Winner for CSN!

The winner for the $20 gift certificate is:

Danielle said...
My 4 year old would love the Baby Boom Yo Gabba Gabba Muno Cuddle Pillow.

I'll be emailing you the $20 gift code today! Congratulations!

CSN Giveaway is Here!

I don't know about you, but I love shopping online. It is so much easier to just get on the computer and pick out what I want and then wait for it to arrive on my doorstep. Well, you need to check out CSN. CSN Stores has over 200 online stores where you can find everything from stylish handbags, to modern bar furniture, or great cookware, how cool is that? Here are some of the things that you can find there:

Cookie cutters: I am loving using these in EmmyKate's lunches to make lunch more fun!

Toddler beds: We will eventually have to buy one for Easton, but for now his crib is perfect!

Vacuums: I am in desperate need for a new one

So now is your chance to win a gift certificate from them. This should definately help out with Christmas shopping, which is the time of year that I do a lot of online shopping.

They are giving away a $20 gift certficate to a What's for Dinner, Moms? reader. So here is what you have to do:
1. Leave a comment telling me one thing that you would like to buy from CSN Store
2. Become a follower of What's for Dinner, Moms? and leave me a comment telling me so (if you are already a follower, just leave a comment stating that)
3. Blog about this giveaway and leave a comment with the link

Enter up to 3 times, leaving a separate comment for each item.
I will chose a winner on Wednesday, November 3, 2010. Winners will be chosen using random.org. Giveaway is limited to US & Canadian residents only.
*There is also a giveaway for $35 going on at The Maynard Moment Giveaways and Reviews. So make sure you go and enter that one too. You can only win one of the contests though, sorry!!!

Giveaway Coming Soon!

CSN has been generous to offer a giveaway to the readers of What's for Dinner, Moms! CSN Stores has over 200 online stores where you can find everything from stylish handbags, to modern bar stools, or great cookware! Be looking in the next few days for this awesome giveaway.

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken

How can you go wrong with bacon? And chive and onion cream cheese? This bacon-wrapped chicken (pg. 118) was awesomely yummy! I can see serving it for company. I'll probably make it for my mother-in-law when she comes. She cannot eat gluten, so I'm always looking for good recipes for her. I used maple bacon, which was fine, but it did add an extra flavor. Next time I'll use regular bacon. And there will be a next time for this recipe!

The ingredients

Preparing the chicken

OK, so this was a yucky mess. Next time I will have everything more organized so I don't have to keep washing my hands between every piece of chicken. I'll flatten all the chicken and lay it out. Then pull out the amount of bacon I need, have some salt in a little bowl, and cut up some butter. I didn't have it all together before I got started this time! I'm sure next time will go smoother.

Ready for the oven

Done!

Next time I will turn the chicken over and broil a few minutes so the bacon on the bottom gets browned. I did do that when we ate the leftovers and it was much better.

Delicious!

And I'm so glad I had a green with my last two meals. It's nice that someone was worried about my roughage intake! Thanks Leah!

Simplicity: 3 (next time will go smoother)
Taste: 5
Nutrition: 2.5 (I did use reduced fat cream cheese though)

Tomato Spiral Toss

I've made two new meals that I haven't shared yet! I'll start with Tomato Spiral Toss (pg. 165). I'm not the kind that has to have meat with every meal, so I made this as the main course. I had lots of canned tomatoes in my pantry, so I substituted them instead of fresh. I also wanted to make it a little healthier, so I mixed garden rotini and whole grain rotini.

The ingredients

Getting it all together

The finished product

Ready to serve!

As soon as I smelled this, I realized I would like it better served as a cold pasta salad. I did not really care for this warm, but it was dinner time and I was hungry! Allie and I ate it the next day cold and it was really good. That's how I'll have it if I make it again. Not sure it will get in the rotation though.

Simplicity: 5
Taste: 2 (warm), 4 (cold)
Nutrition: 4

Santa Fe Chicken

Last night I made Santa Fe Chicken (pg. 130). Loved it!!! It's a great alternative to a Mexican casserole. The thing I liked was that it didn't use a cream of anything soup. I already have several recipes that use those, so it was nice to find something yummy without it! The ingredients were all simple. My only complaint was that it called for chicken broth, but you don't cook the chicken before you make the dish, so I had to use canned broth. I'm trying to be a real penny pincher these days and was upset that I had to buy that!

Here are all the ingredients (my changes: I always use brown rice instead of white, and I did not use any cilantro - I'm sure the cilantro would have been good though! Also, I added a little more cheese than it called for.)

Very simple, one dish recipe. Just had to flip the chicken about half way through.

Finished recipe
It would have been a one dish dinner, but I was trying to get it made, then had to go pick up my son from school and go to a play date, so I had to put it in another dish to refrigerate. That's why it looks a little messy.

Yum yum! I'll definitely make this again!

Simplicity: 5
Taste: 5
Nutrition: 4

Next up? Something without chicken! I think maybe a pasta dish.

Barbequed Onion Meat Loaves

Okay, I know that doesn't look too appealing, but these were actually really good. I thought I had barbeque sauce, but we only had marinade, so I skipped that part. They look a little dry, but I promise they were not.

The other thing that I changed was that the recipe said to cook them in the microwave and that just sounded really gross to me, so I opted to stick them in the oven instead. It took a little longer for them to cook, however the prep work was really fast and easy, so it was a winner in my book. They can sit in the oven by themselves and cook away just as long as it leaves me with time to actually do other stuff. I hate it when recipes take forever to put together.

So, we will definately be having these again: Click here for the recipe

Simplicity: 4

Taste: 5

Nutrition: 3

Apricot Salsa Chicken

Tonight I made Apricot Salsa Chicken (pg. 113). I've bounced back from the boos and hisses I received from the Crispy Chicken. OK, so it wasn't that bad. Anyway, this was just for my husband, Allie (my 14 month old), and me. I hope you don't mind that I'm not writing out the ingredients or instructions. I figure since we all have the cookbook I can be a little lazy! I made a few changes to the recipe. It called for 6 chicken breasts, but I only used 2. I pounded them out and cut them in half. I pretty much halved the other ingredients. I didn't want to waste a lot of chicken if this turned out to be not so good. I also omitted the apricot nectar. I just used water.

The ingredients

Dipping in the flour mixture and shakin' it up

Ready to brown

Nice and brown and ready for sauce

Simmering for 15 minutes

Served over brown rice with a salad

This was really good! Brian said the sauce kind of tasted like the red sauce he likes at Chinese restaurants. I thought it was yummy, but maybe a little too sweet. If I make this again I may cut back on the apricot preserves. I liked how the chicken had a little coating. That made for a little extra work, but well worth it.

Simplicity: 4
Taste: 4.5
Nutrition: 3

Even Allie liked it!

Crispy Chicken

Hey girls! My name is Amanda and I am a stay-at-home mom with three kiddos: Coleman (5 and just started Kindergarten), Spence (will be 4 in November), and Allie (14 months). My boys are the pickiest kids you will ever meet! My 5 year old can be brand-specific when it comes to some foods! I definitely have a challenge planning a dinner that everyone will eat, as I'm sure many of us do. Luckily, my husband, Brian, is the least picky person I've ever met. I decided to start with something simple that might win my gang over, and said a little prayer: Dear Lord, please let these nuggets taste like McDonald's to my kids, but much better to me!

For my first recipe I chose to make Crispy Chicken (pg. 114). Here's how I changed the recipe:

• I cut the chicken breasts into nuggets (I only used 2 breasts)
  
• Used seasoned salt instead of thyme and poultry seasoning

The ingredients

The preparation - I like to use a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper to keep breaded nuggets from sticking.

Ready to cook!

Done! Served with homemade mac-n-cheese, salad, and bread.

I had high hopes, but they were crushed as soon as my boys sat down to the table. Coleman had one bite, which I'm pretty sure he spit out, Spence wouldn't even try a bite, and Allie took a bite then let it fall out of her mouth. I thought they were OK. (Brian had a dinner meeting so wasn't here.) I have a recipe similar to this but it uses French's Fried Onions for the crust. It's much better. For some reason mine didn't come out very crunchy. Coleman even described them as slimy. I couldn't cook them any longer or the chicken would have gotten too dry. I did turn on the broiler, but I guess I could have left them a little longer. I will not be making this again, even though I thought they were fine. But since I have another recipe that I like better and the boys will eat, I'll stick with it. So here are my ratings:

Simplicity: 5
Taste: 3 (the boys would say negative 3!)
Nutrition: 3

For my next recipe, I plan on making the Apricot Salsa Chicken, with no hopes of the boys eating any!

Hey! My name is Melanie and I am a SAHM of a 4 year old boy named Kyle and a 7 month old boy named Travis. My husband, Kenny, is a Houston Fire Fighter, so needless to say, I am in a house invaded by boys!!!! I am always looking for new meals and I am excited to get started on this blog. My first try was on pg 174. It is Pasta with Marinara Sauce. I wanted something with meat, so I did a little bow tie lasagna using this recipe for the marinara sauce. Here is a pic of the ingredients:








Ingredients are:

• 2 lbs of hamburger meat


• garlic


• salt and pepper


• 2 bay leaves


• Italian Seasoning


• Onion Powder (I am not a big fan of cooked onions, so I just use onion powder.)


• Bow Tie Pasta


• Diced Italian Style tomatoes (undrained)


• EVOO

First, chop up about 3 cloves of garlic and saute them in some EVOO.

After the garlic has browned, add the onion powder, italian seasoning, bay leaves, and tomatoes. Simmer for about 20 minutes and let all of the flavors combined together







Then brown your 2 lbs of hamburger meat with a little salt and pepper and onion powder.



As the hb meat browns, bring some water to boil, then salt, then add your pasta and cook until al dente.

Then take two more ingredients:

• Sour Cream
• Mozzarella Cheese
  

Then take everything you have done, mix together in one big bowl, and serve!

Here are my boys reactions! (By the way...my oldest doesn't usually have a mohawk! We went on vacation, and let him do it for the weekend.)

Even though he didn't eat....I had to throw a picture of Travis in here too!

I enjoyed making this meal, but I think that the main reason was because the boys enjoyed it so much. It was a lot of "monitoring the stove", stirring, simmering, lots of stuff going on, but since they enjoyed it so much, I will put it in the dinner rotation.

Here are my ratings:

Simplicity 4

Taste 5

Nutrition 3

TOTAL RATING : 4

I recommend this recipe to everyone. It is a keeper!

My next recipe....Garlic Lime Shrimp!

Easy Pasta Alfredo

Ingredients
1 package (19 ounces) frozen cheese tortellini
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Cook tortellini according to package directions. Meanwhile in a small saucepan, combine cream and nutmeg. Cook, uncovered, over medium-low heat in butter until heated through (do not boil). Stir in Parmesan cheese until melted. Drain pasta; transfer to a large serving bowl. Add cheese sauce; toss to coat.

Simplicity: 5

Taste: 3

Nutrition: 2

Total Rating: 3.33

I thought this turned out okay. I didn't like it a whole lot, I think mostly because when I bit into one of the tortellini the hot cheese shot out on my tongue and burned it. So that kind of turned me off to it. Scott liked it though and it was really, really easy to make. I think next time I will let mine cool off a little more and then eat it! Ha!!!

Also, this has very little nutrition value, but it was easy to make. It was full of heavy whipping cream and cheese, which is really not great for you, but yummy to taste!

The Busy Family Cookbook

Welcome to the first post of Taste of Home: The Busy Family Cookbook cook-through! I am anticipating that we will begin in August. My thought is that whenever you cook a recipe, take a few photos and then come to the blog and post about the recipe. Tell us what you liked about it, what you didn't like, what you tweaked to make it fit your family, etc. Then rate it on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being worst and 5 being best).

I am hoping to cook 1 new recipe from it each week. Sometimes it might be more and sometimes less. So just do what fits your family! If you know of any friends that would like to join us, invite them too!

I can't wait to see the first recipe posted. So, let's get cooking!