Posts Tagged ‘Cheese’
Posted by terrepruitt on April 19, 2022
Here is another “IDEA Recipe” as I didn’t write down the measurements when I made it. It was pretty good. It was just biscuits split in half and rolled out a little bigger, then “stuffed” with chicken. More accurately the chicken was sandwiched between the two biscuit halves then sealed. Since I was just experimenting I was making it up as I went a long and didn’t make notes. And I started with just splitting the biscuits, but then realized I wouldn’t be able to put a lot of chicken in them so I split them then rolled each half to make it larger. I was able to put more chicken in the larger ones.
I used
Canned chicken
onions chopped
bell peppers chopped
corn
seasoning
a tube of biscuits
some cheese
It may surprise you as it surprised me, I didn’t put any cheese IN the mixture. I sprinkled a little on top. I keep wondering what I was thinking.
I cooked them according to the biscuit directions (350° F for 20 minutes) maybe given them a little more time until they were browned. The chicken is cooked so that wasn’t the concern, I just didn’t want soggy biscuits.
As usual I started cooking late thinking it would be a quick throw together kind of thing and it was not so I didn’t even take any pictures when they were plated. It was yummy and was enough for a couple of meals. You know me I love when I cook and it makes more than one meal. This was easy to make, but I had not planned on the time it took to roll out the biscuits (which wasn’t that long, but it added time to what I had planned).
This is just a twist on a few of the things I have done with those biscuits I love.
What do you do with biscuits?
Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: biscuits, Cheese, chicken, chicken pockets, easy dinner, recipe idea | 2 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on September 27, 2017
It is that season! YAY! Stuffed pumpkins for dinner!!!! YUM! I posted this recipe in 2013 in my post Pumpkin For Dinner. But I was cleaning up my desktop a bit and I found these pictures from 2015 which are so much better than the ones from 2013. So I wanted to share them.
My poor friends on Facebook get oodles of stuffed pumpkins pictures during the season!
This is one of my favorite meals and this is the time of of year! Now I am so hungry for a stuffed pumpkin!
Have you tried it yet?
Posted in Food | Tagged: Cheese, Fall Meal, pumpkin for dinner, pumpkin recipe, Sausage, Stuffed pumpkin | 14 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on September 20, 2014
My niece came to visit us recently over the weekend. I thought it would be nice to serve something for dinner that I don’t make often. Even though she doesn’t eat with us often, so something we eat all the time wouldn’t necessarily be something she eats all the time, I thought I would try something new. Well, I had done it before but I don’t remember the recipe I used before, so I was kinda making it up as I went along. Big surprise, huh? Well, I decided to make chicken enchiladas with sour cream sauce. I don’t really like red sauce and green sauce does not like me. I like sour cream sauce.
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Chicken Enchiladas With Sour Cream Sauce
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons butter / 3
4 tablespoons flour / 3
3 cups chicken broth / 2
1 1/2 cup sour cream / 1
1/2 4 oz can diced green chillies
(this makes EXTRA sauce, the / number is the amount to us if you want less sauce)
3 cups shredded and cooked chicken (I actually used canned chicken)
3 cups shredded Mexican Mixture cheese
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 garlic salt
7 large soft flour tortillas
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Stir the flour into butter. Whisk it to get all the lumps out. Watch the heat making sure it does not get too hot. Whisk in the broth. Continue to cook the sauce until it’s thick and begins to bubble. Turn off the heat/burner.
Mix the chicken with the cumin and garlic salt. Put about three tablespoons of chicken in a tortilla, sprinkle in some cheese then roll up and put seam side down into a greased casserole dish. Continue filling and rolling the tortillas until they are all filled. Using about two cups of the cheese.
By now, the sauce should be cool enough so the sour cream will not curdle when added, but still warm enough to allow the sour cream to “melt” and blend well into the sauce. Add the sour cream to the sauce. Whisk until blended. Add the chilies to the sauce.
Pour the sauce over enchiladas. Filling in all the space. Use the remaining cup of cheese to sprinkle over the enchiladas. Save the remaining sauce for allowing individuals to add more sauce to their enchiladas.
Bake in oven for about 30 minutes.
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So my hubby likes extra sauce and leftover sauce, so I made extra. You can make less by using the number after the slash. You can also use more chilies. I brought the remainder to the table so that my hubby and niece could add more to their food.
I think next time I will add the chilies into the enchiladas. I will mark them so I know which ones have the chilies.
You can use any type of chicken you would like. I just wanted really easy so I used canned.
So this is easy and kind of quick. And I thought it was very yummy. I will be making it again. It made enough for leftovers. You know I love leftovers.
Do you like enchiladas? Are you a fan of sour cream sauce? Does this sound like a recipe you would make?
Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: canned chicken, Cheese, chicken enchiladas, easy dinner, fast dinner, green sauce, red sauce, sour cream, sour cream sauce, yummy dinner | 2 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on November 12, 2013
I received a pumpkin in my organic produce box. I didn’t know what to do with it. I was looking at one of the blogs that I read on occasion and I saw a recipe for a stuffed pumpkin. I saved the recipe so that I could make it. I looked at the post a couple of times while I was thinking about it. There was a woman who commented with a link to her version of the stuffed pumpkin. When I posted the original (to me) posting on FB one of my friends commented, “I just made those.” Which, when she posted the picture to my wall, I vaguely remembered having seen it when she originally posted it. But it was before I had received a pumpkin so it didn’t really register. When I went to make my grocery list off of JJ Begonia’s recipe, I realized it was literally like a stuffed pumpkin as in BREAD stuffing. Like a turkey. I didn’t want to just use bread. Then I remembered my friend said she stuffed hers with sausage. The first two recipes have bacon in them, but I don’t like to buy a pound of bacon for only a couple of pieces. So I decided on sausage. I took ideas from all three people and came up with the below stuffed pumpkin recipe.
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Stuffed Sugar Pie Pumpkin
1 2 to 3 pound Sugar Pie Pumpkin
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt
Six mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped onion
3 cloves garlic (minced)
1/4 pound sausage
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 cup cheese (small chunks)
2 tbsp ricotta
1 tbsp sherry
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
handful of spinach
four slices bread – toasted and cubed
Cut the top off of the pumpkin making a little lid. Scoop out the pumpkin guts. Then put a little oil and salt in the pumpkin and place it on a piece of aluminum foil on a baking sheet. Bake at 350° F for 45 minutes (check it after 20 minutes to see that it is not getting too cooked – after the 45 minutes you want it to be almost cooked, but not cooked so much it can’t stand another HOUR in the oven).
Heat the olive oil in the pan with the 1/2 of the onions. Once the onions are translucent put the mushrooms in the pan and cook them. Sprinkle with salt. As they are cooking mix in one clove of garlic. Cook the sausage, either after the mushrooms are cooked or use a different pan. If the sausage has a lot of grease drain it off once the sausage is cooked before you add the sausage to the rest of the ingredients.
Mix the mushrooms and the sausage in a bowl. Add the rosemary and thyme. Mix in the remaining two cloves of garlic and the onions. Mix in the cheese. Mix in the sherry and most of the cream (save a splash for the inside bottom of pumpkin). Add the spinach and bread cubes last. Mix it all carefully.
Pour the remaining splash of cream in the pumpkin. Spoon the mixture into the pumpkin. I used the spoon to press it down into the pumpkin.
Put the pumpkin in the oven for 60 minutes. After about 20 minutes I put the “lid” on. The pumpkin is done when you can gently pierce its side with a sharp object. Check to verify the inside it cooked to your liking. Since the mushrooms and the sausage are already cooked it is just a matter of it heating up and melting the cheese.
Slice and serve.
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This was good, BUT . . . . . I have some adjustments I would make for next time. I was thinking it would be full of flavor so I hardly used any salt which left it almost flavorless except for the thyme. Next time I will use LESS thyme and more salt and some pepper. You will notice I didn’t put any pepper in this. I don’t use pepper. But I can when I think that a recipe needs it. I will salt the inside of the pumpkin more prior to baking and prior to filling.
This was ALL that we had for dinner with a small salad and it was PLENTY! We were full. We each had a half. We did not have a pumpkin each. 🙂
As you can see from just this post there are at least four recipes to make stuffed pumpkin. I purposefully didn’t say what type of sausage, cheese, or bread I used because I want you to find your own flavor and texture. So follow one of the recipes or do it your own way. You have the basics . . . go play! If you do not follow my recipe . . . . please, please, please, tell us what you did. I would love to hear of more ways to make a pumpkin dinner!
Happy Fall!
I had not stuffed a pumpkin before. Have you ever stuffed a pumpkin and baked it?
Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: Cheese, Facebook, Fall Meal, FB, JJ Begonia, organic produce, pumpkin for dinner, pumpkin recipe, Sausage, Stuffed pumpkin | 9 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on May 5, 2012
The past two Thursdays have been pretty cold here and since I don’t teach Nia on Thursdays evenings I have been cooking soup. One Thursday I had it planned so I actually did go to the store after my Nia class on Wednesday to buy the ingredients I needed, but yesterday it was cold so I just decided to use what I had, which was not much. While I think that a bowl or two of soup can easily be a meal, I like to serve something else with it. When I looked in my fridge I saw the eggplant I had bought. Yay! Perfect. I saw a recipe on icancookstuff that sounded interesting. While I do not eat spicy hot food I thought I could use the garlic and the cummin. But it turns out I don’t have any cummin. So I decided to use ginger and turmeric. I have them in powdered form so I got the bottles out of the cupboard and set them on the counter. Then I put the eggplant in the oven to bake it.
The recipe said to bake it at 200 degrees for 45 minutes.** I didn’t think I had 45 minute so I put the temperature up to 300 and left it on for 30 minutes. I didn’t feel that the eggplant was cooked enough so I turned the convection oven on and set the timer for 30 more minutes. I turned it four times because it was getting flat on the pan side.
In the meantime I was cooking my soup. I only had one bunch of baby bok choy, a bunch of kale, and some broccoli. I swore I wasn’t going to put broccoli in a soup again, but . . . I didn’t think the rest would make it. So while I was trying to fake making soup I wasn’t really paying attention to the eggplant. My soup finished before the eggplant.
By the time I finally thought the eggplant was cooked enough to split I split it. I was thinking that I would make one half for me and one half for my husband. I salted it, I put a bit of garlic on it, I put a little bit of parmesan cheese on it. Then I looked over and I saw the onions I had chopped to put on it. And the kale. So I decided to put the onions and kale on one half and hubby and I would just get a half of each half making a whole half.
I put it back in the oven and let it bake for a bit more. Half way through the end of baking portion I saw the ginger and turmeric on the counter. Snap! I forgot to put it on. So I sprinkled a little turmeric on both halves. I put the broiler on for about 10 minutes.
Here is the result.
From the time I thought to cook the eggplant to the time I put it in the oven to finish baking I had thought of three different ways to flavor it. I had originally thought to use garlic, turmeric, and ginger, then I thought of garlic, onions, and kale, then I thought of garlic, and cheese. That really is not a big deal the big deal is that I forgot one each time I thought of the new one. Geez! What I ended up with was ok. I think it needed a little bit more flavor. I will work on that. I don’t even think I tasted the turmeric.
I like cooking eggplant this way because it is much less time-consuming than turn the slices all the time. But I think I like the roasted slices better. But I will continue to experiment with this. I might try slicing it into three pieces next time. Although a baked eggplant is not easy to slice.
**It just dawned on me that the 200 degrees was probably Celsius and not Fahrenheit. So it would actually be about 400 degrees F. Ha!
I can’t wait to try this again!
What do you think of this way of cooking eggplant? What would you put on the eggplant?
Posted in Food, Vegetables | Tagged: aubergine, broiled eggplant, Cheese, cummin, eggplant, garlic, ginger, Nia, Nia class, soup, Turmeric | 9 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on January 7, 2012
A while back I did a post about rules of the house. Ha, as I was typing this I just thought of another one. My hubby is not allowed to talk to me when I am doing my Nia bars. If he sees me with my ear buds in and paper in front of me with lines on it he knows I am listening to my Nia music and not to talk to me. Sometimes there are songs that are just not that easy for me to count and when he interrupts me I have to start over. So we have reached an agreement there. Anyway, back to my other post, in that I mentioned not touching the cheese. One of my friends commented that she was going to come out here and she promised not to touch my cheese. I was actually waiting for her to come out here to post this, but that scheduled trip got cancelled and I still feel the need to explain. Her comment had me thinking that she thought I won’t SHARE my cheese. But that is not it at all. If I have a good cheese I will gladly share it with a fellow cheese lover because everything taste better when you share it. I actually mean don’t TOUCH the cheese.
One reason I have been putting off writing this post is I like to post pictures with my posts. So I was going to take pictures of what I am about to explain, but I really didn’t want to waste the cheese. I could not — every time since then that I have had a hunk of cheese, I could not bring myself to touch it! Cheese is made from curdled milk. In some cases they use bacteria to make the cheese. Cheese contains living organisms. With all these facts that make up cheese most cheese tend to mold quite easily and quickly.
It is my experience that the mold begins to grow where the cheese is touched. Go ahead, see for yourself. As I said, I will not sacrifice my cheese to show you pictures of this type of experiment. I know it to be true. Even though you wash your hands before you touch the cheese, you still have bacteria and things on your hand that apparently help the mold grow. Again, this is just what I have experienced. I have found that if the cheese is touched that is where the mold grows. I have found that if the BAG or wrapper in which the cheese is stored is touched and that area touches the cheese that is where the mold grows.
Of course, if cheese is old enough it starts to grow mold on its own, but wherever it is touched it grows faster. Have you experienced this to be true? I have, so that is why there is a “rule” in our house that the cheese cannot be touched. That includes ALL cheese in all forms. You cannot put your hand in a bag of shredded cheese. You can pour a small amount into a bowl (or whatever) and handle it from there using what you want, but hopefully you will end up using all of it. If not, it gets put in a separate bag or container it does not go back in the bag with the rest of the cheese. Tubs of cheese . . . . same thing. Even cream and ricotta, you can’t use a utensil then “double-dip” if the utensil has touched hands or mouth. Mouth is probably even worse than hands touching the cheese.
So, that is the reason for the “Don’t Touch the Cheese” rule in our house. It has nothing to do with sharing. We will gladly share our cheese with you, just don’t HANDLE it!
Are you willing to experiment? Use two pieces of cheese to see if the one you touch goes bad before the one you don’t touch? Let us know? Remember you have to have cheese around your house long enough for this to even happen. Ha, ha! (I know how some of you cheese lovers are!)
Posted in Food | Tagged: all types of cheese, Cheese, cheese lover, Nia, Nia bars, Nia Music, rules of the house, shredded cheese | 20 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on May 17, 2011
I love tortillas. I love that they come in so many different flavors and ways. Depending upon your nutritional needs and health goals you can pretty much get almost any kind of tortilla you want. There are corn tortillas. They can be white corn, yellow corn, or corn with flavors. There are flour tortillas, wheat, whole wheat, multi grain, or white. There are low carb tortillas, low fat tortillas, spinach tortillas, tomato tortillas, fortified tortillas, high fiber tortillas, gluten-free tortillas, low-sodium tortillas, and the list goes on I am sure.
There are probably as many tortillas as there are ways you can cook with them. I think I have proclaimed my love for them before. Here is one of my favorite ways (why yes, yes I do have MANY favorite ways to eat a tortilla. And this is ONE! 🙂 ) This is a tortilla that I had warmed in the oven, then I put cheese, onions, and grape tomatoes on it. Then I heated up until the cheese was melted. Then I put the spinach on it. Then I put the mushrooms on it that I had cooked.
This is actually what my husband ate. Mine was not as colorful as I did not have the tomatoes or onions. And I cooked my spinach a little so it was wilted and wilted spinach does not make as pretty of a picture was the non-wilted kind.
Love this. Just looking at it I want to go have one. To me this is an easy meal. Put a bit of cheese and load a tortilla with veggies. Have more veggies on the side. Yay. Perfect!
Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: Cheese, corn tortillas, easy meal, flour tortilas, grape tomatoes on it, health goals, low carb tortillas, low fat tortillas, multi grain, nutritional needs, onions, tortillas, Veggie Topped Tortilla, whole wheat | 8 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on May 5, 2011
Since I have a few posts about salads, I have a few comments about salad. When my blogger sister mentioned in her comment her favorite salad is a layered salad I asked her to send me the recipe. So she did. I invite anyone to send me salad recipes. I am not necessarily requesting any certain TYPE of salad because we all have different nutritional needs, different likes, and different dislikes. Here is The Water Witch’s Daughter’s favorite salad:
Seven Layer Salad
It is generally topped with a dressing to marinade for about four hours before serving, and then it is topped with crumbled bacon. The typical dressing is one cup of Miracle Whip mixed with a half cup of sour cream and a quarter cup of sugar.
These are the ingredients pictured:
one to two bunches of romaine lettuce, chopped
one yellow pepper, chopped one cucumber, peeled and diced
about two cups carrots, chopped
one container of grape tomatoes, cut in half
one package of thawed frozen peas
one cup of shredded mild cheddar cheese
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Looks like she started with the lettuce, then put the peppers, then carrots, cucumbers, peas, tomatoes, then topped it with the cheese. I guess you can layer it anyway you would like, she didn’t say.
She did say that she did not marinate this one she just used ranch dressing. So it seems like there are dressing options. As with any salads, you can make them with whatever you want, and you can layer them, but I am thinking that the peas and the cheese combine to make a specific type of texture and flavor.
I am not a fan of Miracle Whip, more accurately I don’t like it. The ranch dressing is more my style, but on my salads I tend to just use olive oil and vinegar. But for this I would think a light creamy dressing would be good. With the ingredients state above, what dressing would YOU use? Do you have a favorite? Or can you suggest one that might be less calories? What would really blend well with this salad yet at the same time make it pop? Please share because I am curious as to what to use.
Thank you to my friend SuziCate for sharing her favorite salad! Thanks for the picture too!
Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: blog sister, Cheese, layered salad, less calorie, Miracle Whip, ranch dressing, salads, SuziCate, Water Witch's Daughter | 6 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on April 23, 2011
You know that the body being in a constant state of inflammation is not good, right? Research and studies are relating this state of being to many diseases. You know there are foods that have an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. Do you know that there are foods that cause an inflammatory response in the body?
It is thought that foods that cause an allergic reaction are related to inflammation. Since inflammation is an immune response. One of the food groups to be avoided when on a nutrition plan to reduce inflammation in the body is dairy. Dairy is a big allergy culprit so milk, cheese, and yogurt would not be included in this type of diet. Although I love dairy this seems like one of the easiest things to avoid.
Another allergy food is peanuts. This food is definitely not on the list of “can eat” if following an anti-inflammatory eating plan. This food seems like it might be a little bit more difficult to avoid. I would imagine if it is just being avoided with the idea to reduce inflammation it would not be so imperative to avoid things that are made in plants with peanuts as one has to do if they are highly allergic.
This diet also excludes caffeine and alcohol. Strict adherence would entail no fried foods, no processed foods, and no corn. I think the really difficult allergen to avoid is gluten. It seems to be in so many things. Things I wouldn’t have even thought of. Since so many people are participating in gluten-free diets I have since learned a few of the things, but still. It is in so many things it seems difficult to avoid. Just like the items on my list*. It is difficult to avoid them. I keep wondering what there is so eat on a diet like this.
This diet is thought to help so many health issues. Again from what I have seen it is thought that a constant state of inflammation is bad for the body. It is thought that this state is a state in which diseases can infiltrate the body and its systems. So if there are health issues I can see following this if it help relieve some of the symptoms of a particular disease. But this type of diet is also used as a detox and to see if any of these foods cause a reaction in the body. The plan is to not eat these foods for about two weeks then introduce them back into the diet and to check the reactions of the body.
I want to try this detox/elimination diet to see if there are some food that I should definitely cut out of my diet. I can live without all of this for two weeks, but the gluten. It is in so many things. Well, I am going to research it further. I am sure I will be posting more about this in the future, but I wanted to see what you think.
I know some of you follow gluten-free diets? So if you follow a gluten-free diet, why? And what do you notice, what differences in your body? And what do you eat instead of bread? Are they any of you that follow an anti-inflammation diet? Please share.
*Currently my list of ingredients to avoid: High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or Corn sugar, partially hydrogenated oils, and Canola Oil
Posted in Food | Tagged: allergen, allergic reaction, allergy, and Canola Oil, Anti-Inflammation Diet, anti-inflammatory, Cheese, corn sugar, dairy, detox, elimination diet, gluten, gluten-free diet, HFCS, High Fructose Corn Syrup, immune response, Inflammation, milk, nutrition plan, Partially Hydrogenated Oils, reduce inflammation, state of inflammation, yogurt | 11 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on December 3, 2009
Yup, AGAIN with the asparagus, but this time it is NOT roasted. You see, my hubby gets just as tired of me cooking roasted asparagus just as you probably get tired of me blogging about it. Well, we recently went to Coscto (is that a Bay Area thing? There are a few just in San Jose.) and bought a few bags of asparagus. I could eat just roast it and eat it that way, but I like to make food that my hubby will enjoy too, so I decided to try cooking it another way.
Trying to come up with something new is a little exercise in creativity. It is funny how it works out when I am just throwing stuff together and when I am just trying something out to be different it turns out that my husband LOVES it. I never know how it is going to work out.
I put some garlic infused olive oil in a pan with some onions then cooked the ground turkey. I decided to be totally daring and so I used some balsamic vinegar (hubby is not a fan, but Ithought I would try it). Then I added the asparagus and I also used some smoky garlic sea salt a friend of ours brought us from Hawaii.
I cooked it all up and served it over rice. Now, I have to honest, I really liked it, but my hubby LOVED it and it COULD be because I plated his rice, then I took two slices of Havarti and put it over the rice, THEN I put the turkey asparagus combination over that. So the cheese melted in between thehot rice and the hot turkey. I had a taste, his tasted pretty much like cheese. And anything is better with Havarti because it is like butter. I didn’t have the cheese and I felt it was great and not overpowered by cheese.
I used a package of turkey (I guess it is a pound or a little over) and probably a one and a half pounds of asparagus.
So . . . how else can I cook asparagus?
Posted in Food | Tagged: Asparagus, Bay Area, Bay Area Exercise, Bay Area Workout, Cheese, Costco, garlic olive oil, ground turkey, Havarti cheese, roasted asparagus, San Jose, San Jose Costco, San Jose exercise, San Jose Workout, turkey | 3 Comments »
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