Cheesy Potato Casserole

A while ago I was miserably sick for a few days. As such, I wasn't eating much, unless you count liquid cold medicine and herbal tea as food. But one day I decided enough was enough, and I simply had to have something to eat. Which meant I really wanted total comfort food. And since I had bought two giant bags of frozen diced potatoes for a potluck that never happened, I decided I needed to make a huge cheesy potato casserole.

It was glorious!

Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

I love stuffed mushrooms. I could happily eat them with every meal, because there is a pretty much endless variety of things you can stuff them with. I was particularly intrigued by these because of their almost nil carbohydrate count, and also because I have a weakness for both cream cheese and blue cheese. Put that all together, and it's a match made in heaven.

Not my recipe... This one was posted by kberry at Recipezazz.com.

Flourless Crust Pizza

I've discussed before how sometimes you run across a recipe and it simply demands you make it because it's so goofy you cannot conceive of how it'll work. This is another one. Pizza with no flour in the crust? What?? Even as I was making it I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. And it's not a cauliflower crust, either, although I will be making one of those in the relatively near future as well.

It's not that we ever ate a ton of pizza, it's that having to cut out virtually all the carbs killed eating pizza ever for us, because the tradeoff wasn't that great. And as you know, being told you can't have something makes you want it constantly, even if you normally wouldn't have wanted it at all.

Streusel-Topped Banana Tea Bread

Everybody makes banana bread, right? There are only so many ways to make it, yet there are a bajillion recipes online and elsewhere, each of them marginally different. Mine is no exception, although the base recipe comes straight out of my mother's 1952 Watkins Hearthside Cook Book. I've added a streusel topping, which I think pushes this over the top from an excellent banana bread to a fabulous one.

Peas and Baby Portabellas

For a while I was absolutely obsessed with baby portabella mushrooms (which I found out are also called cremini mushrooms, and that opened a WORLD of recipes to me). They were on sale almost every week, and I couldn't get enough of them. During that period, I ran across this recipe and it sounded like a neat way to eat them but also get some colour and texture variety onto our plates.

As you've probably guessed, this isn't my recipe. It was posted by LindasBusyKitchen at Recipezazz.com.

Avocado and Lime Bread

Do you ever make something purely because you cannot fathom how the heck it will work, or why anyone would have ever though of putting those things together and eating them? That's how I ended up making this bread. Avocados were on a killer sale (which doesn't happen often where I live), and I was about guacamole-d out so I was wandering around the internet looking at approximately 14 million avocado recipes.

And then I saw this. And said right out loud, "Wait. What? That's goofy!" And I knew I had to make it. Recipe comes from My Kitchen Affair.

Grandma Unrath Salad

Every family has traditional dishes, but I'm guessing mine isn't the only family that has these goofy things that people from outside look at us like we've lost our ever-lovin' minds for eating. We've always called this Grandma Unrath Salad, and everyone in my family knows exactly what you mean when you say it.

Grandma Unrath was my maternal grandmother (her last name was from her second marriage and nothing to do with us). If we were having a holiday dinner at Grandma Unrath's, we were having this salad. Every single time, without fail.

I have to admit, when I was a kid I hated this salad. Hated it with a mad passion. Would sit at the table for hours, pushing it around with my fork, until finally my mother gave in and let me get down. Now I make it on holidays on purpose. I've not only grown to love the salad, but making it reminds me of her. I like to think wherever she is, she's smiling at the fact that we always have it (along with some Aunt Nellie's sweet & sour red cabbage... that was also part of dinner at Grandma's).

Apple and Thyme Chicken

This is a recipe I actually made last September, but apparently never posted anywhere. That happens sometimes, especially when I get busy. But the bonus is now I'm reminded of it and will most likely end up making it again in the relatively near future. As opposed to a great number of recipes I've been making and posting lately, this one is actually diabetic-friendly.

It's not my recipe. It comes from Diabetic Lifestyle.

Brown Ale and Cheddar Soup

It's winter, and that means I want comfort foods. Soup is especially good, and while I love making it I often don't have an entire day to spend watching over it. This was not only amazing tasting, but it took barely over an hour to make... which in my world is unheard-of for soup!

The original recipe is not mine, it comes from From Away, but I did modify it a little bit to suit what I had on-hand without having to run to the store. It's soup. Who makes soup the same way twice anyway?

Holiday Peppermint Fudge

I have a love-hate relationship with fudge. I love to eat it, and my standard for excellence is Mackinac Island fudge... when I was a kid we used to go there a lot, and one of my favourite things was to watch them making fudge, with the wooden paddles on marble tables. And then eating freshly made fudge was total heaven!

And then there's the hate part. I hate making it. Anything that requires a candy thermometer is not my friend. Either I end up with a chocolate rock or I end up with something you can eat with a spoon, suitable only for ice cream topping.

This is neither. This is fudge, with the texture I love. And tasty! And easy. Also, it's not my recipe... it comes from Skinny Ms., and I couldn't be more pleased to have found it.

Crock Pot Chicken and Noodles

Winter time is comfort food time. All I want is a bunch of carbs and cheese and cream sauces and almost anything I can eat out of a bowl with a spoon. When I started this project it wasn't going to have noodles, although I had though I might serve it over some brown rice. But after it cooked for a few hours I realized it was going to be way too much liquid, so I decided noodles would maybe not be so bad. And really, the nutrition information is pretty good, at least if you ignore the sodium.

White Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Cookies

You know those recipes that you make once and know immediately that you're going to love them forever and ever? This is one of those recipes. I love pumpkin, I love white chocolate, and I love cookies. What's not to love about the recipe? They even last for a couple of weeks (assuming you don't eat them all immediately) when kept in a plastic container, and they freeze well!

Here's where I admit this isn't my recipe. It comes from Recipezazz.com. I have made a couple of changes to it, however... I make the cookies a lot smaller than it calls for and I always double the batch, so I usually end up with about 85 cookies instead of the 24 it says it makes.

Cream Cheese Walnut Drop Cookies

It's probably a good thing I only ever make these for Christmas, or I'm terribly afraid I would be an even larger size than I am already. These are one of the three kinds of cookies I absolutely MUST make every year, because they're not only easy they're amazing. Imagine cheesecake in cookie form, and you're getting close.

The recipe was not originally mine, it came from Food.com. But I've re-written the instructions a bit. I also always make a triple batch, because they're so very tasty.

Lucky New Year's Stew

Tradition says New Year's Day you're supposed to eat greens and black-eyed peas to ensure good luck and prosperity in the coming year. Usually I make Hoppin' John (and yes, I do serve the leftovers on the second and call it Skippin' Jenny), but this year I wasn't that into it. Instead, I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen putting together something I decided to call Lucky New Year's Stew, and it was amazing! You don't have to trust me, either... even my mother said it was good, and she usually doesn't comment on anything I make.