Chicken Spaghetti Casserole
It’s been a busy month and while food is always a priority I haven’t been cooking much. For the past month I’ve been flipping a house … you’re becoming a regular Leona Helmsley, says a friend. Ha! So not. I’ve been doing a lot of the cleaning and detail work myself. AND I just got back from my first trip to New York City … My youngest son playing Carnegie Hall. Check out his site, here. Much adventure with a little stress calls me back into my kitchen for a little cooking/baking therapy. Okay, so my first recipe here isn’t spectacular. It is a kid’s favorite, easy to put together and feeds a crowd. I say it works for that potluck this summer. Spicy? no Chicken filled? yes You just have to try it!
I’ll be putting up photos of my house flipping soon. Here are a few of the before.
And guess what we found under this carpet! Yes, beautifully finished wood floors and more, here.
My food critic informed me his favorite deviled eggs are his Mother-in-law’s! But he doesn’t even like eggs! How can that be! Deviled eggs are a personal thing … there’s no one perfect recipe. My fav’s my Grandmother’s (can’t duplicate it) but you had to be quick to get a taste. I’m not exactly old fashioned but I love old fashioned recipes. I’ve gathered together a few I feel will please using cookbooks from the distant past. Choose one or two to try. And for that really special occasion use the sauce recipe too.
What to do with those hardboiled eggs! Here are some recipe ideas. Not just sides but main dishes too. I can’t pick a favorite because I love them all.
Nope, not Grandma Rose’s recipe but she’d rave about this if she’d a taste. A young friend who shares recipes with me now and again says this will be prepared as one of the meats served at Easter. Melissa’s family is right out of Terceira. She just had a birthday and complains she’s in her thirties. Ha. Albeit she’s been cooking since she was a child. Her recipes, yep I’ve tasted her Portuguese Beans, are a mixture of traditional Portuguese and well, American dishes. She tweaks her American dishes but her traditional dishes not so much. I tweaked this one just a little … lack of availability of slab bacon or “bacon steak” as Melissa calls it, and well, my handful of spices may be different from Melissa’s. Slab bacon isn’t really too difficult to find but I wanted to make the dish now … And not have to travel 40 minutes to our special Portuguese grocer.
Here we are about to sit down to our St. Patrick’s Day Dinner! The
A tweet shared with me goes something like this, “A Sister asked this Priest (apparently a good cook) for a kale recipe.” His advice … “Chop it up, toss it in the garden and grow something good!” I must say I’ve met more with this attitude about kale than not. As for me, I haven’t met a green I didn’t like! In this dish I simply sautéed the closely chopped kale separately and layered the pasta mixture right over the top. There’s just enough sweetness in the pasta sauce to counter the usual slight bitterness of kale. I love this dish for so many reasons. If you haven’t tried gnocchi shaped dried pasta you must. The pasta cooks up beautifully. And look how it holds the meat sauce perfectly!