Week 17~ Chicken Cordon Bleu

I had been making cordon bleu the same way for a long time. I found this recipe and loved it! The fresh mushrooms really make the sauce delicious. You could also make this ahead of time, and then bake it when you are ready. This is really good!!
The best advice I can give is make sure the chicken is thin so you can easily roll it and be sure to use toothpicks to hold them together.

4 boneless chicken breasts
8 slices deli ham
8 slices swiss cheese
1 cup flour
2 eggs/ 2 TBS water
1-2 TBS oil for sauteing

Cut the chicken breasts in half so you have 8 thin pieces. In the center of each breast, place 1 piece of ham and  one piece of swiss cheese. Roll up each chicken and secure with two toothpicks.
Beat the eggs/water in a bowl and spread the flour with a little black pepper on a plate. First coat the chicken lightly with flour, then dip in egg wash and then dredge in flour again.
Heat skillet on medium-high. Add oil and saute the chicken rolls until golden brown. Place these in a casserole.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. For the sauce you will need:

2 TBS butter
10 ounces of fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup chopped onion
one-10 oz. can cream of mushroom soup
milk for thinning
3 TBS Sherry

Heat skillet again saute mushrooms and onion in the butter/ Stir in soup and heat until bubbly. Add milk to desired consistency. Stir in Sherry.

Pour sauce over chicken and bake for 30-35 minutes. Serve over rice or pasta.

Week 17~ Lemon Pork Chops

Here's an easy, versatile recipe that I actually took from a crockpot cookbook. Decided it could also be made on the stovetop. Brown pork chops and place all ingredients in the crock, or follow my stove top version below.

Ingredients:
1 TBS vegetable oil
4 boneless pork chops
1-  8 oz can tomato sauce
1 onion, quartered and sliced
1 green bell pepper, cut into strips
1 TBS lemon-pepper seasoning
1 TBS Worcestershire sauce
1 lemon, quartered


Heat oil in a skillet and saute the onion and pepper; remove from pan. Brown the pork chops on both sides. In a separate bowl, mix tomato sauce, lemon-pepper, worcestershire sauce and the juice from lemon quarters.

Return pepper and onion to skillet and top with sauce mixture. Simmer on low, approx 30 min. This was very good over rice!

Week 15~ Jalapeno Poppers

I have had somewhat of a lull in trying new recipes! Since my oldest son wanted to try another recipe from his Sriracha cookbook, we tried one over the weekend! It's a fun appetizer, I think even non- pepper lovers should try these! You can adjust the sriracha to how spicy you want them, since you are de-seeding the peppers.

Here's what you need:

Approx 2 dozen jalapeno peppers
16 oz cream cheese
2 TBS sriracha sauce
1 lb center cut bacon

First, clean the peppers and cut in half lengthwise.

Then mix the cream cheese with the sriracha sauce. Fill each pepper with cheese mix.

Wrap each pepper with half a piece of bacon. ( after having tried this, we all agreed they could have had more bacon, esp since these peppers were very large!) Secure with a toothpick.

We used a cooling rack between the peppers and cooking sheet to let the bacon drip through.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Let the torture begin! These smell amazing while baking.