At my house, I have an Instant Pot and a slow cooker, also known by the brand name, Crockpot.

As far as small electric kitchen appliances go, I also have a food dehydrator, an air-fryer, a countertop grill, a rice cooker, a waffle iron, a citrus juicer, an extractor juicer, an immersion blender, a Vitamix blender, a three-bowl hot pot, an ice cream maker, an electric skillet, a Cuisinart food processor, a KitchenAid stand mixer, 2 hand mixers, a deep fryer, a commercial coffee maker, a popcorn popper, an electric kettle, a 4-slot toaster, a Raclette grill, a sous vide, and the list goes on and on.

I bring this up not to brag about my plethora of appliances. The opposite, actually. If I hadn’t previously owned a cooking school, this would be embarrassing. The fact that the cooking school has been closed for coming up on 10 years makes it ridiculous! When I return to Arizona I plan to do some purging. One of the first things to go will be the Crockpot. When you have an Instant Pot, the slow cooker becomes redundant. In fact, all of the slow cooker recipes I’ve been posting these last two weeks have been made in Marissa’s Instant Pot on the slow cooker setting. Another thing that will be going to charity will be the popcorn popper. I bet that thing hasn’t been used for 25+ years!

As for the recipe below, Marissa and I discussed how to zip it up a bit more and decided that the addition of a diced bell pepper would be a good addition. That is added to the recipe below, though you won’t see it in the accompanying photos.

Instant Pot Lickity-Split Chicken Burrito Bowls

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped
• 3 garlic cloves peeled and minced
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch chunks
• 2 (1.25-ounce) packages taco seasoning
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 2 (15-ounce) cans corn kernels, drained
• 2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 cups fresh salsa, homemade or store-bought
• 2 (4.5-ounce) cans chopped green chiles
• 2 cups long-grain rice
• 2 cups shredded Mexican blend cheese, additional for garnish
• Sour cream, garnish
• 1 diced tomato, garnish
• 1 sliced green onion, garnish
• Chopped fresh cilantro leaves, garnish
• Hot sauce, garnish

Set a 6-qt Instant Pot to “sauté” and adjust to “high” or “more”. Add oil, when heated, add onion and bell pepper and sauté until soft and translucent. Season with salt and pepper, add the garlic, and turn off the pot.

I have been using the slow cooker much more on this trip to Chicago than on my month-long visit when Max was born in June. Mostly because I am his primary caregiver on weekdays while Marissa and Jeff are working. His longest nap is the first one in the morning, so I get everything prepped and into the cooker during that nap so that I don’t need to think about cooking for the rest of the day. The following recipe could easily be done in the oven, but then it would need more attention and I’d rather give all my attention to Max! *I made a half recipe, using only four chicken thighs. I found a Brussels spout sauté pack at Trader Joe’s that I served as the side dish.

Have you heard of Half Baked Harvest? I first discovered Tieghan Gerard on Instagram. I quickly purchased the “Every Day” cookbook, one for me and another for Marissa. I cooked out of it extensively when I was in Chicago that first month after Max was born. “Every Day” is Tieghan’s third cookbook. I have not cooked from “My Barn in the Mountains” or “Super Simple.” But I have tried out several recipes from her blog, including the recipe below.

I made a few adjustments, omissions, and additions to meet my likes and cooking style. You can see the original recipe here to compare.

The first issue for me was the instruction to keep the chicken the in skillet when adding the onion and peppers. Although I was using Marissa’s largest Le Creuset skillet, it just didn’t work. Everything didn’t truly fit into the skillet until the onions and peppers were cooked down, so I instruct to remove the chicken to a bowl. I understand why she wrote it that way, it is called a “one skillet meal” but it isn’t practical. And since there is already a bowl used to make the corn mixture, if you use the same bowl for the chicken to rest in and then to mix the corn in, it is the same number of items to use and clean.

Let’s see, what else… I added garlic, because, it’s garlic! I prefer a mix of Aleppo and Chipotle chili powders to basic chili powder. Oh, and Tieghan calls for mayonnaise as the garnish to be drizzled over the finished dish. That is not appealing to me. Once again, I see where she came up with that. True Mexican Street Corn has mayo, but I prefer sour cream to mayo for the drizzling. If I was to add mayo, I would sub out the yogurt in the corn mixture with mayo for a more authentic taste.

One last thing; although we all thought it was delicious as written, Marissa and I believe it would be even better to lift the chicken along with about half of the pepper/onion mixture, out of the sauce mixture once it is finished cooking, and palce in a separate bowl. Then double the number of tortillas, spread about half as much corn mixture on each, and fill the enchiladas with the chicken/pepper mixture too. (You may need to chop up the chicken strips to make them fit better.) Then place the enchiladas atop the salsa cooking liquid in the skillet, top with cheese, and follow the recipe from that point. Just another option to think about.

Read through my version and hers. Then feel free to mix it up with your preferred variations to make it your own. Enjoy!

With summer coming to a close, the kids back in school, and the “ber” months quickly approaching, how about a fun, festive, and tropical summer dish?

I often prefer cooking chicken thighs over chicken breasts. Thighs are juicy, more flavorful, and don’t dry out. I use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs most often.

The thing I don’t like about using skin-on chicken pieces is all the extra skin that is left on when you bring them home from the store.

Use your kitchen shears to trim off all that extra skin and discard.

This dish comes together in a snap, it only takes about 15 minutes to prep and is in the oven for about 45 minutes while you prepare the rest of the dinner. I like to serve the thighs and their rich herb sauce over couscous.

When you use the side of your chef’s knife to lightly smash the garlic cloves, you are looking for each clove to break up slightly, making each clove come apart into 2 or 3 smaller pieces. You don’t want to obliterate them, use a light touch.

You can purchase the pancetta at Trader Joe’s. It comes in a convenient 4-ounce package and is already diced into the perfect size. Simply open the package and scatter over the chicken when called for.

I saw this “recipe” on the stories of one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram, Cottonstem. If you’re on Instagram, I highly recommend you follow Erin. She is adorable, down-to-earth, extremely talented and creative.

Recipe writers and developers never include the simple small pantry items in recipes when they say things like “2 ingredient recipe,” so I’m not going to. You will need cornstarch, but I’m not counting that. Ditto with the tap water. And since you can eat this with a fork instead of in sandwich form, I’m not including the bread in the ingredient count either. All’s fair in love and cooking!

Connor came over to make me dinner on Mother’s Day. I pulled a bowl of this chicken mixture out for him to sample while he was chopping and dicing. He loved it and said, “Dang it, this is better than what I’m making for you!” As I type this, while he cooks, I can’t say if he is right or not. All I know is that I will love what he makes for me no matter what it is! Just having him here is all I need. Marissa and I connected on Facetime. All a mama wants is to see or be with her babes on Mother’s Day. The best gift is their love and presence.

Many of you follow me on Facebook and Instagram, either on my personal account or on the Harmony Boards accounts. Therefore, many of you may already know what happened to Cody Howard on January 18, 2020. Today I have an update for you and the entire story for those of you who know nothing.

Cody is the oldest son of my dear friend, Kim Howard. Kim and I worked together for years at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. More than just years, decades, actually. Kim and I came up with the idea of Harmony Boards while I was catering Cody’s wedding to Chanté in May 2018 in the forest outside Kingman, AZ. In fact, the first Harmony Board I made was for the cocktail hour of their wedding reception. Cody is a former US Marine turned contractor and has done many of the projects on my home, such as this complete bathroom remodel, this fireplace facelift, this made-from-scratch barn door, these beautiful shelves in my Harmony Boards office, and these new countertops, etc.

Cody is Kim and Paul Howard’s oldest child. Next is Bret, then only daughter, Susannah and then Trevor. Bret married Alyssa last year, and Susannah became engaged to Chad in January 2019, their wedding was scheduled for April 2020.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Cody, Bret, Trevor, and friends traveled to the Howard Family home in Canada for a bachelor weekend to celebrate with Chad. They rented snowmobiles to ride on the frozen lake. On that Saturday a snowstorm came and there was an accident, it involved the snowmobile that Bret, Cody, and Chad were riding. Bret was seriously injured. Chad was fine and at first, it seemed as though Cody was okay as well. The property is between Montreal and Ottawa. Ambulances from Ottawa were called and arrived some 90 minutes later. By then it was apparent, to at least Trevor, that Cody was not okay. Another 90-minute ride to Ottawa. There is more detail to the story than I know, but I do know that it took more than 7 hours to diagnose and get Cody into 9-hour emergency surgery for a dissected aorta, Goggle that and you will be scared to death. Meanwhile, Bret was in surgery getting his head sewn back together with a serious concussion and another surgery to repair his seriously injured bladder.

Can you even imagine being Chanté, at home with your 10-month-old son, receiving the news that your husband has been in a life-threatening accident, a country away, and is heading into surgery with a frightening low survival rate? Knowing that he should not have survived the accident, the agonizingly long wait for the ambulance, the ride to the hospital, all the testing to discover what was wrong, or being transferred to another hospital for said surgery?

Or being Kim and Paul and receiving that call telling you that two of your beloved sons have been in an accident and both are going into surgery and you are also a country away? The strength, faith, and hope of this family boggle my mind.

For the rest of the story, I’m going to send you to Chanté’s Instagram page. Please click on the link at the bottom of her profile and watch the beautiful video, read the updates posted there by the family and if you can donate to the Go Fund Me page, please do. If not, especially in this current climate of uncertainty, please say an extra prayer for Cody and his continued recovery and for the entire Howard family. Their story is the sort of inspiration that we can all use right now to acknowledge that as rough as it is for each and every one of us, others are in the same struggle plus a bit more. Quite a bit more.

I love you, Cody. I love you, Kim and Paul. Chanté and River. Bret and Alyssa. Susannah and Chad. Trevor and Clair. Maggie and Marcus and the entire extended Howard and Simpson clans. xoxo

Alright then, how about a recipe? Here is Stir-Fry #2. A follow-up to Stir-Fry #1 was posted yesterday.

In 1993, Barbara Pool Fenzl began writing her first cookbook, Southwest The Beautiful Cookbook. It was published in 1994. In the space between, I was her recipe tester. Barb would develop the recipes and then give me a stack of recipes for me to test, make suggestions, corrections, and such.  My family vividly remembers it because the batches of recipes came not as a menu, but in groups of the same type of dishes. So one week I’d be making 6 or 7 salads, the next week it would be 5 or 6 desserts, and so on. Honestly, we loved it.

Barb also gave me the opportunity to develop and contribute a recipe of my own to the cookbook. I decided on Tortilla Soup. The only prerequisite was that the soup should include a sauce Barb had developed for the sauce section of the book.  So this recipe uses Barb’s Red Chili Sauce. If you would rather just buy red chili sauce or red enchilada sauce, please take that shortcut. But by all means, make the soup, it is a family favorite.

The recipe also calls for four cooked chicken breast halves. You can substitute shredded rotisserie chicken if you’d like. Use 5 to 6 cups of shredded rotisserie.

Lastly, there aren’t as many in-process photos as I usually post with a recipe. That is because I made this for my final series at Les Gourmettes Cooking School, so I was only able to take photos of the pre-prep I did at home before loading it all up and taking it to the class.

Tortilla Soup

Soup

• 2 tablespoons corn oil
• 3 corn tortillas, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• 1 jalapeño chili, cored, seeded, and minced
• 2 Anaheim chilies, roasted, peeled, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
• 8 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced *see photo below
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup red chili sauce (recipe below) or use store-bought red enchilada sauce
• 2 whole cooked chicken breasts, shredded
• 1 ripe avocado, pitted, peeled, and diced

Garnish

• 4 corn tortillas
• Pam
• Salt and chili powder
• 1/2 cup grated Monterey jack cheese
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Soup: Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the tortilla pieces, reduce heat and cook until they are golden and brown, and slightly crisp.  Add the onion and cook for 3 minutes, then add the garlic and jalapeño and cook another 2 minutes.

Add the Anaheim, tomatoes, and tomato paste; cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the cumin and cayenne; slowly whisk in the chicken broth and the red chili sauce and simmer the soup for about 20 minutes, or until slightly reduced. Add the shredded chicken and avocado and heat until warmed through.

Garnish: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stack and cut the tortillas into julienne strips. Spray a baking sheet with Pam, place the tortilla strips on a baking sheet and spray them with more Pam. Cook in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until brown and crisp.

Remove from the oven a spray with Pam one last time and then sprinkle generously with salt and chili powder.

To serve, ladle soup into bowls and garnish with the grated cheese, cilantro, and baked tortilla strips.

Serves 6

It is well known that I love soup. French Onion Soup is at the top of my list. I have been craving it since my dear friends, Scott and Amy Kilpatrick, went to Paris to celebrate their 25^th Anniversary back in June.

While planning their trip, they asked me for recommendations on where to eat and things to do. I sent them This Link to one of my blog posts from nearly 8 years ago.

At the top of my must-eat list is the French Onion Soup at Royal Madeleine. They went and I was soon receiving texts that the restaurant does not serve the soup in the summer.

Dang, it! I had no idea. I cropped off more of Scott’s text since it was too derogatory and obscene towards “French Frogs” for me to repeat here. I do love him, he’s a funny and adorably sarcastic guy! And Amy is just the sweetest, I adore her and you already know her too. She is The Amy of Amy’s Famous Taco Soup.

Anyhow, the last time we were there it was late May and the soup was on the menu. I guess it comes off at the end of May. It made me sad they missed out but I understand. I don’t enjoy soup as much in the heat of summer either, which is why, even though I’ve been craving it for months, I have yet to make it.

Well, I tamed a bit of the craving when I made this French Onion Soup inspired recipe for our Sunday supper. I should have thought to invite Amy and Scott over to make up for their disappointment.

A few notes before we get to the recipe. Do not rush to process caramelizing the onions. It takes time, about an hour, to get them just right. In the photo above, they had been cooking for 45 minutes. I had browned off all the chicken in the meantime. It took another 5 minutes or so after that for them to get even the slightest bit of color.

But then, just like that, they were done about 10 minutes later. It will happen. Don’t get frustrated.

Also, don’t fret about the chicken not being cooked through when you’re browning it. It will cook to perfection in the oven later, I promise.

Lastly, four pounds of onions is a lot of onion! You’re going to need a very large skillet to not only cook them all down in but to also fit all the chicken thighs in one layer. If you don’t have a big skillet, the reicpe can easily be cut in half. And I call for 8 to 10 chicken thighs, because when you buy the family pack from the grocery store, that is what you get, somewhere between 8 and 10 thighs per package.

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I know I said I’d post the recipe for the salad we ate the night before last, and I promise to get to that soon, but we had such a fun day yesterday, that I’d rather talk about that for now.

It was cloudy and foggy over the lake when I awoke. Then the thunder rolled in and the rain began. The lake house was so cozy and dark, it felt like fall for a moment and I was in heaven. Summer drags on when you live in the desert, so even a few moments of what feels like fall is a complete joy.

Our morning plans to paddle board was put on hold. Kim knows how and Debby and I were eager to learn.

photo credit: Pinterest

Oh, before I go any further, I should mention that I was a bit tentative about being the first person to get up and leave my room. And for good reason, the first night here we saw that we had another resident in the house with us. A mouse. Granted, he was little and even, dare I say, cute. We tried to shoo him out the door with a broom but he wasn’t having any of that. Kim set out a no-kill trap but it didn’t work. We saw him again the next night, Debby set four mousetraps with peanut butter and placed them around the kitchen. So, the first person up was going to have to deal with a dead mouse and I didn’t want that to be me.

But I was getting sore from sitting in bed and typing my post. I had to get up so I could sit at the table to type. I quietly crept out and peeked around the corner … no mouse. All the peanut butter was gone but thankfully, no smashed mouse.

Yay for me. Yay for the mouse. But then again, we still have a mouse in the house, so no bueno!

The rain stopped. Kim and I went running errands and grocery shopping in the little town of Ripon. Two of the things at the top of our list were more mousetraps and Snicker’s bars, which will hopefully work better than the peanut butter. Debby stayed behind to read and hold down the fort.

When we returned, Kim taught us to stand-up paddleboarding (SUP). She may also have given us a short lecture on the details of SUP. Though practically, it wasn’t that easy to paddle. For me, the hardest part was going from the kneeling stage to the standing stage. I had to do Lamaze-style deep breathing and talk myself into being brave and just doing it.

After much hesitation and nearly psyching myself out, I did it. Debby did too. We were quite pleased with ourselves. The Howards have two paddle boards. I came to shore and Kim took that board out. Most of my pride washed away as I watched her pop right up and quickly paddle down the lake in the blink of an eye. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Next, we went out on the pontoon boat and took a tour around the entire lake.

It’s a long lake! You can’t see from one end to the other. It curves and twists and there are cute islands and peninsulas. Kim and Paul not only own the lake but also the 550 (approx.) acres of wooded land that surround it. This is a very special and magical place that has been in the Howard family for generations.

After our cocktail boat tour, I made another recipe inspired by a doctor’s office waiting room magazine find. The perfect end to a perfect day.

OK, not quite the end and not perfectly perfect. Kim and Debby set a total of 10 mousetraps with the Snickers. Without a doubt, I’m sleeping in this time.

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