No Bake Lactation Cookies

I've mentioned before that I'm a nursing mother.  I truly enjoy the time with Mr. Mack and am sad to know it will end eventually.  

While I'm at school, I pump for him.  Lately, I've been pumping barely enough, so I've been trying some different recipes and remedies to try and boost my supply.  Yes, I have enough for my baby right now, but my freezer stash is down to 2 bags, so I'd like to try to get a little extra for a rainy, I mean, extremely hungry day.

Enter Booby Bites.  I've tried different lactation cookies before, mainly oatmeal, but how many oatmeal raisin cookies can a lady eat?  I wanted to try something new this time, so I found this booby bites recipe on Pinterest.

While the recipe looks great and is wonderfully simple, I had some problems with it.  Primarily I loathe coconut.  Also, when I went to actually make these, I was out of honey and didn't have an chocolate chips.  So of course, I improvised.  

Here is what I ended up doing.

I ordered the Brewers Yeast from Amazon.  Who doesn't love Prime 2 day shipping?  I had the flax seed from a bulk store in the area, and the agave was from Aldi.  (Remember, I didn't have any honey.  Plus, I don't really like honey.)  The rest are fairly common ingredients that I keep stocked in my house.

I started with the dry ingredients as the post said to do.

Then added in the rest and mixed it up.  This is how it came out.

I refrigerated it for over an hour due to getting side tracked and working on other things.

I used my large cookie dough scoop and then finished forming them into balls with my hands.

I will say that since my version contains a lot of oatmeal, they are pretty packy, but they were a nice break from oatmeal raisin cookies and a lot easier since I didn't have to spend time waiting for different batches to bake.

I hope you enjoy these if you try them out.  Comment and let me know what you think and if you make any other alterations to the recipe!

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Chicken Bake in the Crock Pot

Raise yo' hand if you have seen this post and image on Pinterest!

It's THE awesomely easy (remember that's the only type of recipes I make) chicken bake.  

Throw it all in a pan, top with Italian dressing seasoning and butter, then shove it in the oven for dinner.  So easy.  BUT it takes an hour to cook, and I don't usually have an hour between when I get home and when we eat dinner.  Hmm, what to do?  

Well,  we could eat dinner a little bit later, but I'm usually half starved and would end up eating 3/4 of a bag of Doritos if I had to wait.  My second solution is to put it in the crock pot!  Yum! 

If you missed my review of the crock pot cook book Fix-It and Forget-It, check it out here.

I love my crock pot mainly because it eliminates the need for me to cook right after I get home.  Plus, it's easy clean up.  So while this recipe is typically baked in the oven, I decided to try to adapt it to my crock pot a few weeks ago.  

Sorry for my glarey pictures.  You understand the concept!

It's very simple.  All you have to do is: dice your potatoes and butter, then butterfly your chicken breast.  (I only use one chicken breast to feed the 2 of us).  Then put the potatoes in the bottom of the crock pot.  Pour a TINY bit of the juice from the beans over them to keep everything from going dry.  Sprinkle the potatoes with the seasoning and put a few pats of butter on them.  

Place your chicken on top and sprinkle with seasoning and include the butter.  

Then finish it off with the beans.  Pour the rest of the seasoning over them and the rest of the butter.

Turn the crock pot on low and enjoy the heavenly smells if you happen to be home while is cooking!

It's just as delicious in the crock pot and even more tender.  So go ahead and give it a try.

Here is the recipe.  Enjoy!

Note: if you are not super duper health conscientious, use a little more butter! : )

Simple Strawberry Smoothie Recipe

Remember this post I wrote last week about smoothies?

Well, it's time to share another simple smoothie recipe that you can whip up in the morning and get going with your day.

Today's recipe is a classic-plain strawberry.  Although it's not super fancy, it is super tasty.  You can add different ingredients to jazz it up such as honey, cinnamon, or even a few tablespoons of rolled oats, but I like to stick to the quick and simple, so here it is.

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Chicken Stuffing Casserole

When Mack was born, some of our friends brought us dinner one night when they came to meet the little mister.

It was complete comfort food, and we devoured it.  It was so good.

They provided a basic casserole with chicken, veggies, and stuffing.

Fast forward 6 months and one of my co-workers gave birth to a little girl last week.  I wanted to do something nice for her because I can remember how hectic those first few weeks really are.  So I got the recipe from Tara and whipped it up one Saturday morning.  

It is so easy and tasty!  It's like a fancy fake out, because it takes virtually no time to put together.  It's the thought and the food that counts, right?  Not the length of time it takes to prepare it.

The ingredients are simple: canned chicken-although I'm sure you could use fresh diced chicken breast, cream of chicken soup, milk, frozen mixed veggies, and boxed stuffing.

I really like casseroles because they basically are a complete dinner in one dish.  Casseroles eliminate the need to make sides dishes etc.  One thing I don't like about casseroles is that many times you have to cook the items that go in them ahead of time.  I think of casseroles as being time saving, but when you have to cook all the items ahead, they are not.   This one is so simple.  The only ingredient you have to cook ahead is the stuffing.  Stove top for the win. 

So I started the water for the stuffing and got to mixing everything else together. 

First, I put the cream of chicken in a bowl and slowly added milk to it until it got to casserole consistency.  There really isn't an exact measurement. I added about 1/4 cup at a time and mixed it through.  I estimate that I added close to a cup.

After that was mixed through, I threw my frozen veggies and canned chicken and mixed it again.

I finished making the stuffing once the water boiled and scattered it over the top.

I didn't bake it since I was taking it to her, but I would estimate to put it in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes or until bubbly.

Enjoy!

You can also download a FREE 3x5 card of the recipe here!

Simple Mixed Berry Smoothie Recipe

This week at school, 3 of my classes made smoothies.  They had 4 options for their smoothie flavors which were strawberry, strawberry banana, peanut butter banana, and mixed berry.

I LOVE smoothies!  When Josh and I went to Hawaii, we had the pleasure of trying Jamba Juice.  Can you say ah-may-zing?  But there is no Jamba Juice here in Western PA, at least not one close, so I have to settle for making my smoothies at home cuz I'm frugal like that.  My personal fave flavor of smoothie is mixed berry.  Sweet and tart; what's not to love?  So I'm going to share the recipe with you today!

Here are a few reasons why I think smoothies are the bomb:

• They are healthy-if you do it right. (As in, don't add in a boat load of sugar.)
• They are usually quick to make unless your blender starts leaking all over your table.  Yep, that was my Tuesday morning.
• You can make them simple or fancy.  I'm mainly in favor of simple smoothies that don't have a lot of ingredients.
• You can make them super nutritious without any veggie haters knowing.  Have you ever added a handful of spinach to your smoothie?  Chances are you couldn't even taste it!  Spinach is a wonderful add in.  Once it's blended up, you don't even know it's there.  You CAN'T taste it! Promise.  Bonus points for getting in an extra serving of veggies!  This is a great way to sneak one over on your kids.
• You can make them in a vast amount of flavors and different sizes/quantities.

Have I said enough?  I'm sure I could go on if you wanted me to.

So here is my super simple mixed berry smoothie recipe.

Easy as pie-well smoothie.  Pie's not that easy.

Go ahead and #treatyoself!

BTW-I am a die hard Aldi shopper, so that is where I  purchase all my ingredients for smoothies!

Chicken Picca What?

As I mentioned in my first post, my current full time substitute teaching gig is in Home Ec, so school is an adventure every day.  Just last week I had 50 students making breakfast in less than 2 hours.  How tough am I?

Well, one really fun part of Home Ec is naturally the cooking.  I am getting the opportunity to try some new recipes that I've never made and some that I've never heard of.  Enter chicken piccata.

Now I thought I had never heard of it, but I saw on Instagram the other day that the Cheesecake Factory offers it on their menu, so I must've just overlooked it.  I probably moved on since I wasn't sure how to pronounce it.  However, I am not too proud to point to something in the menu for my server.  Some names are hard.  Been to Olive Garden lately?  Gnochi=no-key.  Yeah, I'll just point.

So I've been making recipes at home if I am not too familiar with them.  Last week I decided to try out the chicken piccata before I made it for the kids in school.  Good thing I did...

Chicken piccata is simple enough.  Pound your chicken, dredge, pan fry, then make a lemon sauce for on it.  Not too hard.

So I pounded, dredged, pan fried, and began making the sauce.  Ok, sauce is putting it nicely.  All the recipe said to do was put 1/4 cup lemon juice in the pan and scrape up the bits.  I did this.  1/4 cup doesn't give you a lot of sauce, but I poured it over the chicken none the less.  Then we tasted.

It was terrible.  It was actually quite good if you are in to your food being super tart.

I was kind of confused.  The teacher I'm in for told me the kids usually love this recipe, but I wasn't quite sure based on what I made for lunch that day, so I did some research.

I started researching, Pinterest of course.  I looked at several different recipes until it finally clicked.  Chicken piccata uses chicken broth to help make the sauce.  Viola, the secret missing ingredient.

So the next day I had to demonstrate making chicken piccata in 2 classes.  I used the same recipe but added in 1 cup of chicken broth.  It was deelish!  I can see why the students usually like it.

Picture is courtesy of one of my students!
(This is missing the sauce since we were storing it until the next day.)

So without further adieu, here's the recipe (the good one):