Salsa Verde Enchiladas

A few weeks ago I went with some friends to Ikea for the first time. I was in heaven in the kitchen accessories section. They had some really neat things for reasonable prices. I tried to control myself. The rooms they have set up to give you ideas are awesome. One room had book shelves all the way up to the ceiling. You needed a ladder to get to the top. The librarian in me was in heaven. I would love to have that in my house one day. The foodie in me was drooling over the kitchens. If I had an extra $10,000 to spare I would so do a kitchen makeover. Not in the home I live in now because I plan on moving in the near future but my future home. Unless I'm lucky to buy a house with my dream kitchen in it. Then that would be great.

Anyway after shopping we stopped at Hoolihan's to eat. I have never been to a Hoolihan's and I really enjoyed the food there. I will definitely go back. They had a three course special going on so we each ended up doing that. The first course you got to choose salad or soup. The second choice was an entree and the price varied depending on what entree you chose. The third course was dessert. I got the Chicken Tortilla Soup to start, Smoked Chipotle Chicken Enchiladas for my entree, and the Chocolate Cappuccino Cake for dessert. Everything was really good and I wanted to try and recreate the enchiladas. The menu's description of the enchiladas is Enchiladas filled with tomatillo-marinated chicken, onions, garlic and queso fresco atop a spicy, chipotle-smoked mozzarella sauce. Served with pico rice, black beans and sweet chipotle slaw. I have no idea how to make chipotle-smoked mozzarella sauce. I searched the internet with no luck. Since I couldn't make the sauce I improvised. The enchiladas I came up with are not the same but I thought they turned out quite tasty. A little too spicy for my hubby but I didn't find them to be too spicy for me.

Salsa Verde Enchiladas
11 Servings, 4 WW points per enchilada

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2 lbs. chicken breast
1 jar salsa verde
1 small onion, chopped
1 ts. minced garlic

11-15 corn tortillas
1 can mild enchilada sauce, red
1 cup reduced fat Mexican shredded cheese

In a crock pot place the chicken, salsa, onion, and garlic. Cook on high for 1 hour and turn down to low. Cook 2 hours more or until chicken is done. Take the chicken out and cut in up into chunks. Place back in the crock pot and turn down to keep warm. If your chicken breasts are frozen the cook time will be longer.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat up the tortillas before trying to roll them. This is an important step because trying to roll cold tortillas ends up in disaster. They just break apart. You can heat them in a dry skillet on medium high heat or place damp paper towels between them and heat them up in the microwave for about a minute.

In a 9X13 pan pour half of the can of mild enchilada sauce on the bottom. Take a heated tortilla and fill it with 1/3 cup of the chicken mixture. Roll it up and place face down in the pan. Repeat with the rest of the tortillas. I was able to fit 11 in my pan. I might have been able to squish more but I wanted to be able to get them out of the pan hopefully intact. I should have squished them because they didn't stay intact very well. I had about a 1/4 of the filling leftover since I could only made 11. Pour the remaining mild enchilada sauce on top and top with the cheese. Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve with sour cream and salsa if desired.

Thank You Brownies

Yesterday when I got off work at 8:30pm my car wouldn't start. It's never good when you turn the key and all you get in return is a ticking sound. I called my hubby and found out we don't have jumper cables. I need to put that on my shopping list because you really should have those in your car. Fortunately for me our security guard had jumper cables and was willing to help me. We soon found out that my battery was on one side while his battery was on the other and so he had to move my car out of the parking space so it could face his car. He did that with the help of a patron dropping off his material. So he gets the cables on and it takes awhile for my car to come alive.

I get from our parking lot to the stop sign to get out on Front street and my car refuses to go any further. It was strange because I don't think it died but it wouldn't move. While this is going on Joyce and Cody are waiting for me at my house because we are supposed to go out for $1 tacos at Cagney's. Joyce calls and I tell her I'm stuck so they come to help me move my car out of the way. That didn't happen because my car wouldn't go into neutral. All three of us tried and my gear shift would not move. I call Will. He comes and still nothing. The girls leave for tacos and Will goes home to get some tools but nothing works. I had to have it towed. Towing isn't cheap. Cost me $65 and I probably have to replace my alternator that is only a year old. Boo! I finally got home at 10:30 freezing and poor Will missed work to help me out.

To thank our security guard for helping me I made him brownies. These are made from scratch brownies. I never realized how easy brownies are to make from scratch. Just as easy as making a box mix. I liked these brownies because they were thick and solid. You could really sink your teeth into them. Not as moist as a box mix but not dry either and I liked them cold. I doubled the recipe so I could use a 9X13 pan instead of a 9 inch pan. I got the recipe out of a Brownie cookbook I got for Christmas. A cookbook all about brownies. The possibilities are endless.

Basic Cocoa Brownies
as seen in Good Housekeeping's Brownies cookbook

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1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 ts. baking powder
1/4 ts. salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 ts. vanilla
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped (Optional)
1 bag milk chocolate chips

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Line 9-inch square baking pan with foil, grease foil. In small bowl combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt mixing together with a wire whisk.

In a 3 quart saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Stir in eggs one at a time until well blended. Add vanilla. Stir flour mixture into sugar mixture until blended. Stir in nuts, if using. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.

Bake until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Pour on milk chocolate chips and let melt. Spread over brownies evenly. Cool completely.

When cool, lift foil, with brownie, out of pan. Peel foil away from sides. Cut into 4 strips, then cut each strip crosswise into 4 pieces.

I doubled the recipe and used a 9X13 pan. I didn't use walnuts. Since I didn't have chocolate frosting I used milk chocolate chips.

Garlic Breadsticks

I can't make Zuppa Toscana without making garlic breadsticks to go with it. To me you can't have the one without the other. It would just be wrong. You can find the breadsticks I use at Wonder Bread Bakery and at Walmart. They are called Bread du Jour Original Breadsticks. The bag boasts that they are hot and crispy in minutes. The bag doesn't lie. These aren't as good as Olive Garden but they come close and I find them just as addictive.





Garlic Breadsticks
4 WW points per breadstick with butter
3 WW points per breadstick w/o butter

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1 package Bread du Jour Original Breadsticks
1/2 stick of butter, melted or I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray
garlic salt

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

On a baking sheet spread out the eight breadsticks. Brush with melted butter or spray with butter spray. Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes. Take out of oven and brush with more butter or spray and sprinkle on generous amount of garlic salt. Place back in oven and bake for 2 more minutes. You will not use all the melted butter unless you like your bread really buttery.

Zuppa Toscana

Olive Garden is my favorite place to eat at. If you give me 100 choices and Olive Garden is one of the choices I will choose Olive Garden every time. I love their soups, salad, bread sticks, and Chicken Parmigiana with Alfredo sauce. Their Alfredo rocks.

The menu describes Zuppa Toscana as spicy sausage, russet potatoes and cavolo greens in a creamy broth. It is so good. It's funny because when I was younger I wouldn't touch this soup. Sausage wasn't my favorite. My mom loved it and could eat bowl after bowl after bowl. I love that they put Romano cheese on everything. I make them grate it onto a plate so I have a pile of cheese and I can distribute it on my soup for every bite. Extravagant you say, but oh so worth it. Their Pasta e Fagioli is really good too but the Zuppa is my favorite. Don't get me started on their bread sticks. I could eat ten of them at a time if I allowed myself. I knew I wanted to try and make this soup at home because you can't always get to Olive Garden. I searched the Internet and found a copy cat recipe and it tastes just like their soup. I use Italian turkey sausage instead of regular but I can hardly tell the difference.

I cook this soup in the crock pot. I brown the meat the night before and then put it all together in the crock pot the next day. The crock pot does the bulk of the work and leaves us with delicious soup when I get home. I decided to make this soup on Tuesday. Tuesdays are my WW nights and I go to Kim's house to weigh and then we go out to eat. I wanted to have dinner ready for Will so this soup sounded good and I knew there would be plenty of leftovers for the both of us to enjoy over the next few days. Since I wasn't going to be home to add the cream and the kale I texted Will to add both around 2pm. I told him to just tear up two or three pieces of the kale since the bunch I bought was huge. Later that night when I got home from Kim's I looked in the crock pot and noticed only a few small pieces of greenery. I thought Will had ate most of the kale but upon further inspection I realized he added cilantro to the soup instead of the kale. I asked him if it made it taste weird but he said no and that he only put a few leaves in the soup. If you are familiar with cilantro you know the leaves are little. He probably thought I was crazy for telling him to only put in two or three of the leaves. So I scooped out what little was left of the cilantro and put in the kale let it cook for another hour. Next time I'll put the kale next to the crock pot so we don't end up with cilantro again but it didn't affect the flavor the soup. Cooking with help from hubby is always an adventure. But he's a good sport.

Zuppa Toscana
About 14 servings, 4 WW points per cup

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1 lb. Perdue Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage Links
1 1/2 ts. red pepper flakes
1 large onion, diced
2 Tb. real bacon bits
2 ts. minced garlic
10 cups water
5 chicken bouillon cubes, low sodium
1 cup heavy cream
1 lb. potatoes, sliced
1/4 bunch kale, chopped

Take each sausage link and remove the casing. Discard casings and place the loose sausage, onions, garlic, and bacon bits into a skillet. Cook the sausage mixture, breaking up the sausage as it cooks, until the sausage is cooked through. Drain the meat mixture.

In a crock pot place the meat mixture, water, bouillon cubes, and potatoes. Cook on low for seven hours. In the last hour of cooking add the heavy cream and kale. I like to sprinkle on cheese if I have it but it's not necessary. I serve with bread sticks.

Yummy Olive Garden in the comfort of my home. You can't beat that.

Link to original recipe: Copy Cat Zuppa Toscana

Country Salisbury Steak

I found this recipe in the Fall 2006 Kraft Food and Family magazine. Instead of a gravy you saute mushrooms and add barbecue sauce and water. It think this is where the recipe goes wrong. I like barbecue and thought it would be a different twist but this would be much better with beef gravy. I didn't put the sauce on all the patties and I'm glad because for lunch I heated one up with mash potatoes and smothered it in gravy. I used chicken gravy because that is what I had on hand and it was much better than the barbecue.



Country Salisbury Steak
from Food and Family magazine

6 WW points per patty

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1 1/2 lb. extra lean ground beef
1 pkg (6 oz) Stove Top Stuffing Mix for Chicken
1 1/2 cups water, divided
3/4 cup chopped onions
1 pkg (8 0z.) fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup barbecue sauce, I used Sweet Baby Ray's

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix meat, stuffing mix, 1 1/4 cups of water and onions until well blended. Shape into six 1/2 inch thick oval patties. I was able to make 7. Place on baking pan. I recommend spraying the pan with cooking spray because the extra lean ground beef doesn't have much fat in it and they stuck to the pan.

Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked through.

While the patties bake spray large skillet with cooking spray, add mushrooms and cook on medium high heat until lightly browned, stirring occasionally. Add barbecue sauce and remaining 1/4 cup water. Reduce heat to low and cook for 1 to 2 minutes or until sauce is heated through. Serve over patties.

Recipe makes 6 servings, I made 7. The sauce wouldn't have been enough for 6 patties if I would have liked the sauce.

Next time I make this I will bake the patties in beef gravy with mushrooms or cream of mushroom soup would be good to. I just think gravy would give it more flavor and be a lot better than the barbecue.