My Momma's Chicken Salad - A True Southern Wedding Shower Favorite!

It seems that we never really make things as good as our moms.  For years I've tried my best to perfect my chicken salad recipe.  I've added different spices and added nuts, but never quite perfected my chicken salad until yesterday.  Being last minute on almost everything I do in and out of the kitchen, yesterday was no exception.

My Momma's Chicken Salad - Click here for the recipe

In the South, we love our wedding showers.  It is traditional to have certain appetizers to help celebrate the bride to be with.  Yesterday we got to honor one of my oldest friends sweet daughter Leslie Hodges on her upcoming wedding with a bridal shower.  She will be a beautiful bride here very soon and her aunt Camila, her family, along with her mom's and dad's friends came together to shower her with gifts for her home with her new husband.

I will always remember Leslie and her sweet sisters in their pajamas at our house after Friday night football games.  All our young friends would gather at our little house in town after home football games to visit and the kids would play and then pass out all over our girls bedrooms.  We've been friends with her parents for a lifetime and love them and their families very much.  Scott made them a part of our lives many years ago on our very first date and their 'Indian Rock' community connection from church, to classmates, to dear friends goes back a long way.  To sum it all up, it's very special to celebrate sweet friends kids whenever you can.

Leslie and her sweet mom Cindy

Leslie and her sisters Lauren, Lacy and mom Cindy

Hostesses for Leslie's wedding shower full of aunts and friends

Leslie with her mom and dear grandmothers

Leslie with friend Anna Jo and daughter Kayla

Leslie and Patti, her sweet stepmother

Cindy and sister Camila

Leslie and best friend Cassie

It is tradition to serve dainty foods and not a full meal at a southern wedding shower.  In our little town a favorite party food is always petite fours that are little white cakes with a delicate white icing on top.  You simply can never get enough of these and everyone loves them.  Along with those little cakes, you will always find these days beautifully decorated sugar cookies in beautiful bridal designs, fruits and cheese trays, seasoned and spiced nuts, sausage balls and little pinwheel sandwiches that in our part of the south are made with tortillas.  My job was to make chicken salad to serve with crackers for Leslie's shower and instead of store bought, I chose to make it from scratch last minute.

Stunning cookies

Loved these sweet and modern napkins

A pretty southern wedding shower table full of finger foods

Literally as I drove to the store, I called my mom and asked her to snap a picture of her handwritten recipe and send it to me.  You'll see her recipe note below.

My mom's beautiful handwriting.  You can tell it's a teacher's penmanship!

I know one day I hope very far in the future, that these recipe notes will all be handed down to me.  On this day, I was thankful for the technology of telephone photography and the ease in which I was able to get a copy of the recipe instead of having it recited to me last minute.

My Momma's Chicken Salad in my pretty crystal bowl with matching platter.
Click here for the recipe for My Momma's Chicken Salad recipe.

Using store bought rotisserie chicken, I deboned the meat and cut it all into small bite sized portions.  Fresh celery, green grapes, long, green onions (green tops as well), and fresh squeezed lemon were added to make My Momma's Chicken Salad the best I've honestly ever had.  The things that I believe took this chicken salad over the top were the pineapple and sour cream along with the Real Mayonnaise that we mixed in with plenty of salt and black pepper.  If you are not a fan of black pepper, you can hold off on it, but I love, love it in abundance and especially with this chicken salad.

My youngest daughter Audrey was a huge help slicing the grapes with my newest, favorite cherry tomato slicer and helped me mix it all together while making sure I was following my mom's recipe exactly as it was written.

Audrey and I doubled the recipe using two rotisserie chickens so that we could have some for lunch the next day and for the week ahead.  My Momma's Chicken Salad was seriously a huge hit at the shower and from the 8 cups I took, literally only 1 cup was left.  I promised to place the recipe on my blog and recipe site today, so that we could share with all those who asked for it.

As always a special thanks to my sweet mom who inspires me more than she knows with her cooking, her tried and true recipes and love for us all.  She is one of my biggest cheerleaders ever and along with so many of her and my Granny's recipes, her chicken salad will forever be on my shower menus from now on.

So whether it's a wedding shower, birthday party, or you just want a wonderful chicken salad to serve with crackers or between to pieces of bread as a sandwich, try My Momma's Chicken Salad  recipe.  In a pinch, store bought can be a great substitute, however from start to finish Audrey and I had My Momma's Chicken Salad Recipe recipe done in under 30 minutes and in a pretty crystal bowl ready to go.  Sometimes last minute recipes are the best recipes!

Enjoy and let me know if you like it please.

Alise 
The Ranch Kitchen    

The Ranch Kitchen's Dilly Dip

As spring turn into summer, our garden is starting to overflow with squash and all our other vegetables.  One thing I always insist on making sure we have plenty of is crookneck squash and zucchini as we love it!

Last summer to help be a little healthier, I began to cut the fresh squash and serve it with Hidden Valley Ranch Dip as an appetizer before our meal each night.

Click here for the recipe for The Ranch Kitchen's Dilly Dip



This year with the fresh dill from my garden I've starting making my own The Ranch Kitchen's Dilly Dip that my husband and I have become pretty addicted too.  We enjoy it nightly now this past week and I can't wait to make it for my health conscious older daughters when they come in for Memorial Day weekend!

Click here for the recipe for The Ranch Kitchen's Dilly Dip

This recipe literally takes under five minutes to make and you will love it just as much, if not even better than traditional ranch dips or salad dressings.

The trick is to this dip is to grow your own fresh dill.  Dill is super, simple to grow and will spread in huge clumps pretty rapidly.  However, I don't think it taking over our herb garden will be much of a problem with Scott and I making this Dilly Dip all the time.

I used a new seasoning in this dip by Tone's called Six Pepper Seasoning Blend as you can see in the picture below. Click on the link in the name in the last sentence and you can buy it off Amazon. It's fantastic in this dip and even better on top of homemade pizza from our grill.

So give it a try and let me know how you like it.  It would be even healthier with a good Greek Yogurt or light sour cream used instead.

Try this dip as a side for baked fish like salmon, cod or catfish too!

Enjoy!

Remember, no one said cooking had to be hard!

Alise - The Ranch Kitchen   

The Ranch Kitchen's Sure Champ's Southwestern Taco Bowl

During December my daughter Bethany and I tried a few new recipes and added our own flair to them.  She had recently come across a recipe and it reminded her of her days in Aggieland when she loved these from their favorite taco restaurant.  

We recreated this recipe giving it our own additions dubbing it Sure Champ's Southwestern Taco Bowl for my Sure champ post for January of 2016.  We added our own special changes on two separate evenings to this fun dish. 

This rice, bean, corn with onion all in one pot meal was made in large batches so that we wouldn't have to cook the next night.  Around Christmas with our school and family events, it was nice to have a hearty meal that was easy to make and quick to reheat in the microwave.  

The second time we made this recipe we substituted the black beans for pinto beans and exchanged the whole kernel corn for creamed corn since that is all our pantry had.  It was just as good, but Bethany preferred the pop of the whole kernel corn and the black beans.  

We added sliced black olives the second time and really loved that addition. My husband and I love extra spicy dishes, so we even added Tabasco Sauce to the top of our taco bowls. We also added sour cream and fresh cut cilantro to Sure Champ's Southwestern Taco Bowl for extra flavor as a garnish or topping.

 

I told Bethany that this would be a fun dish to serve with a variety of toppings for a party or feeding a large crowd.  Condiments like your fresh shredded cheese, sour cream, cilantro, diced black olives, and even jalapenos would be great additions to the top of this delicious dish.  

This dish would be an excellent recipe to make for my friends on the show road this winter and especially for those of you who will be in Denver or Fort Worth in January.  I am even imaginging it for tailgating at Texas A&M next fall.  I can just see it all now in my large roaster hauling it in to the barns instead of my tradition Chicken Spaghetti for a Crowd.  All my toppings would be set off to the side with southwestern decorative dishes, a big basket of my favorite Pappacita's chips from home and some of my Nolana's Family Hot Sauce. 

Click here for the recipe for Sure Champ's Southwestern Taco Bowl

We hope you'll give this recipe a try and let us know how you made your own additions to it as well.  Remember you can share your own recipes on my site under the Share a Recipe tab. The Ranch Kitchen is also on Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram, so follow us there as well! 

It was fun cooking and planning out meals with my daughter this past holiday while she was in from college.  She has a good eye for recipes and is creatively detailed when this momma sometimes needs an extra push to get dinner on the table.  

She starts a new internship this week.  We pray and wish the very best for her as she completes her masters this spring.  I'm one proud momma in more ways than one.  I have three good reasons and sweet husband that helps makes life a good one. I hope each of my daughters find their way in this big old world in a profession they love and a man like mine who loves both me and most of the time my cooking adventures!

Alise  and Bethany - The Ranch Kitchen  

Alyse & Ruthie's Chocolate Chip Cake

Have I told you how much I love chocolate?  I adore the smell, the thought and all the different flavors of chocolate! My house has candy bowls of sweets and chocolate throughout and found I'm the only one that really eats them.  I don't really eat them a lot, but a small snack size Hershey's Kiss seems to curb my appetite and hold me until dinner.

Alyse Jones Bennett at our school's Thanksgiving luncheon with her wonderful cake!

Today I'm sharing another Alyse's recipe and not mine for Alyse and Ruthie's Chocolate Chip Cake.  It's a dense, rich and decadent cake from a young teacher at our school.  She didn't follow her Aunt Ruthie's recipe directly, but the results were wonderful!  It sometimes gets a bit confusing having two Alise's on our campus, but we are blessed to have her as she is a fantastic science teacher and cares about 'her' kids so much.

Click here for Alyse and Ruthie's Chocolate Chip Cake!

This cake would a great desssert for anytime of the year.  It would especially be enjoyed this week during Thanksgiving as it has most the ingredients you already have in your pantry and refrigerator.  The original recipe called for 8 ounces or sour cream, but Alyse decided on 16 ounces and it was over the top good. 

Very proud of this young cook. If you'd like to also share recipe on my site it's easy.  Just click on the link at the top or here to Share a Recipe and create an account.  Promise it's super simple and won't take you but a minute.

Once you submit and I check it over, I'll submit!  If you'll leave your email in the text of the recipe (I'll delete it before I submit), I'll let you know when your recipe goes live.  It's a great way to catalog and share your recipes with family and friends!  And I love getting new family favorite recipes for my site!

Enjoy and thanks Alyse for sharing this recipe!

Alise - The Ranch Kitchen

 

The Ranch Kitchen's Beef Stroganoff

Click here for easy print version of The Ranch Kitchen's Beef Stroganoff

One of my favorite things to do is re-invent leftovers.  I wrote years ago on my blog of my husbands sudden like of leftovers after the first grocery bill and week of marriage.  He decided then and there on our limited income that I could cook every other night and reinvent my left overs. 

God love his mother as she cooked fresh every night for her three sons and husband.  My mom being a working mother cooked every night as well, but learned to use what she had and be creative on those nights when leftovers were what was left! 

Tonight was definitely one of those nights when the leftover steak from a few nights ago became my version of beef stroganoff.  I simply sliced against the grain the sirloin steaks, sliced up an onion and quickly tossed them both over a little olive oil mixed with one teaspoon of my favorite Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning. 

I then added a can of cream of mushroom soup, one can of beef broth and continued to cook on medium heat until the mixture came to a low boil. 

                                

The heat was then turned down to low and I added one cup of sour cream, mixed that all together and continued to cook on low for about ten minutes.  I served this beef stroganoff over fettuccine noodles. 

                                           



You'll notice in the first picture above that my simple salad did not have a tomato in it, but yellow squash instead.  I got this little jewel of an idea years ago from my good friend Sandra Southwell who is a great cook in her own right.  I'd never had fresh squash in a salad and it's a really fresh addition.  Looking back now that was some twenty or so years ago, but I still remember the great meals we had at her house when her daughter was a new born. 

So, take what you have and reinvent dinner.  It's definitely cheaper and usually is far better than how you cooked it the first night. This stroganoff was husband and daughter approved and looked like I had cooked from scratch!

  

The Ranch Kitchen's Beef Stroganoff

2 precooked sirloin steaks, sliced against the grain
1 onion, sliced in half, then quarters and into one inch slivers
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can beef broth
1 cup sour cream
Prepared noodles, rice, or mashed potatoes

Slice sirloin steak against the grain.  That means do not cut the meat in the same direction the meat runs, but across it.  Slice one onion in 1 inch slices.  In a skillet add 2 teaspoons olive oil with the steak and onion.  

Saute on low until steak and onion are cooked through and onions are translucent.  Add 1 can of cream of mushroom soup and 1 can of beef broth.  Cook on low until mixture begins to boil.  

Add sour cream and continue to cook on low heat until mixture is heated through and on a low boil.  

Serve over noodles, rice or mashed potatoes.  

Traditionally this is served over egg noodles, but tonight the pantry only had fettuccine!  

Cook's Note: You can also used ground beef that has been browned as the beef in this dish instead of steak. 

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Hope you'll give my version of beef stroganoff a try.  When grilling or smoking measts, always cook extra and your meals for the rest of the week are a snap.  

I've used brisket and leftover roast to create this beef stroganoff as well and it always turns out great!

For a recipe card click here for The Ranch Kitchen's Beef Stroganoff.

Alise @ The Ranch Kitchen

The Ranch Kitchen's Pasta Salad with Tomato Relish

Genius sometimes happens in the kitchen.  Sometimes, however catastrophes do happen in the form of to much salt, to many jalapenos or to much mustard!  Tonight I think I hit the ball out of the park with this recipe with the addition of tomato relish to my almost normal The Ranch Kitchen's Pasta Salad! 

The relish adds just the right amount of sweetness to the last of the garden peppers that I threw in for color and crunch. 

-Hope you enjoy it...I'm licking the spoon as I type!

The Ranch Kitchen's Pasta Salad with Tomato Relish

One box of bow tie pasta - mini or regular sized (honestly any pasta will do)
1/2 cup REAL Mayonnaise, not Miracle Whip
I omitted sour cream from this recipe due to being out and too lazy to run to the store! -If you add it, put 1/2 cup sour cream, not light sour cream
2 tablespoons of ranch dressing powdered mix
3 mild banana peppers, sliced thin
1 red banana pepper, sliced thin
1 cowhorn pepper, sliced thin
3 tablespoons green tomato relish
1 tablespoon green tomato relish juice

Cook pasta according to package directions.  In a separate bowl mix ranch dressing and REAL Mayonnaise in a bowl combining well.  Add to this your peppers along with seeds.  I did not take the seeds out, but you can.  Mix pasta with mayonnaise mixture.  Add green tomato relish and juice and stir once more.  Chill and serve! 

This should be even better tomorrow after the salad has been able to rest in the refrigerator! 

*You could also add cubed sharp cheddar cheese, cherry tomatoes, green bell pepper, and olives to this!  Make it your own! 

Enjoy!  - Alise

Susie B's Tomato Pie

Many of us are still getting bumper crops of tomatoes out of our gardens. My friend Susie Bullock shared this recipe with me via Facebook the other day and I had to share it!  She is enjoying her garden this year as many of us are here in Texas due to the great rains we are getting.  Susie has a precious family and with two daughters attending Texas A&M this fall!  


I know you will enjoy it as much as her family and friends!  

Susie B's The Tomato Pie Recipe 

Pie Crust:

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Crisco
3 Tablespoons of ice water

Mix flour & salt together and then add the Crisco. Use a fork to mix it until it crumbles, and then add the water a tablespoon at a time. Knead the dough and then roll it out.  I used a round cake pan to get the deep dish effect.

Tomato Pie:

5 sliced fresh tomatoes (or I'm sure you could use canned ones too) 
1/2 an onion
Garlic Salt to taste ( I used a teaspoon)
Hidden Valley Ranch dry seasoning (I used 1 tablespoon)
1/2 cup sour cream
1 1/2 shredded cheese
Sea Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

Drain the tomatoes in a strainer and then add the other ingredients and stir.

I baked the pie crust in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes, and then pulled it out and added a layer of cheese to prevent the crust from getting soggy when the tomato mixture was added.  I  then put it back in the oven to cook for another 10 minutes. Then I pulled it out and added the tomato mixture and sprinkled a little cheese on top. Put it back in the oven for about 15 minutes or so.

I hope that you like it as much as I did. 

Susie Bullock

Home at Last! The Ranch Kitchen's Chicken Divan!

HOME AT LAST!

HOME!  The last few weekends have been hectic to say the least!  Showing cattle is fun, but hard work on good old dad, mom, and especially the kids.  January used to be one dull month before cattle showing!  But now, there is now time to rest, especially on the last few weekends of the first month of the year!  Showing in the junior and open Hereford cattle shows at the Fort Worth Stock Show has become a tradition for our girls and ranch.  However, as of the last few years we could not do it without our ranch herdsmen Steve.  His help with our cattle and constant gentle guidance of our Audrey been a God send for us all.  Thank you Steve!

My husband this year completed two years as the Texas Hereford President during our National Hereford Show weekend.  It's an association we all hold dear to our hearts.  The people and ranches in their membership have become like family to us all and it was an honor for Scott to lead this historic association. He was blessed to have a great group of officers and executive committee members to assist him. I have just been so very proud of how he has really given everything he had to insure the associations success.

Today, I finished up most of the laundry and attempted to get my house back in order!  The meal I served on this Super Bowl Sunday is not necessarily a party food, but comfort food at it's finest.  It's filling and above all one of my favorite meals to make in the winter.  Along with the rice, a salad and the avocados I served with ranch dressing, dinner was ready in under an hour and fifteen minutes.  It's cheesy texture pleases even the pickiest kiddos and will fill up those men in your house.  Left overs are my favorite and I profess to even eating it cold...in my house eating something cold is the ultimate compliment!

The Ranch Kitchen's Chicken Divan

10 chicken tenders

10 broccoli spears. frozen or fresh

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 can cream of celery soup

juice of 1/2 lime equalling about 3 tablespoons

2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1 cup mayonnaise (no light)

1 cups sour cream (no light)

Spray a 9 x 13 inch glass dish with Pam.  Place chicken tenders in dish.  Place broccoli spears on top of chicken tenders.  Mix soups, lime juice, mayonnaise, sour cream well.  Add grated cheese to this mixture and blend.  Pour this mixture on top of chicken topped with broccoli, making sure to cover all of the dish.  Cook on 400 for 1 hour or until the mixture begins to brown on top.

Serve with cooked long grain rice or Uncle Ben's. 

Alise