Sunday’s opening Bears home game was Liam’s first, and we sure enjoyed dressing him in his little Bears jersey for the first time and watching the game together as a family. Liam is a pretty adorable little Bears fan, if I do say so myself.

To celebrate the return of football I decided to try my hand at making cheddar beer soup and homemade soda bread to eat for lunch during the game. I got the recipes from watching Claire Robinson’s Food Network show, 5 Ingredient Fix, the other day. Everything turned out really great; I followed the recipe for the soda bread exactly and formed two small rounded loaves from the dough instead of one larger loaf so that Lucas and I could make bread bowls for our soup. (This turned out to be a great idea, by the way.) The bread was the perfect density for a bread bowl and sopped up the flavor of the soup well.

For the cheddar beer soup we used Newcastle brown ale, whose nutty flavor blended nicely with the extra sharp cheddar cheese. I used whole grain flour instead of the all purpose white flour that the recipe called for in the thickening process, and I liked the whole grain texture that this produced. And speaking of the flour, we made sure our tablespoons were heaping, based on the recipe reviews that I read ahead of time. It seemed a lot of people took issue with the soup being too thin when made as written; heaping tablespoons gave us the perfect consistency, though.

One of my favorite parts of cooking together with Lucas is how we discuss the food we’ve made as we eat it, and talk about how the flavors turned out. For these recipes we talked about how different beers and/or cheeses in the soup would change the flavor and what combo we’d like to try next time. The recipe calls for 2 cups of cheese, and I think one thing we decided was that we’d want to add even more when we make it again. The soup was perfect in the bread bowls, and it’s definitely a fantastic football Sunday meal that we’ll make again and again, especially as we head into cooler weather.

Here we are, about mid September, and we haven’t begun packing yet. We close on the house on September 29, and we’re planning to make the move on October 5. This means we have just a few short weeks to get everything together! (Thankfully my mom is coming up to help watch Liam so I can get some packing done.) Then once we move, that gives us 5 days to get settled in the house before I return to work from maternity leave on October 10… nothing like cutting it close, huh? Speaking of returning to work, part of me is ready, but part of me is sad that these days cuddled with my tiny, precious little boy all day is coming to an end. He’s growing up so fast! I’ll also miss watching non-stop Food Network while nursing, too, but one perk to the move is that I’ll  be able to act on all of this foodie inspiration in my huge, brand new kitchen with my boys. The layout of the kitchen and living room is an open concept plan, which means we’ll be able to cook and interact with family and friends at the same time now; I’m so excited because this is without a doubt where we spend the most time. It won’t be long until Liam can help mama in the kitchen, too!

We’re going to be pretty busy the next few weeks but we’ll be sure to tell you all about it once we’re settled and back into the swing of things!

I found out quickly that not all bell peppers are the same, and I greatly prefer the orange/yellow/red ones to the green. We’ve included colorful bell peppers 3-4 times a week lately in our cooking, and can’t get enough of them. I feel like now that my eyes and taste buds have been opened and reintroduced to this gem that I should try them in a wide variety of ways except stir fried, (which is how we typically have them) and so we decided to try our hand at stuffed bell peppers to give peppers a chance as the main course instead of just a side dish.

For some reason, ricotta and spinach seemed like a perfect filling in our peppers, but I also wanted some protein so we opted for a little lean ground turkey. Without really having a “recipe” we just sort of threw it all together and LOVED the results! Here’s what we did:

Ingredients
bell peppers – we used 1 green, 1 orange, and 1 yellow
small tub of ricotta cheese
1/2 lb of lean 93/7 ground turkey
1/2 package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed & drained
parmesan cheese
olive oil

Directions
While the ground turkey was cooking thoroughly in a pan on medium heat, we preheated the oven to 375 F. Next we sliced the peppers in half from top to bottom and cleaned out the stem and seeds to make little pepper “boats” for our stuffing. In a mixing bowl, I combined the ricotta, spinach, and freshly cooked ground turkey. I added a little Mrs. Dash, pepper, and basil to the mixture while Lucas lightly brushed the outsides of each pepper boat with olive oil. We filled each pepper with the stuffing mixture and placed them in the bottom of a shallow, foil lined baking dish. Just before we threw them into the oven, we sprinkled each stuffed pepper boat with a little parmesan cheese. 30 minutes at 375 F seemed perfect; the smell will make your mouth water.

Like I said, we loved the result – per usual, we found that we preferred the yellow and orange peppers to the green; it seemed like the flavor cooked right out of the green peppers, but the orange and yellow ones were delicious. Though baked for 30 minutes, the peppers still had just enough “crunch” to keep them from being too soggy. It was just right. In hindsight, we could’ve used a little bit more spices; while we try to avoid salt, a dash seasoned salt on mine was good, but I would definitely season the stuffing mixture a bit more than I did for next time. Experiment with some of your favorite seasonings to give the mixture more flavor.

Speaking of next time, I think we’ll try some smoked sausage as a protein, too. When I mentioned our peppers at work, one of my co-workers said she usually puts some kind of rice as the base of her pepper stuffing. See, the possibilities are endless! Maybe we’ll have to try rice sometime, too. A sausage and rice stuffing with the right spices could be sort of like a jambalaya filling. I look forward to having bell peppers be the star of the meal more often in a wide variety of ways. :)

I headed over to AllRecipes.com to look for the highest rated guacamole recipe they had. I know guacamole is avocado based but that’s the extent of my knowledge on the subject. We went with this guacamole recipe, and bought some fresh ingredients.

Initially, I imagined having turkey burgers and putting the guacamole on them as a condiment. But we also had two lonely chicken breasts in the fridge that were begging to be turned into something, so I turned my attention towards combining guacamole with chicken in a flavorful way instead.

We’ve done a lot of variations on stuffed chicken breasts or pork in the past, so why not guacamole stuffed chicken breasts? It was really as easy as it sounds. And by stuffed I should probably clarify and say “roll ups” because technically we rolled the guacamole up inside of the chicken breasts. Whatever you call it, plenty of tasty guacamole oozed from the chicken. So good!

Guacamole Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Ingredients

• Guacamole, freshly made from your favorite recipe. We used this one.
• boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• mayonnaise
• seasonings to taste or even breadcrumbs if you’d like
• salsa

1. Make the guacamole ahead of time, or open a jar of your favorite brand and set aside. Homemade would be the best, though!

2. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Using a meat tenderizer, pound the chicken breasts really flat and thin. You’re going to be rolling them up, so the thinner the better!

3. Spread the guacamole on the top of each flattened chicken breast. Begin from one end and roll the chicken up completely; you may need a toothpick or two to secure. I used one, even though the guac acted like “glue” and held the chicken together pretty nicely without. I used quite a bit of guacamole on each chicken breast so they didn’t roll beautifully, but I like guac and in the end this was irrelevant to the taste anyway!

4. Brush on a thin coat of mayonnaise to lightly glaze all sides of the rolled chicken breast. This will lock in moisture and also help the seasonings stick. We used Mrs. Dash Tomato and Basil Garlic seasoning to go sodium free, but you could also use salt and pepper or garlic powder or something. You could even coat the chicken in seasoned breadcrumbs at this point if you preferred. The mayo will help hold them on.

5. Place the chicken breasts in a shallow baking dish in the preheated oven and bake for 30 minutes uncovered.

We didn’t have any at the time that was low sodium, but we REALLY wanted to pour some salsa over the top of the chicken a couple minutes before the end of baking, though it would have also been good added right after taking the chicken out of the oven. Either way, salsa on top would finish it off nicely. We omitted the salsa this time, but will definitely be sure to have some for next time!

The chicken had such a delicious, juicy flavor, and it was bursting with tasty guacamole. We served it with steamed golden corn and enjoyed every bite. :) Hope you like it, too!

The best part to me about stir frying is that it can be healthy. Even though it’s got the word “fry” in there, it’s not the greasy, deep fried food that may come to mind first. We normally start with a little bit of olive oil and some crushed garlic and then stir in some chicken or beef. We’ve done fresh white shrimp a few times lately, too, but we throw those in a little closer to the end since they take such a short amount of time to cook through. Once the meat is mostly cooked, we add freshly chopped veggies. And just like that, we’re looking at a really healthy meal; and the stir fry then is the perfect vehicle for a wide variety of sauces. (Which may or may not always be as healthy, but do add flavor!) To stay low sodium, we’ve done some low sodium teriyaki sauce and even balsamic vinegar reduction to spice up our stir fry.

Last night we tried making coconut curry sauce. We used the coconut curry sauce recipe we found at Real Simple, which true to name, really was simple! Lucas did a stir fry with chicken and shrimp, and instead of just using our fall back of bell peppers as the veggie, we did an orange bell pepper, snow peas, and some broccoli florets. While the food was cooking, I whipped up the sauce, which took a total of 3 minutes to make. Really. (They weren’t kidding when they put it on Real Simple!) We also cooked up some whole grain brown rice to have ready.

The sauce was divine. I was surprised when I tasted the light coconut milk because it wasn’t sweet. I don’t know what I was expecting; I’d never had it before, but I love coconut and am usually exposed to sweetened coconut. I really loved that the coconut milk was definitely coconut flavor without the sweet. It along with some soy sauce makes up the main base of the sauce. With yellow curry powder, it was incredibly tasty and fragrant. We’re curious now to try other colors of curry to see how the different types taste. Isn’t it fun to try new things?

Dinner smelled and looked so good when we put it all together that I forgot to photograph the finished dish, but I’m sure you can imagine how beautiful a big bowl of brown rice topped with colorful stir fry and a creamy coconut curry sauce ladled over top looked. It tasted even better! I’m a little jealous that Lucas will be eating the leftovers for lunch today; I’m secretly hoping we can make it again sometime this week.

As far as notes or changes, we decided to serve the stir fry in a big bowl so that we could mix everything up really good and get that sauce on everything. The brown rice soaked it up well. As a side note, we served the sauce hot, and even though we did boil it for a minute and a half to help thicken it a bit, it thickened even more as it began to cool. I think the leftover sauce is going to be even tastier the next day because of that. It was considerably thicker after it was removed from the heat and had a chance to rest. So you may wish to make it up a little ahead of time and set it aside while finishing up if you like a thicker sauce. I also forgot to add the basil at the end of the sauce cook time, so that was an unintentional change we made to the recipe, but there was so much flavor going on between everything that I didn’t notice until afterward when I was looking at the recipe again. We learned that snow peas and small broccoli florets don’t need quite as much time as the bell peppers to cook, so next time we’ll throw those in maybe even after the shrimp so that they don’t get too soggy. The sauce had a little kick; this may have been due to the amount of curry powder (or type of curry we used) or the red pepper flakes, so if you want to tone it down a bit you may want to use a little less curry and perhaps omit the red pepper flakes entirely. But as a pregnant woman who can’t do anything spicy right now, I had zero problems with the spiciness level of the sauce. You may wish to test as you go if you’re apprehensive, and add more curry or add the red pepper flakes to taste.

I think if I’m going to do curry, I’d want it in a sauce cut with coconut sauce. It was that good. The sauce was creamy with a curry kick without being too overpowering. The last time we did a curry recipe it was pretty strong, even for someone that likes curry. If you’re looking for something different, I highly recommend the recipe; I know it will become part of our regular rotation around here!

Ok so the title is Heavenly Chocolate Orange Cake, and you’re probably wondering where the chocolate orange cake comes in while I’m babbling away about colorful bell peppers and stir fry. When we decided to make a fresh new meal, my stipulation was that we also crafted some dessert to go with it. One of my favorite flavor combinations of all time is orange and chocolate together. We decided upon cake, so I started scouring the internet for recipes. Believe it or not, I had a hard time deciding on one. While reading reviews of the various renditions on AllRecipes.com, I picked up a lot of feedback on each recipe and decided to just throw together techniques, ingredients, and suggestions from approximately 5 different recipes (including suggestions from Twitter!) to create our own version of the chocolate orange cake. We crossed our fingers and began mixing the batter.

Heavenly Chocolate Orange Cake

Preheat your oven to 350F and grease a large bundt cake pan. I also lightly floured it.

Ingredients:
1 package yellow cake mix
2 2oz packages of chocolate pudding mix. We used Jell-O brand sugar free cook & serve
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp orange extract
1 cup orange juice, no pulp

Combine ingredients in your mixing bowl and beat for 2 minutes at medium speed. Scrape the sides of the bowl and make sure everything got mixed well. Pour into the greased and floured bundt cake pan, and bake for 35 – 40 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Orange Glaze
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter

Mix the glaze ingredients in a small saucepan until boiling, then boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.  Remove from the heat and stir frequently until ready to use.

When the cake is finished, pull the pan from the oven and let it rest for around 5 minutes, then dump it onto a large plate. While still warm, poke holes in the top of the cake and pour the orange glaze evenly over top so that it can soak into the cake. You may or may not use it all; use as much of it or as little as you want to saturate the cake to your liking. Let cool. Serve. Enjoy.

This being a test recipe, I decided not to make the glaze this first time around so I could see how well the texture and flavor of the cake came out on its own. I thought it was lovely. The flavor was delicious, and the glaze would add a little extra moisture and orange zing. The house smelled so divine while making this, and since we opted not to go with the glaze this time, we served the cake up with a scoop of orange sherbet instead. That was heaven on a plate. Or in a bowl, as we served it.

Would we change anything? Initially I thought of using instant chocolate pudding mix instead of the cook & serve, but in the end I’m not sure it would make much difference either way, but we may try using instant next time just to see. We will definitely make the orange glaze next time, and/or maybe toss just a dusting of powdered sugar on top to finish it off. But no matter how we garnish, we’ll definitely be keeping the scoop of orange sherbet to accompany the slice!

So while cooking and baking was not on our initial rule list that included only video games, knitting, or napping for this relaxing weekend… we really love cooking together. It truly makes us happy and puts us in such a good mood. And then we talk about the food as we eat and plan what we’ll do next time to make it even better. It was the perfect ending to our day, and now we’ll snuggle while we digest another delicious meal that we made together.

We’re happy to report that Lucas’ condition continues to improve every day, and he’s almost 100% back to normal. While it’s possible he won’t have to be on a restricted sodium diet forever, this little brush with kidney problems has made us both a lot more aware of how much sodium we’re eating each day, and it’s been an eye opening experience. It feels like there’s sodium in everything, and quite often a lot of it, too. It’s helped us get back to cooking with more raw ingredients and being more aware of what we eat. So just because Lucas may not have to keep his sodium at a minimum any longer doesn’t mean we don’t want to keep track of it and try to cut out as much excess sodium wherever we can. We’re still preparing low sodium dishes and finding ways to cut sodium from our regular favorite recipes, and today is no exception.

This is actually the second time we’re prepared tonight’s dish, with the first time being just this past week. Yes, it’s that good. Tonight we prepared Broiled Parmesan Tilapia, and it’s seriously the best way I’ve had fish in a long time. We used fresh tilapia fillets from the seafood counter at our local grocery store along with real lemon juice, parmesan, and mayonnaise. It’s a fast dish, too. Since you broil the fish, it takes around 10 minutes to make, start to finish. Really! While the broiler was pre-heating, I mixed together the parmesan mixture. After the first 6 minutes in the broiler (3 mins per side), I pulled the fish out long enough to scoop the mixture on top – but before I did, I splashed the tops of the fillets with a little extra lemon juice because I found it helped make the thick parmesan concoction spread easier. Plus you can’t really go wrong with a little extra hint of lemon when it comes to fish, if you ask me.

The result is a golden fillet with irresistible flavor in every bite; not too fishy. Last week we paired our fish with mixed brown rice and veggies; this week we went with just a mountain of green beans because we had larger fillets. Both times were pure perfection.

To lower the sodium in this recipe, which wasn’t too bad to begin with, we used unsalted butter and celery seed instead of celery salt. Depending on your parmesan cheese you can get this down to around 200 mg of sodium per fillet. Being paired with fresh veggies (sans salt) or whole grain brown rice means you’re not adding any extra salt to dinner, either. Win-win! This will definitely be in our usual rotation; it’s delicious!

Lucas got the results of his kidney biopsy yesterday, and we’re happy to share that the damage to his kidneys is not permanent. It’s called Minimal Change disease, and it means that the blood vessels in his kidneys have little gaps between them suddenly, like a gate that’s ajar. Those gaps between his blood vessels have been allowing protein to spill out. This lead to his fluid retention problems, sudden high cholesterol, and Nephrotic syndrome that was diagnosed in the hospital. The treatment is a high dose of steroids over the next month, which should shut the gates and close the gap between the blood vessels in his kidneys so that they don’t leak protein anymore. This will make his swelling go away, and the damage will be repaired. For now he just needs to keep his feet up and stay on the blood pressure medication and cholesterol medication until he’s back to normal. It’s the best news ever, and the best Valentine’s Day present a girl could ever ask for. Hooray!

So we’re still keeping our sodium in check around here, and will most likely continue, which means more recipes to discover and explore on our low sodium journey. One site that I’ve snagged a few recipes from the past week or so has been from LowSodiumCooking.com, which is where I found the two free recipes we tried out today, including Savory Beef Stew and Amish White Bread made in the bread machine.

Savory Beef Stew – 111 mg sodium/serving
Upon first inspecting this recipe, I was a little puzzled by some of the seasonings used. Ginger? Cumin? Instant coffee? Brown sugar? They sounded a little strange for a beef stew broth, but I admit when I followed the recipe and mixed up all of the spices in the low sodium organic beef broth & diced tomatoes, it smelled strangely familiar and very beef-stew-like, if that makes any sense.  We didn’t have allspice so I just omitted it. I also adjusted the amount of low sodium beef broth by increasing it to 2 cups instead of just 1, since I like a slightly soupier beef stew. On the quest to find low sodium beef broth (and chicken broth, for other recipes) we found that even cans in the soup aisle marked low sodium were just too high in sodium. A quick trip to the organic aisle of our grocery store uncovered Imagine brand of organic low sodium beef broth, which was amazing at only 140 mg of sodium per cup. We also used red potatoes, because we really enjoy those over the traditional large brown baking potatoes. The recipe calls for slow cooking the beef stew all day, and it smelled so good. This pot of beef stew serves 6.

Thoughts
This stew was good. The broth was slightly sweet, which didn’t bother Lucas at all, but was something I wasn’t expecting. Not that it was a bad thing, but I wasn’t really prepared for sweet when eating a beef stew. I’m guessing that it’s due to the 2 Tbsp of brown sugar as called for in the recipe, and perhaps next time I’d reduce that to 1 Tbsp or omit it completely. There was nothing wrong with the broth and I still enjoyed the stew, but be prepared for it to have a bit of a sweet tang to it. Still delicious. I was also unsure of the diced tomato chunks in the stew during prep; I’m not a big tomato person. However, they were so tender and blended so well into everything when the stew was finished that I didn’t even notice them.

Amish White Bread – 3 mg sodium/slice
My mom makes an excellent beef stew. I love when she makes a huge pot of it. Normally when she makes beef stew for a family meal, there’s baked bread to go with it, all warm and fresh from the bread machine.  While Lucas and I typically eat wheat bread, we really enjoy the simple, basic white bread recipe from the bread maker. I was a bit skeptical of the recipe just because it seemed too good to be true to find bread with 3mg of sodium per slice, but curiosity got the better of me and we gave it a try to pair the stew with a traditional comfort fave. The one thing to note with this recipe is the instruction to let it knead and rise twice in the machine. So you place all of the ingredients into the machine like normal and let it go, but then after the rise cycle when it starts to do the second round of kneading, turn the machine off and start the entire cycle over again from the beginning… then let it finish completely. According to the recipe instructions, this helps make the bread a little lighter and less dense than typical bread machine loafs. One loaf can be cut into 12 slices of bread.

Thoughts
The bread turned out well and wasn’t too dense. My setting was on light, because normally our bread loaves turn out a bit too try if I go much darker, but I think in the case of this bread, a medium would be ok. It was light and very soft. The flavor was good, but different than traditional breads with sodium. I was wishing for a slightly salty flavor, but of course that would’ve defeated the purpose. Instead, it was a nice soft, plain bread. I asked Lucas to describe the flavor because it is slightly different than normal breads, but we couldn’t quite put our finger on it. The best we can explain is that it’s just plainer and a bit more “yeasty” without the dash of salt, but a little unsalted butter spread on one side made the entire slice melt in my mouth deliciously. The bread seems like it would lend itself really well to a sweet bread, probably because with the absence of salt the sweetness of cinnamon or raisins mixed in would make you forget all about salt.

Our verdict? The meal was low sodium and not too high in calories, either, not to mention filling and delicious… overall a good choice. We’ll definitely be adding it to our repertoire of low sodium favorites for the future, perhaps with a little less brown sugar in the stew broth next time, and maybe a slightly darker setting on the bread machine. I definitely felt satisfied when I was finished, just like I do when I walk away from my mom’s traditional beef stew and bread meal. :)

Probably more accurate to say “couple of weeks.” It started with Lucas snoring out of the blue. Then it turned into realizing he’d gained 15 pounds and noticing that it was all fluid retention; his legs, feet, and ankles were swollen beyond recognizable. Some blood work at the family doctor pointed to a kidney issue, and Lucas made an appointment to see a specialist. He’d gained 30 pounds of fluid weight by this point. If he would lay flat, the swelling was present in his face and chest. When he woke up this past Monday morning feeling pressure in his chest with a little difficulty breathing, we couldn’t wait for the specialist appointment… it was time to hit the ER. Lucas was admitted Monday afternoon, and they spent all week trying to get to the bottom of his kidney problems. Everything pointed to Nephrotic Syndrome, but why or what the next course of action would be to treat it called for a kidney biopsy.

So what does this have to do with cooking the perfect steak? Well, now that Lucas is home from his hospital stay, fresh from a successful biopsy and awaiting the results so that we know what the next step is, he is on a low sodium diet. Most likely for good. Which means recipes being shared here going forward will either come from a low sodium source or be modified to be low sodium for our needs. There are worse things than being on a low sodium diet, of course, and one positive way to look at it is that typically a low sodium diet will also be healthier all around. If we take this step together to cut down on the sodium, we’ll both benefit. And not just us, but the timing couldn’t be better to get our diets on track to be healthier for our baby due in June.  (Can you believe we’re halfway along now?!)

We could have nearly a week to wait on the biopsy results to find out what treatment will entail for Lucas, and there’s not much we (or doctors) can do between now and then to relieve the fluid retention until that treatment begins, but one thing we CAN control is a low sodium diet in the meantime to help support kidney (and overall) health.

While in the hospital, Lucas was limited to low sodium hospital food. Not horrible, but he was craving REAL food. My dad got a kick out of tempting him with steak and such, so for Lucas’ first meal home I decided to cook him a steak. Plain steak on its own has between 40 and 60 mg of sodium per 3oz serving, depending on the type. I didn’t add any seasonings, and our steaks still turned out perfectly.

Cooking the Perfect Steak

I picked up two Angus beef sirloin cut steaks at Kroger. You’ll want to either use a skillet or griddle pan that is oven safe OR you can throw a cookie sheet in the oven at 425F for a few minutes before you begin cooking the steak to get it up to temp. I wasn’t sure if the skillet pan I have is oven safe or not, so I pre-heated the oven to 425F with the cookie sheet inside. Remind me to grab a cast iron skillet for next time, just for ease and less dishes to wash later.

Put 2 tsp of oil in the skillet. Turn the heat up to high and let it get nice and hot. The first step is to sear the outside of the steaks to create a “crusty” outside that locks in the juices, and thus, flavor. Using tongs, I placed both steaks on the hot skillet in the oil and let them sear for 3 minutes.

Now flip the steaks over, and sear the other side for 3 minutes.

This is where you would normally toss the oven safe skillet right into the pre-heated oven, but like I said… I used a pre-heated cookie sheet in case my skillet wasn’t oven safe. I immediately transferred the two steaks to the oven for 3 more minutes. Really, that’s it! I pulled the cookie sheet out and transferred the steaks to a large plate. I quickly covered the plate tightly with aluminum foil and let the steaks rest for 5 minutes. Resting steak is still technically “cooking” a bit more even though it’s off the heat, and letting the steaks rest redistributes the meat’s internal juices. Before serving, I cut off the excess fat, though I think I’ll cut off excessive fat before cooking next time.

This method created the perfect medium rare steaks, with just the right light pink center. For a more well done steak, increase the cook time a little, or reduce cook time a bit for a more rare steak. It really is hard to screw up steaks this way, and Lucas really appreciated a flavorful REAL meal for his first night home from the hospital. We paired the steaks with oven roasted red potatoes, (that’s a recipe for another time!) and best part of the whole delicious meal is that Lucas was WELL below his sodium intake limit for dinner without sacrificing flavor.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for the love, support, and well wishes sent to us this past week. Whether via Twitter, email, or Facebook, we did our best to keep everyone updated on Lucas’ status along the way, and all of the prayers and positive vibes were really appreciated and helped us get through a stressful time. We’ll be sure to let you know what the next steps are once we get the kidney biopsy results back. While the blood work seems to have ruled out things like hepatitis, lupus, or other BIG scary things, we’re still not sure what we’re up against when it comes to treatment, or how much kidney damage there could potentially be and what that will mean. Until then, keep your fingers crossed!

1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of beef broth
1lb beef for stewing, approximately in 1″ chunks
2 cups (cooked) wide noodles
1 cup of sour cream

I put the soup, broth, and beef chunks in the slow cooker first, on high for 3 hours. Then I switched to low heat for 3 hours. I boiled up the whole grain noodles in the final 15 minutes so that they were ready to go. After 6 hours, I added the sour cream and noodles to the slow cooker and turned up the heat to high for a final 20 minutes.  Voilà! The result? Delish! Thoughts? I think next time we might use lean ground hamburger meat instead of the large 1″ beef chunks. It just seemed like the stew beef was a bit too big, and more like pot roast vs. the flavor I was expecting. Not that it was a bad flavor, but hamburger would make a good variation. Some of the chunks were a bit too much and I ended up picking around them. Ground hamburger would’ve blended in better with the delicious flavor.

All in all, this was really good… and so easy and simple. Hard to believe you only need 6 hours 20 minutes and just 5 ingredients to make stroganoff. We served ours with steamed asparagus, one of our fave veggie side dishes. :) We’ll definitely be making this one again and try out hamburger next time.

Hope everyone has had a relaxing weekend! :)

The original recipe at AllRecipes.com calls for prosciutto instead of bacon, but based on the user submitted comments I read, bacon was a popular substitution and easier for me to get my hands on this week. The result was a pretty delicious chicken dish!

I opted for the quick way, though, and used the Private Selection (Kroger brand) jar of basil pesto that I found in the pasta aisle of the grocery store instead of making my own pesto sauce. I think it would’ve been a lot better had I not decided to cheap out; not that there was anything wrong with that brand of pesto, but it wasn’t as flavorful as homemade, and even one of the more popular brands of sauce (like Buitoni?) has better pesto flavor in my opinion. But a minor detail really. If you’re giving this recipe a try, I highly recommend a good quality pesto or homemade if possible.

The instructions said 400F for 30 minutes; it was more like 35 minutes for us. The chicken was tender and juicy, but I should point out that the better bites were the ones that included plenty of sauce and bacon; the “insides” of the chicken, while baked beautifully, were kind of bland in comparison to the parts covered in sauce and bacon. Does that make any sense? I think maybe if we had marinated the chicken ahead of time to have more internal flavor it would’ve been a little better, and I even thought about using the pesto as the “glue” and then covering the chicken in bread crumbs before wrapping in bacon and baking, just as another variation.

Hope you have a great weekend! GO BEARS!