From the Hound's Kitchen: Pina Colada Oatmeal Bars

I absolutely LOVE pineapple and coconut so when we discovered Mrs. Miller's Homemade Pineapple Jam at PA Dutch Tea & Spice I knew I had to adjust one of my favorite recipes into a Pina Colada style bar. The original recipe is from The Pioneer Woman and is called "Strawberry Oatmeal Bars"(click on the name to get to the original recipe). AND THEY ARE DELICIOUS! Seriously, these things are addicting- they don't last more than 2 days in our house.

Anyway, after discovering the intriguing Pineapple Jam I set out to start adjusting the oatmeal bars recipe into a new recipe full of tropical goodness, and here it is :

Ingredients:
- 1-3/4 sticks cold butter, cut into pieces
- 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1-1/2 cup Oats (quick or regular)
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 jar Mrs. Miller's Homemade Pineapple Jar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish

 Mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and coconut. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until it resembles coarse crumbs*. Sprinkle half the mixture into the pan and pat lightly to pack it a little tight.  Spoon preserves evenly over the surface, then use a dinner knife to carefully spread it around **. Sprinkle the other half of the oat mixture over the top and pat lightly again.

Bake until light golden brown on top, about 30-40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan.

When cool cut into squares and serve.

* Our pastry cutter broke a couple weeks ago and I have yet to replace it. So what I did was I used the biggest holes on my cheese grater and grated the butter. This worked well and if you are in a pinch I say go a head, but on a regular basis I would not recommend this as it was a pain in the butt of a process.

** Because of the consistency of the Pineapple Jam, it didn't really spread well so I used my fingers to press the jam around to spread it. If I tried spreading it, it would pull up the mixture underneath.

One of the things I think I will try next time is melting white chocolate chips and drizzling it over the top to make it more of a dessert bar. The bars are also delicious crumbled over ice cream.

The Pioneers Woman's recipe is also in the back of her new picture book Charlie Goes to School which is an adorable story about Charlie, her basset hound, starting a school for the animals on the ranch. I highly recommend the book as well.

From the Hound's Kitchen: Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip

IT'S SUMMER! You may have noticed unless a) you never leave your house or b) you live in the southern hemisphere. To us, summer means parties and cook outs. Parties often mean everyone brings their own dish and everyone gets a little of everything. This dish is Elfie and my go-to dish for parties. Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip. We got it from my parents to put into the family cook book. This is not a dip that your use to dunk chicken wings in; the dip itself is Buffalo wing flavored. IT'S AWESOME. We highly recommend trying it very soon.


Ingredients

2 8oz packages of Cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup pepper sauce, such as Franks Red Hot
1 cup ranch-style salad dressing
2 cups diced or shredded cooked chicken
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (unless using crockpot)
2) In a medium bowl, mix together the cream cheese and hot pepper sauce until well blended.
3) Mix in the ranch dressing, chicken and cheddar cheese

Only do the following if baking:
4) Spread into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish
5) Bake for 30 minutes, if oil collects on top, dab it off with a paper towel.

Serve with tortilla chips and/or celery

Notes: We usually cook ours in a crock pot. We recommend leaving yourself enough time to do it low and slow. It will work on high, but runs a greater risk of burning. We also usually make a double batch and freeze any leftovers. Finally, this dip goes great with the "Homemade" Tortilla Chips we've talked about.

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From the Water Bowl: Lavender lemonade

Elfie here! One of the trends I've noticed over the past couple summers is flavored lemonades. However, I'm  not talking cherry lemonade, or strawberry lemonade; I'm talking LAVENDER lemonade. I'll admit, when I first heard this, I crinkled my nose and thought it sounded... not so yummy. But recently I decided that I shouldn't knock it before I tried it. So I started looking around at recipes trying to get an idea of what would work best.  I found a couple I liked and I made them, but they weren't QUITE right for me, so I modified them until they were. So I hope you find Lavender Lemonade as enjoyable as I do!

Lavender Lemonade

7 cups water
3 tbsp PA Dutch Dried Lavender Ultra 
7 cups COLD water
3 cups lemon juice
2 1/4 cup sugar (if you want your lemonade to be sweeter- increase the sugar amount)




1) Bring the 7 cups of water  and sugar to a boil. Remove from the heat and add the lavender. Cover and steep for 1 hour. If you want a stronger lavender taste, steep longer. Strain the lavender flowers out. I did
this by using my spaghetti strainer over top of one of my pitchers.

2) Add the 7 cups of COLD water and 3 cups of lemon juice to the pitcher. Stir. Chill and Enjoy!

As a side note, my lavender water was green before I added the lemon juice. After I added the lemon juice it turned a pinkish yellow color - but when it is in the glass it just looks like regular lemonade. I have no idea why it does this- but it made me happy and I giggled.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do!

From the Hound's Kitchen: "Homemade" Tortilla Chips

Hey everyone, Dork_Syd again. It seems that I will be the one writing when food is involved.

Elfie and I LOOOOVE chips and salsa. So much so that we will often eat enough of them to constitute a full meal. This poses a couple of problems. One of them is nutrition. Store bought chips are fried in oil and covered in way to much salt, not to mention the processed ingredients. For the most part I don't really care about processed ingredients but we have found in many cases we can find cheaper and healthier alternatives if we take the time to look. By making our own chips, we can control what goes into them and how much , and what kind of, salt is used thereby getting better nutrition. The other issue with store bought chips is price. The average 10 oz bag of tortilla chips is about $3 and lasts the 2 of us maybe 4 sittings. We were fortunate to have one of our friends post a "recipe" to make your own tortilla chips. All you need is soft corn tortillas like these and some sea or kosher salt. The tortillas in link made enough chips to nearly fill a 40 cup, 16.5 in x 11.5 in x 5.5 food storage container like this. This poses more than a 50% cost savings over store bought chips.

Please know that this will be the most complicated recipe you will EVER see.

1. Acquire ingredients
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
3. Take a 2-3 inch stack of tortillas and place them on a cutting board.
4. Cut into sixths
5. Place cut pieces on UNGREASED cookie sheet
6. Sprinkle with sea or kosher salt until desired cover is reached*
7. Bake until crispy. I recommend starting at 10 minutes and increasing by 2-3 minutes until desired crispiness is reached.
8. Place on cooling rack
9. Store in airtight food storage container

*Also works with other spices. We recommend a cinnamon sugar mix, fiesta citrus spice blend, and any of the flavored popcorn salts.

These chips work well with any type of salsa. However, one of our favorites is Jake and Amos' Corn Salsa from Pa Dutch Food and Candy Company. Not very spicy but definitely full of flavor. The PA Dutch Food and Candy Company has a wide variety of salsas most of which we have tasted and highly recommend.


Unfortunately, We did not take any pictures with this process so please enjoy this gratuitous picture of our basset.

From the Hound's Kitchen: Easy Chicken and Rice Burritos

Hey everyone, Dork_Syd here again. The boss said she wanted burritos for dinner tonight. I could think of no reason to argue. I was, however, able to come up with 2 good reasons not to argue. 1. Despite not being pregnant, it is still a bad idea to get in Elfie's way when it comes to food. 2. That sounded like a good idea. I, once again ignoring doctors' orders, got to thinking. We still had plenty of taco season left over from PA Dutch Tea and Spice Company and we came up with the idea for Easy Chicken and Rice Burritos. The taco seasoning's product page says to add 1 teaspoon to 8 oz of tomato sauce.We used this method for our burritos. On a side note, the 8 oz bag costs $9.15. This may seem like a lot until you consider the quality of the product and the fact that the average packet from a grocery store costs $1+ and is only about 1/2 oz.

Anyway, that's enough math for one post. In our efforts to save money, Elfie and I have done everything we can to plan meals around items we have in the house and/or to plan the week's meals before shopping so we only purchase what we absolutely need. We had all but three ingredients in the house already, so this was pretty easy to plan. FYI: these taste awesome and are super filling.

Without further ado, here is our recipe for Easy Chicken and Rice Burritos

3 cups cooked rice
1 Chicken Breast, boiled and shredded*
2 green bell peppers, chopped
1 heaping tablespoon  of PA Dutch Taco Seasoning
1/2 large onion, chopped
Burrito tortillas
1 28 oz can of tomato sauce
1 tbsp butter
1 15 oz can of black beans (optional)


*One of the ways we have cut down costs is by eating less meat. You may want to use two or three breasts instead. Also, the recipe also would work with cubed or diced breast.

1) To cook the chicken, place in a saucepan and cover in water, heat on high. Cook for approximately 20 minutes. When chicken breast is fully cooked, use two forks to shred.

2) While the chicken is cooking, heat the butter in a large frying pan. Once melted, add the chopped bell peppers and onions. Cook for 5 minutes.

3) Add tomato sauce, Taco Seasoning, chicken and rice to the pepper and onion mixture. Add the beans to the mixture as well if you desire. Bring to a simmer, let mixture simmer for 10 minutes to cook off excess liquid.

4) Serve on tortillas & enjoy.

From the Hound's Kitchen: Southwestern Mac & Cheese

Whether through intent or serendipity, our blog's name adequately describes what we cover. Home: We're new home owners and will use this blog to chronicle our adventures in home ownership: repairs, remodels, and upgrades. Sweet: We love to cook. That's how Dork_Syd wooed Elfie. She did homework while he cooked the world's best* spaghetti as their first date. The rest, as they say, is history. Hound: We love our Basset Hound, usually. We don't have children yet so we dote on our 4-legged children.

*not verified by unbiased parties.

Dork_Syd grew up with a lot of GOOD Italian cooking and is a firm believer in choosing the right spices can really make a dish pop. He and Elfie were fortunate enough to stumble into PA Dutch Tea and Spice Company and PA Dutch Food and Candy Company. These have to be two of the best food related store that we have been in. The tea and spice store has hundreds of teas and spices as well as things like tea infusers, tea pots, honey, and cookies (biscuits if you prefer the authentic British tea experience.) You will be very hard pressed to find many of the items featured in either store in your average grocery store(not to mention the best taco seasoning, ever, in my opinion). The Food and Candy store really brings credence to the old adage "kid in the candy store" reaction. They have chocolate, gummies, European and Asian candies,  and nostalgic candies like wax bottles. Sounds amazing, but that is only half of the store. The other half has so much that it will be difficult to cover it all, but here I go anyway. They have cake and bread mixes (some of them gluten free), pickles (many types), salsas, sauces, dried fruit and vegetables, pasta, snacks like flavored chips and pretzels, and sodas. I may have missed some things. To see their entire product line up, check out their Amazon Store. There is also a link to their page in the upper left corner of this page. Anyway they're some great people with great products and a great small business.

Despite being ordered by doctors not to do so, Dork_Syd was thinking today... he and Elfie just got some taco seasoning and wanted to see what could be done with it besides tacos. Here is what Dork_Syd came up with. 

Southwestern Mac & Cheese Bake

2 cups Uncooked elbow macaroni 

4 tsp  PA Dutch Taco seasoning (secret ingredient: Do not use store brand)

3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cups milk

16 ounces Mexican blend cheese, shredded

2 Green bell peppers

2 cups diced tomatoes (we used quartered cherry tomatoes)
3/4 cup chopped onion (about a quarter of a large onion) 

1) Preheat Oven to  375 degrees.

2) Cook the Macaroni. Drain and set aside.

3) While pasta is cooking, melt 1 tbsp of butter and sweat onions and green bell peppers until fragrant. Add tomatoes cook for another 4 minutes. Drain excess liquid add to bowl with noodles. Avoid over cooking veggies otherwise they will turn to mush once baked.

 4) In 4 cup glass measuring cup melt remaining 2 tbsp of  butter on HI for 45 seconds. Stir in flour. Set aside.

5) Pour milk in 2 cup glass measuring cup and cook on HI for 1 minute or until warm.

6) Gradually stir milk into flour mixture. Cook on HI 3 minutes, stirring once during cooking. Stir, cook on HI 1 minute, or until smooth and thickening. 

7) Blend in cheese and taco seasoning. Stir until melted.

8)  In the bowl combine sauce, veggies and noodles. Stir. Once coated transfer to 9 x 13 casserole dish. 

9) Bake at 375 for 25 minutes, or until bubbling

10)Serve and enjoy! 

Hurricane Sandy = Baking

I don't know what it is about storms, but they make me bake. During Snowmageddon I baked cookies pretty much non-stop. To the point that my husband and I walked through 2 feet of snow in order to get more butter. This time, it's been trying out two recipes included in a new mystery series I've fallen in love with  by Bailey Cates (she has an awesome blog written by the main character of the series here). The first book is called Brownies and Broomsticks  and is definitely loads of fun! I suggest you check them out if you like the cozy mystery genre! Anyway! Since this series is the Magical Bakery mysteries, at the end of Brownies and Broomsticks Ms. Cates includes two recipes : Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies and Chedder-Sage Scones. During this, the first day of true Hurricane Sandy weather here in VA, I've made both recipes. LOVE THEM.

Brownies after cooking. 

 First up was the Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies. The picture to the left is of the batter prior to baking, and of course the novel the recipe comes from! This was my first time making brownies from 100% scratch and IT WAS SO EASY! Usually I'll just buy the packages because I thought it was way easier than making them from scratch. Nope, not true at all. These are SUPER easy and SUPER delicious. These are, by far, my favorite brownie recipe I've ever had. You can bet on seeing these in the future if anyone asks Superman and I to bring dessert to a get-together.

Now, next up, the Cheddar-Sage Scones. Again, my first time making scones! Lots of firsts today! These are also super easy! I never realized that making scones takes pretty much no time at all! Ok, I don't know if that applies to all scones, but definitely does to these. What took the longest (other than the actual baking of the scones) was actually chilling the butter. But they are delicious! Yay!

Now, just for fun, since the recipe comes from a novel that involves herbal magic I'm going to share folklore about sage!  Sage is generally known as a cleansing herb, both if digested and burned. Native American tribes, and later on New Age religions (and possibly other older Pagan religions) use sticks made of dried sage as a type of incense to purify a room of negativity. The smell is wonderful, especially if you combine it with another type of herb or plant, like cedar or juniper.  In addition to burning dried sage for purification, sage is believed to promote longevity and is an important part of diets that promote healing. There is an older saying : Eat sage in May and live for aye [ever].
Folklore surrounding the gardening of sage includes the idea that planting sage yourself in your own garden is bad luck, a stranger  should be found to do the work for you. I personally think a friend should be used, because there is at least a known, positive, connection there. The other tidbit of folklore surrounding the gardening of sage is that a full bed of sage brings ill luck, so one should always make sure that the plot, bed, or pot is shared with another plant.

So there you have it! Where I got two recipes that I tried today and love and some fun folklore about sage!

Enjoy!

~Elphie ~)O(~