Quick Dinner Solutions: Nachos!

Longaberger's handled platter is the perfect piece for preparing and serving nachos.

Layer tortilla chips on the platter with shredded cheddar cheese and top with canned black beans (drained), shredded cooked chicken or pork, black olives, diced green chilies or jalapeno peppers and more shredded cheese. 

Bake in the oven at 300F until cheese is melted.  Top with Salsa Fresca* and sour cream or guacamole (or both!) and serve on your Longaberger wrought iron trivets. People can eat straight from the platter with just a napkin! 

One dish does it all--simple and beautiful!

The Woven Traditions Handled Platter comes in all the pottery colors including the new chocolate color.  Get yours for $60 plus S/H or for just $30 when you host a $150 show or more.

*Fred Meyer has a nice Salsa Fresca in the Deli section near the prepared fruit and vegetable platters.

Quick Dinner Solutions: Chicken Enchilada Casserole

The eternal question:  What to serve for dinner tonight?  This recipe is one of our family favorites. 

Using your 9x13 Woven Traditions Baking Dish, you can make an easy and delicious casserole that can be made ahead or in less than an hour.  This is also fairly low in calories if you watch the amount of cheese that you use (and, of course, the amount that you eat!). 

With Longaberger's vitrified pottery, clean up will be a snap as well.  Just scrape out the baking dish with a rubber scraper and place it in the front of the lower rack of the dishwasher (dirty side facing the back).  You will be pleasantly surprised!  (The glaze on your pottery makes for easy clean-up as long as you are careful not to scratch it too much by heavy use of metal utensils).
Ingredients:
1 pack of 12 corn tortillas
1 large can of green enchilada sauce (Winco is cheapest)
2 pounds of chicken tenders or chicken breast meat
Pepper Jack Cheese, Shredded
Optional:  1 can cooked black beans
Optional:  Light Sour Cream
Preparation:
Microwave or cook chicken until just cooked through and dice or shred the meat.  Pour half of the enchilada sauce into a shallow dish and the other half over the diced cooked chicken.  Dip several corn tortillas into the sauce and layer them into the bottom of your lightly oiled Woven Traditions Baking Dish.  Spread a layer of the chicken and sauce mixture and another layer of coated tortillas.  Top with shredded cheese.  Add another layer of chicken, tortillas, and top with cheese.  You will most likely need to adjust your ingredients based on how much chicken versus tortilla you prefer.
Bake in the oven at 350F for 30 minutes or until sauce is bubbling.  Let cool for 10-15 minutes. This casserole is GREAT the following day.  You can also add a layer of canned black beans for a more substantial meal and serve with a salad.  Serve with Light Sour Cream (Tillamook is the best!).

Man-Proof, Kid-Proof, AND Easy to Clean

I wanted to share my latest 'discovery' about Longaberger pottery.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a scientist by training and that is how I approach life....lots of questions and a lot of skepticism, testing, and analysis.  Well you can be sure that I have put the Longaberger pottery through the wringer by now.  My latest experiment was to test how easily my 9"x13" baking dish came clean in the dishwasher WITHOUT washing it ahead of time.  I made lasagna in it, scraped off the stuck on noodles, put it at the front of the lower rack and....it came out spotless.  I made chicken enchilada casserole, burnt the cheese on the edges, scraped off the bits of tortilla still stuck on the bottom, put it in the dishwasher, and .....voila! it came out spotless again.   My husband made lasagna, burnt the sauce all over the edges, put it in the dishwasher just like that, and ....it came out spotless!  Boy! I tell ya, this would have saved me so many "discussions" with my husband about how he needs to scrape the dishes off better before he puts them in the dishwasher and then me having to wash them by hand again after they had already been through the dishwasher.   Not to mention that the dishes no longer get chipped around the edges even though loading the dishwasher seems to be a contact sport for "some people I know". :-)

Celebrating the Season with Longaberger's Handled Platter

One of the first items I purchased after becoming a home consultant, was the Longaberger Woven Traditions Handled Platter. I had seen an ivory one in last year's catalog that was used to hold a beautiful candle arrangement for Christmas. It has been one of my favorite items. We served our turkey on it at Thanksgiving as well as our Cornish game hens for Christmas dinner. It was beautiful as well as easy to carry securely using the handles. My neighbor, Mary, ordered one to use for Christmas and was very happy with it as well.

Prior to the holidays, I used the platter to bake and serve nachos as well as Twice Baked Potatoes (recipe in another post). Since all of Longaberger's pottery is vitrified, you can prepare and refrigerate dishes ahead of time and then simply put them in the oven when you are ready to cook (as long as you place the cold dish in the oven as you preheat it so that you slowly bring it up to temperature). Afterward, you can serve the food directly from the baking dishes, since they are so beautiful and coordinate with all the other Longaberger pottery. And last, but definitely not least, vitrified pottery is so easy to clean. You simply scrape off the large pieces of food and place the pottery in the dishwasher or you can soak briefly in warm soapy water and easily wash by hand.

Before owning Longaberger pottery, I used to use the inexpensive glass bakeware. I always felt as though I needed to spend the least amount of money I could on things for my kitchen--I don't know why. However, now that I have used the vitrified pottery from Longaberger, I could never go back. It has saved me so much time in the kitchen as well as made the whole family feel more nurtured by our meals simply because of the ease of use and the beauty of the dishes.

Crash! The Shiny Red Mug Revisited

When I received the Longaberger Travel Mugs, they were immediately taken over by my two children (of course); one for my daughter and one for my son.  They apparently liked them too!  One day my son was making a cup of hot tea in his red mug.  I was sitting in the adjacent room working at the computer.  Suddenly I heard this loud crash.  I knew perfectly well what had happened and couldn't believe that he had broken my new mug already.  Turning around I expected to see pieces of red pottery all over the kitchen floor.  What I saw took me a minute to digest.  Shards of pottery were in fact scattered over the floor, but they were not red.  I finally realized that the mug had landed on the cat's ceramic food dish and shattered it.  I went over to pick up the mug, expecting that the underside was broken, but the mug was completely intact.  There was a slight scratch (only discernible to a perfectionist like me!) where the sharp edge of one of the broken shards had nicked the glaze.

I couldn't believe what had just happened.  For years I have been frustrated because the dishes I have owned are constantly chipped or broken by my husband or the kids.  I hate feeling like I have to guard the dishes and remind people to be careful when they load the dishwasher.  In particular, we have some dishes that we got when we were married.  I really like them, except that the top of the bowls flare out in a thin lip at the top.  Well guess what kept happening to the edges of those bowls!  It really bothers me to set the table with what are supposed to be our good dishes only to have chips all over them.

The less expensive dinnerware that I had purchased in the meantime was even worse.  Every encounter with another dish in the dishwasher chipped off the glaze and exposed the porous clay beneath.  These dishes I had purchased for the design on them, which was now being chipped away.  Ditto for the gorgeous hand-painted Italian butter dish I had carefully brought back from a trip to Italy--that was so depressing.  That piece of pottery was NOT so inexpensive.

What was it that made the Longaberger pottery so strong and durable compared to my other dishes?  I had to find out what exactly "vitrified pottery" was.

How I Became a Longaberger Home Consultant

It is not very often in life that you find something and know that it is the thing you have been looking for. Being a perfectionist, I hem and haw around, looking for all the flaws and potential drawbacks until I convince myself that there must be something better out there if only I could find it. In recent years, my mother has started to tell me, "If you find something you like, buy it!" (I am not exactly sure whether she is sharing words of wisdom from her years of experience or expressing her frustration with my inability to make a decision!)

Even so, I still find it hard to do, and was having the same problem when I went to buy the red travel mugs and see the other Longaberger pottery at my Home Consultant's next show. I wanted to know how durable the pottery was; did it chip; how easy was it to break; did it scratch? She graciously answered all my questions and assured me that it was of the highest quality and very durable. She had the travels mugs in various colors, all of them beautiful, and showed me other products including this adorable kitchen shelf I had seen in the catalog.

My next concern was the price. Being someone who feels compelled to buy things when they are on clearance, I was finding it very difficult to convince myself that it was OK to buy the Longaberger products. Despite my concerns, my infatuation with the Travel Mugs won me over and I decided to order Grandma Bonnie's Pie Plate as well.

By the time I got home I was ready to buy more Longaberger pottery and started to look through the catalog again. I came across a page describing the oppotunity to become a Longaberger Home Consultant and how you could save 25% on your own purchases plus make another 25% on any sales of Longaberger baskets and pottery. In addition, you could get a business kit with selected items at half the retail price. Ahhhh.....a Clearance! If I bought the medium business kit, I could get several baskets and pieces of pottery plus a wrought iron trivet and pay only $30 a month for 6 months. I could do that! I wouldn't have to sell anything if I didn't want to and I could buy more product samples at half price for the first month after I signed up. That could work! (Can you hear my little brain just cranking away?)

I went to my Home Consultant's website and found the 'Join My Team' button on her home page. Without too much work, I was signed up and my kit was ordered. Shortly thereafter, my Home Consultant gave me a call to congratulate me on my decision. She had apparently received an automated email from the company informing her that I had decided to become a consultant. She told me that she was going to let me order the mugs and pie plate myself so that I could get the sales credit and receive the 25% discount. How nice was that?! She then talked me through placing an order on my Longaberger consultant's website which had been instantly created when I signed up. Everything went smoothly and easily--now I just had to wait to receive my business kit and my Longaberger pottery in the mail.

I

The Shiny Red Mug: My Introduction to Longaberger

Back in January I was feeling the usual organizational twinges that follow the holiday season and its over-abundance. In particular, I had started resenting the odd collection of mugs that we had accumulated over the years, with their faded designs and chipped edges. One particular morning, as I was preparing to make my traditional cup of tea, I opened the cupboard to find this tall, shiny, and wonderfully-red mug staring back at me.

You are going to think this is silly, but I remember feeling like a child who had just found the one thing they really wanted under the Christmas tree. Without hesitation I took the mug out of the cupboard, made my cup of tea, and sat down on the couch to contemplate the upcoming day. The mug was tall enough that I could cradle it in both hands to keep them warm. I can still remember feeling so pampered just because of that mug.

This went on for several days until I was spotted with the mug by my daughter's boyfriend. He had accidentally left the mug at our house. It was actually a travel mug that came with a lid. That made me love it even more. Unfortunately, so did his mother. I was saddened by this turn of events and decided I would have to get another one just like it. I called his mother to ask her where she had bought the mug and she told me that it was from Longaberger. "Longa-Who?" I had never heard of them before. She told me that Longaberger was a basket-making company and she had gotten the mug from a friend who sold their products from home.

I contacted the Longaberger Home Consultant to find out when she would be having another home show. In the meantime, she sent me a product catalog. Everything was beautiful and made to coordinate with each other. When I finally went to her house to buy the travel mugs, I was smitten.