Fried Okra

I love okra. It's incredible for being a slimy seed pod, don't you think? I made deep fried okra for the first time past night and I was incredibly pleased with the result.

What you need:

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup flour

1 cup yellow corn 

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon garlic powder

2 cups okra, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces

1 tablespoon salt

1 cup oil for frying

Large skillet

Spider

Large bowl lined with paper towels

Preheat your oil to 375 degrees.

Soak the okra in the buttermilk. 

In a large ziplock bag mix the flour, corn meal, pepper and garlic. Drain any excess buttermilk and put the buttermilk coated okra into the breading mixture. Shake well until all the okra is coated in the breading.

Pour the whole bag out into a pasta strainer over your garbage can to shake off any excess breading. 

Dump all the okra into your oil. Cook for about four minutes on each side, or until golden brown. 

Remove the okra from the oil with the spider and place them in the paper towel lined bowl to drained. Salt immediately.

There you have it! Another great dish from my kitchen to your table!

 

No Bake White Chocolate Pistachio Cheesecake

No Bake White Chocolate Pistachio Cheesecake

2 bricks cream cheese, softened

2 (3.5 oz) packages instant pistachio pudding mix

1 (12 oz) bag white chocolate chips, melted

1 (8 oz) tub cool whip

1 pre made graham cracker crust

1/2 cup pistachios, crushed

Mix first four ingredients with an electric mixer on medium until smooth. Fill pie crust and top with crushed pistachios. Refrigerate at least four hours before serving. 

I wasn't expecting much when I threw this together. Look how simple it is! But I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike a lot of no bake desserts, this cheesecake is dense yet fluffy and mimics the texture of a real baked cheesecake. It's wonderful. So there you have it. Another great dish from my kitchen to your table!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Crescents

This is the easiest recipe on my blog. Even easier than the mango sauce and that was literally only pureeing ingredients. 

You Need:

1 tube of crescent rolls

1 cup milk chocolate chips

1/2 cup of peanut butter

That's all.

 Before rolling up each crescent roll in the traditional way (big end rolled towards the small end) spread on one eighth of the peanut butter, and sprinkle 1/8 cup of chocolate chips onto the peanut butter. Roll them up and follow the  heating directions on the tube. 

You can eat these while they're ooey gooey warm and delicious but I actually found I liked them better cooled down, after the chocolate and peanut butter set up in that fantastic timeless flavor combination. Enjoy this quick and easy snack from my kitchen to your table. 

Spicy Sausage Potato and leek soup

We had a cold day. A cold awful day and I wanted soup. Which is weird because I don't like soup. So I looked in my freezer and lo! There was hot sausage. So that made me think of Olive Garden. They have this awesome potato and sausage soup. This is not that soup. But don't worry, it's still delicious.

You need:

2 cups of milk 

2 cups of water 

1 pound hot sausage

1 1/2 cups of thinly sliced potatoes

1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots

1/2 cup thinly sliced leeks

3 chicken bouillon cubes

Brown your sausage just barely. You want it partially cooked but not crispy. Break it up as much as possible. Drain off your grease and set the sausage aside.

In a large pot bring your water and milk to a boil. Add all your other ingredients, including your drained sausage. Season with garlic salt and pepper. Allow to boil until your potatoes and carrots are tender. It will take about 40 minutes. 

Serve with crackers. Or sandwiches. Or in a bread bowl. All of those options sound delicious. I also added a sprinkle of parmesan. Because yum. So there you have it! Another great meal from my kitchen to your table.

Cream cheese stuffed pistachio monkey bread

So that's one heck of a title huh? It's soooo good though. If not a little... Green. Guess who doesn't own a bundt pan. Yeah. Me. So I used my cute little, uh, 8x8 square brownie pan. Lame, I know.

So you start with 15 frozen yeast rolls. Follow the directions and let them rise naturally. None of this quick rise nonsense. Once they've more than doubled in size, rip those babies in half! Yay! Now we have thirty blobs of dough. Yes? Yes. 

Now cut a chilled brick of cream cheese into thirty pieces. Oh yes. 30. Easiest way to do this is to cut the brick into ten even slices and slice each slice into three slices. Slices slices slices! 

Now, flatten each dough ball into a disc. Place a slice of cream cheese on that disc. Cover the cream cheese. Roll back into a ball. Repeat 29 times!

Now take one cup sugar and three teaspoons of ground cinnamon and mix them together. Place this mixture into a bowl or plate. Roll each individual ball of dough into the mixture until it's all coated. Now place these coated dough balls into a greased pan. Once you complete a layer sprinkle two tablespoons of pistachio pudding mix over top of them, as evenly as possible. 

Then take half a stick of melted butter and pour it all over! The dough balls. Not like, on the floor. OR if you're lucky enough to have spray margarine in your fridge like I do, spray each dough ball twice. Yeah that unpleasant green color appeared didn't it? Still super tasty though!

Repeat this process for each layer. I had two. Bake your green blobs of deliciousness for 25 minutes on 350. Now you have all these puffy pull apart gooey tasty blobs that have melted cream cheese in the middle. Mmm! 

So there you have it! An easy snack from my kitchen to your table! 

Rainbow Cinnamon Rolls

Two blogs in one day? This girl is on fire. Please tell me you sang that. Because I did. Any Alicia Keyes fans? No? Ah well. 

Anywho. We start our cinnamon rolls with the dough. I cheated. Like crazy. Two cups of jiffy baking mix, 4oz cream cheese, five tablespoons sugar and 1/2 cup milk. Oh my good gravy Katelyn it's a sticky horrid mess! Well that's what you get for not reading the directions first! Don't go throwing all that together, it'll be awful, you'll cry. Or be mad and cuss me out. Both maybe.

Start by mixing your cream cheese into the jiffy mix. You'll get a crumbly moist mixture that holds together if you squeeze it but crumbles apart easily. Now add that milk. Oh holy tater tots it's STILL a sticky awful mess?! Why Katelyn why?! Yeah I noticed that it was horrid. So I added flour a tablespoon at a time until my dough came together in a nice soft not at all sticky ball. Took five tablespoons of all purpose flour for me. But I do suggest adding one at a time. 

Got a nice ball of dough? Good! Now flour your work surface and plop it out. Roll it out into a nice rectangle-ish shape. If you absolutely must have it a perfect rectangle go ahead and trim it into one. I did not. Lopsided cinnamon rolls for my family it is! Now take a heaping tablespoon of butter and smear it all over your faux rectangle. This will add ooey gooey later so don't skimp! 

Now sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar as evenly as possible. Now sprinkle 1/8 cup of cinnamon as evenly as possible. Now for the sprinkles. That's the rainbow part. I used rainbow non perils and they're so cute. But I bet rainbow jimmies would be awesome too. About a quarter cup of those. 

Now very carefully roll your rectangle up. Got a nice log? Good now slice it into twelve even pieces. Lay them onto a greased baking sheet and bake at 425 for 16 minutes. 

Could you ice these? Absolutely. I didn't but that doesn't mean you can't. 

So there you have it! A tasty and quick dessert from my kitchen to your table!   

Creamy Crock Pot Golumpki Casserole

I am aware that the picture above is less than appetizing. It's a rather nondescript bowl of reddish glop. But I'm telling you, it's rather delicious. Perhaps you're familiar with cabbage rolls, or as I grew up calling them, golumpkis? For those who aren't, a golumpki is seasoned ground beef, rice and onions held together with an egg, wrapped in a cabbage leaf, covered in a tomato sauce. Bake them until delicious and enjoy. There's parboiling of cabbage, rolling of the cabbage and meat mixture, so much work. Don't get me wrong. It's worth it. Sooooo worth it. They taste so good, you may want to slap your matka! Haha. Polish joke, because golumpkis are Polish? Eh my comedic genius goes ignored.

But in all honesty, I was busy today. And wanted golumpkis. No time for all the prep work. Hmmmm. So I turned to my beloved crockpot and had a lightbulb moment. I put my pound of ground chuck in the crock pot with three cups of beef broth, some garlic powder, dried basil, salt, pepper, onion powder and a tiny bit of chili powder. 

Let that cook for an hour before adding two cups of uncooked rice, a sliced medium sized onion and let that cook for two hours. 

Chop up about two cups of cabbage. I used red cabbage because I had it. Green is just fine though. Add your chopped cabbage into the crock pot and allow to cook for another hour. 

Your casserole is nearly done! Just add in one can of tomato soup, a tablespoon of sugar and four ounces of sour cream. Now sour cream isn't really a traditional part of golumpkis but mmm is it good! Let this cook another ten minutes and boom! A delicious and easy meal from my kitchen to your table!