Super Simple Summer Supper

Don't you just love that title? English major working her skills on her blog. Oh yeaah (channeling Vector from Despicable Me).

ANYWAYS...

I am nearly complete with our porch redo and I'm so excited to finally show you! Like all my room projects, half of it is still incomplete. I have a really dated Spanish tile and I'm undecided on whether I want to tile over it, cover it with an outdoor rug, or chip it apart and lay down a new flooring. As far as the ceiling, I'm waiting on a killer deal to come along so we can replace the dated light fixture. The porch will be revealed later... first, I want to share this yummy dish we created for dinner the other night. It took under 30 minutes, using only 7 ingredients (not counting salt, pepper, and olive oil). This supper fed my family of 4 and cost around $5!

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces
1 tsp ground cumin, divided
4 cups of frozen, or fresh, corn
1 scallion, chopped
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 avocado, diced
1 tbsp of lime juice
salt
pepper
olive oil

Directions:
In a skillet, drizzle about 2 tbsp of olive oil and heat at med-high. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and cumin. Cook the chicken thoroughly in the skillet. Once chicken is cooked, remove it and place onto a plate. In the same skillet, add the rest of the cumin and white wine. Stir in the corn and chopped scallion and mix well. You'll want the corn to be tender, so this should take about 3 - 5 minutes. In a small bowl, mix your diced avocado and lime juice. Serve your corn and chicken mixture, and top with the avocado.

So delish! The original recipe called for 12 scallions, but I substituted for chicken. Seafood makes me gag. lol! Something I would tweak for next time: the corn would have been extra yummy if I had grilled it first. I love the taste of corn that has been charred a bit. :)

Linking to: Good Life Wednesday, Christina's Adventures, House of Hepworths, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

Crock Pot Brisket

What a great year this is turning out to be! "Mama's Little Ladybugs" has been featured on two blogs for the Goodwill Sign and has also received the "Stylish Blogger Award" from Tana at Orange It Lovely. You can see my features here and here.  


As we enter the fourth month in our home, I can promise you that this year will be full of crafts, projects, remodeling, and renovations! So, please follow me as my husband and I morph into DIYers and see what can (and probably will) go wrong. ;)

Tonight, I have a yummy recipe to share that was a huge hit with my family. The best part - it cooked in the crock pot (read: super easy)!!! Here is the breakdown on how to make BRISKET:

Ingredients:

4 lbs of beef brisket

2 teaspoons of salt

2 teaspoons of paprika

1/8 teaspoon of pepper

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

Directions:
Trim the excess fat from the brisket. In a bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients really well. Once mixed, rub the spices all over the brisket. Place the brisket, fat side up, into the crock pot.

Cook the meat on low for 8 - 12 hours. (At 8 hours, I checked my meat and found it still very pink on the inside. I spread apart the meat a bit and cooked it for another two hours.

 I like my meat to be WELL DONE because I get paranoid whenever I see pink). Once the meat is done, remove it from the crock pot, onto a large plate, and shred it with your fingers, removing any fat. The meat will be super tender so pulling it apart should be no problem. Now, just place your brisket in some corn tortillas, with whatever sides you want, and you have BRISKET TACO NIGHT!

You can divide the cooked meat into freezer bags and use it for tacos, burritos, hamburgers, or even a hearty soup.

Biscochos: A Mexican dessert

Greetings!

Finally! Here is my Grandmother's yummyful Biscocho recipe! Our family typically only bakes these cookies for Christmas or weddings because they're full of lard and sprinkled with sugar. Anyway, Christmas is about breaking all the health rules, so might as well take it to the extreme.

As I explain the recipe, there may be odd "steps" that you need to follow. Don't ask. We are a Mexican family... we have a way of cooking that can't be explained. Just do it. Also, this recipe is near impossible to do alone, so make it a family day and have everyone pitch in to help.

Biscocho Recipe

makes 130 cookies

Ingredients for dough:

1 lb. lard - softened

2 eggs at room temperature

1/4 cup white wine (Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill)

1 cup of sugar

6 cups of sifted flour

2 tsps. ground anise

Ingredients for sugar coating:

1 cup of sugar

2 Tbls. cinnamon

(the coffee is necessary, as this will take you about 3 hours)

Preparing the dough:

When preparing dough, whoever starts the process, must finish it. If someone else sticks their hands in, the change in body temperature will mess up the cookies and they will have a different consistency. It's a rule that has been passed down 3 generations... just do it. ;)

1) In a LARGE bowl, use your hands to mix the lard and the sugar

2) In a seperate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the bowl 

3) Add the 6 cups of sifted flour - 1 cup at a time. It's better to add 1 cup at a time for better handling 

4) In between the cups of flour, add the anise and wine

5) Mix well until the dough no longer sticks to your fingers. If the dough is still sticking, continue to add small amounts of flour until it doesn't.

6) Roll the dough into a giant ball and let it sit for TEN MINUTES.

7) After 10 minutes, seperate the ball into 4 smaller balls and cover the bowl with a towel as you work on 1 ball of dough at a time.

8) Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

9) With a rolling pin, roll out a ball of dough to about 1/4 inch to cut cookies.

Word of caution: the more detailed your cookie cutter is, the longer you will take to get them on the tray. Here is what I use to make this process a bit faster:

Small enough to let the little ones cut them out while I line the tray. As you can see from the pic above, these cookies don't have to be seperated too much. They aren't going to expand at all.

10) place the cookies on an ungreased cookie tray (you will fill about 8 trays in total)

11) put the cookie tray on the middle rack and bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees

12) On a large plate, mix your cookie coating (sugar and cinnamon)

13) As the cookies are removed from the oven, immediately toss them (a few at a time) onto the plate and toss them around a couple of times to coat them. Place them in a large bowl where they can cool.

This is where a buddy system pays off. While one person is coating, the other can start refilling the cookie sheet with the remaining dough. You will fill around 8 trays (totalling 130 cookies) depending on the size of cookie you make, repeating the above steps each time.

When you are done, sit down and enjoy a yummy Biscocho!

One batch makes so many, that you can do what we do and hand them out as gifts to friends, family, neighbors, and teachers!

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Crockpot Bean Recipe

Haaaaappy Fridaaaaay!

OK, here is a fact...

I don't consider myself a cook by any means. My rice always turns out either undercooked or overcooked, my chicken is always dry, my eggs are never fluffy, and my cakes are far from moist. My husband would probably disagree, but that's just a reflection of what a polite man he is and not a sign that I'm being too hard on myself.

I suck.

FACT!

However, last weekend I hosted our first party in our new home and I decided to try making my Grandma's "Re-fried but not fried BEANS!" No, they're not really called that but I needed to point that out before you said "ew, fried... next!"

I was so scared of how they would taste and even more terrified when the chef, known as Grandma, tried them.

And would you believe it?

They were fantastically yummy!!!!

I didn't even take a single picture because I was sure the entire thing would be another cooking disaster that ended up being given to the dogs. Next time I try this, I'll remember to take pics.

For this recipe, I used a crockpot (sssh, don't tell Grandma!), but any large pot on the stove will be fine. My 1 year old can reach the knobs on our stove and likes to adjust the flame when we step away for a second. Then, I have to figure out why my chicken isn't cooking. Yes, I blame her when meals turn out bad.

Here is what you will need:

Crockpot (or large pot)

2 lb. of Pinto Beans

1/2 lb. of chorizo, cooked

1 package of American Cheese

1 onion cut in half

1/2 tsp of ginger

4 large garlic cloves

1 red bell pepper, diced

First, you want to discard any cracked, or shriveled beans and small rocks. Then, rinse them really well to remove any dirt. Next, soak your beans in cold water for 6 hours. This step is optional but beans cook a lot faster if they are soaked first. Word of caution: place the beans in a LARGE bucket pot for soaking. They will become 3x their original size and you don't want them spilling over.

Next, drain the water and rinse them once more. Place the beans in the pot they will be cooked in and fill the water close to the top. For crockpots, place the setting on "high." For a regular pot, you want them to simmer for 3 hours or until they are easy to mash. Throw in the onion, ginger, garlic cloves, and bell pepper. Leave the beans alone to cook. For the crockpot, this took about 5 hours. You want the beans to be soft and easy to mash.

Once the beans are done, remove the onion pieces and garlic (if you wish) and drain the water from the beans. Next, add the cooked chorizo to the beans and mash with a potato masher. While mashing, add 12 slices of American Cheese.

In my opinion, the cheese really didn't make a difference. My beans weren't "cheesy" so you can skip the cheese if you want to make this healthier.

The finished product, once all the mashing is done, will look like "refried beans" and you didn't even fry a thing!

The beans were a hit at our party and even the next day as a chip dip for football games.

I'm sorry for the lack of pictures. I will try this again soon and will document.

Enjoy and let me know how it turns out!