Sloppy Cucumber Sandwich

Sad and disappointed in Facebook. My "Food" album has been AWOL for the past few days. All the pictures, recipes, nutrition info, comments, years of sharing.... GONE! So... back to my good ole standby, my blog. Well, on with the show.

Cucumber Sandwich

1 tbsp Kroger - Neufchatel Cheese - 33% Less Fat Cream Cheese
1 tbsp Chobani - Greek Yogurt - Fat Free - Plain
1 tbsp Miracle Whip lite
1 tsp It's a Dilly seasoning
1 tbsp Onion Raw - diced
1/2 c (4 oz) English Cucumber - Seedless - diced
1 tbsp (.5 oz) Kroger - Fresh Mozzarella - shredded

2 leaves Romaine Lettuce or .5 oz baby spinach
1 Kroger sandwich slims - whole wheat

Heat the cream cheese for about 10 or 12 seconds, just to soften. Add and thoroughly mix the yogurt, Miracle Whip and seasoning. It's better if you can let it set over night, but not necessary. Add the diced onion and cucumber. Melt the mozzarella on one piece of the sandwich slim (I like to wilt the lettuce and spinach along with this). Top with the cucumber mix and the second half of the slim. You could possibly make two sandwiches with this but I was eating it all.

Only a slight difference when using Romaine or spinach.

with spinach...

Making the sandwich...

One set back to making this, "It's a Dilly", a McCormick seasoning was discontinued a while back...

I had searched and searched to find somewhere, anywhere to order this. I love that it is salt free. I love the dill flavor. I did find another company picked it up but they must have added gold to the ingredients because their price was high and THEN there was added shipping. Searching more I came across a forum that was discussing the same regrets that I was having and one of the member posted their answer to the problem. A recipe that they came up with for DIY It's A Dilly seasoning. 

I reduced the recipe and used a dash of cayenne pepper instead of ground black. I also ground some dill seed for a stronger dill flavor. But I think this is going to work for me.

Oh! One other hint, the fresh mozzarella has less sodium but it's also REALLY soft. Because I wasn't using it up very fast I froze it. Shredding fresh mozzarella is much easier if it's frozen.

Let me know if you liked my sandwich and if you tried one yourself. What did you do differently or if you have any questions.

What a Crock! Taco Salad & Soup

Cooking for two can sometimes be challenging. Most recipes are usually 4 servings. Leftovers can be a problem and eating it ALL is certainly a problem. That is why lately my favorite appliance has been my 1.5 qt. crockpot. (All pictures are from the web, I didn't think about blogging this till after the fact.)

Its only real setback is that it only has two settings, on and off. It's not what I would call a slow cooker because it does bring the food to a boil. I bought it years ago for little smokies in BBQ sauce and only recently have been using it for regular cooking. I thought I'd share the easy two meals I made the other day.

Easy Crockpot Chicken Fajitas

Ingredients

• 1 lb of Chicken Breasts
• 3 Peppers (Green, Red & Yellow), sliced
• 1 Onion, sliced
• 1 Package of Taco Seasoning
• Flour or corn tortillas
• Toppings - sour cream, cheese, guacamole, etc.

Instructions

1. Slice peppers and onions then place them on the bottom of the crock pot
2. Put Chicken on top of peppers and onions
3. Sprinkle taco seasoning on the top
4. Cook on low for 6-8 hrs (or high for 3-4)
5. Shred everything up and mix together
6. Serve with tortillas and all the toppings - sour cream, guacamole, cheese, lettuce, etc.

http://eatathomecooks.com/easy-crockpot-chicken-fajitas/

That is the actual recipe^^^ that I more or less followed. I cut up onion and bell pepper to layer the bottom of the pot and placed three small chicken breasts (frozen) on top. I have a bottle of taco seasoning...

...that I sprinkled freely over the chicken. Put the lid on, turned it on and let it cook for 4 hours. Instead of making fajitas though, we had fajita salads. They're like taco salads except with chicken fajita meat and vegetables.

I added black beans but not corn or avocado. I think I like the salad better than a wrap. One of the granddaughters was here and she didn't care for the onions or bell pepper which left me with quite a bit of taco flavored broth, bell pepper and onion. Back to the web to search for a recipe for Chicken Taco Soup. I scoured through all the recipes for common ingredients and find I only need to add the half cans of diced tomato and black beans that I already had opened for the salad, then a can of whole kernel corn and a can of kidney beans. This made for a full pot. Later I added a little more taco seasoning and taco sauce.

Quick to prepare and easy to make. Full of flavor, I really like it. The only picture that I did take was of the nearly empty pot.

These two dishes will absolutely get repeat performances. Let me know if you give them a try and what you think.

I Forgot the Olives

I thought my guacamole, cream cheese & turkey mix looked a bland. It obviously needed black olives.
Here's the two mixes the next day, side by side. They could be served in any number of ways. Rolled up on tortillas or placed out in bowls surrounded by crackers.

I spread them on wheat bread. I wasn't going for 'fancy' so I didn't remove the crusts.

And I stacked them as tightly as I could get them...

...so all of them would fit on one platter. This is what I made from one loaf of bread.

I didn't use up all the mix so I made up two roll ups and ate the rest with crackers.

Turkey & Cream Cheese Snack Sandwiches

For our Golden Wheat AHSGR Christmas party I mixed up cream cheese with turkey and some other ingredients. I didn't have a specific recipe, I just got online to see what kind of mixtures I could find and what the main ingredients were. I had many requests for my 'recipes' so I promised I would write a blog post the next time I prepared them. I was thinking seasonal colors when I looked for ingredient blends. For green I knew I had some Deans guacamole in the refrigerator and was pleased to find many cream cheese fillings using guacamole. I don't have any measurements but in this filling I used One package cream cheese, lightly melted, half an onion and half a bell pepper, chopped, and half a pound deli turkey. A also added a little dried cilantro and some salad seasoning.
Mix well and refrigerate to let all the flavors blend together.

For red I thought about cranberries and most of the recipes I found for cream cheese and cranberries also called for honey mustard and Miracle Whip. For this batch I used craisins and a blue berry/cherry mix which I soaked in hot water before using. Again lightly melt the cream cheese to make it easier to mix, add a couple tablespoons Miracle Whip, 3 or 4 teaspoons of honey mustard. Then add diced apple and berry mix. Mix in the other half pound of turkey.

This mixture has a nice pink hue that doesn't show real well in this picture. Again refrigerate.

Christmas morning I will make sandwiches that I will quarter and put on a platter to take to my daughter's house in the afternoon.

Edit 12/29/09: A modification to the recipe HERE

Little Joe said...

Following is a comment on my blog post Folklore Meeting of the Golden Wheat Chapter AHSGR by a member of our chapter and I thought it deserved to be brought to the top for everyone to read:

Little Joe said...
I'll admit to bringing the New Year's Cookies to the ethnic meal. In case anyone is interested in knowing how I make them, here is the recipe:


New Year’s Cookies
(Raisin Fritters)
“Niejoasch Küake” or “Portselkje”

2 C. raisins (plumped)

½ C. sweet cream
¼ C. butter
2 eggs (beaten)
½ t. vanilla

1 C. potato water
1 T. sugar
2 T. active dry yeast

3 C. flour (plus about 1 C. extra flour, the amount will depend on the size of eggs and humidity on the day you are making these fritters)
¼ C. sugar
2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
½ t. nutmeg

sugar for coating

Plump raisins by pouring boiling water over them and allow to soften for 10-15 minutes; drain. Scald cream; add butter and cool to lukewarm; add beaten eggs and vanilla. Dissolve 1 T. sugar in warm potato water and add yeast to activate. Sift 3 C. flour and the other dry ingredients together. Place cream mixture, yeast mixture and dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir to combine. Finish by kneading in the extra flour and raisins to make a soft dough. (If using a bread machine, place cream mixture, dry mixture and yeast mixture in bread pan and allow to mix on the dough cycle, adding additional flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the pan. When the machine mixing has ended, carefully add raisins and mix thoroughly throughout the dough—otherwise the mixing paddle will beat the raisins to pieces. It works best to take the dough out of the pan and knead the raisins in by hand. One can also do this in the bread machine pan using a rubber spatula. Mixing a small amount of flour with the raisins will help keep them in the dough so they won’t fall out.) Allow to rise until double in bulk. Pinch off small balls of dough and place on baking sheet. When they have raised again fry in deep, hot fat until golden brown (about 2—3 minutes per side). Some recipes call for less flour, resulting in a batter rather than dough. After the batter has raised, it is dropped by spoonfuls into the hot fat with the result being a football-shaped pastry. Remove fritters from hot fat and cool. Before serving, place several fritters at a time in a sack with sugar and shake to coat evenly.

The cultural connection:
Dutch Mennonites moving to the Vistula River delta (in present day Poland) in the 16th century most likely brought with them a tradition of serving fried cakes or fritters on New Year’s Day. The Dutch version was called Oliebollen (oh-lee-bow-len) or Oliekoeks (literally oil balls or oil cakes) because they were fried in oil. Cakes and pastries fried in deep fat are still eaten in some northern European countries to celebrate the New Year. They are a symbol of affluence and luxury. Fried pastries carried with them the wish for a prosperous, fat (abundant) New Year.

The Low German speaking Mennonites carried the tradition to Russia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In Low German they are called Portselkje (port-zell-kya). When the spongy yeast batter or dough is dropped by spoonsful into hot, deep fat, the dough puffs up, tumbles over and fries to a golden brown. “Portsel” in Low German means tumbling over. Hence the name, “Portselkje”.

The ingredients of New Year’s Cookies are symbolic of a prosperous and happy New Year:

Flour & potato water = the necessities of life

Cream, butter and frying oil = abundance, luxury

Sugar = sweetness

Eggs = reproduction, prosperity

Yeast & baking powder = growthSalt = a preserving and savoring quality

Vanilla & nutmeg = a flavorful and spicy life

Raisins = fruitfulness


The recipe is from my Mama.

Cultural connection/history from “Mennonite Foods & Folkways from South Russia, volume 1” by Norma (Jost) Voth.