First new meal we made was a complete success! I made Easy Chicken Teriyaki. Sunshine found out she really likes teriyaki sauce on her chicken! Who knew?! I made it with broccoli, but I'm the only in the house who eats it, so I also did carrots. Since that went over so well, I also made Asian Chicken Noodle Soup. I really enjoyed this, but no one else in my house did. Unfortunately, with this dish, I found I may have an MSG allergy. With the Chicken Teriyaki, I didn't quite see a connection, but after leftovers of the chicken, then the soup and then leftovers of the soup, I found the only common factor was the MSG. However, now that I'm aware, I'll just make sure I load up on allergy meds before eating Asian food! Another recipe that I tried for Asian food was crockpot Teriyaki Chicken. This one was a freezer meal. Super simple to make and I took allergy medicine before hand and was good to go. This one did not go over as well. It was too sweet for my kids and little on the sweet side for Husband. I could have eaten it all night. I'll definitely make it again, but cut down on the brown sugar next time.
I have really wanted to start making new soups. Since I had so much success with the Asian Chicken Noodle Soup (success meaning I liked it), I decided to try another one no one would like other than me. I decided to try Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup. Worst thing I've ever tasted. Normally, even if something isn't great, I can eat it. Not this. I couldn't eat more than 5 bites. I ended up throwing the entire batch out. It was horrible. What exactly was wrong with it? The taste. Pretty sure it was the coconut milk that made it so incredibly disgusting, and I like coconut milk. Unfortunately, this recipe scared me away from soups. Now, I'm nervous to try another. I've got several more recipes for different squash soups, but I think I'll wait until fall for those.
In case you haven't noticed, chicken is a theme in our house. That being said, we are constantly looking for new ways to make it other than rub it with Bearded Butcher and grill it (though Husband and Monster would be content doing that almost every night). I know I wrote this one up before, but I wanted to add it here with the recipes. Sunshine picked out Taco Chicken Tenders. That recipe was a total win! Then we also tried Crispy Lemon Chicken Pasta. I thought this was so very good. A little complicated to make, but Husband made it. As long as he cooks, I'll be making this again, even though I was the only one who really liked it. A meal that I was actually a little surprised went over as well as it did was Mustard-Herb Panko Crusted Chicken. A friend of mine gave me a few tips, like making chicken strips instead of breasts and just dip the strips into the mustard and then the panko mix. Worked out great! Really easy meal. Since easy is something we really like, we decided to try a very easy recipe for baked chicken nuggets. This one was not well received by the kids. I think we're the only people who have kids who do not like butter. The kids would probably have liked this one if it didn't call for the butter.
Chicken freezer meals were on my list of things to try doing this year. I was really proud of myself when our local grocery store had a sale on chicken and I bought all the ingredients needed to make my freezer meals. I was also pretty excited that I had the time to go put them together after coming home from the grocery store! I made a couple recipes from Over The Big Moon. One was the Teriyaki Chicken that I wrote about above. I also tried the Garlic Lime Chicken and Cafe Rio Chicken. No one was thrilled with the Garlic Lime. Didn't have enough flavor for us. The Cafe Rio Chicken was met well by 3 of us, but the picky one wanted nothing to do with it. However, she ate it. Also from Over the Big Moon, I made Cilantro Lime Chicken with Corn and Black beans (minus the black beans since I don't like them). This one was pretty darned tasty. Again, 3 of the 4 of us actually enjoyed it and 1 tolerated it.
Sunshine has been on again, off again, with guacamole ever since she could eat. She happens to be on again. I was buying her Wholly Guacamole, but that gets a little expensive as she's the only one who eats it. So, I searched the internet for an easy, not spicy guac recipe. I found this one. How could I go wrong with 3 ingredients and a title like "Easy Guacamole Your Kids Will Love"? Obviously they didn't mean MY kid. She was less than thrilled with it. Right now I'm back to buying guacamole until I decide to experiment with a new recipe.
Since I had cilantro left from the Cilantro Lime Chicken meal, I decided that I wanted to try something out of the ordinary and this recipe was exactly what I was looking for. Chorizo Quesadillas with Cilantro Lime Sour Cream. Knowing full well Sunshine would not eat this, I made her a hot dog. We did make her try it though. This was really very good. The sour cream is what made this meal. I could have just dipped tortilla in the sour cream and called it a meal. It was that good. Sticking with the cilantro theme, I also made Copycat Chipotle Cilantro Lime Rice. Sunshine LOVES the rice at Chipotle, so how could she not like this? She didn't. Even Monster wasn't thrilled. Husband and I enjoyed it.
It hasn't been all about new dinners here. I've made some new sweet treats as well. Right around Valentine's Day, I made Strawberry Truffle Kiss Cookies. These went over extremely well. Husband liked them, kids liked them, kids' friends liked them, neighbor's liked them, friend's husband who doesn't like sweet stuff liked them. I, however, did not. I'll make them again, for everyone else to eat! I'm not a huge fudge person, but I do make decent fudge. I decided to branch out this year though and make peanut butter fudge and Bailey's fudge. Both turned out really well. I love cannolis, but I've never made them. They intimidate me a bit, so I decided to try making cannoli dip instead. It turned out to be amazing! The recipe makes a LOT, so I shared, shared, shared. When I make it again, I'll most likely cut it in 1/4, it makes that much. Of course, I've been making different chocolate chip cookies as well. I made some Pumpkin-Oat Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, and Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. They were all very good. All of those recipes are keepers! I also tried a new plain old chocolate chip cookie recipe. They were good, but nothing extraordinary. Tasted like chocolate chip cookies. This past week, I also made two new sweet breads. A friend of mine and I made Chocolate Oatmeal Banana Bread and Peach Mango Coconut Oil Banana Bread. Both were fantastic. I, personally, didn't like the chocolate one since I'm not a huge chocolate person, but everyone else who tried it thought it was great. Everyone who tried the mango thought it was really good as well and I really enjoyed that one. We tweaked the Peach Mango a bit. First, we didn't use coconut oil. We used canola oil instead. Second, we used white whole wheat flour instead of all purpose. Then, we also used fresh mango and no peaches, so it was really just mango banana bread. Also, the recipe said it made two loaves, but it didn't. It made one. We had to adjust the cooking time as well. Unfortunately for timing purposes, we were talking and baking so I'm really not sure what our adjustment in time ended up being.
On a side note, and not a new recipe, Sunshine has decided she likes tacos! That's a huge thing for her. She only likes them in a hard shell and only the meat and cheese, but it's a start!