Cajun Chicken Alfredo

I've had this recipe in my back pocket for over a month now, but have been too excited about all of the tasty drinks I've been making to post it. Honestly I had forgotten all about it until my mom called me and said, "I've been trying to make that pasta you made when we visited, but I can't make it right according to your brother. I searched your blog... but it's not there."

Oops.

I LOVE Cajun Alfredo of any kind, shrimp, chicken, sausage, I can't get enough. But when searching for recipes I always found out that they were super elaborate or just too time consuming. So without further ado, here's my easy peasy Cajun Chicken Alfredo!

3-4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

1-2 jars Alfredo Sauce

Fettuccine noodles (Use however many you like, I used about 7oz if I remember correctly)

1 or 1.5 tbsp Cajun Seasoning

 1/8 tsp Salt

1/8 tsp Garlic Salt

1/8 tsp Pepper

1/4 tsp Dried Basil

2 tbsp Butter

OPTIONAL: 1 Tomato, chopped

Start by cutting your chicken breasts into strips or small pieces.

Once that's done, get a pot of water boiling for your pasta.

Melt your butter and mix with the cajun seasoning in a medium sized bowl. Add chicken and mix together before putting all 3 in a skillet.

Cook the chicken until done all the way through.

Meanwhile, add your fettuccine to the boiling water and make according to directions on the package.

Once both the chicken and the pasta is done, mix them together along with your alfredo sauce.

Add your garlic salt, pepper, salt, dried basil, and chopped tomato (if you chose to add it) at this time and mix all together thoroughly.

Serve and enjoy the compliments! I always love to make this because it satisfies my cajun alfredo cravings and it's so easy to make! Y'all can tell by now I'm way into easy dinners so this is perfect!

Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned, next week is dessert! Have an awesome week!

Life's a Peach! Sweet Tea

If by now you haven't picked up on the fact that there's a slight peach theme for the blog, you need to rethink your observation skills. I've been fostering a slight obsession with peaches here lately, which started with this post. This weekend I decided to try something new for the holiday, and I was so pleasantly surprised that I thought I'd share here!

What you'll need:

2 Peaches

1.5 cups Sugar

Tea (black or iced tea bags, I used the gallon bags from Lipton)

Filtered Water

You're going to start by making a peach simple syrup, I based mine off of foodie misadventures version, but as it didn't make MY tea sweet enough, I did tweak it. Here's how:

Peach Simple Syrup:

In a small pan, combine 1 cup of water, 1.5 cups of sugar, and 2 peaches, pitted and sliced however you choose. 

Bring to a boil, once boiling wait one minute and remove from heat.

Let sit for 25-50 minutes, use a spoon to crush the peaches in the simple syrup.

At this point you can choose to strain the syrup, or you can leave the peaches in, but after that you're done! I love this because the hue is just gorgeous and it smells like liquid heaven. So good.

Now you need to make your tea. All I do to make my tea is bring 2 quarts of water to a boil, remove it from heat, and steep the tea for 3-5 minutes. Any more than that, and it's too bitter for me.

Pour into a gallon pitcher and add water until it's about 3 quarters of the way full so that you have room for your simple syrup.

Now earlier I mentioned that you can leave the peaches IN the syrup, or strain them out. I've done it both ways, and the general consensus is that if you want your tea to have a stronger peach flavor, leave the peaches in. If you take them out it will still taste peach-ey, but I like for the fruit flavor to keep infusing into the tea over time.

Once you've mixed it all together, add ice and voila! Perfect peach tea.

Keep stopping by on Sundays, I'll be posting my recipes once a week here every Sunday. And keep coming back through out the week, there's some big stuff happening and I'm so excited to share!

Happy holiday weekend, hope yours was a blast!

Stay peachy,

Lemon Pepper Grilled Corn on the Cob

Big news... we got a grill.

 Yeah, yeah, I know that's not that much of an accomplishment, but I am overwhelmingly excited about this little doohickey. So excited, in fact, that while my family was visiting we put that baby to use. Unfortunately, we ate all of the food we made, but the silver lining here is that while I was trying (without much success) to find a recipe for grilled corn on the cob, I ended up having to make up my own version. Which means it's recipe time!

Okay, so here is what you'll need:

6 Ears of Corn

3/4 Cups of Butter, softened

1.5 Tbsp of Lemon Pepper Seasoning

• First, you need to get a rather large container out and fill it with cold water. I had trouble keeping mine cold so I also put ice cubes in there.
• Next, you will need to peel the corn husks away from the corn, as far down as you can safely go. Do not shuck it or remove the husks. Once the husk is peeled back, remove the silk. Now wrap the corn back into the husks the best you can and place them in the cold water for 20-25 minutes.

• While the corn is in the water, mix the lemon pepper and butter and get some aluminum foil ready.
• Once the corn has soaked in the cold water for long enough you're going to remove the husks and place the corn individually on pieces of aluminum foil. Bend the foil upwards so that it almost looks like a vessel for the buttery goodness you're about to lay on this corn. Seriously. This prevents the lemon pepper/butter mixture from escaping.
• Cover the corn with the lemon pepper/butter mixture evenly until all of the butter is gone.
• Wrap the corn cobs in the foil, leaving a bit of room for the steam and butter to circulate. Twist the foil at the ends so that it is sealed well.

• Grill the corn on medium heat for about 15 minutes, rotating occasionally.

• Remove corn from grill and thank me for creating such a delicious recipe ;)

I hope you all enjoy this as much as my family did! If you try it out, take pictures and let me know how it goes!

Sausage and Cream Cheese Crescent Rolls

I don't have many recipes in my repertoire, but out of all of them this one has to be both the easiest and the most requested. I always make them when I'm looking to impress someone and fool them into thinking I'm a wonderful cook ;) The problem is, I can never find a recipe online that matches how I make them exactly, and I've found I prefer the way they taste with my recipe more than any other version I've tried. So without further ado, let's get cooking!

You need 3 ingredients:

2 cans of Crescent Rolls

1 lb of Sausage

1 8oz package of Cream Cheese

I know I put 2 packages of cream cheese in the picture, but disregard that. I made these at 10:30 at night, my sleepy goggles were on ;)

• First, preheat your oven to 350
• Then, get out your skillet and brown the sausage. You want to make sure it's just slightly crispy. Drain and crumble.
• Next, fold in the cream cheese and mix well. I usually nuke mine in the microwave for about 30 seconds to make mixing easier, but if you don't like microwaves then you can just stir it until the heat of the sausage melts the cream cheese.

• Roll out your crescent rolls, separate them by triangles, and spoon some of the sausage/cream cheese mixture onto each one. I usually use about 1-2 tablespoons of the mixture per crescent roll, but who has time for measurements?
• Fold the two shorter corners of the crescent roll in over the sausage, then use the long end of the triangle to wrap it around. (I know it sounds difficult, but you'll see what I mean when you do it.) You can just roll them regularly at this point too, but I get the most compliments when I do them the complicated way ;)

• Bake those suckers in the oven for 15-17 minutes, or until golden brown, and voila! You've done it!

Now sit back and enjoy some before everyone else scoops 'em up!

Sunday Funday (but posted on Munday?)

I wanted to start the post with a little update on my kitchen herb garden. I couldn't find anything about one of those in the googolplex of blogs I've plowed through trying to figure out if I'm running my own correctly. So every few days, or whenever I see a difference, I'll just put in a photo. This photo was taken just yesterday, and even since then my Parsley, Basil, and Chives have all grown like crazy! I was expecting to kill them all so I'm pretty ecstatic.

Next on our Sunday to-do list? HOME GOODS! We actually got 2 $25 gift cards when we closed on our new home last month, so we finally figured we'd go spend it. We ended up going over, but it was well worth it. I didn't photograph everything we got (it was only the table piece, a pitcher, and a useless model boat for G's desk), but I did take a picture of the piece for our coffee table we got. I really wanted a cow skull with gold horns (I'm quirky, bite me)(that link is the closest thing I could find to what I saw in the store, and about twice the price)... but we could not agree on it so we brought this baby home.

Lastly, I finally got to make the pulled pork baked potatoes I've been dying to make. Next time I'm going to use a different sauce for the pork, as we went with an applewood smoked sauce this time so the pork was a bit too sweet for us. However, they actually turned out pretty good. Just scrubbed the potatoes, lathered them in olive oil, sprinkled them with salt, and popped those suckers in the oven on 400 for an hour...

...and voila! Throw some pulled pork in there and you've got the perfect meal! They would have been really good with some green beans on the side, but I just threw some mac on there and rolled with it, empty looking plate or not. Like I said though, definitely going to use a more "hickory" based sauce next time. Hey, at least I got some goooood leftover pulled pork out of it ;)