Moroccan Chicken & Couscous

4 chicken breasts

10 oz Couscous

1 can chicken broth (2 cups)

2 cups water

1/2 tsp Salt

1 Tbsp olive oil or butter

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup diced onion

1/4 cup or a little less of chopped walnuts

1 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp honey

In a medium saucepan, water, salt, and olive oil to a boil. Stir in couscous; cover, remove from heat, and let stand 5 minutes. Meanwhile, fry onion in olive oil. When golden add honey, raisins,, cinnamon and walnuts. When caramelized, add to the couscous and mix well. Then put in a greased baking dish. Pour chicken broth over couscous. Place chicken breasts on couscous mixture, cover with foil. Bake at 420 for 25 minutes. Remove foil, cook 10 more minutes or until chicken is golden and cooked through.

Zucchini, yellow squash, or turnips are good side veggies if you're wondering what would go well. If you like pumpkin, that goes well on the side too.

Tortellini

This dish is delicious and takes about 20 minutes! Sorry, no pretty picture. My camera batteries were dead when I made this the other night.

15 ounces cheese tortellini

10 oz frozen broccoli

1 jar RAGU Roasted Garlic Parmesan Sauce

1 small red pepper, diced

6 slices cooked bacon, crumbled

Boil tortellini according to package instructions. Add broccoli during the last 2 minutes of cooking, drain. Meanwhile cook the red pepper for about 4 minutes in a small frying pan. Add red pepper, Garlic Parmesan sauce, and bacon. Mix. All done! Is great with garlic bread on the side.

Pumpkin Soup

I thought this was an appropriate October recipe! I really love it and it's way easy to make. I serve it with scones or rolls. My youngest son ate 3 bowls full then climbed in my lap and asked for mine!

2 tbsp butter

1 small onion, finely chopped

5 cups of chicken broth or you can use 5 cups of water and 4 chicken bullion cubes

1 tsp salt

1 (1 pound) can pumpkin, or 1 little pie pumpkin just peel the skin off and steam it like you would squash or zucchini before adding it to the soup.

optional: if you want thicker soup you can add 2 potatoes

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Dash of pepper

Dash of nutmeg

Dash of cloves

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and cook the onion until soft. Add the broth, salt & pepper, nutmeg & cloves. Bring to a boil. Add the pumpkin (and potatoes if you choose), combine thoroughly, lower the heat and simmer, covered for 45 minutes. Add the cream and heat through For a creamier texture I then blend the soup in my blender, but you don't have to.

The Great Salad

So this has a cheesy name, but there's no better name for it! =) This stuff is so so good I think. Kind of a lot of steps, but it's worth it!

nickel-sized bunch of spaghetti - break in half, boil, rinse in cold water

1/2 head cabbage - chopped

1/2 head lettuce - chopped

1 carrot - grated

3/4 C frozen peas (strain w/ hot water)

1 bunch green onion

1/2 cucumber - cut in bite sizes

1 tomato

1/2 C grated motz cheese

handful of broccoli

handful of cauliflower

(I double the recipe for the dressing, so that's why there's some weird measurements. I don't know how to convert them!) =)

Dressing:

1/2 C sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 C milk

1 C mayo

3 Tbsp vinegar

5 tsp lemon juice

4 Tbsp sour cream

2 tsp mustard

1/2 tsp horse radish

1/4 garlic pwd

1 C parm cheese

Bake and slice breaded chicken and put in on!

Yum yum!

Breakfast Ideas, Anyone?

Anyone with good breakfast ideas, please share! My husband won't eat breakfast, I have no desire to make a nice one if he's not going to eat, but my kids still must eat breakfast and so I need ideas. I cannot for the life of me convince them to eat eggs, so we do waffles and pancackes a lot. Any suggestions???

Crockpot BBQ Ribs

I wish my camera chip wasn't full, or I would have a beautiful picture to post as well. Oh well! These ribs are really easy and really, really good.

3 racks of ribs or 2-3 pounds of pork (ribs are better, if you've got a COSTCO anywhere near you they have the best price on ribs and their meat is fantastic.)

Steak Spice (McCormick's Montreal or Grill Mate brands are both good)

salt & pepper

garlic powder

veg. oil

Red wine vinegar

1 bottle Baby Ray's sweet BBQ sauce

Seer pork in a frying pan for 2-3 minutes each side to keep the juices in. Put in your crock pot. Dash of salt & pepper & garlic powder. Add 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1 cup water, 2 tbsp. red wine vinegar. Cook on low for 5 hours or 3 hours on high until meat falls off the bone. (Slow cook for 5 hours usually turns out a lot better.) Put ribs in baking dish add BBQ sauce and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Best Berry Pie...EVER

Crust:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup cake flour
4 TBS unsalted butter
1/2 TBS Salt
1 TBS Sugar
4 TBS vegatable shortening
3 TBS Ice water
Refridgerate for 45 min, then roll out
"Dust" the counter top with flour before rolling

Why cold water? Why refridgerated?
As the crust cooks it heats up the cooled shortening and butter causing it to dissolve and evaporate at different stages, this causes the crust to be nice and flaky.


Filling:
2 cups blackberries
2 cups raspberries
2 cups blue berries
1/3 cup corn starch
1 to 1 and 1/4 cup sugar
teaspoon of almond extract
Reduce it on the stove on medium heat

Glaze:
3 eggs
Turbinado sugar

Create an egg yolk wash with, you guessed it, egg yolk. Brush the egg yolk on top of your finished pie crust. Then dust the top with turbinado sugar. Once baked, this will provide a golden brown crystalized finished to your pie. Serve up with some vanilla ice cream, eat, drool, then eat some more!:)