Country Chicken Casserole

A couple of weeks ago I had Cody over for dinner and decided to cook for him and my parents. I wanted something with a lot of veggies, but that would still taste really good, so I scoured the internet and checked out Pinterest as usual. I’m a huge fan of comfort food, and let me tell you, this is definitely that kind of meal. The creamy soups and milk make it a little rich, but the vegetables help you get in all those good nutrients. I served it with fresh cooked green beans and extra broccoli on the side. The best part about this dish is that you can choose what veggies you want inside or if you’re tired after a long day you can easily just use a frozen mixed veggie pack! Try out this recipe and let me know what you think!

Ingredients:

• 1 can of cream of celery soup
• 1 can cream of potato soup
• 1 cup of milk
• Dried thyme (amount depends on your preference)
• Black pepper (amount depends on your preference)
• 2 cups of cooked chicken cut up into cubes
• 1/2 -1 small onion
• 4 cups of assorted vegetables of your choice (I used carrots, peas, broccoli, and celery)
• 1 box of stuffing mix (flavor of your choice, but chicken or mixed herb will probably work best)

Instructions:

1. Grease a baking pan (using Pam spray, butter, oil, or whatever you normally use to prevent sticking).
2. Chop up the vegetables and the onion.
3. Cook the chicken and cut it up into bite sized pieces.
4. Prepare stuffing by following the directions on the box.
5. Mix the chicken, soups, milk, onion and veggies, pepper, and thyme all together in the baking pan.
6. Cover the top of your mixture with the cooked stuffing.
7. Bake at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Cody and both of my parents loved this dish! It’s such a yummy, cozy recipe. I will definitely keep this meal in my back pocket for those chilly fall and winter nights! (Those nights that I hope start coming reallyyy soon because I live in California and this drought and heat are not my cup of tea!)

Fresh out of the oven!

Plated with veggies on the side!

Strawberry Kale Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing

So here’s the thing: kale is supposedly amazingly good for you. So naturally, I wanted to find a way to fit it into our diet. We tried kale chips…but that was not a success in the taste department in our opinion…I’ll let you know if that ever changes. A kale salad was next on the list to try. The only problem is that kale itself has a pretty bitter taste…there is however, a way to remedy that! Thank goodness!

Most of what I know about kale, I learned from Haylie Duff and The Real Girl’s Kitchen. I’m in love with her book and her little cooking show and her website. I just love her take on life and she’s got some pretty great recipes. Anyway, back to kale. By reading about kale in her cookbook, I learned that you can make the leaves less bitter by showing them some love and massaging them with olive oil for about a minute. I wasn’t too sure of how well this was going to work, but it did work and it cut that bitter taste right out! I also made a version of Haylie Duff’s classic vinaigrette dressing and added a few things to my salad to give it a splash of flavor and get even more nutrients in.

Here’s the recipe:

Salad Ingredients:

• 1 or 2 bunches of kale. (1 bunch will probably feed about 2 people)
• Fresh strawberries (however many you want)
• Almond slivers
• A few drizzles of olive oil
• Homemade vinaigrette dressing (click to get the recipe)

Salad Instructions: 

1. Rinse the kale leaves and dry them off. (You can either break them up right then and put them in a salad spinner, or pat the leaves dry with a paper towel.)
2. Pull the leaves away from the rib of the kale and tear them into smaller pieces
3. Put the leaves into a big bowl and drizzle a little bit of olive oil on top. Massage the oil into the leaves for about a minute.
4. Chop up strawberries and add them into the salad.
5. Sprinkle the almond slivers on top.
6. Make the homemade vinaigrette dressing and use that to put the final touch on your salad.

Make this salad at home, take a taste, and let me know what you think! I’d love to hear from you!

Homemade Vinaigrette Dressing

Cody and I are really into health lately. Not in that overly enthusiastic, in-your-face, health nut kind of way, but we just really want to get in better shape, get more energy, and just feel better all together. So I’ve been reading a lot about eating cleaner, and I read recently that the reason store bought dressings last so much longer is because they have all kinds or preservatives in them. Sure, it’s more convenient, but if you have the time, why not cut out the preservatives that you don’t need to be putting into your body and make some homemade dressing?! Homemade dressings usually last about five days in the fridge and are so much healthier than anything you can buy at the store.

I looked up a couple recipes for a homemade vinaigrette dressing because we wanted something light. I came across Haylie Duff’s Real Girl’s Kitchen Classic Vinaigrette recipe and decided to make a version of that one. I tweaked it just a little bit, and it came out great. It was so delicious and I felt like I was doing something good for my body by eating something more natural.

Ingredients:

• 2 cloves of minced garlic
• 1 tbsp of finely chopped shallot or onion
• (I completely forgot to add this to mine, and it turned out great anyway, but you can always add that in as well.)
• 1/3 cup of champagne vinegar
• 1 tsp of dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp of honey
• 1 tsp of sea salt
• 1 tsp of black pepper
• 1/4 cup of vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup of good quality olive oil
• The juice of half a lemon

Instructions:

1. Mince the garlic.
2. Chop up the shallot or onion if you’re adding that in.
3. Mix all of the ingredients together and refrigerate until you’re ready to dress your salad

Tip: Give the dressing a quick stir or shake right before you pour it over your salad.

I completely forgot to take a picture of MY dressing, but it looked similar to this.
Next time I make some i will replace this picture with mine.

Check out our Strawberry Kale Salad recipe! This dressing goes with it perfectly!

Recipes Coming Soon!

Lately, Cody and I have been cooking a lot. We have been trying to eat healthier and save money by not eating out so much. Plus, we just enjoy cooking together and for one another. Since we are trying all sorts of new recipes and tweaking them to our liking, I thought that I would start sharing some of our favorites with our readers. So be on the lookout for some recipe posts very soon!

Restaurant Review: Dorn’s Breakers Cafe

Located on Market Avenue, in Morro Bay, California, right next to The Blue Sail Inn, and one street up from the embarcadero, is Dorn’s Breakers Cafe. This place is perfect for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ve been going their for years, and let me tell you, it is always my first and last stop before leaving Morro Bay. I could eat there every day and not get sick of it. They have amazing breakfasts, top notch mimosas, the best clam chowder I’ve ever had with the freshest, most delicious bread to go with it, and some amazing chocolate mousse.

Let me just give you a few quick reviews of some of their dishes:

French Toast - It’s to die for. Perfectly sweet with a soft, but not soggy texture. SO yummy.

Pancakes (I like the chocolate chip ones) - Very tasty, but be sure to bring your appetite!

Mimosas - Strong enough to know you’re drinking champagne, but not too strong. Probably some of the best mimosas I’ve ever tasted. Great addition to your breakfast.

Hot Chocolate - This place has the best hot chocolate ever. Topped with some fantastic whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Perfect to sip in that cool bay breeze.

Omelets - Perfect way to start the day. Always cooked to perfection and filled just right (I hate when omelets are over filled and way too messy looking). My favorite is the bacon and cheese.

Clam Chowder - The best I’ve ever had. It’s the perfect consistency, not to thick, not to thin. None of that watery business. I love to dip their bread in it, that’s the best. There is nothing like Dorn’s clam chowder. Nothing. I honestly can not rave enough about it, and any words I would use to describe it would not do it justice. You simply have to try it yourself. It’s my ultimate comfort food. (Sorry I don’t have a picture of the chowder, I don’t know how I haven’t taken one! I will add one in next time I go.)

Fish & Chips - I’ve never had these, because I’m not fan of fish, but Cody ate them all up and said that it was the freshest fish & chips he’d ever had.

Chocolate Mousse - Very rich, but so worth the calories. Perfect way to end a light lunch. Great for sharing. It’s thick, but not too thick. Seriously delicious. My favorite dessert in the city.

Besides the food, the view is amazing. Dorn’s overlooks the embarcadero as well as the bay. They have both indoor and outdoor seating (some of the outdoor table have small fire stone pits in the center). When I took Cody he loved the feel of the place and thought the view was awesome. The staff is great, and it’s still family run as far as I know. I would definitely recommend stopping at Dorn’s if you’re ever even near the area. It’s worth the trip.

Breakfast fruit platter!

Hot Chocolate!

Chocolate Mousse!

Mini fire stones on the outside tables!

Chocolate Chip Pancakes...I eat mine from the inside out lol.

San Jose Giants Game

So Cody scored some free merchant tickets from his work for the last night’s San Jose Giants game at Municipal Stadium. Free tickets? Of course we went! Why not?! Yes, it may only have been a minor league game, but its still good to get out and enjoy the atmosphere and a nice game of baseball. It was a perfect date for a summer evening.

We got there about 25 minutes early, leaving at 6:00pm for 7:00pm game. That left us enough time to get a feel for the place (neither one of us had been there since we were little), grab a couple drinks, and get some food. The weather was nice, about 75 degrees at the start, and cooled off just enough for me to put on a light jacket by the end of the first inning. We both got burgers to start, and some beer. We later gave into our cravings and bought some garlic fries (I couldn’t stand just smelling them all night), some nachos (just the cheese, with jalapeños on the side for Cody), churros, and another beer.

Here is a quick review of the food that we had at Municipal Stadium:

• Burgers - Not good, but not terrible. Not much taste, not much to review. They had tri-tip sandwiches for sale and I think we should’ve opted for those.
• Garlic Fries - Pretty good, smelled amazing, good amount of garlic, but really greasy.
• Nachos - Really good. They weren’t anything special, just the usual ballpark cheese sauce from what I could tell, but for some reason they just hit the spot. Probably my favorite thing that we got.
• Churros - I’m not a huge churro fan, I usually just take a couple bites for the heck of it, but Cody scarfed them down and was pretty happy.

By the end of the night we had eaten way more than we should have, and both ended up feeling a bit sick. Lesson learned…maybe. Lol.

The staff was very friendly, the woman selling the churros even called us back to give us a free one because it was the end of the night and she saw Cody give me a bite of his. The seats were clean from what I saw and the bleacher seating was pretty dang packed. Lots of families, good kid-friendly atmosphere for sure. There were a lot of games and contests between innings, and they had family fun activities as you enter the stadium such as bouncy houses, frisbee tosses, a batting cage, etc.  Parking cost us $10. We left at the 7th inning stretch because we had work the next morning and wanted to have time to wind down together before I had to go home for the night. (Yes, we sound like an old couple, but we don’t mind.) It was a lot of fun and a great little outing.