Experimental Meals

One of my favorite things to do is experiment with meals. From trying new recipes to making them up, I enjoy experimenting. I am also very fortunate to have a husband who is willing to try whatever I make. Well almost anything, if you ever think that tilapia, brown rice and broccoli and cheese cream of soup all mixed together might be good, let me tell you that it is gross and not even Meric will eat it!

So I have been experimenting a little and thought I would share. Last night I made chicken, macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli. Sounds pretty basic right? Well for the chicken I breaded it in crushed pretzels with a little ranch and garlic seasoning. Instead of using regular cheese for the macaroni I used white cheddar, butterkase, and yogurt cheese. Butterkase and yogurt cheese are both semi-soft cheeses so they made the mac and cheese so creamy I didn't have to add any milk. After dishing it all up, I thought it looked so good I had to take a picture. And after eating it, I would have to say it was delicious!

Another experiment was a result of laziness. When I make lasange I mix together sour cream, cream cheese, and cottage cheese. I take that mixture and layer it with meat sauce and lasange noodles. (I started adding spinach to it for some extra nutrition.) Lazy version is to take a scoop of the cheese mixture, roll it up in a lasange noodle and cover it with the meat sauce. It is all the same ingredients but without the layering. The last time I made it I ran out of lasange noodles half way through. As a result I got even lazier. I mixed the meat sauce and cheese mixture together. Then I boiled some tortellini and mixed it all together. The results... YUM! Adding the cheese mixture to the meat sauce made it very creamy and added great flavor.

I have also been experimenting with breakfast, mainly pancakes. My lastest creation was pina colada pancakes. I used a pancake mix and added crushed pineapple, coconut flakes and rum extract. They turned out pretty good. The pineapple made them sweet and the rum extract added good flavor. I couldn't really taste the coconut though. I am slowly starting to like coconut so I was okay with the light coconut flavor. Baby steps!