Recipe #34 - Easy Chocolate Mousse

Some foods are really not good for you, but they are so delicious that frankly you just don't care.  Right?  That's how recipes that include heavy whipping cream are with me.  They are so full of fat and they require me to get my butt on the elliptical, but I do it without complaining because I love them.

Enter chocolate mousse that contains heavy whipping cream.  Pretty sure I could eat this entire recipe worth of mousse.  Okay, maybe not in one sitting, but over the course of a day.  Its like fluffy goodness in my mouth.  Its probably a good thing that heavy whipping cream is not a typical item found in my fridge.

You can find this recipe on page 234 in the cookbook.  It isn't on the website as a recipe all by itself, but it is the mousse that you use to put in this cake (which is to-die-for-amazing).

First you combine the gelatin and cold water and allow it to stand for a minute.

Next you add boiling water to the gelatin, whisk it together and allow it to cool.

Then you combine the rest of the ingredients and beat until medium-stiff peaks form. Next mix in the gelatin until combined.

Put into individual cups for serving, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

I'm made this before without a problem.  Its been delicious every time.  This time, I must not have stirred the gelatin mixture in well enough because there were some blobs of gelatin in the mousse.  Either I was the only one who got them or everyone else was too kind to tell me.  (Served them to a couple people at a meeting we had at my house.)  It was really quite distracting to pull out gelatin chunks, so its not like they just wouldn't have noticed if they had them in theirs.

Moral of this story?  Mix in your gelatin completely.

This really is a good dessert.  You could serve it with fresh berries, put it in cream puffs, use it as filling for a cake, etc.  Pretty sure that I'll do a little exploring with this one!

Recipe #33 - Sweet and Sour Meatballs

One thing that I adore about this cookbook is all the tips they have listed on the side of the recipes.  There are tips on what to serve the dish with, how to adapt it for the slow cooker, freezer instructions, variations and more.

As I made the Sweet and Sour Meatballs, I totally relied on these tips.  You'll find this recipe (and the needed tips) on page 126.  Its not online though.  They have a different version of Sweet and Sour Meatballs there though.

As a preface for this, I quadrupled this recipe, since I was feeding 20 people.  So don't be alarmed by the quantity of food shown in my pictures.

First you mix together the ingredients for the meatballs.

Then you form the meatballs.  Per the tip on the side of the page, I used a cookie scoop so everything was about the same size.  Then I rolled each blob.  So easy!

It was at this point that my five year old asked me what in the world I was making. I told her that it was meatballs, like we sometime put in spaghetti.  And she replied, "Oh good.  I thought you were making throw-up balls."  Good thing that's not one of the recipes we're trying...

Next you put your throw-up balls, I mean meatballs, into the oven to cook for 5-7 minutes or until they start to brown.

Looking yummy already!

Then you whisk together the ingredients for the sauce and bring it to a boil.

If you plan to serve it right away, you add the meatballs to your sauce and let it simmer for 20 minutes.  (Just enough time to make your rice.)

However, we were headed up to my parents cabin for dinner, so I put the sauce and meatballs into my crockpot (as noted on the side of the recipe) and cooked it on low for 4 hours.

The sauce didn't quite thicken up like I expected it to, but it could be because I did it the crockpot way.  Regardless, it tasted good.  We served it over rice.  Everyone, kids included, seemed to enjoy it.  Many people went back for seconds too.

  

Recipe #32 - Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos

I get so tired of hearing, "uuhhhh, what's in that?" when I cook.  If my kids know that there is onion in anything, they gross out, but if they never see me actually put the onion in and I cut it small enough that they can't tell what it is, its amazing that the taste of an onion never causes any problems.  They'll eat it up without hesitation.  It is just when they know the actual ingredients that we have issues.

When I sat down to make these taquitos, my eight year old quickly asked, "Uuhhh, what's in that?"  The following conversation followed that hated question:

Me:  Chicken, cheese, and tortillas.
Her:  Is that it?
Me:  Oh, and a few seasonings.
Her:  Like what?
Me:  Like things that you eat all the time and like just fine.
Her:  Are there any onions?
Me:  Like white onions that you don't like?
Her:  Yeah.
Me:  Nope, no white onions.
Her:  Good, cuz I wasn't going to eat it if it has onions in it.

What she didn't realize is that her mom is sneaky.  This recipe has delicious green onions.  (Insert evil mommy laugh here.)  These are the ingredients my children don't need to know about.

Today's recipe, Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos, can be found in the cookbook on page 108 or online here.

First you combine your creamy base ingredients.

Stir until well mixed.

Then you add your chicken, cilantro, onions, and cheese.

Next comes the tricky part -- adding the filling and rolling the tortilla.

Rolling a tortilla isn't hard, but rolling it fast enough that it stays warm and doesn't split proved to be a little harder than I anticipated.

The recipe says to buy fresh tortillas to help with the splitting issue.  So i picked mine up at the store on the morning that I made them.  I started by warming up 3 at a time, filling and rolling them.  I found that the third tortilla split open every single time.  So I worked faster.  Still didn't help.  Then I did 2 tortillas at a time and worked quickly.  That seemed to do the trick.  It wasn't fool proof, but the tortillas did keep their shape okay.

With a few exceptions.  (I did end up re-rolling these in a new tortilla, by the way.)

Once everything is filled, you brush the tops with vegetable oil and sprinkle with salt.

It bakes for about 15-20 minutes and crisps up beautifully without having to add the fat and calories of frying.

My kids and husband gobbled these up...onions and all.  They loved them and I had to sneak a couple off the table so that I could save some for lunch the next day.  Another hit!!!

Recipe #31 - Asian Cabbage Salad

When most people feed company, they use their "tried and true" recipes that never fail them.  It makes perfect sense, right?  But then there is me.  I get all excited that I can try some new recipes on people who might just appreciate them.  I pretty regularly tell people, "This is the first time I've made this, so if you don't like it I won't be offended."  Chances are, I'm trying it for the first time at the same time they are.

This doesn't always work out well, but most times it is a success.  Luckily, this recipe was a success.  My side of the family all went up to my parents' cabin for Labor Day weekend, and I was in charge of dinner on Friday night.  So I consulted my handy, dandy cookbook.

The first recipe I made was Asian Cabbage Salad. It is found in the cookbook on page 75 or online here.

First you make the dressing.  All the ingredients get put into a sealed jar.

Then you shake it up.

The dressing does call for quite a few ingredients.  I happened to have them all, but some aren't standard pantry items if you don't cook Asian food very often.

Once the dressing is done, it goes into the fridge.  The dressing can actually be made 2-3 days in advance if needed.

Then you start working on the salad portion.  The base is a bag of coleslaw mix.

Then you cut up the other goodies: celery, cucumber, red pepper, red onions, and snap peas.

If you would like the salad to have a little more "umph" or be more of a main dish, the recipe suggests using grilled chicken or shrimp in it too.  I just so happened to have one cooked chicken breast that needed to be used up before we took off for the weekend, so I cut it up and put it in.

Then you toss the salad, minus the dressing.

When you get a little closer to serving time, you toss the dressing with the salad.  The recipe says 30-60 minutes before serving.  Because of this, I assumed that any leftovers would be soggy (which is typical when you put dressing on a salad and store in the fridge), but I was quite surprised to find that the next day, the leftovers were still yummy and not soggy at all.

Just before serving it, you add the toasted almonds and the toasted sesame seeds.

(I totally forgot to take a picture of this salad before I served it.  Luckily I had enough leftovers for a bowl of it, just right for picture taking.)

For the record, this is not typically a recipe that I would make.  It looked good, but not like something anyone in my family but me would enjoy.  I was wrong.  We all loved it.  It was the most commented on item I made that day.  I was very surprised and will be adding this to my list of "make again" recipes.

A Much Needed Day Away

My life and schedule have been nothing but insane lately.  Late nights, early mornings, and days crammed with more than I can accomplish.  And I'm normally very busy anyway.  Because of that, my blogging has had to take a back seat.  With the exception of this past week, I've still been really good about cooking from the cookbook and taking pictures.  It is the actual typing up of the blog that I'm doing terrible on.

At one point, I thought that I would try to get everything made and blogged about before the new cookbook comes out.  Well...it comes out this next week, and I'm clearly not done yet.  The funny thing was, I wasn't worried about if I could get it done in time.  I was worried that no one would want to eat things like soup in the summer.  Guess I don't have that problem any more.

After an absolutely insane week, I was losing my mind.  My house is a mess.  Most meals have included cold cereal or a sandwich.  I have tons of emails that I need to respond to, and the laundry has piled up to new heights.  After surviving the final "mom taxi" pick-up on Friday, I realized that I actually had an evening without anything on the calendar.  My weekend schedule was even surprisingly empty when I checked.  Normally I would be excited that I had a day or two to play catch-up.

However, after this CRAZY week, the last thing I wanted to do was work all weekend on things like laundry and cleaning my kitchen floor.  I wanted to do nothing.  Nothing at all.  I wanted to stay in my pajamas all day long, watch TV, play games with my family, and veg. 

So I texted my husband on Friday at 6:00 PM.  The conversation went something like this:

Me:  Let's put the kids in the car and go somewhere for the weekend.
Him:  Serious?  Where?
Me:  Anywhere.  Kentucky?  (This is a family joke.  When we ask our kids where they want to go on vacation, one of them always requests Kentucky.  She has no clue what she wants to see there.  She just likes the thought of going to Kentucky.)
Him:  Is the cabin available?
Me:  Doubt it.  It never is when we don't book it in advance.
Him:  Logan?  St. George?  Provo?
Me:  Yes.  Yes.  No.

I am a hard-core vacation planner/researcher.  I spend hours finding the just-right hotel, reading reviews on places to eat, determining what we want to do/how much it will cost/when they're open/how to get there, etc.  I don't just pack up and go.  But this burnt-out mommy was ready to tell all the kids to pack pajamas and a toothbrush and get in the car without any plans at all.

My husband ended up calling and talking me out of an unplanned, potentially expensive, mental breakdown getaway.  We called my mom, found out the cabin was actually available, each packed a basic bag, and off we went.  We even picked up a Papa Murphy's pizza on the way so that I didn't have to worry about dinner.

Right now I am sitting at the table in the kitchen at the cabin enjoying this lovely view and just relaxing.  The boys are in the basement watching BYU football.  The girls are watching Little Mermaid in the master bedroom.   Life has slowed down for a day, and I'm loving it.

One thing that I wanted to do while I was up here is get caught up on my blogging.  Blogging is something that I enjoy, and I don't consider it work.  So I packed up my laptop, my cookbook and my camera (since the memory card doesn't fit in this computer).

I typed up one blog, plugged in the camera to download the pictures, and had a "you're freaking kidding me" moment.  My husband cleared the memory card and downloaded onto our computer at home.  Really?!  Really?!!  AHH!

So, instead of telling you about chocolate mousse and sweet and sour meatballs, you're hearing about my insane week and mental breakdown.  After all, blogging (and chocolate) are cheaper than therapy.

Even though I have no pictures, I am still typing things up.  I will add the photos when I get home and then get the recipe reviews posted.  I'm trying to be better about getting things on here regularly too.  I am excited to try out the new cookbook, but I need to finish this one first.

So be on the lookout for lots of reviews coming soon.  In the meantime, I think I'll go take a much needed nap.