pinteresting recipes

Like many others, I do more pinning than making when it comes to Pinterest. Earlier this week I was inspired to make a few recipes that I had pinned... they all turned out great!

My first project was Crispy Coconut Chicken Fingers:

image source: Our Best Bites

I pinned this recipe almost a year ago, but held off on trying it because of the "exotic" ingredients... panko? coconut flakes? oh my... but on a recent trip down the baking aisle at my local grocery store I noticed that these ingredients are easily accessible and a far cry from exotic. I followed the recipe from Our Best Bites pretty closely, but made a few modifications. I left out the onion powder, because I hate buying spices just for one recipe. I figured that the garlic would give it enough flavor. I also used garlic salt instead of garlic powder, so I just left out the table salt that it called for. I can thank my Grandma Verna for my willingness to sub/omit ingredients- she did it all the time, even in baking (some modifications were more successful than others... I think everyone in the family was disappointed when she ran out of butter and made cookies with lard instead!).  Anyways, this recipe was great- I'll definitely make it again. This was much tastier than heat and eat frozen chicken strips! Oh, and as a side note, I tried sweet and sour sauce for the first time in my life when I made this recipe... I can't believe what I've been missing out on!

Next up was Baked Chicken Ranch Taquitos:

Image Source: Six Sisters' Stuff

This recipe was seriously easy! Justin cooked the chicken in the crockpot when I was at work and we had leftover bacon on hand from weekend brunch. DO NOT leave out the green onions in this recipe- they made a huge difference! I didn't measure out 3-4 tablespoons like the recipe called for- I just chopped up about 4-5 and called it a day. My only other sub was using cheddar cheese instead of montery jack. Technique wise, we added more filling tortillas than the original recipe- we probably made about 12 taquitos. We also skipped mixing the shredded cheese with the chicken mixture- we just put the chicken mixture in the tortilla, added some cheese, and then rolled up the tortilla.

I will definitely make these again! Justin was a bit skeptical when he saw the ingredients getting mixed together, but he was a fan. These also reheated pretty well and made for a yummy lunch.

My final pinteresting recipe was Parmesan Pull Aparts:

Image Source: Life as a Lofthouse

This is a super simple way to jazz up canned biscuits! Of course I had modifications... I don't have a large enough round baking pan, so I used a square 8x8 pan instead. I also used one can of biscuits instead of two (but didn't half the butter or cheese). I skipped the minced onion and used garlic salt and Italian seasonings instead. I didn't bother measuring out any of the spices, I just gave everything a couple of shakes and it looked good enough. I subbed shredded Parmesan for grated (we never use the grated stuff, so I didn't want it to go to waste). You would be fine skipping the parm all together and just using a little bit more mozzarella (which surprise, surprise I didn't measure out but eyeballed instead).

Hopefully Justin and I can keep our cooking mojo going and find some more great recipes on Pinterest. I don't mind cooking, my biggest challenge is coming up with interesting/yummy things to make.