New Recipes: Bacon Wrapped Asparagus and Chicken

I have two new recipes for you! Both of them turned out great and made a good meal with a side of mashed potatoes (and the sauce from the chicken makes a good gravy for the taters).

Bacon Wrapped Asparagus

• 1/2 Lb Bacon
• 1 Lb Fresh Asparagus
• Olive Oil
• Pepper
• Salt (optional)

Preheat oven to 400*
Prepare asparagus spears by cutting or snapping off the bottom 1-2 inches.
Starting just under the tender tips, wrap the bacon in a spiral motion down the asparagus. I used one piece of bacon and wrapped it around 2-3 spears of asparagus (an alternate method is to cut the bacon in half length-wise and use two cut pieces per spear).
Place spears, seam side down if possible, on a rimmed baking pan. Lightly coat with olive oil and pepper to taste. Use salt sparingly or not at all.
Roast at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until bacon is cooked to desired crispness.

My husband and I LOVED bacon wrapped asparagus. We are huge asparagus eaters and wrapping them in bacon just made it even better. I would eat these as a snack or they'd be pretty fun to bring to a pot-luck party (in which case I would do the individual spear method).

Bacon Wrapped Smothered Chicken

• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• 4 slices of bacon
• 8 oz sour cream
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• Salt/Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Wrap each chicken breast in 2 strips of bacon and place in a glass 9x13 inch baking dish.
In a small bowl, mix the sour cream and soup. Cover the chicken with the sour cream/soup mixture and bake uncovered in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes or until slightly brown on top. Let cool and serve on top of hot, cooked rice if desired.  

I used chicken tenders (4-6) and used one piece of bacon per tender, I also didn't have any sour cream so I used a little bit of milk to make the soup creamier. It turned out pretty good, but I would suggest making sure you have the sour cream as it adds just that little bit more flavor. Overall it was really good and will be something I'll make for future dinners!

New Recipe: Baked Acorn Squash

A few weeks back, hubby and I stopped at a farmers market and I kept overhearing people talk about acorn squash and how good it was. We ended up leaving the market with two of them. I then came home and looked up a recipe for baked acorn squash. Here is the recipe and the results.

Classic Baked Acorn Squash

• 1 Acorn Squash
• 1 Tbsp Butter
• 2 Tbsp Brown Sugar
• 2 Tsp Maple Syrup
• Dash of salt (if using unsalted butter)

Preheat oven to 400°F.
Using a strong chef's knife, and perhaps a rubber mallet to help, cut the acorn squash in half, lengthwise, from stem to end. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff in the center of each half. Score the insides of each half several times with a sharp knife. Place each half in a baking pan, cut side up. Add about a 1/4 inch of water to the bottom of the baking pan so that the skins don't burn and the squash doesn't get dried out.

Coat the inside of each half with 1/2 a Tbsp of butter. Add a dash of salt if you are using unsalted butter. Add a Tbsp of brown sugar to the cavity of each half. Dribble on a teaspoon of maple syrup to each half.


Bake in the oven for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, until the squash is very soft and the tops are browned. Do not undercook. When finished, remove from oven and let cool a little before serving. Spoon any buttery sugar sauce that has not already been absorbed by the squash over the exposed areas.

Serves 2 to 4, depending on how much squash you like to eat.

 Review: My husband liked it, I didn't. I think it was the maple syrup part that I didn't like, because that was all I could taste - I am not a maple syrup person (not even on pancakes, which I love). I do think this would make a decent breakfast when using maple syrup in the recipe (not that I would eat it). If we cook this again I think we'll be testing out cinnamon, sugar and cloves or nutmeg. There are variations of this recipe on the internet so feel free to find your own and test it out. Acorn squash is pretty cheap at farmers markets (we got two for $1) and by itself it tastes a lot like a mild sweet potato.

17. Cook 50 New Recipes

As I started to look through my list on a recent update I realized I have no way of tracking how many new recipes I try. I usually end up cooking something new on a whim, so I decided to make a post to both keep track of and share any new recipes!

1. Pumpkin Pie Chili 
2. Baked Acorn Squash
3. Bacon Wrapped Asparagus
4. Bacon Wrapped Chicken
5. Acorn Squash Supreme (recipe coming soon)
6. Real Pumpkin Pumpkin Pie (recipe coming soon)
7. Thanksgiving Turkey (recipe coming soon)
8. My Moms Cran-jello goodness (not sharing the recipe, sorry folks)
9. Gourmet Bean Soup (recipe coming soon)

New Recipe: Pumpkin Chili

I was looking around on allrecipes.com for some good pumpkin pie recipes and stumbled upon "Pumpkin Chili' so I had to give it a go. Here is the recipe (with my modifications) and the results.

Oh yea and I am changing the name of this to "Pumpkin PIE Chili" because I like it better.

Pumpkin Pie Chili

• 2 Lbs. Ground Beef 
• I only had 1lb so that is all I used.
• 1 Large Onion, Diced
• The recipe didn't specify what type of onion, I used yellow.
• 1 Green Bell Pepper, Diced 
• We bought our peppers from the farmers market, so they are much smaller than what you'd find at a regular grocery store I used two small ones to compensate.
• 2 (15 ounce) cans kidney beans, drained
• 1 (46 fluid ounce) can tomato juice
• 1 (28 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes with juice
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
• Rather than only using 1/2 cup out of a 15oz can of pumpkin puree I used the whole can - waste not want not, right?
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice 
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• Because I used the entire can of pumpkin puree I decided not to add the extra sugar. I didn't want the chili to turn out too sweet.

In a large pot over medium heat, cook beef until brown; drain. 
Stir in onion and bell pepper and cook 5 minutes. 

Stir in beans, tomato juice, diced tomatoes and pumpkin puree. 
Season with pumpkin pie spice, chili powder and sugar. 

 Simmer 1 hour.  (Note: While it's simmering, be sure to stir every so often - I didn't and ended up with some burnt yuck at the bottom).

 Overall it was really yummy! We have enough leftover to play with so I intend on adjusting it a bit. It had no "kick" to it so if you're not a fan of spicy chili then this would be a great recipe for you - if you like spicy I'd suggest adding some diced jalapeno (that will be my next adjustment). I am glad I made the adjustment with the pumpkin puree and nixing the sugar. Oh and only one bowl was enough for Craig to get nice and full...although he had three biscuits with it.

Finishing the Cider

This is an update to my Hard Cider is Easy post.

We finally got around to bottling and kegging the hard cider. I think we waited longer than we should have to get to this point but we finally did it. This is what one of the one gallon jugs looked like after it fermented in the jug for about a month and a half (3 weeks would have sufficed). You can see that the yeast went crazy and bubbled out of the container (which is why an air-lock with a bubbler would have been better to use).

We started off by sanatizing everything we were going to use.


We then  boiled about 2 shot glasses of sugar with enough water to allow the sugar to dissolve, let it cool to room temperature and then poured the jug of cider into the pot.

Very carefully poured this mixture into the bottles.

And finally, we capped them and put them back into the temperature controlled freezer set to about 68*.


The reason we added sugar to the mixture was to allow the cider to get bubbly in the bottles. We tasted one of the bottles we did of the Raspberry Cider and I wasn't pleased with it yet, but it has potential. We'll let it sit a while. The regular apple cider that Craig did 5 gallons of, smelled WONDERFUL!! He kegged it and now we're letting it sit a while. I am sure we'll be enjoying it with company for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!!

Cheeseburger Casserole

I am posting this recipe upon request. I had a facebook status saying that I was making this recipe because my Mom used to make it and I thought it was yummy so I wanted to try it. After making it I did have some thoughts so I'll post those too!

Cheeseburger Casserole (Serves 4-6)

6 Medium potatoes, cooked and cubed*
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
4 tablespoons A1 Steak Sauce (or equavalent)
1 lb. extra lean ground beef
6 slices processed American cheese

1. Spread cooked potatoes in buttered 8" x 12" shallow baking pan.
**The pan I used was not buttered, I don't see why you'd have to do this as nothing stuck to the pan I used (a glass pirex dish).
2. In 2-quart sauce pan, melt butter. Stir in flour. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add milk, seasonings, and 2 tablespoons of A1. Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Pour sauce over potatoes.
**I mixed all of these ingredients except for the flour and cooked it until just before boiling then slowly sifted in the flour - worked out fine and seemed faster.
3. Mix beef with remaining 2 tables spoons of A1. Form 6 patties. Arrainge on top of sauce/potatoes.
**It's much easier to just crumble the ground beef on top. I would even suggest adding a little more A1 to it if you like the flavor of A1.
4. Bake in preheated 375* oven for 20 minutes or until hot and bubbly.
**Or in the microwave until beef is cooked thoroughly, which for me took about 20 minutes.
5. Place cheese slices over meat patties. Continue baking for 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Ok.. my overall notes (per the way my Mom made this) and my suggestions:
- When you're cooking the potatoes, do it as if you were going to make mashed potatoes (peel, cube into bite size pieces and boil) only not quite as long. You don't want the potatoes to be mushy, but if you can cut them with the side of your fork then that should be good. Roughly a 20 minute boil.
- Pre-cooking the ground beef before putting on top of the potato mixture. This would ensure that the beef is cooked throughly and evenly. When I was cooking this (per recipe) it seemed to take a while for it to be cooked all the way and the edges were over cooked. You could also pour off the grease and it'd be a healthier dish.
- I used way more than six slices of cheese, I used enough to cover the top of the entire mixture. Everyone seems to love the cheese/ground beef part the best too, so the more cheese the better, I think. I even thought of just using shredded cheese over the top too (cheddar and mozzarella mix).
- My father in law suggested adding sliced ortega chili's to the mix, which sounded really good. Both he and my husband put salsa on their plates too. I imagine this meal would be great with anything you'd put on a cheeseburger.

So there you have it. Let me know if you end up trying this. It's super simple and most people like it.

Honey Bars (Take 2)

So I wasn't satisfied with the Honey "Bars" I made previously and looked up another recipe. I like this one much better. German Honey Bars Lebkuchen


Again, I modified this recipe but only by one ingredient. Anyone know how expensive cardamom is? I do.

I ended up using ground cloves instead, I believe it's a completely different flavor but that is what I had in the cupboard and I wasn't about to spend $16 on something I've never used and the likelihood of using it again was slim! That and I know that cloves and cinnamon go well together. Anyways, I mixed everything up according to the recipe and spread it into a 15x17 cookie sheet (the kind with the sides) instead of a "jelly roll" pan, which I didn't have. The recipe says to spread the dough evenly into the prepared pan...well that wasn't easily done because the dough is incredibly sticky. It was like super thick peanut butter that only stuck to the spoon and not the prepared pan.

After spending about 10 minutes trying to spread the dough unsuccessfully I had an idea: use the back of a metal spoon and cooking spray (good ol' cooking spray). My idea paid off and after a few extra sprays on to the back of the spoon (when the dough started to stick) I finally had it evenly spread in the pan.

So because I was using a larger pan than the recipe called for I decreased my cooking time. I set it to 10 minutes to be safe and added minutes until I felt it was fully and evenly cooked. It ended up being about 15 minutes. When I read the glaze recipe I thought that the dry to wet ratio of ingredients was a tad off, but it worked out perfectly. If you're not into the lemony flavor you can use milk instead. Once they cooled down, I cut them into the recommended size pieces. Cutting was a little difficult as was getting them out of the pan. I suggest using a bendable spatula to get 6-8 out at a time, some might stick though.

These have a GREAT flavor and they reminded me of Christmas, I later discovered that "Lebkuchen is a traditional German product baked for Christmas, somewhat resembling soft gingerbread." - Wikipedia
Go figure.

Honey Bars (Take 1)

So Craig and I are going to an Oktoberfest put on by his home brew club (Temecula Valley Homebrewers Association) during the first weekend of October. The theme for the event is (of course) German and we'll be having a pot-luck dinner the 2nd night in. So I was on a mission to find a yummy dessert to make and share. I found this recipe for German Lebkuchen Bars (German Honey Cakes) and thought it'd be the perfect dessert after all of the other German foods everyone else was bringing. I hit up the local grocery store only to find out that they don't carry two of the ingredients I would need (both of the candied items). Now, normally I would figure out something to put in it's place, but it would have ended up being 1/2 a cup of modified ingredients and I wasn't about to be that courageous. So I stood in the middle of the baking aisle, called my Mom to ask her a few “what if” and “what is” questions and then began looking up a different recipe for the same thing that required less “special” ingredients. After finding five difference recipes I finally found one that only required I buy two ingredients (as I already had everything else at home).

Here is the recipe I ended up with: Honey Bars

Now, I ended up doubling the recipe and tossed in a few modifications based on other recipe's I've seen. I used sliced almonds instead of walnuts because I am not a big walnut fan and I don't know many who are. They sell sliced almonds in 5oz packages so I went with that, which was just under 2 cups worth. If you don't double the recipe then the smaller size package of sliced almonds will work fine (I think it's a 2.5 or 3 oz package). I also added 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and a dash or two of ground cloves. It just sounded good, but keep in mind I added those amounts to the doubled recipe. According to the bottom of the baking instructions it says if you use an 8x8 pan to only fill it 2/3 full. I only have one 8x8 pan so for the first round of baking I filled mine 1/2 full and it puffed up like a nice cake, ended up adding about 10 minutes to the baking time, and cooked unevenly. The second round of baking I didn't have enough batter to get to even the half way mark on the 8x8 pan it ended up being about 1/3 full, took only 30 minutes, and baked evenly throughout. The entire house smells wonderfully sweet but I am disappointed in how these turned out. I was expecting "bars" not "cake" but they turned out to be a very "heavy" cake so they won't crumble apart when cut into serve-able squares. My overall notes after tasting them: I am glad I added the cinnamon, otherwise these would not have much flavor to them, they are a bit dry (not bad) so even adding some chopped apples to it would be great! I felt like I was eating an apple cinnamon muffin, only without the apple and not a muffin. I would recommend cream cheese frosting on these, too (but alas, I have none).

Cooking tip: When cooking with honey, spray some cooking spray on your measuring utensils before measuring out the honey. It will prevent the honey (or other super sticky ingredients) from sticking! (Credit to Paula Deen for that lifesaver!)


Now, if I could just get someone else to clean the kitchen.

Hard Cider is Easy

We went up to Oak Glen this weekend to pick up some apple cider from Riley's Farms. Its a very Julian-esq place, orchards and fields of fruits and vegetables all surrounded by mountan's, trees, cabin-esq and victorian-esq homes. One of the things on my list is to go there and pick fruit with my husband. They have raspberry, pumpkin, apple, pear, strawberry, watermelon, cherry, flower, peach and ollalieberrie(what?) fruit picking days. I think we may try to make another trip there before Thanksgiving to pick pumpkins (cooking pumpkins, not jack-o-lantern pumpkins). If anyone is interested in checking out the place, their website is here. We ended up bringing home a total of seven gallons of cider, five were just apple, one was cherry-apple and the last was raspberry-apple. I even got a small jar of pumpkin butter to share with the family on Thanksgiving, it tastes like pumpkin pie but with a more spreadable consistency - very yummy and I can't wait to try it on some toasted whole wheat or sweet bread!

The second half of our day consisted of "brewing" the cider into hard cider. I didn't know how simple it was. Basically in a nutshell you put the cider in a carboy (6-7 gal glass or plastic jug) and add a vial of yeast to it. Of course you have to be sure the temperatures are right and to leave out any contaminants.

These 5 gallons of apple cider went into a 6 gal carboy:

Pouring the cider into the carboy (we repeated the process with the other two flavors into two, one gallon glass jugs):

Then we pitched the yeast ("pitched" is a fancy way of saying "poured"). For the 1 gallon batches we split a vial of yeast for each, for the 5gal batch we used one whole vial:

Added the stoppers - which prevents foreign objects and bacteria etc. from entering the carboy as the cider ferments (the stoppers we had didn't fit in the 1 gal jugs so using foil works, it's just a bit risky). Then we placed the now fermenting cider into a freezer with a temperature controller set at 68 degrees:


All in all it took us about an hour to do everything, including pre-cleaning and post-cleaning. These should all ferment for about two weeks and then it's on to the next step of carbonating, kegging and bottling. The cost per gallon of cider was $9 for the apple (in the glass jugs) and $10 for the cherry and raspberry (in plastic milk jugs).

Today was a great day!