Cranberry Almond Chocolate Clusters

This is a dessert I made for our Reformation Day potluck at church yesterday. Super simple. It's from Ellie Krieger.

Cranberry Almond Chocolate Clusters

Ingredients:

1 (6 oz.) pkg sliced almonds

1 cup dried cranberries

1 (11.5 oz.) pkg Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips (60% cocoa)

Directions

In a medium bowl, toss together the almonds and the cranberries. Line a baking sheet with waxed paper.

Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler over slightly simmering water, over the lowest possible heat, stirring frequently.

Stir the fruit-nut mixture into the chocolate. Spoon out heaping tablespoon-sized clusters of the chocolate mixture onto the baking sheet about 1” apart. Put them in the refrigerator to set for 15 minutes. Store and serve at room temperature.

Makes 24 clusters.

When I first told Jim that I was going to make this recipe, he wasn't that excited about it saying that he wasn't a big fan of fruit and chocolate combos. But after one bite, he was hooked.

This is one of the easiest desserts I have ever made. The original recipe called for whole almonds that needed to be chopped, but I thought slices would be easier. It also called for regular chocolate instead of chips, but Ghirardelli makes their 60% chocolate in chips, so why not?

It also called for dried cherries instead of cranberries. I'm sure it's good with the cherries, but with Thanksgiving coming up, I was in the mood for cranberries and they were really good in there.

These have all of the convenience of cookies (easy to transport, easy to eat w/o a plate, etc), but way easier than making cookies and way healthier than eating cookies!

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Cinnamon Roasted Chicken

This is part of a Better Homes and Gardens recipe I tried the other night.

Cinnamon Roasted Chicken

Ingredients:

4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves

1 tbsp vegetable oil

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 400°.

Arrange chicken breast halves in a baking pan. Drizzle chicken with oil and sprinkle with salt and cinnamon. Rub the spices over all sides of the chicken.

Roast in preheated oven 18 to 20 minutes or until no longer pink and juices run clear.

Makes 4 servings.

You would think that putting that much cinnamon on a chicken breast would make the flavor overwhelming, but it doesn't. It just gives it a nice subtle flavor. It's not spicy or sweet in any way. I cut the salt back a little bit from the original because we found it a bit salty, but other than that I didn't change anything.

I served this with the other part of the recipe, Pumpkin Sage Polenta. It made an awesome autumn dish.

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Pumpkin Sage Polenta

This is part of a Better Homes and Gardens recipe that I tried last night.

Pumpkin Sage Polenta

Ingredients:

1½ cups water

⅔ cup instant polenta

½ cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp poultry seasoning

½ tsp salt

⅓ cup cheddar cheese, shredded

Sage leaves for garnish

Milk, for thinning, if necessary

Directions:

In medium saucepan bring water to a boil. Stir in polenta until combined. It will thicken immediately. Stir in pumpkin, poultry seasoning, and salt. Remove from heat; stir in cheese.

Top with sage leaves if desired. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

Note: Polenta will thicken upon standing. If it gets thick before you are ready to serve it, stir in a little bit of milk to thin it out.

This is so good and takes all of 5 minutes to make. The original recipe called for using fresh sage instead of the poultry seasoning, but the store I went to was out of fresh sage (it's that time of year again!), and I don't really care for using it anyway. I can never seem to chop it small enough that it doesn't taste like I am eating chunks of a leaf. So the dried poultry seasoning was a good substitution.

Make sure you are using instant polenta, not regular. I had the hardest time trying to find instant polenta. I eventually found it at a specialty grocery store, then a few hours later found it at Meijer, just not where I thought it would be. I always looked for it in the baking section with the cornmeal. Regular polenta is in that section. But then I stumbled across it in the pasta section. I think it's kind of weird that it's in the pasta section, but I guess it's because it's considered Italian ethnic food. I had even asked store employees where to find it and they had no clue. So if you are having trouble finding it, look in the pasta section! Now that I have found it, I make it a lot. It's a nice alternative to the usual side dishes of potatoes, rice, and pasta. It makes really good comfort food and Jim likes it in the morning with a fried egg on top.

Like I said in the recipe, it thickens up immediately. And as it sits, it gets thicker. So don't start this until right before you are ready to serve. I was serving it with chicken, and my chicken took about 5 minutes longer than the recipe stated, so I stirred in a little bit of milk to the polenta to loosen it up a bit before serving.

I served this with the other part of the recipe, Cinnamon Roasted Chicken. It made an awesome autumn meal.

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Glazed Salmon with Broccoli Rice

This is a dish that my husband found online and tried last night. It's from Real Simple.

Glazed Salmon With Broccoli Rice

Ingredients:

¼ cup brown sugar

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 cup long-grain white rice

1 head broccoli, florets only, chopped (about 2 cups)

4 pieces skinless salmon fillet

1 large shallot, sliced

1 tbsp olive oil

kosher salt and black pepper

Directions:

Heat broiler. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and soy sauce. Set aside.

Cook the rice according to the package directions, stirring in the broccoli during the last 5 minutes.

Let the rice and broccoli stand off the heat until the broccoli is tender, about 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

Meanwhile, place the salmon and shallot on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with the oil and season with ½ tsp salt. Broil until the salmon is opaque throughout, 8 to 10 minutes, spooning half the soy sauce glaze over the fish during the last 2 minutes of cooking.

Serve the salmon and shallot with the rice and the remaining glaze.

Makes 4 servings.

It was pretty good. I thought the glaze was just a tad on the sweet side, but not bad. Jim said he had trouble getting the brown sugar to completely incorporate to the soy sauce, so he thought next time it might be good to heat it up a little bit so that the sugar melts.

The other thing he mentioned was that the broccoli was a bit undercooked. It was supposed to be added 3 minutes before the rice was done, so next time he suggested adding it 5 minutes before.

The original recipe called for red onion instead of the shallot, but we didn't have red onion and Jim likes shallots better anyway. It was really good with the shallot.

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Gnocchi Mac and Cheese

This is adapted from a recipe I saw in a magazine I get, Cuisine at Home. It's like a baked macaroni and cheese dish, but uses gnocchi instead of the macaroni. Comfort food at its best!

Gnocchi Mac and Cheese

Ingredients:

16-17 oz. gnocchi

2 tbsp butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp flour

1¼ cup milk

2 cups Fontina or Monterey Jack cheese, grated

⅔ cup soft bread crumbs

⅓ cup parmesan cheese, grated

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°. Coat a 1½ quart baking dish with cooking spray.

Cook gnocchi according to package directions.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Whisk in flour until it thickens and bubbles, then slowly whisk in milk. Increase heat to high and continue to whisk mixture and cook until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes.

Turn heat down to low and add cheeses, ½ cup at a time, stirring until melted before adding the next ½ cup. When cheese is completely melted, remove from heat and add gnocchi.

Pour into prepared baking dish. Combine bread crumbs and parmesan and put on top of gnocchi.

Bake until cheese is golden and bubbly, about 25 minutes. Let it rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Makes 4 servings.

This is so good. Not something I would make every week, but like I said, comfort food.

I did make a few changes from the original recipe. It called for a total of ½ cup of cheese. ½ cup? For 4 servings? That would mean that each serving would have only 2 tbsp of cheese. I would expect a dish that has "cheese" in the TITLE to have a bit more than that! I was really surprised the first time I made it and it only had that much cheese. I also increased the sauce because it didn't even make enough to cover the gnocchi.

The other thing I changed was adding the soft breadcrumbs to the topping. The original recipe called for just Parmesan cheese. But I always like a breadcrumb topping on traditional mac and cheese, so I thought it would be good on this. And it is.

The last time I made this I used whole grain gnocchi and that was just fine. Gnocchi comes in many different varieties, and any of them would be good in here.

The gnocchi are dark colored because they are whole grain.

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Apple Cider Chicken

I can't take credit for this one; my husband made it. I have a cold and wasn't feeling like making dinner last night, so Jim stepped in and did it. Usually when he does that, he will make something easy, or something he made up, but last night he decided to go with the recipe that was on my meal plan. It's from Sunny Anderson.

Apple Cider Chicken

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp butter, divided

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

½ Vidalia onion, chopped

1 Granny Smith apple, cored and sliced into ¼" wedges

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp dried thyme

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp flour

1½ cups apple cider

Directions:

Heat oil and 1 tbsp butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper, add to pan and sear until golden, about 4 minutes each side. Remove chicken from pan, and set aside. Add remaining butter and onion, apple, garlic, thyme and bay leaves. Sauté until apple begins to get color and onions soften, about 6 minutes. Add flour and stir 2 to 3 minutes. Nestle chicken back into pan, add cider, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook until chicken is cooked through, about 12 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.

This was really good. The perfect fall dish. I asked Jim if there was anything about the recipe he would change, and he said there wasn't. The only thing I would change is to remove the apples before serving. They got really soft and mushy and they looked kind of unappetizing in the finished dish. With the green skin, they looked a lot like green peppers in there! So I would suggest taking them out of the sauce before serving. Other than that, it was perfect. It was slightly sweet, but not overwhelmingly so.

We served this with stuffing (Stove Top now has a reduced-sodium variety that is really good). It went really well with the chicken. This would also be good with pork chops or turkey cutlets.

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Baked Stuffed Apples

If memory serves me correctly, this was the first Rachael Ray recipe I ever tried. I made it for the dessert for a dinner party we had when we lived in Texas. I hadn't made it in years, but I've been in such a fall-themed mood when it comes to food, that I decided to bust it out and dust it off.

Baked Stuffed Apples

Ingredients:

6 medium McIntosh apples

2 wedges lemon

6 tbsp butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

¼ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp cinnamon

½ cup walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts, finely chopped

½ cup flour

¼ cup oatmeal

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425°. Trim bottom of apples. Cut tops off. Hollow out inside. Rub tops and cavities with lemon. Combine all other ingredients. Mixture should be crumbly. Pack into apples. Place apples in a shallow baking dish and add ¼ cup water. Bake 17 to 20 minutes until filling bubbles and apples are tender, not soft.

Serve with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce, if desired.

Makes 6 servings.

My recipe is a little bit different from Rachael's. Hers had raisins in it. And the serving size has been adjusted from 4 to 6 because, like I said, I originally made it for a dinner party. Last night I made them for just the two of us, and I halved the filling recipe. The apples I used were tiny (I get little ones for Lena), so I made 4. And I still had some filling left over. If you are serving these for guests, try to get medium or large apples.

These are so good served with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. We didn't have any caramel sauce, so Jim made some from a recipe he found online.

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Curried Honey Baked Chicken

This is a recipe I tried last night and loved. It is adapted from one on Allrecipes.

Curried Honey Baked Chicken

Ingredients:

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup honey

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

1 tsp curry powder

4 chicken breasts

Directions:

Combine olive oil, honey, mustard, salt, and curry powder and stir to combine. Place mixture in a large resealable plastic bag and add chicken. Toss to coat. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350°. Place chicken in a shallow baking pan lined with foil. Drizzle marinade over the chicken.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink.

Makes 4 servings.

This chicken was so good! I never would have thought to pair honey, mustard, and curry, but it is great on chicken. If you are worried about it being hot, it's not. Well, I guess it depends on what kind of curry you use. If you use a spicy curry, then it would be, but I use a sweet curry. It's basically all of the flavor without all of the heat.

The original recipe called for using a whole chicken cut into pieces. I don't like doing that, and several reviewers said that they made it with boneless skinless breasts, so that's what I did. I halved the marinade and doubled the curry. It was perfect.

The original recipe didn't call for marinating, but it was suggested by reviewers. I didn't get to marinate mine for a whole hour (it was probably only 15 mins), but I think that would make it even better. Make sure you put foil on your pan because the honey will burn (on the pan, not on the chicken), and it would be very difficult to clean.

The first time I made this, I used butter like the original recipe called for. But then I was wondering if it would work with olive oil instead (especially since it is supposed to marinate in the fridge), so I tried it that way tonight. Just as good and a little bit healthier.

So glad I found this recipe. I'll definitely be making it again.

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Slow Cooker Loaded Baked Potato Soup

This is a recipe adapted from one I read in a new cookbook, The Everything Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook. The author has a food blog, Coconut and Lime, where she posts her original recipes. The book is great, because it's an entire cookbook of slow cooker recipes and not one of them includes cream of mushroom soup as an ingredient! The recipes are all healthy and very creative.

Slow Cooker Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

½ large onion, diced

4 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed

5 cups water

1 tsp salt

1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

½ cup sour cream

4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled

½ cup green onion, sliced

Directions:

Place the onions, potatoes, water, and salt into a 4-6 quart slow cooker. Cook on low for 7 hours, or high for 4 ½ hours.

With a ladle, remove some of the cooking liquid and set aside. Either mash potatoes using a potato masher (for a chunkier soup), or puree using a stick blender (for a smoother soup). Add more cooking liquid until soup is desired consistency. Stir in the cheese, sour cream, bacon crumbles, and green onion.

Garnish with more cheese, bacon, and green onion, if desired.

Makes 6 servings.

Okay, so my version isn't quite as healthy as the one in the book. I increased the sour cream (reduced-fat is fine), cheese, and bacon. I know, I know, but it's cold outside and I need comfort food! :) The other thing I changed is the amount of salt. The recipe in the book called for ¼ tsp. ¼ tsp for 4 large potatoes? Who could eat that and not find it bland?

Overall, I loved this soup. Mashing it with a potato masher was my idea; I like a few chunks of potato in my soup and I didn't really feel like digging out the stick blender. Taking the cooking liquid out was my idea too; it just looked so watery before I mashed the potatoes that I was worried it would be too runny. So I took about two cups out and saved it. Then after mashing, I started adding it back, and actually ended up adding all of it back. But it's a good way to customize the consistency. I loved the raw green onions in it; it really made it taste like a loaded baked potato to me. But Jim doesn't like raw onions, so I only put them in my serving. Then I chopped up a few more and put them in a container in the fridge for when I had leftovers.

I'm sure I'll be making this again throughout the fall and winter. I had planned to serve this soup with sandwiches, but when it was done, it looked so good that we had no interest in sandwiches and ate the soup all by itself.

Again, I highly recommend this cookbook if you are a slow cooker user. I found about 30 recipes in there that I want to try eventually!

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Barbecue Chicken Pizza

Everyone needs easy, fast, go-to meals that can be made with pantry ingredients for busy evenings. This is one of mine.

Barbecue Chicken Pizza

Ingredients:

2 cups chicken, cooked and diced

½ - ¾ cup of your favorite barbecue sauce

12” pizza crust (homemade or store-bought)

½ cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

Ranch dressing, optional

Cole slaw, optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Combine chicken and barbecue sauce. Spread evenly over pizza crust. Top with cheese.

Bake for about 10 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Serve with ranch dressing for dipping or cole slaw for topping, if desired.

Makes 4 servings, two slices each.

Note: If you are using a homemade crust, you will need to adjust the baking time. The store-bought one that I use is pre-baked.

Like I said, this is a great go-to meal because everything comes out of the pantry (except the cheese, but I always have cheese in the fridge!). Here is the crust I buy at Meijer:

In the past I have made my own barbecue sauce, but then we found a store-bought one that we really like. It's Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Chipotle. It is really good. Sweet, but with quite a kick from the chipotle. In the summer, we went through about two bottles a month!

I like my pizza dipped in ranch dressing. There is something about the combination of the sweet and spicy from the pizza with the creamy and cool of the dressing. Really good. Jim likes cole slaw on his barbecue sandwiches, so this time I made some cole slaw to go with it and he put it on top of his pizza. He liked it.

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