Zucchini Casserole

Zucchini Casserole

This recipe is courtesy of Amy Bergin, the inventor of the Couponizer coupon organizer!

Ritz Crackers prepared in the food processor are a wonderful buttery way to cover this casserole!

4 c. zucchini, sliced or chunked
1 egg
1 c. Cheddar cheese, grated
2/3 c. mayonnaise
1 onion, sliced

1 green pepper, sliced

1 cup carrots, shredded, or sliced

1/2 stick butter
crushed cracker crumbs (to cover casserole)

Place 4 cups zucchini in saucepan in cold water. Bring to boil, then drain well (don't cook). Mix all ingredients together except crackers. Pour into greased casserole dish, last cracker crumbs. Pour melted butter over top. Bake at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes.

Use coupons for: egg, cheese, mayonnaise, butter, cracker crumbs

Oven chicken packets

Quick and easy, these chicken packets are perfect for this recipe blog! I didn't have full-size boneless chicken breasts on hand, but I did have frozen chicken breast tenderloins. I just put 2-3 of the tenderloins in each packet, and it came out perfectly. How did it taste? Well, Hubs ate 3 packets. What does that tell you? :) The vegetables come out perfectly steamed and everything very tasty!

The recipe doesn't say how many potatoes, how many carrots, etc. I cooked 4 packets, so in parentheses I've put how many of each I used.

You'll need:

Heavy duty aluminum foil
Onion slices (I used 1 medium onion)
Sliced carrots (I used about 3 medium-sized carrots)
Sliced potatoes (I used 2 medium sized potatoes but 3 might have been better)
Yellow squash, sliced (optional, I didn't use squash and it came out fine)
Salt
Pepper
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast per packet.

Lay out one big square of foil for each person and chicken packet. Layer chicken, onion slices, carrot slices, potato slices, squash slices. Salt and pepper lightly. Fold the packets tightly or they will drip.

Cook for 1-1/2 hours or until done in a 300 degree oven. Yes, you read this right...300 degrees.

No need to use a pan, just lay these directly on the oven rack.

Glazed carrots

This came from a chef on the Food Network.

This chef didn't give enough details for the food challenged (ie: Me) in my opinion. I think that they know people like the cooking to be fast. Cooking shows are so popular, yet hardly anybody cooks! Maybe we just like to watch but don't like details! I don't know!

But the lady never said how many carrots go into this, so I had to rewind my TiVo, and visibly count the carrots. It looked like 5-6 medium to large sized carrots to me. She also put water in the pan, but didn't say how much. I really like to know how much water and how many carrots. Oh well, I'll give it a shot anyway, just wanted to let you know this has a lot of guesswork in it.

About 5 carrots - peel them then cut them into "coins" (so they are round)

Heat a bit of water and chicken stock together in a pan with 1 TBSP butter, until the butter has melted. (Looked like maybe 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup of the chicken stock to me)

Add to that 1 TBSP brown sugar (can be light or dark brown sugar), 1/2 tsp Cumin, and a BIG pinch of salt.

Put in the carrots, cover and steam for a fun minutes, then uncover.

Let the glaze reduce...which means to let the liquid evaporate.

Then she put in a pretty good squeeze from a lemon. If you don't have a lemon on hand, you could use the lemon that comes in the little plastic lemon bottles (you can find these in the grocery store in the produce section or the larger glass bottles on the regular grocery store shelves.)

Apparently the flavors from the Cumin, the brown sugar and the lemon all work together to make this more than just boring carrots. Let me know if you try it and what you think!