Super Bowl

Sweet Potato Skins

Potato Skins

Nachos

Cocktail Weiners

The Super Bowl theme is the second theme for this weekend. It's one of my family's favorite because of the cocktail weiners and it's basically a junk food meal. I made the for mentioned cocktail weiners, potato skins and sweet potato skins (because I only had two potatoes left in the house), nachos and Hershey's Easy Pizza Brownie for dessert.

For the potato skins, I pre-baked the potatoes at 400 for an hour, cut them in quarters, coated them with olive oil, put them back in the oven for another 15 minutes, covered them with bacon and cheese and put them back in the oven to melt the cheese. With the sweet potatoes, I used butter, brown sugar, marshmallows.

The Cocktail Weiners are the very generic jar of grape jelly and bbq sauce with two packages of little smokies. I placed it all in the pot under medium heat for about a half hour.

Now the Nachos, I decided to try seasoning the ground beef from scratch instead of buying package seasoning. The Mexican seasoning that I used, was a little spicier than my wimpy taste buds are used to. It seemed a little dry (possibly because I used 96% fat free ground beef), so I added a can of diced tomatoes to the meet. I would have added some kidney beans to add some extra protein without the extra fat, but the fam isn't a fan of beans. The cheese sauce I made was also uninspired Valveeta cheese and salsa.

My favorite part of the meal is always dessert. I pulled one of my favorites, I think I pulled it from Hershey's web page years ago. I haven't been able to find it anywhere since.

Hershey's Easy Pizza Brownie

3/4 cup Butter or Margarine melted
1 1/2 cup Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
3 eggs
1/2 cup Hershey's Cocoa
3/4 cup All-Purpose Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt

Hershey's Pizza Brownie

1. Heat oven to 350 F. Grease 12" pizza pan or 13" x 9" baking pan. Make sure the pan has a lip or the dough ends up dripping all over the bottom of the oven (been there, done that).

2. Beat melted butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs by hand. Add and mix in the dry ingredients. Spread into prepared pan.

3. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the top springs back at touch. You can serve plain or sprinkle the hot brownie with topping of your choice. Nuts, Carmel, mini marshmallow bits, chocolate chips, candy bar bits, and the options go on and on.

I used, marshmallow bits, chocolate chips, and chocolate frosting. Then I turned it into a Sundae with ice cream and chocolate topping. Yum!

So, if you're not watching the Super Bowl, but feel like you should do football movie at least here are some football movie options: Wildcats (with Goldie Hawn), Blindside, or Remember the Titans. I'm sure there are many more.

Chinese New Year, Year of the Monkey

Lettuce Wraps, Beef Broccoli Stir Fry, and Egg Rolls

It was one of those weekends were there are two obvious themes. Both of which my husband claims as his favorite. Chinese New Year and Super Bowl. I think it is because it is one of the few times I'll go into all of the work and make egg rolls.

This years menu included, the before mentioned egg rolls, lettuce wraps, and a Beef Broccoli Stir Fry with rice. For dessert, bought fortune cookies. Someday, I may try to make my own, but with egg rolls, I wasn't feeling it. I did make Banana Monkey Bread for dessert also. Yes, I know not very Chinese, but hey it's the Year of the Monkey. So, what the heck, I went with it.

The Egg Roll recipe comes from my Better Homes and Garden cookbook 1989 edition (held together with a rubber band) pages 18 and 19. I've replaced the pork and shrimp with chicken, (I'm allergic shrimp and had some left over chicken that needed to be used up).

8 egg roll skins
1 1/2 cup finely chopped chicken
1/2 cup finely chopped sprouts
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh mushrooms
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp of ground ginger

Mix it together, place a 1/4 cup in each egg roll skin just below the center of the skin. fold the nearest corner over the filling and tuck corner under the filling. Fold in the side corners over the top just as you would making an envelope. Roll up toward the remaining corner. Add a little moister to the corner to seal.  Deep fry for 2 - 3 minutes until golden and drain on paper towels. You can keep them warm in a 300 degree oven. Enjoy warm dipping them in your favorite sauce.

Wrap Sauce

For the Lettuce Wraps, I purchased Lee Kum Kee Sauce for Lettuce Wraps, adding the 1 1b of ground chicken, 1/4 cup chopped peanuts, 1/2 cup chopped carrots, and 4 sliced scallions recommended on the back. I used regular iceberg lettuce leaves to wrap it in. I know it's cheating, but when I looked at the from scratch ingredients, it included items that I wasn't even sure where to find and probably wouldn't ever use otherwise. So, hey.

I tried new recipe for the Beef Broccoli Stir Fry. It was alright. I used Sherry instead of the water and marinated the beef for most of the day with the rest of the ingredients. I did this, because I have been having the hardest time with the beef in the stir fry being tough. I also, tenderized the beef before marinating it. It seemed to help.

Banana Monkey Bread

Now for the Banana Monkey Bread, this turned out really well. We pretty much finished it off between the three of us in three days. I chose banana for selfish reasons, I have too many of them in my freezer. I didn't do the Nutella, it's just not something I keep on hand. I used chocolate frosting on top instead and added chocolate chips in the layers of dough in the bunt pan. Also, added more butter and brown sugar to it also. I hate dry cinnamon rolls. I really didn't need to because in the end they were almost too moist. My daughter did ask me if I was going to make them again. It would have gone much easier, if I hadn't had to stop in the middle of doing the dough balls to clean up all of the sugar I dumped when the sugar contain slipped out of my fingers and went EVERYWHERE.

As for your family movie, these are easy, Mulan, or any of the Kung Fu Panda movies. 

January 30th, Feast of the Three Holy Fathers. Greece

Greek Salad, Greek Chicken, Baked Greek Fries, and Greek Saganaki

A Greek holiday, also called Feast of the Three Holy Fathers. The link below can give you more information.
 http://www.goarch.org/special/threehierarchs/index_html

Since, I was unable to find anything to show foods for this holiday, I just made a Greek menu of Greek Chicken, Baked Greek Fries, Greek Salad, Greek Saganaki, and Greek Lemon Cake.

The Greek Chicken was OK, but probably not the recipes fault. I only marinated it for seven hours instead of eight and I think I over cooked it. With all of the juices around it in the pan, one would not think it would be dry. The recipe stated to grill it, but winter in Michigan not prime grilling. Several reviews said to bake it which I did, but probably too long.

 Greek Salad,  you can't really mess up. It was fine, we didn't add the olives. Just not olive eaters.

The Baked Greek Fries, were good. Basically roasted potatoes, so again, how can I go wrong.

The truly new food for me in this endeavor was the Greek Sanganaki. This is basically like fried cheese using Feta. The recipe has you dipping it in egg and flour and then frying in olive oil. If I were to do it again, I would use some bread crumbs instead of the flour. The breading didn't stick to the cheese very well. 

Greek Lemon Cake

As for dessert, Greek Lemon Cake is a bunt cake. It had good flavor; but as many of the reviews stated it could have used more lemon flavor. It probably could have used some sort of lemon or sauce on it.

I would love to hear your thoughts and inputs. Your own Greek recipes.

Recommended movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "My Life in Ruins," or "Hercules."