Kitchen | Hicks House

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Our first Thanksgiving at the Hicks House was a success! Ken’s sister, her husband and daughter flew all the way in from Oregon to be with us on Thanksgiving and surprise their parents.

Everyone was super excited to see them and the surprise couldn’t have gone better! The food was delicious and while we were left with some leftovers – it wasn’t nearly as much as we had expected. We actually had to make more stuffing in order to make these pockets as we didn’t have any left!

We make pockets all the time, its a staple in our house so twisting the ingredients to incorporate Thanksgiving leftovers was a no brainer.

Yummm!

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup leftover turkey cut up or shredded
1/2 a bar of low fat cream cheese – softened
1/4 cup leftover stuffing
1/4 cup leftover cranberry sauce
1 tube crescent dough (the flat sheet kind)
1/2 cup leftover gravy

Pre-set the oven to 375.

Line a cookie sheet with tin-foil and spray with non-stick spray or olive oil.

Lay out your crescent dough and stretch it out a bit making sure to close up any holes you make. Cut in half.

In a large bowl combine turkey and cream cheese and 1/4 cup of the gravy.

turkey and cream cheese mixture

Spoon the mixture into the center of each of your dough squares.

spoon mixture evenly onto center of dough

Top with desired amount of stuffing and cranberry sauce. Add remaining gravy.

add everything else

fold up like a wonton pinching the edges together to make sure they are good and sealed.

close it up

Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown on the top. Enjoy!

delicious!

You can experiment with any fillings you want. Ken said it would have also been very good to add some butternut squash instead of cranberry sauce. Maybe we’ll try that next time! 🙂

It’s TURKEY week! We’re hosting our first big family Thanksgiving and in preparation we’re trying to clean out the fridge to make room for all the apps, side dishes and of course the gigantic turkey that needs to stay in there until Thursday morning.

I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures – this was kind of an empty the fridge whim and I really wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out (I wasn’t too hopeful). We had leftover Italian chicken sausage from a second night of making Stuffed Acorn Squash (which I took pictures of the second time around – will update post) and shredded chicken which we make a batch of every week for salads and sandwiches.

Thinking of sausage and chicken together immediately had me thinking of jambalaya. I looked up a couple of recipes and they all had the entire process taking an hour plus. Not gonna happen on a Monday hunny. So we made it up as we went along and were pleasantly surprised – I thought it tasted just like jambalaya I’d had out that had been slow cooked.

15 minute jambalaya

Prep Time: 10 minutes (unless you’re a super chopper – I’m pretty slow)

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 shredded chicken breast
2 links pre-cooked italian style chicken sausage (you could use pork sausage as well just make sure you cook it)
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced green pepper
1/4 cup diced celery
2 cloves diced garlic (if you’re using jarred minced garlic this is 2 teaspoons)
1/4 cup medium heat salsa
1 1/2 tablespoons McCormick Baja Cajun seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 package of 10 minute brown rice (we made a whole package of Uncle Ben’s and just used half)

Place the rice packet in a saucepan of water and bring to a boil – boil for 10 minutes according to the package directions.

Meanwhile chop your onions, celery and green pepper. Saute vegetables in tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat until cooked through – about 6-8 minutes. Add garlic cook an additional 2 minutes or so making sure the garlic does not burn. If the mixture looks to dry and all the oil is absorbed add a little bit of water to avoid burning (don’t worry it will cook off).

Add sausage and continue to cook until heated through. Add rice, chicken and cajun seasoning toss to combine cook for an additional 2-3 minutes to ensure the entire dish is hot and enjoy!

15 minute jambalaya

I think this would be really good with shrimp as well. You could either use it in place of the chicken or as a little something extra!