Dare to Eat Cookies… Cheese Straws!

Phew, better late than never. I’ve been a bit preoccupied. But it’s week 3 of Kim @ Newly Woodwards Dare to DIY Blog party and that means is cookies and other holiday baked goods week. So I’m here to share my recipe for Cheese Straws.

These are a pretty southern, I think, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you haven’t heard of them. I haven’t made them again this year yet, and the recipe always varies slightly since humidity can play a role.

Photo from Food Network.com

Cheese Straws

Ingredients:

1/2lb Cheddar
1/2lb butter
1/2lb flour
Red pepper (dash or more- up to you)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350*
2. Shred the cheese (you can use the pre-shredded stuff, but its better if you shred it yourself)
3. Mix cheese and butter in a food processor
4. Add flour, but not all at once. You want the consistency to be dough-like
5. Pipe into sticks/straws on a cookie sheet and bake. for 8-15 minutes. You don’t want them to get brown.

Paula Deen has a Cheese Straw recipe too — here.

Thanksgiving!

So, I am JUST now getting excited about Thanksgiving. Probably because tomorrow I’m going to be baking some pecan pies. I’m going to try this Bourbon Pecan Pie recipe from Real Simple, but minus the orange zest.

Pecan pie is probably one of my favorite pies to make. And to think, I didn’t start eating it until a few years ago!

In other news, I got lost on my way to week 2 of Kim’s Dare to DIY party. I blame the GPS. In reality, I’m still sucked into Breaking Dawn (book 4 of the Twilight saga). As soon as I finish this sucker (this week most likely) then I’ll be back to life as usual.

But no need to fear, I fully plan on being at the party this coming week for the cookie exchange. While I wont be doing my bulk cookie baking-palooza until sometime in December (I think), I’ll be sharing 2 of my favorites, Pecan Sandies and Cheese Sticks. Even though neither are really a “cookie”, it wouldn’t be the holidays without either of these for my family.

Anywho, in case I don’t get back here before turkey day, I hope yall all have a super fabulous Thanksgiving and enjoy spending time with your friends and family. And with starting your Christmas! decorating. I know I can’t wait!

Recipe Review: The Pioneer Woman’s Chicken Spaghetti Casserole

This casserole and I are BFFs. I luv it and could probably eat it (almost) every day. I’ve made some changes to it by omiting some ingredients and using Cream of Chicken soup instead of Cream of Mushroom because, ew. Mushrooms. Yuck.

But the other night I REALLY mixed it up. Instead of using spaghetti I used rotini! Earth shattering change here, you guys.

We ended up liking the rotini version MORE than the spaghetti version. I also calculated the calories for this bad boy. If you use the “healthy” version of the Cream of Chicken soup, a serving (the recipe makes of this ends up just under 450 calories. How awesome is that!

Anywhoos, if you haven’t tried this casserole yet, you need to. And if you have an aversion to some of the ingredients, just leave em out. Or change it up. I can personally vouch for the yumminess of this with the base ingredients- cream of something, chicken broth, pasta, chicken and cayenne (love me some spice!).

And who knew it’d end up being so figure friendly!

Meal Planning: Week of November 15

Here’s what’s cookin’ at the Kesler Expressler household this week:

1. Chili and cornbread
2. Pioneer Woman’s Chicken Spaghetti
3. Chicken, Peppers, and Onions (a holdover from last week that never got made)
4. Orzo with chicken, roasted asparagus, and onion
5. Chicken Quesadillas

Are you trying anything new this week? We aren’t trying any new recipes this week, but I’m going to make something up with that orzo dish.

Recipe Review: Asian Chicken and Orzo Salad

When I try new recipes and we sit down to eat dinner, our conversation usually starts out like this:

Me: So, what do you think?
Matt: Ehh.. it’s okay.
Me: Is it a ‘make-again’?
Matt: Ehhh.. I dunno/ Yeah/ No
Me: Yeah, I agree.
Matt: You never remember what recipes you say we should make again!

So whenever we try a new recipe, I’ll post a review so you know how it went and if you should even bother giving it a try. We’re going to get this party started with the Asian Chicken and Orzo salad that we had for dinner Wednesday night (and Thursday for lunch!)

Asian Chicken and Orzo salad

We loved this one. It was super easy to make since I had already fixed a batch of shredded chicken. Also, the sugar snaps that I got were the frozen steam-in-bag kind, which meant that while the orzo was cooking, I just threw the bag in the microwave and let it do its thing for 5 minutes. Oh so easy!

I’m not really a red pepper and water chestnut fan, but Matt is, so I eat around them. If it were up to me, I’d make this with just Orzo, chicken, and the sauce.

Ohhh the sauce! It is DELICIOUS. I did omit the rice wine vinegar though, and I must say that I did not miss it one bit. The dressing for the Brown Rice, Tomatoes and Basil had rice wine vinegar in it and YUCK. I think that’s just a personal taste though, but know that you can leave it out and everything will work out just fine. We’ll probably use this sauce the next time we do stir-fry or other Asian dishes.

So, Asian Chicken and Orzo salad- you’ve made the cut! Congratulations!

PS- This made a TON. Next time I’ll likely just use a half-bag of Orzo (so, 8oz) instead of the full thing. That would still be enough for dinner for two and lunch the next day.

Meal Planning: Week of November 8th

I just put together my meal list for this week and thought I’d share. Matt & I are trying to start watching our girlish figures, so these are all from the low-cal, low-carb, low-fat sections of the Food Network’s website. We only have 5 meals planned for this week (Sunday-Friday) since Tuesday is our 2yr anniversary and we’ll be going out to dinner.

I don’t assign meals to specific days since what we’re in the mood for can vary, and what I feel like cooking can vary.

• Chicken Piccata (recipe is for turkey, but I’m going to use chicken) with a side of Zucchini Parm Crisps (given that they still have zucchini at the store)
• Loaded Twice Baked Potatoes (I don’t do broccoli, but I might give it a shot)
• Brown Rice, Tomatoes, and Basil (I’m going to add some shredded chicken too)
• Asian Chicken and Orzo salad
• Chicken with peppers and onions (This is a Kesler Expressler original, kind of. We usually make this with sausage– like kielbasa — but I have a feeling that isn’t super healthy. Essentially you cook the sausage with the peppers and onions. Sometimes I make a little sauce and serve it over egg noodles. Should be interesting with chicken this week.)

What’s cookin’ at your place this week?

Review: The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Have you met the Pioneer Woman? If you haven’t, hop on over to her blog lickity-split. When I first stumbled upon it, some time in 2008 I believe, I probably spent 12 hours going through old posts and reading up. Anywhoo, the Pioneer Woman has recently released her first cookbook. And it’s awesome.

If you like Paula Deen, you’ll love Ree. She has a similar ‘I’m not perfect. I cook with loads of butter’ style. But it’s all so darn delicious!

A lot of the recipes in the book are available in the cooking section of Pioneer Woman, but there are some new ones. I ordered the book from Amazon when it came out and it was on my doorstep two days later thanks to Amazon Prime.

I haven’t made anything new out of the cookbook yet, but I have read it (mostly) cover-to-cover. The cookbook is filled with Ree’s photography of her family and their ranch in Oklahoma. She also has some stories about her family throughout. It’s almost like a cookbook-scrapbook hybrid. I don’t know, but it’s great.

I highly recommend you pick it up. Unless you’re trying to lose weight. Or eat healthy. Or you’re allergic to butter. Cause there’s lots of that goin on here.

Breaking News!

Well, not really. But I had to get your attention! I just saw this link on Twitter and wanted to share.

Real Simple:
“Cookie lovers–sign up for our cookie-a-day newsletter to get a new recipe  everyday thru New Year’s. http://bit.ly/2uonaI“

Sign me up, baby!

Last Night’s Leftovers: Pasta with Brie

Last night I tried out a recipe in the November issue of Real Simple, Pasta with Brie, Mushrooms, and Arugula.

Photo from RealSimple.com

The first problem, however, is that I don’t do mushrooms. So I skipped that part. But just pasta for dinner is not quite enough, so I pan-seared some chicken breasts for a few minutes on each side, then transferred to a baking dish and popped them in the oven to finish cooking.

The second problem is that I’m currently out of white wine.

Let’s take a second to let that sink in. No. White. Wine.

But, I happened to still have some chicken stock in the fridge, so after the red onion had cooked a bit, I tossed some of that in the pan. Deglazing or something that like.

After the chicken was done (and the pasta was almost ready), I sliced it up and tossed it with the onions. Then I drained the pasta, mixed in the Brie, threw in the chicken/onions, and added some baby Arugula (I couldn’t find normal Arugula at the store).

The verdict: We’ll make this one again. But this time we’ll axe the Arugula. So really, it’ll be Pasta with Brie, Chicken, and Onions. And maybe I’ll make it with white wine next time.

Have you added any new recipes to your repertoire lately?

Baby It’s Cold Outside

Isn’t it absolutely frigid everywhere? It was in the teens last night. Brrrrr. Too bad it’s supposed to warm up today just in time for rain tomorrow. Boo!

So this is our 2nd Christmas being married, but our 1st Christmas staying in Richmond and not going to my in-laws house. Which means I had to figure out what the heck we were going to do for Christmas Eve & Day. So here’s the plan!

Christmas Eve:

Matt will be driving back from his visit with some friends in another part of the state. I will probably still be working on my super long to-do list that I just made. At some point, I will be making cheese straws. Possibly with my sister. And maybe my dad if he wants to  join in. It’s going to be BYOC. Bring-your-own-cheddar. Now that I have the coveted recipe from my grandmother, I have no excuse for these to turn out poorly.

Also at some point on Christmas Eve I’ll be cooking dinner for at least Matt, Ellen, and myself. Hmm this oven use might conflict with the cheese-straw baking. Here’s my menu:

• Glazed Ham (a 9 pounder was the smallest I could find!)
• Mashed potatoes
• Stuffing/ dressing
• Green beans
• Rolls

Let’s hope I can pull this off.

The Christmas Day, we’ll be drinking mimosas somewhere (either here or at my dad’s house) and then going for brunch at my aunt’s house. Then I’ll probably have to finish cleaning for the in-law’s arrival on Friday.

I also have some sewing to do. At our Christmas celebration with my dad’s side of the family this past weekend, I gave my cousin this clutch I made (complete with a Starbucks gift card).

I also made this kitty tunnel for Alton as his Christmas present. It doesn’t look very tunnel-like, but he loves burrowing under blankets, so it’s right up his kitty-alley. It has a drawstring at one end so you can make it a kitty-sack. I got the pattern from the book In Stitches by Amy Butler.

I have some more sewing projects in the works, but I can’t say what they all are quite yet. I’m hoping to have some leftover fabric so I can make some cafe-curtains for the laundry room. I need some practice before attempting full-size curtains.