Egg in Hole

This recipe isn't mine. It goes by many names, but I'm going to call it "egg in hole" because I like that name best. I was hungry and wanted something that was quick and easy. I made this for dinner because I wanted to =D. This is my version of the tasty recipe...

Egg in Hole

One serving.

Ingredients

- 1 egg

- 1 slice of bread (I cut a slice from a cheesy loaf of bread. It gave it an extra delicious kick.)

- 1 slice of American cheese

- Salt

- Pepper

- Butter

Directions

1. Butter both sides of your bread. Cut out a hole in the middle of the bread (use a cookie cutter if you wish).

2. Place your bread on a frying pan on low heat. Crack an egg into the hole. Hence the name!

3. Let the egg cook. Then flip over the bread to let the other side cook. Sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides.

4. Flip the bread over again and tear the slice of cheese into smaller pieces. Place the cheese on top of the bread.

5. Let the cheese melt and sprinkle pepper on top.

Enjoy! Very simple and very delicious. You can even sprinkle bacon bits on top... something I want to try next time.

Easy Garlic Pasta with Sausage

I love pasta because it's so simple to make, yet so versatile. It's comfort food that I always will love. This dish is super easy (much simpler than yesterday's recipe) and delicious (and also fattening, but lets pretend it's okay).

Easy Garlic Pasta with Sausage


Ingredients

- Spaghetti pasta
- 2 cups of olive oil
- 2 whole pieces of garlic, minced
- Chopped parsely
- Chicken sausage (a much healthier alternative)
- Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Cook pasta according to box directions. Drain pasta when finished.
2. Heat the olive oil into a medium saucepan. Then add the minced garlic and let the garlic sizzle.
3. In a small frying pan, cook the sausage as desired (I fried my sausage using fat-free cooking spray).
4. Gently pour the pasta into the olive oil and garlic mixture. Stir enough that the garlic gets mixed throughout the pasta.
5. Add the parsely and continue stiring. Add a few shakes of parmesan cheese and stir.
6. Add the chicken sausage or serve pasta and place the sausage on top.

Enjoy!

Edit at 6:42 pm
I had leftovers from last night. Instead of reheating in the microwave, I decided to reheat through a frying pan. I made a slight change to the recipe that really enhances the flavor. I poured about a tablespoon of olive oil into the frying pan, cooked my sausage as I did before. Then I threw in the cold pasta and stirred the pasta with the sausage for it to warm up. After it warmed up, I added about 2 tablespoons of Zesty Italian Dressing and some feta cheese (crumbled). I mixed it and let the cheese soften a tad bit. It was even more incredible than last night. Yay for being a little creative with leftovers!

Chicken and Biscuits

This meal was cooked by my roommate and myself last week. We were chatting online while she was at work. I was hungry because I haven't eaten much all day. I started brainstorming ideas for dinner. Then, it hit me. We had to hurry up and cook our vegetables before they went bad. I told her how we should use my cream of chicken, our vegetables, chicken, and biscuits to create this dish. She loved the idea and we immediately cooked when she came home. This took a total of 2 hours to prep and cook (longest dish created thus far!).

This came out absolutely delicious. We penned this dish our "Clean Out the Vegetable Drawer Casserole." We will definitely make this again when we need to clean out the vegetable drawer. The wonderful thing about this dish is you could ultimately put any kind of meat (if at all) and any vegetables you would like in it. It is a very versatile dish.

I know it may not look that attractive, but it's a casserole. Looks can be deceiving. With this recipe, I'm listing everything we used and exactly how we made it, but feel free to use different veggies and meat.

Chicken and Biscuits

5-6 servings.

Ingredients

 Chicken

- 3 small/medium chicken breasts (you be the judge)

- Pam spray (oil or butter will work fine also)

- Pepper

- Salt

- Garlic salt

Sauce

- 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) of cream of mushroom  (we used Campbell's)

- 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) of cream of chicken (we used Campbell's)

- 3 garlic cloves

- 1 small onion, chopped

- 1/4 cup fat free milk

Vegetables

- Broccoli florets (cut into bite size pieces, you be the judge of how small you want them)

- 2 small Idaho potatoes (boil for 5 minutes, then have them cubed and peeled)

- 2 celery stalks, chopped

- 1 cup of asparagus, chopped

- 1 cup of green beans

- 1 cup of mushrooms, sliced (any kind you like will be good)

- Parsley (for garnishing)

Other Ingredients

- 1 can of Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits (5 count)

- 2 cups of bread crumbs, seasoned

- Parmesan cheese (cheddar or mozzarella would probably work better, but we didn't have any in stock)

Directions

1. Put your three pieces of chicken breasts on a cutting board. Pour a generous amount of garlic salt, pepper, and 2-3 dashes of salt on each side. Rub the quick seasoning on the chicken thoroughly on all sides. Spray a medium frying pan with pam and let it heat up. Add the chicken breast and fry until cooked. A healthier alternative is to grill the chicken. When the chicken is finished, let them cool. Then take them out and cut them into small bite sized cubes. Place in a bowl and set aside for later.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Put the the garlic cloves, chopped onions, a dash of garlic salt (yes, we love garlic), and milk into a blender. Blend until ingredients are perfectly minced.
3. In a mixing bowl, pour in the can of cream of chicken and the can of cream of mushroom. Then, add the minced ingredients. Mix thoroughly for about 5-7 minutes.
4. Add half of the chicken and mix. Slowly add the rest of the chicken and mix. Try your best to make sure the chicken is spread very evenly.
5. Slowly add the remainder of the vegetables. Continue mixing as you pour the vegetables into the mixture. Finish evenly mixing the ingredients. Again, you be the judge of how even the mixture is.
6. In a medium glass casserole dish (we used an 8x8 dish), dump the bread crumbs and spread it out, so that it makes an even bottom layer.
7. Gently pour the mixture and try to make it as even as possible.
8. Cook the casserole in the oven for 15 minutes.
9. Open the can of biscuits. We did not cut the biscuits into small pieces (I wanted to do this, but my roommate wanted whole biscuit pieces.). I highly recommend cutting the biscuits into small pieces, so the biscuit can thoroughly cook without burning. Place the biscuits on top in any way you desire.
10. Shake some parmesan cheese on top (as much or as little as you desire).
11. Put the casserole dish back into the oven for 15 more minutes. If you chose not to cut the biscuits into smaller pieces, cook the casserole for 20 minutes. Let it cool for 10 minutes or until the biscuits are no longer too hot to touch.

Serve and garnish with the parsely. Enjoy!

Here is a picture of our casserole before it was served:

Absolutely delicious.

Buffalo Chicken Quesadilla

I'm not a fan of spicy foods, but I love the flavor of buffalo. I decided to make a small quesadilla for dinner last night instead of a buffalo chicken sandwich. This was extremely easy to make and it turned out quite delicious. I also love ranch dressing; I'll eat with almost anything including fries (any potato product actually), chicken, sandwiches, and salads. I would also add it to whatever I can.


I wish I took a picture of the quesadilla's filling, but I wasn't thinking at the time. It would've been nice for you to see what it looked like inside. Oh well. The quesadilla only fit on half of the plate because it was that small. This would make the perfect snack =].

Buffalo Chicken Quesadilla
1 serving.

Ingredients

- 2 small flour tortillas
- Buffalo wing sauce (I used Frank's)
- Cooked sliced chicken breast (I cheated like in the previous post and used Perdue Carved Chicken Breast)
- Provolone cheese
- Ranch dressing

Directions

1. Place one tortilla in a small frying pan on low heat (you do not want to burn your quesadilla).
2. Take one slice of cheese and tear it into pieces. Organize the pieces in a way that it covers the tortilla, but leaves about a free edge around the tortilla of about a centimeter. The reason you want a small edge to be free is so the cheese doesn't melt into the frying pan making a sticky quesadilla.
3. Let the cheese melt a tiny bit. Add chicken breast flat on the tortilla (i.e. do not overlap chicken pieces because then the quesadilla would be lumpy).
4. Pour a bit or spread as much buffalo sauce as you please.
5. Optional: Add a little bit of ranch.
6. Place the other tortilla on top of the contents in the frying pan.
7. Flip the tortilla and let it cook for about 30 seconds.
8. Place on a plate and dip in ranch dressing.

Enjoy! This goes great with baked fries or salad.

Chicken Fried Rice

Being a college student, I'm always in a rush or too busy to have the patience to cook a time-consuming meal. So last week, my roommate and I ordered Chinese food (sesame chicken, yum!). We had a lot of extra rice. The next night, I decided that I wanted to eat fried rice. However, I was limited to certain ingredients because I didn't have too many vegetables in the fridge. Oh, and I also cheated. Cheated how? You'll see later. I just love how versatile fried rice is and there's no way one could fail at making fried rice.

Once again, I apologize for the poor quality of the picture. It was taken with my phone last week to show my boyfriend what I made for dinner, not for a blog. You can edit the measurements or add your own measurements (since this was eyeballed) for the ingredients.

Chicken Fried Rice
 3-4 servings.

Ingredients

- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 1 small onion, chopped
- Vegetable oil (substituting for a different oil is probably fine)
- Perdue Carved Chicken Breast (3/4 box, I was too lazy to thaw my chicken breast, so why not?)
- Leftover cold white rice
- Soy sauce
- Broccoli (and/or other vegetables)
- 2 eggs (we ran out of eggs so I used Egg Beaters)
- Pepper

Directions

1.  Pour a bit of vegetable oil into a medium frying pan. While you're waiting for the oil to heat up, beat 2 eggs into a small bowl. Pour the eggs into the frying pan once the oil heats up. Flip the egg and fry the opposite side once the first side is finished.
2. Take out the fried egg and put it on a cutting board. Slice the egg into smaller pieces. Theoretically, you could also cut up the egg with a wooden spoon or whichever utensil you are using to cook.
3. Add more vegetable oil in the empty frying pan. Add half of your minced garlic to the oil. Let the garlic and oil heat up.
4. Add the white rice to the oil and garlic mixture. Add a little bit of soy sauce and stir. Add half of the eggs and stir. Add more soy sauce as you continue to stir. Add the remainder of the eggs and a bit more soy sauce. Stir.
5. Let the fried rice heat up some more. In a small frying pan, add a little bit of oil (I used olive oil for this step). Then throw in the remainder of the garlic along with the onions. Let the oil, garlic, and onions simmer and heat up. Slice up the chicken breast so that they are bite size. Add the chicken breast and broccoli (and other vegetables, I only had access to broccoli at the time). Add a dash of pepper. Fry the chicken and broccoli as you please.
6. Pour the chicken and broccoli contents to the frying pan with the rice. Add a bit more soy sauce (as much as you please). Stir the fried rice to spread the ingredients. Cook the fried rice for as long as you please (I like letting my fried rice sit for a bit to make some of the edges crispy).

Enjoy! You can serve this as the main dish (as I did) or as a side dish. Add all of the ingredients you wish to add. I really wished I had access to Chinese sausage when I made this dish. It would've given the fried rice even more flavor. Yum.

Zesty Garlic Pepper Grilled Chicken

This was the first solo dinner I made in the apartment. Truthfully, this was really easy and it was through an experimental idea in my head.

The quality of the picture could've been better, but it was snapped with my phone because I didn't anticipate creating a blog following my cooking adventures. Unfortunately, I don't have exact measurements for each ingredient because much of this recipe was eyeballed.

Zesty Garlic Pepper Grilled Chicken
 One serving.


Ingredients

- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- Oregano
- Pepper
- Lemon pepper seasoning
- 1 lemon, squeezed
- 1 small chicken breast
- 1 small onion, minced
- Rosemary
- A pinch of salt
- Parsely, chopped
- A pinch of paprika
- 1 tsp. garlic salt


Directions

1. Squeeze the lemon into a bowl.
2. Add all of the other ingredients except for the lemon pepper seasoning.
3. Whisk together the ingredients. Add a pinch of lemon pepper seasoning and continue whisking.
4. Place chicken breast into mixture and let it soak on each side for 2 minutes.
5. Add a dash of lemon pepper seasoning on each side and rub chicken thoroughly.
6. Place in bag or container for at least 48 hours.
7. Grill the chicken and enjoy!

I must admit that I made the yellow rice from a box. It was delicious. The salad is romaine lettuce, feta cheese (crumbled), garlic croutons, and zesty italian dressing. The combination was wonderful. However, since this is grilled chicken, there are many ways to eat this. Be creative unlike me!

Simple Cravings

Hello there!

I started this blog as a way to document my culinary adventure. I am 20 years old and a junior in college. I was never exactly taught how to cook, but I was taught how to bake. However, one cannot live off of sweets, breads, and ice cream without gaining a ton of weight. I only know how to make "simple" things such as scrambled eggs, french toast, pasta with sauce from a jar, salads, and other low skilled related items.

As a junior, my college allows me to live in an apartment on campus. We (my apartment-mates and I) now have access to a kitchen! Thus, my "experimental" cooking adventures may now begin. I would love to learn how to make more complex recipes that I read on Food Gawker and other various places. I already created a few dishes, since school did begin in late August. Those posts will be put up shortly.