Swiss Chicken

Ingredients:

4 boneless chicken breasts

4 slices swiss cheese

1 can cream of chicken soup

1/4 can water

2 c. seasoned stuffing mix

1/3 c. melted butter

Directions:

Arrange chicken breasts in a shallow baking dish and place one slice of cheese over each piece. Stir soup and water together; spoon evenly over chicken. Crush, coarsely, the stuffing mix and sprinkle over top; evenly drizzle butter. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 55 minutes. Serve with rice.

*This was surprisingly VERY good! My husband took a bite and said "This Recipe is a keeper"! I only made 2 chicken breasts, topped each piece with 2 slices of swiss cheese and the made the normal size sauce. I actually could have used even more sauce so I would definitely double the sauce recipe if you make more than 2 breasts.

Recipe Exchange

I am very excited to start a Recipe Exchange group and get to know some new people and of course, get some new recipes. Before I get everything finalized, I would like to know if nights work better for most people or if the day does? If we have a balance of both, I think what I might do is do one month during the day and then the next month do it at night. If I do it on nights, it would have to be Tuesday night since that is pretty much the only night I have available. The other dilemma I have had is trying to figure out where to do it. I have wanted to start this group for a long time but wasn't sure what to do about the location. If we do a group where we can bring kids, it needs to be where kids can play and run around, but if we do a group at night, I think it should be kid free but people's homes still have kids.... so I haven't figured that out. I think the park here in the neighborhood would be a good location if we did it during the day, that way kids can run and play and the mom's can sit, eat and enjoy each other's company. (but the weather needs to warm up first!) Let me know what works best for you, Nights or Days?

To give you a little bit of background on why I am starting this group. I used to be the WORST cook on planet earth! I was awful! My poor husband didn't eat very well the first part of our marriage. After I stopped working, I decided to learn how to cook. I started off with easier things and learned to make them well and then I would "up" the difficult factor (still easy for others). After years of that, I started becoming a pretty good cook and now I love to do it. It has become one of my biggest priorities to make sure that we have a homemade meal every night and that we sit down as a family to dinner. I make it a goal every week to make a new recipe and I quite often will make a few new ones. We are not picky eaters so it makes it easy for us to try lots of new things. You do not have to be a great cook to be a part of this group. The nice thing about getting recipes from people you know, if you need some help on the recipe while cooking it, you have someone you can call for help.

We will be meeting once a month and every month we will have a different theme. One month it could be something like a Mexican theme where the next month could be a theme like Meals under 30 minutes or Favorite family recipe. We will have everyone copy their recipe and hand it out to those who come. If people can't make it and we have extra recipes, we can possibly stick them in the Relief Society binder or I might can type them up here and post them on this blog where I keep all of my favorite recipes.

I would like to start this month and keep it on the 3rd week of the month so let me know what would work best for you and we will try to accommodate as many people as possible.

I look forward to seeing all of you and eating some great food!

Thanks Everyone!

Mandarin Salad

Ingredients:

1/4 c. sliced almonds

1 T. plus 1 tsp. sugar

1/2 head lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces

1/2 bunch romaine, torn into bite-size pieces

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 T. green onion, thinly sliced

1 can mandarin oranges, drained

Dressing:

1/4 c. vegetable oil

2 T. sugar

2 T. cider vinegar

1T. parsley (dried or fresh)

1/2 tsp. salt

dash of pepper

Directions:

Cook almonds and sugar in saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until sugar is melted and almonds are coated; cool and break apart. Prepare dressing. Toss almonds with remaining ingredients and dressing.

Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas

Ingredients

1/3 cup honey

¼ cup lime juice (about 2 lg. Limes)

1 T chili powder

2 cloves finely minced garlic

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts cooked and shredded

12 corn tortillas

2 cups Mexican cheese blend

1 19 oz. can green enchilada sauce hot or mild

½ cup heavy cream

Non-stick cooking spray

1 T chopped cilantro

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the cooked and shredded chicken in a medium sized bowl. Set aside. In a small bowl, place the honey, lime juice, chili powder and minced garlic or garlic powder. Whisk together thoroughly to combine. Pour this mixture over the chicken and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to marinate while you prepare the tortillas, 30 minutes or up to 1 hour, in the refrigerator.

Heat a large griddle till a drop of water skitters across (about 350 degrees F). Spray the surface with non-stick cooking spray or oil it with a little bit of canola oil in between each round of tortillas. Heat tortillas about 20 seconds on each side till warm and flexible and some golden brown spots have appeared. Remove the tortillas from the griddle and keep them between a couple of paper towels until ready to use.

Spray the sides and bottom of a 9x13-inch baking dish lightly with cooking spray. In a medium bowl, combine the enchilada sauce and the heavy cream. Spread about ½ cup of the mixture in the bottom of the oiled baking dish. Add a large spoonful (about 2 tablespoons) of the chicken mixture to the center of each tortilla in a line. Cover the chicken with a large tablespoon of cheese, then roll the tortilla up from one side to make a rolled enchilada. Place the enchilada seam side down in the baking dish starting at one end with the long edge parallel to the longest side of the pan so that you end up with two columns of six enchiladas each.

Repeat with the remaining chicken, cheese and tortillas. You will use about 1 ½ cups of the cheese for the filling and set the remainder aside for topping the enchiladas in the pan. Add the remaining marinade mixture to the enchilada sauce and cream mixture, if desired. Pour this mixture over the top of all the enchiladas. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese.

Bake the enchiladas for 30 – 35 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbly and starting to brown on top. Serve topped with sour cream and cilantro.

* This recipe looks long & time consuming but the directions are just really wordy, it is actually very easy and very YUMMY! It is a little bit spicy, so if you don't like spice, cut down the chili powder. I made this with a side dish of Lime Cilantro Rice (1 cup of rice, 2 cups of water, ½ of a lime, juiced and 1 T of cilantro leaves) and it was a great combo.

Restaurant Style Chicken Nachos

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic, crushed

6 green onions, sliced, white parts and tops separated

3 T canola oil

1 shredded, cooked, whole chicken breast

salt and pepper to taste

1 cup salsa

1/2 (12 oz) package tortilla chips

1 (8 0z) package shredded cheddar/monterey jack cheese blend

1/2 large tomato, diced

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a 12 inch skillet over medium heat, cook and stir the garlic and white parts of the green onions in canola oil until tender. Mix in shredded chicken, salt and pepper. Toss until well coated with oil. Stir in the salsa.

Arrange tortilla chips on a large baking sheet. Spoon the chicken mixture over tortilla chips. Top with cheese blend and tomato. Bake in the preheated oven 10 minutes, or until cheese has melted. Remove from heat and sprinkle with green onion tops before serving.

*James was craving nachos for about a week or so a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to get online and find a good nacho recipe for him. This is what I found that sounded the best to me and they were really good. They definitely filled his nacho craving.

Valentine Cookies

For Valentines I decided to make the Fair Drop Cookies, just the sugar cookie part, and top it with the Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting and it was AWESOME!!!! I highly recommend this combination for any occasion. You can add whatever fruit flavor and change up the frosting and the color of it.

Orange Glazed Salmon

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs salmon fillet

1/3 cup orange marmalade

1/2 cup orange juice

1 T Dijon mustard

1 tsp. ginger

2 tsps salt free citrus-herb seasoning

Directions:

Rinse salmon fillet under cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Cut into 6 serving portions and place salmon fillets in a large zip-top bag; set aside.

In a small bowl stir together remaining ingredients. Pour into zip-top bag. Squeeze air from bag and seal. Marinate in refrigerator 30 minutes before cooking and bring to room temperature.

Light broiler and line baking sheet or boiler pan with aluminum foil.

Remove salmon from marinade and place on baking sheet. Discard marinade. Broil salmon 6 to 8 inches from heat source for 6 to 8 minutes or until cooked through. Do not overcook.

Serve immediately.

*This is a very good salmon that is a little bit different than any salmon I have made before. And it was very simple to make. I could not find the citrus-herb seasoning so I just made my own by adding some lemon zest, orange zest, thyme, oregano, basil, and rosemary to it.