Cheesy Sausage Chili

Most mornings we snooze the alarm a lot.  But not this morning.  At least not for me.  Instead of snuggling down further into the covers, I pulled myself out of bed and headed for the kitchen to start the crock-pot.  As I dumped the ingredients into the crock-pot I tried really hard to be quiet so that my husband could continue our usual routine of sneaking a few minutes of sleep in between rounds of the alarm going off.  I was finished with that and onto getting ready for the gym when my husband got out of the shower and decided that the house smelled bad.  You have to understand that I am very attached to my cooking and quite good at cooking so it is kind of shocking for me to have someone say it smells bad.  I tried hard to brush the comment off and go on with my day, secretly hoping that he would eat his words later.

Sure enough, when I came home from work, the house smelled wonderful and my husband (who gets home from work before I do) had already snuck a taste of it and proclaimed it very good!  Apparently it just smelled like cold chili and cheese this morning and he doesn't find that too pleasant.  But once it gets going it smells awesome and tastes so good.

So here it is!  My new chili recipe inspired from a recipe I saw on the Official Crock-Pot website.

Cheesy Sausage Chili
1lb pre-cooked sausage links
1 can spicy Rotel
2 15 oz cans kidney beans
2 15.25 cans corn
1 24 oz can petite-cut stewed tomatoes
1 packet taco seasoning
1 tsp chipotle pepper paste (I used peppers that are canned with Adobo sauce and blended in the food processor)
1 c heavy cream
1 lb shredded cheddar cheese

This is so easy.  Simply slice the sausage and place it in the crock-pot along with the Rotel, beans, corn, tomatoes, and taco seasoning.  Warm the heavy cream on the stove until it is bubbling.  Be sure to stir it so that it will not burn.  Add the cheese to the cream, a little at a time.  Make sure to stir constantly so that the cheese will melt into the cream (this is a little trick to get out of using processed cheese products).  Once the cheese is melted into the cream, add the mixture to the crock-pot.  Stir the ingredients together and turn the crock-pot on low for 8 hours.

After your crock pot has done it's magic, it will look like this:

And this is magical.  As my husband says, crock-pots do wonders with sausage making it very plump and juicy.  And the cheese mixture melds with the tomatoes into the amazing broth/sauce.  This is so good it is worth my husband saying it smelled bad this morning....

Bacon-Spinach Stuffed Chicken

Eventhough today was kind of a strange day, I was excited all day long to come home and cook.  Many of my recipes are inspirations of other recipes I know.  But my favorites are when I completely make it up and it turns into a huge success.  And that is what I did today!  And it was soooo good.  But how can you go wrong with bacon, right?  So here it is....my latest masterpiece in the kitchen!

Bacon-Spinach Stuffed Chicken
4-6 large chicken breasts (depending on how suffed you want them to be)
1 c ricotta cheese
1 c mozzerella cheese
1/2 c frozen spinach, thawed and drained
6 pieces bacon
1 egg
salt
pepper
parmesean cheese
melted butter

Begin by cooking the bacon until crisp.  Cut or crumble the bacon into small pieces.  Mix the cheeses, bacon spinach, egg, salt, and pepper in a bowl.  Continue by pounding the chicken breasts with a meat hammer (or a rolling pin, or an actual hammer).  The thinner they are, the quicker they cook.  But at the same time, the thinner they are the harder, the harder they are to stuff (I wouldn't go thinner than 1/2 inch, but I prefer a little thicker).  Once you have obtained a fairly large surface of chicken, spoon 1/4 cheese mixture onto the center of each piece of chicken.  Fold the chicken pieces in half, with the mixture on the inside, and secure with toothpicks.  Place chicken pieces into a 9x13 baking pan.  Brush the tops of the pieces with melted butter and sprinkle with parmesean cheese.  Bake in a 400 degree oven for 35-45 minutes.  This time will vary slightly depending on how thin you pounded your chicken.

When it comes out it looks like this:

I used 4 chicken breast so the stuffed exploded out during cooking.  I love it this way.  Like I said, this is soooooo good.   And I'm not just saying that because I made it up!

Mexican Enchilada-Style Bake

Today has been a long day.  To top it all off I got some kind of upsetting news today and sat there at work wanting to cry bur couldn't because it is never good to cry at work.  Especially when you work with a bunch of women.  So I made it through the day and came home and laid down on the bed to wallow in my self pity.  After a bit of that I remembered a fantastic book on tape I listen to called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnige.  In it he says that if you are feeling sorry for yourself or worrying you should go do something else that will occupy your mind.  So I got up and made dinner and did a load of dishes while the dinner was cooking.

While I was cooking I gradually began to feel better, probably because having an adventure in a different kind of cooking than you are used to takes a lot of thought and leaves no room for feeling sorry.  Today I took a recipe I have for noodle-less lasagna and turned it into tortilla-less enchiladas, or basically an enchilada bake.  Here's the recipe:

Mexican Enchilada-Style Bake

1 lb ground beef
1/2 white onion, chopped
10 oz enchilada sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder
8 oz Neufchatel cheese (a low fat alternative to cream cheese)
1 egg
1/2 tsp cumin
1 can black beans
salt and pepper
8 oz Fiesta Blend (Mexican Blend) shredded cheese
parmesean cheese

Start by browning the ground beef in a skillet.  When the ground beef is finished, add the onions and cook for a few mintutes.  Add in the enchilada sauce and garlic and simmer until bubbly.  Meanwhile, heat the Neufchatel cheese in the microwave for 45-60 seconds.  Once the Neufchatel cheese is heated add to it the egg, cumin, black beans, salt, and pepper.  Once the cheese mixture and the meat mixture is done layer in a 1.5 quart cassorle dish as follows: one half of the meat mixture, cheese mixture, shredded cheese, rest of meat mixture.  Finish by sprinkling the top with parmesean cheese.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 mins.  Let it cool before serving or it will be really soupy.  Serve topped with your favorite hot sauce.

The end result should look like this:

As for the review on this one, my honest first thought was it is really good but I missed the tortillas.  But as my husband was finishing off his second serving and picking at the leftovers I thought, well maybe I don't need tortillas....

Chicken Cordon Bleu Crock-Pot Soup

Today I have been really nervous about starting to post recipes.  I am one of those cooks that LOVES to cook but it nervous about people liking what I cook because cooking is so personal to me.   

So with that said, I decided to start with a little trick that I recently discovered.  If you have a meal that you love that contains carbs or normally has a carb-filled side dish to go with it, then just make a low carb soup version out of it!  For today's example, Chicken Cordon Bleu is often served with pasta or even rice to round it out as a meal.  So instead of trying to eat the chicken without the side dish and be satisfied, I threw the same types of ingredients together in a soup.  And I have also recently discovered that there is no better way to make soup than in a crock-pot!  So here's the recipe....

Chicken Cordon Bleu Crock-Pot Soup
1 lb ham, cubed
3 raw chicken breasts, cubed (can even be a little frozen still)
4 c chicken broth
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 tsp rosemary (because chicken loves rosemary!)
2 tsp garlic
salt
pepper
10-12 oz frozen green beans
1 c heavy cream
4 oz Swiss cheese, shredded or cut up

Combine the ham, chicken, broth, onion, and spices in the crock-pot.  Turn the crock-pot on low for 8 hours.  When you return the look of the soup might make you wonder a little, but keep going!  Turn the crock-pot to high and dump in the green beans.  Meanwhile, heat the heavy cream in a sauce pan on the stove to a gentle boil.  Gradually add the Swiss cheese, stirring periodically to make sure it melts into the cream.  Once all the Swiss cheese is melted, pour the cheese mixture into the crock-pot and stir.  Serve when the green beans are warm.

And when it's done it should look like this:

Just in case you are wondering....this is so yummy!  My husband had two bowls (which is often and indicator to me that he really likes it).  I think I might like this better than regular Chicken Cordon Bleu.  It is easier to eat and has this really great broth that tastes like Swiss cheese!  This was definately a risk worth taking.  I guess it is just one of those days because I took a risk and cut several inches off my hair and that went over very well with my husband also!