Chicken and Black Bean Wrap

While trying to lose some weight lately I’ve been focusing on some fairly simple and healthy recipes.

Ingredients:
2-3 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts
1 can Black Beans
1 cup Freeze Dried Green Bell Peppers
1/2 cup Freeze Dried Onions

1. Get your bell peppers soaking so they can hydrate. Make sure that they are covered in water and then let them sit.

2. Cook your chicken in a skillet deep enough to prepare everything in. (Don’t you love one pan meals!) Once some of the juices and oils from the chicken start working around in the pan go ahead and throw in your Freeze Dried Onions. I didn’t reconstitute mine because I often like to just use the natural juices from the meats to do that. You can reconstitute them if you’d rather.

3. Once your chicken is cooked through and the temperature is at least to 170 degrees go ahead and slice it up. I don’t have a nylon knife that is safe to use in my non-stick pan so I forked them out and cut them into strips on my cutting board.

I guess I added the beans and drained peppers before I cut it. It really doesn’t matter.

4. Add your peppers and beans to your hot pan so they can get warmed up.

5. Serve over some rice or in a tortilla

Golden Graham Smores

I found this recipe on cooks.com.

Ingredients:
3/4 c. light corn syrup
3 Tbsp. butter
1 pkg. (11.5 oz) milk chocolate morsels
3 c. miniature marshmallows
1 tsp. vanilla
1 pkg. (12 oz) Golden Graham cereal (9 cups)

1. Grease 9x13 pan

2. Heat syrup, butter and morsels to boiling, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla.

3. Pour over cereal; toss until coated. Fold in Marshmallows (it suggests one cup at a time, but I just poured it all in at once. Press in pan with buttered back of spoon. I added some extra marshmallows on top for fun. Let it stand for 1 hour.

4. Cut into 2 inch squares (or the serving size you want). Store loosely covered at room temperature up to 2 days. Makes 24 squares.

These are DELICIOUS!!! I heard my sister talking about something similar to this and I had to try them. This is the only recipe I’ve tried, but I love the proportions and the easiness of it all. It comes together really quick.

Funeral Potatoes

One of my favorite dishes. I don’t know why I’ve never tried making it before. I’ve actually found myself wondering the same thing about a lot of other foods recently.

I absolutely love these potatoes. The idea to try these with freeze-dried ingredients actually came from my good friend Rose (Thank you for the inspiration!) They turned out perfect!!! It was so easy and I love the fact that my potatoes/hashbrowns don’t have to be taking up space in my freezer.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of freeze dried onion, reconstituted
2 cans of cream of chicken soup
2 cups of powdered sour cream, reconstituted (2 cups of powder, one of water)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups of grated freeze dried cheese, reconstituted
6 cups of freeze dried potato shreds, reconstituted (or 2lb bag of frozen hash browns)
3/4 c cornflakes, crushed and firmly packed
4 Tbsp butter, melted (optional)

1. Combine your onions, soup, sour cream, salt, and cheese. Stir in potatoes. Pour into a 9x13 inch pan.

2. *Combine crushed cornflakes and melted butter.

3. Sprinkle cornflakes over the top of your potatoes.

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Makes 12 servings

*If you are interested in more onion flavor feel free to add more. The original recipe calls for 1 medium onion, chopped and cooked in 1/2 cup of butter until soft.

It’s delicious and can be served with all sorts of meats and other entrees.

Yes-a Yes-a Taco

Okay, this is kind of a family joke. It is the come back to “Nada Nada Enchilada”. That’s probably as much as you need to know.

We were having a dinner-time dilemma the other night. I had been called into work and hadn’t planned dinner accordingly. I had pulled some beef out in preparation for something, but hadn’t quite decided what. When I got home my husband had browned that beef (thank you!), but didn’t really know what to do after that (my fault since I didn’t have a plan).

So here is where the impromptu, it’s late and we’re hungry, taco night came into play. We didn’t really have all of the stuff fresh and ready that we usually like, so we decided to try out the freeze dried food we had.

So here you go, pretty much everything on this taco (minus the beef, the tortilla, and a little salsa that I added) can come from the dry food storage. It was all good too.

Ingredients:
Ground Beef, cooked and drained (I did ad some of my favorite seasonings to mine. Pampered Chef Southwestern Seasoning and Chipolte Lime Rub)
Tortillas
Cheese, reconstituted
Onions, reconstituted or thrown in while the beef is cooking. We used about 1/4 cup
Green Bell Peppers, reconstituted
Sour Cream, reconstituted (2 parts powder, 1 part water)
Tomato Cubes, reconstituted

You could also include olives, beans, or any other topping that you’d like. I just appreciated the fact that we could hurry and eat something without having to have had it fresh

Orange-Spiced Sweet Potatoes

I am a HUGE fan of candied yams and the like. Especially around Thanksgiving. In fact that’s generally the only time of the year that I eat them. It’s kind of sad now that I think about it. If there is something that you enjoy so much, why don’t you eat it more often? Maybe it’s just part of the tradition that makes it so good.

Anyway, this year I volunteered myself to bring them to Thanksgiving dinner. We had made a plan to do as much in Crockpots as possible though. That is where my journey started. I was just trying to look for some basic instructions for cooking yams in a crockpot when I fell about this one. I couldn’t resist trying it. It turned out perfectly! I loved it, the family loved it, and even people who generally don’t eat the candied yams tried it and liked it. So anyway, thank you CDKitchen. If you’d like to check out more of their recipes you can go to their website www.cdkitchen.com

Ingredients:
2 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (It was about 5 potatoes for me)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, cut into small pieces
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 medium orange, juiced
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
toasted chopped pecans

1. Place your sweet potatoes in the bottom of your slow cooker. Mix your spices together in your orange juice. Pour over the top of your sweet potatoes and stir to coat.

2. Sprinkle your brown sugar over the top of your sweet potatoes and stir it in.

3. Cook on HIGH for 2 hours or on LOW for 4 hours.

4. Before serving stir in your toasted pecans (or set on the side for those that want them and those that don’t).

*Tip: To juice and orange (or any other citrus fruit) I have found that if you roll it around with a little pressure before you cut it it is easier to get more juice out.

Parmesan Fries

A friend of mine mentioned these on Facebook and I pretty much immediately asked for the recipe. They are delicious!!!! Thanks Heather! :)

I’ve always been a fan of potato wedges, or things like them. I am usually pretty boring about them though. I could get daring and through some different spices on them, but I haven’t. For some people playing around with recipes, or even just ideas and flavors, is a little scary. Here is a recipe that you can just stick to.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp garlic
4-6 potatoes

1. Scrub your potatoes really well and then pat dry. Cut them into 8 wedges (or maybe more if they are really big). Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

2. Melt your butter and mix in your seasonings and cheese. I use Italian seasoning quite often. You can buy the dry packets used for making salad dressing or there are lots of other seasonings out there that you could use. Just pick your favorite one. After everything is mixed dip your wedges into the butter and coat them.

3. Cover your cookie sheet with aluminum foil (It makes the clean up sooooo nice). If you’re using a stone don’t worry about the foil. This is also a good recipe to use if you’re trying to season said stone. Place your coated wedges on the pan and bake for 30 minutes.

*Tip: Don’t use the powdered parmesan (and not just on this recipe, always!). The fresh stuff is really worth it. It lasts forever in your fridge and adds such a great flavor.

Spaghetti (Freeze Dried Sauce)

I am amazed with this tomato powder. It is really so simple. The spectrum of things you can do with it is so broad. I decided that my first experiment I would try was a basic spaghetti sauce.

One great thing about using the freeze dried tomato powder is that you get to choose how thick or thin you want the sauce. I opted for a thicker sauce.

Ingredients:
Tomato powder
Water
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder
Chili Powder
Oregano Leaves
Salt

Extras:
1 lb Ground Beef
1/4 cup Freeze Dried Onions
1 cup Freeze Dried Green Bell Pepper dices
1 cup Freeze Dried tomatoes cubed
1 can Olives

1. My sauce was made of about 1 cup of Tomato Powder and 6 cups of water. Add more water until you get the consistency that you’d like.

2. Mix in your favorite spices. I wanted to go for sauce with a ‘kick’. I probably could have added more kick though. Season and taste until you get it where you want it. Start with a teaspoon of each and then adjust from there. Here is my suggestion according to my taste buds:

1 Tbs Onion Powder
1 tsp Garlic Powder
2 tsp Chili Powder
1 tsp Oregano Leaves
1 tsp Salt

3. Brown your beef. As you reach the end of the browning process through your onions right in. They will reconstitute in the grease drained off of your beef.

4. Pour your tomatoes and green bell peppers in bowl then cover in water. Let it sit for 5 minutes, then drain.

5. Combine everything in your pan that you browned your beef in. Let it heat to your liking. Serve with noodles.

This made enough sauce to go over an entire bad of spaghetti noodles. Probably made at least 10 servings.