Cream Cheese Chicken Roll-Ups

Good Evening! I am sitting here waiting for one of our fellow young married couples to come over so I decided to share with you what I decided to make tonight for dinner. I wanted chicken last night, but I did not get home from the office until 8 pm so I had a big bowl of sausage and cabbage soup (which is sooooo simple, light and delicious!) and pan fried potatoes.

My good friend Lisa invited me for dinner a few months ago and made these crazy amazing chicken "roll-ups", I like to call it, not sure if that's actually the technical term or not. I texted her and asked what she put in them and she stated it was mozzarella, cream cheese, garlic and some cream cheese then top with breadcrumbs and bake it for 20-30 minutes. So I looked on Pinterest and Google and couldn't find any good recipe that had the ingredients I had. So I decided not to waste any more time and get to the kitchen since my hubby would be coming home in like 20 minutes.

Here is what I came up with...

Gather:

1/2 green pepper

1/2 red pepper

1/2 onion

1 Tsp olive oil

3 or 4 chicken breast (3 will yield 6 roll-ups, 4 will yield 8 roll-ups)

4 oz. cream cheese

breadcrumbs at your discretion

1. Saute peppers and onions in the olive oil on medium-low heat until onions 

are transparent and the veggies are starting brown.

2. Turn off the heat and transfer to a small bowl. Wait a few minutes and then add 4 oz cream cheese (or more if you like your chicken more creamy. This was the perfect amount for my husband and my taste.)

3. Cut the chicken breast in half horizontally to make thinner.

(On left is the full size chicken breast, right is the already cut breast.)

4. Place a heaping spoon of filling onto each piece of chicken, roll up and finish it off with a toothpick.

5. Place on a sheet pan covered with aluminum foil (to save time on clean up) and sprinkle bread crumbs

over each of the chicken roll-ups.

6. Bake 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

Smachnoho!

Love,

Ty Leigh <3

Better than Auntie Ann's Homemade Pretzels!

Okay so about a month ago my parents were coming over for tea and I needed to make a dessert. I really didn't feel like having cake or brownies or cookies. I was craving something salty. I know my dad has a serious addiction to pretzels and I know how much he loves the near-by Amish pretzel's....so I thought to my self....Why not try to make some at home??!!! So I got out my yeast and started this simple recipe. This is my own version...did some minor tweaks to the original from Ourbestbites.com 

GATHER: 

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 Tbsp sugar

2 Tsp kosher salt

2 1/4 Tsp active yeast (or 1 package dry active yeast)

2 cups whole wheat flour

2  1/2 cups unbleached flour

2 oz unsalted butter, melted

Vegetable oil or PAM to bake

Parchment Paper

10 cups of water

2/3 cup baking soda

1 large egg yolk beaten with a Tbsp water

Cinnamon-Sugar pretzels: additional melted butter + cinnamon sugar

Salted pretzels: additional melted butter + additional kosher salt

STEPS:

1. Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. 

2. Add the flour cup by cup along with the butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. 

3. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. 

4. Remove the dough from the bowl, scrape the bowl clean and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for about 60 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size. I have found that if I put my oven on 250 degrees F for 5 minutes before I put the yeast dough in, that is the best technique to obtain a nice warm place. I also take pictures before and after the 60 minutes to see if it doubled. There is no need to punch down the dough.

5. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and either brush with oil or else spray with Pam.

6. Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in a large soup pot.

7. In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.

8. YOU CANNOT SKIP THIS STEP!!!!! Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Use a metal skimmer spoon to get the pretzels out. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with kosher salt or skip the salt and use cinnamon sugar. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

I'm back!

Good Morning!!

I have been wanting to get back into doing a blog for some time now. I forgot actually that I started this one in 2011 and now its the start of 2013 and so much has changed. Since my last post, I got engaged and then married!

January of 2012, January 14 to be exact, Greg proposed to me! It was a roller coaster experience trying to plan a wedding in 8 months along with mixing 2 different cultures and dealing with language barriers. In the end, it all worked out and ended up being such a beautiful wedding thanks to God sending all these little angles who pulled it all together. My husband and I both looked at each other at the end of our wedding day and said we would not do anything over because it was absolutely PERFECT. I really was a princess that day and feel like i was living in my own fairy tale story. 

For our honeymoon we went on a road trip through NYC, Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont, Quebec City and Montreal. Each stop was amazing and had something different to offer. We would love to go back up and do more hiking than just 1 day. Does anyone have any awesome places up north for hiking or even in the Delaware Valley? We usually go to Jim Thorpe area for hiking when we don't want to go more than 2 hours. But now that we are married, we can go more like 5 or 6 hours and stay the night someplace ;)

Okay enough wedding and honeymoon chatter and more blog related talk!

I don't know how often I will blog or want to restrict myself to saying what things I'll blog about, so I will skip over this conversation. However, I will warn you that most of what will be posted is going to be pictures of what I am up to with my husband and our family and friends along with recipes I use from my kitchen...or links to other blogs. I will confess that I never measure anything unless I am baking because in baking you must since it is a chemistry matter. So, it is going to be hard for me to start measuring things out and giving exact measurements and steps to my madness. I learned the right way to make a sauce, soup and all that good stuff....but it doesn't mean that I follow "by the book" rules. I pretty much do as I please. I am a home cook just like most of you, and prefer to just have FUN in the kitchen! I throw whatever random things I have in the fridge to perfectly fine "by the book" recipes to create my own flare. Sometimes this completely ruins the recipe, other times I have made an even better concoction in which I say to myself "why didn't anyone else think of this?"

I wanted to start this blog when I first started cooking for my husband because I wanted to track my own recipes and things I make. I made so many good things and I am afraid I am going to forget about something amazing I made that is worth making again. But because of life, and because I simply do not want to take pictures of the steps and have to measure everything out, I decided to put it off. Well now its been almost 5 months and if I do not start tracking my recipes now, I will regret it later down the road. I hope that you will enjoy my humor, maybe learn something from me and what I hope the most is that you all will comment and leave me tips and recipes to try as well! I would love to create a community of Christian, married, food-loving women who can have an awesome online friendship from all over the globe!

Love,

Ty <3