Stuffins!

At some point, along some time between now and a year ago, I somehow accidentally got signed up for a Disney Family magazine. 

At my work address.

So once a month, a copy of this very family-friendly magazine  full of kid-friendly games & crafts & vacation ideas shows up in the mail room in my inbox, and inevitably, a coworker will see it & say, “Oooohhh, is there something you’re not telling us???  Hrrmmmm???”

Yup.  …I am secretly harboring a fugitive Guatemalan family inside my filing cabinet. 

And they all REALLY love cupcakes with Oreo mouse ears.

Originally, I just threw these away in our recycling bin, since as a non-mom & have very little need for popsicle stick craft project ideas or notes on how to make a sunflower using bendy straws… but one day I actually started flipping through them, and discovered RECIPES.  Quick, fun recipes designed for letting kids help you cook….i.e. EASY stuff.  Which is ideal because, I know this may come as a shock to you, but I do NOT cook 5-star meals each night.  Sometimes, I actually CRAVE Hamburger Helper.  Or a grilled cheese with deli turkey & sliced tomato.  I also occasionally eat Ramen at my desk while daydreaming about take out sushi.

A while back, I saw in one of these magazines the idea for “stuffins” – stuffing prepared in a muffin pan & baked.  I love stuffing, and I love muffins… so I ripped that page out of the magazine & then quickly shoved the rest of the booklet into the filing cabinet for the Guatemalans—dog-earring that cute “cherry pie cupcake” tutorial for them while I was at it. (Don’t look at me like that—they have a flashlight.)

The stuffin is the ideal side dish—but I wanted to make it more of a bite-size meal option.  So we’ve added meat & extra veggies!

Ingredients:

1 lb spicy smoked turkey sausage, diced

1 box Stove Top (+ boiling water as noted on the box)

1 egg

1 tbsp dried chives or chopped green onions

1 cup canned corn

 

Directions:

Heat your oven to 375.

Cook your sausage in a large skillet until browned. Drain.

Prepare boiling hot water in accordance with the box of Stove Top.

In a large bowl, combine the dry Stove Top Mix, corn, onion, and boiling water.  Mix well & let stand for a bit (5 minutes), then fluff with a fork & add the turkey sausage & the egg.  Mix well.  (The egg is important—I made my first batch without it & they wouldn’t hold together).

Scoop into your muffin tray—you should have enough to make about 12, so divide evenly.

Bake for 20-30 minutes or until nice & brown.  Serve while warm.  This  pairs well with a salad, a warm bowl of chicken soup, or other finger foods, like the bacon-wrapped peppadews from last week.  They also make a pretty snazzy quick savory breakfast when you reheat the leftovers.

NutriFacts (1 serving = 3 stuffins)

Calories 425.9 (142 per stuffin, if you’re not eating 3 of them)

  Total Fat 10.8 g

  Saturated Fat 3.7 g

  Polyunsaturated Fat 0.4 g

  Monounsaturated Fat 0.6 g

  Cholesterol 100.4 mg

  Sodium 1,558.8 mg

  Potassium 211.9 mg

  Total Carbohydrate 41.4 g

  Dietary Fiber 1.9 g

  Sugars 7.2 g

  Protein 19.9 g

Missouri Botanical Gardens (and other such funstuffs).

Hi y’all!

I actually have a backlog of recipes that need to get posted; however, it’s been pretty busy here in the Real World and thus, Cyber-World gets put on the back burner. 

This past weekend, The Hubs & I took a mini-vaycay up to St. Louis.  A city of much antiquity & French influence, one could call it the “New Orleans of the North”… but that just sounds so Yankee. ;)

We live about 3 hours from STL (yay, airport code abbreviations!) but don’t get to visit very often.  So we decided to make the most of our trip.  So we went to:

The St. Louis Science Center:

(ANIMATRONIC DINOSAURS!  I WANT ONE!)

 

A St. Louis Blues game:

(We did not win.  But saw some GREAT fights.)

 

The Schlafly Brewery & Bottleworks:

(I actually didn’t take any photos here.  Above photo nicked from here.  Schlafly makes my favorite pumpkin ale.)

 

And the piece de resistance, Missouri Botanical Gardens: 79 acres of “WOW”.  We walked about 2.5 miles of it & STILL didn’t see everything.  It was an amazingly gorgeous, sunny-although-slightly-too-warm day.  Perfect camera weather.

A few choice snippets:

Prettiest Cactus ever…

 

Tulips!!!

 

When Iris eyes are smiling…

Fringed Tulip (I LOVE these!)

(Bishop’s Hat)

Hedge Maze! (I beat The Hubs in our “race” to find our way through.)

 

My ever-so-silly Hubs:

 

Japanese Garden:

 

That’s it for now!  This is the FeauxCajun & Hubs, from outside the FeauxKitchen, signing off!

(PS—don’t forget to go leave me a comment over here so you can try to win a set of wine charms!!!)

St. Paddy’s Day Recipe: Irish Egg Rolls!

At my office, I’m the head of our Potluck Planning Committee (I know, it’s SO “The Office”, right?)

(Angela: “I'm just trying to figure out why you're trying to sabotage things.”)

 

Although our meetings are much more succinct and less catty.  It’s more like, “there’s a holiday coming up, let’s do a potluck.” “Okay!”

Anyway…our potluck is today, and we did an Irish food theme (or green food, since every office has at least one person who’s going to bring a veggie tray because, “hey, it’s green”).  I asked the hubs what I should make, he did some research, and threw down the gauntlet: Irish Egg Rolls.

Irish Egg Rolls?

…okay, sure, why not?

Apparently he saw it as an appetizer at an Irish pub, and hey, I like egg rolls (Chili’s Southwest Eggrolls?  Hex yeah!), and I like a challenge, so that’s what we did.

The original recipe (shown here) calls for frying them, but we didn’t want all that extra grease, so we baked them instead, and they still turned out crisp and delicious.

Since I have a big office, we also doubled the size of the recipe to use up the full package of egg roll wrappers (15).

Ingredients:

8 ounces chopped corned beef (I recommend getting it freshly sliced from your grocer’s Deli)

1 tbsp bacon grease (aside from a little Pam and whatever’s in the corned beef, this is your only fat, so like I always say—might as well get as much flavor from your fat as you can.  If you’re anti- bacon grease, you can totally just use a pat of butter or a tbsp of olive oil)

2 cups shredded cabbage

2 cups diced cooked potatoes (about two large russet potatoes, diced, seasoned w/salt & pepper), peeled & boiled)

2 cups shredded carrot (took about 5-6 whole carrots, washed, peeled, & then shredded)

1/2 cup thinly sliced onion

1/2 cup sliced green onion

salt and pepper (or Cajun seasoning—it’s my go-to season-all), to taste

15 (7 inch square) egg roll wrappers

 

Directions:

Boil the potatoes, then drain. Set aside for the moment.

Heat the bacon grease in a large skillet (we used a wok, ironically) and add the cabbage, onions, carrot, and seasoning, and sauté over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes.

(I do so love colorful food!)

Then add in the corned beef & potatoes and toss, sautéing for another 5 minutes until the cabbage starts to wilt a bit.  Check for flavor & season again if needed.

Next, set up an “egg roll wrapping station”.  I did my rolling on a plate, with a small condiment bowl of water next to it. 

Scoop 1/2 cup of filling onto the first wrapper:

And then wrap the egg rolls according the instructions on the package—it’s pretty easy.  Just fold the bottom corner up snugly:

 

Then fold in the sides, then wet the top bit of the triangle with the water:

 

(Please ignore the fact that I’m flipping off the camera—it was accidental, I promise.)

And then roll the rest of the way up, and place on a lightly sprayed cookie sheet.

P.S. Heat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Once all your rolls are wrapped, lightly spritz the rolls with cooking spray—this will help them brown & get crispy & brown like as if they were fried.

 

Then bake on the middle rack for 18-20 minutes, flipping them halfway through—(I forgot to do the flip, but they still look pretty good, although the bottom looks SO perfect):

(Tops, without flip halfway through baking)

 

Serve with a Dijon or spicy brown mustard for dipping (we’re using Tabasco spicy brown mustard, because hey, this is a “Cajun” food blog, so it’s gotta be in there somewhere!)

(This shows the bottom.  Look how gorgeous & perfect that is!  So please remember to flip them.)

 

NutriFacts: (1 serving = 1 egg roll)

(Please note that in the original recipe, calorie count for one of these fried was 278 calories)

Calories 158.2

  Total Fat 3.4 g

  Saturated Fat 1.0 g

  Polyunsaturated Fat 0.1 g

  Monounsaturated Fat 1.4 g

  Cholesterol 19.8 mg

  Sodium 516.1 mg

  Potassium 120.2 mg

  Total Carbohydrate 25.4 g

  Dietary Fiber 2.0 g

  Sugars 0.6 g

  Protein 6.5 g

 

Have a great St. Paddy’s weekend, everyone!!!

Shared on 33 Shades of Green's Tasty Tuesday

Bonus (Non-Cajun) Recipe: Gingerbread Pumpkin “Brownies”

I was having a sweet tooth the other night, and sort of created these by “accident”.

I roasted fresh pumpkin earlier this week, so was needing to use some of that for baking.  I found a recipe for “chocolate-pumpkin marbled brownies”, which sounded delicious (because I am a fan of all things “fall spice”, and all things chocolate).  But when my sweets craving hit, I didn’t have any ingredients for the chocolate brownie portion of this recipe on-hand.

BUT, I did have this in my pantry:

So…I improvised!

Ingredients:

Gingerbread cookie mix

1/2 cup applesauce

1 tbsp butter

1 egg

1/2 to 1 cup water

(NOTE: if you can’t find the cookie mix, just get regular gingerbread cake mix & prepare according to package directions—we had to improvise a bit to get the batter to the right consistency.  Buy whichever is more cost-effective for you. PS—using an equal amount of applesauce as a replacement for the butter on the cake mix cuts out a lot of extra fat & calories.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix these ingredients together, pour into a greased 9 x 13 pan.

For the pumpkin portion:

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 tablespoon butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

In a medium mixing bowl beat cream cheese and the 1 tablespoon butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the 1/2 cup sugar. Beat until well combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in 1 egg, the pumpkin, 1 teaspoon vanilla, the cinnamon, and ginger until combined. Stir in the 1 tablespoon flour.

Spoon the pumpkin mix over the gingerbread batter, then use a knife to swirl together.  Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Linked to: 33 Shades of Green