Fall Recipes: Scottish Scones & White Chicken Chili

With fall in the air and cool afternoon breezes, it’s time for some fall food! Wait…..  I live in Florida!!!! It is never cool here, but it was a nice thought even if it was just for a moment!

There is something to be said for fall food, even if it is 80 degrees outside 11 months out of the year. Football and chili just seem to go hand in hand, and there’s always room for desert!

On that note, here are two of my favorite fall foods.

Scottish Scones & White Chicken Chili.

The scones are out of this world, and satisfy any sweet tooth. The White Chicken Chili is exploding with flavor and warms you from the inside out.  I prefer to use all Organic ingredients, but it’s not required.

The recipe for these amazing Scottish Scones comes from my friend Darby, who’s an incredible baker!

Scottish Scones 

Ingredients: 

2- 1/2 c. Flour (All Purpose)

5-1/3 T. Butter, cold & cut into chunks

4 tsp. Baking Powder

2 T. Sugar plus

1/4 tsp. Salt

2 Eggs, beaten

3/4 c. Heaving Cream

1/2 – 1 c. Chocolate Chips

For The Topping:

4 T. Sugar

Heavy Cream

(***You can sub out the chocolate chips for grated orange rind, and dried cranberries***)

Recipe:

Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Cut in butter, until crumbly. Add eggs, cream & chocolate chips.

Mix gently with fork, until mostly mixed.

Spoon mixture into a scone pan (sections) or an iron skillet with the “triangles” that has been sprayed with non stick spray. (I use coconut spray from Trader Joe’s)

With a basting brush, baste tops of scones with cream (lightly) then sprinkle with sugar.

Bake @ 400 degrees for 12-14 min or until golden on top.

Let cool for about 10 min before removing from the pan.

Serve warm. YUMMO!

Now that we have dessert taken care of, let’s move on to dinner! Doesn’t everyone have dessert BEFORE dinner? This is my personal recipe that I have tweaked many times. Oh and I tend to be one of those “scratch cooks” so bear with me!

White Chicken Chili

Ingredients:

4 Organic Chicken Breasts

1 small Onion, chopped

1/4 c. Flour

3-4 cloves Garlic, minced

4-5 T. Butter

1/2 c Milk

4 cans White Navy Beans, drained

2 cans Green Chilies

12 c. Chicken Broth (3 cartons)

* Ground Cumin, to taste

* Chili Powder, to taste

* Paprika, to taste

* Sea Salt, to taste

* Pepper, to taste

1/2 – 1 c. Half & Half

Monterey Jack Cheese, shredded

Fresh Cilantro, chopped

Recipe: 

Boil chicken breasts about 20-30 min or until tender and no longer pink on the inside. Drain and shred or chop chicken. Set aside.

Meanwhile, in a  large stock pot, saute on low/med heat chopped onion & minced garlic in butter. As the butter is melting, add flour and stir well. As you are stirring slowly, pour in milk. Keep stirring until mixture is thick & creamy. Add Navy Beans, green chilies and chicken broth. Add shredded chicken and **spices. Add half & half & cook over low/medium heat, stirring occasionally.

** This is where the “to taste” comes into play. I have followed different recipes for White Chicken Chili, and they almost always come out bland UNTIL I started just adding more spices to taste. To add the spices to your heart’s content. I use a lot of cumin, with a tad less chili powder. 

Serve hot and top with Monterey Jack Cheese and cilantro.

Enjoy!

(Homemade corn bread pairs nicely with the White Chicken Chili)

Organic Summer Bean Salad

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With summer quickly approaching, I have been scrambling for quick side dishes to pair with our meals. There’s nothing worse than firing up the oven, and heating up the entire house when it’s 90 degrees outside. My remedy for this is to serve chilled and or marinated salads. It’s so easy to throw these types of side dishes together at the last minute, and for a crazy busy mom, who’s wearing a hundred plus hats so to speak, this is the winning ticket!

One of my VERY favorite chilled salads to make is Organic Summer Bean Salad aka Garbanzo Bean Salad.  Not only is it super easy, but it’s super fast to make and always a crowd pleaser that can potentially feed many. To speed things up, I use my food processor to quickly chop my peppers. If you’re in the market to buy one, I can positively 100% tell you that the Breville Sous Chef  Food Processor is the BEST hands down. I’ve used several other brands over the years, and none can even compare to this beauty. Once you go the Breville Sous, you don’t go back! Okay back to the salad….. Below is my fabulous crowd pleasing recipe for this must try salad.

Organic Summer Bean Salad

2 cans Organic Garbanzo Beans, drained

1 Organic Red Bell Pepper

1 Bunch Organic Onion

1-2 Garlic Pods

Fresh Organic Cilantro

2/4 c. Olive Oil

1 c. Braggs Vinegar

1-2 T. Raw Unfiltered Honey

2 T. Water

Sea Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Drain the beans in a colander. Meanwhile, remove the middle/seeds from the red pepper, and cut into 3 chunks. Throw into the food processor with the “s” blade and pulse a few times or until the peppers are medium/fine chopped. *I like mine chopped in medium chunks* Now, chop the green onion including the green stems. In a medium bowl, dump the drained beans, add the peppers & onion. Next press 1-2 garlic pods or mince. Then chop the fresh cilantro and add to the bowl. In a separate bowl mix the olive oil, vinegar, honey, water, sea salt & pepper. Whisk til throughly mixed. Pour over the bean salad mixture and toss well. Let stand in refrigerator for 1 plus hours, and serve!

*Note: This chilled salad is better when it’s been marinating for several hours or even overnight.

If your feeling crazy bold (Hot Chic Style) as I normally am, you can add other spices to the mix for a little kick. I like Chipotle Seasoning, Smoked Paprika and even Fajita Seasoning. I often do this to change it up. BE CREATIVE and experiment!

Bon Appetit!

Raw Nourished and Spicy

Mundane….. that sums up how my weekly meals were becoming. Very active busy family of five +  not a whole lot of time = mundane meals. Notice I said our meals “were” becoming mundane.  After I pulled myself out of this comatose state I was in, I discovered a whole new world thanks to Nourished Kitchen, Raw Food Rehab, and Raw Food Recipes. I am not necessarily a vegan, or a raw foodie as I would say, BUT I do believe that adding these elements into our diet is extremely important. I am not a big meat or chicken lover but I do try to prepare dishes with them often. So finding out about these websites opened up our options drastically. Not to mention Facebook and Pinterest made this quest for new options a piece of cake! Nourished Kitchen  is more than just a recipe blog and food site. I discovered Moroccan Lemons  on their site along with many other options to spice up our weekly meals. Spicing things up is what we needed! Being I love all things books (kind of nerd in that respect) they’ve recently launched a new cookbook! It’s called “The Nourished Kitchen: Farm- to-Table Recipes for the Traditional Foods Lifestyle”.  Do yourself a favor and check them out when your surfing Facebook. You can find them there as well. They offer a wealth of information along with fabulous pictures!

Onto the “Raw” part….. Time to get down and dirty…. Literally. To change things up, and eat more fresh veggies, adding raw was the ticket. I decided to surprise my family, *insert evil laugh*,  one night and make Raw Pad Thai.

Let me back up a minute. My first brush with raw was at a little cafe in Winter Park, Florida called Cafe 118 Degrees.  Hot Hubs (aka Steve) and I decided to live on the edge (really just me but I talked him into it)  for date night one evening. Being it was an all raw restaurant, I convinced Hot Hubs that it was an adventure we’d never forget! Boy was I ever right! Little did we know how our lives would change after this crazy night out. First up, Raw Crackers and Hummus. Don’t remember much about this other than it was delish. Next up, Pad Thai. This sounded like something we could handle. Not too freaky if you know what I mean. To say the dish was exceptional would not do it justice. My taste buds were having a party and even more shocking was that Hot Hubs was actually enjoying it as well. To finish off our evening, we opted for a raw cashew ice cream. There were many choices, but cashew seemed safe. This clinched our evening. The server stopped by several times to check on us, I think she thought we might bolt, and in the end we had her pulling up a chair to chat about all things raw.

Fast forward a few weeks to my attempt to turn my boys onto this new concept of a raw dinner. Never mind that I didnt’ exactly tell them it was raw, but their facial expressions said it all when they realized there was not a trace of chicken and the “noodles” were not cooked. Welcome to all raw baby and the rest is history! Well, not really, as this was just the beginning. Let me introduce you to two of my favorite raw food sites:

Raw Food Rehab

and

 Raw Food Recipes

Now we’re cookin’….. or NOT. Both of these sites were a gem for me, as I had felt like I struck gold when I stumbled upon them. Sure I had accomplished making Raw Pad Thai, but I didn’t want to stop there. Both Raw Food Rehab and Raw Food Recipes were a well-spring of information and being they are both on Facebook, it once again made my life 100 times easier. I like the idea of one stop shop social networking, and this made that possible. Click and go! I also love pictures so I can see what I’m attempting to make, and once again these two sites delivered! You know when you absolutely love something, it makes you want to share it with the entire world? Well, I’m very much like that and when I love something, I can’t resist shouting it from the rooftops, and directing people to the proper sites.

It has been almost a year to the date that I decided to spice things up and today we are still going strong. I think most families are super busy, and either honestly  don’t have the time to research fresh and new ideas, or simply get stuck in the same mundane comatose state I found myself in. Adding one meal per week of simply raw into our routine was easy and not as hard as you think thanks to these wonderful sites I stumbled upon. As for myself, I routinely eat a raw breakfast or lunch each day,  and again it’s not hard, it just takes the effort of thinking out of the box! Everyone needs a little SPICE in their life! So what are you waiting for? Spice things up!

Summer Kale Salad Recipe

Ahhhh…….. Fresh Kale Salad. Nothing quite like it and it’s so versatile! When most people think of Kale, they associate it with the pretty green “leaf” on their plate when they’ve ordered an entree from a restaurant. That’s now in the past. Kale has come a long way from just entree decor, and is now seen on many plates as salad, or Kale Chips. Here’s the scoop on Kale: It’s loaded full of antioxidants, vitamins, and very high in vitamin K, vitamin C, and rich in Beta Carotene as well as Calcium. Kale has been linked to helping inflammation and has cancer preventive benefits, as well as provide cardiovascular support and has a high level of detox-activating isothiocyanates. Sound good? Let’s get down to the best part…. The Salad!

3-4 Bunches of Organic Kale OR 1 Bag Organic Chopped Kale

1-2 Fresh Organic Lemons

 Organic Olive Oil

Organic Red, Yellow, Orange Peppers, chopped

Organic Onion, chopped

Greek or Black Olives, chopped

Sunflower Seeds

Garlic

Take your chopped Kale ***Stems removed*** and place in a large bowl. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over the Kale and “massage” the leaves for about 5-6 min or until dark green in color and “wilted”. Drizzle with a very small amount of olive oil, and I mean VERY small amount as you don’t want your salad to be soupy. Add chopped peppers, onions, olives, sunflower seeds & garlic. Mix well and refrigerate for several hours. It is BEST when it has sat overnight, but chill at least a few hours before serving. 

Voila! Bon Appetit!