Featured Friday: Fall Recipes

Welcome back to Featured Friday!! I am so excited to introduce yall to my sweet friend, Sam! Sam and I were roomies our freshman and sophomore years of college and we share so many fun memories!! Especially ones from state fairs, Saturday nights, and college football games. Though we miss those glory days, we are all SO excited for the upcoming months when we get to meet the beautiful baby girl Sam and Trooper are expecting! In the meantime and in the spirit of the season, I knew Sam was the perfect person to share some amazing fall recipes with you. Mainly because she always had THE best tailgating dishes! We hope you enjoy! :)

Hey yall! I’m Samantha Sawyer and I’ve known Courtney since our freshman year of college! We both share a serious love for fall and that probably starts with our love for watching our now husbands play football together at Campbell! I’m thrilled that Courtney has asked me to share a couple of my favorite fall recipes with you guys in September, October, and November! As we all know, September is the start of college football for most schools so what better way to start this series of blog posts than to share a few of my favorite tailgate foods!

If you know me, you know

I. LOVE. THE. CROCKPOT.

You can just throw everything in that bad boy and ignore it until it’s time to get ready for game time! Mine has the fancy clips on it so you don’t have to worry about the lid popping off while driving and walking to your tailgate spot! That makes for less mess and hot food! Best $30 anybody could ever spend.

The first recipe I’m going to share with you guys is “Slow Cooker Sweet and Smokey Pulled Chicken Sandwiches!” It’s easy shmeesy and even though it’s super savory, it’s actually a pretty healthy dish!

For this, you need:

14-ounce can of plain tomato sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 clove of garlic, minced

½ of an onion, diced

½ teaspoon of salt

½ teaspoon of black pepper

1 tablespoon of liquid smoke

2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons of flour (or 1 tablespoon cornstarch)

2-pounds boneless chicken breast

Hamburger buns

1. Add all of the ingredients to the crockpot, except the meat and flour. Whisk them together.

2. Place the chicken in the sauce.

3. Cover and cook on HIGH for 4 hours or LOW for 5-6 hours.

4. Take two forks and pull apart the meat and stir in the 3 tablespoons of flour*

5. Cover again and let cook until you need to walk out of the door.

6. Serve alone or on hamburger buns! ENJOY!

*If using cornstarch, mix in separate dish with 3 tablespoons of COLD water to dissolve, then add to crockpot.

This doesn’t have to be a tailgate food, of course! We had it for dinner last week and I sure had one happy husband!

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The next recipe is one of our favorites! CHILI. Again, we will be using my BFF, the crockpot! This recipe doesn’t need to be followed to the T. You can do more or less of whatever and it will still turn out fantastic!

So this recipe would call for:

1-pound of ground beef, chicken, or turkey

2 cans of kidney beans, light or dark

½ cup diced onion

1 can of plain tomato sauce

1 can of diced tomatoes (or Rotel for some additional spice)

1 teaspoon of black pepper

1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

4 tablespoons of chili powder

½ teaspoon salt

Texas Pete to taste (we probably use 1 ½ tablespoons)

Topping:

Sour cream

Shredded cheese

Saltine crackers

1. Brown the ground beef, turkey, or chicken in a pan on the stove with the diced onion.

2. Throw the meat, onions, and everything else EXCEPT the topping in the crock pot and stir.

3. Cook on Low 6-8 hours or High 3-4 hours. (Everything is already cooked, so it doesn’t REALLY matter.)

4. Serve in a bowl with a spoonful of sour cream, shredded cheese, and crushed saltine crackers!

YUM YUM YUMMMM!

Yall, I’m really sorry that all of these aren’t super-duper healthy but being pregnant, I’m much more into delicious.

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Tailgates are made for yummy dips because you don’t really even need a plate. We all know that one person that stands by the dip and EATS IT ALL. That’s me (and Courtney). No shame in my game.

So here we have it, Jalapeno Popper DIP.

You’ll need:

Dip:

2 packages of cream cheese, softened (Reduced Fat is fine, too!)

1 cup of mayonnaise

1 or 2 small cans of jalapenos, up to you and your taste buds

1 ½ cups of shredded cheddar-jack cheese

5 pieces of chopped, cooked bacon, if you want

Topping:

1 cup of Ritz crackers, crushed

½ stick of butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1. Combine and mix all of the dip ingredients together and put into a baking dish.

2. Combine and mix the topping ingredients together and put on top of dip.

3. Bake for 20 minutes

4. Broil for 2 minutes to brown the cracker topping.

5. ENJOY with Ritz crackers, wheat thins, or scoops!

BE CAREFUL not to burn it! Broiling will char those crackers in the hot minute you take to text somebody back, smoke detectors will go off, and it’ll smell awful for a few hours. Don’t ask me how I know.

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Last one is a super simple one: caramel-dipped apple slices. They are such an underrated snack but everybody loves them.  All you have to do is buy a bag of granny smith apples and grab one of those caramel dips the grocery store conveniently puts next to those apples. Slice those yummy things up, take the lid off of the caramel, and BAM, you have a delicious snack.

(image via google)

I hope you guys enjoyed the four recipes I shared with you this month! I’ll be back in October to share a few more of my favorite fall treats! If you decide to try any of them out, let us know by tagging and hashtagging #wonderfullywolf on instagram!