Easy Cheesy Manicotti

I bought a crap ton of cheese this week. The majority of it was for this recipe, but we were also out of normal cheese, like cheddar. I felt a little weird going around with all that cheese in my cart, but it was for a good reason!

And speaking of cheese, here's the stuff I did use for the recipe:

I was interested in this recipe for two reasons: One, you don't have to cook the manicotti shells prior to filling them. (Win!) Two, it also has instructions about how to freeze it for a later dinner. I'm all about things that can be frozen. I really don't take the time to make freezer meals as much as I should. Anyway, filling the shells was a bit more challenging than I had anticipated and I think it was because the hole I cut in the plastic bag was a bit too big. But I made it work.

And here's where I messed up. I didn't read the recipe fully and therefore did not cover the dish with foil before baking it. >.< I noticed this mistake when I took the manicotti out of the oven and the sauce had turned a much darker color than it should have.

I was pretty convinced the dish was going to be ruined at this point, but it actually was okay. The pasta was a bit hard, but the flavor was still great. I'm confident this would have been awesome if I had used the foil. Next time I will, for sure. I'm still giving this one 4 stars because the slight fail was entirely me being stupid, not any fault with the recipe. It is very easy and came together quicker than I thought it would.

Salsa Verde Honey Lime Chicken

I was really excited about this recipe. I almost think I use my crock pot more during the summer than I do in the winter. It's just great to not have to heat up the house and still have something delicious!

Crock pot recipes don't lend themselves to super interesting pictures as all you do is dump the ingredients in the crock pot and let it do its thing. Not that I'm complaining...another perk of crock pot recipes is how easy they are! Loving it. Anywho, here's everything before cooking:

After it cooked, I shredded it and put the chicken in tacos. And I really wanted to like this recipe. But unfortunately I didn't. I don't know specifically what it was, but I just wasn't a fan of how all the flavors came together. Husband thought it was too much citrus. For me it wasn't necessarily one flavor. The overall taste didn't do it for me, but it wasn't positively awful, and it was extremely simple to make. 2 stars.

Strawberry Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes

I love summer fruit. Especially strawberries and raspberries. These definitely sounded like a good use of strawberries and lemon. The link includes a recipe for strawberry syrup that I highly recommend making with the pancakes.

I made the syrup first and it was really easy. I put everything in a saucepan and then cooked it for a bit.

After cooking it so the sugar dissolves, I first tried using a potato masher to mash the strawberries and combine everything since I didn't want to get out my blender. But it didn't work that well so I still ended up using the blender. After blending, I poured the syrup back into the saucepan to keep warm and thicken.

The pancakes weren't difficult to make either. I started with the dry ingredients:

And added the wet.

The batter seemed a bit thick, so they didn't come out nicely round and pretty. This could have been because I cut the recipe in half due to less than wonderful strawberries. Anyway, after cooking they looked like this:

For some reason, the syrup never really thickened up. However, these were surprisingly good. And the two recipes need each other, if you ask me. The pancakes are a bit on the tart side without the syrup and the syrup is a bit on the sweet side on it's own. But they're a refreshing shake up from regular pancakes that I'll definitely make again. 4 stars.

Banana Cream Pie

I'm back! With pie. It's been a crazy few weeks with the miscarriage and then Husband's brother getting married last Friday. But now things are going back to normal. I've been craving banana cream pie since I was pregnant. And this was the recipe I'd printed out weeks ago but didn't get to try until now.

I made banana cream pie from a Betty Crocker recipe years ago which called for making your custard from scratch. None of that buying Jello pudding mix here, folks. It really does make a difference and it's not super difficult.

I started with sugar, cornstarch, and a touch of salt.

Then added the evaporated milk, eggs, and regular milk.

After that's all whisked, you stick that pot on the stove and cook it until it thickens. This will take a little while, but as Alton Brown says, "Your patience will be rewarded." (We've been watching Good Eats around here lately) As it cooks, it won't seem like much is happening, and then what feels like instantly you will go from that runny mixture to this:

Hello, beautiful.
Not difficult at all, just requires a little bit of patience. I should pause here and say I did not make my own pie crust. I bought a frozen one. Until I can get a new beater attachment, my mixer is out of commission.

I poured half of the filling into my crust then added the bananas.

After adding the rest of the filling, my pie was ready to go into the fridge to set.

I ended up letting it set overnight. The recipe says at least 4 hours and honestly, I kind of forgot about it after getting dinner and doing a little shopping last night. Oops. So today I added the whipped cream and of course had to give it a try. My first slice didn't come out pretty, as they never do, but this is some good stuff. I'm calling this my go to for banana cream pie. 4 stars.

Chicken Alfredo Baked Ziti

My plan was to test this recipe last week. But I started bleeding, and to make a long story short, I miscarried towards the end of last week. So today as I experimented and as I'm writing this post, I'm on Percocet. So I apologize if this seems a little off. I'm feeling a little off. Incense and peppermints anyone?

Anyway, this recipe was pretty easy. I made the sauce and I think I added the chicken broth a little too quickly in the process because it took some whisking to get it smooth, but it ended up just fine.

I know it looks like there's just pasta in this bowl, but there was also some shredded chicken in the bottom. And as you can see, I didn't use ziti-I used rotini. Why? Funsies. Any short pasta would be fine.

I decided to mix the sauce with the pasta and chicken in a separate bowl instead of the pan I used to cook the pasta.

Before I put the whole thing in the oven, it looked like this:

After baking, I got this loveliness:

Did I mention the whole thing smelled good? Because it smelled REALLY good. The alfredo sauce alone smelled awesome once it came together. The verdict? Two thumbs up from me and Husband. It's very simple, so you could easily jazz it up with some veggies or some different spices if you wanted to. It also came together surprisingly quicker than I expected, even with making the sauce from scratch. 4 stars, I'm really happy with this one.

Buttermilk Banana Blueberry Bread

When I buy bananas, I like to get them a little more on the green side. One, so that they'll last longer and two, I like them a bit more firm that most people. So, I ended up with overripe bananas on my counter this week and didn't want to just throw them out. With summer fruit abounding, I decided to try this recipe.

I started with butter and sugar in my mixer.

Then mixed in the eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.

After that I added my mashed up bananas.

Lastly I added the dry ingredients and mixed it all together.

I mixed in the blueberries by hand so as to not pop them.

I love mini loaf pans. Cute food is so much better.

After baking, I let them cool for a little bit in the pans before turning them onto a cooling rack. I didn't have any trouble getting the loaves out of the pans sprayed with a bit of Pam. While these were good, I feel like the banana bread recipe I usually use is better. You can find that here. So these were a fun change, but I think I'll stick with the recipe I already know and love. 2 stars.

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Soft pretzels...I've never met anyone who didn't like them. And I'll try any (well, almost any) recipe that doesn't require a special trip to the grocery store. I had planned on making these earlier this week, but it didn't happen. I was drawn to this recipe because it claimed to be fast and easy and not require a baking soda bath. I learned from my pretzel bowl adventure that baking soda baths often cause pretzels to lose their shape so I didn't really want to do that again.

I started out with yeast, water, sugar, and salt.

Then I added the flour, and with 3 cups it looked like this:

I added about another 3/4 cup of flour to make the dough less sticky. It was very difficult to stir in with just a wooden spoon. The recipe specified using a spoon instead of a mixer, I don't know why. Eventually I gave up and just tried to mix the rest of the flour in by hand.

After kneading the dough, it looked like this:

I decided to try to make 8 pretzels. Shaping them was a bit harder than I expected, but not that hard.

You can tell I got better at shaping them as I went along.

Instead of dunking each pretzel in the egg wash, I decided to just brush them with egg. I didn't have coarse salt, so I just sprinkled on regular table salt. It was a bit hard to tell how much I had gotten on each one and I didn't want to over salt them-I feel like they ended up a bit under salted but oh well.

After baking and going under the broiler, they looked like this:

They puffed up a ton! The picture doesn't show it that well, but they are super fluffy. Are they as good as the ones you get at the mall or baseball games? No. But they're pretty good for how quickly they come together. They're more bready, and it could be because I didn't do the baking soda bath. That's what creates the more....crusty? exterior we're used to. Anyway, I'll probably hang onto the recipe, Husband thought I should and they're really not terrible. But I wouldn't call them a replacement for Auntie Annie's either. I'll give them 3 stars.