A Mexican Fiesta

 



The Allstar Program for Allrecipes had 2 sponsors this month: Herdez Cooking Sauces and Sauza® Blue Agave Tequila. Since the weather was perfect I thought about having a Fiesta using both sponsors to celebrate the warmer weather. So I invited a few friends over and I made a few pitchers of margaritas and fed them good. The party was perfect and we enjoyed ourselves.


Sauza® Mint Margito

I made a few pitchers of different Margaritas. the first one was the Mint Margito which was the favorite of the night.

You'll Need:

Serves 4

• 1 cup Sauza® Blue Silver 100% Agave Tequila*
• 2 cups club soda
• ¼ cup fresh lime juice
• 1 bunch of fresh mint
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• ice

*If Sauza® Blue Silver isn’t available, try Sauza® Silver

To Make:

In a small pitcher, muddle together the mint leaves, sugar and lime juice until they start to melt together. Add your Sauza® Blue Silver. Fill 4 glasses with ice and pour cocktail mixture ¾ of the way to the top of each glass. Fill each glass with club soda and garnish with a lime and an extra sprig of mint.

 

 

Sauza® Raspberry Margarita

Next we made the Raspberry Margarita and that was real good.

 

You'll Need:

9 ounces Sauza ® Silver Tequila

3 ounces Dekuyper® Razzmatazz                 

24 ounces Margarita Mix

GARNISH:                                                                  

Lime Wedge

 

To Make:

 

Combine the ingredients without ice and shake vigorously. Then just pour the mixture over ice in a 14 oz glass, garnish and enjoy the raspberry sensation.

 



 

 I also served a Chipotle Grilled Flank steak and a Slow Cooker Roasted Pasilla Chile Pork Tacos. Served it with Charro beans, tortillas, rice, salsa and guacamole. 

 



Chipotle Flank Steak

Chipotle Grilled Flank steak

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups Herdez Traditional Chipotle Cooking sauce 
• 4 large garlic cloves
• 1 Jalapeno
• 1/2 yellow onion
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or olive oil
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin 
• 1 lime, juiced 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro
• 1 teaspoon Mexican Oregano
• 1 (2 pound) skirt steak or flank steak

Directions

1. In a blender container, combine cooking sauce and remaining ingredients except meat. Cover and run on high until smooth. Reserve 1/2 cup of the mixture for basting the steak on the grill.
2. Trim steak of any visible fat. Place steak in a non-metallic baking dish or seal able plastic bag. Add marinade; turn meat to coat. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, turning meat one or more times while marinating.
3. Preheat grill to medium-high heat. Drain meat and discard marinade. Grill skirt steak about 7 minutes over direct heat with cover closed. Turn meat then baste meat with reserved sauce; grill with cover closed 3 minutes more or until cooked as desired.
4. Brush any remaining sauce on steak and serve with warm corn tortillas and salsa.                







Slow cooker Roasted Pasilla Chile Pork Tacos

Ingredients

• 1 Jar Herdez Roasted Pasilla Chile Cooking sauce
• 1 beer
• 4 large
•  garlic cloves
• 1 cup Chicken Broth
• 2 Jalapenos 
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 tablespoon Vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin 
• 1 lime, juiced 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (for the sauce)
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro 
• 2 teaspoons dried Mexican Oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1/4 teaspoon Pepper
• 1 (3 pound) Pork Butt

Garnish:

Salsa

Cotija Cheese

Warmed Tortillas

Radishes

Lime wedges

Chopped Cilantro

Sour Cream

 

Directions

1. Heat oil in a skillet then season pork butt with salt and pepper and place in hot skillet to sear, till browned turning until all sides are browned.
2. Place remaining ingredients into the crock pot and stir. Then Remove pork butt from the skillet and add to the crock pot and cover.
3. Cook for 7 hours on low. Then remove roast to a cutting board and chop it up or shred it with 2 forks.
4. Return the pork back to the crock pot for another hour or two.
5. Remove the pork from the crock pot into a serving bowl
6. Take a hand blender and blend it until smooth. Pour a little bit of the sauce onto the pork chunks.
7. Serve with the garnish items             

 

I hope you enjoy these recipes, I know we did.  I want to thank Herdez and Sauza for being our brand sponsor this month for the Allrecipes Allstars Ambassador Program.

 

 Disclaimer

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com.

Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of Janet Henderson-My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey

   

 





My Sausage Journey for March

March has been an unusually cold month for me this year and I live in Florida.  This has been the coldest March on record for my little town. So, when I received my March activities for Allrecipes Allstars Ambassador Program with Johnsonville Sausages,  our brand sponsors for this month,  I thought "YUM"... this should be good comfort food to warm our tummies!  I really enjoyed making these dishes and my family enjoyed eating them,too.  I hope you will enjoy these dishes too.
This month I made 4 dishes using Johnsonville Sausages. By the way, I was surprised to see all the different varieties of sausages. Though I mostly used Italian sausage for these recipes but you can try mixing it up a bit by using the Andouille sausage for the Shrimp and grits or maybe a chicken sausage for the Pesto. Experiment and enjoy.

.

 My first and one of my favorites was Hot Italian Sausage and Shrimp with Asiago Grits
This was so good that there were no leftovers, not even a bite. The grits were creamy and the sauce was a bit spicy but you can adjust it to your taste by not adding as much Cajun spice. I added more Cajun spice and some red pepper flakes because we like it spicy. It sure warmed us up on a cold March evening.

My second recipe and also my other favorite was

the Amazing Muffin Cups and they were definitely amazingly good! Eggs, breakfast link sausage, red bell pepper, and cheese are baked in hash brown potato 'cups' for a delicious breakfast that will feed a crowd.  I made these for a Sunday Brunch for just my husband and I.  The leftovers were great for breakfast on the go or a quick snack. Yum. One tip... be sure to really grease up the muffin pans good so the muffin cups come out easy. Now I am craving these again.

My third dish was a Creamy Pesto Gnocchi with Italian Sausage. A creamy pesto and Italian sausage sauce bring lots of flavor to gnocchi. We really enjoyed this dish, too. I added baby peas and made my own pesto sauce. Pesto sauce is easy to make and it tastes so much better when it's made fresh. Very simple and easy to make. Especially when you use a mini food processor. (My favorite appliance in my kitchen) here is a link to one of my favorite Pesto Sauces. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/15-year-old-pesto-sauce/detail.aspx

My fourth dish was Classic Beef Stuffed Peppers. You ask what's up? That has beef in it.
Well, we were asked to take a dish that we normally use ground beef and recreate it using Italian sausage. So I recreated this one using Italian sausage in place of the ground beef. This turned out really good, better than I expected. It took a bland dish and spiced it up. This dish uses a spaghetti sauce as it's sauce  I just added red pepper flakes, Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese in place of the cheddar cheese, since I was aiming at more of an Italian dish.  Just like sausage and peppers. Yum! Plus, it's great on a cold night to warm you up inside.

I hope you enjoyed these recipes, I know I did.
I want to thank Johnsonville for being our brand sponsor this month for the Allrecipes Allstars Ambassador Program.

 

 Disclaimer

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com.

Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of Janet Henderson-My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey

My Sweet and Miraculous December

Happy Holidays Everyone. Let me start with the Sweet part of my December.  As an Allrecipes Allstar, December was a month for our World’s Biggest Cookie Swap board" on Pinterest and a month for Cookies. Yum! My "World’s Biggest Cookie Swap board" has a variety of cookies to try. Please check it out  http://pinterest.com/janh1012/worlds-biggest-cookie-swap/  sponsored by Allrecipes.

Thanks to our sponsors Nestlé and Ladies Home Journal. They had lots of good tips and recipes to help me make my cookies and sweets for this Holiday season.

White Chip Orange Cookies    These cookies were amazing and my favorite! Great combination with just the right amount of butter, white chocolate and orange.  Everyone that tried them loved them and asked me for the recipe.

 Dark Chocolate Cherry Fudge   This is an easy recipe for some tasty fudge. I loved the Cherries in it. I also added a few marshmallows to the top for decoration and for the kids.

 Jumbo Dark Chocolate Cookies  These were like an explosion of Chocolatey goodness. Easy to make, too.

Sweet and Salty Toll House Cookies  If you are craving Sweet and Salty this the perfect cookie for you. The flavors of Chocolate with the salty pretzels and chips work real good in this cookie.



         Butterscotch Haystacks  

Crunchy and sweet stacks made with peanut butter, marshmallows and chowmein noodles. Easy to put together.

Now the miraculous part of my story that I just had to share with you. As some of you know that I was adopted and I have always wanted to know about my birth family. Well, I found my older sister in October, 2012. We were separated by adoption 47 years ago when I was 2 1/2 years old. Well my sister (Lillie) came for a visit for a whole week, a few weeks ago. We spent that time getting to know each other and having some girl time. We went to the beach a few times, shopping, cooked some good food and we had some long talks.  As we got to know each other better we found out how much we have in common and we developed a very special bond. It was a time that I will always treasure. It was hard to let her get on that plane to go home. It was a miracle that we found eachother and it made my Holidays even sweeter.

  

My sister Lillie

 I hope you are enjoying the holidays and  that you will try a few of the cookies I have mentioned. They will make your holidays a bit sweeter. Happy New Year!



 Disclaimer

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com.

Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of Janet Henderson-My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey



My Mini Celebration

Brrr it is a cold November morning for Florida as I sit here thinking about the festivities to come. I just finished planning my Thanksgiving Menu and I am real excited about it. Most of all, I am excited to have my family all together for the Holiday. Should be fun. Now that my menu is finalized it's time for my "Mini Celebration" My mini Celebration is where I like to test some of the recipes I plan to make for the big dinner and where I make notes of any changes that needs to be made before the Big Dinner.

Being part of the Allstar Ambassador program for Allrecipes and we get a monthly assignment and this month we have partnered with Cambell's Kitchen. I have used a lot of Campbell's recipes in the past so this is great for me. I thought I would include some of the recipes from my assignment in my "Mini Celebration". 

Let's start with Dessert! Yum!



These were amazing! Light and creamy mousse with a puff pastry wrap. My daughter's birthday is on Thanksgiving this year and she was so thrilled with these that she has requested these for her birthday/ Thanksgiving dessert. I might make these and send these home in gift containers for all my guests and of course my daughter. They look great and taste even better. I like these so much that I included the recipe or you can click on the link in the title and it will bring you to the recipe at Allrecipes.com

Praline Pumpkin Cornucoppias

Serves: 6

Prep Time: 25 Minutes

Cook Time: 15 Minutes

Ready In: 1 Hour 35 minutes

Ingredients

• Vegetable cooking spray
• 6 sugar ice cream cones
• All-purpose flour
• 1/2 (17.3 ounce) package Pepperidge Farm® Puff Pastry Sheets, thawed
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 (3.4 ounce) package vanilla instant pudding and pie filling mix
• 3/4 cup canned pumpkin
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup caramel topping, warmed
• 1/2 cup toasted chopped pecans                            

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Wrap each cone tightly in aluminum foil, covering it completely and tucking any excess foil into the cone cavity. Spray the foil cones with the cooking spray.

3. Sprinkle the flour on the work surface. Unfold the pastry sheet on the work surface. Cut the pastry sheet along the fold marks to form 3 rectangles. Cut each rectangle lengthwise into 4 strips, making 12 strips in all.

4. Press the ends of 2 pastry strips together. Starting at the pointed end of the cone, wind the pastry strip around 1 cone, slightly overlapping edges of pastry (strip will not reach the bottom of the cone). Spray the pastry cone with the cooking spray and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon sugar. Place the pastry cone on its side, with the end of the strip facing down, onto a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining pastry strips.

5. Bake for 15 minutes or until the pastries are golden brown. Let the pastries cool completely on the baking sheet on a wire rack. Carefully remove the foil cones from the baked pastry.

6. Beat the milk, pudding mix, pumpkin and cinnamon in a medium bowl with a whisk until the mixture is thickened.

7. Beat the heavy cream in a medium bowl with an electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the pumpkin mixture. Spoon or pipe the mixture into the pastry cones.

8. Stir the caramel topping and pecans in a small bowl. Place the pastries onto serving plates and drizzle with the caramel mixture.





 "Moist and Savory Stuffing"

This recipe is very basic and good in a pinch but I like a little more flavor so I added some Italian sausage, butter and mushrooms to my stuffing then I put it in the oven to crisp up on top. Much better.

Quick and Flavorful Vegetables

I made these vegetables and they turned out really good. My husband doesn't usually like cooked carrots but he seemed to enjoy these as they were all gone by the time we finished eating. Which is usually a good sign.

 

Campbell's Green Bean Casserole

This is a classic. We make this every year and this is my husbands favorite. I bought some fresh green beans from Trader Joes and it turned out really good. Next time I am adding some bacon on top with the onions. Everything is better with bacon.

Swanson Ultra Creamy Mashed Potatoes

They were easy and turned out very favorful and creamy. Next time I will add a bit of Roasted Garlic to the recipe.

This months assignment was fun and my husband and I enjoyed eating all the good dishes. I hope you will try some of these recipes and let me know how you like them.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

 Disclaimer

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com.

Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of Janet Henderson-My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey.



Preparing for Halloween

October is one of my favorite months. I love the cooler temperatures, the leaves changing colors and most of all I love Halloween. This is the time of year that I love to decorate, bake and have a party or two. So when I received my October activities for Allstars Ambassador Program, and Karo was one of our brand sponsors for this month and I thought "Perfect"... this should be fun! 



Karo's Carmel Corn Treat Bags

  

One of the activities was to have a little party serving Karo products,   So I had a small party to help us all get in the mood for Halloween and I invited some family and a few friends. I made  Karo's Classic Caramel Corn Treat Bags which I put into a big bowl so everyone could create their own mix. I put Sour Gummy Worms, M & M's, roasted nuts and Candy Corn in little dishes on the side so everyone could customize their own mix.  It was very easy to make and it was so good that I almost had to make another batch, very addicting. 



Creepy Mini Pizzas 



I also made Creepy Mini Pizza's for the party and that used  Fleishmans Yeast (a brand affiliate of Karo) These were a big hit! So much so that I ran out of dough and had have a friend get some "other brand" of premade crusts at the store. Once everyone tried their Pizzas I was told that the crusts I made in this recipe were a whole lot better. I put out the crusts and then I put out dishes with all kinds of toppings and some different sauces and let everyone create their own pizzas. It was fun and everyone enjoyed them a lot. This picture is one of the homemade pizza's before it went into the oven. I never got a picture of the finished pizza as it was eaten too fast. A good sign! ( I have to get quicker with the camera)

 

Harvest Pumpkin Cupcakes

  I saw these Harvest Pumpkin Cupcakes on Allrecipes.com and I had to make them.  This used Argo Corn Starch and baking powder (also a brand affiliate of Karo).They were rich and spicy pumpkin cupcakes with a creamy orange cream cheese frosting. I decided that the frosting should be orange so I added some orange icing gel. They turned out amazing. The cupcakes had a bit of spice and were moist and the frosting had just a touch of orange flavor to where the flavors blended perfectly. Nobody could resist these.



Friends and Family



Here is one of the pumkins the kids were carving after we all ate.



Grandson, Brandon

These were just some of the things that I made for my family and friends. I hope you will give some of these recipes a try and that  you will enjoy them as much as we did. Happy Halloween.



 

 Disclaimer

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com.

Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of Janet Henderson-My Sweet-n-Spicy Journey