food — Giving Up on Perfect

Monday Morning Mmmm: Italian Chicken

April 29, 2013 By Mary @ Giving Up on Perfect 3 Comments

First of all – don’t judge my two starchy vegetable sides on this plate.

Second of all – remember my sweet potato saga? This was my attempt to overcome it. And it failed.

Thirdly - just because this particular dinner ended in yelling (me) and crying (my child) doesn’t mean the meal was a complete bust. As a matter of fact, before I told my daughter to just go to her room if she was going to carry on like that, she claimed the bacon-wrapped Italian chicken we were eating was “the best chicken EVER.”

Yep, the reason for her dinner-ending fit was that I wouldn’t give her more chicken until she ate some more sweet potatoes. If it weren’t for the chicken, my stubborn child wouldn’t have eaten anything for dinner at all! (She doesn’t really like corn, either. Serving it was all part of my strategy to make the sweet potatoes look like the best option. #fail)

Bacon-Wrapped Italian Chicken is a recipe I found in Simply Summer by Kate at Modern Alternative Mama.

Bacon-Wrapped Italian Chicken

2 lbs chicken breast, boneless and skinless
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup water
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp sage
1/4 tsp basil
6 – 8 slices of bacon
6 – 8 thin slices of Gruyere cheese

Combine ingredients from lemon juice to basil, and use as marinade for chicken. Chicken should marinate for at least two hours (though overnight is best. If you think ahead. Which I didn’t.). Remove chicken and wrap each piece with one or two pieces of bacon. Thin bacon works best.

Heat a skillet on medium high (or medium, because medium high was too hot on my stove). Fry chicken until bacon is mostly cooked, about 5-8 minutes per side. Place chicken in a pan and top each piece with cheese slices (I actually used mozzarella, not Gruyere.). Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes to finish cooking.

Simply Summer suggests serving with Italian salsa with tomatoes, onions and Italian seasoning. Nobody in my house loves tomatoes, though, so we passed on that part. Next time I’m making sure to fix this meal for people who like tomatoes, because I think it sounds good that way!

What’s the best chicken YOU’VE ever eaten (or made)?

Affiliate links are used in this post.

Filed Under: Recipes & Food Tagged With: cooking, food, monday morning mmmm, recipe

Monday Morning Mmmm: Snickers & Apple “Salad”

April 1, 2013 By Mary @ Giving Up on Perfect 4 Comments

On one hand, my cousin and her husband said this dish was amazing and swore they could eat the whole bowl. On the other hand, Annalyn informed me (quietly, as if only loud criticism would hurt my feelings) that she didn’t like it that much because it wasn’t “a real salad.”

Poor kiddo. She approached a creamy spoonful of fruit fluff her mom has called a “salad” all week expecting it to turn into a bowl of veggies, ranch dressing and croutons?!? Crazy girl.

Just to be clear, though: This dish is NOT a vegetable salad. Or a salad of any sort. Despite the apples that play a prominent role here, it can’t even be considered a fruit salad. Not really. What it can be considered, though, is delicious – so read on.

I can’t remember where I first saw a recipe for a Snickers and apple salad, but it was probably on Pinterest. (I say, as if I find new recipes anywhere else these days…) Easter lunch with my family seemed like the perfect occasion to try it out.

After doing a little search, I found a few different versions – but none answered my burning question, “Can I make this the night before?”

See, I just wasn’t sure if that would work. I know that a lot of dishes taste better when they’ve had time in the fridge, smushing all the flavors together. (Yep. Smushing. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know that technical term. Maybe someday when you’re a real fancy chef like me.) But, despite the smushing factor, I was afraid the apples would turn brown overnight. Or would they? Do whipped cream-covered apples turn brown? I DON’T KNOW.

I’m sorry to tell you I don’t have an answer for you. You know why? Because the apples were covered in whipped cream! So how was I supposed to know if they had turned brown? I couldn’t. So there was just no need to worry.

That’s not to say the fixing it the night before business went perfectly. I made the salad the night before, refrigerated it and then put it in the same box holding my piping hot Crockpot for the 40-minute drive to my cousin’s house. I’m not sure which part of that situation made the ingredients separate a bit by the time we ate lunch, but SOMETHING did.

Sure. It was probably the Crockpot commute that caused the problem, but I’m still not sold on the advance mixing. Next time, I’ll probably make it a few hours in advance, giving it time to be chilled but not enough time to separate.

No more ado. It’s recipe time!

Snickers & Apple “Salad”

4 large green apples
12-16 fun size Snickers bars
8 oz. Cool Whip
1 box vanilla pudding
1 cup milk

Mix together milk and pudding, then let it set up while you work on the other ingredients. Chop the apples and Snickers bars into small pieces. Mix together the Cool Whip and pudding, then fold in the apples and candy. Refrigerate for some time (I mean, you can do overnight, but I can give you no guarantees.*). Drizzle with caramel sauce before serving.

* I’m kidding, you guys. Refrigerating overnight is a great idea. Setting the salad next to a super hot Crockpot is a terrible idea.

Did you fix anything new and/or tasty for an Easter dinner over the weekend?

This post will be linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, 33 Shades of Green and Works for Me Wednesday.

Filed Under: Recipes & Food Tagged With: cooking, food, monday morning mmmm, recipe

Monday Morning Mmmm: Pizza Poppers

March 18, 2013 By Mary @ Giving Up on Perfect 5 Comments

Last night we got home from small group later than normal, which meant I put Annalyn to bed later than normal and we started talking about what to eat for dinner EVEN LATER. As in, we ordered a pizza just minutes before the store closed and after waiting 45 minutes for it to be delivered, decided the delivery guy probably took our pizza home. So after some hemming and hawing and lamenting the fact that only fast food places were open now, Mark jumped in the car to hit a drive thru. Of course, THAT is when the pizza FINALLY got to our house, which is why we ate dinner at an obscenely late hour.

And that is also why I don’t have a brain cell left to write something deeper than a recipe post right now. Well, that and the fact that I’m sitting on the couch next to my husband, who’s using his remote control powers for evil not good – flipping between Vanilla Ice’s home remodeling show and Finding Bigfoot.

I’m not even kidding. [Oh, and look! Now we - HE - found a show on the Cooking Channel with two girls who call themselves the "Beer Chicks." *sigh*]

So let me just tell you about the delicious {and spicy!} appetizer I made last weekend.

A hundred years ago (FINE. two years ago.), my friend Dana wrote about Pizza Snowballs. The short version is that she smushed canned biscuits, cheese and pepperoni into balls, baked them in a muffin tin, and had a quick, easy and tasty meal that her kids loved helping her make.

Sounds good, right?

I’ve thought about making them several times, but remembered Dana’s recipe most recently when I noticed I’d pinned something very similar. After comparing the two recipes, considering the pros and cons of each, calculating the cost of ingredients, and basically saying “eeny meeny miney moe,” I decided to go with the Rachael Ray recipe that Monica adapted on Lick the Bowl Good.

Because I needed more pizza pieces (Wow. Say THAT three times fast: “pizza pieces, pizza pieces, pizza pieces”!) than Monica’s recipe yielded, I adapted it even further – mainly by doubling it and adding sausage.

You know, just in case the original recipe wasn’t spicy or greasy enough for you.

BUT LOOK HOW TASTY THEY LOOK!

Pizza Poppers

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 cups Italian mix shredded cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1 cup diced pepperoni
1 cup browned sausage
1 cup pizza (or spaghetti) sauce

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Mix dry ingredients, then stir in milk and egg. Fold in cheeses and let stand for 10 minutes. Pour or scoop batter into greased mini muffin tin. Bake 20-25 minutes. Yields 48 mini muffins. Serve with warmed pizza sauce.

AND TRY NOT TO EAT THEM ALL.

When I realized that I needed to add sausage to my batter because I didn’t have enough pepperoni for the doubled recipe, I wondered if I really needed to make so many. Then I tried one, and I thought, “Yeah, it’s probably a good thing I doubled the recipe. I hope my friends like them.”

THEY ATE THEM ALL. I’m pretty sure if I’d TRIPLED the recipe, they would’ve EATEN THEM ALL. And there I’d thought I’d bring home a few and call it good for dinner.

Because, as I may have mentioned earlier, dinner on small group nights is kind of an issue.

Oh, hey, you know what’s funny? The blog post where I found the recipe for the pizza poppers? Talks about HER husband watching horrible TV shows! Apparently this is a common problem.

What’s your favorite late-night dinner? And does anyone in your house watch horrible TV when he (OR SHE) gets control of the remote?

This post will be linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Tuesdays at the Table, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, 33 Shades of Green and Works for Me Wednesday.

Filed Under: Recipes & Food Tagged With: cooking, food, monday morning mmmm, recipe

Monday Morning Mmmm: Beer-Candied Bacon

February 4, 2013 By Mary @ Giving Up on Perfect 3 Comments

At the end of the day, I only tried one new recipe for our Superbowl party.
Though I’d pinned and pinned for the past two weeks, I managed to exhibit some restraint. However, if I had to stick to one new recipe (in addition to my chili and jalapeno popper dip), I declared I would make the one that included all my husband’s favorite things.

Enter beer-candied bacon. Ahem. Beer. Candied. Bacon! (Mark tells me that this declaration is begging for a “booyah” to be added at the end. I informed him that there is nothing on earth – even sweet, sticky bacon – that could force me to add a “booyah” to any part of anything.)

Several weeks ago, as I took a break from searching for easy Valentine’s crafts, I happened upon Tide and Thyme’s gorgeous photo and seemingly simple recipe for beer-candied bacon.

As you know, I’m a sucker for a simple recipe, but this time, it was truly the photo that made me pause and click.

I never would have thought, when I began blogging five years ago and thought Google Images was the only place (and a legal place) to find photos to illustrate my words, that I’d become moderately fascinated by food photography. But, really, given my love of food and love of taking pictures of all the things, I should’ve seen it coming.

The moment I saw Laura’s bacon standing in that beer glass, I knew I had to recreate the whole thing. Not because I need more bacon in my life (although, come on now. Who doesn’t?), but because we have two beer glasses just waiting to be used.

[Now, if you're getting antsy reading through The Longest Introduction to a Recipe Ever, just calm down. I will get to the recipe in due time. Or fairly soon after due time. But the important thing is that I am telling you about Beer. Candied. Bacon! so you can wait. Or, you know, you can scroll down. But I think you should wait.]

See, my husband used to have this friend. He’d say that he still has this friend, but as this friend is my least favorite of my husband’s friends, I pretend like he doesn’t have him anymore. ANYWAY. This friend apparently had, back in the day when they were the best of friends, a collection of shot glasses. And so, in an effort to be as cool as this friend supposedly he was [he wasn't], my husband decided that he, too, needed a collection of shot glasses.

Which is perfectly acceptable when said friend and husband were 22 years old.

Now, though? More than a decade later? Maybe it’s a little weird to collect shot glasses. Especially when said husband doesn’t drink shots of anything and hasn’t – as far as I know – done so in the nearly 14 years we’ve been married.

Nevertheless, I love my husband. And that is why the top of his dresser is decorated with shot glasses we have purchased on every trip we’ve taken, as well as trips I’ve taken without him. Yes, I support this shot-glass-collecting habit. Yes, my bedroom contains no less than 17 shot glasses, none of which have ever held a drop of liquor.

[Side note: When shopping for a shot glass at Disney World, you must ask for a "toothpick holder." Apparently Mickey would be scandalized by the thought that his glass toothpick holders could be used for anything other than toothpick holding. Personally, I prefer to call them "dust collectors," but that's just me.]

ANYWAY. [Why are you making me tell you all this? Don't you want the recipe for the bacon?!] Last fall we visited Grand Rapids, Michigan, and like Disney World, the GR is devoid of shot glasses. The best Mark could find, on our way out of town as we realized we’d spent so much time memory-making and family-bonding that we hadn’t gotten a souvenir, was a beer glass.

Which, if you’re wondering, costs significantly more than a shot glass.

So he bought two.

This is why, when I saw the post about beer-candied bacon on Tide and Thyme’s site, I was actually more interested in the staging of the food than the food itself. And that is why it’s hilarious to me that the photos I ended up using in this here post don’t even really show you the darn glasses.

[Side note: Though they had not been used prior to this food photography session and will likely not be used after it, Mark did remind me that they cannot be washed in the dishwasher. So, it seems, all I did was create dishes to be hand-washed. Which means that for a while - likely a while lasting several days - those glasses will decorate my kitchen counter instead of the dresser in my bedroom.]

Good news. I just ran out of side notes. Time for a recipe!

Beer-Candied Bacon
1 pound thick-sliced bacon
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup beer

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil, and place the bacon on the baking sheet. (I found that the entire pound didn’t fit, but maybe your baking sheet is bigger than mine.) Bake the bacon for 10 minutes, while you mix the brown sugar and beer together. (It will not take you 10 minutes to mix the brown sugar and beer together. If it does, you have bigger problems that bacon may not, in fact, cure.)

After the bacon has cooked for about 10 minutes, take it out of the oven. Brush with the beer glaze on both sides, then return to the oven for another 10 minutes. Repeat as many times as it takes for the bacon to crisp up. Cool for an hour before serving.

Alternate method (also known as what I did when the regular instructions didn’t work for me): Brush with glaze and cook a couple times. Look at the clock; realize you’re going to be late. Wonder how the bacon will possibly cook through when it’s swimming in grease and glaze. [Wonder if that would be a good name for a BBQ team. Remember that you will never be on a BBQ team.] Pull out a second baking sheet, line it with foil, shoot it with baking spray, and place the half-baked bacon on it. Cook it for another 10 minutes. Pull it out, place the bacon on a plate and stick the plate in the freezer for 4-5 minutes.

Look, I’m not saying my method worked well, but it did work. And my friends said they liked the bacon. So, in the end, I think we’re all winners. Except I still have to wash a couple of really expensive bacon holders – I mean, beer glasses.

Do you collect anything? Do you need more bacon in your life?

This post will be linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Tuesdays at the Table, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, 33 Shades of Green and Works for Me Wednesday.

Filed Under: Recipes & Food Tagged With: bacon, cooking, food, monday morning mmmm, recipe

Monday Morning Mmmm: BLT Dip

January 21, 2013 By Mary @ Giving Up on Perfect 3 Comments

Last Sunday was a day we’d been waiting for: Small Group Night! Our small group took a break over the holidays, and it seemed to last forever. We were anxious to see our new friends, make some new ones and eat some snacks.

Okay, so maybe the snacks were a distant third. But I was excited to try out a couple new recipes. (Letting myself off the hook for a weekly recipe has been a relief, but I miss the excuse to try out all the food I see on Pinterest!)

Since the Superbowl is coming up – you know, the Superbowl of Snack Parties? – deciding to make a new dip was a no-brainer. And I just so happened to have a dip pinned and ready to try. I found this BLT Dip on Pinterest, posted from Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain.

You know you can’t go wrong with a melty, cheesy dip that features bacon in a big way. And this dip was no different. It was, however, different than my other favorite melty, cheesy dip that features bacon in a big way. I love the addition of lettuce and tomato, and the Italian seasoning instead of the spicy peppers.

BLT Dip

1 pound bacon, cooked, drained, crumbled, and divided
2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
4 cups shredded Italian mix cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 1/2 cups diced, seeded tomatoes
1 cup shredded Iceberg lettuce

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients except 1/2 cup bacon, lettuce and tomato. Put dip mixture in baking dish, and bake for 25-30 minutes. Sprinkle remaining bacon, lettuce and tomato on top of dip, and serve with crackers or chips. (The original blogger suggested Stacy’s Pita Chips, which sounds great – but I couldn’t find them at the grocery store when I went shopping. I also think garlic rye chips would be tasty, too.)

This dip went over pretty well at our small group, but I will warn you that the dip doesn’t keep well. You might as well just eat it all at once. (Or scrape off the vegetables before you reheat it. Not that anyone at my house did that . . .)

Who do you serve new recipes that you’re trying out?

This post will be linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Made by You Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Tuesdays at the Table, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, 33 Shades of Green, Works for Me Wednesday, What I Whipped Up Wednesday, I’m Lovin’ It, Sweet Tooth Friday, Foodie Friday and Show and Tell Saturday.