SRC: Avocado Ranch Pizza Sauce

Chicken Pizza with Avocado Ranch Sauce

Whew! I’ve got a lot going on around the blog here today. If you missed it earlier this morning, the first post in my 5 Days with Whole Wheat Series went live: it’s all about the different types of wheat and wheat flours available on the market today, as well as their different uses and purposes. And I’ve got a great giveaway that’s still open: win a gallon of Tropical Traditions Coconut Chips!

It’s also the first Monday of the month, and you know what that means! Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day!

This month, I had the privilege of browsing through The Cookin’ Chemist’s great selection of recipes. (You know what’s funny? Almost a year ago, The Cookin’ Chemist had ME in the Secret Recipe Club, and she made my Springy Casserole. Check out her rendition here: A Springy Casserole.) If you are looking to make something for dinner that goes beyond the typical ho-hum, Tessa’s got you covered! From stromboli to runzas to tortas to squash bowls, she’s got an intriguing collection of lunch and dinner recipes.

As it happens, I was indeed looking for a creative recipe for dinner when I was assigned The Cookin’ Chemist for SRC. Since it was pizza night, I wanted a fun yummy pizza using ingredients I had on hand. Tessa did not disappoint! I soon found her recipe for Chicken & Avocado Pizza and immediately chose that one.

I am not afraid to experiment with my pizza a little, but my DH is another story. Give him a Meatitarian Pizza and he’s a happy happy man. Guacamole Pizza? Not so much. I had to dress up the “mock-guac”, as Tessa called it, a little to make it more palatable to his conditioned taste buds… and it worked! Instead of a guacamole-flavored sauce, I ended up with more like an Avocado Ranch dressing; it was perfect, and even my DH said it was pretty good. We will definitely be making this again!



Tessa used tomatoes in her original recipe, which would be delicious, but I didn’t have any on hand and my DH can’t have them anyway. I did sprinkle a few chopped red onions on my half of the pizza, and they added some great complementary flavor!

This pizza sauce is one of the QUICKest you’ll ever make.

And it’s pretty EASY, too.

It’s CHEAP when avocados are in season. Or if you get them at Harris Teeter where they are always $1.47 for a package of two.

Avocados are full of HEALTHY fats, and of course, they are a fruit/vegetable, so it counts for one of your 5-9 servings a day. On pizza, no less!

Want to join in the fun? Read all about the Secret Recipe Club and how to join.

And for all you friendly folks visiting from the SRC link-up, if you like what you see, consider subscribing! (Subscribers get a free gift, so it’s totally worth it!)



The Last Sizzlin’ Soup - and a Free Gift for You!

Welcome back to Sizzlin’ Soups! It has been so much fun for me and Day2Day Joys, Christian Mommy Blogger, The Humbled Homemaker, Intentional by Grace, and The Purposed Heart to bring you so many different and delicious soup recipes.

If you have missed any of the soups so far, check them out by clicking below:

And now for our last featured soup, Simple and Delicious Potato Soup, from Mindy at The Purposed Heart. This basic potato soup comes together very easily and will please young and old alike. Dress it up with some fun garnishes to give it even more flavor!
Head over to The Purposed Heart to get the recipe for Simple and Delicious Potato Soup.

 

And now for the best part! We have compiled a free ebook with 12 delicious and nutritious soup recipes just for you!

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the recipe titles:

  • Santa Fe Taco Soup
  • Turkey Soup with Barley and Quinoa
  • Every-Changing Vegetable Soup
  • Chicken and Quinoa Dumplings

To thank you for your support we are ovver this ebook free to all of our subscribers! Anyone who subscribes by email or RSS to The Purposed Heart, Intentional By Grace, The Humbled Homemaker, Quick and Easy, Cheap and Healthy, Christian Mommy Blogger, or Day 2 Day Joys will get a free digital copy of this book!

If you are already a subscriber to one of the blogs mentioned above, you will automatically get a copy of Sizzlin’ Soups at the bottom of your email or RSS feed.

If you aren’t an email or RSS subscriber yet, you may sign up to receive your free copy as well. Once you subscribe a free copy of Sizzlin’ Soups will be sent to your email or RSS feeder along with the next post. Enjoy!

Crock Pot 5-Spice Chicken {at Stacy Makes Cents}

 

 

 

5 spice chicken Stacy Makes Cents is a blog I discovered last year, and love. Stacy is frugal (like me) and likes to eat healthy food (like me). I like Stacy! Her blog posts always make me smile, and sometimes laugh right out loud.

Today’s your chance to check out her blog, because yours truly is guest posting there with a delicious (if I do say so myself) recipe for 5-Spice Crock Pot Chicken. (Which, by the way, Stacy features crock pot recipes every Friday, another reason I love her!)

A few months back, I was at Ollie’s (a discount store kind of like Marshall’s or Ross but without the clothes and even messier) and stumbled across a little bottle of Spice Islands’ Chinese 5-Spice Powder. I don’t remember how much it was – maybe $1.99? – but I remember it was cheap. And I like cheap spices. So I bought it.

Problem was, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it! I had never before in my life made or even eaten anything (that I recall, anyway; I suppose there’s always the chance I ate it unaware) made with Chinese 5-spice powder. It was one of those random spice mixes that seemed non-essential to my life.

Until I saw it for $1.99.

Find out what I did with that 5-spice powder by reading my guest post at Stacy Makes Cents. Say Hi to Stacy for me!

Cast Party Wednesday realfoodallergyfree

Sizzlin’ Soups: Slow Cooker Chicken and Whole Wheat Garlic Dumplings

Welcome back to Sizzlin’ Soups! Day2Day Joys, Christian Mommy Blogger, The Humbled Homemaker, Intentional by Grace, The Purposed Heart and myself have had a lot of fun bringing you our favorite heart-warming soup recipes.

In case you missed them, we’ve already featured:

I’ve already tried the Creamy Chicken and Rice Soup (I made the wheat-free, dairy-free version), and my whole family loved it! These are recipes you will want to include in your regular meal-planning rotation, I promise you.
And we’re going to make it easy for you to do just that… we will have a free gift for you after our last installment that you will definitely want to take advantage of! Be sure to subscribe to one of the above blogs so that you don’t miss out on the announcement!
Now on to this week’s soup. It’s my turn, and I’ve had fun experimenting with Chicken & Dumplings in the crock pot. Can you believe, by the way, that I had never even eaten chicken and dumplings before? Not that I can recall, anyway. But it always sounded like such a delicious comfort food, and one I knew I would love.
And I was right! Delicious comfort food that I will definitely be making again and again. I started with this chicken and dumpling recipe at Goodbite.com, and modified it to make it easier and healthier. I don’t believe in sauteing things before I put them in the slow cooker, because that just adds extra work. I don’t do extra work. Keep it to the minimum! So this is simplified for anybody like me who doesn’t have time for extra steps. (I did make use of a stash of frozen cooked chicken - if you don’t have such a stash, you’ll probably want to saute your fresh chicken at least briefly before putting it in the pot.)
Speaking of saving steps, there is one thing about making soup that seems to take for.ev.er. and that is chopping up the ubiquitous celery and carrots that always end up in soup. I’ve recently discovered a trick that significantly reduces my chopping time and makes soup an even easier weeknight menu option. Here it is:
I am probably the last person in Christendom to have discovered this trick… but just in case, I’m sharing it with you. (So tell me, do you chop your veggies this way?)
Note: I used granulated garlic in the dumpling dough because I’m not a huge fan of fresh minced garlic in my baked goods. But if you prefer fresh garlic, you can just use the same amount (1-2 cloves) of fresh garlic in place of the granulated garlic.

This is not as QUICK as many slow cooker recipes, because there’s the added step (sorry, couldn’t eliminate that one) of making the dumpling dough. However, you can set the soup going in the morning, then make the dumplings about half an hour or so before dinner-time - that will still save you some dinner prep.
It is very EASY. The only thing to be aware of is not to add too much liquid to the dumpling dough, or you will have a mass of dough that never quite cooks through covering up a delicious pot of chicken soup. Not that I would know from experience or anything.
This is a good CHEAP dish. Soups are so good for using up odds and ends of meat and vegetables, and this is no exception. (If you have corn, peas, or green beans instead of the veggies I used, go ahead and throw ’em in the pot!) The dumplings take the place of the pasta typically found in a chicken noodle soup with very little extra cost.
I love my HEALTHY changes to this recipe, namely the use of whole wheat flour. You can use buttermilk in place of the yogurt (which is what the original recipe called for, and is just as healthy), but I usually have yogurt on hand, and I found it made the perfect substitute. These dumplings are SO much better for you than the typical canned biscuit recipe most people use. And I think they taste a lot better, too!

Cast Party Wednesday

Sizzlin’ Soups: Creamy Chicken and Rice Soup

Welcome back to Sizzlin’ Soups-a 6-week series sharing cozy, wholesome soup recipes! I have to admit, the weather in my neck of the woods has been more spring-like than wintery, inspiring thoughts of gardening and fresh salads more than soup. But according to Punxsatawney Phil, we have 6 more weeks of winter, so let’s not put away the soup pots yet!

So far, we’ve warmed up with

At the end of the 6-week series, we will have a surprise for you. *hint: it’s FREE* To be sure you don’t miss out, consider subscribing to any one of these participating blogs:

This week Erin at The Humbled Homemaker is bringing us her favorite soup recipe!
This soup can be classified as the comfort of all comfort foods: Creamy, frugal and filling, it’s the perfect addition to any cold winter night. Check out the recipe for this Creamy Chicken and Rice Soup over at The Humbled Homemaker!

Sizzlin’ Soup: Sausage and Kale Italian Zuppa

I am so glad we’re doing this soup series now! For one thing, I am freezing my tail off even inside my apartment (I am no engineer, but I’m seriously beginning to wonder if that earthquake did some damage to the building structure! When it’s cold outside…. it’s cold inside!). Soup is just the thing to warm me up. For another, I have been in such a soup rut - potato soup and chicken noodle soup have been taking turns on my menu rotation for a while. Time for some inspiration!

Rachel from Day2Day Joys will be sizzlin’ up some Zuppa this week. What is Zuppa? Click here to find out and to get the recipe for this Italian favorite. It’ll be sure to spice up the sizzle in your soup recipe stash!

Don’t forget, at the end of this series, my bloggy friends and I will be offering you a free gift with your email subscription to any of our blogs! You’re gonna love it! To be sure you don’t miss out, consider subscribing to Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy, or any one of these other participating blogs:
Rachel @ Day 2 Day Joys
Nikki @ Christian Mommy Blogger
Erin @ The Humbled Homemaker
Leigh Ann @ Intentional by Grace
Mindy @ The Purposed Heart

For My Vegan Friends: Black Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Black Bean Stuffed Sweet Potato

First, let’s get something straight. I am not a vegan. I have tasted life without cheese and I didn’t like it. I won’t go back voluntarily. However, on Facebook recently, I asked my readers to give me some ideas for recipes to post in January; and to my surprise, several people requested vegan recipes.

Huh.

I am not entirely a stranger to vegan cookery - having a child who is allergic to beef, dairy, and eggs kind of thrust me in that general direction on occasion when searching for recipe inspiration. In fact, my favorite ever chocolate chip cookie recipe is Happy Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies. I suppose if I were a vegan, I could forget about the cheese if I could eat those cookies all day long. Maybe.

In any case, as it happens, I do have a vegan recipe to share with you, my vegan friends! I bet you’re not surprised that it involves beans. And sweet potatoes! The two together work some pretty awesome magic, let me tell you. I started with this recipe for black bean stuffed sweet potatoes, and then livened it up just a bit.

If you’re not vegan (or dairy-free, if that’s the case), you can un-veganize it by dressing it up with a little cheese (you know what my choice is!) and sour cream if you’d like. But honestly, they’re delicious as they are. Even without the cheese. (Really.)

Black Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes


The bean filling here, folks, is kickin’ awesome, I can assure you! I could eat that on its own endlessly. Thank goodness my boys were there to stop me, or they might not have had any lunch.

Black Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

This is QUICK if you have cooked beans on hand. (I like to freeze extras, or I make them on a day when I have extra time in preparation for a meal like this.) If you don’t have cooked beans on hand, you’re going to have to plan ahead: soak them overnight the day before you plan to make this dish, then cook them in the slow cooker all day until you’re ready to get started with this recipe. Once you’ve got cooked beans to start with, you can make the black bean filling while the sweet potatoes are baking in the oven. Dinner will be ready in an hour or less!

It’s very EASY, for sure. In fact, it’s a one-pan meal, so that means very little clean up!

Both beans and sweet potatoes are super CHEAP, so this one’s a frugal winner in my book.

You’ve never seen so much HEALTHY packed into one little dish! You’ve got the Super Food Sweet Potato, combined with Vegan Protein Extraordinaire (otherwise known as beans), all wrapped up with antioxidants and vitamins from the cute little veggies and spices.

Sharing at Tastetastic Thursday. Frugal Food Thursday,
Miz Helen’s Country Cottage

Sizzlin’ Soups: Creamy Chicken and Vegetable Chowder

It’s that time of year when the big stock pots come out, the broth starts simmering, and the mouths start watering. It’s soup season!

When the temperature starts dropping, I start putting “soup” on the menu once a week. It’s comforting and warming, and can be incredibly nutritious.

I’m so excited that for the next 6 weeks, a few lovely ladies and myself will be bringing you a whole bowl full of sizzlin’ soup recipes! Each soup will use good, wholesome ingredients! At the end of the 6-week series, we will have a surprise for you. *hint: it’s FREE*

To be sure you don’t miss out, consider subscribing to Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy, or any one of these other participating blogs:

Now without further ado, Leigh Ann at Intentional by Grace brings us this week’s soup: Creamy Chicken and Vegetable Chowder. The added bonus? It only takes twenty minutes to prepare!

 

Try a Brined Turkey This Year

Last year at Thanksgiving, my sister brined our turkey for the first time, and I decided at that point that I would definitely have to do the same thing as soon as I had the chance. The turkey was seriously the most moist and flavorful turkey I’d ever had. And I’ve had a lot of turkey.

I had to wait a whole year (what’s up with that, anyway?), but I finally got my chance last week. I read quite a few articles on food magazine or newspaper websites, plus a few blog posts by illustrious bloggers around the internet (including this super simple turkey brining tutorial with some great tips), and in the end, I just dumped a bunch of stuff into my brine without following anybody’s recipe.

Which, apparently, is part of the beauty of a brined turkey. Essentially you need approximately a gallon of water (for a 10-12lb turkey) with a cup each of sugar and salt. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be water! I saw plenty of recipes that used broth, juice, or cider for the brine, which I imagine would be amazing. On top of that, you can add whatever you jolly well please into the brine (OK, with a certain amount of discretion, I suppose!) for all kinds of different layers of flavor. Really, though, the important thing is the water, salt and sugar. Those ingredients are what gets the job done.

I decided to go with a citrus-y element to my brine, basically because I was going through my freezer and found a bag full of chopped up clementines that I had decided to freeze before they went bad. To that, I added some very traditional herbs and spices like bay leaves and peppercorns. It was delicious! To be honest, the citrus flavor didn’t come through very strongly, but it was still very moist and flavorful as I expected it to be.

Like I said, you can add whatever floats your boat to your brine, but here’s what I put in mine, plus specific directions for brining.


Brining a turkey isn’t exactly QUICK, but it doesn’t add that much time to the whole process. You have to defrost the turkey thoroughly in the fridge for a few days beforehand anyway, so chances are, leaving it in the fridge overnight before you roast it is not going to cramp your style much. The actual process of putting the brine together does add a little extra time into your routine, but not much.

It is SO EASY, though, and unlike other unusual methods of cooking a turkey, like frying or smoking, it doesn’t require any special equipment. Plus, it’s hard to mess up!

It’s not any HEALTHY-er than any other method of cooking and preparing a turkey, and may perhaps be slightly less, with the inclusion of all that salt and the sugar. That’s not going to stop me, though.

What’s your favorite way to prepare a turkey?

Some friends and I have collaborated to bring you an awesome little eBook just in time to help you with your Christmas baking! It’s chock full of easy, delicious cookie and candy recipes to help you celebrate the holidays in tasty style. Each recipe is built around wholesome ingredients, so you won’t even feel guilty indulging in one… or two… or even three! What’s more? We’re offering this book absolutely free - no strings attached - to each of our email subscribers! All you have to do is subscribe via email to any one of our blogs and you will receive a link for a free download of this sweet little book.

Collaborating with me are: The Purposed Heart, Intentional by Grace, and The Humbled Homemaker. Subscribe to all of these blogs just because you’ll be glad you did. Yes, they’re that good.

Shared at Real Food 101.

Fight the Flu with Garlic & Potato Soup

garlic rosemary potato soup

Who needs a flu shot? This year, we’re fighting back with food instead! Each Wednesday we reveal a different food that is purported to support your immune system in the fight against cold and flu viruses. What’s more, each post will be opened up to all our readers, who will be linking up their favorite recipes with these key flu-fighting ingredients, so you can get lots of ideas for creative ways to serve them to your family! To be sure you don’t miss a single post in the series, consider subscribing to one of these participating blogs:
Christian Mommy Blogger
Day 2 Day Joys
Intentional by Grace
The Purposed Heart
The Humbled Homemaker

So far, we’ve added green tea, breakfast, and pumpkin into our diets to help ward off the cold and flu. This week, we’re featuring a tried and true home remedy that has stood the test of time. Way back when, it was even thought powerful enough to ward off vampires.

No vampires around here, but cold and flu viruses are a plenty! That’s why you’ll need a hearty stash of garlic to include in at least one meal every day. Why garlic? For centuries, traditional people groups, including the Cherokees (according to Wikipedia), have used garlic as both a preventive and cure for the common cold. This traditional belief was given modern credence by a scientific study a decade ago that indicated that regular consumption of allicin (the main medicinal component of garlic in pill form) reduced the incidence of the common cold by half!

And although it’s also famous for its tendency to induce foul breath after consumption (how’s that for a nice way to say “it makes your breath stink”?!), garlic is well worth the consequences! It adds delicious depth of flavor to any savory dish, which makes it a rather enjoyable way to fend off the flu.

Unfortunately, around here, we have to limit our garlic consumption because my DH can’t tolerate very much of it, so I usually only use a clove or two at a time in any dish. For this special post, though, I went all out and used not one, not two, not even three cloves. Nope, I used 5! Half a head! I was living dangerously. Well, OK, not that dangerously. The recipe I was working from actually called for 5 heads of garlic, not 5 cloves. Um, yeah. Not gonna happen.

I am happy to report that this soup was just as delicious with 5 cloves of garlic as I’m sure it would be with 5 heads. Actually, I’m afraid that 5 heads of garlic in one dish would foul my breath for days, so I’m happy I stuck with the 5 cloves. You can determine your own comfort level. (Just warn me if you’re going for more than half a head!)


Cooking soup in the slow cooker isn’t necessarily QUICKer than putting it together on the stovetop, considering it’s a time difference of hours.

But it is EASY-er! I love making soup in the slow cooker because you can just drop everything in it and leave while you go about your business.

Soup is such a CHEAP dinner, I just can’t say it often enough! I put it weekly on my menu for this reason.

Aaaaannnddd, of course it’s HEALTHY, too, especially if you’re trying to fight the flu. But we’ve already covered that, so I won’t bore you with more of that.

See what my friends have cooked up for you this week:

Garlic-Lemon Salad {& Baked White Fish Recipe} at Christian Mommy Blogger

Better than Red Lobster Garlic Cheese Biscuits at The Humbled Homemaker

Creamy Roasted Garlic Soup at The Purposed Heart

Garlic Salsa at Day 2 Day Joys

7 ways to Eat Raw Garlic at Intentional by Grace

Now it’s your turn to share your favorite recipes featuring garlic, but first, let me share one of my favorite entry from last week’s Green Tea blog hop: how cool is this? A chai tea concentrate made with green tea:

Chai Tea Concentrate

Feel free to link up any of your favorite recipes with garlic! It doesn’t have to be the main ingredient, just one of them, so it should be easy to find one or two. We’d love some more garlicky inspiration!

Please keep your entries limited to recipes including garlic, and please link back to one of the hosting blogs. Thanks!