Grilled Ginger Ale Chicken

Ooh, this is good chicken!  I came up with the recipe on the fly based on ingredients I had on hand and was rather impressed with myself because it turned out so nicely.  The real key here is to a) not cook the chicken at too high a temperature so it cooks evenly and doesn't dry out, and b) use a really good, very gingery ginger ale.  I used Reed's Ginger Ale, it is very potent and delicious if you are fond of ginger.  Seagram's or Canada Dry will probably result in something tasty, but it also probably will not taste like ginger.  You are warned.
 
Grilled Ginger Ale Chicken
  
1 1/2 lbs chicken breasts (probably 3)

6 oz good quality ginger ale

4 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt

 

Clean chicken breasts and each cut in half horizontally to make thinner pieces.  You can cut bigger breasts into more than 2 pieces.  Consider how many people you are wanting to serve and adjust accordingly.

 

Place the chicken pieces a in doubled gallon Ziploc bag.  Add marinade ingredients, seal bag, and squish to coat.  Place bag in a bowl and refrigerate at least 4 hours.  

  

When you're ready to cook the chicken, preheat your grill to medium low (or whatever temperature you know from experience will cook the chicken slowly enough so it can be cooked through and have grill marks without entering the Earth's atmosphere), do whatever pre-grilling tasks are required for your specific grill, and oil the grate.  Grill the chicken for 10 minutes without disturbing it, flip it over, and grill 10 minutes on the other side, or until cooked through.

  

Serve immediately.

  

Yield: However many pieces of chicken you end up with, probably 6.

SRC: Summer Spaghetti

For this month's Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned the blog Dancing Veggies.  Is that a cute name or what?  Dancing Veggies is written by a mom named Amanda who is a vegetarian and enjoys looking for and thinking up recipes that are delicious and not too hard on the wallet.

This was one of those months where I made my SRC recipe really quickly, within a couple days of receiving the assignment.  There were lots of tasty looking options on the blog, and I actually made the delicious Peach Dutch Baby, too, but decided I would share Summer Spaghetti because we loved it so much.  This is a very flavorful dish, but it's not super saucy.  It isn't spaghetti with marinara sauce, it's more like spaghetti in chopped up tomato heaven.  I used a combination of smallish on the vine tomatoes and yellow cherry tomatoes.

Thanks for the recipe, Amanda, my husband and I were crazy about it!

Quick Note:  The original recipe called for 1/4 C minced fresh basil.  The store didn't have any, so I purchased fresh oregano.  I used it and thought it was delicious, but will probably use dried in the future unless I happen to be growing some.  We didn't notice a big flavor difference between fresh and dried of this particular herb, and that little bundle of oregano cost like $3.  Fresh basil is a different story, though, and would definitely be good in this!

Also, to reheat the leftovers, I put the pasta in a large nonstick skillet with a little chicken broth (you could use veggie broth) and heated it over low until the pasta was tender again.  It was almost as good as the first night, which definitely would not have been the case had I heated it in the microwave!  We would have been eating a giant clump of noodles that way.

Summer Spaghetti

3 Tbsp butter

1/2 vidalia onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 1/2 lbs tomatoes, stems removed and chopped coarsely

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp dried oregano or 1/4 C minced fresh basil

12 oz angel hair pasta, cooked until just before it reaches al dente

salt to taste

Melt butter in large skillet over medium-low heat.  Add onion and saute until completely softened, about 15 minutes.  It's okay if the onions turn a little brown, but that's not the goal.  Add the garlic and saute for another couple of minutes.  Add tomatoes, red pepper flakes, oregano (add later if you use fresh basil), and salt to taste.  Turn to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes.  You want the sauce to be at a gentle simmer.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil while the tomatoes simmer.  Add angel hair and cook until it's a little firmer than you want, then drain and add to the skillet with the sauce.  Cook and stir for a couple of minutes, until pasta is completely coated in sauce and tender.   Add the fresh basil if you're using it, and serve.

An InLinkz Link-up

Creamsicle Fruit Dip

This is my tweaked version of The Best Fruit Dip Ever from Iowa Girl Eats.  It's really good and I've made it twice now.  Creamy, a little tangy, nice orange flavor.  It's kind of like dipping your fruit into cheesecake!  I served it with mango, apple slices, raspberries, and grapes, and they were all really good.  My husband and I both agree that this fruit dip doesn't replace Sour Cream Fruit Dip as our favorite (he even suggested adding cinnamon to this one), but it's definitely yummy and a nice alternative.

 

 

Creamsicle Fruit Dip

 

4 oz cream cheese, softened
5 oz container plain greek yogurt

7 oz jar marshmallow fluff

3+ Tbsp frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
milk (optional)

 

Place first 3 ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat with paddle until smooth.  Mix in orange juice concentrate.  The mixture will be quite thick, so add either more orange juice concentrate (which is what I do since we love orange flavor), milk (if you don't want it too orangey), or a combination of the two until it has about the consistency of ranch dressing.  It will firm up some in the refrigerator.

Yield:  About 12 servings

S'more Treat Bars

I found this recipe on the Macaroni and Cheesecake blog while looking for a s'more bar recipe, and made them immediately.  I did make a few small changes (mini chocolate chips and more marshmallows), but the gist is definitely the same.  These bars are a great choice if you're looking for a dessert that is really easy to make and love both Rice Krispie treats and s'mores, like we do!  About half of the bars went to our neighbor as a thanks for helping us move our new couch, but my husband and I polished the rest of the pan off over about 3 days.  Yum!

S'more Treat Bars

12 oz box Golden Grahams cereal

5 Tbsp butter

16 oz bag mini marshmallows, divided

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/4 C mini chocolate chips

Place the mini chocolate chips in the freezer a few hours before you make this recipe.

Grease a 9 by 13 inch baking dish and set aside.

Place butter and all but 3 cups of the mini marshmallows in a large pot and melt over medium-high heat, stirring until fully melted.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.  Stir in cereal until evenly coated, then add the additional 2 C marshmallows and 1 C of the frozen chocolate chips.  Stir very quickly and just enough to evenly distribute the additions, you don't want them to melt too much.  

Spoon mixture into prepared baking dish.  Grease your hands (nonstick spray works great for this) and evenly press the cereal mixture into the prepared baking dish.  Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 C mini chocolate chips on top of the bars and press down again so they'll stick.

Let bars cool completely, then cut into squares.  These keep well covered tightly and stored at room temperature for a few days.

Brown Rice, Tomato, & Basil Salad

This is my somewhat loose interpretation of an Ina Garten recipe.  I used tomatoes from my own garden and just used as many as were currently ripe, and I used less of a different type of vinegar.  Regardless, the salad was really good!  My husband loved it and ate most of it.  Definitely a repeat around here!

Brown Rice, Tomato, & Basil Salad

1 C brown rice, cooked and lightly salted and then partly cooled
tomatoes, chopped into large chunks, however many you want (I used 2 large ones)
about 1/2 C roughly chopped basil
3 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar (you can use less or more, according to your tastes)
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

In a medium bowl, stir together all the ingredients.  Serve slightly warm, room temperature, or cold. 

Grilled Corn & Tomato Salad

I have made this salad 4 times in the past month or so.  We love grilled corn on the cob, and so far every time I have grilled this summer, I've grilled corn for us to eat immediately as well as corn to use the next day in this salad.  It's nothing fancy, but very good!

 

Grilled Corn & Tomato Salad

 
2 cobs fresh corn

olive oil

salt and pepper

10 oz (by weight) cherry tomatoes, halved

3 Tbsp sliced green onions

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, plus more to taste

1 tsp dried basil

1/8 tsp garlic powder

salt to taste

Remove the corn husks and corn silk from cobs.  Rinse corn and pat dry.  Brush all over with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Grill on an outdoor grill over medium heat, rotating every couple of minutes and with grill cover shut in between, until there are grill marks all over the corn and it's cooked through, about 15 minutes.  Remove corn from grill and let it sit until cool enough to handle, or wrap it in foil and refrigerate over night.

When you're ready to make the salad, cut the corn off the cobs with a serrated knife.  Place in a medium mixing bowl with the halved tomatoes and green onions, then add the rest of the ingredients.  Toss until everything's well mixed, taste, and add a little more vinegar, salt, garlic powder, or basil if you think it's needed.

I always serve half of the salad immediately, then cover the rest and serve it the next day.  It's good both ways!

Tickled Pink Lemonade Cookies

This is another cookie recipe from Joanne Fluke's murder mystery series and comes from the book The Red Velvet Cupcake Murder.  Winter is finally, slowly, leaving Interior Alaska, and that's always very exciting.  Before I moved here, I never thought a bare patch of ground would be such cause for celebration!  It's hardly summer yet, but when everything started melting, I immediately thought of this happy, summery cookie from a book I read in the dead of winter. 

It was a good choice, too, because these cookies are quite good!  They have a definite lemonade flavor without making your mouth pucker up, and the pink is rather charming.  The cookies themselves are thick and cake-like, which is a nice change.  They're good on their own, but the frosting definitely adds to the appeal.  My only change for next time will be to make a double batch because I only got 24 cookies.  I gave half of them to a neighbor (my entire excuse for making cookies to start with) and the two of us plowed through the remaining cookies in short order.
 

The only changes I made to Joanne's recipe were to use less red food coloring and more milk and pink lemonade concentrate and frosting.  More milk because the frosting was very stiff, and more concentrate so the lemonade flavor would be apparent.
 

 

Tickled Pink Lemonade Cookies

 

for cookies:

1 stick butter, softened

1/2 C sugar
 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 egg
1/3 C frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed

red food coloring, as desired

1 3/4 C flour

 

for frosting:

2 Tbsp butter, softened

2 C powdered sugar

5 tsp milk

4 tsp frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed

red food coloring, as desired
 

For Cookies:
 

Preheat oven to 350 and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
 

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.  Mix in baking powder, and baking soda, then egg and lemonade concentrate.  Beat until thoroughly mixed.  It will look curdled, don't worry!  Stir in red food coloring to make the dough as pink as you'd like.  Stir in flour until well combined, but don't over mix.

At this point, you can refrigerate the dough for half an hour if it's too soft to work with, but mine was fine.  Use two spoons or a small cookie scoop to scoop small walnut sized blobs of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets, 2 inches apart.  Bake until the cookies are set and just barely beginning to turn very light golden in some spots, about 10-12 minutes.  Let cookies cool completely, then frost with the frosting.

For Frosting:
 
Place butter and powdered sugar into a mixing bowl and beat until the butter is dispersed, it will look very dry.  Add milk and lemonade concentrate, and beat until smooth.  You can add more milk or more powdered sugar if it's too thick or too wet.  You want a smooth, spreadable consistency.  When you've reached that, stir in red food coloring so it's as pink as you'd like.  I didn't use any for the frosting because the pink lemonade concentrate made it ever so slightly pink on its own.

Frost cookies with frosting, let them sit out until the frosting is dry to the touch, then store them in an airtight container.  I can say they stay good for 3 days, maybe longer, but that's as long as they lasted here!

Yield:  About 24 cookies