Recipe: Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

This ended up turning out so well I had to write up a quick post for it. I got this recipe from a bargain book I recently picked up from work at Barnes & Noble. It's called "Real Simple: Easy, Delicious Home Cooking" and it's such a handy little cookbook. It even has the calories for each recipe at the back of the book! (If made to the recipe, this one had 969 calories per serving).

Now I did change this up a little bit - the recipe also calls for corn and I didn't use as much cheese as it called for (I just sprinkled a bit on top instead of incorporating it into the enchilada mixture) and you can definitely change it yourself if you wanted to try it out. (Perhaps using beef or pork instead of chicken!)

This is how you make these delicious babies:

1. Cook the chicken (I used chicken breast) in a saucepan with enough water to cover it. Cook all the way through and transfer to a plate or bowl and let cool for a bit. When it's cool enough to handle, shred it. 
2. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F. 
3. In a blender, puree a bottle of salsa verde, fresh cilantro and half a cup of sour cream until it is smooth. Put in a saucepan and simmer until slightly thickened (about 10-12 minutes). Then stir in another half cup of sour cream. 
4. Add the sauce and chicken together (this is where you'd also put in the corn). Then put some of your sauce on the bottom your baking dish. Put together your enchiladas - adding the chicken mixture to the tortillas and setting them seam side down on the pan. After you've filled the pan, put the remaining sauce you have on top of our enchiladas. 
5. Put in the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, until bubbling and beginning to brown. Right out of the oven I added sprinkled cheese to the top. 
6. (And as you can see I also made some white rice out of a box - as a good seasoning you can add cumin, salt and pepper or even a bit of taco seasoning to add more of a spicy flavor). 

And there you go! It was really simple and so good. I don't know about anyone else, but I just adore the smell of cilantro. (When I was cutting it up the kitchen smelled amazing!) It's so fresh and slightly spicy to smell and the taste is very strong in this recipe - I loved it. 

I'm not the best person to judge spice level, because I do have a pretty high tolerance, but this is definitely on the more mild side. Flavorful and with a tiny bite to it perhaps, but if you're not that into spicy things this would be okay for you. I was even thinking you could mix the cilantro and sour cream with a different sauce to suit your tastes. 

If you try out this recipe - or change it up in anyway - I'd love to see it! I was thinking about adding a tag (though I don't think nearly enough people read my post to consequent doing this) - but if you do end up making this and posting a photo on instagram, tag it with #chatterboxrose and I'd love to see it!

Until next time, 

Rose 

Recipe: Beef Tortellini Soup

I thought it would be fun to have a short post every so often having to do with a recipe. I originally found this recipe in a book I was putting away at work, but ended up modifying it a bit.

It includes:

• ground beef
• cheese tortellini (refrigerated at the store, not a dried bag)
• condensed french onion soup
• a cup of water
• canned diced tomatoes 

The first thing you're going to do in a large pot is cook your ground beef until it's not pink. Then you're going to add the can of french onion soup, water, diced tomatoes and tortellini. I sort of just eye balled the water myself. Then, because I didn't feel like it was liquidy enough, added about half a can of chicken broth. My mom uses this for a lot of different things, just because it does add a lot of flavor. 

I also added some spices: italian seasoning and red pepper. 

Bring this to a boil and then cook for roughly ten minutes, or until the pasta is fully cooked. 

I really liked the final product - it's also great for leftovers!

You can definitely modify the recipe even further, depending on taste. Here are some examples:

• use ground turkey instead of beef to make it more lean (or skip on the meat entirely if you want to go vegetarian)
• instead of chicken broth, vegetable broth would probably taste amazing as well
• add vegetables - zucchini, green beans, etc - to add a "health factor" to it.  
• heck, even go for a different pasta entirely!

There are a lot of possibilities! I hope you enjoyed the post and if you try the recipe, I hope you enjoy that as well! Let me know if you tried anything different!

Until next time, 

Rose

Recipe: Coffee Cupcakes

I've been wanting to make these cupcakes for weeks now and I finally had a few days off work that I could really work on them! I hope you enjoy this post and the recipe (also spoiler alert: they are delicious!)

First off, your ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar ½ cup butter, softened to room temperature 
• 2 eggs 
• 1¾ cups all purpose flour, sifted 
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• ¼ teaspoon salt 
• ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted 
• 1 cup brewed coffee, chilled (use any kind you like, I used decaf since I can't have caffeine)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract 
• ¼ cup semi sweet chocolate chips 

My first step was to brew my coffee so I could throw it in the refrigerator (and later in the freezer) to chill while I got all my other ingredients ready. 

After that I pre-measured a lot of the ingredients so I didn't have to worry about them too much (yes, I'm that person that reads a recipe like twelve times). You should pre-heat the oven right now to 350 degrees.

The very first step is to cream your butter and sugar together. I had no idea how to do this and wasn't sure if I would be able to do it by hand, but good old YouTube didn't let me down. Here is the video I watched to teach myself how to cream the butter - it worked out great! (I used a rubber spoon/spatula). A great thing to remember is that you can't over cream the mixture and the longer you do it, the smoother it becomes, which helps your cupcake's consistency! 

Mix together your flour, baking powder and cocoa powder in a separate bowl. Add the vanilla to your coffee (which should be chilled by now) and set them both aside. 

Next add your eggs, one at a time, to the butter mixture and blend them well. 

Finally you're going to start adding your dry ingredients and your coffee mixture to the butter/egg mixture. Add them gradually, one at a time. I did dry, mix, coffee, mix and over again. Then fold in your chocolate chips.

(Around this time, Elphie decided she wanted to help and parked herself in the middle of the kitchen and I almost tripped over her. Adorable.) 

I might have spilled a bit of flour on her.
Flour + black cat = pretty hilarious.

When everything is all mixed together, it's time to fill your cupcake pan. About 1/4 a cup per liner. Then throw it in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes, or until you can put a toothpick inside and it comes out clean. (You are now required to lick your batter bowl while you wait, unless you're too scared of salmonella.) 

Yuuuuuum!

Next up: let your cupcakes cool completely. I basically cleaned up my mess (or your roommates/parents will be mad with you!) and then showered so I wasn't constantly checking them. When I came back from my shower they were ready to decorate - and here is the really fun part. I made them look like mini fraps from Starbucks. 

I got these Cupcake Gems, which worked out great, because they made them look like a Carmel Ribbon Crunch!

I bought icing bags and attachments to decorate, because I wanted the frosting to look like whipped cream on top of the cupcakes. I was nervous at first, because filling the bag can be a little tricky, but most will come with instructions and once again - YouTube is your friend if you want to see someone do it practically! The actually icing worked out amazingly. I felt like I was on Cupcake Wars or something! (Once again, you are now required to lick the spoon/spatula that you were using to get the icing into the bag.)

Next up: the Cupcake Gems!

Finally, I "borrowed" a few extra straws from the cafe where I work (Barnes and Noble) which brews Starbucks drinks. Obviously you can get them at an actual Starbucks, or buy a pack of green straws at the store. I cut them up, about an inch or so (though I should have gotten an extra straw because I had to cut a few in half because I didn't have enough). Then you stick them in the cupcake and frosting, making it look like a straw! 

And done! The next test is obviously the taste test. I took one where the frosting wasn't the prettiest and it was so good. You can taste the coffee - though I imagine that regular coffee might be stronger than decaf. There are also a lot of possibilities with flavored coffee: hazelnut, glazed chocolate donut (which my roommate loves!), or whatever else you like to have in the mornings. That is definitely a good personal touch. And if you don't want them to be chocolate cupcakes, leave out the cocoa powder and maybe add something else. Experiment a little!

I hope you enjoyed this and I wish I could let you try some. I was going to take this to work, but I think this batch will be for roommate consumption only and I'll make another for my co-workers later. 

Until next time, Rose

Afternoon Out and New Watch

I had the day off work today so I ended up messing around with this blog layout and then baking cupcakes (post for that to come tomorrow). Later in the day I went to pick Marissa up from campus after she was done with her classes. From there we went to Walgreens, to pick up some photos I sent in to get printed for scrapbooking and decorate my wall.

Next we made a horrible decision to get dinner when we were out and then made an even worse decision (because it wouldn't be Marissa and I if we didn't) and went to The Cheesecake Factory.

I got the Baja Chicken tacos and they were just amazing!

While we were at the mall to eat, I wanted to run into Charming Charlie, because I've been wanting to get a watch and get in the habit of wearing it. At work I can't carry my phone around and I'm not always near a computer, so I thought why not. I need to wear a watch. There were so many beautiful options...

But I went for this watch on clearance, so if I end up not wearing it as much, it's not as big of a waste of money. I absolutely love the color regardless.

So, I don't know if this was interesting enough to post about, but here it is!

Until next time, Rose