I admit it - I don't keep promises well!!

At least, not promises I make to myself about my blogs. 


I seems I haven't posted anything on either one since May. I need to slap myself!


I can't talk much about cooking because I haven't done much in the past few months. However, I will tell you that I finally made the No Boil Baked Ziti recipe I have posted from last year just a couple days ago. And, this time, I actually used ziti instead of rotini. It turned out wonderfully! I also used cottage cheese instead of ricotta - other than having curds instead of a smoother consistency, there was no difference!


Last night, I went to eat at the local diner and enjoyed some Flounder Francaise. If you haven't tried this, you ought to. It's really quite good. The flounder is covered in an egg batter and fried and set on a bed of cooked rice. It is all then covered with a creamy lemon sauce (not super lemony, which I like). I had two huge pieces of flounder and so much rice! The only thing I didn't like was the pimentos they added. I also had cream of broccoli soup, which was pretty good. 


If you're not much of a fish eater, try the Chicken Francaise instead. The chicken breast is flattened before being battered, so the piece of chicken looks huge when it arrives. It's also much more tender since it was flattened.


I had wanted to get breakfast for dinner, but they don't have grits after 3pm and I didn't want home fries. I just don't digest potatoes as well as I used to, so when I can substitute something, I do. Grits remind me of cream of wheat and I eat them the same way.

No Boil Baked Ziti (actually, Rotini) DELICIOUS!!!!!

I recently tried a recipe for No Boil Macaroni and Cheese that turned out pretty well other than it was a bit too al dente. It's still worth it because I'll just add more liquid the next time I make it.

But, I had a box of tri-color rotini in my pantry I wanted to use along with some ricotta, shredded mozzarella and spaghetti sauce. I went looking for a recipe for no-boil rotini, but wasn't successful. However, I did find a recipe for no-boil baked ziti that I decided to try figuring my pasta would replace the ziti approximately one-for-one.


My problem was that my box of rotini was 12 oz and the recipe called for eight ounces. Plus, my rotini seemed smaller in diameter than ziti would be, so I wanted to be sure what came out of the oven wasn't too runny or too thick and that the pasta was cooked all the way through.


Holy cow! What I got turned out to be the BEST baked pasta I'd ever had!! I've had some that the ricotta seems to dominate and the pasta sauce gets lost. I've had others that add nutmeg to such a degree that it isn't just an accent, but a primary flavor. I was hoping to avoid either one of those extremes. 

One of the ways I tried to do that was to add some additional spices to the mixture to keep it from being too cheesy. Fortunately, I was successful. 

Now, I'll share with you the recipe I used with notes showing what changes I made and where. I really think you'll be pleased with this recipe. It takes only five minutes to prepare!

The thing I liked best was that it didn't heat up the whole house. There was heat from the oven, but if I had done both boiling water and the oven, it would have been very uncomfortable. Since we don't eat in the kitchen, this worked well for a summer meal.

No Boil Baked Ziti

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Bake Time: 60 minutes
Serves: 8

1 26 oz jar pasta sauce (I used a can of Hunt's meat flavored)
1 1/2 cups water (I added more water, maybe 1/2 cup or so)
15 oz ricotta 
1/4 cup grated parmesan (I left this out - just sprinkled some on top near the end)
2 cups shredded mozzerella
8 oz uncooked ziti (I used 12 oz of tri-colored rotini which is why I added more water)

Preheat oven to 400 F.
Combine sauce and water.
Stir in ricotta, parmesan, and 1 cup mozzerella.
Add uncooked ziti. (I also added about 1/2 tsp each of Italian and Pizza spice blends.)
Spoon ziti mixture into 13x9" baking dish.
Cover with foil and bake 55 minutes.
Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining mozzerella. (This is when I sprinkled the parmesan, too.)
Bake uncovered for 5 minutes. 

Stuffed Pork Chops - This One's a Keeper!

A few days ago, I took a bag of chicken breasts out of the freezer to thaw because I thought I would make a chicken breast recipe I had seen. When the breasts thawed, I learned that they weren't breasts at all, but were boneless pork chops (I guess they really are "the other white meat"!) Well, I didn't have a clue what to do with them since I hadn't planned on them, so I put them in the fridge thinking I'd make them the next night when I had time to decide how. The next night came and went with my daughter going out and not being here for supper. The night after that as well. By then I had found the perfect recipe, but needed to buy stove top (style, not brand) dressing since I didn't have any like I thought. Today was the finally the day that these pork chops were going to be made.


The recipe called for the chops to be pounded, which was unusual. That's usually done for scallopini or cutlets. I've never seen that for stuffed chops before. I got the wax paper out, laid the bottom sheet down, placed two chops on the paper and laid the top sheet over them. Since I still don't know where my mother's meat mallet is, I decided to use my heaviest sauce pan to pound them. I've got to say, it does pretty darned well! After pounding the two (pulling off the excess fat), I set them aside and pounded the third one. Then I made the stuffing. Love it. It takes all of five minutes. That's not to say I don't like homemade stuffing. I make it and I do pretty well, but I don't always want to have celery and onions on hand or a lot of extra bread to use to make it. Plus, that would make too much and it would be drier than the stove top kind. So, I got the stuffing made and put two small scoops on each chop. These weren't the biggest chops, so as I rolled, the stuffing made its escape out the ends. Ugh. But, I didn't let it stop me. I just took my toothpicks (in lieu of the twine the recipe called for that I didn't have) and skewered the chops together around the stuffing and then shoved the escapees back in the ends. The third chop was an odd shape, so it ended up looking like a 3-point Minuteman hat when I was done skewering it (but that actually kept more of the stuffing inside doing it that way). 

Stuffed and overflowing

One by one, I placed them in the baking dish (I didn't grease it). I put fresh ground salt and pepper over the chops and then filled all the empty areas around the chops with the remaining stuffing. I sprinkled poultry seasoning over top of everything and added a little chicken broth as well (to keep the stuffing from drying out.

Ready for the oven

I turned the oven on to 350° and put the baking dish in after covering it with foil (to also keep it from drying out or getting to crusty - it's a personal thing. I hate crunchy stuffing.) I took the foil off 45 minutes later and left the dish in the oven for about another 10 minutes. 

Cut in half and tender

I can only say that the one I ate was amazing! Seriously amazing. I often joke that I can tell when something is done when the smoke alarm goes off because cooking just isn't my forte (despite my love of all things kitchen or recipe related). I'm not a bad cook; I'm a lazy cook. I can think of hundreds of things I'd rather do than stand over a stove, and I usually do at least one of them. But, let me put it in the oven or in a crockpot and give me permission to do something else in the meantime and I do pretty well. Today was one of those days. The pork chop was tender and moist, the stuffing was perfect (I'm thinking of adding apple the next time for a touch of sweet), and the poultry seasoning really put it over the top in my book. 

One down, two to go

By the way, if you're ever near a Dollar General, buy their chicken stuffing mix. It was $.85 and it is fantastic! You can actually see and taste the bits of onion and celery in the mix when it's done. Best value for the price I've seen yet! They didn't slack off on taste at all.