I first saw this recipe on my girl Sammie’s blog, The LaMay Bakery, and it looked amazing. We are total kitchen soul mates and our families tend to like the same meals so I went with it and it was as big of a hit here as it was at her house! The not too cheesy, just crunchy enough combo did it for my husband, the butter was a serious win for Wee One #1 and the other two are head over heels for pretty much any variation on breaded chicken.

It’s very similar to the chicken strips I make, except this is cooked in butter and there is shredded cheese in the bread crumbs. It’s arguably much easier and faster than the strips because with this recipe you’re working with half a chicken breast per person in a single piece instead of about the same amount of chicken, pounded out and sliced into eleventy billion smaller pieces. Both are now requested on the regular, so similarities aside, it’s always nice to add another meal to the list of things everyone around here loves.

Cheddar Baked Chicken – via Allrecipes

1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 cup crispy rice cereal
3 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut in half
2 tablespoons melted butter

First prep your bowls, you’ll need three. In the first one mix the flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. In the second one, beat the egg and milk together and in the last one combine the bread crumbs cheese and cereal. I totally spaced on the cereal so I made mine without it!	Coat your baking dish with the 1/4 cup of melted butter and dredge (aka plunk) each chicken piece first in the flour mixture…
…then in the egg mixture and finally in the bread crumb mixture before moving each piece to the baking dish.
Bake for 35 minutes or so at 350! So so so good!

Today, I’m linking up with Kate Says Stuff, Obviously Marvelous, and Saved By Love. Check out some of the other blogs linking up, they’re full of great ideas!

Why my children prefer these rolled up grilled cheeses over classic grilled cheese sandwiches, I’m not sure. I mean of course growing up with me as your mother you’re going to go for whimsy instead of standard fare and that’s cool with me but man…they loooooove them.

For someone who loves to experiment with food and flavors and styles of cooking, I have a somewhat resistant family. Only somewhat in that most of the time Wee One #1 will try just about anything and if it’s a sugary baked good that doesn’t involve coconut he’s usually happy with it, the other two wee ones are usually down with variations on their favorites but not so into totally new things. My husband is supportive of my kitchen experiments but not always down to actually sit down to eat them. So I try to keep that in mind when I absolutely must switch something up and try a new take on something they’d eat everyday (possibly all day) if it was offered. These grilled cheese rolls were an instant hit and I’ve been making them several times a week now!

Today on Thankful Thursday over at Kate Says Stuff, we’ve all (yes you too) been invited to talk about how awesome we are. These grilled cheese rolls have me feeling pretty awesome because making something decently healthy (if you get sneaky with your choice of ingredients of course) for my kids and having them asking for more is pretty rad. I’m also feeling pretty amazing because I made a tray of four different kinds of cupcakes yesterday for a friend who hadn’t celebrated his birthday in years (wha?!?!) and he went on and on and on about how great they all were and that I should get into catering and my domestic ego was polished to a shine. Lately homeschooling has been a lot of fun and that makes me feel really awesome because at first I wasn’t sure it was a good fit for us – we just needed to find our groove!

I’m going to tag a few awesome people as well. For the record I’d tag my sister and my girlfriends because they’re all pretty amazing girls – very talented and while some of them are kind of badass they’re actually really sweet – but they aren’t blogging at the moment. Their awesomeness shines the brightest when I remember how present they have always been for me even where there is a whole lot of distance (and now time difference) between us.

My dear friend Romi has written and (as of today) has published two books. They are amazing. You can buy her new one right now, here -> Last-Minute Love (Year of the Chick series). She’s always been up for skipping dinner for wine and cake even when going back to her place was a bit of an epic journey. She’s extremely driven and talented and smart and funny and oh Romi, you’re amazing.

My girl Sammie over at The La May Bakery is probably the sweetest person I know. I mean, damn. Not only is she super sweet and cute and always, always looking on the bright side (even right now when her husband is deployed and she’s 16 weeks pregnant with Wee One #2), she’s a good friend and is always there to listen and help figure things out. She’s also a great long distance kitchen buddy and more than once we have cooked the same thing for dinner – coincidentally! So so so awesome.

If I’m talking about awesomeness, I absolutely MUST include Mutant Supermodel. For two years now I’ve been watching her amazing journey in single parenting and amazing, wonderful advice on budgeting. She is a very strong woman but also someone who can chill out and just be a real person. Ah. Maze. Ing.

And last but never least, I’m going to add Erik of Diary Dad to this collection of awesome because he’s such a dedicated and devoted dad! The world would be a better place if more dudes jumped into parenting with both feet! He engages his kids in everyday activities and ‘dadventure days’. Cuuuute (and awesome).

Now, back the ‘recipe’ today, it’s barely a recipe, all you need is bread, butter and cheese slices. If you’re sneaky, like me, you’ll use whole grain bread, vegan ‘butter’ and veggie ‘cheese slices’. Shhhh.

Cut the crusts off the bread and win instant points with wee ones everywhere! Then flatten the life out of them with your rolling pin.
One slice of cheese per slice of bread (more gets messy, trust me), and roll those babies up! I brushed a wee bit of ‘butter’ on each side so they’d look browned and pretty.
Just cook them as you would normally, except make twice as many!

Today I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie and The How To Mommy.

Tater tots are really just rolled up mashed potatoes and everyone knows mashed potatoes go with pretty much anything! Whatever they don’t work with french fries or scalloped potatoes can totally stand in for them. It’s potato madness. So once I discovered how to make tater tots myself, a whole world of weird culinary (I use the word extremely loosely) adventure opens up. Tater tots IN a casserole? sure, why not? Wrapped in bacon? What isn’t there to love?! I have also recently stumbled onto, but haven’t tried, Tater Tot Pie, Cheeseburger Tater Tots and some kind of insanity called Tater Tot Hot Dog Casserole?! What?!

I’ll stick to wrapping or stuffing mine, thanks.

This Week’s Menu:

Saturday & Sunday – Cooking with Visitors! We’ll let them pick!

The tater tot recipe I used in this recipe is the same one I used when I made The Duggar’s Tater Tot Casserole last year.

From here, it’s painfully simple. Just roll each tater tot in a single strip of bacon and secure with a toothpick. Cook at 375 for about 30 minutes, give or take (check on it). Make these for a crowd, take some to your neighbors, whatever you do – share them!

Today I am linking up with Kate Says Stuff, Obviously Marvelous and Saved by Love Creations.

This is one of those lunches that you MUST serve with a salad or else you’re staring down the barrel of a seriously sad meal, nutrition-wise. Taste wise? I hear it’s amazing! I’m going to defend myself a little here and say that when I do make something like this these days, all the ingredients are as healthy as I can get my hands on. So the chicken is local and grain fed, the bacon is low sodium, the cheese is local and rBST-free, the flatbread is all multigrainy and the ranch is homemade. The entire family gobbled these down and that pretty much never happens.

Chicken-Bacon Wraps
4 pieces flatbread
2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped
4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup cheese, chopped or shredded
1 green onions, chopped
1 batch ranch dressing

So painfully simple. Lay out the chicken in the middle of the flatbread, top with cheese and bacon.
Then drizzle on some ranch dressing and sprinkle the green onion bits over top. Roll them up and baket at 350 for about 15 minutes (so the bread is crispy and the cheese has a chance to melt).
Each wee one asked for a second wrap when they were done! Miracles!

This week, I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday and The How To Mommy’s Meal Planning Monday.

My kitchen is so confused. Silken tofu and dairy free cream cheese in the morning, buttermilk fried chicken at night. What can I say? I cook what makes me happy and then I do my best to cook for my family the things that make them happy. There is a lot of dish washing going on around here.

I first found this recipe in February and bookmarked it to do it, but I’m not a huge fan of frying (or more specifically, the splashy mess it makes of my stove top) so I put it off. Once we got down to LA I thought it was time to actually cook up some of these dusty bookmarked recipes and away I went. I’m not going to lie, it feels so wrong to pour that much oil in a pot and have at it, but I’ll keep the honesty going and admit that it was actually a fun recipe to make.

Super simple to do, as long as you make sure your oil doesn’t get too hot (but gets hot enough) and you have some patience with it. Everyone loved this meal, I served it with wedges! I will not be making this again this week, but it did rank really high with the fam so I will likely make it again soonish and thought it’d be a fun addition to Menu Monday! This week I will photograph all of the recipes as I do them so I can link back to them!

This Week’s Menu:

Sunday – Mini Chicken Hot Pockets with Potato Rings for the fam, Chick Pea Salad for me and Salty Sweet Butterscotch Brownies for dessert

Buttermilk Fried Chicken – via Allrecipes

Before you do anything, mix all of the ingredients in the left column with the buttermilk, plunk your chicken in it and soak for about 6 hours. Then get your oil heating and theeeeeeen, mix all the ingredients on the right side and use that to dredge your chicken pieces in.
So you just shake off the buttermilk coated piece of chicken and place it in the seasoned flour. Roll it around a bunch to make sure it’s totally coated. Pile them all up and wait for your oil to heat to about 350 degrees.
Now add your chicken to the pot, with 2 1/2 quarts of oil you should be able to cook all of the chicken at once. Leave it in there for about 10 minutes, then poke at it and turn all the pieces around and leave it for another 10-15 minutes. Dry the chicken on pieces of paper towel for at least 10 minutes. Serve with wedges and a salad!

Today, I’m linking up with Tasty Tuesday at 33 Shades of Green, Flock Together Tuesday at Mom’s Best Nest and Inspiration Linky #12 at Teagan’s Travels.

Hooray for making local friends turned local babysitters! Last night my husband and I went on our first official LA date and man it was fun. I mean, anytime we get to be alone together is fun, but especially nice when it involves a lovely restaurant, a glass of good wine and a late night walk (ending the night with pomegranate Pinkberry was a nice touch too).

This recipe had been in my to-make queue for almost a year before I finally made it last week. It was one of the first recipes I used to break in my new kitchen and being surrounded by alarmingly beautiful people (and also a pretty surprising amount of like, morbidly obese people, what’s up with that, LA?!) this recipe felt like a god jumping off point for a pumped up healthy kick.

The original recipe is not vegan – it includes an egg and cheese in the crust and also mozzarella cheese on top, which I subbed for a handful of oats in the cust and vegan cheese on top. Deeelish and healthier too!

Cauliflower Crust (Vegan) Pizza adapted from Eat. Drink. Smile.

1 cup cooked, pureed cauliflower
1 cup shredded vegan cheese
1/2 cup whole oats, ground
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp crushed garlic
1/2 tsp garlic salt

pizza sauce, shredded vegan cheese & whatever toppings you like

First steam and strain your cauliflower, then run it through your food processor to a smooth puree.
You’ll need about a cup. Pureed cauliflower is great to have on hand for adding vitamins to almost anything. Stir some into mashed potatoes, add a few tablespoons to scrambled eggs – whatever!
Chop up some garlic and add it to a bowl with the cauliflower puree and shredded vegan cheese.
This is where an egg is added in the original recipe, in my version I added 1/2 cup of ground whole oats to help it stick together.
Mix it up a bit more and roll it out (or pat it out if it’s too sticky) onto a baking sheet. I divided it in two pieces for two crusts. Bake at 450 for about 20 minutes.
Top it with pizza sauce, vegan cheese and whatever other toppings you like! Bake again for 5 minutes and voila!

I know I’m not going to get any sympathy for this but man it’s hard to stay on a productive routine down here. The weather is so lovely and if it isn’t the beach calling my name it’s the pool – or it’s the kids wanting to check out one of the eleventy billion neat things there are to check out here. We also do at least four hours of homeschooling every weekday morning so that takes a serious bite out of the day as well. We have managed to force a routine on ourselves this week though. After my husband leaves for work (at what feels like the crack of dawn), I down water and a pot of coffee, wake the kids, feed them and do school until about noon. If we have an adventure planned, away we go. If we don’t, we’re off to the pool. Then we’re back in time for me to do some cleaning, make dinner, usually with the assistance of my lovely 6 year old sous chef and it’s ready when my husband gets home from work. Tidy, baths, stories, get the two little kids off to bed and theeeeeen I have time to crack open my laptop get a blog post out and then chat with my honey while I knit or bake or whatever. Phew. It’s a full life, but it’s hella good. <3

There is a Whole Foods and a Trader Joes in the same plaza just a few minutes from us! Imagine my glee – go ahead, imagine it! Considering that less than a month ago we were living in the woods and the closest Whole Foods to me was at least two hours away and that we are sorely deprived of Trader Joes in Canada, this is big, big news. I like to go at night after my husband gets home so I can actually hunt down the vegan cream cheese without three kids begging for organic gummy bears (the new fave treat around here). I have been cooking and baking my way through Peas and Thank You still and OMG what a great cookbook! Lots of updates on that next week!

I’m still adding recipes to the site without blog posts so I have a nice record of everything I’ve made! Here is what I’ve added lately!

	I have a pretty serious problem with these candied pecans. I mean, I don’t want to admit this but in the interest of full disclosure, I ate all of them. Not in one sitting mind you, but I ate every single pecan. They really are that good. Of course they are though, right? It’s not like I’m going to post a loser recipe on my blog. One other side note about these little babies is they’re vegan! Hooray! (read).
	They really are so so good. White chocolate and macadamia nuts are a perfect pairing! We included this in last year’s cookie tin and everyone loved them. (read).
	Polymer clay is so fun to make little trinkets and buttons and pendants with. It’s essentially play-doh you bake to set it and keep it forever. Since it sets up really hard you can make buttons and actually use them in garments! Or you can make little beads and string them on thin elastic for bracelets or necklaces. Kids especially love making them and grow ups with a soft spot for that specific child will love receiving (and wearing) them. So cute. (read).
	Just cut the apple into thin slices, carve out the core of each slice (if you have an apple corer, just pop the whole thing out first) and fill the middle with peanut butter, cranberries and chocolate chips. Then sprinkle with cinnamon. You can fill it with whatever you want. The point is to keep it healthy and keep it small (read).
	These cookies are so painfully simple, they’re easy and fun to make with kids and you can roll them in any kind of baking candies to match whatever occasion you like. (read).
	I knitted this blanket for our cousin Jenn and her new husband Adam. They’re mega, super rad. It was a pretty easy knit once I got going on it, the bulk of it was a bit much in warmer months, but totally worth it. (read).
	I made these when I wanted to serve up something cute and simple, but that was a little more ‘adult’ than typical apps I make for the kids after school. (read).
	This snack is especially handy when people show up unexpected for movie night, or when you’re poking around the kitchen in the middle of the night when you should be in bed. (read).

This right here? Is husband food. Both the chicken wings and the potato wedges are far too spicy for 2/3 of the children, and I went ahead and made something different for all three of them anyway so my husband wouldn’t have to share. He has his favorites that the kids and I like too, like stew and chili and lasagna and chicken ceasers and things like that, but this kind of meal, the kind of purposely greasy but still made from scratch food you only really find in old school pubs and family restaurants, is defo his hands down number one love. Not just the combo of wings and wedges, but wings that aren’t off chickens that look like they starved to death and wedges that have been cut to actually resemble a wedge of some kind.

Next time I make these though, I need some cute pub-style baskets to serve them in!

First wash and cut your potatoes into wedges. Then mix all the seasonings in a large plastic bag (sandwich bag style).
Put the wedges in the bag, a handful at a time and shake it up to coat them. Bake them at 400F for about 15-20 minutes.
The sauce for the chicken is ridic simple. Just heat up your favorite hot sauce and add the butter. Cook it down a little, about 10 minutes or so before you toss the chicken in it.
Toss all of the ingredients except the cornstarch and water for the honey garlic sauce in a saucepot and stir till it’s almost boiling. Then reduce the heat, mix the hot water with the cornstarch and then add a little of the sauce to the water/corn starch mixture. Slowly incorporate that back into the sauce so it will thicken up nicely.
I cooked the chicken wings in a little oil in my wok, but you can deep fry or bake them if you want. Coat the chicken in the hot sauce, plate the wedges separately and serve the honey garlic on the side.

With a Greek mother and a painfully Canadian father (my grandparents from his side are from Saskatchewan and Quebec!) who was more than happy to adopt as much Greek cooking as my mother liked, we ate a lot of pilaf growing up. There is still a lot of pilaf going on over there – and now that Wee One #2 has decided it’s one of her most treasured things to eat, there is a lot of it going on around here as well.

When I was a kid I thought it was tricky, but by the time I was around 13 my Dad showed me how to do it and I’ve been making it since. Easy peasy!

6-8lb roast 2 tablespoons parsley flakes 1 tablespoon paprika 1 teaspoon chili powder 1 tablespoon garlic powder 2 teaspoons black pepper 2 cups water 1/4 cup molasses	Pilaf 1 onion 3 + cloves garlic 2 tablespoons butter 1 cup rice 2 cups water

Mix all the spices for the rub in a bowl. Rinse off the meat and massage the rub into the meat.
Mix the water and molasses and pour into the roasting pan with the rubbed pork. Slow cook this baby all day at just under 300F. I went with 270F for about 8 hours or so.
Let it sit for 30 minutes or so and the shred it.
I waited till the pork was sitting before I started the pilaf. Chop the onion and garlic and chase them around a frying pan with the butter, until the onions are clear and the kitchen smells like garlic heaven. Add the water, set the heat to low and don’t touch it for about 30 minutes. Everyone has their favorites, but pulled pork on a bun with a pilaf?! How can you not win friends with that?! Or have like, three helpings. Not that I’d ever have three helpings. Ha!

Today, I’m linking up with Kate Says Stuff, The How To Mommy and Obviously Marvelous

There are those recipes for 11 layer cakes that wow a room full of friends or a seriously huge batch of stuffing with all the random stuff in it that makes your entire extended family reach for seconds on Thanksgiving, and those recipes are wonderful and certainty have a time and a place (you know, like a going away party or, um, Thanksgiving). But what about like, Wednesday night dinner?

Enter this recipe. This not only always pleases my crowd (all of them at once even!) but if you’re feeling lazy short on time, you can make the filling over a bed of rice for a no hassle, no dough involved meal and make them just as happy. Wee One #1 loves this so much he requests it for lunch on the regular, and I always have to make a separate ‘lunch batch’ because there are never any leftovers. Never.

Chicken Hot Pockets
1 batch pizza dough (or something similar) original recipe used a can of Grands biscuits
2 cups cup cooked chicken, chopped
2 cups condensed cream of chicken soup
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon dried onion, minced
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon poultry seasoning

First, deal with the dough, however you choose to do that. Then heat your soup and add all the other ingredients to the pot.
However you make the dough, you’ll need to divide it up into individual amounts.
Then with a little flour (or parchment paper), roll out each pocket and fill with about 1/4 cup of filling.
Fold it up as carefully as you can and bake them seam side down for about 30 minutes at 375F.
Super simple, serious taste punch. I swear it’s the poultry seasoning + thyme combo combo, but really the overall combo of all the spices together with the chicken is a real winner.