17 Nov 2014

This Week in the Charming South Kitchen

by | posted in: food, The Charming South Kitchen | 2

Train cupcakes

Sorry for the absence all week.  Last week was the toughest week of parenting to date.  And I know there will be more.

But, when life is tough I’ve come to not turn to blogging.  I really did find solace in the Word last week and journaling some prayers for mommas this morning.

But, I also didn’t turn to cooking, either. When I’m trying to eat healthy, I don’t always want to cook.  So, poor husband didn’t have a lot to eat last week.  One of my comforting things to do is to bake – well, that means I eat it – which won’t go well for me when I’m struggling because then I will eat all the cookies.  NOT GOOD. But delicious.

So, this week, here we go again!

This leftover soup tonight with some homemade hummus.

Chicken Korma – finally, if I can find Paneer without haven’t to go to every grocery store in Atlanta.

Turkey enchiladas.  I didn’t get to make them for my friend who visited this past weekend, so since I have all the ingredients I will make them for us this week – and my boys like them.

Dark Chocolate Cranberry Orange muffins for our end of the semester Bible study brunch.

A strawberry elmo cake for a neighbors birthday party.

What are you cooking this week?

 

8 Nov 2014

Pepper Jack Chicken Enchiladas

by | posted in: food, The Charming South Kitchen, Uncategorized | 0

Pepper Jack Chicken Enchiladas

Some moms ask me how in the world I make dinner and bake and cook the way I do with two littles two and under.  Well, its not always easy and you have to do what works for your family (like mine is really easy or fast food healthy-ish lunches) and leftovers so I’m not cooking everyday.  My mister also gets home at the boys’ bedtime, so I can cook our dinner as they are eating theirs.

So, I whipped this together in a couple of steps.  I relied on Publix with a Mojo Rotisserie Chicken.  Pulled it apart a few days ago and made stock.  Froze the stock for later.  Kept the chicken in a bowl in the fridge.  Then as the boys were eating their dinner, I was working in the kitchen right beside them (to make sure they didn’t toss things on the floor, which did happen) – I was talking with them, playing with them, showing them what I was doing (I do want my boys to love to cook if that is the Lord’s plan).  These were in the oven in less than 20 minutes.  Then as they baked, I had time to put my younger to bed and read to my older one, then come back, put some cheese on top while my older was watching some Thomas the Train waiting on Daddy to arrive.  Easy!

 

 

Print
Pepper Jack Chicken Enchiladas
Author: 
Recipe type: Main Dish
Cuisine: Mexican
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 8-10
 
Spicy creamy healthy chicken enchiladas
Ingredients
  • 1 small onion chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • evoo
  • small can green chilies, diced
  • ¾ cup black beans, rinsed
  • ¾ cup corn
  • 1 can cream of chicken soup
  • ¼ tsp each cumin, pepper, salt
  • 2 cups chopped cooked chicken
  • 8-10 soft taco size whole wheat tortillas
  • 1 can green chili enchilada sauce
  • 1½ cup grated pepper jack cheese
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375.
  2. Spray 9x13 pan with pam
  3. In a cast iron skillet, heat oil and saute onions for about 3 minutes.
  4. Add garlic and chilis, saute another 2 minutes.
  5. Add beans, corn, spices, and soup. Stir until heated through.
  6. Add chicken and stir until combined and warm.
  7. Scoop filling into tortillas and roll
  8. Place seam side down in 9x13 pan.
  9. Top with enchilada sauce.
  10. Bake for 20 minutes.
  11. Top with cheese and bake another 10 or until cheese is melted.
  12. Serve with avocado, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, cilantro, tortilla chips, etc.
3 Nov 2014

Creamy Turkey and Spinach Enchiladas

by | posted in: food, The Charming South Kitchen | 1

Turkey and Spinach Enchiladas

My days in seminary were days that were hard pressed for cash. I was very thankful for work, scholarships, and help from the parents, but still, I didn’t eat out that often, especially the first couple semesters.  But, when I did, I would venture around the corner to my favorite Mexican place, Las Margaritas. It was a small chain, but I liked this location the best.  And then I tried their spinach and mushroom quesadillas.  I fell in love.  Gooey, cheesy, healthy (?), and warm, especially good for cold, NC winters.

And this is how life is funny: one of the friends I went to this restaurant with back then, is now my neighbor.  She got me started on making my own enchiladas with this recipe.  And tonight, she is getting these for dinner as she babysits my boys so my mister and I can go to a concert.  Life is grand.

And that taste, is what I’ve recreated in this enchilada recipe.  I’ve fallen in love with enchiladas.  I love making them.  By far, my favorite homemade mexican food to make.  So, I always try to come up with different ones.  So, today, I used what was in my fridge.

Fresh spinach.  Lean Turkey.  Cheese.

Print
Creamy Turkey and Spinach Enchiladas
Author: 
Recipe type: Main Dish
Cuisine: Mexican
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 8
 
Creamy and warm enchiladas packed with vegetables.
Ingredients
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 pkg ground turkey
  • evoo
  • 1 6 oz bag fresh baby spinach leaves
  • 1 can cream of chicken and mushroom soup
  • ½ cup grated cheddar cheese
  • ½ tsp cumin
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • ¼ tsp kosher salt
  • 8 soft tacos (or 10 depending on the size of your pan, and how much filling you put in each one)
  • 1 can mild green enchilada sauce
  • 1½ cup grated cheddar cheese
Instructions
  1. Saute onion in evoo. Add ground turkey and cook until almost done.
  2. Add garlic and cook until turkey is no longer pink.
  3. Drain.
  4. Cook spinach in same pan.
  5. Add back in the turkey mixture.
  6. Cook until all spinach is wilted and incorporated into turkey mixture.
  7. Add soup, cheese, and spices.
  8. Fill each tortilla and roll.
  9. Put seam side down in a 9x13 pan.
  10. Pour enchilada sauce over the enchiladas.
  11. Top with cheese.
  12. Bake uncovered for 25 minutes at 375.
  13. Enjoy with sour cream, cilantro, and black beans on the side.
 

30 Sep 2014

Starting Family Food Traditions

by | posted in: food, mothering, parenting, Shepherding Children, Treasured Traditions, Truly Families | 1

Family Food Traditions

Family and food.  Those two words often go together for most people.  Whether you wake up and cook pancakes on Saturday mornings, have a weekly pizza night, or always make certain Christmas cookies around the holidays – there are some things food always brings to the table.  Maybe you always go to a certain restaurant for special meals, or maybe you have your grandmother’s recipe for gingerbread and her worn cloth apron that she would wear as she labored hard over her yeast rolls.  Smell in the memories.

Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of these.  We loved food – don’t get me wrong.  There are a few things: smoked mullet, Granny’s chicken and rice, and Dad’s creole black eyed peas every New Years.  Those are good traditions and I even introduced my mister to Papa’s smoked mullet a few years back.  However, I want more.

As a wife and a mother of two littles, I want to create traditions, with the OK of my mister, that will do two things:

1.  Provide a way to create memories for our family.

2.  Help us to see the goodness of God to our family.

Here are three that we have started, and I will explain these two above points as we go along.

Weekly Pizza Night : making it, Little Caesars, store bought – just a night for pizza (and leftovers of course). Who doesn’t like cold pizza for breakfast.  Hold the olives, please!

Weekly trips to Trader Joe’s and Ray’s Donuts.  I am so grateful that my husband makes time to keep the boys while I go grocery shopping.  I seldom go with them anymore because even if I’ve just fed them, they will eat the produce in the cart.  Not going to happen.  But, I like taking them to Trader Joe’s on Monday mornings.  We get TJ cinnamon cookies, try new products, and make all the clerks smile.  Building relationships.  Its important.  And happy boys.  Also, we’ve started going to Ray’s Donuts in Marietta (amazing donut holes) one day each week.  Nothing fancy, but good donuts.  We spent 1.80 this morning, hung out with some friends who joined us, and ate donuts.  It was so much fun wiping down my boys’ fingers with a wet wipe because they had glaze in between their little fingers and on the corners of the their lips.

Homemade Pad Thai for New Years.  I am definitely southern and like greens and black eyed peas – but I wanted to do something different.  So, last year the Mister and I said we would do this.  I want to teach my boys to love it – and to teach them to love the different cultures of the world.

Our family is just starting out, but so far I’m building relationships that can hopefully spread into opportunities to share the gospel and I can teach our boys to be thankful for pizza, donuts, and pad thai.  God is so good to us.  Whether its an additional 5$ for pizza on a Sunday night – where we can rest and enjoy one another and not dirty up a kitchen – or 1.80 for a mid-morning, mid-week fun time with mommy with sticky fingers.  These boys will have memories.

What food memories are you creating for your family?  We will install more just waiting to see what yumminess!

20 Sep 2014

Birthday Party Feast

by | posted in: food | 0

Elijah's name banner

Birthdays are for celebrating.  It is the day that God brought a person into the world: the personality, the eyes, the eyelashes, the fun, the spirit, the name – everything about the person – God wants us to love and hold.

One way I love to celebrate birthdays is by having food.  Celebrating over meals and friends and fun times is such a joy!

Some of my favorites from yesterday’s party:

The smell of the charcoal heating up to grill some delicious burgers.

Sebastian stuffing in little pieces of canteloupe and devouring a cookie with yellow frosting: therefore, having yellow frosting everywhere.

Sebastian's yellow cookie

Elijah staring at his cupcake and then stuffing it in his face.

Elijah's Funfetti cupcake

Friends sitting around enjoying relationships – over good ol’ American food.

Yellow everywhere!  It was a happy party with a happy color!

Elijah's yellow party

Here’s what we had:

Burgers (thanks to my brother for the “recipe” and my neighbor for making them and the Mister for grilling them).  Perfectly cooked!

Crescent Dogs (so yummy!)

Baked Beans – may never make another bean recipe again – and I loved serving it my Papa’s cast iron skillet

Fruit

Chips

Funfetti Cupcakes and Vanilla Buttercream (overcooked the cupcakes but the frosting still rocks)

Homemade Funfetti Transportation Cupcakes

A yellow school bus cake (more on that to come)

Sugar cookies with yellow royal icing (thank you to a friend mailing me the icing from Southern Season)

Sweet Tea, Coke, and Sprite.

What a great, delicious day.  Thanks to all who came, brought stuff, and ate, and laughed, and celebrated our little boy with us!  Here’s to many more birthday celebrations to come!

 

10 Sep 2014

Read This: Bread & Wine (Shauna Niequist)

by | posted in: Books | 1

Bread & Wine

I’ve always been told if you want to learn how to write…then read authors you want to write like.  For that to be true in my life: I need to read Elyse Fitzpatrick and Shauna Niequist.

So, I supposed the same is true if you want to photograph, cook, design, create, etc…be inspired by people you want to emulate.  Not copy them – but look at their work, and learn from their craft.  We all need mentors in the area we want to be better in – so pick good ones!

Bread & Wine was given to me (2 copies actually) by sweet friends at our former church.  I loved getting the little brown book boxes on our Rainwood front porch.  Surprise!  And I was then able to mail off a sweet happy package to a sweet dear old friend who loves family, wine, and food just as much as I do.  That always makes me happy.

The cover of this book alone makes me want to read it  – and that is a great thing.  Why have a boring book cover?  Don’t you want people to open it and devour its contents?  I would.  And Shauna’s cover makes you want to pull up in a comfy chair, have a chilled glass of wine, and settle in for the night.

This book was written – not so everyone can copy Shauna’s life, love, and pursuit of the table – but so that they can dream a little bit of their own: to happy family dinners, to good meals cooked for one – or 10, to life whether good times or bad – but learning how faith, family, and food (and maybe some wine or beer) interacts with that.  One of the criticisms I read about Bread & Wine was that not many people can have the charmed life of Shauna and she seems to flaunt it.  Well, can’t the same be true of Mark Twain and the Adventures of Huck Finn?  Who wouldn’t want a carefree life of being always an adventure?  Or can’t we say the same thing of every cookbook – thinking that every meal is going to turn out photo worthy and perfectly tasty and never burnt?  Plateau status was not Shauna’s desire with this book – and nor should we be envious of any other life.  God has given us our life to live, and I’m sure we never know everything about everyone else’s life.

Many of her chapters come along with delicious recipes.  Here are some I want to try:

Blueberry Crisp (but I can’t keep them in the house long enough without Elijah eating them all)

Breakfast Cookies (always looking for quick breakfasts for the boys)

Goat Cheese Biscuits (hmmm, I do have goat cheese in the fridge)

Green Well Salad

Maple Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

Simplest Dark Chocolate Mousse

This book, while I didn’t agree with everything from the theology perspective, gave me many great things to think about.  Here are some of my favorites:

“I feel honored to create a place around my table, a place for laughing and crying, for being seen and heard, for telling stories and creating memories.” (251)

“A heart of hospitality is creating space for these moments, protecting that fragile bubble of vulnerability and truth and love.  It’s all too rare that we tell the people we love exactly why we love them – what they bring to our lives, why our lives are richer because they’re in it.” (176)

“Soup…it’s the cardigan with elbow patches.” (LOVE THIS QUOTE, 161)

So, go pull up a favorite glass, and enjoy this book. I look forward to reading more of Shauna’s writings.

18 Aug 2014

This Week in the Charming South Kitchen

by | posted in: The Charming South Kitchen, Uncategorized | 0

Cinnamon Roll

Another week, another menu plan.  Here we go!  And this week, toward the end, we get visitors – my parents (Mimi and Pops) are coming for a short visit – so I will enjoy going out to dinner with them and have a food prep helper in the kitchen.

Butternut Squash, Kale, Chicken Skillet Bake (variation from this recipe that I got from a friend on Instagram)

Asparagus Ham and Mozzarella Frittata

Fig Flank Steak with an Asian Salad (an idea I got from a friend)

Easy Cinnamon Sugar Donuts with an Apple Glaze

Slow Cooker Veggie Lasagna

Zucchini and Chicken Skillet

Blueberry Italian Cheese Tart (recipe coming tomorrow)

 

 

 

28 May 2014

How to Plan a Menu

by | posted in: food | 1

Feast

Menu planning is an activity I like to do in our home.  I’m glad my husband likes me to do it as well – that he is an adventurous eater!  That makes menu planning even more fun.

There are many ways you can plan a menu, but as I’ve been doing it weekly I find there is most flexibility in that for our family.  Honestly, I sometimes change mid-week or something comes up and I have to change it, but food usually lasts a week.  The reason I don’t like menu planning for a month is I like spontaneity.  I don’t like even me having that much control over what I’m going to eat that day.

So, here’s what I do.

Each week I sit down and think through 6 categories (one is leftovers).  Sometimes the categories stay the same, and sometimes they change.  Here are some samplings of categories I have on my menu list any given week:

Slow-Cooker

Meatless

International (Italian, Mediteranean, Indian, etc)

Date Night (a little more fancy of food that we will eat for dinner once the boys are in bed – and includes a fun dessert for two)

Salad Night

Taco Night

Pizza Night

Cookbook Night (I love cookbooks, but actually usually get my recipes off the internet.)

Brinner (Where we have breakfast for dinner.  This one is usually delicious, easy, and inexpensive.)

 

When I have chosen my categories for the week, then I look at our family calendar.  I know Fridays are my husband’s day off – so I either let that one be a slow-cooker day if we are going to be busy or I let that be a day when I have more time to spend in the kitchen because he is home to play with the boys.  Maybe we are busy one night, so I need a really easy meal or I know we are going to need to eat early or late that night. Flexibility is the name of the game.

Then I think through what is in season right now.  I may make more strawberry, peach, or blackberry foods and tomato and corn meals since we are coming into the summer months.  In the fall, I will make more soups with pumpkin and winter squashes and sweet potatoes.  This is also a way you can cut the cost down in your food budget.

Then I look through a Bloglovin feed of blogs.  I love seeing the artistry which people create new foods and photograph those foods on their tables.  It inspires me.  Then all I have to do is decide (and narrowing down is sometimes I difficult thing) and ask the Mister if he has any requests that week – and fill in the blanks.

How do you plan your menu?

26 May 2014

This Week in the Charming South Kitchen: May 26

by | posted in: Uncategorized, What's Eatin? | 0

What's Eatin?

Changing up things for the menu planning!  Just to keep you on your toes!

When we lived in Little Rock, I called my kitchen the Rainwood Kitchen because we lived on Rainwood Road and it sounded like a cool restaurant name.  But, I don’t like the sound of our street here in Marietta in line of a kitchen name.  But, I thought through this name for a little while and really like The Charming South Kitchen.  I am from the south, born and raised in central Florida, moved to North Florida, then made my way to North Carolina for over a decade, with just a few years in Louisville, then to Little Rock, now back to Georgia.  Although I love to travel and love seeing the world – I don’t know if I will ever live outside the south.  I love everything about the south: the beach, the weather, the people, the slow pace of life, the friendliness of strangers.

So, I wanted to bring that out in my food and what I cook for our family and those who eat at our table.  Therefore – the Charming South Kitchen.  I cook a lot of non-southern foods – but the south is now a melting pot – and so it my kitchen!

And this week, I’ll be writing a post about how I menu plan.  Stay tuned!

Monday: Strawberry Spinach Quinoa Salad with those fresh strawberries I picked this weekend at Southern Belle Farms.  Also to celebrate Memorial Day, I am making The Pioneer Woman’s Peanut Butter Pie and we are having watermelon.

Tuesday: This delish dip with some flat out bread I picked up on sale with some peanut chicken

Wednesday: Brinner night with potato pancakes, eggs, and sausage.

Thursday: Date night!!!!!

Friday: Slow Cooker beef for some sandwiches w pea salad (I’m still planning on sharing the recipe soon)

Saturday: Spring risotto from Big Sur Bakery cookbook

Sunday: leftovers

 

 

5 May 2014

What’s Eatin’?

by | posted in: Uncategorized, What's Eatin? | 2

What's Eatin?

Thanks for giving me a few weeks off from menu planning. I’ve barely got the kitchen unpacked into The Trace Kitchen – and I’m looking forward to trying these new recipes this week.

What are you cooking?

Monday: in honor of Cinco de Mayo – I’m making Willow Bird’s Taco Crescent Rolls and for dinner, chicken fajitas. Mister’s day off was switched this week so I’m trying to get some meal prep done today for the rest of the week. How do you go about meal prep?  Especially if you have small children?

Tuesday: I got some red potatoes at the Marietta Farmer’s Maret over the wknd to make this roasted bake. Looked healthy and delicious!

Wednesday: This is a serious chicken pot pie – and I can’t wait to show you guys some photos of it.

Thursday: To use up the rest of the cream cheese from last night’s meal – I’ll be making some cream cheese mac and cheese. Two days in a row of comfort food!

Friday: Most Fridays I will not be doing much cooking since it is my mister’s only day off every week. I’m thinking of going to a pizza night on Friday nights – fun for everyone and a simple hands-off whole wheat crust and some homemade pizza sauce in the slow-cooker.  I’ll be tweaking the pizza each week.  This week I’m doing a white mushroom truffle oil pizza.

Baking of the week: some homemade granola bars for all of us to snack on during the week!

Maybe I’ll throw in a lime ice box pie this week too!