Buffalo Chicken Pizza

A while back I shared with you guys my Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe. This is one of my favorite dips, and when we have some left-over, Lee and I like to use the leftovers and make it into pizza! Here's how I make it:

Ingredients
1 pizza crust
leftover buffalo chicken dip
1 cup mozzarella cheese
Frank's Buffalo Sauce to drizzle
Ranch dressing to dip

Start by pre-heating your oven to whatever temperature your crust tells you to cook it on. My favorite pizza crust to use for homemade pizza is very similar to Imo's Pizza crust, and I buy it at Schnuck's.

If you don't have a Schnuck's in your area, use any type of pizza crust. It can be homemade, dough found in your biscuit section, or a pre-made crust. All will work! Just be sure to follow the baking instructions that come with your pizza crust.

Start by drizzling buffalo sauce on your crust.

Take your left over buffalo chicken dip and spread a thin layer all over your pizza crust. I like a thin layer of chicken because I use a thin pizza crust. You can pile yours on as thick as you want!

Cover your pizza w mozzarella cheese.

If you use homemade or canned pizza dough, bake at whatever temp your dough calls for until your dough is fully cooked, and cheese is melted. If you are like me and you use a pre-made crust, bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until your pizza crust is crispy at the bottom, and your cheese is melted up top.

Drizzle your pizza with extra buffalo sauce if you wish, and dip in ranch dressing!

Super Loaded Baked Potatoes

Some nights I come home after work and I already have dinner all planned out, but some nights I come home and have no idea what to cook. Usually when that happens, I ask Lee what sounds good. Last week I had some chicken cooking in the Crock Pot, but had no idea what I wanted to do with it. I asked Lee and he said I should shred it and make bbq chicken. Barbecue didn't really sound good to me. I was thinking that buffalo chicken casserole sounded good. Lee was trying to get over a sore throat and he didn't want anything spicy.  Since we couldn't agree, Lee suggested that we make loaded baked potatoes. That way we could each have what we wanted. He's so smart! On this night, we even used paper plates and kept dinner simple. Here's how we made them: 

Ingredients 
1 lb. shredded, cooked chicken
6-8 potatoes
Butter
Your choice of sauce: Lee used bbq, I used Frank's Buffalo Sauce & ranch
Shredded cheese, we used colby-jack
Bacon bits, veggies, or any other topping that sounds good


To start, I used Mix and Match Mama's Perfect Chicken recipe. I cooked my chicken in chicken broth. Once the chicken is cooked, shred it with a fork. This night, I cooked a full pound of chicken, but I only shredded enough chicken for our 2 potatoes. We ate the rest of the chicken as left overs on salads and quesadillas later in the week. If you are cooking for a larger family, this recipe makes enough chicken to load up 6-8 potatoes.

Next, we stabbed our potatoes with a fork and cooked them in the microwave. Our microwave has a Potato button, but we flip them over about half-way through cooking.

Once your potatoes are soft, put them on a plate and cut them in half. Butter your potato, and add your chicken. Then add your sauce, cheese, and any other ingredients that sound good to you.

I made a buffalo chicken bacon ranch potato, so I used butter, chicken, buffalo sauce, bacon bits & shredded cheese. Then I microwaved my potato for about 15 seconds to melt the cheese, and topped with ranch.

Lee had a bbq chicken potato, so he used butter, chicken, bbq sauce, and shredded cheese.

Enjoy! You can personalize this anyway you want. Some other potato ideas we have tried in the past: Mexican potato with chicken, queso, and salsa. Regular loaded potato with butter, bacon, cheese, sour cream, & green onions. Instead of cooking crock pot chicken, you can even use left-over ham, chicken, sausage, steak, etc, and use this as a way to get rid of your left-over meat or veggies, The options are endless!

Breakfast Braid

For this post, I have to start by giving credit where the credit is due, and that is to my S-Mom, Sheryl! She taught me how to make this one, and boy do I love it! This is one of her fav breakfast dishes to make, especially when her and my dad have the whole family over for the weekend.  Its so yummy, and a pretty quick to whip up. At our house, we love breakfast for dinner, and this was a great way to used up some of our our left-over ham.

The last time Sheryl made this for our family, she doubled the recipe, she used ground breakfast sausage. I am using ham simply because I need to get rid of our leftovers, but its great with sausage, and I'm sure it would be good with bacon (turkey bacon even if you're being healthy), or even meat-less. This is a simple, quick recipe and is great for breakfast, brunch, or dinner!

Here's how I made it:

Shopping List 

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)

Cooked, chopped meat (I used about two thick slices of ham, but you could use sausage, ground turkey, bacon, tofu or omit the meat and use a few more eggs instead )

3/4 chopped vegetables of your choice. I used onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms, but I'm sure spinach, or any other veggies would be good too! I didn't actually measure my veggies, this is just an estimate. You could increase or decrease the amount depending on what you like.

5 eggs, whisked

1/2 block cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup shredded cheese

1 can crescent roll dough

Cooking Spray

cook your meat and veggies in the skillet before adding them to the egg. 

To start: pour enough olive oil to lightly coat your skillet. Let it heat up, and once it's warm, toss in your vegetables and meat. Cook until vegetables are soft. Once your veggies are soft, add in your scrambled eggs. When I scrambled mine, I added about a tablespoon of milk to help make them fluffy, but this is optional! Stir to combine the eggs and veggies.

Be sure to scramble those eggs!

While your eggs are cooking, spray a cookie sheet (I love to use my air-bake sheet), and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Lay your crescent rolls out with the long sides touching and the pointy sides facing out. Press together the long sides together. 

By this time, your eggs should be cooked. Stir in your 1/2 block of cream cheese and mix in with the eggs and veggies. 

Dump the eggs and cream cheese into the same skillet as the meat and veggies. 

This is what my egg, veggie, ham, and cream cheese mixture looked like. 

Once the cream cheese is mixed in, scoop the egg mixture onto to middle of your crescent roll line. Fold the pointy edges of crescent roll over the top. 

Here's what my braid looked like when I first put in my egg and meat mixture. 

Once you fold over your crescent roll corners, your braid should look something like this. 

Place in the oven and bake the crescent roll for about 10 minutes, or until the top of the roll is lightly golden brown.

Here is my golden brown baked crescent braid.

Once the crescent roll is golden brown, take it out of oven and cover the top with your shredded cheese. Place the braid back in the oven for 2-3 minutes, or until your cheese is melted. Remove from the oven and serve!

And of course no recipe is complete until you smother it in cheese!

If you read my post, leave a comment. I love reading feedback from my blog posts!

Shrimp, Steak, & Bacon Quesadillas

Everyone has those nights where you really just don't feel like cooking, or you simply don't have time. Tonight, for me, was one of those nights. I have an assignment due for my online class on Saturday, and reading to do for my night class tomorrow. Thursday and Friday night I'm going to be busy making cupcakes for my nephew's birthday party this Saturday, so tonight I really need to get my assignment and reading done for my classes (Check out my page later this week to see my cookies n cream cupcakes). Since my night is already pretty busy, I decided to make a quick dinner: quesadillas.

I love making quesadillas because there are no rules! You can put almost anything in them and they'll be good. Last night I grilled steaks for Lee and I, but I couldn't finish all of mine. I also had a few shrimp thawed out that didn't get used from our Yummy Shrimp Tacos last week, and some corn left over from our steak dinner. These three things, along with some chopped bacon, onions, and mushrooms got put into our quesadillas. Here's how I made them:

Ingredients:
2 tortilla shells
1/3 cup shredded cheese (I like Colby-Jack)
*left-over meat and veggies (I used steak and peppers, but chicken or shrimp would both good too!)
*1 chopped mushroom
*1/3 chopped onion
*2 slices of bacon, cooked and chopped
*These ingredients are all optional! Use what you have in your fridge, and personalize this to what your family likes.

Each recipe makes 2 servings.

I had some bacon thawed out that needed to be cooked up, so I took two pieces of bacon, cut them in half, and cooked them in the skillet. Once they were cooked, I removed the bacon and set on a paper towel, and left my grease in the skillet. Once the bacon cools, cut it into smaller pieces and set aside with the other chopped meats. If you're wanting to eat healthier, skip the bacon all together and just heat some extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) in your skillet.

Next, I chopped my onion and mushroom and threw them in the skillet with the bacon grease. Once the onions were nearly soft, I threw in my chopped steak, de-tailed shrimp, left-over corn, and chopped bacon pieces. I stirred all of them up over medium heat until they were all warm.

Then I plugged in our quesadilla maker and put a tortilla on the bottom. (If you don't have a quesadilla maker, you can use a Panini press, or simply a skillet on the stove.) Fill the tortilla with your heated food mixture and throw some cheese on top. I like lots of cheese, so I used about 1/3 cup, but you can go more or less depending on your preference. Slap another tortilla on top, close the quesadilla maker, and let it cook. Once the tortilla shell is browned, take it out a cut into triangles using a pizza cutter or kitchen scissors.

I like to serve my quesadillas with queso and salsa. I love this meal because dinner can be ready in about 20 minutes!

If you read my post, leave a comment. I love reading feedback from my blog posts!