Hot Pockets

I really like hot pockets.
However, I've always wished I could change the ingredients to what I like, add more, or just customize them.
Then I had a brilliant idea.
Yes, this occasionally happens to even me.

Yesterday we had a little party with some friends. It wasn't really a party. It was a "Let's eat a bunch of food and attempt to play a game while Averna screams" (It's ok, Averna, we still love you)

I whipped these up as an appetizer. Which, honestly, kind of ruined the main course as we were mostly too full from snacks to eat the awesome burritos we had made.

So anyways. The ingredients involved were chicken, sauce, and dough sheets. That's all.

I boiled chicken for the first time... which was weird. Then I shred it up, placed it in 2 bowls, and poured sauce on top.

 Then I opened the dough sheets, and cut them into 4 long pieces. Place chicken in the middle (I really wish I had more) and fold it up. Place it seem side down on a GREASED pan.

Finally, bake them, and enjoy. These are SO customizable. Next I think I'll make pizza ones, or chicken cordon bleu ones, OR ANYTHING.

Recipe

2 tubes of Pillsbury dough sheets
3 chicken breasts
Barbeque sauce
Spicy wing sauce

 Preheat oven to 350.
If you don't have any leftover chicken laying around, poach chicken on the stove by placing chicken in the bottom of a large saucepan and covering with water or chicken broth. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down, cooking until white through, about 8 minutes.

Shred the cooked chicken and cover with the sauce in separate bowls. Open the tubes of dough sheets and cut each roll into 4 pieces. Place chicken in the center of each strip and fold the top and bottom over, press the edges to seal.

Place in the oven for about 20 minutes or until nice and golden brown.
Enjoy!

Fish Fingers and Custard

I am a HUGE Doctor Who fan.
Like
HUGE
I remember the first episode I watched. It was called Rise of the Cyberman. I fell in love with the chemistry between Rose and this skinny guy called the Doctor who had a stick that made weird noises and an odd blue box. 
After that, I watched the first episode... confused why some other guy was playing the Doctor, but I was hooked. Absolutely hooked.    I watched the first three seasons on Netflix within two weeks, and went as far as to buy season 4 on DVD because I could not wait a single second to see it. Jon and I spent that weekend in bed, on my laptop, watching every single episode.

When my beloved David Tennant left the show, I was heartbroken. This Matt Smith guy looked so WEIRD and UGLY and I was just not happy.

Until the very first episode.
Where I laughed SO much at the scene where he was trying to figure himself out. Honestly, much funnier than David Tennant's fight with Sycorax and he asks "What kind of man are you?" and DT responds "I don't knooowwaaa" (You know you read that in his voice. ;)


So, for reference, in case you are wondering what on earth I could possibly be talking about.










The scene, shows the new Doctor trying to figure out what sort of food he likes. It's hilarious.

When I saw that episode, I immediately started wondering, what on Earth would fish sticks and custard taste like?
Then promptly forgot. For a year and a half.

However, Saturday marks the start of the second part of season 6! and I had a simply brilliant idea to make them... a little more... dessert like.

I don't have very many pictures of this process, unfortunately. It was very involved and required a lot of attention, even though I had a helper, so we will go straight to the recipe!

For the custard, I found a recipe for Eggless Custard Buttercream frosting.
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup milk
1 cup butter
1 tbsp vanilla
4 tbsp cornstarch
2/3 cup milk

Mix 1/4 cup milk and 4 tbsp cornstarch in a small bowl. Set aside.
In a 2 quart sauce pan, mix the rest of the milk and the sugar. Stir until boiling, then add the cornstarch mix. Mix again until boiling, remove from heat, add the vanilla, and stir hard until it is smooth and glossy.
Let it cool completely. After completely cool, transfer to a bowl. Mix in soft butter slowly, mixing after each addition.

For the "Fish Sticks"
10 chocolate or vanilla wafer cookies
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 cups Special K  (crushed)

Spread the peanut butter over the wafer cookies and roll them in crushed special K.

See, how awesome is that!

Enjoy them while you watch the new episode!

Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

I really really like granola bars.
I have this habit of eating them in my car, and getting crumbs everywhere. So bad I can hardly get them up.
When I was stumbling the other day, I came across a recipe for homemade granola bars.
I, of course, became very excited.
Homemade means better ingredients, and I could play around with additions. These granola bars could easily be changed to any other combination of fruit or nuts instead of chocolate chips.

Here are some ingredients!

Looks pretty easy, doesn't it?
Yup, it totally is.

So then, we mixed all that up, and pressed it into a 9x13 pan. GREASED. Don't forget the grease. I always do... such a mess.

Pretty dang tasty when I had to lick my fingers a little bit. 

Then they were baked, but they pretty much looked the same after that as before. 

Here's a cut up one. Mmm

So then, if you would like to make these awesome bars, here's how! 

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 2/3 cup peanut butter
• 5 tablespoons corn syrup
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup toasted oat cereal rings
• 2/3 cup wheat germ

In a bowl, mix together brown sugar, peanut butter, corn syrup, applesauce and vanilla extract.
In another bowl, mix together the rolled oats, chocolate chips, oat cereal, and wheat germ.
Add the dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture, mix until completely coated.
Press the mix into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake for about 26 minutes at 350 degrees.



So, a sneak preview for tomorrow. Not the chicken enchiladas I mentioned the other day... no... something much more epic for my doctor who friends. Hint: it involves fish fingers and custard.

Cheezits!

I am a snacker. I enjoy it far too much.
My husband is also a snacker. Well.. sometimes. He's a weird guy.
Anyway, he's been taking a few snacks with him to work recently, and I thought it would be nice if they were healthier snacks, instead of processed garbage.
Then I remembered I had once stumbled upon a recipe for home made cheezits!
I know, crazy, right!?

This is what we start with:

The stuff in the black bottle is cayenne pepper. Jon likes things really really spicy, so I used kind of a lot.
So then we mixed it all up. At this point, I was really wishing I had a food processor. I used a hand mixer.. and it just... was so annoying. (hint to everyone who loves me, my birthday is only 40 days away!)

After everything was mixed, it chilled in the fridge for about 2 hours, then I spread it out on a baking sheet and cut them up with a pizza cutter.

Baked them, and there you have it.

So the process goes like this

Ingredients
1 cup flour
8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
1tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
4tbsp butter, cut into small pieces 
5 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 350
Mix the flour, cheese, cayenne, butter and salt until the mix is crumbly. Do this in a food processor if you have one, or if not, you can use a blender... or a hand mixer.
Slowly add the water until the dough is moist. You may not use all the water.
Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, or overnight.
Take out of fridge, place dough between two pieces of wax paper, and roll it thin. Carefully remove top layer of wax paper and use the pizza cutter to cut into 2" x 2" squares. Carefully place onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake for about 25 minutes, until crispy.
Enjoy!

Jesse tried to be my model, but you can't really see the cheezit in his hand.

Baked Oven Fries

Well, here we are, folks. My very first recipe that isn't a dessert!
Granted, it's only my second post, but it's still neat.

So on Sunday I was at Jon's parents house. He and his dad were doing something or another on the computer. I could have fallen asleep on the chair, but Julie said, "Hey, lets look at cookbooks!"
So we did.
She has 2 very large binders filled, and 2 stacks of other cookbooks. I was excited.
I have quite a few new recipes to try... this one looked fabulous though.

This is what we started with

That picture shows 3 potatoes. This is good if you want to feed a bunch of people. I cut up 1 1/2, and that was plenty. But I didn't re-take a picture. Sorry.
So I cut them into pretty thin strips. Like this

And then I added a bunch of seasoning and it looked like this!

And then I baked them in the oven, along with some chicken, and they looked like this!

They were fantastic. Could have been a bit thicker, but I love crispy fries, so it was a win to me!

So the ingredients:
1-2 potatoes
2 tbsp Olive Oil
2 tbsp Garlic salt
1 tbsp Rosemary leaves
1 tbsp Oregano leaves
1 tbsp ground thyme
2 tbsp Red pepper flakes
just a pinch of sugar, adds crispyness and stuff

And how to do it:
Preheat Oven to 450, and also put the baking sheet in to be preheated
Cut the potatoes in half, then in half again, and again, until you get your desired thickness
drizzle in the olive oil and mix it around to coat all potatoes
dump on all the seasonings, and mix again
Put on preheated baking sheet, bake for 20 minutes, flip, and bake for an addition 15 minutes.

Enjoy them, just like Jon did