Spicy Crab Dip

I was feeling kind of good yesterday so I tried two recipes. This one was very easy and it too came from the Big Oven Lite app fro my iPad. All you need is a can of crab meat which believe it or not is right with the cans of tuna. 1 8oz pack of cream cheese, 1 cup of cheddar cheese, a dash of cayenne pepper, and a few tablespoons of finely chopped onion (I took some of the onion from the Tex-Mex recipe and saved it for this). Too easy!

All you have to do is drain your crab meat and add to it the cream cheese, cayenne, and onion and then top with the cheddar. After you have it all nice and neat, put it into a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until it is hot and bubbly. My oven was already hot from the recipe before. I just bought one of those fancy boxes of crackers from Harris Teeter to go with it. Chad loved it!

My only flaw... was I should have started out in an oven-safe dish. Good thing I checked because the dish I was going to cook it in was not oven-safe. Always use oven-safe dishes in the oven. Silly me. I caught myself this time. I am getting better at this. Here is a picture of it in the oven. 5 out of 5 stars on this one. : )

Tex-Mex Spaghetti Casserole

Another Day off, I decided it was time to try a new recipe. First I started off cleaning all the dishes; there weren't many but I can't stand dishes in my sink. I found my recipe on the Big Oven Lite app on my iPad. All of the recipes from that app are from other people just like me, just wanting to share yummy family recipes. The recipe is called Tex-Mex Spaghetti Casserole, I know, strange? Well, that's why I wanted to try it! Dig in!

.

I actually made two recipes yesterday and all my ingredients only cost me $25. You need 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, 1/2 stick of butter, 1 6oz can of tomato sauce, 1 can of Rotel (I used original), 1 bell pepper (chopped), 1 onion (chopped), 1 16oz brick of Mexican Velveeta cheese, 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, and one small box of spaghetti.

.

I wish I would have put the spaghetti on to boil while I was doing everything else but the recipe said to use the water from boiling the chicken to boil the spaghetti. Don't do it that way, you end up waiting all afternoon for the spaghetti. So, put the spaghetti on to boil, and put your chicken on to boil. While all of that is in the works you can melt the butter in a deep skillet and saute your onion and bell pepper. When the onion and bell pepper is translucent add the Rotel, tomato sauce, cream of mushroom soup, and Velveeta. Once the chicken is done cooking you can slice it, or shred it like I did. Then add it to your mixture in the skillet. Once the spaghetti is done add it to the mixture (I added it in my casserole dish because my skillet was full, but I had a very deep dish). Once you have it all together put it into a 300 degree oven, covered in foil, for 1 hour, and you're done!

.

But I wasn't done. Here is my only flaw! The night before Chad made tater tots to go with our hot dogs for dinner. Only... 1 tater tot must have escaped and while my oven was pre-heating the poor tater tot was smoldering in the bottom of my oven. So I had a smokey stinky kitchen on my hands, and I lost my appetite. So... Never let the tater tots escape. It put a huge kink in my cooking. At least I can laugh about it now.

.

The recipe had interesting ingredients and Chad loved it. I would give this recipe 4 out of 5 stars.

Squash Casserole

It's raining outside, I am listening to Jack Johnson's, "Taylor" on my new Pandora app on my iPad, and my squash casserole is cooling on the counter. This will be my first recipe on my "Learning to Cook" blog.

.

Chad has been grilling ribs all morning so I figured I would use my squash, fresh out of the garden, to make squash casserole. I downloaded a new app on my iPad called Big Oven Lite; this is where I got my recipe. It makes 4 servings and they say you can use it as a main course but we are using it as a side dish. All you need are 4 yellow squash (sliced), 1 medium onion (chopped), salt and pepper, 1 tablespoon of margarine, 1 cup of cheddar cheese, 4oz of green chilis, and 10 saltine crackers (crushed), and viola!
.
First you saute your onions and squash in a non-stick pan with the butter, remove from heat and add your crushed saltine crackers, salt and pepper and green chilis. Then in a greased 1 1/2 quart casserole dish spread your ingredients and then top with cheese! The last step is to put it in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes depending on your oven. Yay!

.

The only thing I forgot to tell you was in between my sauteing and washing dishes, and putting it in the casserole dish I forgot the crackers! Well, I guess we will see how it turns out? We are having lunch with Chad's parents at their house to celebrate their birthdays. We're having ribs, squash casserole and homemade mashed potatoes. Thanks for reading. This was a very simple dish, and I made a very simple mistake. Hope you have a great day! I hope to try Broccoli Cheddar soup sometime this week that a friend recommended.