Apple Turnovers

I have never worked with puff pastry before, but I had some apple pie filling in my freezer so I thought that I would give it a go.

Every fall, my hubby and I like to go apple picking, but its always hard to eat all the apples just between the two of us. Often I will cook and freeze some of the apples to use as apple pie filling or applesauce throughout the winter months. To do this, I cut and peeled 6 large apples. In a medium sauce pan I cooked the apples with a few tablespoons of water, a few tablespoons of sugar (more or less depending on the sweetness of the apples) and a teaspoon of cinnamon. I cook this mixture until the apples are soft, but not completely falling apart. You can either eat this right away as applesauce, or freeze for later. It also makes a great apple pie filling.

Today, I decided to use some of the frozen apple pie filling for these turnovers. You could use canned apple pie filling, or fresh apples, whatever you happen to have will work just fine.

Gather together all of the ingredients: the apple mixture, an egg, 2 sheets of puff pastry and some sugar to sprinkle on top (I used large sugar crystals, but you can use anything that you have).

Cut each of the pastries into 4 equal squares. Beat the egg and brush it over the inside surfaces of each square. Evenly divide the apple mixture between the 8 pastry squares. Fold over each of the squares and use a fork to seal the edges. Brush the egg wash over the outside of each of the pastry triangles and sprinkle with the sugar. Use a knife to poke a hole or two into each triangle to let any steam vent out.

Bake the pastry puffs for 15-20 minutes in a 400 degree oven. Let them cool for about 10 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

Recipe Recap:

2 cups Apple Pie Filling
2 sheet puff pastry (cut into 8 equal pieces)
1 beaten egg
sugar for sprinkling on top

Place a small amount of the apple pie filling into each puff pastry square. Seal the edges of each triangle using a fork and brush some of the egg onto one. Use a knife to poke a hole into each triangle and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees and let cool for at least 10 minutes before eating.

Best Way to Clean Sink Sprayer!

I don't have a lot of calcium/other junk that builds up on my fixtures from hard water. But after awhile, the little holes on my sprayer attachement always get gross....you know what I'm talking about! The best way I have ever found to clean the sprayer on my kitchen sink:

Leave it on there for at least 5 minutes, but longer as needed is fine. It cleans out all of the little sprayers with little effort on my part......thats the best kind of cleaning there is!

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!

Pantry and Freezer Leftovers: Rolled Up Lasagna

I love simple recipies that I can build from items that I already have in my freezer and pantry. I also love putting together dishes that use up lots of items that are just sitting around taking up space (thank you Type A personality!!). Today's recipie was the perfect way to use up the half box of lasagna noodles in my pantry and several containers of pasta sauce in my freezer.

Make a batch of these roll ups, you will not be sorry....perfect for a cold winter day, or any day really!

I started off boiling the lasagna noodles in salty water (I always boil noodles in heavily salted water...it should taste like ocean water!!...the pasta will taste better, trust me). I had about half a box left from another recipie that I had tried a few months ago and I had been looking for a way to use them up.



In a large skillet, I cooked an onion until it was translucent. I added two large garlic cloves towards the end of cooking so that they would not get burned (burned garlic does not taste good!).

To this I added a pound of ground beef and cooked it until it wasn't pink anymore and some pasta sauce. I can't tell you exactly how much pasta sauce that I added......I added the entire contents of the container on the right. This is what I do with leftover pasta sauce. When I make sauce from scratch or when I open a jar of pasta sauce I never seem to use it all; so a few months ago I started freezing the leftovers. I seems to find ways to work the sauce into other meals later on.....again a great way to use up leftovers and preventing food from going to waste!

Here is what the mixture looked like when I was done, very thick and yummy. 

While this mixture was cooking I combined the dairy products in a medium mixing bowl. I mixed together a small container of ricotta cheese, 2 eggs, mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese and then added good assortment of spices that I had in my cabinet. 

The mixture looked something like this:

Then the fun part began, here you can see how I assembled each of the roll ups:

After about 5 rolls, I realized that it would be much faster if I made an assembly line, learn from my mistake, save yourself some time!

It was about this time that I realized I had forgotten to add the package of frozen spinach to the meat mixture. So I added it on top of the rolls:

You can add it to the meat mixture or on top of the rolls, whatever makes you happy....

At this point I topped the rolls with more of my leftover pasta sauce, the rest of the mozzeralla and Parmesan cheese and some bread crumbs.

Then they went into the oven for about 30 minutes at 375 (covered in foil....I forgot to take a picture of this), but this was really just to heat and melt the cheese mixture. When they came out they looked like this:

and I served them up like this:

Delicious!!

Here is a wrap up of the ingredients:
8-10 lasagna noodles
1 medium onion diced
2 cloves of garlic diced
1 lb ground beef
4 cups pasta sauce
2 cups ricotta
2 cups shreded mozzerella cheese
2 cups parmesean cheese
2 Tbs basil
1 Tbs oregano
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic power
1 package frozen spinach
Salt and Pepper to taste

Valentines Day Wreath

I took out my valentines day decorations this week. I love decorating for the different holidays, but I realized that I don't have very much v-day decor.....so I decided to make a wreath that was loosely based on one I had seen on pinterest a few weeks ago.

It probably took me about two hours to make this from start to finish, but I broke that up between 3 different days. Its actually made from two packages of cupcake liners (150 total) and then I covered a cardboard heart in some pink glitter that I already had in my house. The whole thing is mounted on a styrofoam wreath that I covered in pink ribbon (I only bought one spool of  thick pink ribbon when I was at the store, thinking that it would be enough.....it was not :(.......and I ended up suplementing with some thin pink ribbon that I already had at home, which was ok).

Not sure how I am going to store this without crushing that entire thing.......but loving it all the same!