(Nearly) Vegan Mexican Goolash

Here it goes:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 jar salsa
1 can rotel
1 can shoestring corn
1 can yello corn
2 cans black beans
1 can olives

Spray your crockpot with PAM first, trust me. Then put the chicken breasts in and cover with the jar of salsa and can of Rotel (undrained). Cook for 2 hours on high if not frozen, 4 hours if they are still frozen. After they're done cooking, remove and shred. To the crockpot add the corn and beans (drained and rinsed) and the can of olives (drained). Add the chicken and stir. Cook on low for a little longer, until heated through.

If you want to, serve it with some cheese and sour cream. Its really not necessary though, and it adds extra fat and makes it non-nearly vegan. This is also really good cold as leftovers. Mmm...

Chocolate Marble Cheesecake

The ingredients and steps are simple. But getting it just right... a little trickier.

2 Cups Graham Cracker Crumbs

5 Tablespoons Melted Butter

Make the crust, press it in a 9" springform pan.

Filling:

3 8z Pkgs Cream Cheese

1 C White Sugar

5 Eggs

Best if you beat these together with a paddle not a beater, because air is bad (makes cracks). Also, don't go adding a lot of the liquid (in this case the eggs) until you have the cheese beat smooth. It's almost impossible to get lumps out of anything once you have too much liquid.

Pour half or so of the mixture in to the pan, then melt 1/4 cup of chocolate chips and mix it in to the rest. Pour it in the pan in a swirly pattern or cut it in with a knife (careful not to disturb the graham crackers).

Bake at 3o0 degrees until the top isn't too jiggly. It's supposed to take 50 minutes, I find it is more like 75 minutes.

By the way, cheesecake is the only cake that should NOT be eaten warm. No matter how badly you want to. It isn't worth it. Let it be. Cool it to room temp, then put it in the fridge for a couple of hours. Lock the fridge.

I'm told a good frosting for this is 3/4 cup of melted chocolate mixed with 1/2 cup sour cream. But who frosts cheesecake? At some point doesn't it just become ridiculous?

BLT Pizza

This is an invention of yours truly, with a little help from mom. This summer, I did the linger longer food every week for the singles branch. I wanted to make this salad stuff I had at some random baby shower in Worthington, but it was in cute little pastry cups, which i could not afford for the linger longer. so it got all twisted around and made into BLT Pizza!!

You need:
Cresecent Rolls
Sour Cream
Cream Cheese
Lettuce
Tomato
Bacon

Okay, its like vegetable pizza, where you take pillsbury crescent rolls (You know, the little tubes that *POP* when you squeeze em) and bake them flat on a cookie sheet. Then you make an amazingly unhealthy spread with cream cheese and sour cream.

Then you pile lettuce on top ( I liked using romaine, because its pretty :) ) and some tomatoes, and some bacon pieces and VOILA! bacon lettuce tomato pizza. Its amazing.

Raspberry or Strawberry Salad

I made a most lovely salad this summer for movie night at my friend Becca's house. It was the first original recipe I have made, I think. I used Merle's salad with the mandarin oranges and almonds as a basis for thinking of the ingredients, and then found my own combination. It was extremely easy, and I got so many compliments, I have made it a few times now.

Spring Greens bagged lettuce (no, not iceburg - this texture is important to the berries, plus it is healthier by far)

1 Pint Raspberries or Sliced Strawberries, whichever is in season

1 Cucumber, peeled and sliced

Butter Toffee Glazed Almonds (found in the salad toppings area near the produce section)

Ken's Steakhouse Raspberry Vinaigrette Salad Dressing (this is a fabulous brand - it makes the salad, so I won't guarantee your results unless you buy this brand).

Rinse and dry lettuce. Add berries and cucumber slices. Sprinkle on almonds - I normally use about 1/3 of the bag. Add the vinaigrette just before serving.

Cookie Salad

Nancy's salad post reminded me that nobody has posted Cookie Salad yet. This isn't dessert, no way! It has been served on the table with the meal every time I have eaten it, so it can't be dessert. Besides, it has fruit in it, so it is healthy.

Instant Pudding

Whipped Cream

Bananas

Mandarin Oranges (optional)

Keebler Fudge-Striped Cookies

Mini Marshmallows (optional)

To start, make some instant pudding. I like vanilla. Do as many servings as you have people who are going to eat it.

Stir in a container of whipped cream.

Cut up some bananas into slices. Add them to the pudding. Some people like some drained mandarin oranges, too, but others don't. Just make sure they are really well drained, or they will water down the salad, and we don't want that!

Just before serving, break up some Keebler Fudge-Striped Cookies and mix them in, but save enough whole cookies to decorate the top of the salad. Don't ever try adding these more than an hour in advance of serving, or they will be soggy. However, I have been known to enjoy a bowl of leftover cookie salad for as many as three days after making it. I just wouldn't serve it to guests that way.

Mini Marshmallows could also be added at this time. I haven't had it that way more than once, and I could take them or leave them.

The vinaigrette

In a shameless attempt at garnering more points and further procrastinating my paper, I am posting the vinaigrette for the preceeding salad as a seperate recipe.

In my defense, lest you judge to harshly, it applies to much more than this salad, and has so many possible variations that it was a cumbersome addition to the salad post.

You really need to know one major principle in the making of any vinaigrette. Are you ready? Its a ratio. 2:1.

Tough, right?

That's 2 parts oil for one part vinegar. This is your base.

You can use whatever kind of oil you want, although olive oil is both traditional and healthy, peanut oil can make for a nice flavor, and canola oil works if you are a poor starving student forced to improvise on a crappy budget or on the leftovers people have in the cupboards.

And, while the options for the vineagar are infinite, I must warn you to not eliminate the possibility of using just plain white vineagar. It has its benefits, and it depends on the salad.

Next you need to think about the essence of your vinaigrette. Do you need a citrus feel to it? Add some lemon juice. Are there crasins in your salad? Try a little orange juice in your dressing. Is the salad mostly made up of tart or bitter ingredients? Put mustard in the dressing. (Weird logic? not really. Mustard is very good at drawing out sweet flavors, especially if you are just putting that yellow "French's" stuff into it. Which I give you permission to do, as long as you tell NO ONE.) The rule for any of these additions is that however many you use, one or 5, the amount should equal your vinegar.

(Incidentally, if you insist on making the vinaigrette without adding these flavors, you should increase the vinegar to equal the oil, making it a 1:1 ratio.

But thats not all! Simply mixing oil and vineagar will never impress anyone, so start thinking spices. Salt and pepper, yes, but you know that spice rack you got as a wedding present that you never really touched except for the cinnamon which is now empty? Yeah, open that up and start smelling things. If you like the smell, throw it in. It only takes a couple of tries before you find a combination that really expresses your flavor. Or, if you don't have a spice rack at your disposal, start digging through the cupboards and discover the random spices you have accumulated over the years.

Make the dressing a few times and put it on the side, pretty soon you will find the simplicity of mixing it as easy as grabbing a bottle out of the fridge, and you might even start preferring it so much, you stop buying dressings altogether.

Tomato Mozzarella salad

I am avoiding a paper, and by doing such, noticed that other's neglect gives me ample opportunity to win this particular challenge.

So let's talk salad for a moment. An important pronciple I learned from the French is that salad does not always mean lettuce and dressing. In fact, since salad really just refers to the blending of various fresh things, it doesn't even necesarily have to refer to vegetables at all, meaning fruit salad could simply be referred to as salad, and if you wanted to, say, create a salad using pudding and cookies, it could simply be referred to as a salad as well. Although I don't know anyone who would do such a thing, and if they did, there would be GREAT debates as to whether it counted as a salad or as a dessert.

But I digress. My favorite salad from France is one I had my very first week there, and many many times after.

You will need:
Tomatoes (Roma work really well for this)
Mozzarella (I like to get the fresh kind, packed in water, for this, since its more of a feature of the dish than just grating it over the top)
A vinaigrette. You can use a pre-mixed kind, but if you want to make a really nice one, I will give you the recipe for that as well.
You can add fresh basil as well. It brings the flavors together quite nicely.

Slice the tomatoes and the mozzarella so that the slices are basically the same size (and if you got the fresh mozzarella in the round packages, then they are nice and uniform!) Layer them out on a plate, in a pretty pattern, alternating between the tomato and mozzarella. Drizzle with the vinaigrette and the chopped fresh basil and some salt and pepper.

Yup, thats all there is to a marvelous salad. I might add that if you are particularly wealthy or trying to impress someone, Havarti cheese works well too.

And, I might add again, that its in our blood, in our own heritage to love this salad. After all, how many times did we have tomatoes and cheese for lunch at Grandma and Grandpa Pratt's house? Remember how you could just pick a tomato and eat it like an apple, catching the juice dribbles with that unreasonably large hunk of yellow cheese that Grandma would cut for you? This is simply less portable and less messy.