The Things I Will Do For Cookware

Remember CSN?  Those folks with over 200 stores?  Even one dedicated to swingsets?

They've asked me to work with them again.  Last time I gave away bunny coffee mugs, 

but this time I think I'm going to do a review.  I'm taking my time browsing this time, 

but so far I'm really leaning towards this 10.5' x 7' baking dish and bonus 7' x 5' dish. 

As I've mentioned before I have a fetish for Le Creuset cookware, so an opportunity to add a piece of their stoneware to my kitchen is kind of a no brainer.  I still really want the frying pan, but it's still a little spendy. I'm thinking that the smaller dish might be perfect for a half batch of my enchiladas, and I can't wait to try it out.  Stay tuned for the review and enchilada recipe.

Spring Fling

The girls over at SITS are hosting a Spring Filing Tuesday. Everyone is encouraged to give something away on their blog, and SITS is hosting lots of awesome giveaways on their blog every hour as well. I wanted to participate in this, but until yesterday was at a loss about what to give away. The rules state that it can be anything new or used and doesn't have to be elaborate at all. Anything from a purse you don't use anymore to a batch of chocolate chip cookies. This doesn't help me much. Anything is just too many things to consider for someone with ADD. So for the last couple of weeks it's been on my mind.

What should I give away??

True to my ADD fashion, I had an epiphany at the 11th hour. Well technically I guess I had about 12 hours to spare since I figured it out around noon, but you get my point. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to come up with something.

So here is what I came up with.

Now I'm not giving you my recipe book, but what I am going to give away is a binder, with a custom cover, a few of my favorite recipes, and a lot of empty sheet protectors.

What is this good for you ask?

Well let me tell you a little bit about my binder.

I'm a bit of a pack rat. I hold onto all kinds of things because I never know when I might need them.

Craft supplies for umpteen billion different craft projects - Check
Enough scrapbook supplies for an entire lifetime - Check
A tote box full of socks in case I decide to start crocheting beads on them again - Check
A tote full of patterned socks, buttons, and embroidery floss to make sock monkeys waiting for my sewing machine to be fixed - Check

One thing I don't hang onto, or have cluttering my house anymore, is magazines waiting for recipes to be pulled out of, or loose papers on which I have printed out recipes from the internet.

I keep lots of extra sheet protectors in my binder just waiting to be filled with that loose paper. Now if there is a recipe I want in a magazine, I don't have to hang onto the whole magazine waiting for that someday that never comes to tear it out and do something with it. I save myself the time and energy of writing them all on recipe cards, and can chuck the rest of the magazine into the recycling bin without a second thought. The recipes from the internet go right in there too. The sheet protectors also mean that my recipe for pie crust isn't covered with actual pie crust from Thanksgiving pie 1994.

I also used to be a Tupperware lady, which means that all my pantry items, flour, pancake mix, instant mashed potatoes, sugar, pasta, beans, etc. are neatly stored in Modular Mates. What does this have to do with the binder, you ask? Well for years I dealt with the issue of while the pancake mix was all fresh in my Modular Mates, I no longer had the instructions on what to do with it. Even though I'd cut them out, somebody would always see that cut out piece of cardboard as garbage. Or I'd fold it and put it into the container, which would mean spilling some of the contents onto the counter when I removed it. So now, thanks to the greatest home printer/scanner/copier ever made , I copy the instructions and put them in the binder.

My binder has made my life so much simpler and allowed me to get rid of a little bit of my pack rat tendencies. Now if I could only figure out how to make everything else fit in the binder.

So my gift to you (assuming you are the lucky winner) today, is your very own binder. No having to make a trip to Office Max to get a binder and sheet protectors. Just a couple of days for it to come in the mail, since I haven't figured out that teleportation thing yet. The Modular Mates and the copier you are on your own to get, but I would highly reccomend them.

How do I get to be the lucky winner, you ask?

Leave a comment telling me why you want to win my binder for one entry.
Follow my blog for a second entry, leave a second comment telling me you are following.

The lucky winner will be picked at random (using random.org, I have a feeling that site is going to get a lot of traffic today) Tuesday March 10th at 9 pm, Arizona time (which is MST all the time, no daylight savings bull puckey here).

Good luck everyone, and don't forget to check out all the awesome stuff over at SITS today!

Cornflakes taste like corn, duh

A few weeks ago I had this conversation with my oldest daughter.

Aimee "Mom, don't we have any cereal?"
Me "Didn't your dad just buy some cornflakes?"
Aimee "Yeah, but they're gross"
Me "Why are they gross?"
Aimee "Because they taste like corn"
Me (after spitting coffee out my nose) "Um, yeah genius, that might be why they call them CORN flakes"

In other words, they weren't Frosted Flakes and therefore tasted like cereal and not sugar.
So for weeks they have been in the pantry and have become a joke around here. "Where is the lemonade mix?" "Behind the cornflakes that taste like corn". I've been trying to figure out what to do with them since it's painfully obvious that none of my kids, or my husband are going to eat the cornflakes that taste like corn.

Yesterday I remembered having a couple of recipes that called for cornflakes as an ingredient that I had learned to make back in either junior high or high school foods class. Amazingly they are a couple that I have already typed up and put into my recipe binder. One of them is for Christmas Holly Wreath Cookies, and since it's a little past Christmas, I didn't want to make those. The other one was for peanut butter bars. They came out just as yummy as I remembered. Here's the recipe.

1 1/2 cups of sugar
3/4 cups of corn syrup
2 cups of smooth peanut butter
7 cups of cornflakes

Melt the sugar and corn syrup. Add the peanut butter and stir until smooth. Remove from heat. Add cornflakes and mix it all up. Pour into a wax paper lined 13x9 baking pan. Smoosh them down (I wrap my oven mitt with the Glad cling wrap and then smoosh). Cool. Once they are cool, you can cut them into squares.

Let me just take this moment to mention that it's a really good idea to measure out all your ingredients BEFORE you start the sugar and corn syrup melting. When you are ready to throw in the peanut butter is not really a good time to discover you are about a quarter cup short. I went ahead and made them anyway, but in retrospect probably should have reduced the amount of cornflakes a tad. They came out a bit crumbly. Either that or I didn't smoosh them down enough.

Of course I also forgot that Tiffany is the weirdo kid that doesn't like peanut butter so she was a little disappointed come snack time, but the other two liked them, and I used up most of the cornflakes that taste like corn.

Crazy Week

Wow. Since my last post things have been kinda nutty over here. I intended to make the Taco Soup on Wednesday, but I realized later that I was short one can of pinto beans and the can of diced tomatoes with green chiles. The tomatoes with green chiles really shocked me too, because I use those all the time to make salsa. I usually have several cans on hand, but with the hubby being out of work, the pantry is not as full as usual. Since I really like green chiles, I didn't want to make the soup without them. Therefore a trip to the store was needed.

Wednesday morning was my first official shift as a server. It went pretty well. Then the manager asked me if I could cover a shift that night. Being the helpful person I am, I said yes. In retrospect I should have said no way in hell no. I had barely two hours from the time I got off until I had to be back. I was in no mood to go to the store during this precious reprieve from work, so I came home and sat down instead. Of course then I didn't want to get back up, but I did. The evening shift did not go as well as the morning. Some really big parties came in and where did they decide to seat them? In my section of course. My first real day as a server and they put a party of 10 in my section. I do not even want to attempt this and ask another server to take them. He just got sat a party of 6 and doesn't want both, so I offer to take the 6 and he agrees. Just when I'm thinking that things are under control, they seat a party of 16 people in my section. Of course I flip out and tell the manager on duty that there is NO way I am ready for that. Mercifully she gets another server to take the 16, but I have to take 2 of her tables in trade. That's cool. I can handle that. Or not. So now I have her two, plus the other guy's one, plus a couple in my own section and that's when things went downhill rapidly. I was so frazzled that I put the wrong table number down on one party's order, so of course their food got delivered to the wrong table. There went that tip. By the time it was over I was so mentally and physically exhausted I just wanted to pass out. Thursday morning I worked again. I came in and found that they had created me a special little 3 table section where no big parties could possibly be seated. Yippee!! The manager that was on Thursday morning was the same one that had been on the night before. She told me that she wanted me to succeed and wanted me to have a section I could handle. Thursday was a good day.

After work Thursday, I finally had time to go to the store and get the missing Taco Soup ingredients. By the time I got home at 4:15 after picking the kids up from school, I didn't exactly have time to start the Taco Soup and have it ready for dinner. And I had to leave at 5 to go pick up my oldest from cheer practice and then go to a PTA meeting at 6. I decided I didn't want to waste gas driving her home and then going right back to the school, so I whipped up some red beans and rice, packed some for us to eat and was out the door again.

Today I finally got everything for Taco Soup in the crock pot. Actually I got everything in but the meat. I left the browning of the meat and depositing it into the crock pot up to the hubby since I was running out of time to take the kids to school. Lately he's been taking them to school most days, but I needed to make fliers for a PTA fundraiser that is next week, so I took them. He did the meat and got it into the crock pot.

I have to say it turned out pretty good. I did add some water since some of the comments on the recipe stated that it wasn't very soup like. I didn't put a packet of ranch in there because it sounded slightly odd and to be honest, I forgot it when I was at the store. Today my mom emailed me a link to this online cookbook because of it's crock pot recipes. Taco Soup was in there too but theirs called for just one can of everything and the one packet each of taco and ranch seasoning so I wondered if it would be under seasoned. I finally decided to try some of the soup even though nobody else seemed to be hungry yet and did think that it could use a little more taco flavor. I just added some more taco seasoning, so we will see if that kicks it up a bit. I also added a drop of ranch dressing to my bowl to see what the ranch would do to the flavor after I had several bites. I was totally cool with dumping half a bowl if I didn't like it, but not so adventurous with the whole batch. I have to say, I liked the flavor that it added and I will certainly put the ranch seasoning in next time.

New Friends

Between yesterday and today I've read a whole bunch of blogs. Going to my favorite blogs and then checking out their faves or people that have commented on theirs, and then checking out their faves and comments. Does that make sense? So I've ended up on some that I'd have a hard time tracking my way back from, but I've found some real gems. Check out my blog list on the right to see the new friends. I removed a few from there too, because even though I'm still following them, they don't post that often. I didn't want the list to get too long that nobody would look at it. So check it out. I totally found a blog all about crock pot recipes. This lady is using her crock pot EVERY DAY for a year. Now you know how I LOVE my crock pot, but every day is a little too much crock potty goodness for me. But that only means that 365 crock pot recipes could last me like 3 years!!! I'm so excited. I found a recipe for Taco Soup on there that I'm totally trying tomorrow. Great thing is I have EVERYTHING already in my pantry. Including the pinto beans even though I don't recall where they came from. I'm quite sure that I didn't buy them, because I've been wondering what to do with them for awhile. Now I know. I just wish I had found it this morning because right now I need to go make something for my family to eat tonight.

What's for dinner?

Almost every afternoon my Facebook status is set to wondering what to make for dinner. Today was no exception. Since nothing exciting was happening on Facebook, I decided to hop over here to see if any of my bloggy buddies had posted since I was here this morning. To my delight, Alexis had posted, and not just posted, but posted a recipe for Creamy Beef Fold Over Pie, which looks uber yummy and I'm totally trying tonight.

Unlike Redneck Mommy who posted this. I will not be trying that, anytime in this lifetime.

By the way, since my nifty blog re-design, all my links are showing up the same color as the regular text, so you have to mouse over them to find them. I don't like this so much, because if I've linked to someone, I want it to be kinda obvious for everyone's ease of use. I've tried to change it, but there seems to be some kind of font color override in the code because no matter what color I try to change the links to, they remain brown. So until I'm able to figure out this latest bit of html mystery, if ever you think that I should be linking to something, mouse around and I'm sure you will find it. For instance there are two links above.

Why I love my crockpot

I know this isn't surprising to you, I've talked before about how great the crockpot is, but I've just learned to make yet another thing in it!! Refried beans. A frend of mine gave me a bag of pinto beans when she moved. I guess I should clarify, she didn't just give me a bag of beans as a going away present, she gave me most everything that was in her fridge and pantry because they would be too much of a hassle to move. Included in those items was a bag of beans. So I've been looking at this bag of beans wondering what the hell to do with them. I usually buy my refried beans in a can. Finally I decided that I had these beans, I should figure out what to do with them. A short internet search later and I had a recipe for vegetarian refried beans made in the crockpot. That one little bag made as much refried beans as comes in two of the big cans, AND they were way yummy. Oh, and cheap since the bag and all the ingredients cost less than one regular sized can. Since there was very little work either, I can't even complain that my time is worth money. I don't think I'll ever buy refried beans in a can again.

Crockpot Refried Beans

Ingredients:

3 cups dry pinto beans
9 cups water
1 onion, diced
1/2 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded and minced (I didn't have jalapenos sitting around, so I used a teaspoon of a chipotle seasoning I have)
3 cloves garlic, minced (or 1 1/2 Tbsp. of the pre-minced garlic in a jar)
1/2 tsp cumin
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Prep:

Some of the recipes I found said to soak the beans overnight, dump the water, and cook them in fresh water, others didn't. Since I'm lazy, I opted to skip that step. Both ways the cooking time was the same, so I didn't see the point. If you feel that you have to soak them, go right ahead.

Combine all ingredients in the crockpot, cover, and cook on high for 8 to 10 hours. If your beans are old, they are going to take longer. I ended up cooking mine on high for 7 hours and then on low for another 7 overnight while I slept since they weren't done before bedtime.

When they are done you will be able to mush them easily with a fork. Drain and reserve the liquid. Mash the beans with a potato masher. Add in as much of the reserved liquid as necessary to achive the desired consistency.

Some recipes suggested putting small quantities in the blender and using that to mash them. Since this would have created more dishes to wash, I opted against it. The beans were soft enough that it didn't take me long with the potato masher. But if you don't have a potato masher, or have a broken arm or something that would prevent you from using one, a blender will work too.

Way overdue recipe

Ok, Ok I know. I had been wowing you with weekly recipies when I first started blogging and lately there haven't been any. I realized after awhile that I had a few killer quick and easy recipes, but after I posted them all here, I quickly ran out. I didn't have the time to constantly be on the hunt for new ones and try them before posting, so my recipe segment died.

This summer while I've been stuck at home, my friend Alisha turned me on to the Food Network. I've always avoided this channel because I thought that watching other people cook was about as exciting as watching grass grow. Not to mention that Emeril guy yelling BAM all the time is just about the most annoying thing ever (well after Dr. Phil anyway). Come to find out they actually have some pretty cool shows. I love Good Eats, it's very educational even for the kids and I love the sock puppet bacteria. Challenge is another good one. I like the cake ones the best. Speaking of cake Ace of Cakes is super cool. All of their cakes are beyond amazing. During this time my oldest has been inspired to become a pastry chef. This is the same child that not long ago wanted to be a doctor. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to be a doctor, but I think it might be more fun having her make us desert, than having her diagnosing everyone in the house with things like Scurvy. Not to mention the school is a little more in my budget.

As exciting as all this is, I bet you are thinking "Hey she promised us a recipe" about now. So here it is. One night a week or so ago, I really wanted to make a chicken pasta with alfredo sauce. The only problem being, I didn't have any ready made alfredo sauce in the house, and didn't have any heavy cream on hand to make homemade. So it was off to internet land to find an alfredo sauce recipe I could fudge with what I did have in the house. This is what I found.

Quick and Easy Alfredo Sauce

1/2 cup butter
1 (8oz) package of cream cheese
2 tsp garlic powder
2 cups milk
6 oz grated parmesan cheese
1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Melt butter in non-stick saucepan over medium heat. Add cream cheese and garlic powder, stirring with a whisk until smooth. (I seriously recommend using a silicone whisk so you don't scratch your non-stick pan. Teflon flakes are not a yummy addition to any meal. Also I'd like to note that it doesn't exactly get smooth. Once the cream cheese completely melts it looks kinda curdled. Fear not, it totally starts looking normal again in the next step.) Add milk a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps. Stir in parmesan and pepper. Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency. Toss with hot pasta to serve.

Along with this sauce I prepared 3 cups of penne pasta, sliced 2 chicken breasts into bite size strips and sauteed in a little butter and garlic, and steamed about 2 cups of broccoli that I had chopped into bite sized pieces. When everything was ready I tossed it all together and added the sauce. Totally easy, and totally yummy. Enjoy.

Cheaters Chicken Parmigiana

Cheaters Chicken Parmigiana

Breaded Chicken Patties
Spaghetti Sauce
Mozarella Cheese, Sliced

Spaghetti
1/3 cup Butter or margarine
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (the kind that comes in a can)

Place one Chicken patty per person in a pyrex baking pan. Pour spaghetti sauce over each patty. Just enough to cover the patty, they don't need to be swimming in it. Place one slice of mozarella cheese on top. Cook in the oven at the temperature and time it says on the package of chicken patties. (Each brand is slightly different).

Boil spaghetti and drain. Melt butter. Add parmesan cheese and spaghetti. Mix until butter cheese mixture evenly coats spaghetti.

Serve the chicken either on top of or on the side of the spaghetti.

Enjoy.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Sort Of

So how many of you know that today is not actually St. Patrick's day, and that it was actually last Saturday? Apparently something weird happens when March 17th falls during holy week for Easter and St. Patrick's day gets bumped. I guess church and green beer don't go together. It's a shame, more people might show up. Here in the US nobody knew except me and one other guy. I wore green on Saturday, but not many other people did. You would have thought that the bars would have been all over it since Saturday is a much better drinking day than Monday, but they seem to have missed the news too. Today I wore a shamrock headband to work. I figured that since everyone was wearing their green today I might as well join the fun. It is my favorite holiday after my birthday and Christmas after all. This guy tells me, "you know today isn't really St. Patrick's day right?". I said "I know, but you and I are the only ones so I decided to join the fun." When he left he said "have a happy day". I think he was mad at me for being a sell out. Oh well.

So for those of you who were waiting for the corned beef and cabbage recipe, I'm sorry it's a little too late to cook it for tonight, and most definitely too late for last Saturday. The good news is, if you haven't bought yours yet, it should be really cheap tomorrow and it freezes well. I like to buy a few and then I can have corned beef sandwiches in July. So here is the corned beef in the crock pot recipe I promised last month.

Ingredients
3-4 potatoes
3-4 carrots
1 head of cabbage
corned beef brisket

Peel and quarter potatoes. Peel carrots and cut in half. Cut cabbage into 8 sections.
Place potatoes and carrots on the bottom of the crock pot. Place corned beef on top fat side up, along with all the juice from the package. Open seasoning packet and put that in. Add enough water to barely cover meat. Cook on low for 6-7 hours. Add the cabbage pushing it into the water around the meat. Cook for another 2-3 hours.

When ready to serve, remove the meat to a cutting board and let stand for 5 minutes. Cut into thin slices, against the grain. Serve with potatoes, carrots, and cabbage.

It's a winner

So I made it to the store today, but do you think I remembered to write down what I needed for the soup before I left the house, of course not. Going by memory I bought as much as I could remember. Between that and what I had at home, I pieced it together. Not exactly what the recipe called for, but it turned out good, the kids liked it (Kimberly ate 3 bowls of it), and bottom line, it was EASY! So here is the recipe, the original (which is credited to a MsTillmannRN), and my modified version.

Corn Chowder

1 15 oz can of corn
1 15 oz can of cream style corn
2 12 oz cans of chunk chicken
1 can of cream of chicken soup (this is one that I forgot, so I substituted cream of celery)
1 can of cream of mushroom soup (forgot this one too, but I had a second can of cream of celery)
2 7 oz cans of mushroom stems and pieces (this just sounded gross, and I didn't think the kids would like mushrooms in their soup so I substituted a 15 oz can of diced potatoes)
1 5 oz can of evaporated milk (I didn't remember what size when I was at the store and bought a 12 oz can, it worked)
1 16 oz can of chicken broth
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 teaspoon of pepper (I added another 1/2 teaspoon because I didn't think it had enough)
1/4 teaspoon of salt (I also added a couple shakes of garlic salt)

So the directions say to open all the cans and DO NOT DRAIN (sounds kinda weird I know, but I followed the directions). Pour all of it into a large pot (it makes a lot, you will have leftovers unless you have a family of 10). Stir well. Cover (I apparently had stopped paying attention by this point because I didn't cover). Heat for 20 minutes on medium and then reduce heat to low and cook another 10 minutes.

For a something you can whip up in 30 minutes with stuff that you have in your pantry, this recipe is fabulous.

I AM that crazy

Today I took five, you heard me right 5, kids to Chuck E Cheese and the mall. My three plus two of my friend's kids. Amazingly they were all really well behaved. It was so fun to watch Tiffany stare in awe at Chuck E Cheese. She's 6 and still blissfully ignorant of the fact that Chuck E Cheese is just some guy in a furry suit.

After Chuck E Cheese we went to the mall and Tiffany got her ears pierced. Then we saw the Easter bunny. Hey two guys in furry suits in one day. That's got to be some type of record. All this fun meant I didn't have the time to stop at the store to pick up the ingredients for the recipe that I wanted to try tonight and then share. It looks really promising. Open 10 cans, dump the contents in a sauce pan, and in 20 minutes you have soup. I don't want to post it until the kids have tried it though. I'll do it tomorrow, right after the jump place, McDonalds, and the orthodontist, I promise. It's not like the sock basket (that I still haven't touched by the way).

Crock Pot Ribs

Wow, it's Monday again already. Last week was quite eventful. I'll elaborate on that in another post, but today I was on my own again to run my whole household (including dinner). This is what I came up with. I had some pork spare ribs, but I didn't have a lot of time to mess around with them. I had to work today. So I looked on the internet to see how to cook them in my crock pot. I found several recipes, some more complicated than others. This was by far the simplest, and quite obviously the one I picked.

Ingredients

2 racks of spare ribs
1 16 oz bottle of bbq sauce

Put the ribs on a foil lined baking sheet and broil in the oven for 10 min per side. This is supposed to crisp them up some and drain some of the fat. I forgot I was broiling them until something started smelling good, so they were probably on the first side for 20 minutes, whoops. Didn't seem to hurt anything though. Cut them in half so they will fit in the crock pot. Slather bbq sauce on each section before you put it in the crock pot. Dump the rest of the bottle on the top. Cook on low for 6 hours. Broil for another 10 minutes when ready to serve if you want them a little more crispy on the outside.

Birthday cake

It's my birthday so it seems only fitting that today's recipe should be for cake. Now my favorite type of cake is white cake with lemon filling and sickening sweet buttercream frosting YUM, but that is not quick and easy to make so instead I will tell you how to make pineapple upside down cake. I like making pineapple upside down cake because it is sweet, but I don't have to put frosting on it. I stink at frosting cakes without getting all the crumbs in the frosting.

Ingredients

One box of yellow cake mix
One can of sliced pineapple
1/3 cup of butter or margarine
1/2 cup of brown sugar
Marachino cherries if you want to be really fancy (I don't do the cherries because if I had them in the house the kids would eat the whole jar in one sitting and get sick. I then would not have any for making the cake anyway, so I just don't buy them to begin with.)

Take the butter and brown sugar and melt them in the microwave for about 30 to 45 seconds, just enough to melt the butter. You should have just enough of the mixture to make a thin layer on the bottom of your cake pan. I use a 13x9 pyrex pan to bake my cake in so I melt the butter and brown sugar directly in it. If you are using a metal baking pan I would recomend you melt them in something microwave safe and then pour it into your cake pan. Drain the pinapple rings but save the juice. Add water to the juice to make up the total amount of water called for on the cake mix if there isn't enough juice in the can. My cake mix called for a cup of water and I had exactly that much juice. Other than that, make the cake mix according to the directions. Place the pineapple rings on the bottom of the pan in the brown sugar mixture (and the cherries in the center of the rings if you are doing the cherries), and then pour the cake mix gently over the top. Bake according to the directions on the box. When it is done baking and has cooled, flip it over onto a platter. Enjoy!

Cookie Dough Dip

Ok, not exactly a nutritious meal for your family, but it's a really good dip.

1 package of cream cheese
1 cube of butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar
3/4 of a bag of chocolate chips

Blend the cream cheese, butter, and brown sugar with an electric mixer. When it is well mixed, fold in the chocolate chips.

Serve with graham cracker sticks

Big Salad

It's Monday and I owe you a recipe. The new recipe I made a few nights ago didn't turn out so well. It was bland and colorless. So I'm not going to share it. Instead I give you the big salad. I love the big salad. Put some croutons on it and you have every food group. It's a little more time consuming, but I get the kids involved.

Big Salad

lettuce
tomatoes
cucumbers
celery
green onion
hard boiled eggs
grated cheese
sliced black olives
bacon bits
garbanzo beans
kidney beans
peperoni
ham
turkey

Dice all the ingredients except the beans and bacon bits (they are already bite sized). Toss everything with Ranch dressing. Serve.

Grandma's Spaghetti

Today's recipe is one that has been handed down in my family for three generations. It's so ridiculously easy that I'm going to have to try to estimate the amounts for you. This one is great because it's easy to always have the ingredients on hand just in case something happens and you don't have more than 10 minutes to make dinner. Also in case I have failed to mention in previous recipes, I have a family of 5, so all my recipes are going to serve 5-6 people, so adjust accordingly if you have more or less people in your family.

Grandma's Spaghetti

Small shell pasta (about 3/4 of the bag)
15 oz can of tomato sauce
1/3 cup of margarine
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp salt

Cook the pasta until it is done and drain. Using the same pot, heat the tomato sauce, margarine and salt and pepper on medium heat until warm. Return pasta to the pan. Stir to coat the pasta in the sauce. Serve in bowls.

This is really good with buttered bread on the side.

Red Beans and Rice

Happy Monday. I hope you all are enjoying your MLK day. My kids are all acting crazy. That happens any time they are off their schedule. FUN. Today's yummy recipe is Red Beans and Rice. This is something new we just tried this week and it was really good. Enjoy!

Red Beans and Rice

2 cups rice
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup diced onion
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 cans of kidney beans
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
1 cup water

Start your rice cooking in your rice cooker. About 10 minutes before the rice is ready, heat the oil in a large skillet on medium heat. Saute the onions, celery, and garlic until the onions are clear. Place one cup of the beans in a bowl and mash with a fork. Add the mashed and whole beans, the one cup of water, cilantro, and chipotle pepper to the pan. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Serve the bean mixture over the rice in a bowl. I also made some Jiffy Cornbread Muffins to serve with this.

My little one's first reaction was "Eww, beans, I'm not eating that", but after trying one bite (that's the rule around here, you can't say you don't like it if you haven't tried it) she kept eating it without complaint and when her bowl was half empty, she said "Mom, this is really good. Can we have it again tomorrow?"

Sausage and Rice

Sausage and rice

Smoked sausage sliced into bite sized chunks
1 cup rice
½ of a small onion diced
1 cup frozen corn
1 can diced tomatoes
Approx 10 oz water, I use the can from the tomatoes and fill it about 3/4 of the way up, one less thing to wash

Put everything into a sauté pan, cover. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, for approx 20 minutes until rice is cooked. Serve.

Crock Pot Beef and Noodles

We have a busy household. Three girls and their activities keep us running, so I like super easy, yet yummy meals. I have a bunch that I've collected on the internet, or that have been passed down in our family. I'll share a new one every Monday.

Beef and Noodles

1 can of Campbells French Onion Soup
1 can of Campbells Cream of Mushroom with Garlic Soup
1 lb. of stew meat
Extra wide egg noodles

Put both cans of soup and the stew meat in the crock pot. Don't add water to the soup mix. I usually cut the meat into smaller chunks so it's more bite sized when I serve it, but you don't have to. Leave it in the crock pot on low if you are starting it in the morning or high if you only have 4-5 hours. When you are ready to eat, boil your noodles, and serve the beef and sauce on top. If you like it creamier, you can add some sour cream right before serving, but because my oldest is a picky eater and won't eat anything called "sour" the rest of us just put a spoonful on top.