Blueberry Cranberry (Awesome) Sauce

Wouldn't it be great if someone invented an easy-to-make, delicious dessert, with very little added sugar, that had plenty of vitamins and antioxidants? I imagine we'd name that person leader of life, the universe and everything. Oh, they'd be decorated with medals and bring about world peace and all the ills of the world would wash away.

Well, you'd better get that crown ready for me because I did it tonight. And as soon as I finish eating my helping, I'll be prepared to humbly accept my title.

FOR THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED:

2 Cups Fresh Cranberries
1/2 Cup Fresh Blueberries
2 TBS Honey
Juice from 1 Fresh Lime (optional)

Pour about 4 cups of water into a pot and add the honey and lime juice to it. Bring this to a boil. Once the water is rolling, drop the berries in. Let the water come back up to a boil for 2 minutes and then set to simmer. Simmer this mixture for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain the water and pour the berries into a heat-proof bowl.

Add more lime juice unless you are my mother. Then dont add lime juice, I dont even know how you got those home from the store without going anaphylactic!

Mash it all up and enjoy! This can be enjoyed as a topping over ice-cream or with whipped cream over it but you can also eat it by itself.

Note: Don't eat it by yourself though, you need to serve it to your friends so you can see the look of amazement on their faces when they can ask you where you bought it and you casually say, "I made it from scratch."

Stolen Tomato Mozzarella Salad

So my husband and I were eating out a few days ago and we both ordered a tomato mozzarella salad. We fell in love and I have a delicate enough palate (there were only 4 ingredients, 3 of them visibly obvious) to determine how to make this at home. Thus I stole the idea, guessed at the proportions and succeeded.

FOR THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED:

10 Medium Roma Tomatoes (or 2 baskets of cherry tomatoes)
1 Small Brick Mozzarella Cheese
1 Shot Olive Oil
3 Shots Vinegar
Basil To Taste

Dice your tomatoes, or if you used cherry tomatoes, cut those in half. Throw them into an appropriately sized bowl. Add olive oil, vinegar and basil. Dice up your cheese and throw it in no more than 10 minutes before you serve. (You don't want to see what happens to cheese when it sits in vinegar for a while.)

If you want to look fancy for a party, you could throw the mixture minus the cheese into a strainer, toss it and the cheese into a pretty bowl and surround it with those rich people crackers.

Bacon Stuffed Jalapenos

So maybe it's the Texas influence, or maybe it's just a phase in our lives, but my husband and I have been really into bacon/jalapeno flavored anything lately. We are always coming up with new recipes to get that heavenly combo.

I've been waiting to do the one I am about to tell you for about a week now and I can say with certainty, that despite the multiple phases of preparation, it is both easy and delicious.

FOR THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED:

10 Jalapenos
1 Small Tub Cream Cheese
10 Strips Pre-Cooked Bacon
1 Colander or Strainer
A Lot of Ice

Preparing the Jalapenos:
Boil some water and cut the tops off of your jalapenos and core them. I like to use a tiny metal spoon for that because it rips the center right out. Now we are going to parboil them. If you know what that means, go ahead and and do it smartypants! If you don't know what it means, I'll explain it. Fill up your colander with ice and set it in the sink. When the water comes to a rolling boil (and I mean really get it going) toss the jalapenos in. Let them sit in the boiling water for about 2 minutes. Pour the water and peppers in the sink over the colander and start the faucet on cold water over it. Stick some smaller ice cubes in the jalapenos, we are really trying to cool them down quickly!

Preparing the Bacon Filling:
If you are a true lazy chef, you just bought pre-cooked bacon and you can go ahead and microwave it now. If you are a fancy-shmancy cook, you cooked the bacon yourself and you dont need to be reading this blog!
Cut up the bacon as finely as you can and mix it in with the tub of cream cheese. I know it sounds scary but you can do it!

Fill up the jalapenos with the bacon cream cheese and stick them in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Pull it out and slice it into circles about the width of your finger. Allow the end pieces to be a little longer and use any left over filling to stuff those since they tend to be empty during the cutting process.

Now throw those on a cute little dish, stick a toothpick in each and serve them to your friends under the pretense that you are a master chef who slaved for hours over this treat.

Crock Pot Tacos or Crockos

Ewwwwww! That was your first response right? What on earth is this nonsense? Well fortunately for you, I don't intend the entire taco to enter the crock pot, I just wanted to trick you. I made this meal unintentionally and it was so easy and yummy I had to share. And because it started out as the base for something else, it is slightly healthier than the average taco, due to extra veggies you wouldn't have otherwise put in your sodium laden meal. Maybe slightly healthier isn't the term to use...less unhealthy! Yes, that fits nicely.

TO MAKE THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED:

1/2 lb Ground Beef
1 can Beans (your choice)
1 can Mixed Veggies
1 can Carrots

1 or 2 boxes of taco shells or some Tacones
2 Fresh Tomatoes
1 bag Shredded Cheese
1 container Sour Cream
Your favorite hot sauce

See how I separated the ingredients with an abrupt space? That's because you don't need to deal with the bottom five for another few hours. Now about those first four...

When you wake up in the morning, toss the ground beef, beans, veggies and carrots into a crockpot with some spices or whatever. You wont need water if you dont drain the cans. Mash it all up, set it on low and do whatever it is that you do.

When it's time for dinner, turn off the crock pot, dice up your tomatoes and get your ingredients out. Scoop some of each into a taco shell and then eat it.

Peanut Butter Hummus

So I wont lie, I stole this recipe from PETA and then modified it. Ok so I got the idea from PETA and then did my own thing and never looked at their recipe cuz I was too lazy, so I guess I don't really need to link back to them. Especially since theirs was supposedly vegan and mine could be considered vegetarian but certainly not vegan. Anyway, this stuff is crazy yummy and crazy simple to make.

FOR THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED:

1 can of chickpeas
1/3 cup of peanut butter
1/3 cup of chocolate chips
1/4 cup of honey
1/4 cup of applesauce

You could take the extra lazy way out and throw all this in the blender, but since my blender was broken, I used a potato masher. Then I ate it with gluten free crackers since I'm gluten sensitive, but I wanted to eat it with chocolate graham crackers, so if you can, you should and tell me how it is. It took me more time to write this blog than to make it. Didn't I tell you it was fast?

Green Sun Tea

Summer is here and it's time for something cool and refreshing to drink! Recently, I have become quite disgusted by what we call food. e.g Pink slime, cellulose, high fructose corn syrup, food dyes made from gasoline bi-products. I pretend the ingredients I cook with are made of rainbows and sunshine because here in Central TX, I have no "real-food" options.

But it's bad form to make your readers gag on a food blog so let's move on. I wanted something to drink that wasn't full of poison and I knew I'd need to make it myself. Then my husband came home with an Arizona Green Tea and I figured out how to imitate it at home for about fifty cents a gallon and without corn syrup, "natural"flavors, citric acid or ginseng extract.

FOR THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED:

1 gallon sized empty milk jug
5 bags of green tea
1 bag of ginseng tea
1/3 of a honey bear*
1 working faucet **

Fill up your empty jug with the hottest water that will come out of your tap. Don't do something silly like boiling its and pouring it in, you'll melt the jug and the entire point of sun tea is that you don't have to boil it. Now dump 1/3 of a honey bear in. The hot water will mostly dissolve it for you. Stick the tea bags in but leave the square paper part out and make sure it goes past the screwy part of the jug. Screw the lid back on, (yes it will go over the strings just fine) and shake it gently three times.

Set the jug out in the sun and walk away for an hour or two. Now forget you made it and go make another gallon. Set that outside and find yourself pleasantly surprised that you have some finished green tea. Take that jug back inside, remove the tea bags and set it in the fridge till it's cold. Eventually go get the second jug and do the same thing.


*So what if I dont know how much honey is in a bear or how much a third of one bear is. You aren't gonna spoon honey into a milk jug now are you?

**I guess one could buy a jug already filled with fancy, shmancy distilled water or something. But your honey wouldn't dissolve as quickly in the cooler water so there!

Storm Soup

So I made soup for the first time in my life today. OK, that's a lie, I have opened up cans of soup, poured them into bowls and heated them in the microwave in the past but does that really count? For Lazy chef purposes, yes. but that's not the point.

What prompted me to make soup from scratch? Weather that threatened to go twister on us and possibly cut electricity and the fact that we have been putting of grocery shopping for a while.  I hurriedly threw open my cupboards and grabbed what I knew could be cooked quickly. I call this Storm Soup because if you want to make dinner before the power goes out, it takes about 20 minutes (prep included), feeds 4 and if you lose power in the first 10 minutes, you can still keep going if you move quickly...

For this recipe you will need:

2 small frozen chicken breasts
1.5 liquid chicken bouillon boxes
green beans (because you have no peas)
macaroni noodles
 spices (whatever you feel like but salt and pepper are a good start)

Now, I am assuming you are rushing to beat the storm like me so quickly clean your dirty soup pot and dump the chicken bouillon in as fast as you can. Dump in as many green beans as you feel like. Set to boil and snatch the chicken out of the freezer . Toss that in and wipe up the bouillon you spilled. Dump some random spices in there and when it comes to a rolling boil, cut into the middle of your chicken to see if it is white all the way through...

If your chicken is cooked through, grab a box of mac and cheese out of your cupboard, yank the cheese powder and toss the noodles into the boiling water for 8 minutes. After that, shred the chicken and eat...

If your power cuts off after your water comes to a rolling boil, dinner will take longer but the already boiling water should continue cooking your chicken. Just throw the noodles in right away instead and put a cover over your pot to keep the heat in. Check your chicken in about 20 minutes and it should be cooked through, along with the noodles. If you threw in medium to large sized breasts after I told you small in bold, underlined italics you are probably screwed...