Crock Pot or Not Chili

As the weather starts getting colder, there is nothing that I like better than a big bowl of chili. It's one of life's perfect comfort foods. It has meat, beans, tomatoes...seriously, what's not to love? I wanted to share my recipe for chili with you today. What I love about this recipe, passed down from my Mom, is that it is perfect for a crock pot, but if you are lacking on time, you can easily just cook it up in a big sauce pan on the stove for 20 minutes or so until it gets heated up. Here goes!

Amy's Crock Pot or Not Chili

2 cans of petite cut diced tomatoes

2 cans of chili beans (slightly drained)

2 cans of kidney beans (drained)

1lb of browned ground beef (with onion if you like)

1 cup (or so) of water

3 heaping tablespoons of chili powder

Garlic salt to taste

Add everything into the crock pot and heat on low for 6-8 hours. If you make it on the stove, the longer you cook it, the better it will taste. As always, soups like chili ALWAYS taste better the second day.

And here's a secret for you: I learned many years ago from a dear family friend, Chae Tartt, to serve chili over white rice. Although it sounds unusual, it really makes the chili stretch farther, and it gives it so much more substance. Chae is no longer with us, but I always think about her whenever I cook chili with rice. Anyone can serve chili with cornbread, Frito's or a grilled cheese sandwich, but you can totally surprise your family with rice. Give it a try. I promise you will love it!

Another secret: Just about everyone knows how delicious shredded cheddar cheese is in chili, but have you ever tried a dollop of low fat sour cream? It's amazing!

Another secret: I know this will sound so strange, but I also love chili with a spoonful of blue cheese dressing. I know that blue cheese is an acquired taste, and heaven knows that I don't understand why everyone doesn't enjoy it, but my oh my, it is delicious in chili!

Now that I'm all secreted out, you need to go make a big pot of chili with rice and cheese and sour cream and blue cheese dressing. You can thank me later! Have a great day!

Coca-Cola Cake

I'm usually not a fan of chocolate cake. At weddings I always, without fail, go for the bride's cake. I have found my chocolate cake exception.

After my Tres Leche cake flop, my Mom told me that I just had to try making a Coca-Cola cake. She swears by Cracker Barrel's version and told me that I would just love it. So I gave it a shot. Here's the recipe she gave me to try straight out of her Coca-Cola recipe book:

Coca-Cola Cake
2 cups plain unsifted flour
1 cup sugar
2 sticks butter or margarine
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup Coca-Cola (NOT Diet Coke)
½ cup buttermilk
2 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups of miniature marshmallows

Sift the flour and sugar into a large mixing bowl. In a saucepan heat the butter, cocoa and coca-cola until they boil. Pour this over the flour and sugar mixture and mix thoroughly. Add the buttermilk , eggs, baking soda, vanilla and marshmallows and mix well. The batter will be thin and the marshmallows will come to the top. Bake at 350 in a greased sheet pan (2x12x14 inches) for 30-35 minutes.

Icing
1 stick of butter or margarine (melted)
3 tablespoons of cocoa
7 tablespoons of Coca-Cola
I box of confectioners sugar
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Mix the first three ingredients well and pour over the confectioners sugar. Mix well and pour over the cake while it is still warm. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

My only diversion from the original recipe was that I used a greased 13x9 inch dish. I didn't have the other size. My cake turned out delicious! It was so simple to make, especially considering it was from scratch, not very expensive, and I had most of the ingredients already around the house.

My Mom had a piece and she loved it also! She pronounced it more "brownie like" than Cracker Barrel's version, but it was so good! The whole family loved it! And seriously, the icing is so delicious I tried to drink the leftovers as I was mixing it. The icing would be amazing to just pour straight over vanilla ice cream if you ever wanted a quick chocolate fix. It was still warm from the melted butter when I poured it over the warm cake and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream it was so delicious!

Jeremy quickly told me that I had to make it again. Like the next day. It was that good! If you are eating the cake as leftovers, pop it into the microwave for about 10 seconds and get icing warmed up again. Give it a shot and let me know what you think. It's life changing!

Have a great day!

Turkey Fettucine

I apologize for Amy's lack of recipe sharing! She's supposed to be sharing a Coca-Cola cake recipe but she did say something about her Mom taking the cookbook back home....I'd post it myself, but I googled mine and it didn't turn out exactly like Amy's! So I'm sharing something else my family tried last night that was wonderful - good comfort food on a cold, chilly night.

I am going to post this recipe twice in this blog, once to share the original, and then again to show you my version. I'll explain why later....

Turkey Fettucine
1/2 pound fettucine noodles
3 tbsp. butter or margarine
3 tbsp. all purpose flour
1 c. milk
1 c. chicken broth
1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
dash of white pepper
2 c. chopped skinless turkey breast (about 10 oz.)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

When I first looked over this recipe, it reminded me of a "flopped" Chicken Carbonara pasta I tried a few weeks back. I don't know about the rest of you, but I like sauce when it comes to pasta - not just to balance the pasta/sauce out but because when you have a recipe that doesn't create a lot of sauce, a few things happen:
You end up with leftover cooked noodles and no sauce
OR
You end up with leftover sauce and no noodles
OR WORSE
You have leftovers of both but the sauce is so miniscule that when you reheat the dish it is DRY to the bone!

I also like a lot of flavor with my pasta, and cheese is always an added bonus! So using that carbonara experience and going from there, I present to you my own modified version of Turkey Fettucine!

Miranda's Turkey Linguine
1 lb linguine noodles
6 tbsp. butter
6 tbsp. all purpose flour
2 cups milk
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 c shredded parmesan cheese
3 turkey breast fillets
2 tbsp dried parsley flakes
salt and pepper to taste

I used three of the turkey breast fillets, cooking them 5 minutes per side on medium heat until they were no longer pink in the middle. I think that took about 20 minutes, flipping them every five minutes. Then I had two half-empty boxes of linguine and no fettucine, so we substituted. When it comes to pasta, you can always substitute if you don't have something on hand!
I started the water for the pasta after the turkey fillets were cooked. Then I went to work with my Pampered Chef chopper and diced up the turkey fillets for the sauce.
Then you melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour, cooking for one minute until it is smooth (to me, it looked like warm, liquid cookie dough). I added the milk and the broth, and then waited for the sauce to thicken. This kind of takes a while, I think it was 15-20 minutes before it reached a consistency I was comfortable with. The pasta was done, so I drained it and added a tbsp. of olive oil and some salt and pepper to the pasta. I turned off the sauce and moved it from the heat, dumping in the 1 1/2 cups of shredded parmesan. I put the pasta in a huge pot and dumped in the turkey, and then the sauce and tossed it to mix.

I made some garlic bread and english peas to serve with it, and Gracie and I had leftovers for lunch today! My only recommendation for reheating is to add 1-2 tbsp. of milk to the bowl in order to keep the sauce from drying out or the pasta getting hard.

I am anticipating cooler temps for the rest of the week (although I'm not weather man!) and so I'm looking for recipes that make good comfort food, soups, stews, etc!

Maybe the next post will be from Amy to share her version of the Coca-Cola cake. Although mine was super-good anyway!