Indianapolis Food Tour

I don't have a recipe to share with you this week, but that doesn't mean I don't have any food to share! We are recently back from a trip to Indianapolis, Indiana and we had a GREAT time. There are TONS of museums, parks and attractions that could keep you busy the entire length of your trip and something to fit any interest. The 2012 Super Bowl is also coming to the Lucas Oil Stadium this year which is something else to keep in mind. The Zoo and Children's Museum were wonderful plus all the other attractions we visited. There is simply too much stuff to see in this city to list! But what about the food!? I did a lot of Internet research before out trip of not only attractions to visit but also of restaurants to eat at. We wanted to make the food as much a part of the destination as the other attractions we were visiting.

Our first visit upon arriving in town was for lunch at Edward's Drive-In. They are known for their Pork Tenderloin Sandwich which is not only big but really, really tasty.

I ordered the Chicken Fingers and they were fantastic. They hand bread all of their meat at the restaurant and it really pays off. The breading is really good and the meat stays nice and moist.

Samantha also really enjoyed her Grilled Cheese......It was really good.

For dinner we stopped at Bub's Burgers and Ice Cream in Carmel, Indiana, just north of Indianapolis.

Bub's is home of the Big Ugly Burger and a competition involving it. If you can eat one Big Ugly, you get a 4x6 picture of yourself on the wall. Two Big Uglies gets you an 8x10 picture, three Big Uglies for a poster of yourself and eating four Big Uglies earns you a life size cut-out. No one has ever eaten four and when we were there, there were 6 posters. Here is us waiting for our table.

And here is a picture of Jason's Big Ugly Burger and my Settle For Less Than Ugly Burger.

The Burger's were very good, very moist and the buns were all buttery and toasted. Jason was very happy with his Burger.

And he ate it all!

So the waitress took his picture for him to sign and hung it up on the wall.

As you can see, the walls are littered with pictures!

We also visited the Greek Islands Restaurant for dinner one night.

In the frenzy of the delicious food and being extremely hungry after a day spent at the zoo, I neglected to take a picture of my plate. I ordered the Greek Spaghetti which was a homemade red sauce over spaghetti noodles, topped with gyro meat and graviera cheese. Jason ordered the Traditional Gyros which also came with rice and green beans. Both of our meals included a Greek dinner salad and a loaf of warm homemade bread.

Let me just say this to describe the taste of the Greek Spaghetti- I would drive the 4 hours back to this city just to eat dinner at this restaurant.

Our last dinner spot was Gray Brothers Cafeteria in Mooresville, just south of Indianapolis. As the name suggests, this is a cafeteria style restaurant. You get in line, grab a tray and start going down the line filling it with whatever you like. On the bad side.....the desserts were toward the beginning of the line and they offer over 15 different homemade pies. Why is this bad you ask? Because we choose 3......we were really hungry.

The food was unbelievably good and the portions are huge. Here are our trays from two different angels.

In the above picture going clockwise from my husbands hand (to show how big the pork tenderloin is): fried tenderloin, stuffing with brown gray, fried chicken breast with a side of mac & cheese, yeast rolls, coconut cream pie (a mile high!!), deviled eggs, rhubarb pie, cheesecake with strawberries and mac & cheese. We definitely over ate this night and it was so worth it. Everything was excellent. Period.

And finally, we hit the Heidelberg Haus before heading home. This is a German cafe, bakery and gift shop. This place was very.....different. You will understand what I mean if you ever stop here. It has tons of imported gifts for sale and throughout are tables to sit at where you can order off their German menu of items. We however, only stopped to buy some pastries to take home with us and are so glad we did.

Here is their Coconut Rum Pound Cake

The White Chocolate Cream Puff filled with Cream and Raspberries and a piece of Apple Cheesecake

A Coconut Marzipan Bear Claw and a Cheese Danish

And lastly, everyone ahead of  us seemed to be ordering one of the homemade bread pretzels so we ordered one too. It was very, very good. If something seems to be popular and selling well, there is a reason for it!

Hope you enjoyed hearing about all the food we ate and hopefully if you are ever around Indianapolis, you will keep some of these places in mind. Have a Great Weekend!

Cookie Bouquets

Happy Mother's Day! I know Mother's Day was two days ago but I couldn't post what I made for it until I gave away my gifts so that they would still be a surprise. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed their day, I know I did. I made my Mom a cookie and candy bouquet and am very happy with the way it turned out! What do you think?

I also crossed-stitched the bread cloth that I used to line the flower pot and that was the most time consuming part. I used Mary's Sugar Cookie from my Sweets for the Sweet post for my cookie dough. I have been experiencing some problems with this dough lately and haven't been able to figure out why.....but I have figured out how to fix it! So, I amended the recipe in my Sweets for the Sweet post in case you experience the same problem as I have. I thought my Mom's came out a little crowded looking but I'm still very happy with the way it turned out.

I also made another smaller one to give to a friend of ours for Mother's Day.

But these don't have to be just for Mother's Day. My husband and I also had to get-together the night before Mother's Day for a friends birthday so I made one for him too!

I promise that these are pretty easy to make. Simply make your sugar cookie dough, cut out your shapes with a cookie cutter and place them on your baking sheet. Then take sucker sticks and gently pressed them into the dough. I also found it helpful to take some dough scraps and cover part of the sucker sticks to "encase" them into the cookie.

Bake your cookies according to your directions. When removing them from the pan after they have baked, make sure to use a large spatula as to not crack or bend them at all. It is also better to leave them in the oven slightly longer. You don't want a soft and chewy cookie for these flower pots. A stiff cookie will make this much easier.  Once the cookies are completely cooled, decorate them as you wish. Don't be afraid of using a pipping bag, all you have to do is make dots using a simple star tip. You could also make a runny icing (simply mix powdered sugar and a little water until you get your desired consistency), dip the cookies and decorate them with sprinkles. It also helps to decorate the side of the cookie that you stuck the sucker stick to. This way you hide the stick and have a pretty side (the back side) showing.

I made the chocolate flower sucker the same way I did for my Dirt Dessert post. A big help is if you have a electric skillet. Fill it with a couple inches of water and set it to a low temperature setting. Then using glass measuring cups or coffee mugs, you can have all you colors and flavors of candy melts all ready and waiting for whenever you need them.

To assemble everything, take a terra-cotta flower pot and place in flower foam to fit very snugly. If you want to add a decorative cloth or towel, place it in the pot before the flower foam. You may also want to wrap the flower foam in plastic wrap so it doesn't rub off and stain the cloth.

Add colored shredded paper, tucking it down into the sides and begin to push in your cookie and candy flowers. If you want to cover it for travel, take a few glue dots and attach them around the outside edge  (rim) of the flower pot.

Then carefully slip a clear treat bag (usually found in the cake and candy decorating supplies) over the top and press on you glue dots. Attach a decorative ribbon around using glue dots again to hide the edge of the bag.

And just in case you're wondering, here is what I got for Mother's Day!

Here is a link to the cookie cutter set that I used: Wilton Cookie Cutter Set
In this set, the "6" also doubles as the "9" and the "O" also doubles as the "zero".

Butter cream icing I used to decorate cookies: Cupcakes at Tiffany's

Super Simple Chicken and Rice

Sorry I'm a day late, computer problems.....
Anyways, this dish is so simple I can't even believe I am posting it. But it is very tasty. There won't be an actual recipe at the end like my usual posts because I think this is more of a method. That being said, you can change it around a ton of ways using different rice mixes, broths, veggies or even using pork chops.

So I started off by chopping 1/2 an onion and 1/2 a green bell pepper and softening them over medium heat with some olive oil and salt and pepper.

Once they were starting to soften, I added in the dry rice and pasta mix of a box of Rice-A-Roni. Here is the box I used but you can use any flavor, brand or variety you like.

I stirred the dry rice mixture around in the pan to toast it a little bit then added in the seasoning packet and instead of water I used chicken broth. I followed the amount of liquid listed on the box directions. I then laid two frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts on top and sprinkled them with salt, pepper and dried thyme.

I covered my pan with a lid, turned the heat down to simmer and stirred it every few minutes to make sure the rice was not sticking to the pan. Once the rice was done (mine took around 28 minutes) I cut up  the chicken breasts into bite-size pieces (my chicken was also cooked through at this point) and stirred it back into the rice mixture. We had ours along side some steamed broccoli with cheese.

I hope you will try this version or come up with other versions yourself. It is a super simple method and great on those nights when you just need and want something simple to throw together for dinner. Just doing simple additions like these really jazz up a store bought rice mix. Enjoy!

Easter Sugar Cookies

I know I said I was only going to post on the 10th, 20th and 30th of each month......but that was just for new recipes. It doesn't mean I can't post quick ideas, tips or pictures in between, right? Right! So......

My Mom and I made Easter Cookies today.

Here are some close-ups of some of my favorites.

And lastly, one of the ears broke off on one of our bunny cookies so I tried to make it look like one if his ears was flopped down over his face.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Stuffed Crescent Wreath

At one of the first Pampered Chef parties that I hosted, the consultant that came made a Chicken Holiday Wreath. It was good and I have held on to the recipe ever since but never made it. This last Christmas my husband and I were hosting a family get-together and I wanted to make something different and off I was rummaging through my stack (literally.... I really to organize it) of recipes, pictures, ideas, books, notes and magazines looking for something to catch my eye. I came across the original recipe for the Chicken Holiday Wreath and decided to give it a go. I changed a few things around to suit our tastes better and what follows is my version. Here is a link to the original Pampered Chef Chicken Holiday Wreath if you want to take a look or give it a try. I was unable to find it on Pampered Chef's website (the recipe is from a while ago) but was able to locate it on a site called Recipe Goldmine and it is the original recipe.

This recipe makes a great starter course and works really well for get-togethers when you have all little things or appetizers to eat instead of one big meal.

I started off by shredding one chicken breast and placing it in a bowl and finely chopping one small carrot, half of a red bell pepper and 1/2 cup of broccoli.

I added all of the veggies into the bowl with the chicken and added a can of cream of celery, shredded cheddar cheese and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

I then opened two cans of crescent rolls and separated the dough into 8 triangles per tube (16 total). I laid 8 of the triangles out into a half circle, slightly overlapping, on a pizza stone with the wide end facing in.

I laid the other half out in the same manner then pressed the dough together to seal the seams.

I spooned half of the chicken mixture onto the wide end of the crescent dough. We will come back to the other half of the chicken mixture later.

I then took the "pointy" end of the crescent dough and wrapped it over the chicken mixture and tucked it under the bottom side. Don't worry about having gaps in the dough along the top, you want the filling to peek through.

I placed it into a 350 degree preheated oven for 25 minutes.

The second half of the filling can be saved to make other wreath (especially handy during parties or family holidays) OR ......

You can make a pizza with it! I took a thin crust, store bought pizza dough, lightly brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with garlic salt. I spread the leftover filling onto the dough and sprinkled the top with more cheddar cheese. I followed the baking directions listed on the package for the pizza crust.


Stuffed Crescent Wreath

1 pre-cooked chicken breast, shredded
one small carrot, finely chopped
half red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup broccoli (fresh or frozen), finely chopped
10.5 oz can cream of celery
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tubes of refrigerated crescent rolls
salt and pepper

Mix chicken, carrot, pepper, broccoli, cream of celery, cheese and sprinkle of salt and pepper together in a bowl. Very lightly spray a round pizza stone with non-stick spray. Open tubes of crescent dough and separate into triangles. Going in a circle, lay out triangles of dough around the pizza stone, slightly overlapping with the point of dough hanging over edge of pizza stone. Press dough together to eliminate seams and seal dough together. Spoon half of chicken filling onto wide end of crescent dough going in a circle. Fold over points of crescent dough over top of filling and tuck underneath in center of the wreath. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Dirt Dessert

It's Spring! I know its been here for a while but it finally FEELS like spring. We hit 80 degrees here this weekend and it felt wonderful. So I thought this would be a perfect treat to a nice spring weekend.

I first made some chocolate suckers shaped like flowers. I used pink and milk chocolate candy melts and melted them in the microwave in 20 to 30 second intervals.

I used this sucker mold from Wilton to make my flowers. I first spooned a little chocolate into the center of each flower then used the end of a sucker stick to help me spread it around.

I added dots to some of my flower petals then set the tray in the freezer for a few minutes to set.

 Once set, I poured the contrasting color of chocolate into each mold and tapped it against the counter to even out the chocolate and get out any air bubbles. Then I set a sucker stick into each one.........

......and turned the stick to completely coat it. I then put them back into the freezer to set.

Next I made two flavors of pudding following the directions on the box.

I also made up some homemade whip cream.

After I had the whip cream made, I folded in a couple spoonfuls of the Devil's food pudding to make it chocolate also.

I placed a full package of Oreo sandwich cookies into a gallon zip top bag and crushed them up. I also had mini chocolate chips and gummy worms on hand.

Using my Pampered Chef Trifle Bowl I layered all of my ingredients like this starting with the bottom layer:

Half of the Oreo pudding
Gummy worms around edge of bowl
1/3 of the crushed Oreo cookies
Devil's  Food pudding
1/3 of the crushed Oreo cookies
Half of Oreo pudding
mini chocolate chips
Chocolate whipped cream
1/3 of the crushed Oreo cookies
Decorated top with gummy worms and chocolate flower suckers

And I was able to get the lid on top!

Whip Cream

1 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp brown sugar

Place everything into a chilled metal bowl for easier whipping. Using a whip attachment, beat with electric mixer until stiff peaks form.