Broccoli & Chicken Casserole

This recipe was a hands down winner in our home!! I found the recipe off of a fun blog titled, Just Get Off Your Butt and Bake! (Since you said it so nicely lol)! She has tons of great looking recipes that I can't wait to try out! I threw this one together fairly quickly, and once all your ingredients are put together, it goes by more smoothly! (I should also add I was in a major hurry trying to get this done before DJ left for work, and finished just in time!) Let's get started...

Ingredients

1 lb. fresh broccoli-broken into pieces & steamed for 2 minutes

3 cups of cooked chicken-broken into little pieces

1 1/2 c Cheddar Cheese-shredded

2 tubes of Ritz Crackers

1 stick of melted butter

1 TBS Poppy Seeds

SAUCE

1/3 c butter-melted

1/4 c cornstarch dissolved in 1/2 of a cup of cold water

1/3 c Chicken Broth

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

2 c Milk

1 1/2 c shredded Cheddar cheese

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. In a greased 9x13 pan layer the steamed broccoli on the bottom, then add the shredded chicken. Set this aside for now! In a saucepan, melt the one stick of butter and add the poppy seeds. Set the temperature to low once these two ingredients have been incorporated. In a large Ziploc bag, add the Ritz crackers, and take a rolling pin and crush the crackers. Don't make the pieces too small (more chunky pieces)! Once you have your cracker crumbs, pour the crumbs into the saucepan with your butter and poppy seeds and stir together! Add the 1 1/2 c of shredded cheddar cheese to the pan (on top of the chicken). Keep the saucepan on low for now! In a separate sauce pan, you're going to melt the 1/3 cup of butter. Add the cornstarch, broth, salt, pepper, and milk and stir together! I waited until this was all heated through before I added the 1 1/2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese. Once you have all the ingredients stirred together, your sauce should now be a much thicker consistency. Pour the sauce over the cheddar cheese layer in your pan, then top it off with your Ritz cracker crumb mixture from the other pan! Place all this in the oven (uncovered) for 30 minutes! Let it cool for a couple minutes, and the rest is history!! Seriously, we probably would have taken down the whole pan by ourselves last night if we had been given the chance...it was THAT good!! This is now going in our "favorite dishes" book!! It seems like a lot of work, but there's no chopping, just a lot of standing by the stove making sure all your saucepans are behaving! Had I not been rushing around like a crazy person, this would have been a very easy dinner to make! 

Fresh broccoli (prior to tearing it all apart and steaming it)

Here is the broccoli in it's steam bath!

Make sure when you are making the corn starch and water mixture that your water is VERY COLD! This will thicken up quickly and stick to the bottom of your bowl! So, I made my mix right before I was ready to put it in the sauce pan!

The good thing about this recipe is that it doesn't take all the Ritz crackers from the box! I love to snack on these and club crackers!! 

This is the Ritz cracker, butter and poppy seed mix! If you look closely you can see the tiny poppy seeds in there :)

Here it is out right out of the oven, and part of it is already gone! 

DELICIOUS!! 

Stay tuned for some great recipes!! 

I don't know about ya'll but I am more than excited for Spring to finally be here and STAY here!! We had beautiful weather this past weekend (partially), and now we are back to chilly. cloudy days! (I'm pretty sure it might have just sleeted a little bit here)! I have been looking up Spring accessories, clothes, decorations and recipes for a couple weeks now! I came across this fun Etsy shop with some great items! Check it out if you haven't already found her yourself! 

Jimmy Pickles

This pocket purse is only $14... DEAL!! She really has some crazy cute stuff! 

Now I need to go decide what's next on the menu!

Until next time...

Ziti for 20 (or close)

So, have you ever read a recipe and started cooking only to find that either a) you went wrong somewhere or b) the person who originally cooked the recipe studied at Hogwarts school of magic and "somehow" made it work? Well, I'm not really sure which is the case here but let me tell you, I just made the BIGGEST casserole of my life! It's a good thing I had DJ and his brother, Craig here to help me tackle this beast! We still have leftovers, but we are down to only a square or two! YAY!! This is a super delicious and a very easy dish to make (and still tastes great as leftovers)! Before I start, I want to tell you that the recipe called for a 9x13 pan. I am here to tell you a 20x20 might have been easier and a lot less messy!! I had to place a big cookie sheet under the casserole dish just to keep the oven rack from bending haha!!! So, you can find the original recipe here on a very wonderful blog titled The Girl Who Ate Everything. She has some really great recipes and I can't wait to try more of them very soon! I will say she did note also that it makes a "heaping" 9x13 casserole, but her picture is so pretty! When we tried to maneuver ours out of the pan it was only pure luck we got it out in kind of one piece! So here we go...get ready to EAT!!!

Here are the ingredients you will need:
1 lb Ziti pasta
1 onion, chopped
1 lb. Italian Sausage
2 ts minced garlic
2 ts Italian seasoning
2 jars (26 oz EACH) spaghetti sauce--I used Ragu's Roasted garlic and Six Cheese
6 oz Provolone cheese, sliced (9 rounds)
1 1/2 cups sour cream
8 oz Mozzarella cheese
Grated Parmesan

First, you're going to want to get the pasta boiling in some salt water. Cook as the package directs!

While the pasta is cooking get out your large skillet and brown the onion and sausage over medium/high heat. Add minced garlic and cook for another minute. Then add the spaghetti sauce and Italian seasoning and simmer for 15 minutes.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and butter your 9x13 pan (get ready to work some magic here)!!
Layer:
1/2 cooked Ziti
1/2 sauce/meat mixture
Provolone cheese slices
Sour Cream
Remaining Ziti
Remaining Sauce
Mozzerella
Then top it off with Parmesan cheese

Bake this for 30 minutes (20 minutes covered with foil and 10 without)

Note: You might want to add an extra pan to the bottom if you have spills...and get napkins nearby to clean up after the spillage you will probably get as you try to get it all to fit in the pan :)

DELICIOUS!! 

~Happy Eating~

The Girl Who Ate Everything

Company Casserole

I love finding recipe books, especially when they are hand written by my mom!!  I found this particular recipe the other evening in a cookbook I "Borrowed" from my sister (which I am now done pretty much copying the entire thing and will return) and had to cook it. It had me at cottage cheese :) I LOVE cottage cheese! I could eat it everyday...whenever and wherever! So here we go with the Company Casserole!

I cranked up my Nick Drake playlist and got all my ingredients out and entered the cooking zone. As I made this dish, I tried to think of all the times my mom probably made it for church gatherings and company over for dinner. It's fun to cook things when you know how and when they were cooked before. She had noted that this particular casserole serves 6 and was made for church get togethers or easy weeknight meals. We of course have lots of left overs and haven't stopped eating it yet :)

To begin you take 1 8 oz package of spaghetti and cook as the package directs you to. While you have the spaghetti going you will want to take a pound and a half of meat and brown it and drain the grease off. When the meat is cooked, you will add 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper, 1 8 oz can of tomato sauce and simmer this with the meat for about 5 minutes.
NOTE: I added chopped onion to my meat mixture. We love onions :)

When your spaghetti is finished cooking you will want to drain the water and let it cool for a couple of minutes. In a separate bowl you will add 1 cup of cottage cheese, 1 cup of sour cream, a couple of green onions chopped and mix this in with the noodles. I personally would have added a little bit more of each of these just because I love the cottage cheese/sour cream mixture.

To finish this off you layer the meat then the noodle mixture in a casserole dish, and so and so forth until you run out of ingredients. Top the casserole with 3/4 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes at 350.

This is what it looked like before it went in the oven :)

This is what it looked like coming out of the oven :)

~Happy Cooking~

Company Casserole
1 8 oz pkg spaghetti
1 1/2 lb ground beef, browned and drained
1 t. salt
pepper to taste
8 oz can tomato sauce

Combine:
1 cup cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 or 2 green onions, finely chopped

Topping:
3/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese