Pizza Pull Apart Bread

This is actually a recipe from my sister. She made it for Superbowl and it was yummy!

This recipe is really more of a method to make a yummy stuffed pull apart bread, and you could change it up by using different types of cheese, meat and other filling.

To start she defrosted 3 loaves of frozen bread dough overnight in a Ziploc bag. This gave the dough a chance to rise.  She tore the dough into small pieces (a little smaller than the palm of her hand and placed a small piece of mozzarella cheese and a slice of pepperoni inside the dough.

She repeated this step until she ran out dough. She ended up using a block and a half of cheese and about half of a package of pepperoni.

In a small bowl, she melted a stick of butter with 2 tablespoons of garlic powder. She use this mixture to coat the bottom of a bundt pan and then started stacking the balls of dough into the pan, coating each ball in the butter mixture (I said it was yummy....I didn't say it was healthy!).

After placing all of the dough balls into the pan, she baked the entire thing at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. After taking it out of the oven, she let it cool for about 10 minutes and then served it with some pasta sauce for dipping.

As you can see, the bread did get rather dark. It tasted perfect, but I think that next time I would lower the over temperature to 350 and bake for a little longer. 

Here is the overview (remember you could swap out any/all of the fillings below for something that you already have in the house to make a fun new combination):

3 loaves of frozen bread dough (or use dough made from scratch)

2 blocks of Mozzarella cheese cut into small cubes

Pepperoni Slices

1 stick butter

2 tablespoons garlic powder

Pasta sauce

Wrap the cheese and pepperoni into small balls of dough. Coat the dough in the butter and garlic mixture and bake in a bundt pan for 35-45 minutes at 350. Serve with pasta sauce for dipping.

5 Ingredient Spicy Chipotle Crock Pot Pulled Pork

This dish was the perfect thing to make for a superbowl party because I set it up in the morning (before going shopping at the outlet mall) and then I got to watch the ENTIRE game including the commercials! After the halftime show I just shredded up the meat and presto....dinner for everyone!

It did make a looootttt of food. Enough to feed 5 people plus tons of leftovers. I would say that it made at least servings for 10 (maybe more).

To make this, put everything into the crockpot. Thats it, just pile it all in there. Cut the onion in half first (dont bother cutting it up, it will fall apart during cooking).

Oh, and the plastic baggie is 3 frozen chipotle peppers. These peppers always come in a big can (at least they do at my Super Target), so when I need some for a recipie, I just freeze the rest of the can into smaller bags.

This is what it will look like once you pour it all into your crock pot:

After 8-10 hours cooking on low, turn off the crock pot, set aside the peppers and any onions that you see and use two forks to shred up the meat:

Then serve on crusty bread and enojy!

Here is the recap:

Pork Shoulder around 3 lbs

12 oz bottle BBQ sauce

1 can pepsi

1 medium onion

2-3 chipotle peppers

Throw everything in a crock pot and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Shred using a fork and serve. 

Healthy Game Day "Wings" Alternative: Buffalo Chicken Salad with Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing

With the big game approaching this weekend, I have been craving buffalo wings! So I put together this semi-healthy alternative for dinner tonight. It is way more filling for way less calories than a serving of wings!

Start off by mixing up the blue cheese dressing right away when you get home after work (let it sit at least 2 hours, but it can sit overnight as well) so that it has time to let the flavors mingle. Just mix a small container of Greek yogurt, about a cup (half of this container) of crumbled blue cheese and about 1/4 cup of water. Use a fork to mix everything together and work out some of the lumps from the chesse crumbles.

When it was almost time for dinner (about 15 minutes before you want to eat) boil some frozen chicken for about 12 minutes.

Do you ever cook chicken this way? Its a great way to take chicken from frozen to cooked in a short amount of time. I was cooking for 2 people, so I used 4 tenders, but you can use any amount of chicken you need, this is the type of recipe that can easily be scaled up or down as needed.

While the chicken was cooking I chopped up some veggies and lettuce to help cool down the heat from the buffalo hot sauce. Use whatever you want/have on hand. I used cucumber, carrot, avocado (sorry, I forgot the take a picture of this) and celery.

Then take the cooked chicken and using two forks, shred it in a medium sized bowl and then add in however much buffalo/hot sauce you are comfortable with. I probably added about 1/4 of a cup.

Then just build your salad, drizzling the dressing all around and adding some extra hot sauce and blue cheese crumbles on top!

From my mental math, I'm pretty sure that this salad is right around 400 calories (about 200 for the chicken, 125 for the dressing and the rest for the veggies). Not too bad for a very filling salad that takes care of that craving for buffalo chicken salad!

Here is the summary:

6oz Greek yogurt

1 cup blue cheese crumbles

1/4 cup water

Mix together dressing ingredients with a fork and let sit for at least 2 hours.

Lettuce

Assorted veggies (celery, cucumbers, carrots, avacados, whatever youve got)

4 chicken tenders (makes 2 servings)

1/4 cup hot sauce

Mix the hot sauce with the chicken and serve on top of salad with lots of dressing and some extra cheese crumbles.

Enjoy!