It’s time for a giveaway!
I was so excited (and totally shocked, and flabergasted, and blown away, and knocked off my rocker… you get the idea) to have reached over 3000 Facebook friends a couple of weeks ago. Really? I’m so incredibly humbled.
So… I want to celebrate YOU by giving something really cool away.
I am a huge fan of America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated Magazine. Seriously ya’ll… they test the recipes several times until they get it just right. They’ve taken all the work out of it for you. If you follow one of their recipes, you WILL be successful. I promise.
I just purchased a copy of Cook’s Illustrated’s 2010 annual cookbook. Basically, the book is a year’s worth of the magazine in a hard cover. Really! They took every issue of the magazine (including the index, extra notes, etc) and slapped a cover on it. There is an entire year’s worth of tested recipes in one handy location. I love that!
I love it a lot.
But I love you more.
So… I’m giving it away.
To win a copy of this awesome cookbook, simply post a comment on my Facebook page (here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/shecooksp31).
(If you do not have Facebook, please post a comment here sharing a funny story. It can be about anything. I just like to laugh and this seems like a good way to get some laughs this week.)
The winner will be announced on Monday, along with a wonderful recipe from the cookbook. For today… here’s one of the recipes from the book that I made over the weekend.
Oh… and here’s a peek at the recipe I’m eying next. Doesn’t this look yummy?!
OK – here’s the recipe for Chicken Parmesan Roll-Ups. They were very easy to make and delicious. Instead of breading and frying cutlets and topping with marinara sauce and cheese, you roll the chicken cutlets around the cheese and bake in the marinara sauce with a breadcrumb topping. It’s a lighter version of the higher calorie classic.
Chicken Parmesan Roll-Ups
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup olive oil, divided
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes (they recommend Hunt’s)
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
- 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 6 thin-cut boneless, skinless chicken cutlets, about 1 1/4 pounds
- salt and pepper
- 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 475 degrees. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in medium saucepan over medium heat until simmering. Add onion and cook until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in half of the basil. Spoon half of the sauce into the bottom of an 8 or 9 inch square baking dish.
Combine mozzarella and Parmesan in a medium bowl; reserve 1/2 cup. Add remaining basil to remaining cheese. Pat cutlets dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Top cutlets with the basil-cheese mixture, leaving 1 inch at the top of each cutlet. Roll up tightly and arrange, seam side down, on top of tomato sauce in baking dish.
Toss breadcrumbs with remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a small bowl. Top the chicken with the reserved cheese, remaining sauce, and then the breadcrumb mixture. Bake until chicken is cooked through and crumbs are golden, 15-20 minutes.
Serves 4.
Sweetest Blessings,
LeAnn
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
When my daughter was about 2-1/2 I asked her one evening what she did at daycare that day and she said very matter-of-factly, “we just sat around lookin’ like jerks!”
I made your Really Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies to give to a friend, loved that it made such a large batch and could divide them up for us and my friend. My son really liked them, he snuck 2 when I wasnt looking. I am staying away from sweets so havent tried them yet. Thanks for your great recipes.
Hi LeAnn,
Thanks so much for blessing us with all your yummy recipes! Cooking is one of my favorite things to do and I always love to see a new recipe from She Cooks.
A few years ago when my son was in middle school we went into a local drug store. We were walking down one of the aisles when I felt like I had a bug or something crawling up inside my capri jeans. I started screaming and shaking my leg, trying to shake the bug loose. Instead of a bug, out on the floor dropped a pair of my panties! Yes. I said panties. Black, silky ones! Needless to say, my middle school son was mortified. He couldn’t figure out how in the world my panties fell off in the middle of a store! I laugh out loud as I type this out. We were both in that same store this week and I couldn’t resist the urge to remind him and caution him to watch out for panties on the loose! He turns red and I start laughing so hard, I’m crying. The check-out lady must have thought I was crazy.
Note to ladies: Always make sure when you slip on a pair of jeans you might have had on the night before that there are no panties inside. You never know when they might make an appearance!
I would love to win the cookbook, so I posted a link to the recipe…
I don’t have a FB, but a funny story that comes to mind is when my daughter was about 2, she asked how we were going to get to heaven one day. I told her Jesus would carry us up there when it was time. She got a very concerned look on her face and said, “But we’ll be too heavy for him! Can we just take an airplane?”
I wrote it in her baby book it was so cute!
I made all your recipes for Easter and they were a big hit with my family. Thanks so much.
I have no funny story today – not that I can print!
I don’t have a FB, but a funny story happened about a year ago. I was putting my daughter’s (age 3 then) pj’s on her one night. Our conversation went like this:
Emily: “These jammies are cute. Where did we get them?”
Me: “Don’t you remember, you picked them out at the store last week.”
Emily: “Oh yeah, what store did we get them out.”
Me: “JcPenneys”
Emily: “WHAT? Jesus’s panties? Jesus doesn’t wear panties!!!”
Me: Laughing so hard I could hardly talk, “No honey, JcPenney’s”
She kept on, but I had to leave the room I was laughing so hard!
Oh boy! Fresh basil in the garden…now if my tomatoes would hurry and make I’d be in business. This looks fabulous! And I’m linking to your givaway on my blog!! Thanks for the giveaway!!
I was heating up Italian sausages for dinner and held one up to see if they were warmed through. They were very hot and the sausage grazed the side of my face while I was touching it to my lips. I asked my daughter if I had a red mark/burn on my face and she said, “No mom, I just see a crease.”
Thank you for your delicious recipes. God Bless.
I just wanted to tell you that I am having so much fun cooking up your recipes.
I made the lemon fluff pie last week and my whole family just adored it. My husband couldn’t stop eating it. I also make your sugar snap pea saute at least once a week now. My teenage son requests it! Keep on postin’!
Oh, what a great idea. These are some funny stories. Love them. 2 1/2 years ago, I was in an auto accident and had to recuperate 1800 miles from where I lived. My husband, bless his heart, was the mom and dad to both our kids. My kids were texting and talking to me on the phone and kept saying they smelled something funny. I kept asking questions but they couldn’t figure it out at all. Come to find out, my husband had decided to make cookies. My cookie sheets came with the lids…yep…he had put both the cookie sheet and the lid in the oven. They still laugh about it – they said the house smelled horrible for days. Needless to say, they did not get to enjoy that batch of cookies. Nanci
When my son was about 4, I had made some banana nut bread and sliced it to make it easy for him to grab a piece to snack on whenever he got the urge. (Boys eat CONSTANTLY, it gets worse when they are 16! ha) Anyway, we were in the bedroom watching TV and he jumped up to go get a snack… he came back with two pieces of banana nut bread. He had halved a large piece and told me, “This piece is for you, Mommy!” I was so touched that he brought me a piece to share and I told him so. He said, “Yeah, it broke in half and that half fell on the floor.” ((GRIN)) Gotta love kids.
The other day, my 3 year old son and I were leaving church and we walked by our pastor. My son nonchalantly waived and said “Hey, God.” Our pastor about had a heart attack!
On the day my grandson learned about the ‘good old days’ in his first grade social studies class, he asked his mother “exactly when the good old days” were. She answered, “When Granddaddy and Mamm were alive.” …to which Will questioned, “Are they dead today?” Hmmm, my son shared this story…not my sweet daughter-in-law!
Really Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies…
Really Great! Thanks, Really!
Keep the good recipes comin’! We love them!
I don’t have a facebook account so here’s a funny (or not so funny!) cooking story from this week… Made banana bread and doubled the recipe. However, with a 3 and 2 year old helping me I got distracted and forgot to double the flour. Wow, that was some VERY MOIST banana bread! The kids ate it fine though
Last nite my 7 yr old grandson was writing about a hornet’s life cycle and how long each stage lasted. The last stage was “death” and his comment was “a long day”.
When we moved to CA we spent a few nights in a hotel before getting into our house. We ran to get some milk and my husband came back with lemon pound cake – in the plastic pack all sliced up. The next morning we awoke to find our 3 year old had made breakfast for us. He took the cake, put it on a napkin and had one at each place. It was awesome and my husband and I just giggled at cake for breakfast! Fast forward 11 years and this morning he made French Toast from scratch! Today he graduates from 8th grade and it seems like just yesterday he made us cake for breakfast! I love that he’s 14 and WANTS to make all 6 family members breakfast on his last day of school! Makes a momma’s heart proud! Have a great day and keep sharing these yummy recipes!
I was blessed to have a mom who loves to cook delicious meals but unfortunately early in my adult life I was not as blessed with that same talent.
The first time I ever cooked for my in-laws could possibly go down as the longest breakfast – ever.
Menu consisted of pancakes, bacon and toast. Easy, right?
Well, one and a half hours into cooking (yes, that is right 1 1/2 hours) my father in law asked me in his kindest voice if he was there for breakfast or lunch?
Thankfully my husband came to my rescue and helped me finish the breakfast (originally didn’t want him in “my” kitchen).
And guess what??
The pancakes were not even cooked all the way through. The amazing in-laws I have didn’t even seem to mind or were just plain starving and did the best they could to eat my mess.
Funny how life turns out because breakfast is now my favorite menu of the day, everything is cooked through and it does not even take me 1 1/2 hours
My step-mom is a wonderful cook, however, there was a little ‘incident’ with the turkey on the 1st Thanksgiving diner she prepared for our family… she opened the oven door to baste the turkey and because it was just a wee bit too big for the pan, it slid right out of the pan down the oven door and onto the floor. And there it sat…she just non-chalantly picked it up, washed the bottom, put it back in the pan for our dinner. I don’t know if anyone else knew what happened, but, we still chuckle about it.
Hi LeAnn,
I love cookbooks and trying new recipes. One year for vacation bible school I had several of our sweet golden agers working in our kitchen preparing the snacks for our children. The curriculum that we use have these wonderful snack cards with recipes and pictures that go along with the theme for that year. I picked a few of the cards that were easy and fun and asked these ladies to prepare them for our snack each night. The first card was very simple, it was a snack mix consisting of only bugles and cheese balls. Very simple, at least I thought. About an hour into Bible school several of the children began complaining about how terrible the snack was that night. I took off to the kitchen to see what the problem was. When I walked in the ladies immediately began telling me that the kids did not like tonight’s snack. I said how can they not like bugles and cheese balls? Then I looked over and saw this frozen pink concoction with cheese balls and bugles sticking out of it sitting on the counter! I gently said, what is this? The lady replied that she followed the recipe on the card that I gave her and this is how it turned out. I immediately picked up the card and realized on the back it also had a pink lemonade punch recipe that you could make to go along with the snack mix. The lady thought that both sides were the complete recipe. So she had mixed up this elaborate punch recipe to which she added bugles and cheese balls. Then froze it. When she got ready to serve it she dished it out and added ginger ale to it! The kids were mortified! I have never laughed so hard! We still talk about the year we had bugle and cheese ball punch. I think that is the most memorable VBS I have ever had.
Rhonda Carroll
Chattanooga, TN
This Spring we have had a problem in our yard with the neighbor’s bamboo invading our property. In the adjoining back yard there are some bamboo trees that are 20 foot tall and it looks like a forest of bamboo. A friend’s daughter was here visiting and looked in our backyard and asked”Do you have pet pandas here?”
The first year I worked at church camp I was a kitchen assistant to another girl my age (we were 16). We had a head cook (read experienced adult cook) for lunch and supper, but we were in charge of breakfast. I don’t kow if we converted 5# bags of dry oatmeal to cups wrong or if it was dry measure to wet that we did wrong, but we had oatmeal that could have been used for mortar. When we scooped it out of the big pan on the stove into serving bowls for the tables, it stayed in the form of the scoop. We laughed til we cried and then got out the boxes of cold cereal. Rumor has it you can still find the oatmeal in the old camp dump…probably still in scoop form. By the way, it’s 40+ years later and a group of us including the adult cook who is now 92 years old still stay in contact and get together a couple times a year.
I am so blessed!
My younger two girls are 10 and 6, and it seems that something pretty funny happens or is said every day. Here is today’s “funny” (condensed). Tomorrow is the 4th grade girls’ maturation talk. My 10 year old was expressing angst about it. I said, “If you aren’t ready to hear it, don’t worry. They’ll give it to you again next year. We’ve already talked about it a bit – and I used to teach it, so you know we can always talk about it anytime you want.” She said, “OK. (pause) How about when I’m 32?”
I made the chicken parm roll-ups tonight for my family. It was a HUGE hit. So delicious and so easy. Thanks for the recipe.
This recipe looks JUST GREAT! Keep ‘em coming. And, I loved reading all the funny stories.
http://bringingyoumorethanasong.blogspot.com/
Love your blog! Recipes are great too. . .have tired most of them
Would love to win the cookbook but sorry have no funny stories to share.