WHAT’S FOR DINNER | SOUTHERN COUNTRY COOKING | MAKING SOME OF MY FAVORITES!

#whatsfordinner #easymeals #dinnerideas

Hello, my sweet friends!
Thanks for stopping by for another What’s for Dinner Video!
Hope you see something that you can cook up for your family and friends!

In this video, you’ll see:

-FRIED CHICKEN WINGS, MACARONI & TOMATO, FRIED OKRA, CORNBREAD
-BBQ CHICKEN FLATBREAD PIZZA
-GRAPE JELLY MEATBALLS & WIENIES IN THE CROCKPOT
-LOADED NACHOS W/COPYCAT CHUY’S JALAPENO RANCH
-CARAMEL CARROT POKE CAKE

Chuy’s Creamy Jalapeno Ranch Dip

3/4 cup Sour Cream
3/4 cup Mayonnaise (if you prefer less mayonnaise, you may use 1 cup of sour cream and 1/2 cup mayonnaise)
1 packet dry ranch dip
1 small can green chilies
1/2 cup cilantro (tightly packed, may add more for fresh flavor)
1/2 cup pickled jalapenos (+ juice …may add more depending on heat preference)
1/2 cup Buttermilk (if you want it to be thinner, add more buttermilk)
juice from fresh lime

Instructions

In blender, puree sour cream, mayonnaise, ranch dip, chilies, pickled jalapenos, & lime juice.
Add buttermilk until you reach desired consistency.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.

This is the recipe I usually use, however, this time around, I was out of sour cream. So, this is how I made it in this video!

1 cup milk
1 cup mayonnaise
1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch Seasoning Mix
1 tsp. garlic powder
black pepper to taste
1 Tbsp. lime juice
2 Tbsp. pickled jalapeños, diced
1 Tbsp. pickled jalapeño juice

Put all ingredients into glass jar & shake thoroughly to combine.
Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to an hour.
This recipe so customizable to suit your preferences.

GRAPE JELLY MEATBALLS & WIENIES
30 oz bag frozen meatballs
12 oz bottle chili sauce, such as Heinz
12-ounces grape jelly
Add all to crockpot and cook on low for 3-4 hours or high for 2 hours, or until meatballs are hot & sauce is combined.
All of these amounts are approximates.
The sauce goes a long way.

Caramel Carrot Poke Cake:

Carrot Cake Poke Cake

NEED MORE DINNER INSPIRATION?
CHECK OUT MY PLAYLIST BELOW:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LLss8UW02dzmKWOTxvU4Hu-A

Music: Epidemic Sound

INSTA: If_The_Creek_Dont_Rise
EMAIL: pennigirl@comcast.net

Thanks so much for watching!

[Music] Ever since you came into my life, it felt so good. It felt so right. You bring the sun on cloudy days. All the birds sing your praise. [Music] It’s your face, your laugh, the way you hear music, and the way you dance. But it’s your soul that sings to me. I’m here to hold your heart. Is the sweetest gift that I will not drop. And I promise to always stay true. Yeah. I love you. So [Music] I love. If you love fried chicken, raise your hand. I’m raising my hand. I think fried chicken is probably my most favorite food and a chicken wing I especially love. Look how good these are. Let me show you how I made them. I am almost to the end of this well I am now of this Kentucky kernel seasoned flour. So I used what I had and I added a little bit more flour to it and I decided that I was going to take this. It was a six-pack of chicken wings. pour a little bit of milk over it and let that kind of get it um so the seasonings would really adhere. So, I put the milk over it and then I pulled out these spices from my spice cabinet and I’m just going to get this all doctorred up. So, it’s going to have really, really good flavor. So, one hand holding the chicken, the other hand using my other hand for the spices here. So, I went in with some Spanish paprika, the salt, pepper, garlic blend, and then I used some onion powder. And then I just put the wing of course into the bag. Gave it a good shake. Did that to each and every one of them. And then I have my oil here in my cast iron. And I got it pretty good and hot before I added this chicken in. And then I just let it stay on that side until I knew it had a good coat on there, a good crisp forming before I turned it over. Now, um, of course, you hear don’t crowd your pan. Don’t crowd your pan, but I am a pan crowder. So, I just wanted to get all six of these into this pan so they could all fry together. So, yeah. Uh while back Kroger had buy one get one free on these and I just decided chicken wings it is. And honestly I don’t know why I don’t fry chicken more often or even bake chicken wings or something like that. Now we do the little you know like the pot wing style wings but these whole wings like this just so so good. So got these all nestled in there real close like they love each other. And then I have this little um splatter guard that kind of helps from grease splattering everywhere when you’re frying. Okay, look at that. So, I am going to get these all turned over. And these actually did not take long at all. I used my meat thermometer to make sure that they were done to the correct temperature. And it just didn’t take long at all. And I could just rave and rave and rave about these. That’s how amazingly delicious they were. Um, I’m already ready to make them again. [Music] This night was make what I thought sounded good. And I started off knowing I was going to make the wings. And then my mother-in-law had made some macaroni tomato a week or so back. It was so so good. James loves these so much and I only make macaroni and tomato maybe a couple times a year. Well, I decided based on having those recently and they were just so delicious that I was just going to make up some more. So, I had about a half a box of this corkcrew pasta. I had a fresh tomato that needed to be used. And then I also went in with some tomato sauce because a fresh tomato doesn’t have that much juice. You can do these however you want to do them. It’s just macaroni and tomato. So you can just say pasta and tomato. And you can season them how you want. You can add whatever kind of tomato products you want. It’s just quick and easy and so delicious. So that was a side for tonight uh to go along with this chicken. [Music] I recently got this picked sweet brand of the um breaded okra and I think it was labeled there for the air fryer, but I had this chicken fat that I just fried the chicken in. So, I decided that I was going to pan fry these and of course they’re going to taste delicious. probably, you know, truth be told, better than the air fryer, just not as healthy. And then I also baked up a pan of cornbread. I’ve showed cornbread on my channel a lot of times. So, here’s my plate. Had to add a slice of onion to it. Put some hot sauce on my chicken wings. I can’t even say how good this was. This is southern country cooking at its finest, and we loved every minute of it. Now, let’s switch gears. No more southern food, at least for the next day. I actually was home for dinner, just me this evening, because James had a business meeting. So, I decided to had gone to Walmart that day and I picked up the naan bread and decided I was just going to make myself a little barbecue chicken naan bread pizza. So, I put a little barbecue down on the bottom. And this is some barbecue chicken that I had in the refrigerator. This recipe is coming up and let me tell you, it did not disappoint with a homemade barbecue sauce. It cooked in the crock pot. So, be looking for that one. So, I decided that was kind of what inspired this meal. So, I got this barbecue chicken shredded and I’m going to start making this naan bread. [Music] [Music] And I’m not sure why, but it seems like a barbecue chicken pizza always needs red onion. So, I also picked that up the same day. Got my couple cheeses on here and a little bit of garlic powder, a little bit of parsley flakes, and then I just put that down in my air fryer and it needed no time at all. Look how golden brown and delicious. I put some cilantro on top and a little bit of ranch dressing. This was an amazing dinner for just me, myself, and I this evening. It totally hit the spot. So quick and easy to do a pizza of any kind on a naan bread. [Music] Okay, now I’m going to show you a couple things that I took to a family reunion. This recipe is probably one everyone has made, but it’s a bag of meatballs and I’m using a package of the little smokeokies. You use some grape jelly or whatever jelly you want and a jar of chili sauce. such few ingredients to make such a wonderful, flavorful, easy meal that cooks in the crock pot. You can also cook it on the stove or you can bake these in the oven. Super versatile, super easy, and flavorful would be the best way to describe this. So, I absolutely love these. A lot of people just choose to do these around holiday time, and that’s great, too. But these are good anytime. They’re great for a family reunion or anything in between. They’re great for, you know, getting together with friends. Maybe you’re getting together to uh play games or watch a game or something like that. You just can’t go wrong here. So, all you do basically is put all of that in the crock pot and the crockot does the job. So, these were one thing that I took to the reunion and I’m going to show you at the end of the video the second thing. All right, here I am moving on to another day. On this particular day, I wanted a salad for lunch and I didn’t have any. I was close to the end of my ranch dressing. So, I thought, you know, I’m just going to make some homemade ranch. I love having that in the fridge anyway, so I just follow the directions on the ranch packet or in my case, the ranch container that I have here. And then partway through, I knew what I was going to make for dinner. And I knew the jalapeno ranch would be delicious with that. So I decided to add in some extra ingredients, which was garlic powder and pepper, some lime juice, some chopped jalapenos, and some jalapeno juice to make. It’s kind of a copycat of Chewies. If you’ve never been to Chewies, it’s kind of a TMEX style restaurant. We have one. It’s not super close to us, but it’s not super far away either. We just don’t get on that side of town real often, but when we do, it’s the Chewies Jalapeno Ranch that we are really, really wanting. We love it so much. You were, if you were to look this up online, you would find a a lot of different varieties to this same recipe, but it’s basically a a ranch dressing that’s kind of kicked up a notch with some jalapenos. You could add um cilantro if you wanted. Um you can, you know, there’s going to be a lot of variation. And you can add more spice if you want. So anyway, I went ahead and got that made. I used it on my salad at lunch and of course it had thickened up by then and we used it for this dinner that I’m showing you now. So I browned up one pound of ground beef. I added in about a half a can of Rotel tomatoes. That’s I had a half a can left in my fridge from something else. So, I added those in to my ground beef. I used that little container of the taco seasoning. I also decided I wanted ranch in my taco meat. I’m kind of on a ranch kick right now. I love dry ranch dressing. The flavor of it, it just kicks anything up a notch in my opinion. So, here we go with the ground beef all seasoned up. And what I’m really wanting this night are loaded nachos. So, here we’ve got a can of reffried beans, and I’ve got those simmering away in my pot here. I’m going to add some cholula to it. And I always add some bacon grease to my reffried beans. That just gives them more flavor, makes them taste like they are freshmade instead of out of can. So, I’m going to simmer these here. And like I said, I was just really wanting nachos. In fact, I had taken sheetpan nachos to church the Sunday before this. And for some reason, I just felt like I had a little bit of them that day, but not very many, and I wanted them again. So, that is what we had. So, I’m going in here. I’m making a one plate and then dividing the plate rather than just doing two. So, that way I can get it all topped um for the two of us. So, reffried beans are going down first. And I know sometimes I tell you guys little extra stories here and there and sometimes I don’t. But um I don’t know if I’ve shared this one before or not, but I’m sure if you’ve been around here long, you know that I love nachos. I love loaded nachos. And when I was growing up, I would say my teenage years, um, a lot of nights, uh, Saturday night or Sunday night, maybe Friday night, too, but mostly Saturday night, that was what we had at home. We just I don’t know, that was just kind of a little routine that we got into. my mom would make the best loaded nachos and she did not mess around when it comes to top when it comes to toppings. We had to have all the toppings and so that just carries on with me today. Now, generally I use some sort of, you know, like a white cheese or a Rotel flavored cheese um where you make, you know, your own cheese dip. But today I wanted shredded cheese. So, I got the cheese all on top after I did the beans and the meat. And then I just stuck that in the microwave to melt. And then in the spirit of my mom, I’m doing all of these toppings. I don’t often have all of these things. So, especially green onions. I don’t always have those. And then I went in with the jalapenos. I don’t always have cilantro, but I did. And then there we have that yummy jalapeno ranch that I made earlier in the day. And it’s thickened up. I don’t actually I like my dressing a little thinner. Um, that’s just my preference. So, I sometimes thin it out myself, but it’s definitely thickened up and it made the perfect topping for these loaded nachos. And these were so filling, so delicious. One of our absolute favorites. And it’s also pretty quick and easy if you’re looking for something um along those lines. So, yum. Doesn’t this look great? All right. I saw this recipe on Facebook and decided I was going to give it a try. And it starts here with a carrot cake mix, the box mix. You just follow the recipe on the back. Now, there was one variation. Um, it was using crushed pineapple and I decided to use the juice in place of the water that the recipe called for. And then it, like I said, you just follow the recipe directions on the back. Otherwise, now anytime I find a new recipe, I cross reference, I guess, I pull it up, you know, maybe on another format, say Pinterest or something else, and then I just look at a few different recipes and I see, you know, if there’s variations between the two, what I might like better, maybe ingredients that I might have or do not have, however. Okay, so this one is called, what’s it called? It’s called caramel carrot poke cake. So, like I said, box directions. Uh, one recipe that I saw had mentioned using pineapple. I had pineapple um in the fridge that could be used. So, I decided to go for that. And then, of course, once this is baked, then you poke all the holes in it as you do with any poke cake. So then what you poured down inside of this, this is where it got a little interesting, I guess. And I felt like that from the beginning. I was like, “This is a lot to pour down in this cake.” So it called for a can of sweetened condensed milk and it called for a container of caramel dip. You could use like Smuckers, you could use what I have here. You just needed some caramel dip, like 12 ounces or so. And I just was thinking and you know thinking, wow, this is going to be a whole lot to pour down in this cake. But I do make a pinñina colada cake that takes a can of sweet and condensed milk and it takes coconut like the canned coconut that you mix um oh, I can’t even think what it’s called, but you buy it like where you buy uh products to make milk mixed drinks. So, like it’s the thick sweet coconut cream. I was like, well, it’s about the same amount there. I should have listened to my gut and just used about half of this. So, everyone’s taste is different. Everybody likes different things. So, you may make this exactly like the recipe. You may have already made this. This recipe is floating around and loved it. But just for and and I took this to the reunion. This is the thing, the second thing that I took to reunion and there were probably there was probably about half of it gone and several people told me they really enjoyed it. I’ll just say for me personally, it was just too much. It was too sweet. It was too heavy and moist and it was just too much for me. Now, you can see that this cake is just soaking this all in. Um, but if I were to make this again, in theory, I love this idea. Obviously, I wouldn’t have picked it to make, but I would use half of this to pour down inside. Half of the caramel, half of the sweet and condensed milk. And then you have a half a thing of sweet and condensed milk and a half a thing of caramel to figure out what to do with, which is wouldn’t be bad. The caramel, you just use it for your apples or whatever. But, um, I just felt like it was a little too much. I don’t know. So, leave me a comment down below if you have made this or um it what you think about it. I just uh like I said, for me it was just a little overload um on the sweet side. So, okay, let me show you real quick the toppings. [Music] The recipe called for a homemade icing made with cream cheese. So, it was the cream cheese, vanilla, powdered sugar. The icing was so delicious. I could just had the icing and been completely happy. But uh yeah, so I made the icing up um using my stand mixer. And again, like I said, I’ll have this recipe. I I cross reference, like I said, with several, but I’ll have a recipe or two linked below in case you want to give this one a try. But I got this all topped with the homemade icing and then it called for toffee bits for the final topping. All right, and before I sign off, I have a really special visitor. Time for the joke of the day. Yes, you heard me. It’s the time for the joke of the day, viewers. I see you. I see you. I know you’re watching me. Well, anyways, here’s the joke of the day. What’s red and bad for your teeth? I’m going to give you a couple seconds to try to guess. Here it is. A brick [Music] of your imagination. Yours watching me. I know it. I can see you. I can see you. I pulled a wallet out of my top hat. [Music] Bye. Well, I hope you did enjoy it. I hope that maybe you are leaving a little bit hungry and that you will add some of these things to your meal plan. If it just helps one person, maybe find something new or think of something they haven’t thought of or at least had in a while that makes your meal planning or you’re cooking up dinners for next week a little bit easier, then that’s what I want and that’s what would make me happy. I hope that you guys got some inspiration. So, I hope you also have a wonderful week coming. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. Take care. Bye, everybody. [Music]