Southwestern Layered Cornbread Salad

I’m always on the lookout for a great new salad recipe, especially as the weather starts to get warmer.  I like this take on the seven-layer salad.  The sweet cornbread plays well with the salty bacon and the spice from the dressing and the jalapeno in the pico de gallo; the sour cream is a nice touch to cool everything off.  photo courtesy: http://www.woodslifeblog.com/2010/06/layered-cornbread-salad.html

Fresh Strawberry Pie

I found strawberries on sale at the grocery store!  It’s not truly spring until I can pick up a pound of strawberries for under $2, and since I found them, we are welcoming spring with a slice of strawberry pie today.
photo courtesy: http://www.gratefulprayerthankfulheart.com/2011/04/strawberry-pie.html

It’s a goal of mine to one day learn how to make a perfect, buttery, flaky pie crust.  But it’s gonna have to be dang good to beat the Marie Callendar’s deep dish crusts that I buy at the store in the meantime.  Pie crust is hard to get perfect and takes some time.  These pie crusts are one item I splurge on occasionally because they make baking the perfect pie so much easier!

The original recipe for this pie called for double the cream cheese layer and double the sugar in the Jello mixture.  It was way too sweet for us, so I modified the recipe to suit our own tastes. Cutting back the sugar makes the fresh strawberry flavor the star of the show.  So bright and fruity! 

White Bean Chicken Chili

“We are not a chili family”. 

It’s sort of a motto around here.  I’ve tried a lot of different chili recipes, and I’ve never tasted a single one I liked.  Except this one, and that doesn’t count because it’s nothing like traditional “chili” because it uses white beans.  It’s a great way to use up your food storage dried beans! 
http://www.desertvistahealth.com/2011/03/quick-fix-white-chicken-chili.html

I usually leave the sour cream out of the pot and instead just garnish each bowl with a small dollop, mostly because I like the chili as much without it as I do with (and I don’t need the extra calories).  The kids like theirs with sour cream, though, so they get a nice little dollop on their bowls.