German Pancakes
If the first line in many of the recipes I make SHOULD say, “get in the car and go to the store to get all the things you don’t have….” this is NOT one of them!! Hooray for simple food!! The best part is that these look kind of impressive!
There is a restaurant in our town called “Pannekoeken” whose specialty is (any guesses here?–okay you are brilliant…) Pannekoeken! Pannekoeken is another name for German pancakes (which, just in case you didn’t notice, look nothing like the pancakes I grew up eating). The tricky thing about these is they start to collapse as soon as they come out of the oven. Pannekoeken deals with this by taking it out of the oven and literally RUNNING the dish to your table all the while yelling, “Pannekoeken!” It’s worth eating there just to watch the show! (If you like goofy, corny restaurant traditions!)
The FANTASTIC thing about these is that they make a wonderful, easy breakfast or dinner and it is very unlikely that you will have to start this recipe with a trip to the store!
So, the recipe goes like this:
Preheat your oven to VERY HOT (450 degrees Fahrenheit)
No delusions here…we were having this for a VERY LATE, FLY BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS dinner. I don’t cook that early in the morning!
(You also might notice that I have a convection oven, but I have never tried convection for this recipe)
This recipe makes two pie plates which really serves 4-6 people. If you are serving more, adjust the recipe accordingly. I regularly make a 1 1/2 recipe of this–a single recipe is not enough and a double recipe is too much!
Put 2 T. butter in each pie plate and pop it in the oven to take advantage of the pre-heating to melt your butter.
(You might want to set your timer for 5-ish minutes in case you are forgetful like I am, so you don’t wind up with browned-best case, or burned-it DOES happen…I promise, butter)
While your oven is preheating and your butter is melting, combine eggs,
flour, milk and salt in a mixing bowl
and beat until very smooth. (It will be fairly thin)
I have a friend who does this in the blender. That works too!
Divide the batter evenly between your pie plates (pouring in over the melted butter) and cook in your preheated oven. When it is done it should be puffed and golden all over. Not like this:
Like this! Yummmmm!!
So, the recipe looks like this:
6 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/4 t. salt
4 T. butter or margarine
(If you only want one pie plate, use 3 eggs and halve everything else, or you can add on 1/2 recipes in increments by how many pans you need) Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Put 2 T. butter in each of two pie pans; melt as oven preheats. In a bowl, combine eggs, milk, flour, and salt; beat until fluffy and smooth. Pour half of batter in each pan. Bake for 20 minutes. Pancakes will puff up. Serve with syrup, warm jam, powdered sugar and/or butter and/or fresh fruit. Enjoy!
Weekly Menu #8–Easy!
The menu for this week contains a great collection of easy meals that your family will think you slaved over! You can look forward to:
Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches
Here is the printable recipes and shopping list for this menu (be sure to add in some vegetables or a green salad to round out the meals!) :
Do you have any suggestions for making the printable shopping lists and recipes more user friendly? Would you prefer it in a different format? This week I tried color coding the ingredients for the different recipes. Let me know if that is helpful! Enjoy!
Maple Teriyaki Salmon Fillets
I clipped this recipe from a Taste of Home Magazine years ago, and it is one of my favorite ways to eat salmon. You take some apple juice, 
and some maple syrup (I just use the same stuff we pour on pancakes without worrying about the REAL stuff…)
soy sauce, onion, and garlic
Mix it all together in a ziplock bag (or, the way I do it in a 9×13 pan) and add the salmon.
If you do it in a pan, be sure to turn the fillets periodically to coat them and get the flavors everywhere. Cover/seal and refrigerate for a few hours, and then broil!
Maple Teriyaki Salmon Fillets
Serves 4 (but this easily serves my family because not everyone will eat fish—the ones who don’t fix themselves leftovers. Salmon is too expensive to force feed to anyone!)
1/3 cup apple juice
1/3 cup maple syrup
3 T soy sauce
2 T finely chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 salmon fillets (about 2 pounds)
In a bowl, combine the apple juice, maple syrup, soy sauce, chopped onion, and garlic. Remove ½ cup for basting. Pour remaining marinade into a large resealable plastic bag. Add salmon. Seal bag and turn to coat. Refrigerate for 1-3 hours. Drain and discard marinade. Broil salmon 4 inches from heat for 5 minutes. Baste with reserved marinade. Broil 10 minutes longer or until fish flakes easily with a fork basting frequently.
Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches
Years ago a friend suggested this meal to me, and I have enjoyed it many times since, but like many things I forgot about it until I saw the same recipe in my new Our Best Bites Cookbook. This meal is quick and easy–it goes in the crock pot in about 5-10 minutes and then it goes from the crock pot to the table in less time than that! Perfect for a busy day!
Choose a beef roast, sear it if desired, and put it in the crock pot. 
I doubled it, so I had two pretty good sized hunks of meat in my slow cooker, (that way when it was done I had enough to take some of this to my sister–’cause she is awesome!)
Sprinkle the onion soup mix over the meat and add the liquids. Voila! Done! I think I’ve mentioned before that I just don’t use the low setting on my crock pot. It takes 6-8 hours on high to get the meat nice and tender in mine. You will just have to experiment with yours. Of course, I don’t think I really cook anything on low anywhere…not just the slow cooker. I just don’t have time to mess with low. Here’s the official recipe:
Slow cooker French dip sandwiches
Salt and pepper
Beef roast
2 pkgs onion soup mix
2 cups water
2 cans beef broth or 4 cups water and 4 beef bouillon cubes
12 slices Swiss cheese
Rolls for sandwiches
Generously salt and pepper the beef roast, and then sear the meat in a preheated pan. Put the browned roast in the crock pot. Sprinkle the onion soup mix over it and add the water and beef broth or bouillon cubes. You want to cook this until the meat shreds easily. In my crock pot this takes 6-8 hours on high. Remove meat from the broth and serve with cheese slices on rolls. Use the soup as au jus for dipping the sandwiches in.
Salsa Verde Chicken (adapted from Pam Anderson’s Perfect One Dish Dinners)
This got rave reviews at our house! It is a great combination of a little bit of spicy and comfort food all rolled into one! You can make the chicken stew ahead of time if you are looking for a do-ahead meal, and then just reheat it and make the dumplings fresh right before serving.
First you make up the chicken stew. Melt the butter.
(I’m pretty sure you can figure out what these steps look like, but it makes me feel better to put the pictures in!). Add the flour.
You are supposed to be making a “roux”, but the butter to flour ratio is a little off, so it winds up looking more like this than a true roux (hey I’m a poet and didn’t know it!).
Roux can add flavor, but they also prevent the flour from clumping up and making the stew all lumpy. Because this is a little short on butter, you might miss out on the flavor a teensy tiny bit, but it does accomplish its texture job. Everything stays smooth and silky! (And you don’t miss the butter at all!) Next you are going to add the liquid and whisk it together to mix the flour in and get that nice smooth texture:
See how that is a little fuzzy? That’s because you are doing this all over medium-high heat, which creates STEAM! Next you add the chicken and the original recipe says to leave it in large chunks so I did. I might prefer it cut in more bite-size pieces. Just sayin.
Now you get to make the yummy dumplings. Keep the stew warm and heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit while you make them.
To make the dumplings, first you will heat the butter and milk in a sauce pan until it is nice and steamy. Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl
and add the cilantro and scallion greens. Add the dry ingredients to the milk/butter mixture and stir until it becomes one big glop.
Then you get to drop this by spoonfuls on top of the hot chicken stew.
Take this yumminess and put it in the oven for 15-20 minutes until the dumplings are cooked through. Here is the complete recipe:
Chicken Stew:
3 T. butter
½ cup flour
2 cups water and 2 bouillon cubes or 1 can chicken broth
1 jar (16 ounce) salsa verde
12 ounces evaporated skimmed milk
1 large rotisserie chicken, meat deboned and left in large chunks (about 6 cups)
Dumplings:
1 cup skim milk
3 T. butter
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup cornmeal
1 T baking powder
¾ t. salt
¼ c. sliced scallion greens
¼ c. chopped fresh cilantro
To make the chicken stew: heat the butter over medium high heat in a oven proof large dutch oven pan. Whisk in flour to make a paste. Add in the water, salsa verde, and evaporated milk and bouillon cubes and whisk together vigorously until the mixture smooths out, simmers and thickens to sauce consistency. Stir in the chicken, heat through, and cover to keep warm.
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
To make the dumplings: heat the milk and butter in a small saucepan until steamy. Mix together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, scallion greens, and cilantro. Add in the milk mixture and stir to form a smooth, firm dough. Drop ping-pong ball size portions of dough with spoons onto the top of the chicken stew mixture and return to a simmer over medium high heat on the stove. Transfer pan to heated oven and bake until dumplings are cooked through—15-20 minutes.
Yeild: 8 servings. 10 PointsPlus/serving
Easy Mushroom Chicken
I will be posting a new weekly menu in a few days, but I decided to start putting up the recipes now instead of doing the whole week in one day.
This is one of those meals that my mother used to make when I was young, and it still just makes me happy! It’s great because you almost always have what you need to make it, it takes no time at all to put together and it tastes wonderful!
I have it pictured here with some roasted cauliflower and rice. The recipe in my head goes something like “take as much chicken as you want and put it in the crock pot and spread a can of cream of mushroom soup over it. 
Cook until it is done. Remove the chicken from the crockpot,
and take the soup and mix in sour cream. 
Serve over rice.”
BUT…because I love you, and I know not everyone is comfortable with such non-directions, I worked up a REAL recipe for you!
You can also do this in the oven, so if you need dinner in 45 minutes, it works for that!
Easy Mushroom Chicken Recipe
2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cups sour cream
cooked rice to serve it over
Put the chicken in the bottom of a 9×13 pan or the crock pot. Spread the soup over it. Cook on high in the crock pot for 3-4 hours, or at 350 degrees F uncovered in the oven for 30-40 minutes until chicken is done. Chicken breasts are way too big for one person to eat anymore, so I usually cut them into 3 or 4 pieces before cooking so it cooks a little faster. When the chicken is cooked, remove from the oven or crock pot and stir sour cream into the sauce (I measured my juices before stirring in the sour cream and it was about 3 cups, if you have more or less you could use more or less sour cream). If you want to make sure it gets hot, you can mix in on the stove–or pop it in the microwave before serving. Serve the sauce with the chicken and rice. Enjoy!
Weekly Menu #7
Here’s my menu plan for the week:
If you haven’t tried looking at the pdf files I post–they have all the recipes for the week compiled in a printable format, along with a shopping list and a list of things to make sure you have in your pantry before you shop. I have started putting which recipes each item is for so that you can easily swap out recipes if something doesn’t float your boat! Also, although my goal is to post a menu weekly, it seems like each week there is some recipe that just doesn’t work, or we have a lot of leftovers in the fridge, or some other reason not to cook…so you get to wait for quality! It sometimes takes me longer than a week to come up with a new menu! Next week I am planning a “best of” menu plan, because as I was looking over the last 7 weeks of menus there were so many things I just want to eat again! Enjoy!
Chicken Broccoli Bread Braid
You probably think I have an obsession with bread braids, and you might be right! This isn’t the prettiest picture…maybe someday I will take the time to take a pretty picture before it gets devoured by the family!
I have posted a different bread recipe to go with the other bread braids I make. I’m sure they are all interchangeable. I started using this pizza crust recipe with this filling years ago when I started making it, and I really like it! The original recipe called for 2 rolls of crescent rolls instead of the pizza dough, but those are too high in fat for me to feel good about having very often, so this was my solution.
Crusty Pizza dough (I SHOULD call this Bread braid dough and tell you that you can also use it as a pizza crust…):
1 package active dry yeast (about 1 T. if measuring)
1 c. warm water
½ t. salt
2 t. olive oil
2 ½ – 3 ½ cups flour
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add salt, olive oil and 2 ½ cups flour. Knead with dough hook 1 minute. Add additional flour about ¼ cup at a time while mixing until sides of bowl come clean. Knead for 2 additional minutes. This makes one pizza crust—or the amount of dough for one bread braid in our case….
Filling: (This recipe is adapted from a Pampered Chef pamphlet from years ago and I have been making it ever since!)
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped
1 cup chopped broccoli (I use frozen chopped broccoli)
½ cup red bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, pressed
4 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
½ cup mayonnaise
1 t. dill weed
¼ t. salt
1 T. ranch dressing mix
Mix together all the filling ingredients. Roll out the pizza crust (or whatever dough you are using) into a large rectangle. Spread the filling down the middle of the rectangle. Cut strips from each side perpendicular to the strip of filling about 2 inches wide and braid across the top of the filling. I have put pictures of making different bread braids in several different blog posts, so if this is the first on you are trying, you can get more detailed directions and pictures here! Bake bread braid at 375 degrees F for about 25 minutes until golden brown.
Spicy Honey Chicken—Our Best Bites Cookbook
Here’s another yummy recipe from my new Our Best Bites Cookbook. Sometimes you have to get outside and grill–even in the winter! This was one of those times, and it was just so yummy! I grilled up a whole bunch of this chicken and then used the leftovers to top salads. I know I used to see boneless, skinless chicken thighs at Sam’s club, but when I sent my hubby to find them he came home with chicken tenderloins…those worked great, which made me wonder about the assertion that thighs work better than breasts in this recipe–if any of you try it with breasts, let me know how it is!
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (thighs work better in this recipe than breasts), about 2 lbs.
2 t. vegetable oil
Rub:
2 t. granulated garlic
2 t. chili powder
½ t. onion powder
½ t. coriander
1 t. kosher salt
1 t. cumin
½ t. chipotle chili powder
Glaze:
½ cup honey
1 T. cider vinegar
Preheat grill to medium-high heat or about 400 degrees F.
Combine rub ingredients in a small bowl
Trim any visible fat off the chicken, rinse, and pat dry with a paper towel. Drizzle oil over chicken and rub in in with your hands. Rub the spice rub into the chicken.
Grill for 3-5 minutes on each side.
For the glaze: while the chicken is cooking, warm honey in the microwave for about 15 seconds. Whisk in vinegar. Reserve 2 T. glaze and brush the rest on the chicken in the final moments of booking. Remove chicken from the grill and allow to stand 3-5 minutes. Drizzle reserved 2 T. glaze over chicken while it is standing.
Mexican Style Sweet Shredded Pork (for tacos, taco salad, burritos….)
I got the Our Best Bites Cookbook for Christmas which is super fun since I love their blog! So, this week I finally got to try some of the recipes. Here’s one. It turned out great! We all enjoyed it! I took half of it to someone along with all the fixings for tacos and we ate the other half. Be sure to add whatever you want to eat along with it to your shopping list–refried beans, tortillas, chips, lettuce, tomato, sour cream, olives, avocados….yummm!
The recipe starts with trimming the fat from the meat (see that little ball of fat at the top of the picture? I’ve been working hard for you!
Then you need to sprinkle the spices on
(see how I got a little on the counter too? not sure that makes it taste any better….). Go ahead and rub them in too!
Put the oil in a frying pan and heat it up
sear the meat to get it nice and brown all the way around (it would have been nice if I had taken the picture AFTER it was brown on top…)
In the meantime mix together the sauce ingredients in your crock pot (see the brown sugar on the right? be sure you only add 2/3 cup here…the other 1/3 cup gets added at the end)
then add the seared meat to the sauce and let it cook ALL DAY….(don’t forget to put and keep the lid on!)
then take the meat out and shred it, add a little more brown sugar to the sauce,
and return the meat to the crock pot and simmer for about 30 minutes more with the lid off. Easier than pie!
Mexican Style Sweet Shredded Pork Recipe
4 lbs boneless pork shoulder or pork loin roast
½ t. kosher salt
¼ t. black pepper
2 t. chili powder
1 t. onion powder
1-2 T. vegetable oil
2 (10 ounce) cans enchilada sauce
1 cup brown sugar, divided
½ cup salsa
½ T. Worcestershire sauce
¼ c. apple juice
Trim the visible fat from the roast and sprinkle with salt, pepper, chili powder and onion powder. Use your hands to massage the spices over all the sides of the meat. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sear the pork roast for about 1 minute on all sides or until meat surface is golden brown.
While meat is searing, combine the enchilada sauce, 2/3 cup brown sugar, salsa, Worcestershire sauce and apple juice in crock pot. Add the pork, cover and cook on low for 7 hours (this is what the original recipe says, but I NEVER cook anything on low in my crock pot. It took almost 7 hours on high for my meat to shred, you have to know your crock pot).
Remove the pork and shred, discarding any pieces of fat. Add the additional 1/3 cup brown sugar to slow cooker and turn heat to high (or leave it there). Add the shredded meat and simmer with the lid off for 30 minutes.
Serve as the meat for burritos or taco salad.