs off (kind of) and then just decided to throw the whole thing in the pot, NOT cut up, to see what happened.

I let the whole thing boil, and it seemed to be working out okay.  When it came time to take it out of the pot and shred the meat, I grabbed a slotted spoon that I THOUGHT would be strong enough to support the chicken, but as I was lifting it out of the pot . . . SPLASH.  That sucker fell right back into the broth, leaving my whole kitchen, and me, covered in little bits of chicken.  And chicken fat  Oh, and not to mention . . . boiling hot water.  You don't realize how greasy chicken is until you're having to wipe it off of your floor, cupboard doors and counter tops. And let's not forget that moms of littles don't get to take showers whenever they feel like it.  In fact, this post was inspired a few minutes ago when I pulled a tiny bit of chicken out of my hair. 

The meal was tasty and Jack even asked to take the leftovers in his lunch. So all's well that ends well, am I right? 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take the first of the 1,000 showers that it will take to get the chicken smell off of me.

Recipes

I've mentioned before that after Claire was born, we made it a full month and I only had to cook dinner once. And that one time was only because I had alerady purchased produce and meat for a meal and I didn't want it to go to waste.

I thought I'd be dreading going back to cooking when the meals ran out, but it turns out that January was the little break that I needed. I started enjoying planning our meals. I don't know why I've had this change of heart. I think it has something to do with being a little more organized about it. And I think pinterest had something to do with it, too. The fact that Kyle isn't coaching baseball makes a difference, because when it was just me and two boys eating dinner, it was way tempting to throw chicken nuggets and fries on a tray every night so that I don't have to argue with them alone. I also give a little credit to Danica, who posted something in December about making freezer meals for after her little guy was born. It really started me thinking about how I can plan farther ahead than just one week. I found quite a few freezer recipes and we'll sometimes prepare several meals on one day so all we have to do is stick it in the oven on the day we want to eat it.

Here are a few recipes we've tried that have worked for us.

1. Chicken enchilada soup. Everyone in our family loved this. I've made one single batch and two double batches. I froze a few batches to eat later and ended up bringing a few to friends who had sick kids. I LOVE having meals in the freezer to do that with. It's a nice surprise for them and it's nice to be able to do it without having to drop everything and make something that day.

2. Honey mustard chicken. This was WAY better than I had anticipated. Jack had three servings before I cut him off.

3. Baked zucchini sticks. These make a great snack or small meal. I've made them twice and we all loved them. I made the dip, too, and it was really good, but it is time consuming. The second time I made them, we just dipped them in ranch.

4. Chicken Gyros. Kyle and I liked these, but the boys weren't as crazy about them. They ate them reluctantly. The bread was incredible. I'm not sure we'll make them again because it was a lot of work for a meal that only half of us enjoyed, but I'm glad we tried them once. Maybe we'll try again when they're older.

5. Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Adult style. A little piece of heaven.

6. Freezer Breakfast Burritos. I've made two batches of these for the freezer. The boys don't eat them that well, but they're perfect for Kyle and I. It takes so much work to get everyone ready and out the door on Jack's preschool days, that we got into the bad habit of running through the drive through after dropping him off because we hadn't had time to eat breakfast. Being able to pop one of these in the microwave while we're getting their shoes on and eat it in the car has made a huge difference. I DID mess with the proportions a little. Bacon and sausage was a little too much for me and I ended up putting more eggs in (which made more burritos) because they were a little too meaty at first. On my second batch I just used a pound of sausage, half a green pepper, one onion and 24 eggs. I think it made about 30 burritos.

7. Bacon, Ranch and Chicken Mac and Cheese. This has been a family favorite since this fall and we've made it more than I can count. I made up two pans before I had Claire and just thawed them and popped them in the oven in January and they came out as if I had made them fresh that day.

8. Zuchinni Muffins. Again, I made them and froze half. THen I forgot I had frozen them and they made for a fun little surprise when we took them out of the freezer last week. Just as good as when they were fresh! Add a piece of fruit and you've got a decent breakfast.

What have been your most recent favorites?

Just a bite . . .

There are a few snacks I've been obsessed with over the last month or so.

EDITED TO ADD: A new #5 at the bottom!

1. Pretzel bites. Debbie made these on New Year's Eve and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I probably ate half of the amount that she brought to our house. After dreaming about them for weeks, I made them again last night. They weren't as pretty as hers were, but they were just as delicious.

One important note: Don't add ALL of the baking soda to the boiling water at once unless you really like cleaning your stove top. As I was dumping it in, I thought, "I wonder if this is a bad idea." It was, in fact, a bad idea.

Also, Debbie made the cheese sauce listed with this recipe and it was really good, but it started to get thick pretty quickly (which, of course, still didn't keep me from continuing to eat it). Last night, we just warmed a jar of cheese sauce and it was great.

One more thing . . . this recipe makes A LOT of pretzel bites. If you don't have friends to share them with, you might end up making yourself sick because you just can't stop eating them!

2. Melissa's CPK Guacamole. I made this right after she posted it in late October, and I cannot even count the number of times I've made it since them. We refer to it as "holy guacamole" because of how good it is.

The only thing we do differently is reduce the garlic powder and use a little garlic salt and I also add some chopped onion. Every time we make this, we start out thinking, "It's such a bummer that guacamole goes bad so quickly because we hate wasting what's left." That's never been a problem. For better or worse, the bowl is always clean.

3. Fire and Ice Pickles. To be fair, you don't actually "make" pickles with this recipe. You just take a jar of pickles and make it even better. Kyle's grandma makes these and I don't think I'll ever taste them and not think of her. They're so good. I already love pickles, but this just takes their goodness up a notch.

The only down side is that they're supposed to chill in your refrigerator for a week before you eat them. I have three jars in my refrigerator and I cannot wait to snack on them!

4. Spicy Holiday Anytime Nuts. I make these every Christmas and am still in the process of perfecting them. I started with a recipe I found online years ago and have never been able to find that same recipe. Truth be told, I don't think they've ever been as good as they were that first year when I had an actual recipe, but my version isn't bad.

Because I try to recreate them every year, they never really stays the same and I rarely measure everything out. Here's a general idea of what I do.

Ingredients:
3 - 4 TB butter or margerine
1 large can of mixed nuts (6ish cups) . . . I buy the big can from Sam's Club
2 TB Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp garlic salt
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 - 2 sm jars of sesame seeds, depending on how many you want in there.

Preheat the oven to 300. While the oven is preheating, divide the butter between to cookie sheets with lips. Put the pans in the oven until the butter melts.

When the butter is completely melted, remove the pans from the oven and add half of the nuts to each. Divide the Worcestershire sauce between the two pans and drizzle it over all of the nuts. Toss with the butter to coat. I love Worcestershire sauce, so my guess is that I use more than a TB per pan. Put them back in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes.

Something I learned: if you're doing anything else in the kitchen with vanilla while you're making these, be careful. Our sugar cookie frosting almost ended up with a beefy flavor because I wasn't paying close enough attention. The two bottles are very similar.

While the nuts are toasting, empty the sesame seeds into a dry frying pan and toast them over medium heat. Stir them frequently. This step isn't necessary, but I did it last year and thought it made a big difference. I love the crunch of a toasted sesame seed and I think it makes a difference in the finished product. The sesame seeds will just change color slightly.

When the nuts are done toasting, dump them all in a bowl and add the spices. Stir thoroughly until all of the spices are evenly dispersed. While the nuts are still hot, add the sesame seeds and toss thoroughly.

These are a great snack and perfectly for parties. Because this recipe make so many, it might also make a nice treat to put in a tin and give to friends.


EDITED TO ADD:

5. Queso Blanco Dip. Debbie made this at our house tonight. A. Mazing. Make it now. You'll thank me later.

Bread

There's something good about baking bread.

Isn't it amazing that different proportions and quantities of the same few ingredients can give you so many different things? Flour + water + yeast + salt = many, many different types of bread. Incredible.

Bread makes you wait. It encourages delayed gratification. It's a science and an art all at the same time. It's delicious and wholesome. And there's something satisfying about mastering kneading, folding and shaping techniques.

My love for bread making began on a trip to Chicago when Kyle and I had been married for less than a year. I was stuck in traffic and the radio was on an AM talk station. Normally I would have changed it, but I just wasn't paying attention.

The interview was with a woman named Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Bread Bible. I shifted into park on I-90, waiting for traffic to start moving again and listened to her talk about baking bread as if it were a type of therapy. Kyle bought me The Bread Bible for Christmas and he still says it was one of the best investments he's ever made.

I made bread way more before we had kids than I do now, for all of the obvious reasons. I made two loaves of cinnamon swirl bread two weeks ago, and my love for it came rushing back. Now, however, I have to barricade the work area of my kitchen so that I don't have any little people reaching for things on the counter or touching hot pans.

Several people have asked me for the recipe, but it's 7 pages long. I found a condensed version of the recipe on this post (scroll a little bit down the page).

Menu planning

Something that I didn't understand before I had a family was the difficulty of menu planning. I'm sure it comes naturally for some people, but I am not one of those people. Honestly, I'd be happy with a bowl of cereal or oatmeal for dinner every night. In fact, for most of college and my two years on my own out of college, I consumed more cereal than I did anything else.

When we were first married, I'd cook these elaborate meals that we both loved. The challenges now are a) we don't have the kind of time we used to, b) dinner is usually at 5 to give us enough time for playtime and bedtime routines afterward and c) we have a toddler who doesn't like all of the things we do.

Remember the recipe for "Yummy Chicken" I posted last week? Well, I figured out where it came from: Dine without Whine. They have a sample menu/shopping list posted on their site and I had bookmarked it a while back. I liked a few of the recipes so last week, I decided to try it out for a month. It's $6.95 a month and so far, I've been pleased with the recipes. In fact, I'm eating the last of a fantastic Peanut-Beef Dinner that I made on Monday and I realized that we've actually consumed ALL of the leftovers. This never happens.

The recipes are WAY simple and the ingredients are easy to find. I wouldn't say that the recipes are super healthy, but they are well balanced. I won't try all of the recipes they send, because some of them just aren't "us." But I have tried a few that I was skeptical about (i.e. Peanut-Beef Dinner) and we've loved them!

I think my favorite part of the program is that the shopping lists are letter coded. So, if you know you want to make recipes A, C and F, you just purchase the items on the shopping list with an A, C or F next to them. Most other menu planning sites give you one list and you have to sort through if you aren't going to make some of the things on the list.

So, there's my plug for Dine Without Whine. Check it out.

Yummy Chicken

In case you weren't sure, this recipe was named by Jack.

I love this chicken. It's so simple and quite delicious. Figure friendly? Not so much. But did I mention that it was delicious? Also, if you're only cooking for two, it's so easy to modify for fewer than 4. My only regret is that I made it when Kyle was out of town so he didn't get to try it.

I modified it from a recipe that I found online a few weeks ago, and I can't remember where. So if you're thinking, "This loser stole my recipe!" you might be right.

YUMMY CHICKEN

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 sleeve of Ritz crackers
• 2 tsp or so of garlic salt . . . less if you want a more mild flavor, more if you really like garlic
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup butter

Beat eggs. Crush ritz crakers and mix with garlic salt in separate dish. Oh, and I actually added panko to the cracker mixture, too . . . I'm not sure if it was necessary because the crackers were so crunchy, but I like to think it helped.

Dip each piece of chicken in egg, then the cracker mixture. Press the crackers into the chicken.

Place the chicken in a shallow baking dish and put a thin pat or two of butter on each piece of chicken until the full 1/4 cup is used. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes.

Jack cleaned his plate . . . as did I.

Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins

It's shocking to me that I've never posted this recipe, but I've searched high and low and it's nowhere to be found on my blog! Until now . . .

My mom made this pumpkin chocolate chip bread and I don't know where she got the recipe from. I'm sure it's elsewhere online, but this was the recipe I got from her. She made it as a loaf (therefore, this recipe is for the loaf version), but when I was in college and wanted to make this, I think I only had muffin pans, which is why I started making them that way. Also, they take a little less time to make. I really do prefer it in loaf form, so you can slice it, heat it and spread a little butter on it. Which I guess you can do with the muffins, but it's just not the same.

I also always double the recipe below and make two loaves or two pans of muffins. Trust me on this one . . . you'll thank me later.

Mix these ingredients well:
3/4 cup pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling . . . regular pureed pumpkin)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix these ingredients in a separate bowl and then add gradually to the wet mixture until everything is combined:
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Once everything is combined well to form a batter, add the chocolate chips. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup - which would be 1 1/2 cups if your doubling the recipe - but when I double the recipe, I add at least 2 cups. Probably a little bit more. The moral of the story: Add chocolate chips until you have your desired amount.

Pour into a 9 x 5 loaf pan (or 2 - 9 x 5 loaf pans) and bake at 350. I think for around 50 minutes to an hour for loaves. More like 25 - 30 minutes for muffins. You know . . . until a knife comes out clean.

Here's a picture from a few years ago. Enjoy!

I made popsicles . . .

. . . two weeks ago. And they're still in the freezer. I don't know why I even consider making anything during this time of year. We're at camp all day and never eat anything at home! I should take some to camp because they would be awesome on these incredibly hot days we're having.

But, if we can't eat them, I can at least share pictures.

I made two batches. The first was using this recipe and I used my star pop molds. They are delicious and fairly healthy!




I made the second batch with this recipe, and used some more traditional molds. These are way less healthy. Way.

Playing it fast and loose with this recipe

One of the staple dinners in our house is a chicken crescent pouch for which I no longer have the exact recipe. Every time I make it everyone says, "I love this . . . we had it all the time growing up." But last week I ran across someone who hadn't heard of it before, so I thought I'd share it here. It's rough, but it gives you an idea of how it should come together . . .

CHICKEN CRESCENT POUCHES

3 - 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cooked and diced
slightly softened cream cheese (more than 4 oz, less than 6 oz? 5 oz maybe?)
a few pats of butter - softened
garlic salt
1 - 2 tubes of crescent rolls (it depends on how many pouches you want to make and how full you want them to be . . . I usually buy 2 rolls of the "big and flaky" rolls that usually make 6 crescents. I think the 8-crescent tubes make pouches that are too small)
Pepper
A few tablespoons of breadcrumbs

Mix the cubed chicken, cream cheese and two or three pats of butter (leave a little out for brushing on top at the end). If the chicken is warm and the cream cheese is still a little cold, it usually softens pefectly.

To the mixture, add garlic salt and pepper to taste.

Unroll the crescent rolls, but don't tear them apart. Keep two triangles together to make a square. Pinch the perforated seam so that you have 3 - 4 (depending on which crescents you have) square or rectangles of crescent dough per tube. SO, 6 - 8 pouches if you have two tubes. Make sure the dough is still cold when you do this. If it gets warm, it's much harder to work with.

Spoon the mixture evenly on each of your crescent squares. This is why you want to make sure you cream cheese isn't too soft. You want the mixture to stay on the crescent. Wrap the corners and sides of the square up and twist them at the top to seal in the mixture. Bake them for 20 - 30 minutes until the crescent is all of the way cooked. You might need to prod at one a little to make sure it's not still doughy. Check them often to make sure they don't burn. It helps to bake them on a Silpat or a light-colored baking sheet so the bottoms don't get over done.

When they come out of the oven, brush the tops with butter and sprinkle with a mixture of bread crumbs and garlic salt.

Served with mixed veggies and you have a great dinner!

Kyle claims that this is his favorite thing that I make . . . Jack and I love them, too.

A happy post

So, I woke up this morning and found that everything had successfully backed up to my external hard drive. So, I restarted the computer, only I missed my window of time to boot from the Vista disk because I was distracted by the news. I suddenly looked over at my computer and it had STARTED UP NORMALLY. As if nothing had ever happened. I don't know if some of the fiddling I did last night fixed it, or if it's just a miracle. Either way, I was THRILLED!

So moving on to lighter (more interesting) things . . .

I don't really like ribs, mainly because they're so messy to eat. But boneless ribs are a different story. This is one of our favorite recipes and it's really quick and easy. The meat can be on the pricey side, but we often find it on sale.

SLOW COOKER BONELESS RIBS

• 1 large onion, sliced into rings
  
• 2 1/2 pounds boneless country-style pork ribs (for the three of us, we make one pound and cut the recipe in half)
  
• 1 bottle barbecue sauce . . . Sweet Baby Ray's is our favorite (I think it's usually 16 oz - we use a little over half when we're just making a pound.)
  
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

1. Put onion in a layer on the bottom of the slow cooker. Top the onion with the ribs.
2. Mix the barbecue sauce, syrup, mustard, salt and pepper in a bowl and pour over the ribs.
3. Cover and cook on low for 7 - 8 hours. We turn the meat once during the day and will uncover it for the last 30 minutes or so to let the sauce thicken up a little.

The meat is so tender and delicious! I sometimes do one of the steam-in-the-bag veggie and rice sides and rolls or baked potatoes and a salad. I'm getting hungry just writing about this!

In which I'm stripped of my mother of the year award

I just made a batch of this, and I'm pretty sure I won't be eating anything else until it's gone. It's amazing. And I deserve it after a day of malfunctioning computers, a disobedient, shrieking child and a disobedient, puking dog.

I spent my entire morning at camp, trying to figure out a minor computer problem. Well, it seems minor know that I know what was causing it. At the time it was major.

I'm using the television as a babysitter right now until Kyle gets home from practice. You may call it bad parenting. I call it my coping mechanism.

Jack said, "Dang it!" when I saw Murphy puking on the carpet. Nice. I know it could be worse, but it's not exactly what I wanted to pass on to him. And it pretty much cancels out every "I love you" and "thank you" that he said today.

I want to take a picture of my belly at 13 weeks, but I'm embarrassed. Because it's half 13 weeks pregnant and half 21 months post-partum baby fat.

When Kyle gets home, I will ask him to take care of bedtime, and clean the kitchen, so that I can go to bed early. Like at 7 PM. And I will pull out the "I'm carrying your second born" line if that's what it takes. But I don't think it'll get that far.

I'm about to start my second apple's worth of taffy apple dip. We'll call that dinner, I guess.

Make-shift dinner

Ok, I tried to pull a dinner together tonight with what I could find in the kitchen and I thought I'd share it with you because it turned out so well.

Ingredients:

• I thawed the last two chicken breasts we had in the freezer
• I found a jar of Bertolli alfredo sauce
• We have four boxes of multi-colored bowtie pasta that I got on sale a few months ago . . . they need to be eaten!
  
• Whole Milk (we're out of skim)
• A partial bag of the frozen broccoli and carrots with the frozen garlic butter sauce - probably about 4 servings left
• A little bit of leftover mozzarella . . . Probably around 1/4 cup.
  

1. I thawed the chicken by putting it in a bag and immersing it in a sink full of water. This is my favorite way to thaw, though I'm sure there's a more efficient way. I'm not crazy about thawing in the microwave, because I lose track of time and always end up leaving it in there too long. And the little "automatic setting" on our microwave is a joke. I diced it up and lightly browned it with olive oil in a sautee pan. You could use that pre-cooked frozen chicken and save some time.

2. The next three steps all kind of happened simultaneously:

a. Then I cooked the pasta according to the directions, but drained it about 2 minutes early so that it was extra al dente. Since I put it in a casserole, I figured it would cook more in the oven and I don't like mushy pasta.

b. I mixed the jar of alfredo sauce with the milk. Maybe about 1/2 - 1/3 cup of milk? I know that jarred alfred sauce has a bad name, but I really like the Bertolli sauce. If you were feeling inspired, you could make it from scratch (half butter, half parmesean . . . melt and stir over medium heat) or buy the tubs that you get from the dairy section at the supermarket. But I like the jar. I heated the sauce over low heat while the water boiled and the pasta was cooked.

c. I microwaved the veggies according to the package directions. I really wanted to add peas, but I didn't have any. You could use fresh veggies, too. ALthough, I think the garlic herb flavor added a little something.

3. I mixed it all together in a bowl and then put it in a casserole dish that I sprayed with no-stick spray. Although, I'm not sure I needed to spray it. I topped it with the little mozzarella cheese that I had and baked it (uncovered) at 350 for about 30 minutes. If I had fresh parmesean (which I originally thought I did) I would have added a little to the sauce and would have topped the casserole with A LOT more. I like cheese.

It was delicious! Jack had three helpings and didn't even notice the brocolli. I had two and Kyle had a full plate. I had three pieces of frozen garlic bread that I popped in the oven, and a frozen cherry pie that I baked while we ate dinner. Most of the stuff I used was cheap or free thanks to coupons.

I was dreading dinner tonight, but it turned out to be pretty good!

Beach Bar Tomato Soup

We have a restaurant near us called the Beach Bar. They are famous for their amazing tomato soup.

You might be thinking to yourself, "I don't like tomato soup." Well, neither do I . . . with the exception of their soup. The thought of any other kind of tomato soup makes me a little nauseous. But this stuff is amazing.

How amazing is it? They don't have air conditioning at the Beach Bar, and on a 90 degree day, you will still find half of the customers eating bowls of this hot, tasty deliciousness.

I don't know if it's THE recipe, but it's pretty close, and might actually taste a little better than theirs (in my opinion).

BEACH BAR TOMATO SOUP
1 - 8 oz cream cheese
2 - cans of stewed tomatoes
1 - onion
1 qt - half and half *
6 cans - tomato soup (campbells, or any brand)
2 tsp - dry basil
1/2 tsp - garlic powder
1/2 stick of butter
1 tsp - pepper
crutons
mozzarella cheese

Finely chop the onion and sautee in the butter. I usually just do this in the bottom of the soup pot that I plan to use. Put the cream cheese and stewed tomatoes in a blender and puree until smooth. Mix all ingredients and simmer until the soup is hot. Then serve, or transfer to a crock pot. *You can substitute 1/2 the amount of half and half with milk, if you'd like.

OH! I almost forgot the most important part. When you serve it, top it with crutons and mozzarella cheese. Don't even try crackers. It's just not as good. And the mozzarella cheese is a nice touch as well.

I used to serve this soup with turkey sandwiches on pretzel bread, but I haven't found the time to make pretzel rolls in the last 20 months or so. Imagine that. Maybe I'll post that recipe another time. It's a nice addition to quesadillas or a salad, as well.