Six Layer Bars
How about something sweet to go along with your game treats? These bars are quick, easy and tastier than tasty. Just layer the ingredients, put them in the oven and you’re free for the next half hour!
½ c. butter
1 c. graham cracker crumbs
1 c. chocolate chips
1 c. coconut
14 oz. sweetened condensed milk
1 c. chopped pecans
Melt the butter in a 9×13 inch baking dish. Layer on top crumbs, coconut and chocolate. Pour the condensed milk over all of it, then sprinkle with nuts. Bake at 325° for 30 minutes. Cool and cut into squares.
Soft Pretzels
Everyone love soft pretzels (pardon the assumption if you don’t!). After finding a good recipe several years ago, I have made it numerous times for guests. I was even brave enough one year to make it for our church girls camp, all 150 of them, and they loved it! It’s not hard, but you do have to allow enough time for the dough to raise twice, so start early. Your football fans will really appreciate these fresh, home cooked baked goods.
2 c. warm water
1½ T. sugar
1 T. yeast
Combine the yeast and sugar; add water and let the yeast act. When you have a nice yeast mushroom add 1 c. flour and 1½ t. salt. Stir well. Add 4-5 c. more flour until you have a stiff dough. Knead for about 1 minutes, coat with vegetable oil and allow to rise until double in bulk.
After rising, punch down the dough and divide into 16 pieces, for large pretzels. Cover the pieces with plastic wrap so they won’t dry out. Roll each piece into about an 18” snake, shape into a horseshoe, then bring the ends up to form the pretzel shape. Place shaped pretzels on greased cookie sheet, cover and let rest for 30 minutes. Whisk together 1 egg and 1 T. water, then brush on each pretzel. Sprinkle with coarse salt while the pretzel is wet. Can also sprinkle with parmesan cheese, onion powder, garlic powder, or whatever your mind can think of! Bake in 425° oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with melted butter. Nacho sauce will leave them begging for more.
Enjoy the game!
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Wings
Everyone seems to like wings, nobody knows that you don’t have to follow some elaborate cooking-show process that takes hours. Wings are easy to prepare, and you can make them just as spicy or sweet as you’d like. Just put the wings in a casserole dish then cover with barbecue sauce, as spicy as you want. You can even add additional Tobasco sauce, or some freshly cut jalapeños (or any other peppers) if you prefer them hot. Now bake in the oven at 350° for about 40 minutes, or until the meat is very soft. If you put peppers on them take them off when they’re done. Easy. Serve, cheer, and enjoy!
Pigs in a Blanket
Pigs in a blanket are always a big hit hit while watching a game, and they’re super easy Buy three packages of uncooked crescent rolls and two packages of hot dogs. Separate each roll. Cut each hot dog in half and place on top of the roll, close to the small. Now roll the dough over the hot dog and keep rolling until the hot dog is completely blanketed. Place on a greased cookie sheet, spritz with butter if you don’t care about calories, and bake at 425° for about 20 minutes, or until the roll is light brown. You may want to buy more than three packages of hot dogs, as these will be very popular!
Chicken Crescents
Chicken crescents will be a touchdown with your game fans, and they’re so easy to prepare it will leave you time to watch the game as well. Mix together 1 T. chopped onion, 4 oz. cream cheese and 2 c. shredded, cooked chicken. Open 3 cans crescent rolls and separate. Place equal amounts of the chicken mixture on the top of the rolls at the small point of each, then roll them up. Place on a greased cookie sheet, once again add some butter if you don’t care about calories, and bake for 15 minutes at 425°, or until golden brown. Then watch them disappear into the end zone.
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Most college kids think that cooking is a waste of time, and far too difficult. So, we’ve created a little how-to explaining how to make the “easy”, yet usually unhealthy, college meals a little better for the great minds of tomorrow.
1. Gormet Ramen Noodle Soup
Ramen, as far as healthy is concerned, gets off to a very bad start. Manufactured into cute little squares by deep fat frying in a little mold, we already know that it isn’t going to be too great.
However, by putting in some frozen vegetables before the water has boiled, and just letting them boil right along side the soup is a good start to making it a little more healthy. This is very easy and actually is very tasty! Broccoli and cauliflower is very tasty in the chicken and beef soups, and a good stir-fry blend tastes good in the oriental flavor.
Also, various meats can be added to ramen also, including chicken, hot dogs, and ground beef to make it a bit more hearty. ***Just remember to brown the ground beef, or boil the chicken thoroughly before adding the vegetables or ramen soup!!
2. Macaroni and Cheese
My son calls this “man mac“, but I think everyone can enjoy it. To start off, add some vegetables in with the boiling macaroni just like the Ramen soup, but add some chunked hot dogs in to give it some protein.
Next, add some other spices, like a few healthy shakes of black pepper, some tomatos, and if you’re brave, some hot dried peppers (pequin works very well, and is cheap in the latin-american section of your local grocery store), to give it some real flavor and kick. Add some extra cheddar or american cheese to make it especially good.
Unhealthy? Most certainly, but they’re going to eat these foods anyway, so you may as well make them a little better!
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I once made Chicken Pot Pie for a family and the mother commented that she had never tasted a chicken pie so good! So what was my secret?
A flaky crust?
Fresh ingredients?
Baked with love?
Nope.
The secret for how to cook a really good chicken pot pie is rosemary. If you’re cooking chicken pot pie (or chicken vegetable soup for that matter), and you’re not using rosemary, then you don’t know what really good tastes like! Start with about ½ tsp. and increase as needed.
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Mexican food can be difficult to get to taste authentic. So, to help you get a good response when someone asks “Whats For Dinner?”, lets take a look at a couple of tips for how to cook this cultural cuisine.
With Mexican flavored food, cumin is usually the spice that makes the difference between good and really good. Start with about ¼ tsp. and then taste it. Increase the amount by ¼ tsp. each time until it is as spicy as you want. Also, if you want that genuine almost musky flavor that Mexican food has, don’t hesitate to put in lots of cilantro.
Another good way to cook good Mexican food is to make your own tortillas. There are some great recipes out there for both flour and corn tortillas, or you can just buy some of the uncooked flour tortillas at the store and cook them stove-top in a frying pan. The trick with tortillas is to flip them often, that way the inside will cook as evenly as the outside. You know you’re cooking tortillas right when they puff up almost like a balloon.
Also, include some citrus in your Mexican spread! Nothing creates a good contrast to that spicy flavor like some fresh pineapple or cantaloupe.
Also, for those who want the peppers, but not so much heat (or intestinal discomfort), try to take all the seeds and pulp out of the peppers before adding them.
Happy cooking, and have fun making your cooking as colorful as Mexico!!
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How to cook low fat? That’s a hard question to answer. Low fat means different things to different people, but here are a few rules that might help.
Low fat rule 1: Right size portions
No one needs more than ¼ pound serving of any kind of meat, fish or poultry. So, make sure you don’t cook more than “1 serving” per person and then you won’t eat too much fat.
Low fat rule 2: Meat
Concentrate on meats that aren’t too fatty to begin with: chicken, ground meats, light meat. Lean ground meats and roasts are far better than a brisket, which is known for its high fat content. White meat on poultry is much leaner than dark meat, so choose a chicken breast rather than a thigh when possible.
Low fat rule 3: Applesauce
If you are baking cakes, cookies, breads, etc. and you want to make them low fat, just add applesauce instead of the fat, ounce for ounce. So, if the recipe calls for ½ cup vegetable oil, add ½ cup applesauce instead. The baked goods will be slightly heavier in texture when eating them, but certainly healthier.
Low fat rule 4: Eggs
Eggs are not low fat, but if used in the right way, they can be. The yolk of an egg holds all the fat, so if your recipe calls for 2 eggs, just separate the eggs and discard the yolks, using only the whites. You will need to use 3 eggs instead of 2 when doing this for the recipe to be good. (so use 1½ times the amount of eggs called for).
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So in this post, I’ll try to help you understand better the science of cooking, about ingredients and how they go together. How does someone come up with a good recipe? Are there rules to follow? Not necessarily, but there are guidelines.
Have you ever tasted a biscuit that has a bitter aftertaste? What is causing that? Well, if you look at a recipe before you make it, you can tell if it will be bitter or not. There should be about 1 t. baking powder to every cup of flour. So if the biscuits have 2 c. of flour in them, and 3 t. baking powder, then you can see they will be bitter. Cut the baking powder down to 2 t. or maybe 2 ¼ t., but no more than that. Now try the recipe again and you’ll probably like it much better. Happy Cooking!
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