Homemade Candy!

I got this recipe from my friend Shannon, who I write about quite a bit on my main blog. I don't know if I ever mentioned it on here, but Shannon and I lived together for about 6 months before Jeff bought a house and asked me to move in. I came in one night and she was making this candy. I tried some, loved it, and asked her for the recipe! She said her sister used to make this during the holidays, and now that her sister is sadly no longer with us, she makes it to honor her. It's so good and such an easy recipe! I make a batch for my family and Jeff's family every Christmas and everyone loves it!

You need:

• 1 8 x 8 pan 1 stick of butter 
• 3/4 cup of brown sugar 
• 1 cup crushed nuts. I used walnuts, but you can use pecans of whatever you want! I also tend to just pour in almost the entire bag because 1 cup doesn't cover the bottom of the pan and I don't like that.
• 2 cups of chocolate chips. I used milk chocolate chips, but you can use semi sweet as well. I personally hate the taste of semi sweet.

Pour the nuts into the pan, making sure the entire bottom is covered.

Melt the butter on lowish heat. I tend to set it to the notch just below medium. DO NOT do it on high like I did the first time a couple years ago! The butter/sugar combo was black, burnt, smelled awful, and I set off the smoke alarm!

Once the butter is completely melted, add the brown sugar in and stir. You have to stir it constantly for 7 minutes with a fork which will make your arm tired, but it's important. The butter will kind of sit on top of the sugar until it's stirred for a few minutes.

This is about 6 minutes into stirring. I like to call this the "brain stage." This is how you can tell it's almost done! This mixture tastes like toffee.

Pour the butter/sugar combo onto the nuts. Try to get it somewhat evenly on all of the nuts (if you're not perfect, no worries.) It's trickier than it looks because the mixture tends to move in one huge piece.

Pour the chocolate chips on top. Be sure to spread them so the entire thing is covered.

Cover the pan for a couple minutes.

Use a spatula to spread the somewhat melted chocolate chips across the entire thing, then re-cover the pan.

Put the candy in the fridge for several hours so the chocolate hardens.

Cut the candy up into pieces. Sometimes it breaks on its own when you're cutting it. I suggest putting a cutting board under the pan if you used a foil one like I did. I learned the hard way that the knife will cut through the pan and onto your counter which makes some unattractive scratches! You may also notice some nuts that didn't stick to anything leftover in the pan. I like to eat them afterwards! :)

Wrap up in a cute container or just eat them and enjoy!

Chicken Dumplings

Another chicken dish! All we eat at our house is chicken or turkey, we're very picky! Anyway, I got this recipe from my mom and I think she got it from Rachel Ray. It's pretty easy to do and tastes sooooo good!

You will need:

* 2 cans of cream of chicken soup

* 1-2 packs of crescent rolls. I did 2 because we love having leftovers!

* Chicken broth, which I forgot to buy, so I just used a can of soup. Get the smallest can of broth you can find because you only need a tiny bit!

* Chicken breasts. I chose to get a rotisserie chicken because it was easier for me. You can easily cook chicken breasts and slice them up, I just wanted to take out the extra step of having to cook the chicken, and it HAS to be cooked before you make the dumplings!

Coat the dish with about 1/2 can of cream of chicken soup.

Put some chicken in the middle of each crescent roll. You want to put enough to get the taste, but not too much where you can't close the dumpling!

Close the dumpling up! There's no special way to do this, just wrap it up! They will all look different!

Use the remaining 1 1/2 cans of cream of chicken soup to cover the dumplings, then pour a little bit of chicken broth on top. Be careful not to do too much otherwise the dumplings will be really soggy!

Cook at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes until the tops are golden brown.

Enjoy! I chose to make corn with ours dumplings since I love the flavors together, but you can do whatever you want! This meal is kind of fattening, but so yummy and filling! This is one of our favorites!

Pumpkin Dip

Jeff and I are throwing a Halloween costume party tomorrow night for a bunch of our friends. I found this recipe for pumpkin dip. It tastes like liquid pumpkin pie and is to die for! This took like 10 minutes to make and was so incredibly easy!

You will need:

* 1 8oz. package of cream cheese (softened)

* 1 150c. can of pure pumpkin

* 2 cups confectioner's sugar

* 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie seasoning

* 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

* 1 teaspoon frozen orange juice from concentrate

Put cream cheese and confectioner's sugar into a bowl.

Mix until creamy and well blended.

Gradually add in the pumpkin.

Add in the spices and orange juice. I found that the Kitchenaid Mixer didn't mix it perfectly, so I had to stir it too. This made A LOT of dip! We plan to serve it with honey graham crackers and Nilla Wafers! 

Chicken Barbeque

In an effort to work on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days I decided to use my Cooking Light Slow Cooker Cookbook (which I registered for and got as a bridal shower gift) to make a meal called Chicken Barbeque.

What you will need:

* 1/2 lemon sliced and seeded (I used a whole one because we love lemon!)

* 1.5 cups cut onion (I don't like onions very much, so I left this out)

* 3 chicken breasts, each cut in half

* 1 bottle (18oz) of BBQ sauce (your choice of brand. I used Sweet Baby Ray's)

* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

* 1/2 cup of Coke (NOT DIET! It has to be regular Coke!)

* 1/2 cup water

Put the sliced lemon into the crockpot. Hopefully you can slice it more evenly than me!

Place the chicken breast halves on a slice of lemon. This made the chicken have a hint of lemony taste and it was sooo good!

Squeeze the entire bottle of BBQ sauce into a bowl.

Add in the 1/2 cup of Coke and stir until blended.

Pour the mixture over the chicken and cook on HIGH for 1 hour. After that, cook on low for 3-4 hours. The cookbook told me to do 4 hours, but we found that the chicken was a bit overcooked, so I will definitely shorten the time next time I make this dish!

Once chicken is tender several hours later, remove it with a slotted spoon (so you preserve the sauce) and put it aside. Get the lemons out and throw them away.

Put the flour in a bowl and gradually whisk in 1/2 cup of HOT water.

Mix the flour/water mixture in with the leftover sauce from the crockpot. Turn the crockpot back to HIGH and stir occasionally for about 10 minutes. The sauce should be nice and thick, that's how you can tell that it's done.

It will look something like this.

Not sure why this pic won't go horizontally! Anyway, spoon the sauce over the chicken, serve with a veggie of your choice and enjoy!

Jeff and I really liked this and will definitely eat it again. I just need to make sure not to overcook the chicken! Since there's not a ton of liquid in with the chicken, it dried out, so one less hour would have made a huge difference!

Italian Dressing Chicken

A fellow camp director brought this meal in for lunch, and I commented on how delicious it smelled, so she let me taste it and gave me the recipe! I'm not entirely sure where she got the recipe from, but it's easy, yummy, and healthy if you use low fat ingredients and brown rice instead of white (which I did not do!)

Ingredients: A pack of boneless, skinless, chicken breasts, minced garlic (you can use chopped too), rice, Italian dressing (I used fat free), Swiss cheese.

Cut the chicken breasts up into cubes, let them cook in a pan for 5 minutes or so.

Add in the entire bottle of Italian dressing (I probably could have gotten away with using 3/4 of the bottle) and some garlic. I just used a little bit of garlic. The amount you use is a matter of preference!

Cook the chicken covered on medium heat for about 25-30 minutes. Stir occasionally.

At the very end, top with Swiss cheese and let melt for about a minute. (I took Jeff's portion out before I did this. He HATES Swiss cheese!) I put 5 slices on, which was probably too much, especially with some of the chicken already out of the pan, but I love Swiss cheese! Again, the amount you use is personal preference!

Serve over rice and you're done! Jeff and I absolutely loved this dish and ate it really fast! We had some leftover, and it's just as good the following day for lunch!

New Recipe Finally!

I have another chicken (of course) recipe I will post about as soon as I get home from Baltimore! It was delicious!

Poppy Seed Chicken

I stole this recipe from Kelly's Recipes, so the credit goes to her, but this dish was so yummy, both Jeff and I hoovered it!


Ingredients: 2-3 chicken breasts cut into chunks, 2 cans cream of chicken soup, Ritz crackers, 1 16 oz. sour cream, poppy seeds (2 tablespoons), rice, 1 stick of butter (will be melted eventually).


Cut the chicken breast into chunks and put them in a baking dish. I sprayed my dish with butter spray beforehand.


Mix the 2 cans of cream of chicken soup and sour cream together. The 2 tablespoons of poppy seeds get mixed in here too! You can also add more poppy seeds if you want!


Spread mixture on top of chicken, crumble Ritz crackers and spread them over the mixture, melt your 1 stick of butter, and pour all over the top. Bake at 350* for about 30 minutes.


I made rice to go along with it and put my chicken all over the top of it. Jeff likes his rice on the side and he always pours soy sauce all over it!


Delicious dinner, and we have so much left over that we have another meal for the week!

Pecan Crusted Chicken

This was pretty easy and I made it up as I went along. I made some mistakes, which I learned from for next time, but it was still delicious!


All the ingredients you need (I wound up needing 2 bags of chopped pecans, and I used breast tenderloins since they're smaller.) Make sure you really smash up the pecans more, I didn't and they had a hard time sticking at first.


Mix together 3 eggs.


Spray your baking dish! (I used olive oil spray)


Spread the pecans out on a plate.



Take each piece of chicken and dip it into the eggs. Make sure you cover the entire thing!


Put the chicken in the pecans and make sure you cover both sides!


I noticed the pecans weren't sticking to the chicken well, so I ended up putting pecans at the bottom of the dish, and I took all the extras and covered the top of the chicken then sprayed with more olive oil spray. It worked out very well! Cook at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.


These are Lipton chicken flavored noodles. So easy and yummy! These take about 7 minutes to cook. Don't minde the awful aluminum foil. I'm begging Jeff to get rid of it and just buy new burner covers of whatever they're called!


I also made some frozen green beans (which are sprayed with butter spray, that's why they look kind of funny in this picture.) The chicken needed some sort of sauce, so I used Duck Sauce and Jeff used Teryaki. Both were excellent!