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Southwest Chicken Tacos (A Favorite Crockpot Recipe) #BackToSchoolWeek

By KariV on August 23, 2013 in Dinner in Minutes, Recipes

Sometimes life is hectic. Some days require a little dinner help…from your crockpot. I love coming to home to the smell of a delicious dinner that has been cooking away all day!

I first got this recipe from my sister. She loves the spice cumin. I have never been a real big fan of cumin. But when I added a few ingredients and cut down on the cumin, I found this recipe became a FAVORITE quick crock pot dinner with my family. (Thanks, sis! *wink*)

I love that I can take a few cans of ingredients from the pantry and some chicken from the freezer and throw them all together in the crockpot and Voil’a…dinner!

I will post the complete recipe in a bit. But first, a note on that Herdez salsa. The Herdez salsa pictured above is the one I like to use, but I’ve tried the Ranchero salsa, too and it adds a bit more heat. You could use your favorite salsa if this brand is not available in your area.

Put the chicken in the crockpot, then add all the remaining ingredients. Turn the crockpot on High for 4 hours or Low for 8 hours. Beautiful. Then shred up the chicken using a couple forks and stir it all together.

When you are ready to eat, just assemble your toppings (shredded cheese, lettuce, homemade salsa, sour cream, guacamole…whatever you like!) and put your taco together.

Oh…please do use those tortillas that you cook up yourself (find them at most grocery stores and Costco). These tacos taste SO much better on those fresh cooked tortillas.

Easy, delicious crock pot dinner! It has a smoky Southwest flavor from the cumin, and a little added heat from the chiles and salsa. If you like more heat, you can increase the heat in the salsa or add some chipolte chili powder!

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Enjoy!

Did you enter the giveaway yet? Enter the Back To School giveaway here!
There are some amazing prizes: like a $75 Pick Your Plum prize (I love them!), a Cuisinart 3-in-1 Cooker (perfect for this recipe!), a smoothie maker, cooking supplies, a Pack-It lunchbox cooler…and more! I hope you win!

There’s a whole lot of Back To School Ideas this entire week:

And just a reminder, there is our back to school PinChat coming up:
Join us on Sunday, August 25, 2013 for a PinChat! For more information on how it works, click here

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The Secret to Amazing Grilled Salmon – and How to grill corn with the husks on

By KariV on August 16, 2013 in Cooking Light, Recipes

I love to get fresh salmon from the Market every time we visit California. It seems so much fresher than the fish in Arizona, and when we grill it up using this secret (that I’m going to tell you today) I am convinced that it’s even better than any restaurant salmon!

Yes, I’m going to share the secret with you to Grilling up amazing Salmon. My husband was shocked when I shared the secret with him, and now it’s going to be on the blog-o-sphere for all my dear readers to see!

Here it is: Fresh fish, simple ingredients, and a homemade foil tray! (That’s a secret, you ask?) Well, yes…and I’m going to give you the full instructions here.

First, get your salmon at a fresh market and get the best quality you can find. We got Silver Salmon (not farm raised, no dyes added). Silver Salmon is known for it’s bright red flesh and a slightly more delicate texture than King Salmon. King salmon is considered the best tasting, but it also costs more because many use it raw in Sashimi (sushi) dishes. I also like Sockeye Salmon, and King Salmon for grilling, though. Then, gather a few easy ingredients of salt, pepper, garlic salt, and butter.

Take some aluminum foil and make up a simple tray by doubling the foil, then turning up the edges for a make-shift tray. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on the tray. Put the salmon skin-side DOWN on the tray. Then season up the top side of the salmon (only) with a few sprinkles of salt, pepper and garlic salt.

Add some small pieces of butter across the top of the salmon. This is going to melt into the salmon during the cooking process and make that salmon even more moist and amazing!

Now for the corn.

While at the farmer’s market, we picked up some amazing two-toned sweet corn and it’s delicious grilled up with your salmon dinner. Here’s how to cook it in the husks and all. (We discovered this while at the beach house a few years back and we didn’t have much foil…the answer? Cook it in the husks! It turned out SO good that this is the only way we cook it now.)

Here’s what you do: Peel back the husks, tear the silk off (as much as possible), butter up that ear of corn! Then, wrap the husks back around the corn and tie the end with a bit of bakers twine or string to keep it closed. Don’t salt the corn before you cook it…you will add it later.

Put the corn on the top tier and the salmon, tray and all, on the bottom tier.
Note: Preheat the grill to 400 degrees. Since the corn takes a bit longer to cook than the salmon, put the corn on while the grill preheats. Then add the salmon.

Close the grill and set your timer for about 3-5 minutes, depending on the thickness of your salmon and the heat of the grill. When it cooked about 3/4 of the way through, it is ready to flip over!

Now, here’s the exciting part. You will take the salmon OFF the tray at this point and flip it directly onto the grill. When you take the salmon off the tray, the skin should peel off easily!

Now, cook it directly on the grill for just 2-3 minutes, so you get a nice grill mark. Then flip it to the other side for just about 1 minute so it gets nicely grilled. It doesn’t take long. Don’t forget to turn your corn!

Just about ready to eat!

To serve the corn easily, cut the end off the corn and the husks should peel off completely. (use a cutting board, we really could have used one here!)

Oh, that corn was good! And the salmon, AMAZING!

The nice thing about this salmon is: if you have leftovers, it makes an amazing topper for a big salad.
Enjoy!

Sometimes simple really is delicious. Thanks for reading!

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Back to School Snack Idea (party) — How to make a Watermelon Sundae

By KariV on August 2, 2013 in Back to School, DIY, Holidays, Recipes

I love Back To School sales {and} parties! I don’t have kids at home (anymore), but I can’t help shopping all the Back to School sales. I love to collect office supplies: pens, markers, folders, sheet protectors, and notebooks.

This year I was so antsy to have a Back to School party. Luckily, my 2 nephews were here visiting this past week and so guess what we did!! Yes…a Back To School Snack Party! I wanted to have a bunch of “healthy” after school snacks for the boys to try.

I set it up with some school lunch bags, snacks, pens, paperclips and highlighters. I cut those cute little apples out with the Cricut Sampler cartridge. We had to have green apples because that’s G’s favorite color!! (ok, actually it’s LIGHT CORE GREEN, but this lime green is close enough, right? He gets that color from one of his favorite video games: Skylanders. I got educated about that game this week!)

We had plenty of fruit and crackers. And I had the boys put together their own cheese and ham on fancy toothpicks. (They LOVED this part). Kids really do love to be involved and I think they enjoy their snacks even more if they can take a little ownership.

After putting together their ham and cheese picks, I had another treat up my sleeve. Something that looks so tasty, but is also good for you!

Here’s what I came up with:

And OH, these were quite the hit! They are fabulously easy to make with the kids and SO MUCH FUN! I had these sundae glasses already, but I’ve seen them at the dollar store recently. 😉 My nephews helped to build their own watermelon sundae:

My nephews ate this up! But we didn’t stop there…

We made fruit skewers…G preferred strawberries and blueberries for this one.

And then the boys wrote in their notebooks about their favorite after school snacks. G decided to DRAW pictures of his favorite snacks. First he drew a watermelon sundae. Then he drew ham and cheese picks. And then he drew this:

That’s his fruit skewer: see the strawberries and blueberries?! How much do I love that my nephews loved all the after-school snacks we had? {quite a bit!}

And to top it off, they finished up their “bookworms” made of pipe cleaners and attached to a pencil.

What a great snack party!

Talk to your kids about their favorite snacks. What can they help assemble for their own snacks? It makes Back to School so fun! Happy school year!

Linking up to the “Let’s Hear It For the Boy” link party here! (Let’s face it…I’m a little excited that I have a blog post that will work for this party. If you follow me, you know my blog posts are usually pink and girly!)

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The Best Bruschetta in Minutes (Guest Post)

By KariV on July 16, 2013 in Cooking Light, Recipes, Uncategorized

It’s time for some Garden Bruschetta! I am excited to be guest posting at Mom Endeavors with my VERY favorite Bruschetta recipe. So if you have tomatoes from your garden (or even from the grocery store), then try this easy recipe here. I’m also sharing a tip for putting this together FAST (no more tedious chopping).

And while you are there, don’t forget to leave a nice comment or two. Enjoy!

I’m off to make some Bruschetta now…this has my mouth watering. 🙂

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Taste Test Tuesday — Sweet Pork (Cafe Rio Copycat) with NO cola involved

By KariV on July 9, 2013 in Dinner in Minutes, Recipes, Taste Test Tuesday, Uncategorized

There are a lot of Sweet Pork (Cafe Rio Copycat) Recipes out there. But have you noticed that most of them call for Coke or Dr. Pepper? Well, I’ve tried my fair share of these recipes in the past…but since I strongly dislike colas (yes, all of them) I found that I did not like those recipes that included them! {Plus, I sorta have an aversion to cooking with soda pop.}

SO, I’ve been searching for a good recipe for sweet pork that didn’t have cola in the ingredient list. I’m happy to announce that I found a couple recipes and then put them up to the Taste Test Challenge!

The great thing about these recipes is: you put all the ingredients in the crock pot to cook all day (easy!), then just shred up the meat and add in the sauce. I love that!

After I cooked up both recipes, I put a taste of each on small plates for our judges. And then, when they picked their favorite, they got to make an entire sweet pork salad (or burrito). Now those are some lucky judges!

Sorry about the half eaten salad in this next picture…it was SO good that I forgot to take a picture before I ate most of it!

We used the following for our salads:

Fresh cooked tortillas
Cilantro Lime Rice
Garlic Black Beans
Lettuce
Peach Mango Salsa
Kari’s Garden Salsa
Cheese
Cilantro Lime Dressing

Oh. My. Goodness. I think these homemade salads are SO delicious! (They do rival the restaurant — however, there is something lovely about having all the ingredients ready and a salad made-to-order for you at the restaurant!)

Just to make sure of our results, I took both cooked recipes to my brother and sister-in-law (who just had a baby! yay!) to try out. The difference was, they would warm theirs up for dinner the next night. And they both liked the SAME one.

THE RESULTS:

Surprise! It was a TIE. I know, I know. I can’t believe it either.

So today, I am going to share with you my mother’s recipe for Sweet Pork.

And I will link up to the other cola-free Sweet Pork recipe ~~as soon as I get permission!~~ Permission granted! Here is the Sweet Pork Recipe that was a favorite among 50% of the judges! (Thank you to The Sisters Cafe for such an awesome recipe!) If you do try this recipe, be sure to try their Garlic Black Beans as well…so good!
[Note to judges: this was recipe 1 for all of you that picked the first sweet pork sample as the winner]. This one has a small hint of a spicy kick to it (probably from the enchilada sauce) that was delicious, and this one was definitely quite a bit sweeter than the other.

And the other 50% of the judges liked my mom’s recipe! {recipe to follow} This was, in my opinion, the easiest of the recipes. You just mix together all four ingredients (yes, only four ingredients!), add on top of the pork roast, cook it up all day, take out the pork and shred it up, and add back in some of the sauce (not all of it….it makes a lot of sauce!) [Note to judges: this was recipe 2 for all of you that preferred this one]

*Recipe here

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I used the green can of El Pato (jalepeno salsa). The yellow can said “hot” and I was a little ~~scared~~ hesitant to try it. If you like a little more spice, try the yellow can.

So there you have a couple of the BEST cola-free Sweet Pork Recipes! Give them a try and let me know what YOU think! I just love a good Sweet Pork Salad. 🙂

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