What a Crock Tacos!!

This is a super easy recipe to make super delicious meat tacos. This recipe you can prepare at night in the crock-pot bowl, stick in the fridge overnight, pop in the crock-pot on low in the morning, and have a delicious hot meal as soon as you get home from work.

Ingredients:
-3 boneless chicken breasts (you can always put in more if you want, or you can use minute steak)
-1 medium can of enchilada sauce (or a small can of tomato sauce)
-3 to 4 bell peppers (I use a combination of red and green in slices as if you were making fajitas)
-sliced Anaheim chili peppers and jalapenos (as many or as few as you want)
-1 can of diced tomatoes
-1 sliced onion (....as if you were making fajitas)
-1 bottle of beer
-Seasonings: Salt, Pepper, Garlic Salt/Powder, Chili Powder, Cayenne Pepper to taste

You could also add:
-salsa
-cilantro
-lime juice

Directions:
-Place meat in the bottom of the crock-pot bowl.
-Add everything else on top....everything (the beer is the liquid and this dish doesn't require water).
-If you prepare this at night, put the top on the crock-pot and leave in the refrigerator overnight. This dish takes approximately 6-8 hours to cook.
-In the morning, take the crock-pot bowl out of the refrigerator, put it in the crock-pot cooker, and cook on low all day.
-When you get home, take out the meat and use two forks to shred it up and place back in the crock-pot.

How do you eat it?!?
-I will usually use some of the extra liquid from the tacos to cook up some rice in a rice cooker, and then I eat the taco mixture with rice, shredded lettuce, and avocado (if I have some) or salsa, wrapped in a tortilla.
-I will also sometimes just eat it on top of shredded lettuce like a salad.

Crock-Pot Tacos with rice, lettuce, and avocado. Yum!!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Cholent!!!

Cholent is a traditional Jewish dish that people would prepare for the Sabbath (or Shabbat). Shabbat starts every Friday night and lasts until sundown Saturday, and during this time, Jewish people are not supposed to cook. So, people would prepare cholent in a pot on Friday, let it cook overnight, and then eat hot delicious food all day Saturday. I have had a lot of different cholents (everyone makes it differently), but this is how I make mine:

Ingredients:
-3 to 4 Russet potatoes (peeled and cut into thick chunks approximately 1.5 inches thick)
-1 frozen Kishke (Kishke is traditionally meat product wrapped in intestines, but nowadays, they sell both meat and vegetarian or "Parve" options at Kosher markets. It is in the frozen section and they are covered in wax paper that must be removed before putting into the crock-pot.)

-1 to 2 diced green bell peppers
-1 diced large onion
-1 can of diced tomatoes
-1 cup of pearl barley (approximately 1 cup)
-3 to 4 whole cloves of garlic
-water (enough to cover ingredients)
-Seasonings: Bouillon powder (I typically use non-meat chicken soup bouillon), salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika (Add a lot of seasoning since everything will get watered down.)

Ingredients you may want to add:
-1 can of pinto beans
-eggs (whole, uncooked eggs will hard-boil overnight)

Ingredients you should definitely add if you like spicy:
-diced fresh jalapenos
-dried Thai chili peppers
-chili powder
-chopped chipotles (I added a few once and it came out pretty tasty)

Directions:
-In a large crock-pot, put barley, tomatoes, bell pepper, onion, and garlic. (Optional: add jalapenos, Thai chili peppers, and pinto beans)

-Peel off the Kishke's wax coating and push it down into the center of the ingredients.

 

-Place potato pieces all the way around the Kishke.

-Add seasoning to taste (Be sure to add A LOT of paprika)

-Fill crock-pot with water until the Kishke and potatoes are covered. (Optional: If you want eggs, place the eggs on top of the potatoes. Be sure they are submerged in water. When you are ready to eat the cholent, take out the eggs and peel them.)

-Cook on low for approximately 24 hours.
-Stir mixture at some point in between and add water if necessary.

As I said, everyone makes cholent differently. Once you have one recipe under your belt, feel free to come up with your own concoction. You may want to add meat such as chicken thighs (on the bone) or minute steak (it falls apart and is super tasty). A lot of people use a mixture of dried beans instead of canned pinto beans (there is a mixture that is actually labeled "Cholent Mix" at the regular market). Some people put in the bagged rice things in the morning (rice does not need to cook overnight, putting it in in the morning is fine). Really, you can put anything you want in cholent.

Cholent is a great dish to make at the beginning of the week because you have a hot meal waiting for you when you get home, and if you separate it out into tupperware, it reheats really well as lunch for the rest of the week. You may also freeze it and microwave it later on whenever you're in the mood for cholent.

The Best Big, Chewy, Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever!

I know what you're thinking, "Another chocolate chip cookie recipe? How different could it be?" But, I'm not kidding when I say that this is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe:

Ingredients:
-2 sticks or 1 cup of butter/margarine
-2 1/4 cups of flour
-1 tsp. baking soda
-1/4 cup white sugar
-1 1/4 cups of dark brown sugar (dark brown sugar makes them extra chewy)
-1 egg
-1 egg yolk
-approximately 2 tbsp. milk/mocha mix
-1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
-1 bag of chocolate chips (or try 1/2 chocolate and 1/2 white chocolate)

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
-Cream butter/margarine, white sugar, and brown sugar together until light.
-Add egg, yolk, milk/mocha mix, and vanilla.
-In a separate bowl, sift together flour and baking soda.
-Add flour combination to mixture and blend until thoroughly combined.
-Stir in chocolate chips.
-Use a large ice-cream scoop (*Not a cookie scoop!! I mean a regular, large, ice-cream scoop) to scoop out equal sized portions onto a non-stick cookie sheet. (Approximately six will fit on a regular sized sheet.)

-Cook for about 14 minutes in the oven (be sure it's placed on the center rack in the oven and do not try to cook more than one tray at a time....they won't cook evenly).
-As soon as you remove the tray from the oven, use a flat spatula to carefully remove the cookies from the tray and place them on a cooling rack or tin foil to cool.

Just so you know, they will be pretty thick, and they will be pretty delicious. One batch makes approximately 15 cookies.

To make these cookies non-dairy, use margarine (Nucoa) instead of butter, Mocha Mix (non-dairy creamer) instead of milk, and non-dairy chocolate chips (these are sold at Kosher markets and Trader Joe's, or check the labels on bittersweet and dark chocolate chip packages).

White Chocolate Blueberry Cake Pops

This was only my second attempt making cake pops, and these came out absolutely amazing! Here's the recipe:

Cake: (One batch fills one 9-inch cake pan. I doubled the recipe to fill two 9-inch cake pans and that made about 48 cake pops)
-3/4 stick butter/margarine
-3/4 cup of white sugar
-2 eggs
-1 tsp. vanilla extract
-1/2 cup of sour cream (light, non-fat, or non-dairy are fine)
-1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
-1 tsp. baking powder
-1/4 tsp. baking soda
-3-4 oz. of melted white chocolate
-1 cup fresh blueberries

You will also need:
-1 regular container of store bought vanilla frosting
-at least 1 bag of white chocolate to melt and dip cake pops into

You may want these for toppings:
-fresh blueberries
-sprinkles
-white chocolate chips

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.
-Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until light.
-Reduce speed and add the eggs, vanilla, and sour cream.
-In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
-Add flour mixture to the batter until just combined.
-Add melted white chocolate.
-Fold in blueberries.
-Pour mixture into a 9-inch baking pan, repeat the recipe/steps to fill the second cake pan.
-Cakes will bake for approximately 45 minutes. (use a toothpick to check if it is done)
-Let the cakes cool down completely.
-The top of the cakes may be too tough to crumble, so use a butter knife to gently cut it off.
-Put both cakes into a large bowl and use your hands to crumble up until there are no chunks. It will be purple :-)
-Use a spatula to add in the entire container of vanilla frosting.
-Gently mix everything together with the spatula, then use your hands to mix it the rest of the way through until it's almost like a purple dough.
-Use a cookie scoop to scoop out identical portions of the dough and roll them into ball and place down on a large cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper. Continue until all the dough has been made into balls.
-Place in the freezer while you melt the white chocolate.
-Start to melt down the white chocolate on a double boiler.
-Take the cake balls out of the freezer, before placing the popsicle sticks in the cake, dip the ends in the white chocolate. This will help the stick stay in better.
-Once all of the balls have a popsicle stick in them, place in the freezer for approximately 1 hour.
-Meanwhile, make sure you have enough melted white chocolate to coat the pops.
-Take the pops out of the freezer and dip on at a time into the white chocolate. (Be careful, the cake may fall off into the chocolate. Go slow, take your time, and have a spoon handy.)
-I have a cardboard box with holes poked in it to hold the pops while they set (in the picture above), and I suggest you do the same.
-Before the chocolate sets, add the toppings you want.
-Once all the pops are done, place the cardboard tray with the pops in the refrigerator overnight.
-The next day, they should be pretty set and ready to display. I bought a small basket and some green aqua-foam (the stuff they use for floral arrangements), place a cut paper plate over it, and the displayed the pops in a sort of bouquet.

All there is left to do is....ENJOY!!!

Now, this recipe may be made to be dairy-free, all you would need to do is use margarine instead of butter (I always use Nucoa margarine and everything always comes out perfect), non-dairy sour cream (which is sold at a lot of regular super markets nowadays), non-dairy white chocolate can be found at Kosher markets (or perhaps at another specialty market?), and you will need to make your own vanilla frosting using mocha mix and margarine instead of milk and butter.