Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 brown sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp soda
• 12 oz chocolate chips, M&Ms, etc.

Instructions

Mix wet ingredients together, add dry ingredients and mix. Spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. ENJOY!
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So I have totally become a total slacker on this blog but for a good reason. Our life has been hectic for the last month. Our meals have seriously consisted of microwavable meals, sandwiches, and a lot of fast food. Eeek! Honestly, we are lucky if we even get more than one meal a day. Jeremy bought a business, and we have been working our bums off!

I have been begging Jeremy to make me some chocolate chip cookies for like the past month, but we can't even seem to stay awake when we get home. I would make them, but the one time I made them, Jeremy pretty much told me never to try again. They didn't turn out so well. How could someone botch up chocolate chip cookies?! I don't know why, but when Jeremy makes them, they always turn out soooooo yummy! He's definitely the baker in our household, so I have left the sweets to Jer.

Finally, Jeremy made me cookies! This chocolate chip cookie recipe came from Jeremy's mother. They are sooo yummy and have become my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I think I ate like ten of them. I was just making up for the month of malnutrition. I feel so much better now. LOL Enjoy!

Bacon Basil Chicken

Ingredients

• Chicken Breasts
  
• Flour
  
• 1 egg mixed with a little water
  
• Italian bread crumbs
  
• 2 bacon slices per chicken breast (precooked bacon shortens prep time)
  
• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
  
• Fresh Basil leaves or dried basil
  
• Olive oil to drizzle
  

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice chicken breast, almost all the way through. Coat the outer chicken breast with flour. (It helps the bread crumbs stick on better) Dip closed breast in egg and then dredge in the bread crumb. Open up the chicken breast while it’s sitting in the bread crumbs (this just controls mess) and place the following inside the breast: two pieces of bacon, a small handful of mozzarella cheese and some basil leaves or sprinkle some dried basil. Close up breast and place in shallow roasting pan. Drizzle olive oil over tops of chicken. Bake until internal temp reaches 165, about 30 to 35 minutes.
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I'd like to thank Not So SAHM for letting me post this recipe on my blog. She had this recipe posted on her blog, and when I read the recipe, my mouth would not stop salivating. I just had to ask for her permission to put it on my blog. It had a lot of my favorite ingredients, bacon being the first. I also love anything cheesy and who doesn't like chicken? I changed the recipe ever so slightly because I didn't have flax seed, and I added some flour because it's almost a habit for me when I coat chicken. The results were AMAZING! It was so incredibly good. I just paired it with the Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat (yes, I actually sang that) and the meal was complete. It almost seemed like I spent a really really long time making this. I really like this recipe because you can easily make as much as you need. It's hard to cook for two sometimes, so it's great to have recipes like this. Although now I kinda wish I had leftovers!

Awesome Lasagna

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 chopped small onion or 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 Tablespoon basil- crushed
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup grated or shredded parmesan cheese
• 2 Tablespoon dried parsley
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 2 beaten eggs
• 10 cooked lasagna noodles (as directed on package)
• 1 1/2-2 lbs shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions:

Brown beef and drain. Then simmer with diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, chopped onion/onion powder, basil, and salt for 20 minutes.
In a separate bowl, mix eggs, cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, parsley, and pepper.

Layer in a 10X13 pan (2 layers)

1. Noodles (edges should overlap)
2. Cottage Cheese Mix
3. Cheese
4. Meat Sauce

Repeat

Cook at 350 degrees for about 30-45 minutes until bubbly. Serve with breadsticks!
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This is by far the best lasagna I have EVER tasted. This is another recipe from my older sister, and nothing she makes ever comes out bad. I'm glad she shared it with me! It's very simple to make, and it makes enough to feed an army. I will warn you though, you do get a lot of dishes dirty. I swear I completely fill up the dishwasher every time I make it, but it is definitely worth it. I made some yummy breadsticks to go along with the lasagna. My first attempt at breadsticks. They turned out great, thank goodness.

The meal was perfect! All we needed was some romantic Italian music in the background. In fact, I have an Italian CD I bought when I went to Italy! Why didn't I put it on? Oh well, there's always leftovers and we've got plenty! It's a good thing we have our FoodSaver. We can vacuum seal our leftovers (in individual servings), freeze them, and enjoy them in the future without having them go to waste! The food always tastes just as good as when we originally cooked them. Check out all of our leftovers!

Breadsticks

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups water (warm)
• 1 Tablespoon yeast
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 cups flour
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine (melted)
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tsp garlic salt powder (optional)

Instructions:

Combine water, yeast and sugar in a bowl and set aside until yeast bubbles. Combine yeast mixture with salt and flour and knead. Press dough out to fill greased cookie sheet.

Combine butter, mayonnaise, garlic salt and parmesan cheese. Spread over dough and cut into bars. Let it rise for 30 minutes. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Eat alone with your favorite Italian dish or with your favorite dipping sauce.

*Might taste good to cover with shredded mozzarella cheese before you bake! Cheesy bread!
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These breadsticks turned out sooo good. The recipe is from Elizabeth F. (with a little bit of my own flair) who submitted this recipe to a cookbook I got for my wedding. It was a book put together by several submitted recipes from the locals in my husband's hometown. The breadsticks were very fluffy inside but with a slightly crunchy crust if that makes any sense. Maybe next time I'll try putting some mozzarella cheese on them before I bake them and make cheesy bread. Mmmmmm....that sounds sooooo delicious!

Easy Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups cooked shredded chicken (about 3 small chicken breasts) 
• 2 cans Cream of Chicken soup
• 1 2/3 cup frozen mixed vegetables, thawed
• 1 cup Original Bisquick Mix
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg

Instructions

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. In an ungreased 9" pie plate, stir together vegetables, chicken, and soup. In a bowl, stir Bisquick, milk, and egg until blended. Pour mixture into pie plate. Bake about 30 minutes or until golden brown. Goes great served over white rice or with green salad.
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I couldn't decide which picture I liked better, so I put them both. This dish is way beyond easy to make. I got this recipe off the back of the Bisquick box. My mom used to always make this, and I'd always thought she'd spent so much time making this until I saw the recipe on the back of the box. With how good it tastes, you wouldn't believe how easy and fast it is to make.

Jeremy used to always buy those icky frozen pot pies that you can get for 2 for a dollar (for a good reason) until one day I made him this chicken pot pie. I think he was impressed because now he asks for it all of the time. We did change it up a bit to our liking. Jeremy and I always thought it was a bit dry. The original recipe only calls for one can of cream of chicken soup, and one day Jeremy decided to throw in another can of cream of chicken just to see what would happen. At first I was like, "What did you do! That is waaaaay too much!"  I then had to increase the shredded chicken from 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups just to make it somewhat even. Everything else I left the same. What a huge difference it made!  It made it so creamy and moist. It solved our dryness problem for sure. We've made it like that ever since then!

We have also found the BEST frozen mixed veggies. A good package of mixed veggies are always hard to find because there is always that one veggie you don't really like that you have to pick out. For me, it's mostly the peas. One day we were walking through Costco, strolling down every aisle like we always do, and we came upon this mixture.

It is Bybee's Finest Organic Garden Trio. It has all of our favorite veggies, and we don't have to pick anything out! It has corn, green beans, and carrots. Absolutely perfect! It's also really good to eat by itself as a side. I don't know if it's the organic factor or not, but I've noticed that this particular mixture tastes so much better than any other frozen veggies I have ever tasted. If you find it, I really recommend it.

We always have all of the ingredients to make this chicken pot pie stocked to make it at any moment's notice. It's just that easy to make! It helps that not many ingredients are involved. It sure beats having to run and get a crummy fast food burger when you're trying to come up with a quick dinner solution! Try it! You will love it!