Adventures in the Kitchen: The First Thanksgiving Dinner

Ok, so not THE first Thanksgiving dinner, but certainly our first Thanksgiving dinner. Mike and I took on the foodie's favorite holiday of Thanks and here's how it went:

As Mike is an Italian, every holiday has to incorporate pasta in one form or another, so that was his job in the morning; making a lasagna. As I am slowly learning how to be Italian (absolutely no Italian blood whatsoever), I observed from a close distance. He was nice enough to let me grab pictures of the lasagna process and result, which was quite delicious I must say! What I did not get to snag was the recipe; he throws things in fast and doesn't measure, so I will have to pay closer attention next time.

After the lovely lunch was cleaned up, it was my turn to take over the kitchen! Thanksgiving dinners do not just prep themselves!

Our Thanksgiving menu:

The meal begins!

Turkey Breast (As there is only two of us, there was no point in cooking a huge whole turkey)
Stuffing (family recipe, my first attempt at it)
Mashed potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Broccoli
Green Beans
Gravy
Crescent Rolls (I wanted to make them from scratch, however there was already too much to do and the recipes I kept finding involved the dough rising twice and it was just too much for that day)

The turkey was pretty easy as it was just a breast; clean it up, butter the outside real good (I know that is not what the package says, but I have always seen my mother do it this way and I had always liked her turkeys), toss it in a floured bag and into the oven. For the size we had and since I thawed it out, cooking time was 2 hours.


Stuffing and sweet potatoes were immediately started next. I knew the sweet potatoes would take a while to cook and the stuffing is quite a process. For the stuffing, we use:

• white bread with no crusts
• onions and celery, chopped fine the day before, but not put in a food processor as this makes them soggy and harder to work with
• chicken broth
• butter
• poultry seasoning

Butter, Sausage, Onions and Celery cooking up

Bread is added before the chicken broth to moisten

Ready to go into the oven!

Finished product

And for an extra ingredient this time around, I added some ground smoked sausage for Mike. He would have wanted Italian sausage, but it was quite hard to find. I thought the smoked worked just as well though. 

Once the stuffing was taken care of, I mashed the sweet potatoes and threw them in the oven as well with some brown sugar on top. 

The rest of the food was pretty easy; the veggies just needed to be heated up and the mashed potatoes were pretty basic once the potatoes softened. 

What do you think of my spread?

My thoughts: The turkey was just a tad drier than I would have liked, but came out well for my first time. The stuffing was AWESOME!!! I was so excited with how flavorful that was and how the sausage worked in the mix. The mashed potatoes were pretty good and the sweet potatoes came out well, though I really want to find some kind of topping to put on them next time. 

Not a typical Thanksgiving dessert, but how could you
say no to a deep dish chocolate chip cookie with ice cream?

What are your Thanksgiving traditions? Anything you tried new this year? Any suggestions for me? Please leave me comments below!

I hope that you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that your holiday season will be filled with Adventure!

Adventures in the Kitchen: Flourless Fudge Cookies

Mike and I are motivating each other to eat healthy. We find that whenever we are together, we tend to eat whatever we want. We eat out more and eat junk more. Since he left for his core rotations, we have been working together but separately to come up with a healthy eating regimen that way we can stick to it when we visit each other.

Part of our regimen is that we get one day a week to be our "cheat day", meaning that we can go over our calories deliberately and indulge a bit. This may be the day we have a few drinks, eat out or have a little extra dessert.

Entering this past week, I had my meals planned out and knew what I would cook when. After planning everything, I realized I did not really give myself a cheat day. The worst thing I was making was the Corn Chowder, so I decided to make that my cheat day and I would decide how to indulge when the day got there.

The week went by and Friday finally arrived. I made my chowder and it was great, but outside of having some chocolate milk at breakfast and throwing some bacon on my salad, I really would not consider myself having a "cheat day". Heck, I didn't even reach my calorie goal with everything I ate.

I wanted something sweet, but not candy, and I really did not have anything to fill that craving. I also did not have a wide variety of baking ingredients. I searched my Pinterest boards and finally came across a recipe that I had the basic ingredients for. The recipe was from kingarthurflour.com.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cocoa Powder
• 3 large egg whites
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (gluten Free if you are trying to make them that way)

The other ingredient that could have been added was 1 teaspoon of espresso powder, but I did not add this as I really do not like coffee.

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 365. Grease two baking sheets. 
2. Stir the ingredients until smooth, scraping the bowl as you stir. 
3. Drop the soft, batter-like dough onto the baking sheets in 1 1/2 inch circles. 
4. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. They will spread out, become shiny and some may have a cracked look on top. 
5. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the pans. 

The directions were easy to follow and yielded 16 cookies. They were not too sweet and the chocolate powder that I used really gave them a strong flavor, but as a quick and easy dessert, I was quite pleased.

Flourless Fudge Cookies

Makes 16 3" cookies
Calories: 88 per cookie


Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cocoa Powder
• 3 large egg whites
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (gluten Free if you are trying to make them that way.

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 365. Grease two baking sheets. 
2. Stir the ingredients until smooth, scraping the bowl as you stir. 
3. Drop the soft, batter-like dough onto the baking sheets in 1 1/2 inch circles. 
4. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. They will spread out, become shiny and some may have a cracked look on top. 
5. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the pans.

Adventures in the Kitchen: Crockpot Corn Chowder

Hurray for Friday! After a long week, I just don't feel like cooking at times. Enter the amazing invention; the Crock Pot (or slow cooker, whatever term you prefer). Just throw some stuff in the pot, turn it on low while you are at work and you come home to a meal! Its brilliant and I want to shake the hand of the person who invented it!

I figured, after the chilly week we have had here in Florida (Yes, I was cold, don't judge me) I thought coming home to a crock pot filled with corn chowder would be a great idea!

The recipe I found was from crockingirls.com. This recipe had been sitting in my Pinterest space for a while. Very simple recipe, just adding the ingredients, letting it cook, adding a couple more and then it is done. I relative novice chef shouldn't mess that up!

First: the Ingredients: 

• 6-8 potatoes (peeled and diced)
• 1 Can cream corn 
• 1 Can whole kernel corn
• 2 Cups chicken broth
• 8 Ounces diced ham
• 1 Cups diced onions
• 1/4 Cups butter
• 2 Cups half and half

For the potatoes, I cut them up the night before. The ones I found were pretty large

so I only used 3 of them. In hindsight, I could have probably done with one more, but I was happy with my choice. Both varieties of corn were Del Monte as they were buy one, get one free at Publix. For the chicken broth, I actually used chicken stock as it is supposed to have more flavor than just regular broth. This seemed to work just as well for me. It was an all natural version called Kitchen Basics. The diced ham was also a natural version, no MSGs, by Cumberland Gap. They actually had a pre-diced version that was exactly 8 ounces, which made it very easy to just dump into the pot. The butter was Target brand and the half and half was from Organic Valley, a perfect pint size. 

The Directions: 

Adding the ingredients

1. Put the potatoes, both cans of corn, chicken broth, diced ham and onion into the crock pot. 

2. Cook on low for 7-8 hours

3. Mash the mixture to your desired consistency and then add the butter and half and half.

4. Cook for 30 minutes on high and then serve. 

After 9 hours cooking

When I woke up this morning, it took a total of 8 minutes to put the crock pot bag in the pot, open everything, pour it into the pot and turn it on low. It was great! I then left and forgot about it. As my day at work had to start a little earlier than usual, my chowder ended up being in the pot for almost 9 hours, but that did not seem to change anything about the recipe.

When I got home, the house smelled great! I went into the kitchen, stirred the contents and then mashed it up a bit. (I love my Farberware utensils, I have a Nylon Basting Spoon and masher from them and they work great!) I don't think this had to be done, but I cut my butter up into chunks and threw it in the pot with the cream. After a half hour on high, I poured some into a bowl and had probably the best dinner I had all week!

After adding the butter and Half and Half

I ate it just the way it came out of the crock pot, but some may want to add some salt and/or pepper to theirs, all depends on your taste. 

If you are interested in the calories, according to MyFitnessPal when I plugged it in with my ingredients, it said this dish would be 383 Calories for 6 servings.  After spooning it out and putting the rest of the chowder into containers, I am thinking that I may be getting 8 servings out of it, but we will see. 

Would I recommend this recipe? Absolutely!! I plan on saving it to my recipe book on my tablet and would definitely make this again!

What are your thoughts on my first Adventure in the Kitchen? Have you made this before? What would you have done differently? Please leave comments below and let me know your thoughts! 

Crockpot Corn Chowder

Servings 6-8

• 6-8 potatoes (peeled and diced)
• 1 Can cream corn 
• 1 Can whole kernel corn
• 2 Cups chicken broth
• 8 Ounces diced ham
• 1 Cups diced onions
• 1/4 Cups butter
• 2 Cups half and half

The Directions: 

1. Put the potatoes, both cans of corn, chicken broth, diced ham and onion into the crock pot. 

2. Cook on low for 7-8 hours

3. Mash the mixture to your desired consistency and then add the butter and half and half.

4. Cook for 30 minutes on high and then serve. 

Adventures in the Kitchen: Intro to my Kitchen

I have always loved cooking. When I was little, I found an basic pound cake recipe in one of my mothers cookbooks and after making it a couple times, decided that I could make it better. I tweaked the recipe to make a vanilla pound cake, a rainbow pound cake and a cinnamon pound cake.

My pride and joy :)

I took chef's classes in high school and loved every minute of it. I was even in the FCCLA (Family, Career and Community Leaders of America) and competed in cake decorating and table setting (winning bronze and gold respectively).  In those classes, I first worked with a KitchenAid Mixer and fell in love. I kept telling my mother I wanted one and she told me when I got my first place she would buy me one. It took 8 years for that to finally become a reality.

The kitchen is just a happy place to be in my opinion and creating something delicious out of a bunch of  random ingredients is quite a fun science (and the closest I will get to being good at a real science)

So, why post about my little self's cooking past? Well, I figure that if I want you to read and take my cooking and ideas seriously, you should know my background and where I come from. I am no chef school graduate nor a food critic, I just enjoy cooking and want to share what I learn along the way.

Some facts about my kitchen:

• I like to try to cook healthy, but there will be no guarantee that every recipe that I make will be. 
• Desserts can be big in this house (especially when Mike is visiting), plus I just love to bake!
• I have been working towards trying to use organic products and products without MSGs, however,
• I am a poor teacher that lives on my own and organic can be expensive! I will be specific in my ingredients what I am using
• Also on the poor teacher route, there are few name brands or products that I am 100% loyal to (I tend to go store brand or what is on sale), I will label those as I come across them
• I love kitchen gadgets! If you know any good ones, comment away!
• Recipes that I make come from everywhere; cookbooks, Pinterest, friends and just the internet. 

I hope you enjoy the recipes that I will soon be posting and if you have any suggestions of things you would like to see please send me an email at jadisney12@gmail.com or leave a comment below!