Cheesy Broccoli Twice Baked Potatoes

Over the past couple of days we've been eating your typical easy BBQ foods: hot dogs, hamburgs, macaroni salad, chips etc. It seems this time of year holds a lot of birthdays in my family so we've  been celebrating by of course BBQing. I did manage to cook something other than hot dogs: Cheesy Broccoli Twice Baked Potatoes. I love twice baked potatoes! I try different recipes all the time. I received inspiration from a magazine to try this new variation.

Cheesy Broccoli Twice Baked Potatoes

3 large white potatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 cup milk
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Clean and scrub potatoes. Pierce potatoes with fork and microwave for 10-12 minutes or until potatoes are fully cooked.
Meanwhile boil broccoli until tender. Drain water from broccoli and set aside.
Once potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut lengthwise in half. Scoop out insides of potatoes, leaving 1/4 inch around skin. Add scooped out potato insides to a bowl with cooked broccoli, set aside.
Heat butter in a small pot over medium until melted. Add flour to butter and whisk for 2 minutes. Add 1 cup of milk to flour/butter mixture and continue whisking until sauce thickens. Add cheddar cheese and garlic salt, stirring until cheese is all melted. Remove from heat
Add 3/4 of the cheese sauce to potatoes and broccoli and mash with a potato masher or hand-held electric mixer( I prefer the electric).
Scoop broccoli mixture back into potato shells and top with remaining cheese sauce. Bake potatoes on greased baking sheet for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Chicken Noodle Soup

The other day I had a craving for chicken noodle soup. It was a strange craving considering I am not unwell or pregnant and it's now June. Oh well, I made soup anyways haha.

Chicken Noodle Soup

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 stalks celery + leaves
2 carrots
3 cloves garlic
8 cups chicken broth
2 bone-in skinless chicken breasts
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
2 bay leaves
2 cups cooked egg noodles

Finely dice onion, celery leaves and garlic. Chop celery stalks and carrots. Heat olive oil on medium low in a large stock pot. Add onion, celery stalks and leaves, garlic and carrots. Sweat vegetables for approximately 10-15 minutes until onions start to become translucent.

Add chicken breast to pot and cover with 4 cups of broth or until broth is just cover chicken. Add thyme, oregano and bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Remove chicken breasts from pot. On cutting board, remove meat from chicken breast, discard bones and place meat into pot. Remove bay leaves from pot. Add remaining chicken broth and egg noodles. Heat until desired temperature has been reached; approximately 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Blueberries and Baby

The other night, while making dinner, my fiancé called to me to come look at our son's poop.( I know, what a way to start a blog post.) I left dinner to go examine this strange looking diaper. It was almost BLACK! So I did what most people do in this day and age and ask my good friend google about it. And the results.... Internal bleeding. I started to panic. It looked like coffee grounds so that's what I googled. The poop was very dark and left specks on his bum that were very hard to get off. I informed my fiancée of the information I found and we proceeding to get ready to go to the ER.

At the ER the triage nurse asked us a series of questions and I showed her the pooped filled diaper we were carrying around. One of the questions she asked: what did he have to eat today? Oh man he had blueberries, but I started reasoning that he has had blueberries before and this has never happened.

So the 3 of us settled ourselves in the waiting room for what will be a couple hour wait. Once comfortable I reexamined the diaper under the fluorescent hospital lighting. SHIT! Those little "coffee grounds" now look like seeds. Did I feed him too many blueberries this morning? I shared my epiphany to J(fiancé). He reexamined the diaper as I pointed out the seeds. Slowly I could see the look on his face as it dawned on him as well. CRAP! Are we now looking like some overly neurotic parents carrying around a shitty diaper, with a baby out past his bedtime?

We decided to stay and wait it out. We finally saw the dr and he agreed that the poop did look quite weird. He took a swab to test for blood but was hopeful my son just ate too many blueberries. (The doctor was very nice about everything and reassured us we weren't being silly). The results came back... Negative! Of course I was absolutely thrilled the only thing that was wrong was my son ate too many blueberries but I couldn't help but feel a little silly.

photo credit: Mr. T in DC via photopin cc