Cheesy Quinoa

This week's recipe (found here) happened mainly because I was looking for something I already had the ingredients for in my pantry. I don't normally keep quinoa on hand, I'm definitely not a health food nut, but I had it leftover from last week. Honestly I wanted to try a different recipe a bit more, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what happened to my 8x8 baking dish. It's so strange.
Anyway, my love of mac and cheese isn't a secret. And Husband did actually say something about trying some form of cheesy quinoa last week. So I gave it a shot. The recipe is very simple. This is not a pretty recipe, at any point in cooking.

One word describes this recipe in my mind: bland. I even used more cheese than the recipe calls for (2 cups), because there is no such thing as too much cheese. I could smell the cheese as I mixed it, and pulled it out of the oven, but dang if I couldn't taste it. :( But the weird thing is it wasn't necessarily bad. I think it could have potential with LOTS more flavor added somehow. And, obviously, more cheese. I know this was supposed to be a light recipe, but...come on. Husband gives it 3 stars, I give it 2.

Quinoa Chicken Parmesan

I love chicken parmesan. I've never tried quinoa, inside or outside of my own kitchen. But with it's sudden popularity for being ridiculously healthy, I decided I would give it a whirl. The recipe I used can be found here. For starters, I didn't even know there are different kinds of quinoa. There was white quinoa, traditional quinoa, and quinoa with some different flavorings thrown in. I decided to buy the traditional.

First, I cooked the quinoa. I babysat it, since I've never made it before and really wasn't sure of what I was doing. There are so many tutorials about how to cook quinoa online, that I was convinced there was going to be some sort of learning curve. But honestly, it's no more difficult than cooking rice.

The recipe calls for two chicken breasts cut in half crosswise, but I totally mutilated one in the process of cutting it, so I ended up with three pieces of chicken instead of four.

I heard once that if you're not making a mess, you're not cooking. Well, this recipe is definitely cooking. Evidenced by my dredging set up and the fact that quinoa is like the glitter of dinner ingredients. If it's wet and uncooked, it sticks to everything. If it's cooked, it still sticks to everything. You've been warned.

I got my pieces of chicken coated and stuck them in the oven. The recipe says to bake the chicken pieces for 20-25 minutes, I baked mine for 20. I pulled them out and sprinkled some mozzarella on the top of each one. I didn't measure because there's no such thing as too much cheese in my book. Also, I forgot the parmesan. Thought we had some, but it turns out we didn't. Oops. I baked them for another five minutes, and they came out looking like this:

They smelled amazing. Seriously. I did things a little differently here. Rather than putting sauce and cheese on top of the breasts and putting them back in the oven, I only did the cheese and put marinara on the plates, and placed the chicken on top. I also sprinkled some dried basil on top rather than the chiffonade of fresh basil. Comme ça:

It was really good. Not as good as an Italian restaurant, but still really good. I was hoping for a little bit more from them, but they definitely weren't a failure. Husband gives 4 stars, I give 3.

Chipotle Sweet Pulled Pork

It's another crock pot recipe! Gotta love it. There's a lot of copycat recipes for Cafe Rio's sweet pork floating around, and I can't say I'm surprised. It's glorious. This recipe supposedly started out as one, but she decided all the copycat recipes out there lacked spice. But you can read all that on her blog, I'll just tell you how it went when I tried the recipe out for myself.
My piece of pork wasn't quite 2.5 pounds, it was closer to 2, but the selection at my local Walmart was somewhat lacking. Either way, it worked out just fine. The recipe seems complicated at first, but it's actually quite simple.

Marinate your pork.

Throw it in the crockpot.

Let your pork hang out in the crockpot and do it's thing. The recipe said for 6-8 hours, I did around 6. Shred the pork and add the rest of your ingredients. Let it hang out a bit longer. You'll end up with something like this:

I decided to put it in a quesadilla, Husband had the pork in a salad. Either way, it's definitely a winner winner pork dinner. 4 stars from both of us.

I realize my food photography skills are somewhat lacking, but it definitely tasted better than it looks.

Coconut Chicken Curry

"It's hot here at night, lonely black and quiet, on a hot summer night..." (Name that song! I'll put the answer at the end of this post.) It's been really hot here lately. So, I decided to try this recipe and bust out the crock pot. It sounded really easy and I was willing to give making Indian food a try. I've never made Indian food, heck, I've never even gone out to an Indian restaurant. But it sounded good so I decided to be adventurous. Here's the cast of characters minus the chicken and garlic.

I forgot the garlic-I'm not a fan of garlic so I didn't want to buy a whole bulb, or a big jar of minced garlic. And then I got distracted at the grocery store looking for fancy spices. Sue me.
Honestly I can't say if you can find curry powder and garam masala at your standard grocery store, I went to an organic market near our apartment since their produce is awesome and prices are great too. But I'm betting you can with how large the ethnic food sections of grocery stores have gotten.
We don't have a food processor, so I just used my Ninja blender. I love that thing and it worked fine. I know I sang the praises of kitchen scissors for cutting chicken into chunks in an earlier post, but since this recipe calls for bigger chunks, a big 'ol knife worked just fine.

 Throw the chicken and sauce into the crock pot and walk away.

 Having a curious little kitchen buddy helps.

6 Hours Later....

This is what I ended up with.

I don't know what I expected, but this wasn't it. Husband, who has actually had Indian food before liked it and said it wasn't too bad. Not amazing, but not terrible. Personally, I thought it was too oniony and so I wasn't a fan. And I didn't taste any coconut, which disappointed me. So honestly, I don't really think this one was much of a winner. Husband gives it 3 stars, I give it 2.

Oh, and the song I quoted at the start of this post was Hot In The City by Billy Idol. ;)

Taco Cornbread Pie

About a month or so ago, I rediscovered my love of cornbread. And tacos are a fairly common dinner occurrence around here, so when I saw this recipe, I knew I should give it a try. I ad libbed this recipe quite a bit from the original. I used ground turkey simply because it's cheaper and really I can't tell the difference.

 Here's my seasoned and drained meat. This was my first time using my cast iron skillet, and for the most part it was awesome!! Love love. However, trying to tilt it one handed to drain the fat is really difficult. Cast iron is heavy! But I made it work. We had a tiny bit, like maybe 1/8 of a cup, of corn salsa hanging out in the fridge, so I dumped that in and mixed it into the meat. Then I dumped some salsa on top of the meat, I just eyeballed it.

Hooray for the Guy Fieri salsa! Still my favorite. Next I put some grated cheese on top, again, no measuring. I probably could have grated a little bit more, but meh.

And my hand looks really weird from this angle. Alien hand....Husband mixed up the cornbread for me, and I attempted to spread it on top. This was a little tricky, but ultimately it spread out a bit and covered everything.

After realizing I forgot to move the top oven rack back to it's normal spot from when I last used the broiler, I put the whole thing in the oven. After it was done, I got this:

Okay, so it's not a very photogenic dinner. But oh man was it tasty! Husband decided to try it with tortilla chips and that was also a good idea. It was a good way to eat some of the extra taco meat. We both definitely give this 4 stars. Next time I may add in a small can of corn, since we liked the little bit of corn from the leftover salsa. I'd say this recipe is definitely open to interpretation so do what sounds good and it'll be awesome!!

Brownie S'mores Trifle

I've kind of fallen off the wagon of trying a new recipe once a week. I really don't have a good reason for this, but I plan to start up again this week! In the meantime, this is the dessert I'm taking to a Father's Day BBQ with my in-laws later this afternoon. It's super super easy and delicious!! You should definitely give it a try.

Pillsbury Mango Cookie Mix

Today I tried Pillsbury's mango cookie mix. It was on sale at the grocery store a little while ago, so I figured why not. I didn't buy the frosting that goes with though, because I wasn't sure if the cookies would be any good and canned frosting usually isn't that great. At least to me.

Of course, it was super easy. Add a stick of butter and an egg to the cookie mix, mix, and bake. And not too surprisingly, they didn't come out looking exactly like the picture. Mine were super flat. The box also says you get three dozen cookies out of it, but I only got two. Either way though, they're not bad for a quick and different treat.