Almost Guilt Free Game Day Food

Well being an Alabama fan it's really easy to start grinding out all sorts of Tailgate like foods. I am a front page of Yahoo! junkie and I found this Spicy Buffalo Tenders with a Healthier Spin recipe a few days ago so I decided to give it a swing, along with making up my own Spinach and Roasted Corn Ranch Pasta Salad. I also did change up the recipe just to fit my measuring cups and techniques to have minimal dirty dishes, because I hate doing dishes. Overall it was a definite yummy and relatively quick meal that could have fed a lot more than just the 3 of us.


Spicy Blue Cheese Dip
2/3 cup reduced-fat sour cream
2/3 cup crumbled blue cheese
1 Tablespoon distilled white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 t Garlic Powder
1/4 t Poppy Seeds
1/4 t Paprika

Directions:
Stir together all ingredients in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

 Buffalo Tenders

3 tablespoons buttermilk
2 tablespoons hot sauce, such as Frank’s RedHot
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
2 pounds chicken tenders
6 tablespoons whole-wheat flour
6 tablespoons cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons oil, I used olive oil
Baby Carrots

Directions
-To prepare tenders: Mix buttermilk, 2 tablespoons hot sauce and 2 tablespoons vinegar in a large freezer bag until combined. Add chicken; toss to coat. Transfer to the refrigerator and let marinate for at least 10 minutes or up to 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

-Meanwhile, mix flour, cornmeal, and paprika in a shallow dish.
-Remove the chicken from the marinade, pat of the excess marinade and roll in the flour mixture until evenly coated. (Discard remaining marinade and flour mixture.)
-Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add half the chicken, placing each piece in a little oil. Cook until golden brown and cooked through, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer to a serving platter. Repeat with the remaining 1 tablespoon oil and chicken, reducing the heat if necessary to prevent burning. Transfer to the platter. Drizzle the chicken with hot sauce to taste. Serve with carrots, celery and Spicy Blue Cheese Dip.

**With your leftovers you can make a spicy chicken dip with the rest of the blue cheese dip, shred the chicken tenders, add some more sour cream, cream cheese, blue cheese, and hot sauce. You can find the recipe on the back of Frank's Hot Sauce.** This dip is now just sitting in our fridge for some snacky food for the rest of the weekend

Spinach and Roasted Corn Ranch Pasta Salad
1 cup uncooked pasta
1 cup washed spinach, chopped
2 cans whole kernal corn
1 cup ranch dressing
1/2 cup cheese

Directions
-Cook pasta as directed, rinse with cold water and set aside
-Roast corn in oven Directions here and add to pasta along with washed and chopped spinach, toss with ranch dress and cheese. I made homemade ranch with the Hidden Valley ranch packet because in my opinion it's the best ranch.

Corn Roasting

-Serve cold and if the salad seems dry you can add more dressing, I just added some reduced fat sour cream and a little more milk

For your "awwwww" moment of the night her is a picture of my little "helper" after I woke her from her sleep to take her picture.

Rebecca

Roasted Vegetable Soup

You may remember this post Roasted Vegetables. Well Sunday night we had the roasted vegetables with dinner and we had a quart container full of leftovers. As I have written before I watch too much Food Network, if that's possible. Any who Ina Gartin aka Barefoot Contessa really started me on the roasted vegetables but also I remember watching her once take the roasted vegetable leftovers and make a soup, I attempted it and it turned out phenomenally.

Roasted Vegetable Soup
3 cups chicken broth
1 quart roasted vegetables
1/2 cup half and half

Directions
After roasting the vegetables heat the broth up to at boil. Once it boils turn it down to low and add in the vegetables and use your hand emulsifier or put the soup into a blender or food processor until small chunks remain and pour in half and half. Taste the soup to make sure the spices are right, also mine turned out a little too salty so I just added more water and a little more half and half and it turned out just right.


Roasted Vegetable Chicken and Rice Soup/Stew
1 cup of rice, cooked
1 pack chicken tenders
Roasted Vegetable Soup (Recipe above)

Directions
Cook 1 cup of rice following the package directions, once finished add to roasted vegetable soup. While the rice was cooking I marinated my pack of chicken for a little while and then cooked it in a medium-high pan with a splash of olive oil until browned. Once the chicken was finished I shredded it and added it also to the roasted vegetable and rice soup. After all ingredients were added I checked the spices again and let simmer on low until ready to serve.

Note: this is very easy to change up, if you like runnier soup just add more water and half and half. You can add no meat, or different meat, just make it your own. It is also man approved and he didn't even care that broccoli was in it and he always complains whenever Mama and I roast broccoli.

This would feed 4 very hearty servings

January: A Month in Review

I guess as I'm really starting to figure out what direction I'll be taking the blog, I'm starting to form different ways of writing because in my mind variety is good. Sometimes I can't just sit down and write this really long thing and expect people to read it all because I can't sit here and re-read it all either. Anyways to my point I decided on the last day of the month calls for a recap of the month because well January was awesome.

If 2011 is as awesome as the month of January was this year will possibly be the best yet.

The month started out at Disney World in Orlando and with an Alabama dominating win against Michigan State.  If there was a way to kick off a new year that was the best way imaginable.

I ended up with the flu at the beginning of the month and let me say it was one of the more miserable few days of my life on top of also having a bronch the Friday that I was sick.

Also we ended up with the most snow I have ever seen in Atlanta that I was allowed to play with pushing 6 inches. When "The Storm of the Century" hit in 1993 it was too cold outside and I was all of 5 and we were not allowed to go outside to play in it.

I also spent MLK weekend in Panama City with Charles and his friends from UAB for Gulf Coast Getaway which is a college ministry retreat weekend and it was amazing.

One Friday evening I spent hanging out with Katie and a few of the bridesmaids for her wedding playing dress up and I am in LOVE with my dress! I can't wait to order it, pick it up and just play dress up in it. :) Confession time: A guilty pleasure of mine is when I'm cleaning a lot or packing I like to play dress up and put on my dresses that I don't get to wear all the time.

To round out the month of January after visiting with my surgeon and making sure I was not going to be scheduled for surgery immediately I decided that it was the perfect weekend to go to Tuscaloosa to see my friends and catch the Alabama-LSU basketball game. As it turns out almost all of my friends from Tide for Christ Student Ministries aka TCSM thought the same. So it just formed into this awesome weekend of spending as much time with one another as possible, eating, shopping, laughing, watching basketball. I love seeing how little actions in the big scheme of things work out perfectly. For instance I really didn't commit until Wednesday night late to going to Tuscaloosa and it was too late to get a ticket with Charles. Friday night we're walking out of dinner and Mike mentions that Dustin has an extra ticket possibly so Mike would take that ticket so they could have "man time" and I could sit with Cassie and her parents. This worked out perfectly, and so I stayed the first half with Cassie and since Mike and Dustin had some extra seats next to them I went and hung out with them since I hadn't seen Dustin in 8 months which is a record that I don't like. Words honestly can't quite describe how great of a weekend it was and how great of friends I have.

Just a few of the ladies

The month of January in Review gets an A+. I really don't know how any of the other months this year can quite be as great.

Also today to end out the month is my first "baby's" birthday. He is 9 years old today and boy does that make me feel old. Isaiah and I have been connected since I met him at a few weeks old and that's all she wrote. Isaiah is just precious and I love him but he's not my little baby any more but we still have fun together.

6 years ago

I hope everyone else has had just as great of a January as I have! 

Rebecca