Some Favorite Recipes

These recipes are some of our favorites that we've discovered since we've been married. Thought I would share. The French Dip Sandwiches are our most recent cooking adventure, and I'm SO excited about them. We loved them. But we've loved all these recipes.

Enjoy!

Jodie's Creamy Chicken

4-5 chicken breasts

1 cube margarine

2 pkgs. Italian dressing mix

Put chicken in crockpot, sprinkling with pkgs. Italian dressing mix. Add margarine. Cook, covered on high about 3 hours. Take out chicken and put on plate. Scrape meat off bones (if any) and cut into bite-size pieces. Clean up broth. Add in and stir well:

2 cans cream of chicken

2 8oz. pkgs. cream cheese

Add back the deboned chicken and heat through. Serve over rice, noodles, or potatoes.

Crockpot Cheesy Penne

1 lb. Italian sausage 1 15oz. can tomato sauce

1 14oz. can diced tomatoes 1 tsp. oregano

1 tsp. garlic powder salt & pepper

1/4 cup veggie or olive oil 2 tsp. granulated sugar

1/2-3/4 lb. penne pasta 1 cup shredded Mozzarella or Monteray Jack cheese

Parmesan cheese

Cook sausage in frying pan on medium heat until browned and crumbly. Drain well. OR Cook sausage whole in casings; remove and dry, then cut into halved circles. Place in crock pot. Add sauce and diced tomatoes. Add oregano, garlic powder, salt & pepper, oil, sugar and stir well. Cook on low 7-8 hours or high 4-6 hours. Salt large pot of water and cook 1/2-3/4 lb of penne 4-5 minutes less than directions on box call for (about 7 or 8 minutes). Add penne and stir well. Top with 1 cup shredded cheese. Continue to cook on high for 15-20 minutes or until pasta is tender and heated, and cheese has melted. Serve with Parmesan cheese.

***I got this recipe online, and do a few things differently. 1) I do not use any oil. It makes it too heavy and we don't think it's really needed. 2) We don't like tomatoes, so I add a little more tomato sauce and don't use any diced tomatoes. 3) Jopes likes lots of cheese, so he mixes in the first cup of shredded cheese, and then puts more on the top to melt.***

Easy Chicken Enchiladas

3-4 cups cooked chicken (or turkey), shredded or cut into 1/2 inch chunks

7 oz. can chopped ortega style chiles

16 oz. sour cream

1 can cream of chicken soup

3 cups shredded jack or cheddar cheese (plus a little extra to sprinkle of top)

10 flour tortillas

Mix ortega chiles, 3/4 of sour cream (save rest for garnish) and soup. Then take approximately 1/4th of this mixture and mix with cut up chicken. Fill flour tortillas with a scoop of chicken mixture and handful of cheese. Roll enchilada style. Take another 1/4th of sauce mixture and spread in bottom of greased baking pan. Place enchiladas on sauce. Cover enchiladas with remaining sauce and cover baking pan with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30-35 minutes. Remove foil, sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake another 5 minutes. Garnish with tomatoes, lettuce and sour cream if desired.

French Dip Sandwiches

1 beef roast (any type, any size)

1 or 2 packets Au Jus (you can probably get away with 1 for most size roasts, but I used two with a 3 lb roast and didn't have too much left over sauce)

Put your roast in the crock pot. Mix the Au Jus with the amount of water it calls for and pour over roast. Cook for about 6 hours. Pull apart or cut up the roast.

Using your favorite kind of bread (we used bollio rolls), cut open and put 1 or 2 slices of Provolone cheese on it. Broil open face in the oven until the cheese just starts to melt. Add meat, and dip in a bowl of the Au Jus from the crock pot.