Buffalo Chicken Mac N’ Cheese January 22, 2011

A few weeks ago, the always delightful fellow mama blogger, The Mrs. of Trying Our Best, tweeted about making a Buffalo Chicken Macaroni and Cheese casserole. You had me at Buffalo, mrs.! 🙂 I asked her if she would share the recipe, and she led me to the Food Network’s version of the recipe. She doctored it up to be lighter and healthier, I doctored it up to be more “me”. 🙂 (I will share her link when she has it ready.) I am sharing tonight because this dish is my contribution to an AFC Championship party (GO STEELERS!) tomorrow night, and if I get people asking how I made it, I can direct them here.

What you need:
1 lb. macaroni noodles
2-10 oz. cans of chicken (white in water)
Chopped Onion (spice, to taste)
Olive Oil (to coat pan)
3/4 c. Buffalo Sauce (I also used Frank’s)
7 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp flour
3 c. 2% milk
16 oz. cheese, shredded, your choice (I am a fan of colby jack, so I bought 2 8 oz bags of that)
1 c. bread crumbs

Mix it up…
1. Boil the water in a pot. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9×13 dish with Pam. When water is boiled, add in the macaroni.

2. At the same time the mac is cooking, I put the chopped onion spice and olive oil (ok, I used EVOO with roasted garlic this time) into a pan and start to “brown” the onion”. Add in the chicken and allow that to heat/get a light tan color.

3. Start the cheese sauce by melting the margarine in a saucepan and SLOWLY adding in the flour and milk. Keep stirring, but check that macaroni and chicken, too! Add in the cheese, a bit at a time, until you have a super creamy sauce like this:

4. Time to add the buffalo sauce to the chicken and stir.

5. By now, your macaroni is ready and so is the cheese. Remove both from the heat. Drain the macaroni. Add about 1/2 the macaroni to the 9×13 dish. Add about 1/2 the cheese sauce to the macaroni (trying hard not to burn yourself whilst taking a camera phone picture and dumping/stirring:)

6. Now your chicken should look like this:

…which means it is time to mix that in with the macaroni and cheese sauce. Slowly add in the rest of the macaroni. Top with the bread crumbs. Put in heated oven for 25-35 minutes until the top is nice and crispy.

7. Remove your finished product from the oven. Allow it to cool a few minutes, dig in and enjoy!

Homemade Pizza January 4, 2011

Last night, Greg asked what we wanted for dinner. For some reason, I was seriously craving homemade pizza. He worked his magic on the dough (I have never seen him prep dough, it was quite honestly intimidating ’cause he is so good!), Arianna ran trash duty, Evan chilled in his sling, and I seasoned the pie. Ari had her special non-cheese version in the oven and was so excited when the timer went off, “Pizza done! Pizza done!”.  We thoroughly enjoyed cooking together, and it made us realize we don’t do homemade often enough. It was simply delicious and called for a repeat tonight. Looks like we are breaking out the bread machine more often!!! (On another note, it made Greg think of a gift wish for us–a pizza pan probably wouldn’t fit in our oven, but a baking stone sure could be nice!)

New Years Resolutions

I am not really one to set specific goals or resolutions, but what with having weeks off to bond with the new baby, alot of thinking is going on. This year, I would like to become better at couponing, meal planning, and meal variations. (Even though I DID make a statement less than 2 hours ago that is 100% true–i could eat pizza, of varied types, everyday for the rest of my life. Frankly, if you tasted last night’s dinner, you may agree. Pics to come soon.) In order to achieve my loose goals, I want to take the following steps:
1. Faithfully organize my coupons.
2. Follow through with deals from coupon bloggers–but only ones that work for our family or or stockpile.
3. Plan ahead. 4 grocery trips a week is not good for our budget, we never take coupons or qualify for a good foodperks trip. (If you don’t get what a “good foodperks trip” is, watch for the commercials and use them when you are saved up and spending more than you’d like–i get so irritated when people use 4% on a $10 bill.)
4. Make meal calendars and stick with them.
5. Get a deep freezer.
6. Prep meals in the deep freezer–casseroles could make a comeback: see this Trib article
7. Get a food panel done for A. It would be great to know what she truly can and cannot eat. Family meals would become much easier.
Let’s see how we do this year!