Chicken Surprise Casserole

My sweet friend Annamarie brought this meal to us right after we had our son and it was so yummy. We have made it many times since because it is delicious! Our kids love it too. To make it easier on me I cook the chicken in butter and onions in the crockpot in the morning and then combine the ingredients whenever David is napping. Then around 4 I pop it in the oven. Super easy and really delicious! Thank you Annamarie!

Chicken Surprise Casserole
7 or 8 chicken breast halves (I have gotten away with only using 4)
1 box butter crackers crushed (about 2-3 sleeves Townhouse)
1 stick melted butter
1 can cream of chicken
1 can cream of celery
1 can water chestnuts, chopped (we don't love water chestnuts, so we just add more celery)
1 onion, chopped
16 oz sour cream
3/4 cup chopped celery

Cook chicken and shred. Saute onions in a bit of butter. Combine crushed crackers with melted butter, reserve 1 cup for topping. Pat remaining cracker crumbs into 13x9 baking dish. Combine chicken, soups, water chestnuts, onion, sourcream and celery and spread evenly over crust. Sprinkle reserved crumbs over top. Cover and bake for 30 mins at 350. Uncover and bake 5-10 mins longer. Eat alone, or serve with noodles.

Beef Strognaoff

My husband and I have always disagreed on strognaoff. I liked mine creamy and he liked his bold. Well one night I was making strognaoff for dinner and I decided to marry the two recipes. This is what I came up with and we haven't looked back. We love it and so do our kids! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Beef Strognaoff
1 lb ground beef
1 can cream of chicken (or mushroom)
1 packet brown gravy
4 heaping spoonfuls sour cream
milk
garlic powder
minced onions or onion salt
pepper

Cook and drain beef. To beef add soup and gravy packet- mix till smooth, then add sour cream and milk. Add as much milk or as little milk as you prefer. We probably add about 1/3 c. Add seasonings to taste. Serve over egg noodles, baked potatoes or rice and enjoy!

Mac and Cheese

I may or may not be baking this as we speak. Don't judge I am pregnant and a sandwich just wasn't going to cut it for lunch today. This recipe originally came from Rachael Ray. We discovered it 4 years ago and have been making it ever since. Check out the full original recipe here.

Mac and Cheese
1 pound pasta
Salt and black pepper
onion & garlic powder or salt
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk
3 cups cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 400. Cook pasta to just shy of al dente. While pasta is cooking start your sauce. Add butter to sauce pan until melted, add flour and cook for about a minute. Whisk in milk and season with seasoning, bring to a bubble. Once to a bubble turn off stove top and stir in cheese until melted. Once pasta is done combine the pasta and the sauce. Pour into baking dish and bake until bubbly and golden brown.

This has become a favorite recipe at our house. We love to make different variations. You can add whatever you want to it and you can use different cheeses to make more of a 3 cheese pasta or whatever kind you like. One of our favorites is using Parmesan cheese, then blending up spinach into it. We also love to add broccoli to ours. You can also add breadcrumbs or corn flakes to the top. The kids love this and so does my husband. Enjoy :)

Pineapple Raspberry Julius

When Walmart was out of most of orange juice concentrates and only had a bunch of GV ones covered in sticky juice concentrate I was bummed because I was craving an orange julius. I got home and decided to make a pineapple one instead. I found this recipe and added a little twist. It was so yummy! Even my kids were asking for more. 

6 oz. frozen pineapple concentrate
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1/4 cup powdered sugar sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
12-16 ice cubes
about 1 cup frozen raspberry

Add first 5 ingredients into blender and blend until well mixed. Add the ice cubes and blend until there are no ice chunks. I used the frappe setting on my blender. Next add the raspberries in and frappe again until they are well incorporated. Pour into desired cups and enjoy! Warning- if you don't want to share make it after the kids are in bed ;)

Wingers Sticky Fingers

For a year or so now we have been making Wingers sticky fingers at home. We started by just using the sauce we found here and putting it over pre-made frozen chicken strips. Well a week ago we found an amazing recipe here for the chicken strips so we started from scratch. I can say this has now been perfected and we are in love. It's a good and a bad thing that we know how to make these. Good because we can save money, bad because we will probably make them way too often. So here is the recipe. We hope you enjoy them.
Wingers Sauce
6 TBSP Franks Red Hot
4 TBSP water
1 1/2 c. brown sugar

Combine in a sauce pan over low heat until smooth.

Chicken Strips
Milk
1-2 Eggs
seasoning salt
flour
raw chicken tenders
vegetable oil

Start heating oil. Combine milk and eggs in a bowl, beat until combined well. Put flour in separate bowl, add seasoning salt mix together. Next drizzle some milk over the flour (about 1/4 cup) and mix with a fork.  It will make it slightly lumpy so that the flour sticks to the tenders better. Place chicken in the egg/milk mixture and let soak for 10 - 20 mins. Next dip the chicken into the flour mixture until covered. Place the covered chicken into the oil and cook until done. You will need to flip it over halfway through. When done, place on plate with a paper towel or on a cooling rack for a few minutes. You will then dip it in the wingers sauce. After the dipping is done you can either place it on your plate and eat it, or place on a non stick baking sheet in the oven on warm until you are done frying the rest. Then you can dig in. These are seriously exactly like the real thing. We still like to go out to eat at Winger's a few times a year, but this is great for a night at home. ENJOY!

Chicken Enchiladas

2-4 chicken breasts
2 10 oz cans green chile enchilada sauce
1/2 cup sour cream
1 can northern beans
tortillas (about 8)
cheese

Put chicken in crockpot with enchilada sauce. Cook on high for 3 to 4 hours or on low for 7 to 8 hours.

Take chicken out of crockpot and shred it. In crockpot mix sour cream with sauce. I used my little hand blender to make it nice and smooth. Put about 1/4 cup of sauce on the bottom of a casserole dish. Mix drained beans with chicken and about 3/4 cup of sauce. Take tortillas, place spoonful of chicken mixture in the middle of it, add some cheese, roll it up and then place it in the casserole dish. Continue this til you are out of the chicken mixture. Pour sauce over the tortillas. Sprinkle cheese on top. Place in oven at 350 and bake for about an hour.

Sticky Finger Rice Bowl

A few months ago I found an amazing Winger's sticky finger sauce recipe here. We have used it to make sticky finger salad and sticky fingers. It is the best. Well tonight I was craving the sticky finger rice bowl, so we made it :) Here is what I came up with.

Sticky Finger Rice Bowl

chicken cut into strips/pieces

rice

veggies

homemade wingers sticky finger sauce

First start making the chicken sauce. The recipe for the sauce can be found here. Here is the recipe so you don't have to go there to find it:

6 Tbsp Frank's Hot Sauce

4 Tbsp water

1 1/2 c. brown sugar

Heat all in pan until the sugar is dissolved. Instead of regular franks sauce we used their Red Hot Wings Sauce: Sweet Heat BBQ this time and it was sooo good. Regular Franks is amazing too.

Next cook the chicken in a few tablespoons of oil until done. Drain most of the oil. Add the sauce to the chicken and cook for a min or two, mixing well the whole time. Take pan off heat and mix a bit more. Let the chicken sit in the sauce for a bit.

In the meantime cook the rice and veggies. While rice and veggies are cooking- start the sauce to put on top the rice.

Sauce:

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
5 tablespoons packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
a spoonful or two of wingers sauce

Add all ingredients into a small sauce pan except 1/4 c water and cornstarch. Mix those together in separate bowl and then add to the rest. Bring to boil, then turn down to low and keep warm til everything is done.

Once rice and veggies are done plate up the food. Place desired amount of rice on plate, top with veggies, chicken and sauce and ENJOY!