Steamed Vegetable Toss

Download the printable version of this recipe for free at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php.

If you’re like me, you’ve overdosed on sweets over the holidays. Christmas candy and cookies… I love chocolate so much that I’ve written books based in bakeries and candy companies just so I could do the research, but even I have had enough. (I can’t believe I’m saying that!)

Last night, I created a super easy, delicious, and beautiful vegetable side dish. Seriously, recipes don’t get an easier than this.

Recipe: Steamed Vegetable Toss

1 C whole, peeled baby carrots
1 head of cauliflower florets
1 zucchini, cut into one-inch half-rounds
1 yellow squash, cut into one-inch half-rounds
1 red bell pepper, cut into one-inch chunks
1 t season salt or garlic salt
¼ t dried thyme leaves
1/8 t black pepper
1/8 t celery seed

Steam the baby carrots for 10 minutes. Add the remaining vegetables and steam for 10 minutes more. Remove to a bowl. Add spices and toss.

Aren’t they pretty?

Quick & Easy Chicken Cheesy Soup

You'll find a printable version of this and many other free recipes online at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php.

Last week on Facebook and Twitter, I asked my fans to tell me one thing they enjoy about winter. (I needed a pick-me-up. I don’t enjoy being cold, and Seattle at this time of year is cold and wet and gloomy.) Several people said “snow.”

That did nothing for me.

Someone else said curling up with a good book next to a roaring fire. Now we were getting somewhere. As you might imagine, I do love a good book. But still, I’d rather read that good book in the summer, when the days are long and the skies are blue.

Finally, one of my Twitter followers said that what she enjoys about winter is a bowl of thick soup. I perked up. Most of the year, I’m not into soup. I could take it or leave it. But on a cold winter day, a nice, thick soup warms me up from the inside out.

Unfortunately, by this time, it was already getting close to dinner. I wasn’t willing to put off the soup for another day. I needed to find something good about winter now, darn it! So I came up with a recipe for a hearty, delicious soup that took just half an hour from start to finish.

How is that possible? Because the soup is only sort of homemade. There are so many cans of food in it that I thought about naming it Can-Can Chicken Soup.

I settled on the name Quick & Easy Chicken Cheesy Soup because rhyming is fun.

Recipe: Quick and Easy Chicken Cheesy Soup

1 whole rotisserie chicken
1 can cheddar cheese soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can of corn or Mexicorn
1 can diced green chilies
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can chicken broth
1 T cumin
1 T chili powder
2 C milk

Tear the meat off the chicken bones, chop, and put into a heavy-bottomed soup pot with the accumulated juices from the chicken. Stir in all remaining ingredients. (Don’t drain any of the cans except for the black beans. Just open them up and add them to the pan, juices and all.) Heat over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.

This recipe can be made in the slow cooker. Just toss all the ingredients in a slow cooker and heat on low until warm all the way through.

Pork and Asparagus Alfredo

You can find a printable version of this recipe at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php.

Last week, one of my Twitter followers mentioned this recipe for Pasta with Asparagus and Bacon from historical romance author Vanessa Kelly. It looks incredible, and I’ve had asparagus on the brain ever since. I’m going to make that recipe exactly one of these days, but for today, I decided to come up with something original, inspired by Vanessa.

I started out with the idea of fresh asparagus, and nothing past that. I found some nice pork chops at the store, so I thought I would cook them simply with a little salt and pepper, and then serve the asparagus on the side. Unfortunately, by the time I finished working for the day, it was too late to start the pork chops. They were about an inch thick, and cooking them as I’d planned would push dinner too late.

One of the things I love best about asparagus is that it cooks so quickly. The flipside to that is that it overcooks very easily. I wanted to create something that would allow the asparagus to keep a nice bit of crunch.

Why not cook the pork quickly, too? So I sliced my chops thin and cooked them in a heavy-bottomed pan. In order to resist the urge to flip them too soon, I snapped the asparagus into one-inch chunks while the pork cooked. There’s no need to use a knife to cut the asparagus. When it’s fresh, you can snap it apart, a very satisfying activity. If it doesn’t snap easily, it’s not fresh enough. Because I didn’t move the pork around in the pan, it got nicely browned.

The Alfredo sauce isn’t a true Alfredo sauce, but it’s really delicious and fast to make. I hope you love it as much as I do! If you like, you can serve this over pasta. I chose to serve it on its own with a salad on the side. Delicious!

Recipe: Pork and Asparagus Alfredo

1T butter
3 T olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T onion, minced
1/8 t nutmeg
½ t black pepper
8 oz sour cream (low fat or fat free is fine)
½ C milk
1 C parmesan cheese, shredded
1 lb pork, sliced thin (about 2 boneless pork chops)
1 lb asparagus, cut in 1” chunks

In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter with one tablespoon of olive oil. Add the onions and garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds, until onion is translucent. Add the spices, sour cream, milk, and cheese. Lower the temperature to low and warm the mixture, stirring frequently, melting the cheese.

Heat a heavy-bottomed sauté pan on medium heat. Place about half of the pork in the pan, so that the meat is not overcrowded. Cook until brown, then flip over, about 1-2 minutes per side. Set aside the meat, cook the rest, and then set that aside, as well. Put the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and break up the browned bits that are stuck on the bottom of the pan. Add the asparagus chunks and sauté for about three minutes.

Return the pork to the pan and add the Alfredo sauce. Toss to coat everything well.

Christmas Crackers

Last year for the first time, I made Magic Wands, which are pretzels dipped into melted white almond bark and then sprinkled with colored sugar. The salty-sweet flavor made them a big hit. Such a simple treat, and yet they were the first thing that many people reached for when they approached the plate of cookies. (You can find a printable version of the recipe for Magic Wands at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php.)

So this year, when I decided to try to make up a recipe for a new Christmas treat, that salty-sweet combination was on my mind. I opened my pantry, and there sat an unopened box of Ritz crackers. Perfect! I would create something using the Ritz as a base. Its shape and size would make it both pretty and portable.

I didn’t want to just dip it in almond bark and sprinkle it with sugar, though, because that would be cheating. This needed to be a whole new recipe, something that would make people slap their foreheads and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?!”

Often when I’m writing a book, I start out with a really great title and then try to come up with a story to fit the title. (And then my editor or the marketing department ask me to change the title because it turns out that I do not have a talent for titles. Even so… ) Before I started contemplating ingredients, I thought about what I could name my new treat.

Christmas Ritz?

Putting on the Ritz?

On Britzen?

Somehow, I stumbled upon Christmas Crackers, and felt that thrilling “Aha!” rush through me. I’ve always found the British tradition of Christmas crackers to be charming, those brightly colored little pockets of wrapping paper, which pop open to reveal candy and toys.

So I would make my own version of Christmas Crackers with a Ritz cracker as the base with melted chocolate hiding a surprise inside.

On the outside, these treats look nearly identical, but each one contains a different surprise under the layer of chocolate. I experimented with several options. Pictured below are Parmesan cheese, caramel bits, marshmallows, and chopped peanuts.

I tried both Parmesan on its own and Parmesan over a layer of orange marmalade. Both were okay, but they weren’t as good as the four options I settled upon for the recipe. (The printable version of this recipe with its multiple fillings is also available at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php.)

Christmas Crackers

1 box (4 sleeves) of Ritz crackers
1 36-oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1-2 T vegetable shortening or coconut oil

Line four cookie sheets with parchment paper. (If you don’t have four cookie sheets, you can just lay the parchment paper out on any flat surface. You only really need the cookie sheet for the sleeves of crackers that will have the marshmallow filling.) Lay all four sleeves of crackers out on the parchment paper and cover each of the crackers with one of the following fillings.

Melt the chocolate and shortening in a double-boiler. If you don’t have a double-boiler, then boil water in a small saucepan and carefully balance a medium-sized saucepan over it. Stir constantly until chocolate is melted.

Cover each cracker thoroughly, hiding the filling. Refrigerate until set.

Caramel Filling:
1 C caramel bits or caramel candy
½ T heavy cream

In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the caramel and the cream. Heat in 30-second increments until melted, stirring after each time. Drop by scant spoonful onto each cracker.

Marshmallow Filling:

Place 3 mini marshmallows of half of one large marshmallow on each cracker. Broil for one minute, then flatten with a spoon. I overdid the broiling a little bit, but they still tasted great.


Peanut Butter Filling:
Spread a thin layer of creamy peanut butter on each cracker, then sprinkle heavily with chopped peanuts.


Mint Crème Filling:
¼ C butter, softened to room temperature
1 C powdered sugar
1 T green crème de menthe

In a mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Add crème de menthe and mix thoroughly. Spread a thin layer on each cracker.

Happy holidays!

Slow Cooker Mexican Lasagna

Remember, you can get a printable version of this and my other recipes at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php!

Slow cooker recipes are terrific on cold winter days. As the food cooks, the scent drifts through the house, and you feel like you’re being productive even long after the work is done. When evening rolls around, it feels like magic to go into the kitchen to a fully cooked meal. Putting a meal in the slow cooker is like giving a gift to the “you” of later that day.

I was in the mood for pasta, but I wanted to put my own twist on it, so I decided to try to create a recipe for Slow Cooker Mexican Lasagna. My husband was skeptical. He lives by a very specific set of rules and, as he put it, “Lasagna is Italian!”

Yes, okay… but I still made it, and it was so good that he was speaking Spanish by the end of the meal.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Mexican Lasagna

2 T olive oil
1 lb ground turkey
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 package of taco seasoning mix
2 15-oz cans of tomato sauce
1 15-oz can of pinto beans, drained and rinsed
16 oz low fat cottage cheese
8 oz bag of shredded Mexican cheese blend, divided
1 C fresh spinach, chopped
9-10 whole grain lasagna noodles

Brown the turkey in oil, then add the onions through beans. Stir well and set aside. Combine the cottage cheese with half of the Mexican cheese and all of the spinach.

Layer in the slow cooker like this:

One-fourth of the meat mixture
One-third of the noodles, broken up to cover the meat
One-third of the cheese
One-fourth of the meat mixture
One-third of the noodles, broken up to cover the meat
One-third of the cheese
One-fourth of the meat mixture
One-third of the noodles, broken up to cover the meat
One-third of the cheese
The rest of the meat mixture.

Cook on low for about 5-6 hours, until the noodles are soft. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top, cover, and allow to melt.

If desired, serve with sour cream, chopped green onions, and chopped cilantro.