Chicken Taquitos

I found this recipe at the Pioneer Woman's new(ish) recipe sharing site, Tasty Kitchen.

I thought they were really good, went together in a snap, and clean up wasn't too bad either.

Just roll them and line them up on the tray and they're ready to go.

Even the picky boy liked them!

Here's the recipe for ya:

• 1 pound Shredded Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast
• 2 jars Premade Salsa (use The Smaller Jars)
• 2 cups Shredded Cheese (mozzarella Is Good—so Is The Mexican Blend)
• 24 whole 6" Corn Tortillas
• 2 cans Chicken Stock/broth
• 1 cup Water (as Needed To Cover Chicken)
• 1 cup Vegetable Oil

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Bring chicken stock/broth to a boil in a large sauce pan or dutch oven. (Use a pan large enough so that the chicken is covered by broth and water.) Add chicken to broth, then add enough of the water to cover the chicken while it simmers.

When chicken is cooked through, remove from heat, drain liquid and let cool for 20 minutes.

While the chicken cools, combine the salsa and cheese in a large bowl. Once the chicken is cooled, shred with food processor (or my method—two forks, two hands!). Add chicken to cheese/salsa mixture and stir to combine.

In a small (6″–8″) pan, heat oil to medium/medium-high. Individually place the corn tortillas in the oil for a few seconds on each side and place on paper towels to dry. Repeat with remaining tortillas until they’re complete.

On a baking tray, spoon 2-3 tbsp of the chicken mixture inside the tortillas and roll. Place seam-side down on a pregreased (Pam!) baking tray. Continue until all are rolled.

Bake for 10–15 minutes until the tops of the taquitos are golden brown. Let cool for 10 minutes. Serve and ENJOY!

Peanut Butter Cookies

I used to think I didn't really like just plain old peanut butter cookies. I've never hated them by any means. But they just didn't give me the warm fuzzies.

But lately, peanut butter and I have been on pretty friendly terms. Heck, sometimes it's even beyond friendly, if ya know what I mean.

If it wasn't for my guilt in two timing my long time love, chocolate, me and pb might even go steady. Of course I have no objections to the three of us just hanging out sometime.

I promise I haven't been drinking.

I saw these cookies at Ice Cream Before Dinner (which is a blog title I can truly respect).

These are really easy to throw together, and make nice soft cookies that go great with a big tall glass of cold milk. Or whatever your beverage of choice may be.

And seriously, I like the fork marks peanut butter cookies always have in them. But when was it decided that it's just something you do? Cause they always seem to have them.

That's the kind of questions that keep me awake at night.

The Night the Lights Went Out in Phoenix or Why I Made Salsa at Midnight

I had such a nice meal planned for yesterday evening. Was gonna have tostadas with all the

trimmings and make some salsa, which is something I've never made before.

When BAM! The stinkin' electricity goes off on my whole street. I have no idea why, it wasn't storming.

Anyway, let me tell you, that totally ruined my supper plans! As we sweltered away in our hot box of a house (and later went to grandma's) dinner quickly changed from tostadas to Otter Pops and frozen bananas on a stick.

Everything got back to normal later in the evening. We got back home and got the kids to bed. But I was still thinking about my little veggies waiting for me to chop them all up and turn them into salsa.

So there I was, slicing and dicing way past my bedtime on a school night. (I followed the recipe at Fun Foods on a Budget) I supposed this might be a bit more on the Pico de Gallo order, but either way I liked it. Could have used a bit more spice, I'm always afraid to throw in too much jalapeno since I'm a huge weenie.

I took it to work to share with my co-workers just to have my Mexican friends look at me and shake their heads in shame.

Coffeebreak Cookie Bars

From Hershey's Kitchens. Have you ever visited their site? Oh my....yummy stuff they got going on there.

(click their link for recipe)

You know things are going to be okay when you start with 2 of these big guys and chop them up to smithereens.

The recipe actually said to use six 1.55 oz bars, but I did a little math and decided this would be the cheaper way to go, and pretty much the same amount of chocolate. Boy did my brain hurt after trying to do multiplication without a calculator or even a piece of paper in the middle of the store.

They also said to use a "vanilla drizzle" to which I said "PFFT!" We're going chocolate all the way with this thing.

Ah, perfect end of the day snack. Except for the part where I sucked a piece of coconut down my trachea.

Jalapeno Popper Dip

Pretty tired tonight so I'll get right to the point. But definitely want to get this out to you because it's pretty important that you try it this very weekend. See how I'm always thinking of you!

Found this recipe some time back at Closet Cooking. Just click the link for Kevin's recipe.

A few things I did different:

*used 2 pkgs of cream cheese instead of just 1 because I was taking it to work

*used less mayo, about 1/4 cup

*added a handful of bacon bits (oh yeah!)

*probably used twice as much shredded cheese

It was pretty darned good. I think the dip gets a little hotter throughout the day as the flavor of the peppers kinda spreads throughout the cream cheese mixture.

We scarfed it down like a bunch of wild javelinas.

Multi-Inspired Meal

Is multi-inspired a word? I'm not sure so let's just carry on like it really is.

The T-bones were inspired by the fact that they were on sale at Fry's. To "kick 'em up a notch" as Emeril would say, I served them with a garlic lime butter sauce I found at Momtourage. Sounded like an unlikely pairing but it really works!

The twice baked potatoes came from Pioneer Woman. They're awesome...they're full of bacon, cheese, and butter. How can they not be?

I saw this oven roasted corn on the cob at Bread & Butter. (actually it's Bread plus Butter but I can't figure out how to make the plus sign on my keyboard)

By the way, that garlic lime butter is pretty darn good on the corn too.

A little girl I know is having a birthday tomorrow (but we had her party yesterday). How about that tiara...I put that on her head at Picnik.

Thank you Mara for being a sweet daughter, and for trying to keep me on my toes for the past 9 years!

P.S. I hope I don't get fined for every time I used the word butter in this post. BUTTER!

Back to School Breadsticks

Well, the kiddies are back in school again. We're tyring to get back into a routine. My favorite part of the school routine is me exclaiming everyday when I look in their backpacks "How many trees did they kill to send all this crap home today?!" Seriously. They send a lot of papers home. Daily. I have been known to get tired of looking through it and throwing away things that I wasn't supposed to. Shocking, I know.

Back to school means quick meals, and not much is quicker than spaghetti. And the kids would both rather have spaghetti than just about anything else. But we needed something to go with it that didn't involve me having to go inside a store.

So I cruised around the blog-o-sphere and found the recipe for these breadsticks at Real Mom Kitchen. They looked easy enough so I gave them a go.

I had to make a substitution because I didn't have any powdered milk. Instead I used 1/4 cup regular milk. Which of course made the dough a little wetter, so I just added more flour till if felt right. I also used a combo of regular flour and whole wheat flour. See, they're good for you!

I put mine in a regular cake pan, but it might be better to use a sheet-type pan to get flatter breadstickier shaped breadsticks. I think it might be good to put some garlic salt right in the dough for more flavor through out. Click on the Real Mom Kitchen link above for the whole recipe.

Here's the back to school boy. I really don't know why he's frowning at me like that.

And the back to school girl.

Cupcakes and Pizza

I saw these little cupcakes that look like corn on the cob in a magazine last summer and thought they were the cutest things. The girl had a friend over and so it seemed like a good time to make cupcakes and do some decorating.

Below are the girls working hard on their creations, and what they came up with.

We also had "do-it-yourself" pizza. I used the same recipe for crust from when I made skillet pizza. Sans the skillet.

Actually, this one was one of the best pizzas I've had in a long time. And I've been eating a lot of pizza!

Potatoes Anna

They're supposed to look something like this:

photo from martha stewart.com

In my world, they look more like this:

In the scheme of things, I don't really care. Who is this Anna person anyway, standing around all smug because her potatoes all stay together when she takes them out of the pan. I'm pretty sure we'd never be friends anyway.

This particular (yet delicious) kitchen flop is loosely based on a recipe I found in Cooking Light. I seriously doubt it was that light to start with, and I made it even less light by adding bacon and cheese. Basically it's just a layering of thinly sliced potatoes, with salt, pepper, bacon, and cheese in between the layers. It's baked covered at 450 for 20 minutes, then uncovered for 25.

I think to make the whole thing be cohesive you are supposed to do a lot of pressing down on it, maybe even put another heavy skillet on top.

Obviously, I'm no expert.