Festive Cranberry Cheese Dip

A friend introduced me to this recipe a couple years ago and I like it so much, I'm looking forward to eating it around the holidays!  I'm making this recipe next week, so I'll add the exact measurements to this post, but for now, here's the general idea in case you feel so inclined to make it for an upcoming event.

You add a 12 oz. bag of cranberries and one store-bought pint of pico de gallo to a blender or food processor.  Add sugar to taste (I'm thinking maybe 1/2 cup?) and a handful of cilantro.  Add a few drops of red food coloring to beautify it.  Then pour it over an 8 oz. brick of cream cheese.  Garnish with cilantro and serve it with rice crackers.  Yum-O!

Energy Bars

I love these! They're such a treat, but you can sneak anything into them! These are jam packed with all kinds of good stuff! I got the idea for the recipe from the "Cool Cooking" cookbook series by Lisa Wagner, but I modified it a bit to make them even more healthy.

1 Cup Chocolate Chips
1 1/2 Cups Rolled Oats
2 Cups Crisp Rice Cereal
1/2 Cup Flaked Coconut
1/4 Cup Sesame Seeds
1/2 Cup Flax Seeds
1/4 Cup Sunflower Seeds
1/2 Cup Walnuts, Almonds or Peanuts
3/4 Cup Peanut Butter
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
1/2 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup

1. Put the chocolate chips, oats, cereal, coconut, seeds and nuts in a large mixing bowl and mix them together.

2. Mix the peanut butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup in a saucepan over medium heat stirring until everything is blended and the brown sugar has dissolved.

3. Pour the hot mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until everything is completely blended.

4. Pour the mixture in to the prepared baking pan. Use your hands to pat the mixture into the pan.

Then you are supposed to refrigerate for 3 hours, but that is totally not going to happen at my house!

Corn & Black Bean Salsa

A coworker shared this recipe with me and I love it! Unfortunately, I ate it before I remembered to take a picture of it.

1-2 Tomatoes (medium to large)
3 Avocados
1 Can White Shoepeg Corn, drained
1 Can Kidney Beans, drained
1 Can Black Beans, drained
1/2 Bottle Italian Dressing
Lime or Lemon Juice

1. Dice the tomatoes and avocados, place in a bowl and sprinkle a little lime/lemon juice over the avocado to keep it from turning brown.
2. Add the corn and beans.
3. Pour italian dressing over the top and stir together!

Serve with chips. If you chill it in the fridge for about an hour before serving, the flavors blend together better.

Raisin Bran Banana Muffins

Everyone needs more recipes for using up over-ripe bananas. I tried this one the other day and we loved it. They're healthier than the average muffin with the fruit and fiber in them.

2 Cups Raisin Bran Cereal
1 1/4 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Walnuts, chopped
1 1/4 teaspoons Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 Egg
1 Cup Buttermilk
1/4 Cup Cooking Oil

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the cereal, flour, sugar, walnuts, baking soda and salt.
3. Break the egg into another bowl and beat it together with the buttermilk and oil.
4. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.
5. Fill greased muffin tins 3/4 full with mixture.
6. Bake about 20-25 minutes.

Staples Grocery List

I've been wanting to create a "Staples" Grocery List for awhile since we always run out of things we need, but we don't notice until we need them. We use the same things over and over, so I wanted a list that we could just mark as soon as we run out of something. Here's what my list looks like.

I've attached links where you can download them for yourself. One of them is a PDF in case you like it just the way it is and the other is a Word Document so you can edit it to fit your needs. I apologize that the PDF version has a blank second page, I could not get it off no matter how I tried! The Word Document looks like junk, of course, because they don't have the same fonts and it threw all the formatting off, but you can at least get a start from what I've created. This is my first accomplishment from my list of 55 in 500! Woot, woot!

Staples Grocery List PDF
Staples Grocery List

Staples Grocery List Word Document
Staples Grocery List

Hawaiian Sweet Bread

• I busted out the old bread maker and have been loving using it to make dough lately. You know how the bread in those machines always has such a hard crust? Well, just making dough in them works awesome and then you just transfer the dough to the oven for baking. We've eaten a lot of fresh bread this week. Yum!
  
• 
  
• 1 Cup Pineapple Juice
• 2 Eggs
• 4 Tablespoons Butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1/4 teaspoon Coconut Extract
• 5 Tablespoons Sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon Salt
• 2 Tablespoons Dry Milk Powder
• 2 Tablespoons Dry Potato Flakes
• 3 Cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1 Tablespoon Active Dry Yeast

1. Measure ingredients into the bread machine in the order listed above and set the dough setting.

2. Place dough in a 9X5 inch loaf pan. Allow to rise until doubled. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

3. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Sweet & Sour Chicken

Sorry this food didn't pose very well for the camera, but I thought a bad picture was better than no picture. I wanted to post this recipe because it's super easy and also because if you take out the chicken, pineapple and bell pepper, it's your regular run of the mill sweet and sour sauce served in chinese restaurants, so you could make it for dipping wontons or eggrolls too.

1 3/4 Cups Water, divided
3/4 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Distilled White Vinegar
1/4 Cup Cornstarch
1 (8 oz.) Can Pineapple Tidbits. drained (juice reserved)
Yellow (1 drop) & Red (2 drops) Food Coloring
4 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, cooked and cut into bite size pieces

1 Bell Pepper, cut into bite size pieces

1. In a saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups water, sugar, vinegar, reserved pineapple juice and food coloring. Heat to boiling, then turn off heat.

2. Combine cornstarch and 1/4 cup water, slowly stir into saucepan. Continue stirring until mixture thickens.

3. Add cooked chicken pieces, bell pepper and pineapple. Heat until warmed through.

Serve over rice or chow mein noodles.