Chicken and Veggie Stuffed Peppers

Dork will not be home for dinner tonight, so it was just dinner for two at our house. I decided to use up some leftover grilled chicken and some fresh bell peppers I had on hand to make some stuffed bell peppers. I made one for each of us, and served it with a romaine lettuce and almond salad. I thought it turned out to be a delicious dinner, and since Quirky practically inhaled hers, I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it to. Here is what I did:

Egg Muffins

Egg Muffin Ingredients

While Quirky slept the morning away, I spent a relaxing morning in the kitchen, making breakfast for Quirky and myself for the whole week. I love cooking with Quirky, but sometimes it's just peaceful to be in the kitchen by myself. In the silence I contemplated what to make, and considered making mini blueberry pancakes to freeze, but ultimately decided on egg muffins. This is something I've been making for Quirky since she has been a toddler, the only difference being then they were mini muffins with only cheese but now I can make them a little more hearty. I love making them because anything goes, your ingredients can be just about what ever you want or what you have on hand. This is what I did.

Delicious Boston Brown Bread

Recently, browsing through my local library, I ran across a cookbook called, Pillsbury, Best Muffins and Quick Breads. I quickly decided to check it out. It turned out to be a great book with more than one recipe I want to try. I decided first to try their recipe for  quick Boston Brown Bread. The bread turned out moist, sweet, and delicious. Because neither Quirky nor Dork are fans of raisins, I omitted those from my bread. Using their recipe, I made two loaves.

With a slight nod to the way traditional Boston Brown Bread is served with Boston Baked Beans, I served it with Beanie Weanies. Yes...you read me right. I said Beanie Weanies, probably not healthy but make a great quick meal. They went perfectly together. Quirky and Dorked sopped up the juices and wanted more bread.

The next day I still had a half a loaf left, so I decided to use it to make Quirky and I some grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Now the bread tasted great with the beans, but grilled turned it into perfection. The sugars in the bread caramelized and gave a nice crusty crunch to the sandwich. It was quite frankly...delicious. I could have eaten two more. 

This is definitely a recipe that I will be trying again. I highly suggest you find the book and try it yourself. Quick, easy, and delicious...right up my alley.

Homemade Deep Dish Chicken Pot Pie

Dork is still working long summer hours, but today Quirky is with him. So after a late morning appointment, I found myself in the unusual position of being home alone. Should I go sew for awhile and begin some of those ideas I've been throwing around my head? Or maybe I should work on homeschool planning for 8th grade before the beginning of school sneaks up on me? I could even pull out the paints and start on that blank canvas that has been staring at me for weeks. There were so many possibilities of what I might do, but ultimately I decided I would make a special dinner for them. One of their favorites, homemade chicken pot pie. I know it is a hot time of year for this kind of meal, but Quirky and Dork never seem to care. They inhale the stuff like I'll never make it again. It's one of those meals that I could make with my eyes closed, in other words super simple. Here is what I did:

Shepherds Pie...a Quick Meal for Quirky and Me

What do you do when you are planning on having baked potatoes topped with veggies, but you're just a wee bit scatter brained from have spent numerous hours solo with your Quirky autistic kid and unfortunately forgot to buy the potatoes. ( Which was one of the main reasons we had gone to the store that day, yet I still came home without them...sigh.) Going out to eat was not an option...I was not leaving the house again. So after rummaging through our cabinets and contemplating whether it was bad parenting to feed your kid cereal for dinner, it finally clicked with me that we had instant mashed potatoes...Hello. So I decided to go all topsy turvy and instead of having veggies on a baked potato, we instead made Shepard's Pie. It was quick, easy, and delicious. Here is what we did.

Pinterest lunch...

Quirky and I have found our new favorite quick and easy lunch. I have Pinterest to thank...well sort of.

You see I've been making crust less mini quiches for years for our lunch. They are quick to put together and once in the oven takes no effort on my part...in other words the perfect lunch when you have to be both teacher and chef. Then, Pinterest came along with all of its beautiful pictures and ideas and well...there it was. Almost like the quiche I've made a hundred times for Quirky but some genius decided to use sliced ham for a crust. I'm not a fan of ham and neither is Quirky so we used thinly sliced turkey instead. She prefers hers with just cheese but I sprinkled mine with cayenne pepper and then a spoonful of salsa once they were out of the oven. So really it was just the mini quiche again but with a meat crust...heart healthy? Probably not. Delicious...definitely. 

Really no recipe is necessary...but if you are really really one of those people who has to have directions then go check out ohsnapletseat.com, she has done a beautiful job of explaining it.

Chicken And Rice Soup By The Bowl

Most of my quick recipes happen out of necessity..."Mom, can I have soup for lunch?" "Ummmmm...sure, just let me pull out my magic wand." Poof! Soup a la Harry Potter style...no not really. What do you really do when you are looking at cabinet with none of your Quirky girl's favorite soups inside...
tell her yes and then make up your own recipe as you go. Lucky for me I had some useful leftovers in the fridge...chicken, rice...add in some frozen mixed vegetables and chicken stock and well...there you go. Soup. It's not rocket science but here is break down of what I did anyway...


1/4 cup diced leftover grilled chicken
1/4 cup frozen vegetables
1/2 teaspoon dry chicken stock
1 cup of water (warmed)
1/2 cup cooked rice

In a microwave safe bowl, thoroughly mix together dry chicken stock and water. Add rest of ingredients...microwave until hot. Then bask in the glory of just having made your kid "homemade" soup.

Almost Instant Oatmeal Muffins

     What should you do if you have five packs of maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal that everybody seems to be avoiding? I mean they are just sitting there...waiting...I mean wasting.


Make muffins of course! So how did we do it?

You will need:

5 packs of Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal
1 tsp of baking powder
1 egg (well beaten)
1 large banana mashed to pieces until resembles baby food
About 1/2 cup of flour (**see note below**)
Orange Juice

     Mix all dry ingredients together until well blended. Next add mashed banana and beaten egg mix well. Mixture will still be a little dry. Slowly add orange juice until mixture is moist and the consistency of a thick batter. Drop by the spoonfuls into a mini muffin pan. I baked mine on 400*F for about 8-10 minutes.

     Now how easy was that? Well considering I wasn't sure what I was going to make at first and I really didn't have a recipe...just a vague idea in my head...pretty easy. I have to confess I did look on the Internet...I even pinned a bunch of recipes to try later. The problem was that the ingredient lists are usually a mile long and have things on the list that I never have in the house...and oh yeah I ran out of milk two days ago.
OK, so I am not out to a good start. I almost gave up at this point, but I recouped...put my thoughts together and started pulling out ingredients. Mixed all ingredients with trepidation...what if this tastes like something that has been stuck on the bottom of someones shoe for awhile. Put in oven anyway...wait what seems like forever (not really). Delicious smells drift from oven...heave sigh of relief. Few minutes later...try to explain to Quirky that she can't eat them all in one night. The fact that she loves them...well let's just say its a major mommy ego boost.

     So don't just sit there...go grab your kids and get cooking! If you come up with a great spur of the moment recipe with your kids Quirky and I would love to hear about it.

** For the flour I actually used a packet of crumble mixture that I had leftover from a box muffin mix that I didn't use...it was just sitting around waiting to be used.**