Cheesy Taco Buns

This was one of those recipes I pinned and was not sure if it would be any good. It seemed sort of lazy to me for some reason. So, the other day I had one of those days when I needed a lazy kind of meal. My husband was out of town and my kids don't appreciate fancy meals anyway, so Cheesy Taco Buns were on the menu!

I got the recipe: HERE on Centsless deals' website. You can read all of the nitty gritty details there, but here's a quick overview:

Brown up your ground beef and add taco seasoning, preferably in a cast iron skillet, because they're awesome.

Then you have to make a sauce with cream cheese and salsa. Unfortunately, we were all out of salsa, but I did have this taco sauce, which worked out well.

Then you have to get your Pillsbury Refrigerated Rolls. I used these:

Then you roll them out flat, like so:

Put a little dollop (I used that word because Sister #1 hates it) of the salsa/cream cheese mixture, add some meat and cheddar cheese.

Then pinch the dough together to make a cute little taco bundle and place it in our your cookie sheet, seam side down.

I just realized that the recipe said to brush the tops with butter. I didn't do that! Darn. Butter is always a great addition, but mine were still good without it.

Then you bake them for about 15 minutes! Easy Peasy!

Mmmmm..yum. Clearly, not at all authentic taco cuisine, but still a good meal. It was a big hit with the kids. I was kind of expecting that the leftovers wouldn't heat up very well, so I was pleasantly surprised when they did!

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Teriyaki Salmon with Sriracha Cream Sauce

I recently found a recipe for Teriyaki Salmon with Sriracha Cream Sauce on Pinterest. It can be found: HERE.

Let me just start off by saying, I don't really like seafood. If someone makes it for me then I'll eat it, but I very rarely choose to make it or to order it at a restaurant. I am usually ok with salmon. I really like Giada's recipe for Salmon Fish Sticks which can be found: HERE. Ooh...and this one too, Cheesy Onion Baked Salmon found HERE. Anyway, I decided to try this Teriyaki recipe and I really liked it! My kids liked it too. Awhile ago, Sister #2's daughter told my son that salmon makes you smart and he pretty much takes everything she says as gospel, so he eats salmon really well. I wonder if she can talk to him about shrimp and broccoli too.

The recipe is pretty simple.  You have to marinate the salmon in a teriyaki sauce recipe listed on the link. The longer you marinate it, the better. I let it marinate for a couple of hours and it was good.

Then you have to make the Sriracha Cream Sauce. I thought it had a little bit of a kick, but not too spicy at all. You can add extra Sriracha afterwards.

I clearly have a hard time taking pictures of meals after they are all made. I think at that point I'm a little too excited to eat or something. So, for a pretty plated picture, head over to Damn Delicious' website. Again, here's the link: Teriyaki Salmon with Sriracha Cream Sauce.  It was really good and went well with rice and kimchi, but I'm Korean so most things are good with rice and kimchi in my opinion.

Try the recipe and let me know what you think!

Cheesy Chipotle Chicken and Rice

I promise that I really do cook things other than chicken and meals that are a little more fancy pants, but for some reason I only remember to take pictures of quick, chicken meals. Oh, well.

Tonight, we were going to have stuffed cabbage rolls! That is until I took a marathon nap and read the recipe when I woke up and realized that they have to cook for 2 hours, which at that point meant that we would have eaten at 8:30. So, we had to turn to Plan B. Luckily, I had almost everything for this recipe from Yammie's Noshery for Cheesy Chipotle Chicken and Rice. I did have to adjust some things, because I was missing a couple of ingredients.

The original recipe calls for black beans, but shockingly I didn't have any! Luckily, the rice we cook at home has beans and barley mixed in it so I used that and it worked out great. I also didn't find chipotle seasoning, so I added some Mexican seasoning and a little cayenne pepper and I thought it worked well. I mixed the cheese and sour cream right in with the rice. I kind of love one pot recipes like this. I guess I used two: one to boil chicken and one for the rice. I also didn't have a red bell pepper, but I had a bag of small sweet peppers so I chopped up a few of those and they were delicious.

We ate ours with some tortilla chips. The kids and my husband all loved it. Our 11 month old son ate two bowls of it. If you want you can add some hot sauce on top. I think it would work well as a side dish to fajitas or tacos or even as a dip. It was definitely not the fanciest of meals, but was a really good lazy Sunday dinner.

My picture leaves a lot to be desired...again: lazy Sunday! So, I didn't plate it nicely or sprinkle cilantro on top. Go to Yammie's Noshery for pretty pictures.

Try it out! Don't be dissuaded by my less than impressive picture!

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

My husband doesn't like casseroles, so I very rarely make them. A couple of weekends ago I went out of town and I wanted to make something he could just throw in the oven. I figured he could just deal with having a casserole. Well, much to my surprise, he liked it! So, I figured I had to make it again so I could try it. I got the recipe from Six Sisters Stuff. The recipe can be found: here. It turned out to be the perfect meal, because I already had leftover ham from Easter (my kids refuse to eat split pea soup) and leftover broccoli. It was simple to make.

You just mix up the chicken, ham, broccoli, mustard and cream of chicken soup.

 Then you layer on some swiss cheese. Is it weird that mine only had holes on the edges?

 Then a layer of chicken flavored stuffing.

And bake it!

I thought it was a good weekday meal, pretty easy! My only critique is that it was a little salty for me. Next time I think I will use low sodium cream of chicken soup or maybe unsalted butter. Other than that, I thought it was great and my husband and kids like it, which is always a plus!

Try it and let me know what you think!

Guess what my house smells like ...

Recipe adapted from Paula Dean's Southern Fried Chicken

Decided to try out fried chicken for dinner tonight.  It was quite good. I changed a couple of things - one change I liked, the other I didn't.

Recipe said to mix water with the beaten eggs.  I decided to substitute buttermilk.  This change I liked a lot.  It kept the chicken really moist.

The recipe also called for 1 cup of Frank's hot sauce, but I was worried that it would be too spicy for the kids (nothing is more frustrating to me than to spend ANY amount of time cooking to have them complain about the food).  I ended up only adding 1/4 cup of hot sauce.  I was NOT happy about this choice.  There was no hot sauce flavor in the finished product.  The next time I make this chicken I will likely use the called for amount.

Seems a little brown.

Overall, I thought the chicken was delicious and it was a hit with the family, it just lacked the spicy bite that I like.  It did make my entire house smell like fried food, but I found that some whole cloves and vanilla boiling on the stove helped a lot!