Slow cooker enchiladas

Since I have no oven in my current apartment, I have been looking for new and creative recipes to try in the slow cooker. I found one for enchiladas on Allrecipes.com and decided to use that as the basis for dinner tonight. Of course, I am terrible about measurements, so maybe you'll want to look up their recipe if you want exact amounts.

Need:

~1.5 lbs ground beef

1/2 cup taco seasoning

1/4 cup water

1 can cream of chicken

1 cup salsa

handful of fresh cilantro (because it was on sale 0.74 a bunch!)

Corn tortillas

Shredded cheese

Step 1: Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Drain off as much of the grease as you can. Add the taco seasoning and water, and cook the seasoning into the beef until most is absorbed. This is the second layer over the tortillas.

Step 2: Mix the chicken soup, salsa and diced cilantro in a bowl. This will be your third layer.

 
Step 3: Spray the inside of the crock pot so hopefully there will be no burnt-on mess later. Put down a layer or 2 of tortillas. Then a layer of meat. Then the cheese mixture. Over the topmost layer of beef, I added some slices of pepper jack to give it an extra little kick.

Keep layering until you use all the beef and soup mixture. Put a top layer of tortillas on and sprinkle with more cheese. Put on High for 45 minutes to 1 hour. We will see in an hour how well I did!

Stuffed peppers

Stuffed peppers have become known as my signature dish among certain people. I made them once, my boyfriend fell in love and shared them with his family, who also loved them. Through trial and error, I have perfected the recipe and learned that shortcuts are usually not worth sacrificing taste! The typical stuffed pepper is made with a green bell pepper and stuffed with a combination of meat, rice, and spices. I like using the red ones so much better because they are sweeter. As always, there is plenty of room for experimentation, and they can easily be made vegetarian. I made some yellow ones stuffed with a combination of quinoa, carrots, brown sugar, celery and raisins that were quite delicious. However, this is "the" recipe for my famous peppers. Perhaps I shouldn't share, but they are so good I feel everyone should have a chance to make and try them!

The most recent batch I made was a dozen for myself and my boyfriend's family. If you are only making 2 or 4, the recipe can easily be pared down, just cut amounts by 1/4 or whatever you need.

Ingredients:

12 red bell peppers (ok, 2 were yellow)

~1.5 pounds ground beef

~2 cups rice

2 cups chicken broth or 2 bouillon cubes

1 packet onion soup mix

1 large can (24 oz?) tomato sauce or 3-4 smaller ones

Nature's Seasons

Step 1: Boil the rice in the chicken broth. This gives the rice extra flavor and saltiness.

Step 2: Brown the ground beef. Put it in a pan and cook over medium heat until there is no more pink. Drain the excess grease.

Step 3: In a large bowl, mix the cooked meat, the cooked rice, the seasonings and the sauce. (Honestly, I could just eat this mixture itself with a spoon!)

Step 4: Cut the tops off the peppers and pull out the white rinds and seeds.

Step 5: Stuff the mixture into the peppers.

Step 6: Bake at 350 for at least 1 hour. Be sure to add some water to the pan so they don't dry out or burn. You can rinse the tomato sauce can and use that for extra flavor. Depending on how tender you want your peppers to be, you can leave them in a little longer or shorter. You can also add some shredded cheese on top during the last 5-10 minutes of baking. You will know they are ready when the skin is soft to the touch and wrinkled, and the tops are nicely browned. You can also cook these on high in a crock pot for 1-2 hours, they will just not develop the crispy brown top. Enjoy!





They also reheat great for lunch or dinner the next day!



Cheap and easy comfort food for a crazy week

Between fighting a persistent cough all week, taking the GRE, two jobs, a birthday party and a baby shower, this week and weekend were bound to be hectic. I knew I wanted to make chicken soup to boost my immune system and as comfort food. But for the times when I was not home, I also needed something which traveled and reheated well with minimum expense and fuss. With the holidays just around the corner, the belt-tightening has intensified in anticipation of gift buying (as well as graduate school application fees!). Therefore, the most logical choice seemed to be pasta. As cheap, tasty and comforting as it gets. So midweek I prepared one large batch of each.
Chicken soup for one: to ward off a cold in a week or less.
2 medium potatoes
2-3 carrots
2-3 stalks celery
1 medium onion
6-10 cups chicken stock or water plus bouillon cubes
1-3 pieces chicken (I used 1 leg quarter)
If you have them or desire them, add sliced fresh mushrooms as well
Optional seasonings: salt, pepper, italian seasons, bay leaf

Dice up the potato and carrot, leave the celery and onion whole. Throw all the ingredients into a crock pot on high for at least 5 hours (to ensure chicken is thoroughly cooked). Spoon solids into a collander. Remove the onion, celery, and any bay leaves if added and throw away. Seperate the chicken from the skin, fat and bones and add meat back to the pot. Add carrots and potatoes back to pot. Boil pasta noodles of your choice to serve with the soup. Enjoy the warm, homey taste and smell.

The next day I made a large batch of pasta so that I can pack it in tupperware to take to work. This will last quite a while for me, and may allow a frozen meal or two.
Wheat linguini noodles
1 bag frozen Italian style veggies
1 large can sauce (I used mushroom which I bought on sale a few weeks ago for 50 cents a can!)
Boil a huge pot of water with a bit of oil and salt added. Toss in the pasta once it is at a rolling boil. Cook the pasta for 8-12 minutes (because wheat needs cooked longer than non-wheat) or until al dente. Add the veggies during the last 5 minutes of cooking. Drain the pasta and veggies and return to the pot. Open the sauce and pour over, mix well. Enjoy!

These both were made with things I had lying about in my cupboards and the freezer. Total, it cost me approximately $2.50 for the pasta, and maybe $2.50 for the soup. So for around $5, I have a full crock pot of healthy homemade chicken soup and a fridge full of about 10 pasta lunches. Not too bad.

Hungarian Chicken Paprikush

This is in my top 5 favorite meals of all time! A hungarian (or maybe slovak?) recipe handed down from my grandmother and mother. It is simple to make, just a few ingredients. It does take a bit of time and some labor-intensive steps, however the end product is so worth it! The noodles can of course be bought, but making your own noodles is well worth the effort. They taste so much better than any store bought noodles ever could.

Soup:
Chicken

Water

Sour cream

Paprika

Salt & pepper

For this I used 4 chicken leg quarters, because dark meat gives the soup a richer flavor. You can use white, dark or a mixture of both. Put the chicken in a pot and cover it with water plus a little bit. Maybe a gallon and a half of water. Boil for at least 2 hours or until chicken is no longer pink at all. Take the chicken out and pull all the meat off the bone. Throw the bones, skin, fat, and any other non-edible parts away and return the meat to the pot. I did this step the night before and refrigerated it until the next day but you can also just continue right into the next step.

The second step is creating what I think is called a "zapraska". This is how you mix in the sour cream without it curdling. Mix about 1 cup sour cream with 2 tbsp. flour (omit the flour if you want watery soup) in a seperate bowl. Then slowly add soup to it while mixing continuously. The sour cream should be left out at room temperature as well. The soup will slowly warm up the sour cream. Continue adding and mixing well until it is warm. Then you add the zapraska to the main soup bowl and mix it all together. Add paprika, salt and pepper to taste.

Noodles:

Eggs

Flour
The ratio will depend on how many noodles you need to make. I only needed a small amount, so I used 6 eggs and approximately 1 cup of flour.

You will also need a noodle maker, we call it a "shusher'. I don't know what it actually is called.

Mix the eggs and flour together a little bit at a time. Keep adding flour until it has a doughy consistency. A spoon left in it should basically be able to stand upright. Get a big pot of water to a rolling boil. Then pour the dough into the top basket of the shusher. Push it back and forth so the dough drips through into the boiling water. Make sure to stir a few times throughout so that the noodles don't all stick together. Keep going until all the batter is used up. Drain the noodles completely. These will be the sweetest, saltiest, most eggy and delicious noodles you may ever have had! Put some into a bowl, and pour the soup and chicken on top. You can add some extra paprika or salt to taste.

This is the finished product! Chickeny, sour creamy, salty and amazing. Especially on a cold November day or if you are getting/are/getting over being sick. Or just because! Enjoy!