One of my favorite things about Wednesday nights, aside from the fact that they’re family nights, is that I have the time and energy usually to try new recipes.  Today I was struck by inspiration at work, thinking about my as-yet-unused pizza stone, just sitting in the oven, and I called Southern Honey to offer him a choice: paprika chicken or homemade pizza.

You can guess which he chose.  *grins*  Of course, this then meant I had to find a new recipe and make a shopping trip which I should really never do without first consulting the inside of my refrigerator and cabinets, but it ultimately worked out all right.  And the pizza, while a bit overly saucy this time, was really good.

Buffalo Chicken Pizza (from Mike Fuller over at Hubpages)

Ingredients

Approx 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, boiled and either shredded or cubed
4-5 Tbsp butter
2-3 Tbsp Franks hot sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
2/3-1 c ranch dressing
Wing sauce to your desired taste
Approx 1 c Colby jack and/or mozzarella cheese
Crumbled bacon
Chopped green onion

In a pan over medium heat, combine the shredded or cubed chicken, butter, hot sauce, salt and pepper, using amounts of hot sauce, salt, and pepper to your individual taste.  Heat and stir until the chicken is thoroughly coated.

Roll or press out your dough and preheat the oven to 425*.  If it’s a store-bought dough rather than homemade, bake for five minutes and remove from oven.

Combine the ranch dressing and wing sauce, starting with 2/3 cup of ranch and adding wing sauce to taste — you’ll ultimately want about a full cup of sauce, but not much more to avoid getting too saucy.

Spread the sauce over the pizza dough, then evenly cover with the chicken.  Sprinkle on the crumbled bacon and green onions, then layer on the cheese.  Bake for another few minutes, until cheese is melted and the crust is at your desired level of doneness.  I baked ours for about 7 minutes at this point.

Normally when that happens, I just find one that looks decent online somewhere and give it a shot, but this time I was feeling adventurous.  I decided I had a pretty good idea of what normally goes into a meatloaf, so why not make the rest of it up on my own?

Since I almost never do something like this without some kind of baseline, I was thoroughly surprised and pleased to find Southern Honey going back for seconds and asking that this be made more often.  I do think I’ll modify the recipe a bit in the future, but I was really pleased with how the meatloaf turned out for a first try.

Homestyle Meatloaf (a Southern Sugar original, but not like Mama used to make)

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
1/2 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 egg
1/2 c bread crumbs
1/4 tsp ground red pepper
Salt
Pepper
2 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp ketchup

Topping ingredients

1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
3 Tbsp ketchup

Preheat oven to 375*.  Combine all the meatloaf ingredients in a medium bowl and integrate thoroughly , which will probably be easiest to do by hand.  Spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray and mound the meatloaf in the pan.  Bake for 45 minutes.

In a small bowl, combine the topping ingredients and mix thoroughly.  After 45 minutes, remove the meatloaf from the oven and spread the topping along the top.  Place back into the oven  and turn on the broiler.  Broil for 3-5 minutes or until topping starts to glaze over.

Pinterest has been very good to me.  Both this and the balsamic honey-glazed carrots came from randomly surfing around through other people’s pinned recipe pictures.  Clearly this means that I need to get my butt into gear and find some more new things to try.  It also means that I need to keep up with my blogging, because I made this probably two weeks ago the first time (and have already had a chance to make it again).  Sheesh!

Anyway, here’s my take on this yummy recipe that I took from Pennies on a Platter, although it’s made the rounds of just about every major site I’ve come across and I got linked to Quick Free Recipes from Pinterest.

Capellini with Ham and Mushrooms (from Pennies on a Platter)

Ingredients

Approximately 4 oz dried capellini
1/8-1/4 lb cooked ham (DH is a carnivore, so more was a must), julienned
1/2 c sliced mushrooms
4 oz 1 Tbsp whipping cream (I had to add the extra tablespoon to make up for the additional ham)
1 large clove garlic, smashed or minced
1 Tbsp butter
1-2 tsp dried basil (the original recipe calls for 1/2 handful chopped fresh basil, but I forgot to specify when I sent Southern Honey to the store.  It would be much better with fresh.)
Ground black pepper
1/4-1/2 medium onion, chopped finely (I used 1/4 because Southern Honey isn’t a fan)

Cook the capellini according to the package directions — dried should only need four to five minutes of boiling in salted water.

In a heavy-bottom pan over medium heat, melt the butter.  Add the garlic, onion, and mushrooms and saute until the onions become soft.  Reduce the heat and slowly stir in teh heavy cream.  Cook until sauce has reduced by about 20%.

Add the ham and basil to the sauce and simmer for eight to ten minutes.

The original recipe called for pouring the sauce over the capellini (and for using linguine, but I digress), but I prefer to add the pasta to the sauce in the pan and mix it that way.  Season with ground black pepper and garnish with more fresh basil if you have it.

When I made this the second time, I added some frozen peas and a small amount of shredded Parmesan to the sauce.  I think I prefer the original, but the modifications were tasty, too.

However, tonight, in honor of Arkansas’s part in the Cotton Bowl, I decided I needed something new.  Something Razorback red.  Something tasty.

Thus was born the Crazorberry Blitz.  What this ultimately needs is a martini glass rimmed in red sugar, but I made do tonight with a regular wine glass.

Crazorberry Blitz (a Southern Sugar original)

Ingredients:

1 ounce vodka
1 ounce cranberry juice
Sparkling cherry juice
Red sugar
Maraschino cherries for garnish

Wet the rim of your martini glass and dip in the red sugar.  In a drink strainer, combine vodka and cranberry juice; shake and pour into martini glass.  Top with cherry juice and garnish with a cherry on a toothpick if you like.

Well, maybe not that last one.  But everyone’s on the road to recovery now, so I guess I should get back to posting about all my holiday recipe attempts.  I failed at taking pictures of most of them because I apparently have the memory of a goldfish and forgot to have my camera handy, possibly because I was trying to do all my cooking during the Munchkin’s naptime, but more likely because I have no brain.

This one would have gone over better, but when we got to our destination, the crock pot got plugged in but not actually turned on.  By the time everyone was ready to eat, they hadn’t gotten hot.  *facepalm*  That said, I really like these as a contrast to the ordinary honey-glazed carrots I’ve had in the past.  The balsamic vinegar cuts the sweetness really nicely and keeps the honey from turning them into a weird dessert.

Balsamic Honey-Glazed Carrots (from So Wonderful So Marvelous, by way of Pinterest)

Ingredients

2 lbs baby carrots, washed
3 Tbsp olive oil, divided
Salt and pepper, to taste
3 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

Preheat the oven to 400*.  In a bowl, toss the carrots with approximately 1 Tbsp olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Spread them on a shallow pan and roast for 20 minutes.  Combine the remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil, honey, and balsamic vinegar.  Drizzle over the carrots and roast for another 5 minutes.

Easy, quick, and tasty!

The benefit of having bought some new ingredients to cook with for Thanksgiving and having leftovers of them meant that I had some fun new ingredients to play around with for everyday occasions.  I like my French toast normally with milk, eggs, and cinnamon, simple enough.  But this time around, I not only had cherry topping and powdered sugar to have instead of syrup, I had heavy cream and ground nutmeg.  When I was finished, it smelled like the holidays all over the house, and the French toast tasted delicious.  I think I’ve found what I’m making for Christmas morning!

Holiday French Toast

Ingredients

2 eggs
1/4 c heavy cream
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
5 slices bread
1/4 can cherry pie filling
Powdered sugar

Whisk together the eggs, cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Heat a heavy-bottom pan over medium heat and spray with cooking spray.  Soak each slice of bread in the egg mixture, then place in the pan.  Cook on each side until golden-brown.  Heat the cherry pie filling in the microwave, and top each serving of French toast with it and a dusting of powdered sugar.  Enjoy with a mug of hot chocolate, your favorite coffee, or some orange juice.

This year it looks like we’re going to be Friendsmasing on Christmas Eve, down at the shop.  I’ve already picked up plates and napkins, and we have cups left over from Friendsgiving, so that much at least is taken care of.  What food I’m going to take is still up for debate.

I’m thinking Spicy Sausage Dip (I found it on Annie’s Eats last year for our office Christmas party) with bread chips, maybe turn our pork butt into pulled pork mini sandwiches, and possibly balsamic honey-glazed oven-roasted carrots.  I’ll let Southern Honey handle desserts — I’m betting he’ll want brownies, and I think I’ll sneak some toffee bits or Nutella  into the batter.  I love Nutella…  Those recipes won’t require me to pick up too many extra ingredients above and beyond what we already have at the house, which is what I’ve been aiming for in recipes lately.  Plus they can go in crockpots, which is an added bonus.

God bless us, every crockpot!

That love?  Dr. Pepper.  Apparently, I am incapable of liking drinks that aren’t abbreviated.  Regardless, it got me through cramming for biology finals and staying awake in boring classes, not to mention serving as a rum delivery vehicle at parties.

But then I graduated from college and I moved to the big city.  In an effort to be healthier, I cut out sodas.  My caffeine came only from my morning cup of tea, since I’m not a coffee fan, and the rest of the time I primarily drank water and milk.  Fortunately, I didn’t have many demands on my brain that couldn’t be solved by a good night’s sleep, and nothing stood between me and sleep but the occasional bass-thumping neighbor.  Life was good.

Then I got pregnant, and I decided to switch my morning cup of tea to decaf.  I’m short, Southern Honey is short, so why risk stunting the Munchkin’s growth more than the genetic lottery already makes likely?  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Then I had the Munchkin, couldn’t breastfeed him for long, and went back to work on short sleep.  Being functional mentally became a must, but how was I to achieve it?  Caffeine, my old friend, seemed the only answer.

Until that first cup of full-bodied tea had me up and jittering all night long.  My body had adjusted to life without my friend, and we could no longer inhabit the same space.  So I reluctantly went back to my decaf tea, shoving the box of caffeinated stuff deep into the recesses of my desk drawer.

Except that Monday I decided I needed a little pick-me-up after a long weekend without much sleep (cranky baby), so I broke out the real thing.  Caffeine, my buddy, come hang out!

Yeah, caffeine and I, we’re not buddies anymore.  It’s my nemesis.  My jittery, brain-exploding nemesis.  But, dangit, caffeine, I just want to love you.  Why do you hate me so?  I didn’t abandon you needlessly; I didn’t throw you aside because I wanted to!  Forgive me?

I’ve been trying lately to stick with recipes and dishes that I already have the ingredients for at home.  Not to mention dishes that don’t take long to make since I rarely get started before 8 or 8:30 at night for dinner.  So when I came across a simple cream sauce recipe today, I got excited.  After all, I had angel hair pasta, I had heavy cream (for the first time), and I had Parmesan cheese.  I could do it!

This was an easy one, based on a recipe I found over on Cooks.com.  All I did was add some frozen peas and diced Roma tomatoes to the mix for some color and added flavor.

Angel Hair with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

1 Tbsp butter
1/3 c heavy cream
1 small clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 c Parmesan cheese

Heat a heavy-bottom pan and melt the butter.  Add the garlic and cook for about thirty seconds to release the flavor, then add the cream.  Stir and bring to a simmer, then reduce heat and reduce in volume by about 10%  Season salt and pepper to taste.  Add the peas and tomatoes so they can heat through.

In the meantime, bring the water to a boil for the angel hair and cook for approximately five minutes.  Drain.

Increase the heat under the cream sauce until it starts to bubble around the edges of the pan and add the Parmesan cheese.  Stir until it melts, then add the pasta and toss to coat thoroughly.  Dish up, top with extra cheese if you want, and serve.