Polenta and Corn stuffed Peppers

I found this recipe in a magazine a while back and finally decided to give it a try. I had to share it bc they are just so pretty and it was such a simple recipe to make. Smells heavenly.

4-6 large peppers-red, yellow or green (seeded and membranes removed)
12 oz roll of polenta, cut into pieces
1 can mexican corn
3/4 cup shredded montery jack cheese
3/4 cup provolone cheese(I sliced some up)
salt and pepper
Sour Cream

Heat oven to 350. In a bowl, mix polenta,corn and half of cheeses together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spoon mixture into peppers.Sprinkle w/remaining cheese. Place peppers in ungreased baking dish and fill pan w/water about half way up. Spray some foil w/cooking spray and cover peppers. Bake 30 min. Romove foil and bake another 20min. Garnish w/sour cream.

Broccoli and Rice Casserole

I love this casserole but hate the idea of using Cheese Whiz or Velveta. To me, Velveta is way too thick and well, I am just not that crazy about it.  A little bit of that stuff goes a longgggggggg way. So, I wanted to try using real shredded cheese. The original recipe for this, calls for cream of chicken, velveta or cheese whiz, frozen broccoli and lots and lots of  butter.This is what I have come up with.

A bunch of Broccoli-cut up and washed
2 cups of cooked rice-I used brown
shredded cheddar cheese, or you can use maybe monterey jack w/some cheddar
1 can cream of muchroom
1can cream of celery
1 small onion,diced
butter
Chop the onion and saute it in the butter, I used maybe 2 tbsp of butter. Cut up your broccoli and steam it. DO NOT boil ur broccoli. The vitamins in broccoli are water soluble and will just leach out in the water. Your broccoli should still be a bright green. Cook your rice. Add all these ingredients to a very large bowl. mix together. Add the soups. Mix together.  I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it's not. You can cut up your broccoli and onion ahead of time if you like. You can even put this casserole together ahead of time, and you can freeze it :)

Once you've mixed those ingredients together, add maybe a cup of shredded cheese to the bowl and mix together. I also added some garlic powder, red pepper,salt and cracked pepper to this. You can leave it out if you wish, but we like some spice lol. Spray a casserole dish, and pour mixture into dish. Add some more cheese on top and bake at 350. Original recipe says to bake this for an hour. BUT since I did not use frozen broccoli or processed cheese, it was done a lot quicker. You're just melting the cheese really good here, not heating up broccoli(bc I steamed it).

*if you do not want to use the "cream of soups" you can easily make ur own. I went into it a little bit in this blog post. 

http://roorooskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/01/homemade-cheese-sauce.html

next time, I may just add some shredded chicken to this and see how that turns out :) 


I can't tell you enough just how good this is! SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE VELVETA!!!!

Caramel French Toast

I put this together tonight and stuck it in the fridge to bake for tomorrow morning. Since some of my gals asked for this recipe, I am posting it on my blog :) 

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 Tbsp corn syrup
1 loaf french bread
5 eggs
1 and 1/4 cup milk(I used soy milk)
1 tsp vanilla

In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, butter and corn syrup. Heat and stir until melted together. Pour into the bottom of a 9”x13” pan. Slice the loaf of French bread into 1” thick slices. Lay the bread slices on the syrup mixture in the pan, using most (if not all) of the loaf. You may need to squeeze some pieces in, or cut a couple pieces to fill in the holes, but you should be able to use most of the loaf.  mix together the eggs, milk and vanilla. Slowly pour the milk mixture over top of the bread, being sure to cover all the bread. AND I used bread that was already sliced-it was whole wheat but very hearty so I thought it would work just as well. :)

You can either freeze it or put it in fride for the next morning if you want. OR you can bake it
uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove pan from the oven and cut into serving-size pieces. Serve, syrup-side up, on a plate sprinkled with powdered sugar.

*I will post pic tomorrow after I bake it, but wanted to post the recipe before I went to bed incase y'all wanted to make it tomorrow lol.