Turkey a la king is what's cooking!

Hello, I am here!

When I first started this food blog, I had major dreams about it! What I would post, how awesome I would be at posting every food picture I took. Well, reality is different. I love to cook but I don't measure everything. I have been trying to be better about measuring and writing down recipes and the changes that I make. How can I post a recipe if I don't know exactly how I made it? It also helps when my husband says, " what did you do different this time?" I wish I knew. I do take a lot of pictures that I see every time I open iphoto, waiting for me to edit and post.

I also love healthy cooking so I substitute natural sweeteners for white refined sugar and ground whole white wheat for white flour as much as I can. I am a sugar addict so the easiest way I can make little changes is in substituting. I also have lots of other little quirks about food but that is an entirely different post.

Let's get on with the food.

My last post was about what amazing sweets to make for turkey day. This post is about what to do with the freezer bag full of leftover turkey - if you still have any left.

Turkey a la King

Saute on medium heat:

White onions diced - 1 medium
Mushrooms - 5 small white
Red bell pepper - 1/2 BP diced
Butter (I throw a little olive oil in so the butter does not brown, maybe a tablespoon of each)
Salt and Pepper

After those are softened and glistening, I add:

1/4 cup flour
chicken broth packet (no MSG)

I stir that around a bit to get the flour taste out of it, then I add:

1 cup water or 1 cup chicken broth if you don't have the fancy packets from Trader Joes
1 cup milk

After that starts to bubble a little, I add:

Cooked, shredded or chunked turkey or chicken (that would make it Chicken a la King)
frozen peas (1/2 bag, whole bag? whatever your kids will eat)

After the turkey and peas are warm, you are good to go! Taste it and season a little more with S&P if needed. If it is too thick I add a little bit of water to make it pourable over the cute little pastry cups I got at the store. If your nearest store does not have any fabulous pastry cups, this recipe is great over biscuits.

See what I mean about not measuring a lot. Sorry! Throw in as many veggies as your family will eat. It is also really great the next day as leftovers.

Guten Appetit - Jenna

Pumpkin Bars are what's cooking!

For Halloween I made the most amazing pumpkin bars. I plan on making them for our Saturday Thanksgiving feast, they are that good! I am not bragging, I found the recipe on allrecipes.com. How good were they? They were so good I forgot to take a picture. Do you really think that my pumpkin bars would have that little amount of walnuts on top? No!

*photo also by allrecipes

Paul's Pumpkin Bars (Paul is my new BFF)

4 eggs
1 2/3 cups white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree (me - 2 cups fresh cooked)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt

1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a medium bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, oil, and pumpkin with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Stir into the pumpkin mixture until thoroughly combined.
Spread the batter evenly into an ungreased 10x15 inch jellyroll pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in preheated oven. Cool before frosting.
To make the frosting, cream together the cream cheese and butter. Stir in vanilla. Add confectioners' sugar a little at a time, beating until mixture is smooth. Spread evenly on top of the cooled bars. Cut into squares.

That is straight from one of my favorite websites, allrecipes! I love allrecipes because it has temperatures in Celsius as well as Farenheit. I also love allrecipes because people can make comments and add their own ideas of what works and what does not. I only roll my eyes to this fabulous system when some lovely commenters add things like:

"this turned out horrible! I did not have baking soda, so I doubled the powder I had and I did not have bread flour so I doubled the whole wheat flour, oh ya, I only had 1 egg and it called for 4, so I just added extra milk, what a dumb recipe, thanks a lot, Gary!"

Or whoever the recipe contributor's name might be. If you do not make a recipe how they say to and it turns out like crap I do not think you have the right to comment. It is that simple. I am not kidding with the crazy changes people think are ok to try and comment about like it is the contributors fault! The funny thing about Paul's bars that were submitted by Deb Martin (thanks Deb) some commenters were saying they were too cakey? Cakey and delicious is all I have to add to that.

So, let me just add that to Paul's amazing recipe, the only thing I changed was canned pumpkin to fresh pumpkin. Seeing that in Switzerland if you can find a can of overpriced pumpkin it is rare, it just seemed easier for me to use fresh. Oh, and I added TONS of walnuts to half of the pan. And I used an entire 8 oz. cream cheese container with the obvious larger increments of other ingredients to make the cream cheese frosting marvelous. And that is it, I promise. So, instead of pumpkin pie tomorrow or maybe in addition to, why not try my favorite pumpkin bars.

Happy Thanksgiving America!

En Guete! - Jenna