at home with ann

One of my friends had a baby recently, so I brought a dinner to share with them.  Whenever I do that, I make double so we get dinner, too!  After constructing their meal as traditional enchiladas and rolling many little tortillas, I decided to do something a little simpler for our version and make it into an oven bake.  Mexican and barbecue are both popular in our house, so this is the perfect combination! BBQ Chicken Enchiladas Ingredients: 1 lb. chicken breasts 1/2 cup barbecue sauce 1 (12 count) package of corn tortillas 1 (15 oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed 1 cup corn (I used frozen) 1 cup enchilada sauce (homemade or store bought) 1/2 cup barbecue sauce 2-3 cup shredded cheddar cheese Optional toppings: sour cream, avocado, hot sauce, cilantro In a slow cooker, combine chicken and 1/2 cup bbq sauce.  Cook for 6-8 hours on low until easily shredded with a fork.  Alternatively, cook chicken in oven or on stove top and shred. Combine ch...

We brought back the crock pot this weekend.  After the great crock pot bender of March, it took a brief hiatus.  What better way to bring it back than to make good old pulled pork barbecue?  Pulled pork in the crock pot is one of the easiest recipes of all time.  After some very quick prep, you let it cook all day until your house smells like barbecue and the meat is tender and shredded.  A light vinegar slaw is the perfect accompaniment for some slightly sweet, slightly sour, crunch.  Crock Pot Pulled Pork 3 lb. boneless pork butt (you can get any size you want, as long as it fits in your crock pot) Canola oil 1/2 sweet onion, thickly sliced 3 Tablespoons pork rub (optional) 1 bottle barbecue sauce (I used about 3/4 bottle of Stubb's Spicy) In a large pan or pot, heat canola oil over medium high heat. Sear the pork on all sides until a brown crust starts to form, a few minutes each side. Place onion slices in the bottom of the crock pot. Tran...

Perhaps you are finding yourself in a bit of a lunch rut, staring down that same turkey sandwich or salad every day.  Or you might be in need of a very quick and simple dinner. This is another Pinterest inspired recipe from here .  For the past few weeks I've been cooking a pound of chickpeas at the beginning of the week.  Half goes into the huge quantities of hummus I've been making, and the rest are for recipes, salad toppers and snacking. Of course, this is just one of a million ways you can use chickpeas in a wrap.  Add them to pretty much any flavor combination for a good protein and fiber source.  Keep these ingredients and swap out the barbecue sauce for hot sauce for a buffalo flavor, add them in to Greek salad ingredients, or use them in place of chicken or tuna for salads. Barbecue Chickpea Wrap Serves 1 1/3 cup chickpeas 4 grape tomatoes, quartered 1/2 avocado, chopped 1-2 Tablespoon red onion, diced 1 Tablespoon barbecue sauce Touch of m...

If something only has two ingredients can you really call it a recipe?  This was so good that I'm going to go ahead and say yes. As you can probably tell, I have been all about the crock pot lately.  I had it in the back of my mind to do a pulled pork or chicken dish, but every time I ventured near the pork section of the market, I shrunk back in dismay.  Something about the huge, fatty cuts of meat were just not doing it for me.  Then, I remembered that chicken breasts make excellent barbecue as well.  There are many variations on this recipe that range from using a spice rub, homemade barbecue sauce, coke or root beer for cooking and pan searing.  While they all sound good, I did none of these things.  Instead I put the uncooked chicken in the crock pot, topped with my favorite jarred barbecue sauce, and cooked it for 7 hours.  Let me tell you, it smelled amazing around here. Crock Pot Barbecue Pulled Chicken 1 1/2 pounds chicken  ( I ...

I'm guessing you don't need anyone to tell you how to make a burger.  Whether you like beef, turkey, chicken, bison, tuna or veggie, I'm willing to bet you have a recipe that works for you.  I like them all.  One of the reasons I like burgers is because they are all about the toppings, and if you saw my refrigerator door, you would know that I am no stranger to condiments.  That being said, I will not bore you with directions to make burgers, only say that these are turkey burgers and I went with the oven baked cooking approach.  And half the reason I used that cooking method was because I already had the oven on to bake the sweet potatoes.  We're all about multi-tasking around these parts.  What I will share are the toppings, because they were good.  Melted cheddar cheese (on top of and under the burger), barbecue sauce , sliced apples and romaine lettuce .  My taste tester commented that they would have gone to a whole new level if we...

After a wonderful beach day on Saturday, we came back home Sunday night.  Today I opened my book and dumped sand all over my lap, which is a good gauge of the weekend. Grilling barbecue chicken can be tricky.  It's easy to burn the sauce and overcook the meat, so it takes a little finesse with the grill.  Jon was in charge, as always, and used an indirect cooking method. We used boneless skinless chicken breasts, although I've read bone-in, skin-on is easier to grill and more traditional.  He started by sprinkling the chicken with a barbecue rub, just a mixture of spices.  He set the grill up with the coals concentrated under one half to create a section of direct heat and indirect heat.  To initially sear the chicken, cook for a couple minutes on each side close to the hot coals.  This will give you nice grill marks and seal in the juices.  Then move the meat to the non-coal side of the grill for indirect cooking, basting with sauce on each f...

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of our move to this house.  I can't believe it!  It's certainly been quite a year.  While there are advantages (free reign to decorate how I want, plenty of space, our own yard and wonderful porch) and disadvantages (replacing the water heater, the prospect of paying a mortgage for the next 30 years, the mysterious scratching noise in the attic) to owning a home in the suburbs as opposed to renting an apartment in the city, one of the things that has significantly changed are our weekend activities.  Back in the day, we would go out to eat at one of the many fantastic restaurants a few steps from our apartment.  Now, although the suburbs do have some good dining out options, we usually find ourselves cooking at home. If you've been reading for a while, you know that homemade pizza is one of our favorite weekend dinners.  It's great to cook together - even when one of the cooks is kind of bossy like me....

As some of you already know, my husband and I bought a house and moved to the suburbs almost a year ago.  Prior to that, we lived in an apartment in Brookline, MA.  Our apartment was wonderful in many ways, not the least of which was the proximity to our favorite thai food and craft beer restaurants. Off the back of our apartment building we had a little deck, which was small and had a view of the parking lot.  Not exactly the type of place to lounge outside on warm evenings.  We did, however, have room for a small gas grill.  We bought the Weber that is actually designed for tailgating, but you can stick it on a stand and pretend it's supposed to be used at home, too.  Everything was going wonderfully until all our neighbors saw we were grilling and put grills on their decks, too.  Not long afterwards, the fire marshal posted that grills on decks are illegal and they needed to be removed.  That was the end of grilling at our apartment. Last s...