Pinterest Picks 10

Squash Casserole
There was a near disaster with this one when I misread the recipe to say 6 squash and zucchini rather than (what it actually says) 6 cups of squash and zucchini. For the record, 1 regular sized squash or zucchini yields about 2 cups of chopped up squash or zucchini. You're welcome. :) Anyway, this turned out well. We liked it, the baby LOVED it, so it was a win-win.

Healthy Chicken Tortilla Casserole
So here's the deal...this is basically a Mexican chicken casserole but it calls for corn tortillas instead of tortilla chips. I think corn tortillas are gag worthy, so I was going to just toast some flour tortillas. But I didn't have time for that nonsense, so I tried just putting some flour tortillas in it. Slimy slimy slimy. So basically the flavor was fine, but the texture was gross. Maybe some foods just aren't meant to be healthy.

Pollo Fundido
I had never used Mexican Dipping Cheese before, and I know it's "processed cheese food", but dang if I don't like some processed cheese food. In an effort to save cooking time, I cut the chicken breasts into fajita sized pieces with kitchen shears. Delicious on a tortilla with the cheese and some Mexican rice. Yum!

Orzo with Parmesan and Basil
This was my first time making orzo. Weird considering how much I love pasta. Anyway, I didn't have enough basil, so this didn't have as much flavor as I would have wanted, but it was still good and the baby is a big fan. (But what food is he not a fan of?!)

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Pinterest Picks 9

Chicken and Cheese Lasagna Rollups (kinda!)
I cheated. I had leftover homemade meat sauce, so I didn't want to put chicken in these. Instead I just combined cottage cheese and Parmesan cheese with salt, pepper, and garlic powder to make the filling, spread it on the lasagna noodles and rolled them up on top of the sauce. I topped it with a little mozarella and parmesan (the picture is pre-topping). It ends up tasting much like stuffed shells or something like that. I may try to make my homemade sauce without meat sometime and try the chicken version, but I bet the chicken version would be even better with alfredo sauce!

Greek Marinated Chicken
This turned out well, but the flavor wasn't as strong as I was expecting based on the yummy smell. I think it would be ever better with a little dill mixed in.

Crushed Hot Potatoes
I usually don't like potatoes with skins, but these were so good! My husband said they're his new favorite way to have potatoes. I used coarse sea salt, coarsely ground black pepper, and oregano. Yummy! Will definitely make these again.

Pesto Ranch Crock Pot Chicken
I'm a sucker for anything with pesto. This was no exception. I liked the sauce so much that I froze it after I took the cooked chicken out of it. I think I might make a pasta sauce from it in the near future.

Tried and True Recipe Board

Pinterest Picks 8

I'm about ready to find another "WOW!" recipe, so if you run across any, let me know! The ones I've tried lately could all be really good with a little tweaking.


Ultimate Chicken Fingers
I hate it when the link on Pinterest doesn't go back to the recipe! This link seems to be from a blog that doesn't exist anymore, so if you know the actual recipe, let me know. I just guessed based on the ingredients listed, and it was kind of blah. I'm sure with the right ratios of ingredients, it would be closer to "ultimate" like the title suggests.


Baked Zucchini Sticks
I was worried that these would be mushy like the zucchini "crisps" I had tried before, but the texture of these is actually crispy on the outside and not mushy on the outside. The cayenne pepper gives them a little kick and The Baby Fish gobbled them up.


Best Asparagus in Under 10 Minutes
The recipe calls for both shredded and grated Parmesan cheese. I thought I had both, but I only had grated. Basically the cheese clumped up and fell off the asparagus, but that's not the recipe's fault. I would definitely try this again and err on the side of under cooking it so that I could cook it longer during the "cheese melting" portion of the program.

Quinoa Burgers
This recipe makes a TON of food, so I would suggest maybe halving it if you aren't feeding a lot of people. I made the whole amount and froze the patties individually so that I can take them out and feed them to The Bottomless Pit Baby. Seriously, I thought the grocery bills were supposed to start rolling in when he was a teenager, but I didn't expect an infant to eat so much! Anyway, these are a good source of protein, and he doesn't seem to mind them as leftovers.


Tried and True Recipe Board


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Pinterest Picks 7

Spicy Thai Basil Chicken


This was so good that I took the pic above and texted my husband to tell him to come home soon because the chicken was disappearing fast. This was my first time using chile paste, and I actually expected the chicken to turn out much more spicy than it did. It was mostly sweet with a little spice.

Then I got on a salsa kick.

First I made Salsa #1
I could not stop eating it. This makes a pretty small batch, so I will double it next time.

Then I made Salsa #2
This makes a HUGE batch. I ran out of chips and I was sad. Unfortunately, I tried to blend it all at once, and the garlic didn't get chopped up as much as I would have liked. Still good though!

Healthy Penne Alla Vodka
I have formed the opinion that Penne Alla Vodka should not be healthy. Also, this recipe has no mention of vodka except in the name of the recipe. Probably because you get the tangy taste from the Greek yogurt and don't really need it. I added some anyway. I definitely prefer the unhealthy Pioneer Woman version. :)

All of the recipes I try end up on my Tried and True Recipes board. Feel free to follow.

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Pinterest Picks 6

Pesto Chicken Stuffed Shells
There's just something about pesto + chicken that makes me happy. These were very rich, so I think I might add more chicken to it in the future to offset some of the richness of the cream cheese mixture.


Cheesy Garlic Cauliflower Sticks You've seen the pins. Pins that try to trick you into thinking that cauliflower can somehow be a substitute for bread. It's a lie, y'all. Cauliflower != bread. I would go so far as to say cauliflower < bread. Really, the smell of the cauliflower cooking doomed this recipe for me. After I had mixed the garlic into it, it was a little more manageable, but eww that cauliflower smell. It doesn't use a whole head of cauliflower, so I fed the rest of it to the baby and he loved it for some reason. My husband loved these "cheese sticks", but he didn't have to smell the cauliflower cooking. :) Zucchini Parmesan Crisps OK so the word "crisps" is up for interpretation on this one. I'm sure it was user error, but the only thing crisp was the browned parmesan cheese. Even so, they had the flavor of skillet fried potatoes, so I ate them. :) If anyone has tips on how to make them actually be crispy, they would be fantastic and I would like to hear all about it.



Baked Parmesan Paprika Chicken Ah the smell of butter in the oven. I mean...ah the smell of chicken in the oven. Seriously though, this smelled great cooking, was simple and quick to prep, and tasted great.

Pinterest Picks 5

Asparagus Gratin
This looks fairly impressive and it was a big hit with my husband, but I didn't love it as much as I expected. Probably because it required a decent amount of prep work and I'm just not that into prep work. I think it's best saved for special meals. All in all, I like this asparagus recipe better.

Mexican Rice I actually love Mexican Rice, but I had never tried to make it until I ran into this recipe. As it turns out, it's really quick and easy. I might try the same recipe with quinoa just to see how I like it.

Baked Chimichangas. The link takes you to my inspiration for trying this, but I actually kind of marched to the beat of my own drum on this one. I'll paste my own version below. My husband said they're the best chimichangas he's ever had and it's a huge bonus that they're not deep fried!

1 lb shredded and seasoned chicken (I cooked two chicken breasts in the crock pot with about 1/2 a packet of dry ranch and probably the equivalent of 1 packet of dry taco seasoning, plus about 1/2 cup of chicken broth. In the future I will add about 6 oz of cream cheese to the crock pot to keep from having to mix it together later.)


about 6 oz cream cheese (could use less and could use the 1/3 less fat kind)


cheddar cheese


tortillas


cooking spray


Cook the chicken and combine with cream cheese and cheddar cheese, spoon it out on a tortilla and fold it up, placing it seam side down on a wire rack (I put a wire rack on top of a cookie sheet to catch any melty cheese). Spray the top of the tortilla with a small bit of cooking spray.


Cook at 350 for about 15 minutes, flip the chimis, spray tops with cooking spray, and cook another 15 minutes.

I made some steak ones too using cut up steak that my husband grilled the day before. Just sprinkled the steak strips with dry ranch, taco seasoning, mixed in the other 2 oz of cream cheese and some cheddar cheese and folded them up.


I made a dipping sauce with sour cream + Frank's Red Hot.

Pinterest Picks 4

S'mores Bars!
I love it when I see something on Pinterest that looks delicious and I can go straight to the pantry and make it. It's like destiny! These are messy, gooey, yummy deliciousness!

Sour Cream Chicken Bake
This only has a few ingredients, takes almost no prep time, and you could make enough to feed a crowd easily. The taste is similar to poppy seed chicken, but with less prep time. I've made it twice now and I will say that using the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix as a topping really is better than using regular bread crumbs.

Honey Lime Chicken Skewers The pin doesn't take you to where the recipe originated, so if anyone knows who owns this recipe, please let me know so I can update the pin. We have made this twice and the second time I made extra just so we could have leftovers. It's that good! I marinate the chicken all day so that it really soaks up the flavors.

As an aside, was I the last to know about these nifty herbs that come in a tube? They last a long time in the fridge as opposed to buying the little packet of fresh herbs. I used the cilantro kind for the chicken skewers. It did not have a strong flavor, but I can't keep an herb plant alive to save my life and when I buy the little packets of fresh herbs they always go bad before I use them all.

Pinterest Picks 3

Here are our newest experiments:

Crockpot Lemon Chicken
What's not to love about a recipe with a total of 4 ingredients that's cooked in a crockpot? This is one of those pins that drives me crazy...if you click it, it doesn't take you where you're expecting to go. However, it's kind of hard to mess up and the description gives you enough info to make the recipe without having an actual recipe. I wish I had made extra so we could have had leftovers!

Creamy Cheesy Potatoes
There are so many good things in this recipe! Cheese! Cream Cheese! Sour Cream! I mean how can you go wrong? The recipe says to use 6 potatoes. I only had 5, but they were on the large side and I think it was maybe one too many potatoes (my preference is to have more sauce). It turned out well, but I think in the future I would skip using real garlic and use garlic powder instead. I don't like the weird crunch that garlic has when the rest of the dish is kind of smushy. What made this dish even better was adding a little ranch dressing to it. Yum!

I also decided to use the homemade cream of chicken soup recipe from the same source as the Creamy Cheesy Potatoes recipe. I went ahead and pinned it here:

Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup
This was so easy and the final product looked and smelled just like I would expect of the condensed version you buy in a can, but without the weird mystery ingredients. I don't always have chicken broth on hand, so that's the only thing that would keep me from just making my own from now on.

Crescent Roll Casserole
It really sounded like a good idea, but we didn't like the texture of the finished product. It's a good idea in theory, but the rolls stayed gooey from cooking in the soup.

One Pot Mac & Cheese
I have made this several times and it's so easy and only dirties up one pot! I usually add a little browned hamburger meat to it and it's like Hamburger Helper, but way better! This time, my helper accidentally added a TABLESPOON of salt instead of a TEASPOON. Whoops! :) I wouldn't suggest doing that.

These (and all of my previous pinterest trials) are saved here: Tried and True Recipes

Linking up here:

Homemaking Party at Hope in Every Season

Pinterest Picks 2

Here are a couple of Pinterest things we've tried recently.

Cream Cheese Filled Chicken

I was a little skeptical of the dredging on this one because it says to dip it in flour, then egg, then corn flake crumbs. I thought the egg would wash off the flour, but actually I think it made the rolled up chicken hold together better. I didn't have a lot of problem with the cream cheese mixture oozing out of the chicken, so I would call that a victory.

It was pretty good. The prep time is minimal, and that always makes me happy! I used pressed garlic instead of garlic salt, and I think maybe I didn't add enough salt to make up for it, but you live and you learn.

Soft and Chewy Springtime Blondies
Do you know of my Cadbury Mini Egg addiction? Well when I saw a dessert that incorporated those little pieces of heaven, I knew right away it would be a winner. I even let a bag of Mini Eggs languish on my kitchen counter for a week or so because I wanted to try this. Well, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I ate the eggs, folks. I still wanted to try the recipe though, so we made it with chocolate chips instead. I'm always skeptical of brownie/blondie recipes because I don't like for them to be cake-like. If it's not chewy, it's not a brownie/blondie. The texture of these are just right and the possibilities are endless as far as what you can mix into them. I have a feeling that we will make lots of variations of these!

What have you tried lately?

Linking here: Hope in Every Season
Make, Bake, Create

This Week's Pinterest Picks

I have a slight addiction to Pinterest. I use it mostly to find recipes to help me get out of the recipe rut, but sometimes I find other things of interest. Mostly I just pin them and never look at them again, but I try to find a couple of things per week to actually try.

Here are some things I've tried recently.

Borax Ant Trap Recipe

It's suddenly like I'm living in a bad 80's movie starring a legion of nasty old ants. My favorite ant killer is Terro Liquid Ant Bait, but it's not always easy to find. The active ingredient in it is Borax. I like it because it's a natural substance and though you wouldn't want to drink the stuff, it's not a pesticide, so it's not as harmful as regular ant killers. Plus, it works REALLY well.

Anyway, my sweet husband searched the world over for it on his way home from work and couldn't find it, so I told him to just grab some Borax so I could make my own.

I put it out last night and when I checked the first trap, I thought it was a flop. My mistake may have been labeling it as ant bait. Maybe ants can read?




Anyway, then I checked the other one and BINGO!



The website says it works overnight. I think that's a bit of a stretch. Even the Terro kind takes a few days to get rid of all of the ants. When I refill it, I will put less liquid in the trap. I want them to drink it and take it home with them, not drown in it. The website says to soak it up on cotton balls, but I didn't have any.

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Sticky Slow Cooker Chicken Teriyaki

This smelled so good cooking! It's always a bonus when I run across a recipe that I have all of the ingredients for. It's also a bonus when I can throw it in a slow cooker and forget about it! I didn't have the ginger this called for, but it was fine without it, and I served it over quinoa instead of rice.

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Melt in Your Mouth Chicken

This was so easy that I was able to prepare it while the cranky teething baby was still awake. Granted, I had to put some gangsta rap on Pandora and sing along while changing the words to make the words baby appropriate. And I had to randomly hide behind the island and jump out to make him laugh, but it worked! My oven has a fancy "cook time" feature that will turn off the oven when the timer goes off, so it worked perfectly for me to pop in the oven just before beginning the marathon that is trying to convince The Baby Fish it is his bedtime. It was a little salty, but I think it was just because I cooked half the amount of chicken the recipe calls for and didn't half the coating. If you're concerned about salt, maybe use a little less of the seasoning salt. You can always add more when it's done if you need to.

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I move all of the recipes I try to my Tried and True Recipe board so I can keep up with what I've tried.

If you've tried any Pinterest experiments this week, share them with me. It's always interesting to see real reviews.

Linking here:

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Homemade Vanilla Extract

Ever notice how much vanilla extract costs and how quickly it disappears?  Maybe it only disappears so quickly here because I'm married to the world's best waffle maker, but it seems like there's only enough in one of those little bottles to make a few desserts.

As it turns out, it's really simple to make your own.

See exhibit A:

What you need:

• Some sort of bottle that seals (we got ours at Hobby Lobby, isn't it cute?)
• Cheap vodka (we used a couple of cups)
• Whole vanilla beans (we used 5)

Now in order to do this, you are going to have to get over your fear of running into some of your fellow church members at the liquor store.  Some of y'all know what I'm talking about!

Vanilla beans can be pricey, so you might want to find a place that sells them in bulk or order them online.  If you're wondering why they're so expensive, it's because all of the growing and harvesting of the beans has to be done by hand.  Isn't it strange to think that in this day and age, there are still crops that are handled without the use of machinery?

I digress.

1. Wrangle your vanilla beans onto a cutting board and cut a slit all the way down the bean.
2. Drop the beans into your cute little bottle.
3. Pour in enough vodka to cover the beans.
4. Close the bottle and shake it up.
5. Store in a dark cupboard and take it out to shake it up every now and then.
6. As you use it, top it off every now and then with more vodka.  You can reuse the same beans in this way for awhile.

Within a couple of weeks, it should be ready to use!  When we first made it, the color was a light brown,but the picture was taken after about 2 weeks and you can see how dark it had gotten.  It has been about a month now and it's even better.

If you look around on Pinterest, you can find some variations on doing this, and some free printable labels for the bottle (very cute ones!).

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The Self Sufficient HomeAcre