Category: Recipes

Chicken, Main Dishes, Recipes, Soups

Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili

Sarah

Quinoa meets chicken tortilla soup for a kicked up crockpot meal that is filling, delicious, and perfectly spiced. Plus, you can top it with everything from tortilla chips to cheese to avocado so it’s a customized dinner that your whole family will love!

Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili: Quinoa meets chicken tortilla soup for a kicked up crockpot meal that is filling, delicious, and perfectly spiced. Plus, you can top it with everything from tortilla chips to cheese to avocado so it's a customized dinner that your whole family will love!

It’s another chilly week! Ben and I are certainly learning about good insulation versus bad insulation throughout this first winter in our house. Fortunately, winter in Nashville isn’t that intense. But unfortunately, when it is cold, I don’t want to spend a gazillion dollars in heating costs. So I do the next best thing–warm up from the cold with a hot ‘n hearty dinner! One of my long-time favorites that I somehow haven’t shared on the blog is this wonderful Chicken Quinoa Chili! It is so full of flavor, so simple, and so tasty. Don’t let the long ingredient list scare you–this dish can be made in the crockpot so all you basically have to do stir together, live your life, and come back for a tasty dinner. 🙂

Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili: Quinoa meets chicken tortilla soup for a kicked up crockpot meal that is filling, delicious, and perfectly spiced. Plus, you can top it with everything from tortilla chips to cheese to avocado so it's a customized dinner that your whole family will love!

This easy crockpot meal basically combines all the good stuff–chicken, spices, quinoa, tomatoes, black beans, corn, green pepper, onion, and garlic–with a little chicken broth to make an incredible Chicken Quinoa Chili. It’s seriously a Mexican-style soup/chili on steroids! And each bite is made better by the mass quantities of toppings. You can basically add any sort of taco, chili, or soup topping you like… but my necessary Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili toppings include: cilantro, cheese, and sour cream. If I have some diced avocado too, even better! #goodstuff The toppings just take this chili to the next level… but it’s still fabulously filling and delightful.

Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili: Quinoa meets chicken tortilla soup for a kicked up crockpot meal that is filling, delicious, and perfectly spiced. Plus, you can top it with everything from tortilla chips to cheese to avocado so it's a customized dinner that your whole family will love!Before we go, can I let you in on a secret? Even though this chili is made what it is by the quinoa, I’m a little quinoa-ed out. For a long time, I was convincing Ben that it was the BEST-THING-EVER and I put it in everything. I think the rest of the internet did too. 🙂 But now… I don’t use it very often so when I do, I want to make it count. And this is the type of dish where it really does count. Adding quinoa to what’s basically a chicken tortilla soup kicks it up a notch into a fabulous chili. Mmmm, tasty stuff! Hope you enjoy this awesome meal as much as we do. 🙂

Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili: Quinoa meets chicken tortilla soup for a kicked up crockpot meal that is filling, delicious, and perfectly spiced. Plus, you can top it with everything from tortilla chips to cheese to avocado so it's a customized dinner that your whole family will love!

one year ago: Homemade Turkey Sausage Patties
two years ago: Quick ‘n Healthy Pineapple Fried Rice
three years ago: Buffalo Pretzels
four years ago: Camp Tecumseh Baked Oatmeal
five years ago: Pork Chops with Red Wine Sauce

Crockpot Chicken Quinoa Chili

  • Servings: 6-8
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slightly adapted from Boys Ahoy

Ingredients:

  • 2 large chicken breasts [about 1 1/2 pounds]
  • 2 teaspoons cumin
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 cup quinoa, rinsed
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 1 – 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 – 14 ounce can diced tomatoes with green chiles
  • 3 cups black beans, drained and rinsed [or 2 – 15 ounce cans]
  • 1 – 16 ounce package frozen corn
  • 1 green pepper, diced
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • shredded cheese, for serving
  • sour cream, for serving
  • avocado, for serving
  • green onions, for serving
  • crushed tortilla chips, for serving

Directions:

Place chicken at the bottom of a large crockpot. Sprinkle with cumin, crushed red pepper, and chili powder. Season with pepper. Top with quinoa and pour chicken broth on top. Then add tomatoes, black beans, corn, green pepper, onion, and garlic. Cover and cook for 8 hours on low.

When finished cooking, remove chicken and shred with a fork, then return to crockpot and stir to combine. Serve with cheese, sour cream, avocado, green onions, and tortilla chips as desired.

Breakfast, Muffins, Recipes

SRC: Almond Poppyseed Muffins

Sarah

Sweet and tender muffins… these glazed almond poppyseed muffins are a great addition to your muffin repertoire!

Almond Poppyseed Muffins

Welcome to my first Secret Recipe Club post for 2016! Woohoo! I can’t believe that this November will be the FIFTH anniversary of when I joined the club. It’s crazy. I had no idea it had been this long until I was notified that I was featured on the SRC blog as a Gold Member. Crazy! And fun. 🙂 So it’s fitting that my SRC assignment this month is also a blogger who has been a member since 2011. That’s right, this month I was assigned to Sara’s blog, Cooking with Sara. With a name like Sara(h), you know she has to have lots of great recipes [even though I think she spells her name wrong. Hahaha!]. She’s a midwestern girl who’s passionate about sharing family friendly recipes–in both taste and time. My kind of recipes! When perusing Sara’s blog, I wanted to make pretty much every other recipe–if not more! Sara and I must have pretty similar tastes. 🙂 So I made up a short list and as usual, asked for Ben’s advice. So if you don’t like this recipe, you can blame him. Hehehe! The choices I gave him included: Spiced Pear Muffins, Creamy Orzo and Chicken, Frosty Coffee Pie, Shrimp Pad Thai, Custardy Baked Orzo with Bacon and Spinach, and the winner… Almond Poppyseed Muffins. Well, her original recipe was for bread, but I prefer muffins so we went with that. 🙂

Almond Poppyseed Muffins

After taking one bite of these sweet little treats, Ben exclaimed, “I sure made a great choice!” And he did. These muffins are incredible! I’m not gonna lie–these muffins are more on the cupcake side of the muffin spectrum, not healthy in the least… but they are tasty so we’ll let it slide! 🙂 The texture of these muffins is perfectly cakey and soft, very similar to my trusty Grandma’s Blueberry Muffins… even though this recipe uses oil instead of butter. Crazy! If you have an almond lover in your life, I think this base recipe–sans the poppyseeds–would be wonderful with some buttercream frosting! As it was, the poppyseeds gave these muffins a decidedly nutty taste with a wee bit of crunch… and that crunch was intensified with the orange juice-almond glaze that I brushed on top as the muffins were cooling. Oh man! Don’t skip that part–it’s pretty much the best.

Almond Poppyseed Muffins

Interestingly enough, this glaze is made with granulated sugar, orange juice, and almond extract. I’ve made many glazes in my baking life, but never with granulated sugar. The result [that you can’t see in these photos] is a sparkly glaze with more than your average amount of glaze-y crunch. I was skeptical that a glaze made with granulated and not powdered sugar would actually work, but this recipe proved me wrong. Woohoo! New baking trick! 🙂 The orange juice in the glaze gave these muffins the hint of citrus they were begging for, without being overpowering. I think next time I make these muffins, I might stir some orange zest into the glaze and sprinkle some almond slivers on top! And yes, there definitely will be a next time! Enjoy–and be sure to thank Sara as I am doing for this wonderful recipe!

one year ago: Skinny Lasagna
two years ago: Broccoli Stuffed Loaded Potato Skins with Avocado Cream
three years ago: {Healthy} Mexican Hot Chocolate Breakfast Bars
four years ago: Perfect Black Beans
five years ago: Triple Chocolate Oat Cookies

Almond Poppyseed Muffins

  • Servings: 14-16 muffins
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from Cook with Sara

Almond Poppyseed Muffins

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 3/4 cup sugar*
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 2 eggs*
  • 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 teaspoon almond extract
  • 3/4 teaspoon butter extract*
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon poppyseeds

for glaze*

  • 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon orange juice
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon butter extract*

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin cups with paper liners or grease with cooking spray.

In a small bowl, stir together flour, sugar, and baking powder. In a large bowl, whisk together oil, eggs, and vanilla, almond, and butter extracts. Alternate adding flour and milk until just combined, then fold in poppyseeds. Divide between prepared muffin cups, and bake for 20-22 minutes, until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool in muffin pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack. In a small bowl, whisk together sugar, orange juice, and vanilla, almond, and butter extracts. Spread over warm muffins and let cool to set.

Notes:

Original recipe yielded 2 9×5 inch loaves of bread. I reduced the recipe by half. I reduced the sugar for the half batch from 1 1/4 cups sugar to 3/4 cup; used 2 eggs instead of measuring out 1.5 eggs since the original recipe called for 3 eggs; and omitted the butter extract. To make this recipe as bread instead of muffins, bake for approximately 1 hour.

Be sure to check out all the other delicious recipes featured this week from Secret Recipe Club bloggers in group C at the link below!

Main Dishes, Recipes, Salads

Chopped Thai Chicken Salad

Sarah

Chopped salads are my favorite salads… they’re just so fun to eat! This version combines chicken, cabbage, carrots, and mango but the peanut butter based dressing takes the cake by far! 🙂

Thai Chopped Salad: a hearty winter salad everyone will love!

Salad in January? So cliched, I know. Especially since last week with that Amish Cheeseburger Soup I talked about how we didn’t need to just ‘eat healthy’ in January. Ummm, right. 🙂 But still, I stand by what I say… and salads are definitely part of our normal meals. Normally, our salads are pretty standard: romaine/spring mix/spinach, carrots, peppers, cucumber, maybe tomatoes or mushrooms or something else based on what’s in season. Dressing, yes… croutons, cheese… maybe. But never anything too exciting, unless I make a salad for our main course. Then, it is GOOD STUFF! And this salad is good stuff. 🙂

Thai Chopped Salad: a hearty winter salad everyone will love!

Every bit of this salad is incredible, and it’s perfect for the winter since it’s so hearty and filling, and isn’t your typical bunny rabbit salad fare. 🙂 This salad is basic and fancy all at once, with a basic chicken-cabbage-carrot mixture dressed up with mango, cilantro, green onions, and peanuts. But the best part of this salad by far is the peanut butter-based dressing… it’s just SO flavorful, tangy, and fantastic. The salad easily serves four, so what we do is divide everything in half and eat half for dinner, and save half for lunch the next day. Leftovers will do okay in the fridge for the next day, but for best results combine the salad and dressing immediately before serving–hence dividing everything in half before serving. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

one year ago: Southwest Veggie + Taco Rice Casserole
two years ago: Oreo Ice Cream Pie
three years ago: Lemon Cranberry Muffins
four years ago: Spaghetti and “Meat” Balls
five years ago: Caramelized Onion Dip

Chopped Thai Chicken Salad

  • Servings: 4
  • Print

from Pinch of Yum

Ingredients:

for the salad

  • 2 cups cooked and shredded chicken [I used some from a chicken we roasted earlier in the week, but a rotisserie chicken would be great too!]
  • 3 cups shredded cabbage [I’ve used green, red, and a combination]
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded carrot [about 3-4 medium]
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped mango [or green papaya if you can find it]
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
  • 1/2 cup green onions, chopped [about 1/2 a bunch]
  • 1/2 cup peanuts, chopped

for the dressing

  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons honey or sugar
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • 1 tablespoon canola oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • pinch of cayenne
  • 1/4 cup peanut butter [natural works great–just microwave for 10-15 seconds to melt a little if it’s too hard to combine]
  • 1/4 cup water

Directions:

Combine chicken, cabbage, carrots, mango, cilantro, and green onions in a large bowl. Toss to combine, then stick in the fridge while you prepare the dressing.

In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, vinegar, honey, lime juice, oil, fish sauce, garlic, and cayenne. Add peanut butter and water and whisk again until smooth.

When ready to serve, pour half of the dressing over the salad, then sprinkle with the chopped peanuts. Add more dressing to taste, or save for later–the dressing will keep in the fridge for up to a week. Leftovers will be okay in the fridge for the next day, but for best results combine the salad and dressing immediately before serving.

Enjoy!

Beef, Main Dishes, Recipes, Soups

Amish Cheeseburger Soup

Sarah

A cheesy, creamy, and hearty soup… if you haven’t had cheeseburger soup before, you are in for a treat!

Amish Cheeseburger Soup on thepajamachef.comI know January is supposed to be all about healthy recipes and “cutting back.” That’s not exactly my philosophy though. I don’t say this to be all holier than thou or anything, and I don’t think I’m being naive/blind, but I don’t think I really indulge to levels of epic proportions during the holiday season. I’ve never been able to eat and eat and eat beyond the point of fullness, and if I did, it won’t be on traditional holiday fare [it would be on some sort of baked pasta :)]. So while I’m all for a reset in January of healthy habits, I’m still all about moderation and enjoying all food all year round. Hence a cheesy, comforting soup in January. 🙂

Amish Cheeseburger Soup on thepajamachef.com

There’s honestly not too much to say about this soup… it’s like a cheeseburger in a bowl, minus the bun of course! LOL. Plenty of cheese, sour cream, hamburger meat, potatoes, and some veggies to thicken it up! I did healthify the original recipe by using real cheese instead of Velveeta, but feel free to use either to suit your family’s preferences. Ben and I loved every bowl of this soup! I will be honest, it’s not one I’d make every week or even every month, but it is a hearty, comforting meal on occasion. It would be a wonderful addition for a soup potluck–it’s definitely different from anything anyone else would bring, I’m sure! Enjoy! 🙂

one year ago: Healthy Tropical Banana Muffins
two years ago: Cranberry Steel Cut Oats with Caramelized Pears
three years ago: Mexican Cornbread Pot Pie
four years ago: Lasagna Soup
five years ago: Whole-Wheat Corn Bread

Amish Cheeseburger Soup

  • Servings: 10
  • Print

adapted from 4 Little Fergusons

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground chuck
  • 8 tablespoons butter, divided
  • 1 1/2 cups carrots, diced [about 3-4 carrots]
  • 1 1/2 cups celery, diced [about 4 stalks]
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 1 teaspoon dried parsley
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 6 cups chicken broth
  • 8 cups potatoes, peeled and cubed [about 2 pounds]
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 cups skim milk, room temperature
  • 16 ounces extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated
  • 16 ounces sour cream

Directions:

In a large stockpot set over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter. Add carrots, celery, and onion and saute for 8-10 minutes until soft.

Meanwhile, in a separate skillet, cook ground chuck through. Drain off fat and set aside.

When vegetables are cooked, season with parsley, basil, and pepper, then add chicken broth and potatoes. Cover and reduce to a simmer, cooking until potatoes are soft and tender.

While potatoes are cooking, in a separate saucepan set over medium-low heat, melt the remaining butter. When melted, slowly whisk in flour to make a roux. Constantly stir for 1 minute, until bubbly. Slowly pour in room temperature milk, stirring continually until mixture thickens. If you use skim milk this may take longer but it will happen. Then pour in potato mixture along with ground chuck and shredded cheese. Reduce heat to low and cook until everything is incorporated and cheese is melted.

Off heat, stir in sour cream. Cover and let rest for a few minutes, then season with additional herbs or pepper.

Note: I think it’d be great to add some diced tomatoes to the soup next time!

Fruit, Recipes, Sides

Apple Cranberry Relish Salad

Sarah

A fun, flavorful, refreshing salad combining seasonal favorites: cranberries, apples, and jello! Mmm! 

Apple Cranberry Relish Salad... A fun, flavorful, refreshing salad combining seasonal favorites: cranberries, apples, and jello! Mmm!

Happy New Year! 2016–woo! It’s fitting that my first recipe of the new year is a festive dish like this. My mom made this salad for our early family Christmas dinner and we devoured it… so naturally, I had to make it for Ben and I to enjoy at home… and for you too! 🙂 I highly suggest making it before the holiday season ends because it’s just so good it can’t wait til next year.

Apple Cranberry Relish Salad... A fun, flavorful, refreshing salad combining seasonal favorites: cranberries, apples, and jello! Mmm!

Dishes like this aren’t fancy by any means, but they are one of my favorite parts of a good holiday meal. There’s something so refreshing about the sweetness, simplicity [no cooking required!], and tartness of a side dish like this combining fruit and jello in one marvelous dish! Growing up, we always had some sort of jello dish for every big occasion, but cranberries usually weren’t part of that. But this time… they are. It’s like cranberry relish + jello in one!

Apple Cranberry Relish Salad... A fun, flavorful, refreshing salad combining seasonal favorites: cranberries, apples, and jello! Mmm!

Enjoy!

one year ago: Chewy Ginger Cookies
two years ago: Sweet Potato Chorizo Chile Mac
three years ago: Chicken Tinga Tacos
four years ago: Crock Pot Cran-Apple Sauce
five years ago: Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Apple Cranberry Relish Salad

  • Servings: 6-8
  • Print

from Taste of Home Magazine, by Edna Means of Iola, Kansas

Ingredients:

  • 1 small package strawberry gelatin [3 ounces]
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 1/2 cup frozen orange juice concentrate
  • 1 package fresh/frozen cranberries, chopped [I used a food processor]
  • 1 medium apple, peeled and chopped [I used a Granny Smith apple and didn’t peel]
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar

Directions:

In a medium bowl, whisk together strawberry gelatin, boiling water, and orange juice concentrate. When gelatin is dissolved and orange juice is melted, fold in cranberries, apple, and sugar. Stir to combine, then cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight to set.