Chicken Artichoke Casserole

Recipe Taken From:
Virgina Fare Cookbook

Ingredients:
8 chicken breast halves, cooked and cubed
1 stick of butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 cups marinated artichoke hearts, drained and sliced

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken in a large shallow baking dish. Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Add flour; mix well.
Whisk in milk. Season with salt and pepper. Heat mixture until thickened.
Add parmesan cheese and wine to cream sauce. Stir in enough chicken stock to make the sauce thick and creamy.
Gently fold in artichokes. Pour sauce over chicken. Cover and bake for 1 hour.

Notes & Tips:
Makes 8 servings. You can add chopped bell peppers and one jar sliced pimientos for a more colorful presentation. I used part whipping cream and part skim milk. Also, I made the mistake of putting raw chicken in, instead of cooked. It looked mine WAY longer to cook than it calls for I was at 1.5-2 hours instead...duh Danielle. Geez. You can also crumble Ritz cracker over the top and uncover for the last 5-10 minutes.

Country Dijon Chicken and Pasta

Recipe Taken From:
Virgina Fare Cookbook

2 tbsp. flour
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 lb. skinned & boned chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch pieces
3 tbsp. butter
1 sm. onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/4 c. whipping cream
1/3 c. Dijon mustard
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
8 oz. fettuccine, cooked & drained
2 tbsp. parsley, chopped

Preparation:
In plastic bag, combine flour, pepper, and chicken; shake to coat. In large skillet, brown chicken in 2 tablespoons butter. Remove chicken to platter and keep warm. Add 1 tablespoon butter to skillet. Saute onion and garlic until soft. Stir in cream, mustard, and cheese. Add chicken, keep warm. Toss hot pasta with 2 tablespoons parsley. Place on serving platter; top with chicken. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon parsley over chicken. 4 to 6 servings.

Notes & Tips:
This took about 40 mins. total to make. Pretty easy and def. yummy. Make sure to use real Parmesan cheese, not the Kraft kind in the canister. Sorry there are no nutrition facts in this cookbook, and honestly you wouldn't want to know with all the cream and butter in this one anyway.

Shrimp Fantastic

Recipe Taken From:
Virgina Fare Cookbook

Ingredients:
3/4 cup butter, divided
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon tarragon
1/4 cup sherry
1 pound large fresh shrimp, peeled & deveined
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs (or croutons pulsed in a food processor)
Paprika

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Melt 1/2 cup butter in a large skillet. Add onions, garlic, tarragon, and sherry. Simmer 5 mins. over medium heat.
Melt remaining 1/4 cup butter in same skillet. Add shrimp, cooking over low heat. Season with salt and pepper.
Add bread crumbs when shrimp is almost done. Toss well.
Transfer to a large casserole dish. Sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 10 minutes.

Notes & Tips:
This is very similar to shrimp scampi. I think it would be best served with crusty bread to put the shrimp on. Make sure to generously season with salt if your bread crumbs don't have much. Overall I felt like this was good, but would be even better served like bruchetta. I served this with french bread and a salad.

Applesauce Pork Chops

Recipe Adapted From:
www.sparkpeople.com

Ingredients:
4 Boneless Pork Loin Chops
1 1/2 cups Applesauce
2 Tbsp Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Ginger

Preparation:
Slice the Loin into 7, 4 ounce pieces. Lay in shallow baking dish. Combine applesauce, brown sugar, cinnamon and ginger. Pour on top of pork. Bake in preheated oven at 350 for 40 minutes.

Notes & Tips:
Lame, lame, lame...this was so bland and tasted like I just threw applesauce on a baked pork chop...which is sort of all it was, but really not anything I'll make again. It needed something else, either to brown the chops before hand, add some chopped apples, something. If you try this and add something that works, comment and let me know!

Nutrition Facts:
Calories: 115.1
Total Fat: 3.8 g
Cholesterol: 34.1 mg
Sodium: 304.2 mg
Total Carbs: 5.1 g
Dietary Fiber: 0.6 g
Protein: 14.5 g

Photo Courtesy of: All's Fare Food Blog

Black Bean Pasta

Recipe Taken From:
Taste of Home, Healthy Cooking
April-May 2010

Ingredients:
9 ounces uncooked whole wheat fettuccine
1-3/4 cups sliced fresh baby portobello mushrooms
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can (14-1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes
2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
2 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 cups fresh baby spinach

Directions:
Cook fettuccine according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute mushrooms in oil until tender; add garlic, cook 2 minutes longer.
Stir in the black beans, tomatoes, rosemary and oregano. Cook and stir until heated through. Stir in spinach until wilted. Drain fettuccine. Serve with bean mixture.

Notes & Tips:
I didn't have any fettuccine so I used spiral pasta instead. Also I added the two vinegars because I'm on a huge vinegar kick and I think it was a great addition. I also didn't have any fresh spinach, so I used canned. It wasn't as wonderful as fresh spinach could have been but it's too hot to go out to the store. Great, low cooking, easy, vegetarian meal.

Nutrition Facts:
Serves 6:
2/3 cup bean mixture with 2/3 cup pasta equals 255 calories, 3 g fat (trace saturated fat), 0 cholesterol, 230 mg sodium, 45 g carbohydrate, 9 g fiber, 12 g protein. Diabetic Exchanges: 3 starch, 1 lean meat, 1/2 fat.

Strawberry Lemonade Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 cups finely chopped fresh strawberries

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375F. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in lemon zest, then blend in the eggs one at a time.

Stir in about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Mix well, then add in vanilla extract and half of the lemon juice. Add another third of the flour, followed by the remaining juice and the remaining flour mix. Stir until just combined and no streaks of dry ingredients remain. Mix in finely chopped strawberries quickly, just to distribute them evenly into the batter.

Spoon batter out into prepared muffin cups. The muffin cups should be very full.

Bake for 17-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, or with only a few moist crumbs attached. Start at 17 mins and keep adding time in 3 min. increments until cooked through. Turn muffins out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 12 muffins.

Notes & Tips:
You'll need about 3 or 4 large lemons to get enough juice for the quantity needed. Please use fresh lemons and strawberries. It gives the muffins a fizzy pop. Also, the 1 1/2 cup chopped strawberries looks like alot but the amount is just about perfect. Fresh and delicious. The muffins don't rise very much so feel free to fill the cups to the top.

Cranberry-Stuffed Turkey Burgers

Recipe Taken From:
Midwest Living Magazine
April 2011

Ingredients:
1/4 cup orange juice
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1-1/2 pounds uncooked ground chicken or turkey
1/3 cup fine dry bread crumbs
1 Tbsp. snipped fresh marjoram or 1 teaspoon dried marjoram, crushed (or rosemary)
1/4 tsp. kosher salt or 1/8 teaspoon regular salt
1 to 2 oz. Parmesan cheese, shaved
4 thin slices fresh mozzarella cheese or 4 slices regular mozzarella cheese
4 Kaiser rolls or sesame hamburger buns, split and toasted
Lettuce leaves

Preparation:
1. In a small saucepan, bring orange juice to boiling. Remove from heat; stir in cranberries. Let stand for 5 minutes. Drain cranberries, discarding orange juice.

2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine ground chicken/turkey, bread crumbs, marjoram/rosemary and salt. Shape chicken/turkey mixture into 8 1/2-inch-thick patties. (The mixture may be sticky. If necessary, wet hands to shape patties.)

3. Place one-fourth of the cranberries and one-fourth of the Parmesan cheese on the center of each of 4 patties. Top with the remaining patties; press edges to seal.

4. For a charcoal grill: Grill patties on the greased rack of an uncovered grill directly over medium coals for 14 to 18 minutes or until no longer pink (165 degrees F)*, turning once halfway through grilling. (For a gas grill: Preheat grill. Reduce heat to medium. Place patties on greased grill rack over heat. Cover; grill as above.) Top each burger with a slice of mozzarella cheese. Grill, uncovered, about 3 minutes more or until cheese begins to melt. Serve burgers on toasted rolls with lettuce leaves. Makes 4 burgers.

Notes & Tips:
Well the orginal recipe was for chicken burgers, but I don't know about you but where in the world do you get ground chicken? So I subbed turkey. Also I didn't have any marjoram in my cabinet so I used rosemary. I think these turned out great. Since it was raining out I used my little indoor electric grill and they came out great. Mat even said he'd love to have them again. My one pice of advice is to make sure you have big enough buns...mine were tiny haha.

Nutrition Facts:
552 Calories
22g Fat
47g Carbs
3g Fiber
42g Protein