Yummy Butterscotch Brownie Trifle

This blog is called ‘Yummy Butterscotch Brownie Trifle,’ because frankly, the sweet old lady who gave me the recipe never gave me the name of it.  I first tried this wonderful goodness at a Fall potluck at our old church several years ago.  It was covered in fall colors, the presentation was gorgeous and let’s not forget about the taste.  Oh the taste!   Delightfully simple, sweet and oh so fall-y.  I loved it so much that I hung around the empty trifle dish for nearly an hour after the potluck was over, just so I could meet the woman who made this tasty dish and see if she would mind sharing or swapping recipes.  Unfortunately, she never showed.  I tracked down a piece of paper and wrote my name, number and email address and taped it to the inside of the bowl, and to my surprise, two weeks later I got a call from her!  I made this at our Bible Study a couple weeks ago, and even though we were only about half the size we usually are, it was completely devoured by the end of the night.  So here goes!

 

One Brownie Mix (Should be more chewy, less cakey since it will be supporting pudding)

Whipped Cream (This is really to taste, but I use a ton.  Like at least a large tub’s worth)

Two small packages of Butterscotch pudding prepared with 3 cold milk

One package toffee pieces (Such as Heath Toffee Bits)

 

Make the brownies as per directions on the box.  The bigger the pan, the skinnier your pieces.  This must be AT LEAST a 9 x 13, if not a little bigger.  Cut the brownies into small pieces, like maybe 1 inch squares.   It’s also best to make these a little ahead, so that they have time to cool and harden up some.  It’s prettiest to use a trifle dish for this, but not necessary.  If you don’t have one, use a regular bowl, it’s going to taste the same  J  Layer in half the brownie pieces, then top with half the pudding.  Then top that with whipped cream, then half a cup (or more!) of toffee pieces.  Repeat this step and voila!  Now here’s a great trick.  Did you know that you can go to many of your local grocery store bakeries and buy their thick, fluffy, birthday cake worthy whipped cream for often less than the tub stuff?!  Yessiree, and it makes a WORLD of difference!  For those of you local to the Moore area, the Homeland on 119^th sells it super cheap!  I buy at least 2 lbs and pile it on!  Anyway, enjoy and let me know if you ever make this and what you think!

German Salad Seasoning (Zwiebel-Krauter) and Cooking White Rice

Tonight’s blog is mostly just for my benefit.  I want to remind myself which Knorr Salat Kronung I used, and what I thought about it.  While I was in Germany, I seriously bought no less than 50 little packages of salad seasonings, about 7 packages of each flavor the store offered (I also bought 100 euros of other groceries to fill the empty luggage that I had brought for that very purpose, but that’s another blog!).  And with this pregnancy, as with my others, I’ve had a HUGE aversion to anything vegetable-y, and I LOVE vegetables, so tonight I decided I’d use one of my salad packages to make myself eat something healthy.  Wow!  I LOVED this particular one and oh how I wish these were sold in the states!!  I used the Zwiebel-Krauter package that looks like this:

 

It was really, really good!  It was light, oniony, garlicky, and herby.  I cut up two vine-ripened tomatoes, thinly sliced white onion and quartered peeled cucumber, added the seasoning packet with a little less than a 1/4 cup water and equal parts olive oil.  Then I sprinkled some fresh cracked pepper on it, mixed  and mmmm mmmm mmmmm! 

OK so that was for my benefit, now I’ll add a little something extra for anyone reading  :)  We ate our salad with Tilapia, black beans and white rice, all of which are common in this half Venezuelan household.  I tell people that we eat rice at least three times a week, and almost every time their response is, “I don’t know how to make rice.”  So here we go.  White rice, Venezuelan mother-in-law style:

 

The thing to remember about cooking rice is it’s always a double water to rice ratio.  So if you want to cook 2 cups of dry rice, you’ll use 4 cups of water.  2 cups of dry rice will feed about 4 people.

The first thing I do is heat up a small sauce pan to medium-high heat with the kind you’d use to cook a box of macaroni or a couple cans of soup.  While it’s heating, get out your ingredients:  White rice, Minced garlic, chopped white or yellow onion (maybe about half a medium sized onion per 1 1/2 cups rice or so, this step is really to your taste), and salt.

Put a small amount of vegetable oil in the pan, and then add 1 1/2 cups of dry white rice and the onion.  Mix it until the rice is coated in the oil and the rice starts to brown just a tiny bit.  Then add slightly more than 3 cups of water (I say slightly more, since we added onion). 

Add about a small spoonful of salt and bring it to a boil.  Once it’s boiling, cover it and turn the heat down to low (this step is much easier with a gas stove).

 Cook until you no longer see liquid bubbling out.  If you accidentally cook it too fast, you will cook all the liquid out, and your rice won’t steam.  No worries!  Just add a little bit more very hot water and cover immediately and continue cooking.  If you end up with soft rice but still too much water, take the lid off and turn the heat up and the water will cook out in no time!

 It took me a few times of practice, but rice is super cheap, so you can practice away!!  I sometimes add green onion and shredded carrots, and this is way good too.  Other times I’ll use a different liquid, like green tomatillo or poblano sauce.  You really can play with it all you want after you get the hang of it  :)

Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana and Salad Dressing

OK, so I haven’t made anything new in the last few days, so I’ll blog about some things I made last week.  Last week was the first time this season that it really felt like fall, and it was lovely.  The skies were kind of grey and misty and even though it was warm outside, staring out the windows of my air conditioned house it looked cool and crisp.  What is it about grey skies that makes your 72 degree house feel like 60 anyway?? Plus, high 70s outside feels freezing compared to the 110 degree dog days of Oklahoma summers that we’re used to.  I got to thinking about when Ronny and I worked together at the Olive Garden, and how much I used to love to sit in the empty banquet room after a shift and hope that he’d come in and talk to me while I ate a huge bowl of salad, drenched in that drinkable dressing followed by a hot, spicy bowl of Zuppa Tuscana, YUM!  He’d pretend that he had tables to clean in there, though we both knew that room had been empty all day!  So I decided I’d try to recreate some of those memorable recipes using a little help from the good ‘ol internet. Here’s the original soup recipe:

 

Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana

·                     1 lb Italian sausage (I like mild sausage)

·                     2 large russet baking potatoes, sliced in half, then in ¼ slices

·                     1 large onion, chopped

·                     1/4 cup bacon bit (optional)

·                     2 garlic cloves, minced

·                     2 cups kale or 2 cups swiss chard, chopped

·                     2 (8 ounce) cans chicken broth

·                     1 quart water

·                     1 cup heavy whipping cream

 

Directions:

Chop or slice uncooked sausage into small pieces.

Brown sausage in your soup pot.

Add chicken broth and water to pot and stir.

Place onions, potatoes, and garlic in pot.

Cook on medium heat until potatoes are done.

Add sausage and bacon.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Turn to low heat.

Add kale and cream.

Heat through and serve.

 

So here’s how I changed it:  I used 1 lb of Italian sausage, 4 medium Russet potatoes UNPEELED, 1 small white onion, 5 strips of sliced bacon, 2-3 spoonfuls of minced garlic, lots of kale (veins removed and sliced thin like ribbons), 5 cups of chicken broth, 3 1/2 cups of water, 1 cup heavy cream and red pepper flakes to taste.  Don’t be surprised if you have to add some liquid to it, though, since mine could down really fast.  I browned the sausage in my soup pan and left it aside for a while, not draining it.   Then I cooked the bacon until kind of crispy, cut it into small pieces and left it aside.  Then I cooked the onions until transparent and added them and the cut up bacon to the stock pot.  Then I sliced up all the potatoes using my Pampered Chef slicer on the fattest setting, 3, or about 1/4 inch thick... leave the skins on!... it creates awesome ribbons in the soup that add texture and flavor. I sliced them lengthwise and then in half into 1/4 inch thick triangles. Then I put the chicken broth, minced garlic, and water and let it all boil for about 30 minutes, or until the potatoes were tender. Then I added the kale, heavy cream and red pepper flakes (maybe a teaspoon, I don’t know.  I eyeballed it and kept adding until it was spicy enough) and let simmer another 15-20 minutes or so until the kale was tender as well.  WOAH!  This was a PERFECT match!!!  I eat this soup every time I go to the OG, and I tell you, this was SPOT ON!  I was super impressed.  I took about a bowl’s worth and froze it, just to see if it would reheat well, and today I ate it and it was super delish! 

The next thing I made that day was a Copy Cat Olive Garden Salad Dressing recipe.  I used this one:

http://barenakedchefsaidso.com/2011/02/20/copycat-recipe-olive-garden-dressing/

Lemme just start by saying, Meh.  It was good, not great.  It made waaay too much, and it was a little too sour.  Ronny loved it, but I am still on my quest for the search of the holy grail of salad dressings.  I froze a little bit and I’ll keep you posted to see if it froze well or not, and it is good dressing, just not a copy cat.

But make the soup!  That was delightful went into my “Family Fav’s Tried and True” folder!

 

 

First time blog and Spicy Avocado Enchiladas

OK, well I'm a product of the 80s, grew up in the 90s, and I vividly remember when getting on the internet meant 20-minute hold times for connection and that no one else could talk on the phone while you spent 2 hours trying to visit three websites. That was back when all I cared about was correctly tying the framing of our bamboo fort and racing the streetlights home.  If you said “blog,” I’d probably have laughed at you and said, “You mean ‘pog,’ like playing pogs?”  Even a couple of years ago, when everyone seemed to be on the blog bandwagon, I yawned at the idea and silently chuckled at the thought of some Cosmo girl sitting in her city loft with her Caramel-Spiced Macchiato blogging away about her Cosmo life.  But here’s the deal:   Since the invention of Pinterest, I’ve come to realize how absolutely wrong I was about blogging, and how wonderful of an invention it is to us moms and wives who long for easy, taste-tested recipes with tutorials and pictures to go along with them!  So that’s what this is about.  It’s a way for me (I’m probably going to be the only reader anyway, and I’m ok with that  ;)  to try out, organize and record recipes that I’ve attempted, what went wrong/right with them, where I got them and how I’ll change them next time.  It’s more fun than the word document I’ve been keeping up with for years, and waaaay more fun than that huge box of barely legible, torn out magazine recipes I think I still have in the attic somewhere.  So here goes!

 

 

Spicy Avocado Enchiladas

 

I’m honored to be able to make this my first blog recipe.  I love every word in that title, especially the second.  I found this on the internet, probably Pinterest, and I made it last night for dinner.  It. Was. Divine!  I’ve made many ‘a sour cream enchiladas in my day, and I tell you, this was my favorite white sauce I’ve ever had.  It was spicy, creamy and oh so good atop those tasty, chicken filled enchiladas.  Here’s the original recipe:

 

Recipe Note: To make these as Spicy as their name, leave in the seeds in the Serrano Pepper and use a "medium" Salsa Verde. For those without the love of heat, seed the Serrano Pepper and use a "mild" Salsa Verde.

Ingredients:

for the sauce:
1 tablespoon butter
1 Serrano pepper, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp flour
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 cup medium salsa verde
1/2 cup fat free sour cream

for the enchiladas:
3 cups chopped cooked chicken breasts (about 4 breasts)
8 oz Cabot Monterrey Jack Cheese, shredded & divided
1 small yellow onion, chopped
3 avocados, peeled and chopped
8-10 flour tortillas

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a medium sauce pan, melt butter over medium-high heat. Saute serrano pepper and garlic, for 1 minute. Stir in flour, constantly stirring, and cook for 2 minutes. Whisk in the chicken broth, cumin, salt and pepper and bring to a low boil. Once boiling, whisk in the sour cream, salsa verde and cilantro. Remove from heat.

Spray/grease a 9×13 baking dish. Add 3/4 cup sauce to the bottom of the pan. Add chicken, Cabot Monterrey Jack Cheese, onion and avocado to the center of each tortilla and roll, placing seam-side down in the dish. Pour the remaining sauce over the enchiladas. Top with leftover cheese and bake for 15-20 minutes or until bubbling. Serve immediately.

 

 

Here’s how I changed it and what I’ll do differently in the future:  First, I left the seeds in the Serrano pepper.  Won’t do that again.  Hotchya Momma!  I may even only use a half of a seeded pepper, since it was so dang hot.  I used a salsa that I found at Wal-Mart that I’d never seen before and pray I see again called “Jardine’s Jalapeno Salsa Verde.”  It was super tasty.  I used two tablespoons of butter to sauté the peppers and garlic instead of just one.  I used regular sour cream instead of fat-free and I didn’t use Cabot cheese, because I couldn’t find any.  I just used Great-Value Monterrey Jack and I even used a tiny bit of cheddar too (I try to find any excuse to add cheddar to a recipe).  I marinated, grilled and shredded the chicken (I always keep marinated, grilled, shredded chicken in my freezer to pull out for recipes.  You can grill 10 lbs at once and keep it all frozen, saving yourself many hours in the kitchen repeating steps).  Oh, and most importantly, I used a TON of avocado!  Like, probably 6 avocados for 8 total enchiladas.  VERY yummy and next time I'll even use a little less chicken and maybe add some black or pinto beans!

 

Enjoy!