Fantastical Friday: Over 100 Cheesecake Recipes

I totally missed yesterday's National Cheesecake Day, so I've worked all day going through all my boards on Pinterest looking for any cheesecake themed recipe - and I found over 100! I hope you all enjoy and find something you will love!

Throwback Thursday #5

I haven't always been the best cook. When I was first married, I had a couple staple recipes that I made...and some of those included out of box meals. One in particular was like pot pie with biscuits and it was good, but it didn't make much and it could get pricey. I found my solution from this recipe from Campbell's: Easy Chicken & Biscuits. I don't make it as often anymore, but it's still a great and comforting dish to have on occasion.

Once I started making more of a variety of foods, there were still a handful of recipes that I made often because we liked them so much. Slow Cooker Tex Mex Chicken is definitely one I have made so many times I could make it with my eyes closed! It's a lot like having a fajita in a bowl served over rice. :)

------------------------------

don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram

Kielbasa, Pepper, Onion, & Potato Hash

When I was first married, I made skillet potatoes ALL. THE. TIME. I'm talking all the time. It was always my go-to side dish. I stopped making them, not because we got sick of them, but because we try not to eat a ton of carbs. If you're eating a ton of potatoes and pasta and bread...it's a bit much.  Since we don't eat potatoes a lot, it's a treat when we do. I particularly love hashes and anything where you have peppers and onions fried up too. In the last two or so years, I've become a big fan of kielbasa, so I was incredibly excited to try this recipe. It was everything I was hoping for. You get a nice crispy edge to the kielbasa when you fry them up. The potatoes are just everything. Really. And then you get practically caramelized onions and peppers. YUM!!

Buffaloaf

Image via wiki

 

I am a huge fan of the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs movies. I've seen them I don't know how many times and don't think I could get sick of them. Amy of Amy's Cooking Adventures posted this recipe for one of the creatures of Cloudy for a Food & Flix blog event. I immediately pinned her recipe to make myself. Unfortunately, I had the worst time trying to find peppercorns NOT in a dang grinder and ended up using red hots. Because that is all I had in the house to use. So ignore my evil Buffaloaf. LOL!


What is a Buffaloaf? The Buffaloaf is one of the many Foodimals created by the FLDSMDFR, as you can see above he is a buffalo meatloaf :) I think I earned some brownie points from my kids for making this little guy. They loved him and almost didn't want to eat him.

Menu Plan Monday - July 27th, 2015

I honestly can hardly believe it's the end of July already. I mean, where did the summer break go? My kids go back to school in about two weeks...what!!! I'm also impressed that instead of soup night (Weds) lessening in the summer, we kept it up the entire summer long!

{Monday}
One Pot Tomato, Basil, & Chicken Pasta
onion,* garlic*, pasta, Italian diced tomatoes, 15 oz. crushed tomatoes, chicken breasts, fresh basil, Parm*, broccoli (side)

{Tuesday}
Puffins // Quinoa Stuffed Peppers
Dried cranberries, bananas // green bell peppers (2), 15 oz. tomato sauce, ground beef, onion*, quinoa*, cheddar cheese

{Wednesday}
Loaded Potato Soup
bacon, carrots*, celery, onion*, potatoes (5), heavy cream*, broccoli, chicken bouillon

{Thursday}
Pepperjack Chicken
chicken breasts, pepper jack cheese, cream of chicken soup, milk, turkey stuffing, rice*, green beans (side)


{Friday}
Pineapple Bacon Burgers
ground beef (2), bacon, fresh pineapple, american cheese, hamburger buns, lettuce*, tomato, fries (side)

{Weekend}
Hawaiian Lava Flow // Homemade Claussen Pickles
pineapple juice, cream of coconut (2), half-and-half, frozen strawberries, fresh pineapple // pickling cucumbers, cider vinegar, pickling spices, kosher salt*, dill seeds

Total Spent: $117.35

------------------------------

don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram

Fiesta Queso Burritos #SecretRecipeClub

It's time again for Secret Recipe Club reveal day for my group, Group D! What is Secret Recipe Club? It's a bunch of food bloggers separated into four groups that post once a month on a designated Monday. Each month, we are paired with another foodie from our group secretly (hence the name). We then pick a recipe (or two or more) from that blog and make it. On our reveal day, we reveal whose blog we had and what recipe(s) we chose all at the same time. It's like a Secret Santa every month, but with food and blogs! It's a great deal of fun :)

This month, I was assigned to Kate's blog, The Colbert Clan. As always, I picked out my recipes first and then read the about me, which I promptly got sucked into. Kate is, without a doubt, a strong lady. Within a year's time, she had her first child who was born 2 months early and lost her husband. Kate tells both these stories on her blog. Fast forwarding to now, she is remarried and is a mom of three. She has a beautiful family!

I pinned a few recipes to try that include: Cheesy Pesto Pull Apart Bread [pesto is life!], 3 Cheese Chicken Alfredo [hello, three cheeses?!], Doritos Taco Salad [I just think this is a good idea], Samoa Bars [because Nick loves them], and Caramelitas [I've always wanted to try them]. In the end, I chose her Fiesta Queso Burrito recipe because I needed something for Taco Tuesday!

This recipe is very filling and oh so good! I had to swap the queso Kate used for one that I could find/knew of, which is Laughing Cow's Creamy Queso Fresco Chipotle Cheese. It with the Rotel added a bit of heat to the recipe. I was also impressed with how well they reheated the next day. I typically will not eat anything soft shell reheated, but these were on point!

Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad Copycat #SundaySupper

Good morning, everyone! It's been a while since I have participated in Sunday Supper. I've been very excited for this theme though: Restaurant Copycats! This recipe makes 75 copycat recipes posted on my blog. I was not expecting to enjoy this copycat recipe as much as others because, in truth, I've never had the recipe from the restaurant (nor do I know if they still have it on their menu). Plus, I don't like honey..and I was incredibly skeptical of the dressing.

I made this recipe while pregnant and having my chicken aversion...and then proceeded to make it an additional 2 times before Mason was born. This is completely unheard of for me to make a recipe that many times within a short amount of time unless I really really really like the recipe. Plus the fact that I really didn't want anything to do with chicken while I was pregnant. If that isn't enough to convince y'all that you must try this recipe, I don't know what is!

In addition to the lovely honey dressing, this salad has crunchy, crispy, fried chicken (not the most healthy, but hey...it's alright to indulge a little when the rest of the recipe is veggies, yes?), tons of cabbage, cucumbers, and almonds. It has a perfect mixture of savory and sweet.

Throwback Thursday #4

There are some recipes that are on my favorites list because they are so incredibly good, but also so incredibly easy to throw together. I am not one to stray from complex, time-consuming recipes. However, I do enjoy  the occasional recipe that you throw together all in one dish and cook/bake without having to stand over it. This Oven Denver Omelet is precisely that. You stir all the ingredients together and bake it in the oven. There are very simple ingredients, but it comes out so delicious that it's hard to stop yourself from eating the whole pan!

This Good & Garlicky Sweet & Sour Pork is another simple recipe. I feel like as a family, we don't have pork as often as I'd like. Most of what we eat is beef, chicken, and turkey. I guess sausage too, but pork chops and pork tenderloin are rare. I don't have a lot of pork recipes in my arsenal either which could be part of the problem, but this one is fabulous.

------------------------------

don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram

Pork Tenderloin with Pineapple Salsa

I cannot tell you how much I cringe when I see a recipe pop up that I made in New York. Something about the lackluster living situations with horrible lighting in the house plus pregnancy made me not even really attempt to get a good picture. [as seen above] I hope to make this very soon because it's one of my favorites and the picture DOES NOT do it any justice. Pineapple salsa is unbelievable and I love pairing pineapple with meats - it's such a surprise to have sweet and juicy pineapple with meats other than ham (Hawaiian pizza, anyone?), but it's definitely something I recommend trying!

Sally's Hawaiian Pizza

It's hard for me to decide on favorites of anything. Favorite book...favorite candy...favorite animal...and pizza is definitely included. I love supreme pizza and meat lovers' and pepperoni and cheese and vegetable and HAWAIIAN. I love Hawaiian pizza. This recipe stays pretty true to the classic with just the addition of bacon to the ham/Canadian bacon. Plus I made mine with a stuffed crust because regardless of toppings, stuffed crust is my favorite crust! 

[Sally's pizza did not have the stuffed crust]

Menu Plan Monday - July 20, 2015

This week holds a lot of foods featuring cilantro and jalapenos. I'm not at all mad about this.

Fantastical Friday: A Blog Redesign

It was time for a little blog facelift. I was a little bored with the food on top and how large my header was. I am still going to try and incorporate some more stuff into the sidebar eventually, but for now - the basic structure is here and I LOVE IT! I'm hoping by September to announce a new addition to the blog (no, not a kid!) and I thought it would be nice to make things look new and more simplistic.

------------------------------

don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram

Throwback Thursday #3

I started Throwback sharing things made on the same day in years past, but I don't know how well that will work since some days I haven't posted or some days were on weekends, etc. So I'm backtracking and just sharing old favorites from the beginning in chronological order :)

Mint Cookies & Cream Ice Cream

Last year for my birthday, I got an ice cream maker and Ben & Jerry's cookbook from Nick. Ecstatic doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. I love ice cream and have wanted the attachment for my KitchenAid for FOREVER. I just didn't want to spend the money.

Now that the weather is warm again, I have made a few batches. This batch happened to be the first one I made in my ice cream maker [last September]. Ben & Jerry say that it was one of their best selling flavors and I know exactly why. Mint [chocolate chip] ice cream is unbelievable and one of my all-time favorites and cookies and cream ice cream is not too far behind. I've been known to polish off way more than I should way faster than I should of this Oreo-y goodness! :)

Taco Casserole

I often underestimate how much I am going to love recipes when I see the simplicity of the ingredients. I looked at this one and thought "Meh. Tacos" because it's just ground beef with taco seasoning and taco fixings. I should know by now that I'm gonna be impressed by simple recipes and blown away by ingredients I will throw together in a pinch on Taco Tuesday, not in casserole form, basically when they are actually in casserole form.

I have made this quite a few times since that first time making it because it's nice to not always have tacos and the kids enjoy taco salad because it's a little easier for them to eat than when it's in a hard or soft shell. I personally doubled the meat when I made it and I have plans to double the beans next time as well. Bell peppers or even a jalapeno would be a great addition. And cilantro is definitely a must [also not pictured in this initial time I made it].

Menu Plan Monday - July 13, 2015

It's gonna be hot this week. Highs in the 90s ALL WEEK LONG. I think after that it will be more mild...and we're already a month away from school starting. How crazy is that? I'm not gonna lie, I am both super ready and super not ready. The kids are rambunctious as all get out and need a good outlet, but they are helpful with Mason when I need to get something done quickly (like dishes) and he needs distracting...and I'm just now getting him on a schedule which will have to be changed...and I haven't gotten to do some of the things I wanted to do with them this summer due to Nick having to switch jobs :( I am hoping with milder temps at the end of July that we will get to go to the zoo and see the new gorilla babies that were born in June! In other news, I am using my crockpot a lot this week. I hate running the oven in the summer!

{Monday}
Creamy Pesto Chicken Pasta

penne pasta, chicken breasts, basil pesto, butter, heavy cream, roma tomatoes (2), Parmesan cheese*, parsley

Throwback Thursday #2

I'm back again for Throwback Thursday where I post old favorites from years past! I'm excited about today's two recipes that come from 2012 and 2013, respectively.

If there is one thing my [older two] kids love, it's hot dogs! And even more so, pretzels from the mall. They were unbelievably blown away when I made these Hot Dog Stuffed Pretzels. I think they thought I was the coolest mom in existence! I have to admit that they were pretty fantastic little pretzels and not too difficult to make.

Kielbobs

When I was younger, I hated kielbasa. I'm not sure when, but I do know my love for kielbasa fostered from my mom-in-law. I cannot remember what she made with it, but I now love it. Another thing that I love is kabobs. We don't make them often, probably because they are a little time-consuming to make. These particular kabobs also have potatoes, so they do take a little longer to cook. The smaller you can get your slices, the faster they will cook on the grill.

Strawberry Salsa

One great thing about living in the South is that produce is pretty outstanding throughout the year. Strawberries are a summer item, but we had great strawberries in the winter. Namely, around New Year's. So I took to making this recipe for New Year's Eve. I was skeptical about the green onions with the fruit, but enjoyed it thoroughly. I made cinnamon sugar tortilla chips to go with and it was gone before I knew it. Cami especially liked it - you can see her hand up there!

Menu Plan Monday - July 6, 2015 + Winner Announced

Good morning, everyone! Monday is here again and that means it is time for me to share what we are eating this week. I guess I didn't realize how much red meat was on the menu, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super excited about it. I've taken to planning "throwback Thursdays" now, but this week has a lot of recipes I've already made in it. Yesterday was a lazy day, so I haven't shopped yet. I hope to do that today if I can fit it in.

{Monday}
Steak, Asparagus, and Crockpot Bacon Cheese Potatoes
steak, asparagus, potatoes (4), green onions, onion (2)

Bacon & Kale Quinoa Fried Rice

I saved this recipe when I had Amy's blog, Fearless Homemaker, for my Secret Recipe Club assignment a few months ago last May. Apparently, time flew by since I made her Maple Bacon Cinnamon Rolls. I made it late last summer while at Nick's mom's house and it was a hit. Our kale obsession was just starting and I was basically making anything and everything I could with kale in it. Plus I was on a quinoa-eating spree too. I wasn't really feeling a lot of chicken dishes (since I was pregnant at the time), so this recipe was definitely one of my favorites I had made in a while.