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It seems like a bag of baking potatoes lasts us forever! I looked in my crisper drawer just the other day and I have a 5 pound bag that desperately needs to be used. Since the weather has been fabulous lately, we've been spending as much time outdoors, soaking up the sun before cold, yucky weather starts. Here's a veggie recipe for the grill to make during those beautiful, golden fall days.
Potato Packets
Ingredients:
3 Large Baking Potatoes
2 Apples
1 Small Onion
2 Green Peppers
1 Red Pepper
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
1/2 Tsp Pepper
1/2 Tsp Salt
1. Wash potatoes, trim off ends and microwave for 90 seconds.
2. Chop potatoes into large chunks. Chop apples, onion, and peppers into chunks 1/2 the size of the potato chunks.
3. In a large bowl, mix together potatoes, apples, onion, peppers, olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper.
4. Fold veggie mix into 3 large pieces of aluminum foil. BBQ on the top rack of bbq grill for 25 minutes on high.
Ohhh, I had forgotten how busy the start of the school year is! After a crazy month of August, I finally get to sit down and post a recipe. Hooray! This is a recipe I made a couple of weeks ago. I loved it! It was a fabulous mixture of tastes that you wouldn't necessarily put together regularly. We bought our Sicilian Eggplant and all the peppers from our local farmer's market. If you can't find a Sicilian one, just use a small regular one. Happy cooking!
Tortellini with Eggplant and Peppers
Ingredients:
1 Small Sicilian Eggplant, peeled and diced
1/2 TBSP Salt
1 Fresh Banana Pepper, diced
1 Poblano Pepper, diced
1 Small Onion, Diced
1 TSP Minced Garlic
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1 Can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1/3 Cup French Onion Dip
1/2 Can of Milk (use cream of can)
2 Bags of Meat Tortellini
1. Pour olive oil and eggplant into a large skillet. Sprinkle salt on eggplant. Saute on high. When skillet is hot, add peppers, onion, and garlic. Stir frequently. Saute until eggplant softens.
2. Add cream of mushroom, French onion dip and milk to skillet. Lower heat to medium, continue stirring frequently. Cook until bubbly and thicker (about 15 minutes).
3. While finishing sauce, cook meat tortellini in a separate pot following directions on package. Mix sauce and cooked tortellini together and serve. Serves 4 to 6 people.
We love to order Chinese! This Friday, Andy had a guys' night out, so my friend Leigh Anne and her daughter came over to hang with me and my kiddos. We had a smasing time catching up and our children played nicely the whole night! We ordered Chinese delivery for dinner. I have found that when I order Chinese, I am always really hungry, so I order around two times as much as we really need. This incidence was no exception. We had enough Chinese for 2 meals plus some. This is great news for What's for Leftovers readers. Leftover Chinese, warmed up is adequate at best, but leftover Chinese re-worked is like a whole new, delicious meal. My family loves it everytime! This is a loosey goosey recipe as my mother would say. Meaning, everybody's leftover Chinese will be a little bit different, as will be your quantities, but if you follow the general guidelines, it will turn out great every time!
Chinese Take-Out Fried Rice
Ingredients:
*Olive Oil
*Frozen Vegetables- Use 1/2 of a Bag to a Full Bag of Peas or Peas and Carrots
*1/2 Yellow Onion
*Meat- I had 1 and 1/2 Cups of 2 different kinds of Chicken
*Rice- I had 3 Cups of Fried. It doesn't matter if it's Fried or White
*Any juices left at the bottom of your take-out boxes
*1/2 Cup Apple Juice
*1/8 Cup BBQ Sauce
*3 Packets Soy Sauce
*3 Packets Sweet n' Sour Sauce
* 1 Jumbo Egg or 2 Medium Eggs
1. Pour a thin layer of oil in a large frying pan. Chop up Onion and Meat into bite-sized pieces.
2. Heat oil. When oil is hot, put onion and frozen veggies in frying pan.
3. After 5 minutes, add meat, rice, juice left on the bottom of container and apple juice. If you do not have any juice left on the bottom of the containers, add 1 cup of apple juice instead of 1/2 cup. It's important for your rice to stay moist so it won't burn on the bottom of your frying pan.
4. Add BBQ Sauce, Soy Sauce, and Sweet n' Sour Sauce. Mix all together. Continue Cooking until everything is hot and onions are cooked. Make sure your rice stays moist. If is starts to dry out, add a little bit more apple juice or honey.
5. After everything is cooked, make a well in the middle of your pan. Crack your eggs into the well and scramble them. Cook them completely, then mix in with your rice. Enjoy, Chinese- part 2 with your family. They'll never even know it's leftover!
We are blessed with wonderful neighbors. We live in a quiet, little neighborhood and we have become good friends with the neighbors on all our sides and across the street. So, the other day on our snow day, our neighbor Marty brought us a bag of groceries because they were going out of town. I love when people give us food. It's always different from what I would buy and gives me new ideas for recipes. In the bag was half a cucumber. Normally I would just cut it up because Celia loves to eat cucumber slices, but instead I made a sweet bean salad with it. The good thing about this salad is that it tastes better the second day after marinating in the fridge overnight.
Sweet Bean Salad
Ingredients:
1/2 Large Green Pepper Chopped
1 Large Cucumber Chopped
15 Baby Carrots Chopped
1/4 to 1/2 Cup Onion Chopped (add more, if you like onions a lot)
1 Can of Beans (I used small white ones)
2 TBSP Sugar
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1 TBSP Rice Wine Vinegar
Salt
Pepper
In a large bowl, mix together green peppers, cucumbers, carrots, onions and beans. In a separate bowl make dressing. Whisk together sugar, olive oil, and vinegar. Pour over veggie mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste. I was very generous with both.
Happy Super Bowl Day! We are having our neighbors over tonight to watch the big game. So, I've been working on some snacks for us to eat. Of course one of my main ingredients is leftovers! I turned the dollar rolls from my birthday into bread dippers for our spinach dip. They are really tasty and easy to eat so you can still pay attention to the game. They're also a leftover you can make into a new dish! If you have any of these leftover, turn them into breadcrumbs by throwing them into your food processor or cut them up into croutons for your salads. In not so recent news, Kurt Warner has decided to retire from football at age 38. I guess he decided he was too old to undergo another season of being chased down by guys like DeMarcus Ware. As a Rams fan, I would like to take this opportunity to say farewell to Kurt, who took our rams to two Super Bowls and won one. Look on the bright side Kurt, at least you can 'pass' these wonderful snacks out for Super Bowls to come!
Dinner Roll Dippers
Ingredients:
Dollar Rolls
Olive Oil
Garlic Powder
Salt
Italian Seasoning
Cut each dollar roll into four circular slices. Coat a large frying pan with a thick (1/4" to 1/3") layer of oil and heat up. Place bread in frying pan after oil is heated. Fry side of bread until crispy and light brown, then flip. Right after flipping, season cooked side with a little salt, garlic powder and Italian seasoning. When sprinkling Italian seasoning, roll it between your fingers a little, so it crushes and is finer. Take out of pan when other side is toasted. Cover a large plate with a paper towel for olive oil to drain on. Place finished toasted rolls on plate and season other side. Let cool and enjoy with dip.
Last week I asked Andy to pick up some hotdog buns at the bread store on his way home from work. When there, he was overcome by the cheap prices and bought a giant loaf of white bread, a 16 pack of hotdog buns, and a box of powdered sugar doughnuts. The doughnuts were gone within 24 hours, but the bread and hotdog buns lingered longer. I have had to think of all kinds of creative ways to cook with bread over the past week. Tonight I made Pizza Burger Pie in memory of my grade school days. I loved when we had pizza burgers at lunch. In fact all the kids loved them. They were basically a bun topped with spaghetti sauce, hamburger, and cheese. I took that basic recipe, made it into a large dish and fancied it up. After it was finished cooking and I placed it on the table, Charlie proclaimed, "That's my favorite- Yummy pizza!" And sure enough, everyone in our family had two helpings. I hope your family enjoys it as much as mine did.
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Pizza Burger Pie
Ingredients:
5 Hotdog Buns
Olive Oil
Garlic Powder
1 Cup Ground Turkey
1 1/4 Cup Spaghetti Sauce
18 Black Olives Sliced
1/2 Cup Red Onions Diced
1/2 Large Green Pepper
1/2 TBSP Dried Basil
2 1/2 Cups Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
Parmesean Cheese
Spray a round 10" to 11" baking dish with Pam. Tear up hotdog buns and spread out over bottom of dish. Drizzle olive oil over torn up buns and then sprinkle garlic powder on top. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes until toasty. Brown ground turkey while buns are toasting in the oven.
Take the buns out of the oven. Spread tomato sauce over toasted buns. Next spread the browned ground turkey on top of the sauce. Add the onions, peppers, and black olives to the top of the pie. Sprinkle dried basil and parmesean cheese on top of veggies. Finally top Pizza Burger Pie with shredded mozzarella. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes at 350 degrees until cheese is melted and starting to brown around the edges. Let cool and enjoy!
This morning, Celia, Charlie and I sat down to a nice breakfast of bananas and yogurt. They promptly peeled (or took the tape off, as Charlie says) their bananas and said they were done. They didn't want to eat them. I did not want to eat three bananas, so I had to figure out something to do with them. I made a caramel sauce and cut them up into it. I put the sauce on top of their pancakes. You could also put it on top of ice cream or waffles. I thought it was great. Celia and Charlie still wouldn't eat their breakfast. I guess it wasn't a breakfast kind of day for my two and three year old. Oh well. Here's the recipe. It was just enough to top the pancakes for two little ones. You'll probably want to double or triple the recipe if you're going to serve more people.
Banana Caramel Sauce
Ingredients:
2 Bananas
3/8 Cup of Honey
1/4 Cup Olive Oil or Butter
3/4 tsp Vanilla
1 tsp Cinnamon
Heat butter or olive oil up in skillet. Slice bananas into the hot oil. Add honey, vanilla, and cinnamon to the skillet. Stir constantly because the mixture will burn easily. You want the liquid to boil and become sticky. After boiling, turn stove off and mixture will continue to thicken. Serve warm.
