R is for Ravioli Lasagna Cups

I can't believe it . . .after today, we just have S T U V W X Y Z. I've tried to write several posts each weekend so that I don't have to stay up late into the night. Late nights are not my best times!!

R is for Ravioli Lasagna Cups! This recipe is from the WW (formerly Weight Watchers) website - I'm going to tell you their recipe and then I'll tell you the changes I made.

Ingredients:

Frozen Cheese Ravioli (15 ounces, 24 average size pieces)

Olive Oil - 1 1/2 tsp. (I don't use - see my note below)

Garlic cloves - 3 (I only use 1 or I use 1 tsp garlic powder)

Chopped Frozen Spinach - 10 ounces thawed (I thaw in the microwave)

Jarred Fat Free Marinara Sauce - 1 1/2 cups (I use Ragu homemade style pizza sauce 3/4 cup -- if I can't find that, I use Prego No Sugar Added)

Shredded part skim mozzarella cheese - 3/4 cup (I used 24 T fat free mozzarella)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375. Spray a 12 cup muffin pan with pam (or other cooking spray).

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add ravioli and boil 2 minutes. Drain well.

In a small skillet over medium heat, warm oil and garlic until fragrant and barely golden brown (about 2 minutes). Remove from heat. Squeeze as much liquid as possible from spinach and fluff spinach with fingers. Stir spinach into oil mixture. (I didn't use the oil and I just added the garlic powder to the spinach -- I thaw the spinach in the microwave in a little plastic colander. I put the colander on a paper plate which catches some of the liquid. Then I use paper towels to get as much water as possible out of the spinach - I roll it up and squeeze it with the paper towels.)

Layer 1 ravioli, 1 T (or less) marinara, 1 1/2 T spinach, 1 ravioli, 1 T (or less) sauce, and 1 T mozzarella into each muffin space. Bake uncovered until sauce is bubble and cheese melts - about 15 minutes. If you wish, broil 1 minute to brown tops (I usually don't do this).

Serving size for the original recipe is 2 muffin cups worth. One week, the raviolis I purchased were smaller and I ended up being able to eat 3. If you are doing WW, make sure you add up your own points. Depending on your ingredients 2-3 cups will be anywhere from 7 - 10 points.

I do NOT like cooked spinach. If I were a guest in your home and you served it to me, I would eat it but it isn't my favorite. The amazing this is  I LOVE IT in this recipe!

sorry for the pitiful muffin pan - I do

have a better one!

Just FYI - that is queso on my

broccoli - yum!

Q is for Quesadlilla

What food or recipe begins with Q? Quesadillas!! I really love quesadillas from Taco Mama or from Frontera or Tecate - all local restaurants. We have found that quesadillas are easy to make at home and we can customize our ingredients. I'm going to be honest, quesadillas made at home are better if you use butter (land o' lakes) in your skillet but remember I'm on WW . . .so butter spray and a tiny drizzle of olive oil will suffice. Here are the ingredients I chose for my breakfast quesadilla. Yes - breakfast. Sometimes the thought of real breakfast food makes me gag so years ago, I realized that I might enjoy some other things for breakfast - like a turkey sandwich or a grilled cheese or a quesadilla!

On this day, these were literally the ingredients I had in the house:

thinly sliced ham

Velveeta slices

Mission Carb balance tortillas

butter spray & olive oil

Spritz the butter spray and olive oil into your skillet. I use my all clad non stick skillet for quesadillas. Turn heat to medium. Place tortilla in skillet and add ingredients. Sometimes we make plain cheese quesadillas but I was really hungry on this day and wanted to up my protein.

We like our tortilla to get a little crispy. This is more difficult when using only a spritz of oil and butter spray. When you use real butter . . .the butter makes the quesadilla wonderful and toasty on the outside!!  Allow cheese to melt - flip and heat other side and cook a few more minutes.

Eat and enjoy!! I know you love my beautiful china. Busy mornings definitely call for paper plates at our house. This is great when you are in a hurry in the morning or really tired at night. If we have tortillas, cheese, and butter/olive oil/butter spray in the house, we can have a quick breakfast, lunch, or dinner. When you make your quesadilla you can use all cheese and you can even use a couple of kinds of cheese. You can add other protein - turkey, chicken, ham - whatever you have on hand!

Do you ever eat things for breakfast other than traditional breakfast food? Do you have a recipe or favorite food that begins with the letter "Q"?

P is for Pie - Pecan Pie!

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O . . . P! P is for Pecan Pies!

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we love pecans! My son-in-law really loves pecan pies so when they married back in 2018, I made lots and lots of tiny pecan pies and we served those instead of a groom's cake at the wedding reception. Pecan pies are really easy to make.

Pecan Pie

1 cup Karo Light (or Dark) Corn Syrup

3 eggs (I always use jumbo)

1 cup sugar

2 T butter, melted (I use Land O' Lakes)

1 tsp vanilla extract (use extract not flavoring)

1 1/2 - 2 cups chopped pecans

1 unbaked 9 inch deep dish pie crust (I usually use the pie crust in the box that you purchase from the same section as canned biscuits)

Preheat oven to 350.

Stir the first 5 ingredients together using a spoon.

Mix in pecans.

Pour into prepared pie crusts and bake 60-70 minutes (for whole pie).

If making mini pies, cook for 30 minutes - check center of pies to make sure they are 200 degrees. If making mini pies, roll refrigerated crust into a slightly larger piece than it is straight from packaging. Use a large glass to cut circles. Spray a regular size muffin tin with Pam. Spray heavily. Seriously. Listen to me -- spray heavily.

Place each dough circle into muffin tin and press gently around edges to form a cup for filling. Do not overfill. If the filling comes over the top of the dough and cooks, it is VERY HARD to get the little pies out of the muffin tin. I made several hundred. I know what I'm talking about :-). Also, when making mini pies, I added more pecans as I used the filling. I was generous with the amount of pecans in each scoop so all of a sudden, I still had filling but no pecans were in the filling. I just added more and kept scooping.

If you ever need to bake lots of mini pies or regular pecan pies, they freeze beautifully! I made a few batches per weekend. I froze them in plastic containers. On the day of the wedding, two friends came by our house while we were at the church getting ready. They packed all of those containers into their car and delivered them to the reception venue.

see the big plastic cup? that size

works perfectly for my

muffin pans

A Weekend Away and a Wedding

Mark and I traveled to Israel in February 2020 and came home and the world shut down soon after. We've been home for 13 months. We've not eaten inside a restaurant in all that time. We've just started attending in person worship. We were supposed to go to the beach in September but a hurricane hit our intended location. This past weekend we ventured forth!! Our friends, Kate and Sean, were originally scheduled to be married in the spring of 2020 and their wedding ceremony and festivities were postponed. They decided not to postpone the marriage and did get married in a private ceremony at Kate's church BUT they rescheduled everything for last weekend. We booked a hotel room, RSVP'd for the rehearsal dinner and the reception, packed our overnight bags, filled up an extra litter box for the cat . . .along with an extra huge food bowl, and headed north. I'm going to be honest - I love staying in a hotel :-). Of course, things were different due to covid restrictions - rooms weren't cleaned every day to protect staff and guests BUT enough things were the same that we still had a wonderful time.

Kate and Sean are so very special to us. Kate and I worked together - she is a youth minister and she served at our church for several years. Actually both Sean and Kate are youth ministers and they both came to our Tuesday night group. Sean and Mark hit it off from the beginning. Sean and Mark are actually as different as night and day in some areas of life but they are so alike in other areas. Kate was our house sitter along with our Harvey (cat) sitter. Mark and I love Kate and Sean as if they were our own and we were so honored to be included in this very special weekend.

On Friday night we attended the rehearsal dinner which was held at our hotel. Friday night was THE FIRST time for us to be in a room with people other than family and take off our masks and eat! We didn't know anyone at the dinner except the bride and groom but ended up at a table with Kate's grandmother and two uncles and their wives and they were so kind to us. The food was yummy and the conversation was very interesting. I planned to take lots of pictures but didn't take a single picture at the rehearsal dinner.

On Saturday, we went for a walk and then made a trip to a local store where Mark wanted to check out the merchandise. It was raining and I sat in the car. The rain stopped and we met our friends who just happen to live nearby at a restaurant - Honeysuckle Local and Social - and enjoyed our first meal in a restaurant!! These friends are the kind of friends where we can go a long time without seeing each other and pick back up as if we were together the day before. We laugh harder with these friends than just about anyone else. Once again I intended to take pictures but was living in the moment!!

We went back to the hotel and got ready for the wedding. The ceremony was beautiful and most people wore their masks in the church and we were seated at least 6 feet from other guests. The church was beautiful and the flowers were gorgeous. Kate's dress and veil were beautiful.

The minister did a great job making the service perfect for a "repeat" wedding and he made it so personal for Kate and Sean.

As soon as the wedding was over, we headed out to the reception. What did we do before Waze? I know we had maps but Waze makes it so easy to get from one location to another. We had been told that parking at the reception would be tough. We couldn't believe it when we found a parking space in the small lot attached to the venue! The venue was so cool - The Cannery. It was a cool facility and another guest told us that she had heard that Adele had performed at this venue. It was built in 1883 and was a flour mill and later a place to grind coffee. Dale foods bought it in 1957 and made jams, jellies, and other things and then it became a music venue! The facility has exposed brick walls and a huge bar.

When we arrived at the venue, this unbelievable flower arrangement "greeted" everyone. It was truly spectacular and there is a family story -- maybe there was a flower giraffe at Kate's parents' wedding??

There were beautiful flowers on every table. It is our understanding that the floral designer and his wife came in from another town.

Servers were walking around with tiny appetizers. These tiny tacos were so cute and packed a punch! My favorite tiny appetizer was a teeny tiny polenta cake with a wonderful topping. Mark loved the Nashville Hot chicken teeny tiny sandwich. I also liked the spoon full of grits with one shrimp on top.

The bride and groom danced their first dance and then the bride danced with her daddy and then the buffet opened. We were so excited to see one of our other former Tuesday night friends and his wife at the wedding. 

We stayed until they cut the cakes and made their toast. We got a hug from both bride and groom and then we slipped out and headed back to the hotel.

We had so much fun throughout the weekend. Mark is fully vaccinated and I was three days post my second vaccination so we felt a little safer than the previous 13 months.

One of my favorite moments of the weekend was on Friday night. Mark and I were standing in the room where the rehearsal dinner was to be held. When Sean entered the room, he was so excited to see us and we felt so loved. A few minutes later, Kate entered and we felt that same love from her, too.

God has blessed us with our own children and their spouses and our granddaughters AND God has also blessed us with relationships with so many young professionals over the years. As I said, we love them as our own. 

It was indeed a great weekend!

O is for Okra

When I was a kid, my dad and grandpa always had a garden. I'm pretty sure we ate fresh vegetables every day when they were plentiful. My daddy always had okra plants so we enjoyed fried okra often in the summer months. I never learned to fry it and one Sunday before church I was talking to the older couple that sat behind us. Pre-Covid we, like many others, had a tendency to sit in the same spot each Sunday during worship. Anyone else? The older couple behind us were our "pew buddies" and we always chatted before church. I have no idea how okra came up in the conversation but I said I loved it but didn't know how to cook it. I have a giant 3 ring notebook with tried and true recipes and in that book inside a plastic sleeve is this recipe that she shared with me that day:

I've cooked okra her way several times and it is delicious. There is a problem. I hate to fry inside our house. I don't like the way the house smells for several days afterwards. Mark has a fryer we can use on the porch and I could get him to set it all up . . .or . . . .

Last summer, I used the air fryer to cook the okra. It was delicious! I first washed the okra and then whisked an egg with a little water. I dipped the okra in the egg mixture and then into White Lily Cornmeal Mix (I added salt and pepper) and placed in a single layer in the air fryer. I spritzed the okra with olive oil spray and then cooked at 400 for 8-10 minutes. Check it at 6 minutes and adjust time accordingly. Normally, I would slice the okra into several rounds but we had eaten in a restaurant where they served the okra pods whole. These were tiny and tender okra pods so it worked well. I prefer to purchase the smallest pods possible because they are usually more tender.

We've also placed several okra pods on a skewer and spritzed with salt, pepper, and olive oil and placed them on the grill. They are good! I was surprised because I thought the only way I liked okra was fried.

Okra is also a great thickening agent to use in homemade vegetable soup and gumbo just isn't the same without okra.

Hubby will eat it "boiled" or "stewed" but I have a hard time even looking at it. When stewed or boiled, okra has a slimy texture and I just can't eat it but when it is used in a soup or gumbo, it tastes great to me and it doesn't seem to have that same texture issue. For soups and gumbo, I usually purchase okra (non-breaded) in the freezer section of the grocery. For grilled or fried okra, I purchase fresh.

I borrowed this picture from the internet :-)

Last but certainly not least . . .hubby and both kids love pickled okra. Wickles Pickles (and other products) originated in Alabama. The first jar of Wickles we ever purchased was in a hardware store in Auburn! The original company was in Dadeville, AL. The first time we ever ate Wickles Pickles was in a tiny restaurant in a converted gas station in a tiny town . . .and they were served on a saucer as an appetizer alongside saltine crackers - seriously! Wickles are widely available now. (They don't know me - they aren't paying me - we just love them!)

There are other brands of pickled okra in most grocery stores but Wickles seem to be the most loved at our house. Wickles pickles and okra are sweet hot.

Have you ever eaten okra? Do you cook it? What is your favorite way to eat okra?

N is for Northern Beans or Navy Beans or Maybe Even Nuts!

Back in February or March, I sat down and mapped out some of my blogposts for this April A to Z Challenge. Mark even made a few suggestions. As I mentioned in a previous post, instead of scrolling social media at night I began writing my posts for the month. All of a sudden, I realized that I hadn't done a very good job on this last portion of the alphabet. I've been looking through my favorite recipes trying to decide which recipes to use for the remaining letters . . .and some of the recipes will be a STRETCH to fit that letter :-). 

When I was a kid, my dad was a carpenter and then he was an engineer for the railroad (the engineer that drive the train). In hindsight, I realize we didn't have a lot of money but I didn't really know it at the time. I can look back on some of the menus my mom prepared and I realize that she was definitely cooking on a tight budget. One of the things she cooked was dried beans - pintos, big limas, northern beans, and navy beans. As a kid, I detested those big white lima beans, northern beans, and navy beans. To be honest, I'm still not fond of those big white lima beans. If I was a dinner guest in your home and you served them to me, I would eat them but I've never purchased them. Imagine my surprise, when I realized that I actually like northern beans and navy beans especially when used in White Chicken Chili. 

White Chicken Chili

Ingredients needed:

Chicken breast, cooked and cubed or shredded - (1 1/2 # raw)

1 onion, chopped fine

2 cans Northern or Navy Beans

2 can chicken broth 

1 can diced green chilis

1 1/2 tsp cumin

1 tsp chili powder

minced garlic to equal 1/2 to 1 clove 

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

Someone gave this recipe to me years ago. The original recipe called for 2-3 of the larger cans (12.5 ounces?) of chicken breast (yes - canned chicken!). Sometimes I still use canned chicken but I usually cook several breasts and cube them or shred them. We like a lot of chicken in ours so I use 3-4 cups of cubed or shredded cooked chicken which equates to about 1 1/2 pounds of raw boneless skinless chicken breast.

Using a large pot (or you could use a crockpot or even an instapot), add chicken, onion, beans, broth, diced green chilis, and spices. Cook over medium heat until onions are soft - probably 45 minutes to an hour. The longer you cook white chicken chili, the more the flavors meld together. You can always add another cup of water or another can of broth if soup becomes too thick.

If you want to use a crockpot, place all ingredients in crockpot and cook on low all day while at work. If you use an instapot . . . read the directions because I don't have an instapot! hahaha!

What about the nuts I mentioned in today's title?

We live in Alabama and pecans are loved by many! I purchase at least 10-12 pounds of pecans each year and keep them in my freezer. We use them in all sorts of recipes from baked goods to dips to chicken salad. Back during the spring of 2020 when we were not going anywhere (except Mark had to go to his office every day), sometimes we would crave a salty snack and not have anything in the pantry. I would grab a bag of pecans from our freezer and preheat the oven to 350. I would spread the pecans out on a cookie sheet and spritz with a little spray butter (I can't believe it's not butter spray) and a sprinkle of Lawry's seasoning salt. Bake in preheated oven for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Enjoy snacking on these yummy pecans. 

I've also ordered large boxes of individual packs of Pistachios, Almonds, and Peanuts from Costco to keep in our pantry for a quick snack. I like most all nuts EXCEPT cashews! I cannot eat cashews.

Do you like beans - especially Northern or Navy? Do you like nuts? (I know that peanuts are not technically a "nut" but I'm using nut today!)

Moscow Mule

M is not a food item but it is a beverage! M is for Moscow Mule!! Several years ago, we went to visit our friends in Nashville (who we were able to see this past weekend!!) and we ate at a quirky restaurant. My friend was drinking a Moscow Mule and she let me taste it. I immediately ordered my own! Since then, I have loved Moscow Mules and I have tried them in several different restaurants. I even ordered one in Israel but they didn't know what I was ordering. A real Moscow mule is made with Ginger Beer, Vodka, and Lime juice and it is a very refreshing beverage!

As I written several times, I'm on WW and I try to steer clear of sugar. I haven't found a sugar free or no sugar Ginger Beer but I love Canada Dry Zero Sugar Ginger Ale. 1 1/2 ounces of Vodka has 3 points on blue on WW so I use Ginger Ale (0) + Vodka (3) + Lime juice (0) for a 3 point drink. A real Moscow Mule has around 8 points. A Moscow Mule from Longhorn Steakhouse has 11 points. When you have 23 points to spend for the day, it is hard to "spend" that many on a drink.

Also, I only drink a couple of these a month. I'm not a big drinker but it sure is nice to have something easy to make that tastes great!

Moscow Mule by Lisa

1 1/2 ounce Grey Goose Vodka - you may have another brand you like but I love Grey Goose. I've never been one to drink any kind of liquor straight but I think I could drink Grey Goose straight from the glass. It is soooo smooth. I keep mine in the fridge so it is always ice cold.

1 12 ounce can (cold) Canada Dry Zero Sugar Ginger Ale (you might have to purchase another brand - I don't know if this brand is sold throughout the US or not)

Juice of one lime (or lemon when you have no limes!!)

Pour Ginger Ale in mug, add Grey Goose, and add lime (or lemon) juice to your taste. I like at least 1/2 of a lime squeezed in mine. You can even save a wedge to place on rim of mug.

Gently stir ingredients and enjoy. My ingredients are always cold but if your ingredients are not, you can add a couple of ice cubes to chill your drink.

Do you have a favorite beverage that is easy to prepare?