Shari's Awesome Chicken Marsala Over Spaetzle

Shari's Chicken Marsala

5 Chicken Drumsticks

1/2 Cup Water

1/4 Cup Sherry Vinegar

1/4 Cup Lemon Thyme Olive Oil

1 Brown Gravy Dry Mix Packet

1 Small Can of Mushrooms With Liquid

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken in glass baking dish. Combine remaining ingredients in medium size mixing bowl. Pour sauce over chicken. Cover with foil. Bake for 1 hour or until done.

Shari's Spaetzle

1 TB Olive Oil

1 Tsp. Salt

Water

1 lb. Spaetzle

1 Cup Alfredo Sauce

Boil noodles according to package instructions. Drain. Stir sauce into hot pasta.

All-American

I'm not sure what got into me, but tonight when I pulled out the ingredients for our evening meal, I reached for butter, cheese, and more cheeses! "This is going to be good," I thought. Although you can hardly go wrong with the taste buds with these All-American artery-cloggin' ingredients, I rarely cook with them, much less all at once. Tonight, I put Mexican cheeses and butter in my fresh cooked spinach. I added yellow American cheese to my rice. I cooked my cod in butter and garlic.

Quadruple Layer Quesadilla Tower

A friend posted a recipe for a taco bake on Facebook. That recipe gave me inspiration for my Quadruple Layer Quesadilla Tower. The taco bake recipe called for meat, salsa, and taco seasoning for the filling, I used leftover burrito filling from earlier this week instead. In a blender, I blended my burrito filling which included beans, bell peppers, onions, and spices. I then layered the resulting "refried beans" between tortillas and cheeses. I cooked my quesadilla tower at 350 degrees for 13 1/2 minutes. The outcome was outstanding. My recipe was easier and healthier than the original taco bake recipe I had seen, and it was tasty!

Lemon Cranberry Chicken

I made a basic meal of meat, potatoes, and salad. I did something a little different with my chicken. I marinated it with lemon juice, dried cranberries, olive oil, black pepper, and salt. Dinner did not disappoint.

Israeli Couscous With Parsley Root

This was my first time working with parsley root. I would definitely recommend it. Tastes just like parsley, but the root is crunchy like a radish. I cooked my onion, broccoli, and parsley leaves, and then added my parsley root last, before adding my combination of veggies to my couscous. Doing it this way left the root nice and crunchy for some added texture in my couscous pilaf.

Israeli Couscous With Parsley Root:

1 1/2 Cups Water

1 Cup Israeli Couscous

1 Small Onion

2 Small Broccoli Stalks With Florets

2 Parsley Roots With Foliage

Chanal Chole Powder to Taste (Indian)

Salt to Taste

Yummy Supper

Anthony made a yummy supper of fried bread and Italian soup with dumplings. The fried bread reminded me of Indian Naan, and the soup reminded me of Italian Zuppa Toscana except it had dumplings instead of potatoes. Anthony used the extra meat, veggie, and spice filling for the soup that we had leftover from when I had made pizza baozi. 

Pretty Purple Cabbage Bowls

Purple cabbage is so beautiful and tasty to work with. I put kind of a two to one ratio of purple cabbage to egg noodles for my cabbage bowls. I figured it would be healthier that way. Amazing. I will definitely be making this again.

Cabbage Bowls:

2 Cups Chicken Water (leftover from poached chicken breast)

1 Cup Egg Noodles

1/3 Cup Napa Cabbage

1 Onion

1 Head Purple Cabbage

3 Tb Soy Sauce

3 Tb Balsamic Vinegar

Salt & Pepper

1. Cook noodles in chicken water.

2. Saute onion in a large skillet. Add cabbage, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper.

3. Add cooked noodles and chicken water to cabbage skillet. Cook until liquid is cooked off or absorbed.

Shari's Sweet Potato Habanero Crawfish Boil

I had some crawfish kicking around in my freezer at home because I randomly discovered them and bought them on my last grocery shopping trip. I thought of making the crawfish for Valentine's Day since they are red, exotic, and fun. I was so excited to make them however, that I could not wait until then.

I had so much fun planning it all, making it all, and eating it all. Of course, it would not have been the same without my dear husband Anthony and his good nature humoring me in feasting on this dish with me. I think I had a little too much fun with the whole event. When we sat down to eat Anthony asked me how we were supposed to eat them. I said I had posted a YouTube crawfish eating demo video earlier on my Facebook page that day saying that he and I were going to need it soon. I told him maybe he could look up the demo video on his phone for us both because I had never eaten crawfish before either. We laughed, looked up the demo video, and followed the instructions.

When we ripped the meat out of the crawfishes, I was surprised to see yellow. I thought maybe I hadn't cooked it all of the way. I googled a few different words and thoughts before finding a few pics that helped me determine whether our crawfish were indeed cooked. They were. The yellow that I had seen was guts, and I just had to pull some more of the meat out on the other side to get to the meat of the matter. Phew!

As for my recipe, I decided to just work from ingredients I had on hand after reviewing multiple crawfish boil ingredient lists online. Most of the lists included: crawfish, potatoes, corn on the cob, onions, garlic, sausage, lemons, water, and seasonings. Some even included mushrooms, or shrimp, or crabs. I wanted my crawfish boil to be original so it just worked out that I didn't have exact ingredients for the recipe. Below you'll find a list of the ingredients that I used to create my own original crawfish boil.

Shari's Sweet Potato Habanero Crawfish Boil:

1/4 Cup Cajun Seasoning

6 Quarts Water

2 Lemons

2 Onions

2 Sweet Potatoes

2 Habaneros

1/2 Lb. Cooked Ham

2 Lbs. Cooked Crawfish

1. Bring water and cajun seasoning to boil in a large pot.

2. Quarter lemons, squeeze juice into pot, and then drop lemons into pot.

3. Chop onions, sweet potatoes, and habaneros. Drop them into the boiling pot. Cover and cook 15 minutes.

4. Add ham and crawfish. Cover and cook for ten minutes.

Buckwheat Kasha Pilaf With Soy Sauce

I first tried buckwheat kasha in Moscow, Russia. It was served with liver. I've made my own buckwheat kasha some occasionally in America. One time I prepared it for my husband Anthony. He did not like it. The rest of the box of kasha has been shifted around in our cupboards for quite sometime now and I finally decided to go ahead and prepare it. I wanted to make sure to dilute the flavor a little to make it more edible for Anthony. There are certain robust flavors that Anthony is not too fond of such as sauerkraut, or brussel sprouts, and including buckwheat kasha. I found that out real fast when we first married and I tried making him a classic Pennsylvania Dutch/ German meal. He did not enjoy it.

And so today, I cooked up an onion, some carrots, garlic, chicken, and kasha in a kind of riceless pilaf. We put soy sauce on top. The slight resemblance of pilaf reminded me of eating amazing pilaf in southern Ukraine. The soy sauce of course reminded me of our time in China.