Mushroom Chicken with Rice

You'll need:

Chicken Breasts (enough to feed your family)
a little flour
1 can Campbell's Mushroom Soup
Milk
1-2 tbl oil
Rice

Season the chicken breast with garlic powder, coat with a small amount of flour, (not trying to make fried chicken) then cook in a skillet with the oil until chicken is done. Meanwhile, prepare the Mushroom soup according to the directions on the can using the milk. When the chicken has cooked through, drain some of the oil off and pour the mushroom soup over the chicken, let it cook together for 5 minutes or so, it will thicken a little. Serve over steamed rice or noodles whatever your family prefers.

Shrimp with Green Rice

1 (14.5 oz) can chicken broth
3TBL butter, divided
1 c long grain rice
1 c each: chopped asparagus and fresh spinach
1/4 c chopped green onion
1 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
Garlic salt and chopped fresh basil to taste

Bring broth and 1 TBL butter to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add rice, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Quickly stir in asparagus, spinach and onions; cover an let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, melt remaining butter in a large skillet; stir in shrimp and cook, stirring frequently, until shrimp is pink. Season rice and shrimp with garlic salt and basil; top rice with cooked shrimp. Makes 4 servings.

Salmon Patties

In a bowl combine cooked salmon, panko bread crumbs, 1 beaten egg and chopped up chives. I baked fresh salmon, but you could use canned. Sorry, I don't have amounts of ingredients, I just throw stuff in till it looks good.

Form into patties, then fry in oil till brown on both sides.

Serve with your favorite side dish. I was choosing to eat low-carb this night so I just had salad

Shrimp "Boil" Dinner

Serves 4

1 lb Smoked Sausage
12 oz peeled medium shrimp
4 ears fresh or thawed frozen corn, halved
2 tsp Louisiana seasoning (Old Bay Seasoning my be substituted)
4 lemon wedges
Garnish: sliced scallions

1. Place oven rack in second position from bottom. Heat to 500.
2. Coat top of four 24 inch long sheets of foil with nonstick spray.
3. For each packae: Place 2 chunks sausage, 1/4 the shrimp and 2 pieces corn in center of foil. Put 1 tsp butter on shrimp; sprinkle shrimp and corn with 1/2 tsp Louisiana seasoning.
4. Bring Long ends of foil together; double-fold to seal. Seal sides same way. Place on a rimmed baking sheet.
5. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and open sides of packets away from you.
6. Squeeze lemon over shrimp and toss, with juices in packet, to coate. Sprinkle with scallions.

Meatball Sandwiches

This first part is a basic Meatball, it can be used with a red sauce for sandwiches like I did, or Spaghetti and Meatballs, or I have put them in a brown gravy which can be served over noodles. Or you could do a Swedish Meatball sauce.

In the bowl I put a pound of ground beef, 1 egg, some panko bread crumbs, not sure how much, maybe somewhere between 1/2 cup to a cup, and garlic powder.

Roll the meatballs approxiamately the size of a ping pong ball, place on a baking sheet, bake for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees.

In this pan I put 2) 8 oz cans of tomato sauce, garlic powder & Italian seasoning to taste. (I put a lot of garlic). My girls will use this sauce over pasta, without anything else in it. After the meatballs have cooked I put them into the pan with the sauce and simmer for 15 minutes or so, could be however long you like. I tried to take a picture with the meatballs in it, but the steam kept fogging it up.

Put the meatballs and some of the sauce on a sandwich roll, then parmesan and provolone cheese, then I toasted it a little in the oven. My youngest likes onions on her sandwich.

Hope you try it, and enjoy it as much as we did.

Seafood Medley

This is a recipe that my husband actually found in one of my various cookbooks. After several attempts, deleting some of the ingredients, I have finally settled on a variation that my very picky daughter will eat. I don't follow the recipe exactly, so I'm going to give it to you the way we eat it. That isn't really it's name, that is just what my daughter decided we should call it.

1 T vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic
1 T flour
1 can (16 oz) whole tomatoes undrained
1 pkg (10) oz frozen cut okra, thawed
6 oz shrimp (recipe in the book says cooked, I use raw, if frozen thaw)
6 oz crabmeat (I have only used imitation, but recipe states real crab, if frozen thaw)

Put oil in skillet, add okra, we like the okra cooked a little longer than the recipe states, so I cook it till it's soft, but not brown. While the okra is cooking I put in the garlic. After this add the flour and tomatoes, break up tomatoes. Cook uncovered, stirring frequently, just as mixture begins to thicken, add shrimp and crabmeat. Cook till shrimp is pink, by then the crab has warmed through. Recipe calls to put it over noodles, my girls prefer steamed rice.

I gave you the weights on the seafood that the recipe states, I just put in as much as I need to feed my family of 4. You could put diced onions in it if you wanted, I don't if I'm feeding my oldest.

Refrigerator Biscuit Donuts

Amanda Gardner Photography

One Saturday morning I was trying to come up with something different to make for the girls for breakfast. This is a doughnut made from refrigerator biscuits. This was probably one of the very first things I ever cooked in 7th grade Home Ec. You take the biscuit, form a hole in it and deep fry it. As soon as it comes out roll it in something. I rolled these in sugar. You could use anything, cinnamon and sugar, powder sugar. You could put a sugar glaze, or a chocolate glaze. I've only had them with regular sugar, however. The taste is similar to Funnel Cake, so if you go with that concept you could put whipped cream, strawberries, you name it. Though when your cooking them don't turn your back on them they cook really fast. Hope you try them and enjoy.

Pumpkin Bread

The first time I made this recipe was in 7th grade Home Ec. We didn't have time to mix it and then bake it for an hour or more, so we made it in a rectangle cake pan. Since we made it as a cake we put a cream cheese frosting on it. It was soooo good. However, I have never made it that way since then, I have always made it in the plain and simple loaf version, and it is still soooo good. I make it every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas to give out to friends and family. My girls will go through at least 2 loaves by themselves.

1 3/4 C. sifted flour
1 1/2 C. sugar
3/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
1 t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt
1/4 C. + 2 T. water
2 eggs
1/2 C. oil
1 c. canned pumpkin (100% pure-not pumpkin pie mix)
1/2 C. nuts (opt.-I don't use them)

Sift all dry ingredients together in large bowl, make a well in the center. Add water, eggs, oil, pumpkin, and nuts (if using). Mix well. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 for about 1 1/2 hours.