My Favorite Sandwich

And it includes my favorite vegetable… Tomato!! I’m a Southern girl, born and raised! I grew up eating fresh garden tomatoes from my mom’s garden or some other family member’s! And I still do, but now they also come from my friends’ gardens. I’m hoping to plant my own garden next year (we just got a house in February) and tomatoes are a must-plant!

2 slices of bread (the fresher the better!)
Mayonnaise (lite or reg., just not fat free)
1 Large tomato, thickly sliced
salt to taste

If your tomato is large enough to fit your slice of bread, you will just need 1 slice. It’s easier to eat that way too. Spread as much mayonnaise as you desire on BOTH slices of bread (my dad slaps it on thickly). Put your tomato on one slice and salt it lightly. Salt is required (unless you can’t have it, I guess).  Top it with the other slice of bread and enjoy that. My mouth is watering right now, thankyouverymuch!

Goes well with a glass of milk!

Nate’s Favorite Sandwich

I make this sandwich 4 days a week (unless we have leftover pizza) for my wonderful husband. I want to change it up, but he doesn’t. So here’s his favorite sandwich in the world!!

4 slices of thinly sliced chicken lunch meat (Or turkey meat usually. Or any other kind of lunch meat. Chicken is the best though!)
1 slice pepper-jack cheese (or sometimes cheddar cheese)
2 slices of bread
Hidden Valley Ranch (the good stuff!)
mustard
hot sauce

Lay out 2 slices of bread, pour on your desired amount of ranch dressing, put your slice of cheese on one side of the bread (sometimes I use 2, so one on each side if that’s the case), squirt some mustard on the cheese as desired, layer on the sliced chicken next, top that off w/ a few drops of hot sauce and top it with the other slice of bread (and cheese).

Nate also always gets some kind of chips. Two Dr. Peppers and two waters. Occasionally I’ll surprise him with a dessert or piece of candy.

Tomato-Basil Grilled Turkey & Cheese

My dear friend Jacky made this for Nate and me one evening. She used fresh basil from her garden. This was absolutely amazing! I made it at home a couple of times. (Once we had no mozzarella, so I had to use American cheese. Still really good!) I entered this sandwich recipe into a contest yesterday. Results come in today.

Tomato-Basil, Turkey Grilled Cheese
2 slices of bread
3-4 slices of Bryan sliced turkey
1 slice large tomato (fresh garden tomatoes are the best)
3-4 fresh basil leaves or 1-2 pinches of dried basil
sliced or shredded mozzarella cheese
butter

Butter one side of each slice of bread. Heat your skillet or griddle to medium-low. To begin layering the sandwich, put 1 slice of bread, butter side down on the heated skillet, then layer w/ the Bryan sliced turkey, as much cheese as you desire (my husband likes two handfuls of shredded cheese, I just go w/ one), 1 slice of tomato, and basil leaves to cover the tomato. Finally, put on the last slice of bread, butter-side up. Heat for a couple of minutes until the bottom slice of bread is golden, flip and press the grilled sandwich down with your spatula. Heat for a couple of minutes until the other slice of bread is golden.

I cut mine in half. Serve with chips and a sweet tea! 🙂

I’m back

After nearly a  yearlong absence, I have come back to the world of blogging!

I had to give this up for a while because I was planning my wedding and it was just getting too stressful to try to keep up with this so much. I wanted to do a good job and not just half par. I’m planning on changing up the way I do somethings and hopefully be a little more successful at this! 🙂

I’m married now and I love to cook and experiment on new dishes for my brave husband. So here comes the new Kim in the Kitchen!!

Some friends I met last year have inspired me (my small group really) to do some new categories. We did a different theme each Wednesday when we got together. They were “Eat Out Night,” Left-over Night,” “Soup and Salad Night,” that got changed to “Sandwich and Salad Night” once it got warmer, and then “Big Meal Theme Night.” It was really fun. I’m adding a sandwich and probably a soup category for when it gets colder out. Right now, it just as humid as all get out in Alabama!

Momma’s Meat Loaf

Here is the first official post of my family’s recipes. I posted the recipe for chicken and dumplings the other day without realizing that. I’m making meat loaf tonight for my friend that had a baby 3 weeks ago. My mom has made this ever since I was little and it’s probably my favorite thing she makes. Our recipe for meat loaf is very different than most peoples. We use oatmeal intead of bread crumbs. Don’t diss it just yet… I have a friend that hates meat loaf loves mine! Try it! You know you’ll like it!

And there’s something you need to know about most of my family recipes. We don’t measure. We use however much looks good to us. We know how much it needs to come out right. You just eye it. I’m trying my best to put this into amounts, but you may have to play around with it. Maybe next time I’ll try to measure everything, but please bear with me.

Momma’s Meat Loaf
1 lb. ground beef, thawed (ground turkey works well too!)
1/2-1 cup oats (either kind works… old fashion vs. instant)
1 egg
Ketchup
Salt, to taste
1/3 cup Onion, chopped (optional)
Bacon (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, place the ground beef, oats, egg, salt, onion, and about 1/2-1 cup of ketchup. (If it looks too dry, add more ketchup. If it looks too liquidy, add more oats. Use common sense here.) Mix with your <clean> hands. It’s kind of fun. Just make sure it’s all mushed together.

Next, place the meat loaf into a loaf pan or a small casserole dish. Bake for 30 minutes. You may need to drain some of the grease. If you’re using bacon, leave the strips long and just lay the raw bacon on the meat loaf. Then add enough ketchup to cover the dish. Use a spoon to spread it out. It doesn’t have to be too thick. Place back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes. Remove, let it set for about 5 minutes. Serve in 2 1/2 inch squares.

Serve with mashed potatoes and peas. Or with rice and green beans. Those are my favorites to eat with it. Top is off with a cold glass of milk.

Chicken and Dumplings

Hello food world!!

I had deserted you for way too long! I am back and ready for some good action!! So much has happened and I’m ready to get to cooking again! I’ve been in my kitchen a lot more recently!! I love it!

On Saturday, I hung out with some friends from church and they all just happen to be *Yankees*. I knew that a couple of them had never had chicken and dumplings and had talked about wanting to try it, so I made some from scratch! 🙂 If I may say so, they were quite wonderful!! I’m not really going to write a recipe on it, but I will tell you what I did/how to do them. Please let me know if you try to make these.

Chicken and Dumplings, made from scratch.

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken, raw & thawed
Water
Flour
Milk
Butter
Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Put whole chicken in a medium/large crock-pot. Pour in enough water until it covers it. Cook for a couple of hours or until the chicken is cooked thoroughly. Turn off the crock-pot and let it cool. Once it is cool enough to handle, place chicken on a plate or something where you can de-bone the chicken (you may even want to put the chicken in the fridge for just a little while to let it cool completely while you work on the next step). Save all the chicken broth.

2. Strain the chicken broth. (*Note: I didn’t have a good enough strainer, so I used a coffee cup to get all the “good looking” broth out before I tried to strain the rest.) Pour chicken broth into a large pot.

3. As you de-bone the chicken, place the chicken in the broth. Make sure the chicken is in bite size pieces. I just pull it apart with my fingers and toss it in there.

4. Now for the dough! This is probably the hardest part to explain because I didn’t measure anything… I’m pretty sure it was a little more than 2 cups of flour mixed with about a cup of milk and a half a cup of melted butter. If you’re not sure if that’s the right amount, it needs to have more flour than liquid. It needs to be really tough to mix. I just mixed it with a wooden spoon just enough to where it was all mixed. You may need to keep adding flour.

5. Put your pot of broth/chicken on the stove top and turn the heat to medium high until it starts to boil.

6. On a clean, dry counter top, sprinkled even more flour down and place the dough on top. You will want to be generous with the flour because that dough will soak it right up and it will stick to your counter. Rub flour on your clean and dry rolling pin. I also sprinkled more flour on top of my dough. Roll out the dough until it is about 1/8 inch thick. With a butter knife, cut the dough into 1 in. by 2 in. strips and place dough directly into chicken broth. Do this until you have used all the dough.

7. Add about a teaspoon of salt and about a 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, or as desired. Let this cook for about 20 more minutes. The dough will puff a little, and the broth will get much thicker. Serve warm.

**Props to Pam and Shala for letting me bum some flour from them. What wonderful neighbors I have! 🙂

Breakfast

HA! I think I’m going to make another category about making you jealous of me!

Today, we had an office-wide breakfast. I work in a very small office. We enjoy doing little luncheons where everybody brings something different. I always love these kinds of parties just so I can see what other people are going to come up with!

I used my homemade waffles recipe that is already posted on here. I got to use my Winnie-the-Pooh waffle maker. My boss kept saying he wanted a Tigger waffle, so I just flipped it over.

I also brought some syrup and milk. Julie brought fresh strawberries, strawberries and juice (made by putting sugar on it and letting it sit), and homemade whipped cream (just heavy whipping cream and sugar). Jacky made a Ham and Egg Frittata Biscuit casserole (chunks of ham, peppers, onion, and spinach mixed with egg and baked on top of biscuits flattened in a pan). Bev made a hash brown casserole (full of cheesy goodness!) and brought Simply Orange juice (my fave). And Cindy brought some turkey bacon and sausage AND reg. bacon and sausage.

Needless to say, I was not very productive for the 2 hours after that. I was so full and needed a good nap. I love parties. 🙂

Chicago Trip, Day 1

So, I just got back from a 3 day trip to Chicago. I ate so much food on vacation! This might be multi-part posting for the week! I’ll just start from day one. I’m not going to really talk about what we did, just what we ate since this is a food blog.

Breakfast: Just regular ole Honey Nut Cheerios and a banana

Snack 1: Ghirardelli Brownie Fudge Sundae – This was a large Ghirardelli brownie loaded with warm Ghirardelli fudge and 2 scoops of ice cream! I had to split this sucker with a friend because it was so intense. But it would definitely fill your sweet tooth! SO good!

Lunch: Hot dog w/ ketchup, mustard, and onions from Wrigley Field (that’s right, I went to a Cub’s game) – This was good, but I don’t think it was a true Chicago-style hot dog. I think I missed out on that one. Looks like I need to go back though! 🙂

Snack 2: McDonald’s Mocha Latte – We went to a 2-story McDonald’s that even had an escalator in it! The upstairs was a coffee/gelato shop. The mocha was priced pretty cheap (especially for Chicago), so I thought it would taste horrible, but I was sincerely impressed with it! Very smooth and full of flavor. Not bitter or burnt-tasting either.

Supper: Chicago-style, Deep-dish Mushroom and Cheese Pizza from Gino’s East – The service sucked, but the pizza made up for the experience! I learned that the sauce is always on top on a true Chicago-style pizza. I think because there is either too much sauce or too much cheese. Either way, it was delicious! I do think there could have been more mushrooms, but that might be because I’m a mushroom freak. I did enjoy the vast amounts of sauce and cheese though. The crust was something I wasn’t used to, however. I didn’t like the edges of the crust. Needless to say, it gets my stamp of approval (the pizza, not the restaurant). We split 2 deep-dish pizzas between 7 ladies. I think we had 1/2 a slice left. It was very filling. No dessert needed! 🙂

I’ll continue with Day 2 tomorrow!

White Chocolate Blackberry Scones

I just want to brag right now. I had breakfast with my dear friend Annie this morning and she made the most amazing scones ever! I had one with coffee this morning. She sent another one home with me. I just ate it after my lunch. I couldn’t make it last! 🙂

I’m trying to get the recipe from her. We’ll see if she’ll give it to me. I’m heaven right now!

That is all. You can comment about how jealous you are!

Going Green with Kraft Foods

I’m not a “green” person, but I do like to cut back on wasting things and saving money! I’m absolutely in love with http://www.kraftfoods.com and I found a link from their page about their new promotion for those “Green” lovers. It could just be a gimmick to get me to buy their water bottle, but I need a new one anyway. And it comes with free drink mixes (your choice of Crystal Light, Kool-Aid, or Countrytime Lemonade) and a coupon for a Brita water filter. I’m all for saving money… and the world!