Food | Prudent and Practical

November 12, 2009

Crockpot Spicy Peanut Chicken

Filed under: food — Tags: food, meal — K @ 11:17 PM

I know how to do three things with my slow cooker: roast beef (I know, who doesn’t do this?), whole chicken, and yogurt. I’m interested in learning more recipes when I’m in need of one. Although the recipe originally called 1.5 pounds of chicken breasts, I just used a whole chicken. Chicken is my favorite meat, but it’s hard to carve. Slow cooking it solves this problem!

If you’re not ready for the spicy peanut chicken yet, but want to try a whole chicken in the crock pot, I suggest this:

Pour a cheap bottle of wine or 3 cups stock in the crock pot, add a whole chicken, and then slow cook.

Most of the time I don’t pay attention to how long I slow cook – I just crank up the timer – and I have yet to ruin a meal. Yeah, someday that is going to come back and bite me… Anyway at the end of the day, you have delicious chicken that requires no carving!

The one thing I don’t like about slow cooking a whole chicken is the skin, as it starts to come off and gets mushy. Next time I will try removing it beforehand to see if I like it better. I hadn’t thought of that until now. All of the spices make your home smell wonderful ~ I loved it!

I have modified the original version of this recipe from Recipezaar. The recipe suggests serving it with basmatti rice and bread.

Ingredients:

4 pounds whole chicken
28-ounce can diced tomatoes with juice (I used 4 mini cans V8 – don’t do this, it doesn’t thicken the sauce)
2-3 cups chicken stock
1 cup peanut butter (I used chunky, it leaves chunks in the sauce and I didn’t like that)
1 small diced onion
3 garlic cloves (minced)
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1+ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (as desired)
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons white sugar (optional, but recommended if using natural peanut butter)

Instructions:

Put all ingredients except the chicken into a slow cooker. Stir to combine.
Add the chicken. Cook on low until liquid has thickened and chicken is cooked. I cooked it for 8 hours.

sauce over chicken 150x112 photo Crockpot Spicy Peanut Chicken

november 2009 028 150x112 photo Crockpot Spicy Peanut Chicken

If you’re interested in more recipes you can check out my food and recipes pages. If you want to know what I’ve been up to this week, visit my front page!

I’m also participating in the following carnivals today! You can find many more recipes here:

Comments (18)

November 11, 2009

Martha Stewart’s Christmas Workshop

Filed under: General — Tags: crafts, DIY, entertainment, food, free, holidays, projects, random — K @ 11:30 PM

Hi all! I just got an email (newsletter) from Martha Stewart.com! The Martha crew is doing a 6-week workshop to help you prep for the holiday season.

The topics will include…

Martha’s best holiday tips
Handmade gifts, stockings, and ornaments
Treats, menus, and party ideas
Expert tree-trimming and wreath-making techniques
Hostess how-tos and a magnificent holiday menu
Time saving strategies
A gingerbread-house contest and photo contests
And many more ideas!

According to the email, more than 100,000 people have already joined, including me. I’m a fan of Martha Stewart and can’t wait to see what wonderful tips and projects she has in store for us all.

The fun begins November 16. Please visit the signup page to get in on the action!

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November 5, 2009

Grandma’s Pistachio Bread Recipe

Filed under: food — Tags: food, holidays — K @ 11:50 PM

Many many years ago my paternal grandma gave my mom a very special recipe. There are quite a few similar recipes out there that call for added cinnamon, sugar, and food coloring, but I think this recipe is just perfect. My mom began the tradition and has been making this recipe every Christmas for as long as I can remember. The tradition has been passed down and now I make it every year. Since there’s only D and me, I usually make smaller loaves and give them out to extended family who have come to love the recipe as well.

Although the recipe is called “bread” it is more like a cake in a loaf form. Don’t let the pistachio scare you away, the dominant taste is the yellow cake mix and the cinnamon-sugar topping which becomes delightfully crispy while baking. I’m not a cherry fan, but the maraschino’s are really good in this recipe. This recipe freezes nicely for a long time, but you sacrifice the crispy crust. I’ve personally frozen a recipe for 10 months and I know D’s mom has frozen it for a long time too.

Ingredients

1 yellow cake mix
a 4 serving package pistachio pudding
4 eggs
1/4 cup oil
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (Mom makes the recipe with them, I make it without them)
2 tablespoons water
3/4 cup maraschino cherries – chopped
1/4 cup cinnamon-sugar mix

Instructions

1 – Heat oven to 350 degrees F

No, it's not lunch time, it's baking time. (aka: Half past midnight) That's how much I love you guys (and baking)!

2 – Combine and mix all ingredients except for the cinnamon-sugar

3 – Pour into two 8×4 loaf pans or one 8×4 and two or three mini loaf pans or all mini loaf pans to give as gifts

4 – Sprinkle cinnamon-sugar on top of loaves

5 – Bake for 45 minutes

6 – After it has thoroughly cooled… enjoy! I think this is one of those recipes that tastes much better the second day anyway. (If it’s still to warm, it will also start to fall apart when you cut into it.)

If you’re interested in more recipes you can check out my food and recipes pages. If you want to know what I’ve been up to this week, visit my front page!

I’m also participating in the following carnivals today! You can find many more recipes here:

Comments (23)

November 3, 2009

How to Get Cheap Tickets in Vegas

Filed under: saving money — Tags: bargains, discounts, eating out, entertainment, food, free, restaurants, review, saving money, travel — K @ 6:50 PM

During my shuttle from the airport to the Las Vegas Hilton, the driver explained how to get cheap tickets if you hadn’t purchased any yet. I already had two Cirque Mystere tickets, but there were three of us that wanted to go so I checked out Tix 4 Tonight. Tix 4 Tonight sells discount vouchers usually the day of the show. The available showings post at 9:30 AM and the store opens at 10:00 AM. They also offer discounts for local exhibits (Bodies Exhibit at Luxor and Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum at The Venetian to name a couple) and discount vouchers for the local restaurants and buffets.

My Experience:

I used (or was with someone who used) the service three times. The first location I visited was at Hawaiian Marketplace. After standing in line for 15 minutes, Mom and I made it to a sales rep. The rep was friendly, helpful, and fast, explaining different exhibits we might be interested in. We purchased tickets for the Bodies Exhibit and Madame Tussaud’s and the tickets had to be used that evening. If we didn’t have enough time, we could bring the tickets back and trade them for tomorrow. We stopped at the Bodies Exhibit first and learned a lesson. The tickets that you purchase at Tix4Tonight have to be traded in for actual tickets at the event or exhibit. This meant standing in line another 10 minutes to trade the slips for actual tickets. Mom was only there for 2-1/2 days – all the waiting was annoying.

Since Darren and I had tickets to Mystere, after lunch the following day we stopped at the Bills Casino location across from our hotel, Bally’s to get a ticket for my mom. (I switched hotels when the rest of the family arrived in town.) Lesson #2 learned - when you purchase a voucher for a show, you’ve simply bought a seat for that show. So, you must haul your tush across town and trade that voucher in for a ticket as fast as your legs will carry you – the sooner you do the trade, the better seat you’ll get. You don’t get an assigned seat until you have an actual ticket from the show’s venue.

For buffets and restaurants, you pay a $2 or $3 service fee per person and they give you a discount pass. The average buffet we went to was over $18, so a 25% discount per person definitely helps.

There are now 7 locations along the strip:

Fashion Show Mall (strip entrance in front of Neiman Marcus)
Hawaiian Marketplace (along strip in front of Polo Towers)
North Strip (south of Riviera Hotel)
Showcase Mall (south strip near the giant Coke bottle)
Downtown (4 Queens Hotel at the Fremont Street Experience)
Bills Casino (on the corner between Bally’s and the Flamingo)
Casino Royale (across from the Mirage and next to Denny’s)

What I Liked:

Discounted tickets – the shows out here are expensive!
The employees were efficient
You get a $2 fee discount and entrance to the short (VIP) line if you bring your used ticket stubs back the next day
Online coupon for a fee discount
Many locations

What I Didn’t Like:

The long waits in line
Running around trading vouchers for tickets

If you’re not pressed for time and don’t mind waiting in lines or taking chances on ticket availability, Tix 4 Tonight may be for you. If you are staying at a casino-hotel that is the home venue for a show, you may be able to get discounted tickets there. For example, the Price is Right tickets are $50, but because I was staying at Bally’s (where the show is) I was able to snag tickets for $37.

There are also the freebie attractions at the casino-hotels.

Show in the Sky at the Rio
The Fountains at the Bellagio
The Conservatory and Glass Ceiling at the Bellagio
Richard MacDonald Art Gallery at the Bellagio
The Sirens of TI at Treasure Island
The Erupting Volcano at the Mirage
Madame Tussaud’s – meet Whoopie, Justin Timberlake, and The Rock before you have to show a ticket
Pole dancers at Planet Hollywood’s casino in the table games area – no link, just something we observed
Fremont Street Experience – stage show and video shows
The Lion Exhibit at MGM Grand

There are a few other attractions that I didn’t list because I didn’t visit them. You can see them at About.com’s Vegas page.

Have you used Tix 4 Tonight? What did you think and did you save a lot? As far as the freebies go I really enjoyed the Bellagio attractions, how about you?

Comments (2)

October 29, 2009

5 Minute Chocolate Cake

Filed under: food — Tags: food — K @ 10:34 PM

The day before our vacation ended, I started getting sick. I toughed it out since that was our Grand Canyon day, but I slept on D’s shoulder the entire flight home. I was worried about looking sick in front of all the people we had just flown with. I asked that he take me to my parent’s so I can sleep somewhere familiar. The look on my mom’s face when I walked in the door worried me so I took my temp – 103.1 – the highest I’ve seen it in a long time! So if I have H1N1, do I go expose other people to it at the hospital? And if I have something else, do I risk complicating things by being exposed to H1N1 at the hospital? So here I am in flannel jammies resting on the couch at home.

What do I have? I have no idea. Looking up symptoms online, speaking with an on-call nurse, and also having my mom, a nurse, give her opinion, all tell me that I could have either bronchitis, walking pneumonia, or everybody’s favorite (I’m being sarcastic here), swine flu. I have asthma that doesn’t bother me until I’m sick, so breathing has been a little uncomfortable. I’m making progress though – my temp has gone down on it’s own and I’m not feeling as weak.

While I’m sick I’m not too hungry. Pot roast and veggies were too heavy. And when I got hungry again I wanted something different…

I received an email from my mom a year ago containing the recipe for quick chocolate cake that uses basic kitchen staples.

For those times when you have that urge and nothing else will do!

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
a small splash of vanilla essence
1 coffee mug (I always use a bowl because it’s easier and cleaner to add extras, like ice cream!)

1 – Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well.

2 – Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
3 – Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.

4 – Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla essence, and mix again.

5 – Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!

6 – Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired. EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).

And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

Seems like you could make up a bunch of these ahead and just add the liquids and egg when it’s time to make one. Put each batch in a snack-size zip lock bag. You’d cut the prep/cook time down to about 3.5 min. The kids could make it up quick without too much mess. It would be a quick snack for visiting kids/grandkids.

How Does it Taste?

Honestly, it tastes like something I made in middle school family and consumer sciences class. To be more descriptive, it tastes like the cake desserts that come in microwavable dinners. It’s not light and fluffy, but when you’re really wanting (or needing ) chocolate cake fast, this does the trick.

If you’re interested in more recipes you can check out my food and recipes pages.

I’m also participating in the following carnivals today! You can find many more recipes here:

Comments (22)

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