The Sanborns

Today’s recipe hails from my best friend, Trina. I think she originally got it from some magazine, I’m not quite sure. She calls it a cookie base, meaning you can add whatever combo of candy to it you want. 

Today we’re making chocolate chip cookies with heath toffee bits in them. It’s GOOD!

Let’s start with the ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups of flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 package of instant vanilla pudding mix
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Today I am going to share with you Gray’s favorite meal. This recipe is originally from my friend Justin Adams’s family. I’m not sure where it came from before then, but there are a lot of similiar recipes on the internet. 

Here are some of the characters:

The Complete Cast:

• 1 cooked, de-boned chicken
• 1 small sour cream (80z.)
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1/4 cup of milk
• salt & pepper
• Ritz crackers (60)
• 1 stick of butter
• Poppy Seeds (of course)

I usually fill a stockpot with water and place the chicken inside to boil for about an hour. Be sure to rotate the chicken every fifteen or so minutes so it will not stick. Also, check the chicken before you remove it to make sure it has cooked.

While the chicken is cooking I usually work on the ritz cracker topping. I crush the ritz crackers until they look something like this:

Put this aside and once the chicken is done, it’s time to de-bone.

I use a 8×8 pan but you can double the recipe for 9×13.

Once you’ve placed the chicken in the pan, it’s time to pour on some ingredients. 

Pour over chicken In order:

1. sour cream
2. cream of chicken soup
3. cup of milk
4. salt and pepper

Once that is poured, pour and toss some poppy seeds on top… 

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

It’s yummy and tasty!

So, things are about to get a little messy around here. I realized having several blogs is really time consuming and I never update the others. So, I’m importing the blogs into this blog.

There may be some confusion until I get it all sorted out.

It’s been a month, crazy! As I was making spaghetti the other night, I thought, “Why not put it on the cooking blog?”

Here’s some of the cast. I used whatever noodles are available, these were from my mom. Gray insisted on Prego sauce, but we use any sauce we like at the time. I also use 1lb of ground beef… it makes it taste yummy!

I start off by boiling the water, since that takes forever… and then I moved on to cooking the ground beef.

Once the ground beef is cooked, we drain it.

And put it back in the pan and pour the sauce over it. Turn the heat down to low for this and cover it with a lid until the noodles are ready.

Once the water is boiling, add your desired amount of noodles! My box said to cook the noodles for about 10 minutes.

I added some Oregano to the noodles… yummy.

Once the noodles are finished, drain them as well.

And that’s it! Viola, spaghetti!

This recipe is from Allrecipes

INGREDIENTS

• 1 individual package chocolate graham crackers, crushed
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

This recipes hails from Allrecipe.com

INGREDIENTS

• 1/3 cup Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon steak sauce
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the grill for medium heat.
2. In a shallow bowl, mix the mustard, honey, mayonnaise, and steak sauce. Set aside a small amount of the honey mustard sauce for basting, and dip the chicken into the remaining sauce to coat.

Prep: 20 minutes

Cook: 20 minutes (or less)

Makes: 4 servings

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
4 slices prosciutto or cooked ham
4 slices Swiss cheese (3 ounces)
1 tablespoon butter or margarine

1. Place a chicken breast half between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Using the flat side of a meat mallet, pound meat lightly into a rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. Remove plastic wrap. Repeat with remaining chicken.

2. Place a slice of prosciutto/ham and a slice of cheese on each chicken piece. Fold in the bottom and sides; roll up and secure with a wooden toothpick.

3. In a 10-inch skillet, cook rolls in hot butter over medium-low heat for 20-25 minutes or until no longer pink (170 degrees F), turning to brown evenly. To serve, remove toothpicks.

When I did this, I found that after a while I could remove toothpicks and the chicken held together. This made it easier to cook.

I’ve wanted a cooking blog for a while now. I’ve recently had the time to put one together. So expect to see many recipes and other tidbits to come!

Chicken Cordon BleuOriginally uploaded by becsaboo

It’s been a few days since my last post. We’ve been dealing with the truck acting up a bit and on Wednesday we’re taking it in to get looked at. I’m hoping it’s fixed by this weekend because I’d like to go to a wedding on Saturday, if we can afford gas, that is.

I’ve been enjoying trying new recipes and here is one from my cookbook. Gray and I both enjoy chicken cordon bleu and I always wondered how it was made. The picture shows one of my attempts, the insides are a little open because the piece of chicken that I used was a bit small.

Prep: 20 minutesCook: 20 minutes (or less)

Makes: 4 servings4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
4 slices prosciutto or cooked ham

4 slices Swiss cheese (3 ounces)
1 tablespoon butter or margarine

1. Place a chicken breast half between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Using the flat side of a meat mallet, pound meat lightly into a rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. Remove plastic wrap. Repeat with remaining chicken.

2. Place a slice of prosciutto/ham and a slice of cheese on each chicken piece. Fold in the bottom and sides; roll up and secure with a wooden toothpick.

3. In a 10-inch skillet, cook rolls in hot butter over medium-low heat for 20-25 minutes or until no longer pink (170 degrees F), turning to brown evenly. To serve, remove toothpicks.When I did this, I found that after a while I could remove toothpicks and the chicken held together. This made it easier to cook.

It was yummy and Gray enjoyed it. I recommend using bigger pieces of chicken or having a few side as this is not going to fill you up as a big chicken cordon bleu would.

Yummy Potatoes

Originally uploaded by becsaboo

Now, although my maiden name was Cook, I didn’t enjoy cooking until high school and even then, it was more of a last minute effort if I was starving. At college I didn’t have a proper kitchen to cook in, except the year I lived in Beasley so I was forced to eat off my free lunch plan as a RA and starve the other years. Kidding, mostly.

When I moved in to an apartment this past fall, I suddenly realized, “I’m getting married in 9 months, I should start cooking so I’m used to it by then.” So I began to cook here and there. It was hard to do so because I had a very busy fall schedule. Cooking and I had a few rough patches, until January came. Having no job and being frustrated with trying to find one, I took up cooking.

First it was the spices, Trina introduced me to the basics and then suddenly, I was opened to a whole new world. I was trying new recipes, cooking a lot and then there was Pampered Chef. I went to a party, got a new recipe and a lovely measuring cup that is my best friend.

Now I am a frequenter to allrecipes.com, an amazing resource and a few cooking blogs. The picture is from the other night when I cooked a new recipe, hot crush potatoes from thepioneeerwoman.com. Gray said it was one of the best meals I’ve made yet. He also loves the cheesecake chews I made yesterday.

So now I really enjoy cooking and baking foods, especially when my husband enjoys them, which isn’t really that hard. I was blessed to get an awesome cookbook as a wedding present and I’ve subscribed to a cooking magazine. I think cooking is highly understated.

I should have been a professional cook, but I’ll settle for being Gray’s.