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What to do with plain yogurt?

A few weeks ago my co-worker gave me a bottle of creme fraiche.  I used it in several recipes I've posted on What's for Leftovers.  Creme fraiche is a creamier, richer, sour cream.  If you buy creme fraiche in the grocery store, it's a little pricey.  It costs more than its cousin sour cream.  However, you can make it at home quite easily for an extremely reduced price.  Here's the recipe Dawn shared with me.  Let me know how it works out.

If you're looking for a recipe to use your creme fraiche in, check out Stuffed Pasta in a Pork Sauce, Seafood Salad Melts and Tomato Basil Soup on What's for Leftovers.  You can also substitute sour cream for creme fraiche in any recipe.

Creme Fraiche
1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons yogurt


1. Combine 1 cup heavy whipping cream and 2 tablespoons yogurt in a glass container.
2. Cover and let stand at room temperature (about 70°F) for 8 to 24 hours, or until very thick. Shake your bottle periodically while it is sitting out. 
3. Stir well before covering and refrigerate up to 10 days.

What to do with cabbage and spaghetti sauce?

Now that Spring is in full swing and Summer is right around the corner (hallelujah!) fresh fruits and veggies are popping up everywhere.  We have the cutest little vegetable stand right down the street from us and everytime I go there, I buy just a little too much!  It all looks so good and the prices are very reasonable.  We're also attempting to grow our own fruits and veggies this year.  I'll keep you updated on how it's going.  So now I'm motivated to create some new vegetable recipes.  Here's the first for the season- Italian Style Cabbage.

Italian Style Cabbage
Ingredients:
1 Head of Cabbabge
3/4 Cup Spaghetti Sauce
2 TBSP Grated Parmesan or Romano Cheese
Olive oil


1. Wash and chop cabbage into small strips. 
2. Pour a thin layer of olive oil into the bottom of a large frying pan.  Toss cabbage into pan.  Start frying.  Stir while frying so cabbage doesn't stick to bottom of pan.
3. When cabbage turns brighter, stir in spaghetti sauce.  Continue cooking until cabbage is cooked all the way through (7 to 10 minutes).  Add parmesan cheese.  Let melt and serve.

What to do with leftover chicken and corn?

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Happy Cinco de Mayo What's for Leftovers readers!  We love tacos in our household, however sometimes I get tired of making them the "regular" way.  This recipe is a great way to use up roasted chicken or leftover chicken breasts and celebrate Cinco de Mayo!  Serve this with What's for Leftovers' Sangria and you'll have an instant party!

Crispy Chicken and Corn Tacos

Ingredients:
3 Cups Cooked Chicken
1 Cup Corn
½ Cup Plain Yogurt
½ Cup Cream Cheese
½ Cup Water
2 Tsp Dried Green Pepper
2 Tsp Dried Red Pepper
1 TBSP Dried Onions
8 to 10 Flour Tortillas
Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Lettuce
Fresh Cilantro
Chopped Tomatoes

1. If chicken is still on the bone, take it off and cut it up into small pieces. There needs to be 3 cups after you take it off the bone.

2. Wash lettuce, cilantro and tomatoes.  Chop, mix together and put aside to use to stuff your tacos.

3. In a large sauce pan, mix togetherchicken, corn, yogurt, cream cheese and water. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. Add peppers and onions to pan. Cook until a creamy sauce begins to form and everything is heated thoroughly, about 10 minutes.

4. Turn stove top on medium heat.  Spray a large frying pan with non-stick spray.  When pan is hot, put a tortilla in pan.  Spray side facing up with non-stick spray.  Heat bottom of tortilla for 15 to 30 seconds.  Flip tortilla.  Before putting tortilla back down, spray pan again.  Put a large spoonful of chicken and corn filling on half of taco.  Sprinkle cheddar cheese on the other side.  When cheese is melted, fold one side of taco over the other.  Cook both sides until light brown and crispy.  Continue with other tortillas.

5. Stuff tacos with lettuce, cilantro and tomatoes and serve.  Ole! 

What to do with Cherry Coke Zero?

Andy's Granny came into town tonight.  I've known about this visit for weeks, but I still hadn't pre-thought dinner.  After work, I ran home before picking up Celia and Charlie to fix something really quickly.  Luckily, I had a whole ham thawed out.  My friend Leighanne had given me a 2 liter of Cherry Coke Zero the other night.  I looked at the ham, I looked at the soda and I thought hmmmm....

Baked Ham and Sweet Carrots
Ingredients:
1 Ham (mine was 6lbs)
1 Pound of Carrots
1 Medium Onion
3/4 Cup of Cherry Coke Zero (or regular Cherry Coke)
1/4 Cup Jelly (use a berry or grape based jelly, I used black currant jelly)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put ham in a large roasting pan.
3. Peel and chop carrots and onion into large chunks.  Put around ham.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together jelly and Cherry Coke Zero.  Pour over ham and veggies when finished.
5. Bake in the oven for 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours.  Dish is finished when carrots are tender.

What to do with biscuits and cream cheese?

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I love the weekends.  It's so fun to make my family new and interesting breakfast dishes.  This weekend I stuffed regular canned biscuits to make something different.  They must've been a big hit because a couple of hours later Celia came up to me and said she wanted some more of those biscuit balls.  Sadly, I had to tell her she had ate them all.  Next weekend I'm going to stuff the biscuits with ham and cheese.  I can't wait to see if everyone will like that version as much.  I was able to figure out the calories and fat for this dish.  Each biscuit has about 70 calories and 2 fat grams (I rounded up a bit), so you can enjoy more than one :)

**If you want to double this recipe, don't double the egg.  One egg is enough to dip two cans of biscuits in.  I used black currant jelly, but feel free to use any kind of jelly your family likes.  Or, stuff the biscuits with ham and cheddar cheese, or mushrooms and goat cheese if you want to get fancy.  The possibilities are endless, yet so easy to make! 

Black Currant Stuffed Biscuits
Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 Oz Cream Cheese (I used neufchatel cream cheese)
1 Tube Small Biscuits
1 Egg
Jelly (I used Black Currant Jelly)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Spray baking sheet with non-stick spray.
2. In  a small bowl, beat egg.

3. Cut cream cheese into the same number of small squares as your biscuits.  (My tube of biscuits had 10, so I cut my cheese into 10 small squares.)

4.  Put 2 biscuits between a piece of wax paper.  Roll them out flat with a rolling pin.  Put a piece of cream cheese in the middle of the biscuit.  Put a spoonfull of jelly (1/4 to 1/2 tsp) on top of cream cheese.  Roll biscuit up.  Then fold sides up to form a little ball.  See pictures of how to do this.  Try to close seam as tightly as possible so jelly doesn't ooze

out too much.

5. Dip biscuit into egg and put on baking sheet.  Follow steps 4 and 5 with rest of biscuits.
6. Bake biscuits for 9 to 10 minutes.  They will be golden brown when finished.

What to do with ham and plain yogurt?

I love when the unexpected turns out great.  Yesterday Andy and I wanted to have an easy dinner without a lot of fuss.  He was talking about Taco Bell, but I had just gone major grocery shopping the other day.  Plus, ever since we've made friends with our neighbor Mathilde, Taco Bell just doesn't sound that great.  Mathilde's authentic Mexican food is to die for!  So I talked Andy out of Taco Bell and set out to make something easy.  I knew I needed to use up some ham, but I was tired of my regular leftover ham recipes.  Instead, I looked around and came up with this curry noodle dish.  It was amazing: one of the best pastas I've ever made and oh so simple.  The egg noodles have great substance and the scent of the curry powder will make your house smell great!  If you want yours to have a little more bite, add some red pepper to your dish.  Enjoy!

Curry Noodles with Summer Squash
Ingredients:
8 oz Egg Noodles*
2 Cups Chopped Ham
1 Medium Yellow Squash
1 Medium Zucchini
1 and 1/2 Cups Water
1 TBSP Dried Minced Onion
1/2 TBSP Curry Powder
1 and 1/2 TBSP Cream Cheese
3 Oz Plain Yogurt
2 Chopped Roma Tomatoes

1. Put water in a medium sized soup pan on stove top and bring to a boil.
2. While water is starting to boil, chop ham, squash and zucchini.  Put in a separate medium sized soup pan.  Add water, dried onion, cream cheese, yogurt and curry powder to pan.  Turn heat on high right before putting egg noodles into boiling water.   Bring to a boil and turn down to medium heat.  Continue stirring while cooking so sauce won't burn on the bottom.
3. Follow directions on egg noodles.  Cook until al dente.  When finished cooking, drain water and put back into pan. Turn stove off under noodles.
4. Right before mixing sauce in with noodles, take out a large spoon full of sauce and mix a teaspoon of flour with liquid to form a paste.  Pour paste back into sauce and bring sauce to a boil, stirring frequently.  (This will thicken your sauce up a bit.)  Pour sauce over noodles, turn heat back on and bring to a boil, stirring.  Turn off heat and let sit covered for 5 to 10 minutes.

* I used specialty, dried egg noodles (from Aldis).  If you don't have these, I reccomend the type you buy from the freezer.