Black Beans and Pumpkins

This recipe comes from the current issue of Taste of Home and it is good. My kids didn't like it, but then again, they don't like soup/chili/etc. It's a more mild chili, but I'm sure you could spice it up as much as you want.

Black Bean 'n' Pumpkin Chili

METHOD: Slow Cooker

TIME: Prep: 20 min. Cook: 4 hours

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium sweet yellow pepper, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups chicken broth
2 cans (15 ounces each) black beans, rinsed and drained
2-1/2 cups cubed cooked turkey
1 can (15 ounces) solid-pack pumpkin
1 can (14-1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained
2 teaspoons dried parsley flakes
2 teaspoons chili powder
1-1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions:
In a large skillet, saute the onion, yellow pepper and garlic in oil until tender. Transfer to a 5-qt. slow cooker; stir in the remaining ingredients.
Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours or until heated through. Yield: 10 servings (2-1/2 quarts).

Grilled Cheese...With a twist

I don't have a picture of this particular sandwich, but you may find one by searching Paula Dean. I got this recipe watching her show, and it was every bit as delicious as she made it out to be. :)

Grilled Cheese w/ bacon and apples with a roasted onion mayonaise

bacon strips, fried up
thinly sliced granny smith apple (gala works, too)
cheddar cheese slices
some sort of fun bread (french, sourdough, Italian, etc.)
purple onion
mayo

Chop your onion and roasted in a lightly oiled pan for 1/2 hr (350 I think). Fry your bacon and slice your apples. Butter two pieces of bread. Ok. I'll stop here. I think you know how to put a sandwich together. ;) When your onions are done, throw a 1/2 c. mayo in a blender and toss some onions in (to taste). Spread that on both pieces of bread (not the side you buttered) and then add your fixings and grill it like normal. It is a little bit of upscale eating in your every day kitchen. Bon appetit!

Beautiful Brown Rolls

Like most of you, I love some good homemade rolls. My favorite hands down are my late Grandma Marchant's Parker House rolls. I have tried and tried to recreate them, but have never managed it. So, when I got the craving for homemade rolls and the itch to bake simultaneously, I had Jeff search some cookbooks for a new roll recipe.


Beautiful Brown Rolls:


2 c. boiling water
1 c. quick cooking oats
2 pkg (1/4 oz each) active dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c. molasses
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/3 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
5-3/4 to 6-1/4 c. flour
melted butter or margarine


In a large mixing bowl, combine boiling water and oats; cool to lukewarm. Meanwhile, dissolve yeast in warm water; stir into oat mixture. Add the eggs, molasses, oil, sugar, and salt. Add enough flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface ; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch dough down. Divide into 36 pieces and shape into rolls. Place on greased baking sheets. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes. Brush with butter. Cool on wire racks. Yields: 3 dozen.


This recipe comes from "The Best of Country Cooking 2000" which is a Taste of Home cookbook.

Peach Pie

I was dying for some fresh peach pie last week, but not having any fresh peaches, I had to improvise. Fortunately, improvising is my specialty. :) What I did have were some jars of bottled peaches that needed to be used. (I know-big improvise) I pulled out some of my most trust-worthy cookbooks and found this in the ever-handy Betty Crocker cookbook:

Fresh Peach Pie (with canned peach variation)

9 in - 2 crust pie

2 cans (1 lb 13 oz) sliced peaches, drained

1 tsp. lemon juice

1/2 c. sugar

1/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

2 TBSP butter or margarine

Heat oven to 425. Prepare pastry. Mix peaches and lemon juice. Stir together sugar, flour and cinnamon; mix with peaches. Turn into pastry-lined pan; dot with butter. Cover with top crust which has slits cut in it; seal and flute. Cover edge with 2-3 in strip of aluminum foil to prevent excess browning; remove foil last 15 minutes of baking. Bake for 35-45 minutes or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust.

I sprinkled the crust with cinnamon and sugar on the top for a little extra sparkle. Not one piece of this pie was wasted.

A New Look

I loved the clean, boring look I used to have, but when I saw this template, I couldn't help myself. (Doesn't that lime look perfect with it??) There is one tiny problem. All the font colors remained the same-black. Black on black doesn't work when you're trying to read. :) As a solution, I've edited all of this pages post (and all future ones) in white. If you happen to scan the back pages and are interested in a post, leave a comment on the newest one and I'll go change it to white as well. Otherwise, it'll be like reading invisible ink..He he he.

A Twist on Lime

I had this absolutely refreshing drink for the first time about 4 years ago. I don't remember who made it first (probably one of the super cute girls in my old FHE group), but I loooove it. Very easy and with a surprise ingredient-cucumbers-it turns into a perfect summer picnic beverage.

Ingredients
2 small cans or 1 large can frozen limeade concentrate
Cucumbers, peeled and sliced thinly
2 liters lemon-lime soda (or ginger ale)

Directions
Thaw limeade. Marinate cucumbers in limeade for a few hours. Add to the punch bowl with the soda. Add ice to chill.

What to do with Leftover Spaghetti

That was my quandary the other night. It's not like I had just one portion left, I had a whole meals worth of noodles. So, like any other good dilemma, I posted the question of what to do with the stuff on a forum. After 2 pages of responses, I picked a recipe to try. (Shocking that people would have idea. My idea was to just throw it away and count my losses.) We ended up trying a variation of chicken spaghetti. 2 out of 3 kids loved it and Jeff was blown away by its deliciousness. I was pleasantly surprised. Warning-the color is not aesthetically pleasing while making the sauce-don't let it fool you about it's taste.

CHICKEN SPAGHETTI
4 Large chicken breasts or one full chicken
16 ounces of spaghetti1 stick butter
1 medium onion
1 can cream mushroom soup
1 (16 ounce) can stewed tomatoes OR Rotel tomatoes
1 tablespoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon chili powder
Velveeta cheese

To make:
1. Boil chicken breasts or chicken. Save the broth. Cool and cut chicken into bite size pieces.
2. Boil spaghetti in the chicken broth.
3. Spray 9x13 pan with no-stick cooking spray. Pour spaghetti and chicken into pan.
4. Sauté the chopped onion in butter. Add cream of mushroom soup, stewed tomatoes, garlic salt, and chili powder. Pour over spaghetti and chicken.
5. Top with Velveeta cheese and melt in oven.

Vitamins and Supplements

Gee...It's been awhile, huh? Sorry about that!

I was looking through an article my friend sent me about what to do when you start feeling the blues and/or overwhelmed. One of the suggestions the article made as to the cause was a deficiency in either magnesium or B vitamins. That got me excited. Someone was telling me exactly what the mineral or vitamin was for! So, then I wondered if I would need to go to a health food store for that or if I could pick it up at Wal-Mart. I went to Nature Made's website (only vitamin brand I could think of). To my happy surprise, they have a fabulous website. You can search by supplement or by what you're trying to treat or need (energy, memory, health, etc.). Thought I'd pass a good thing on. www.naturemade.com

Quiche

In honor of spring, I'm posting a recipe for quiche (or as my kids call it "egg pie"). Serve with some fresh rolls (from the bakery or your freezer is perfect) and a yummy Spinach Strawberry salad (posted 7-18-07) and you'll have a yummy spring meal. By the way, it uses milk instead of cream.

Quiche
1 Pie crust

1/2 c. (or to taste) onion, chopped
1/2 c. butter
3 garlic cloves
1/2 green pepper, chopped

Saute veggies together (5-7 minutes)

1 tomato, chopped
handful shredded cheese
chopped ham (optional)
salt and pepper

Mix in with sauteed veggies and spoon into crust.

Mix 4 eggs
1 c. milk
salt and pepper to taste

Spoon egg mixture over veggie mix. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes. Sprinkle with another handful of cheese on top. bake for another 35-40 minutes. Enjoy!

Lucious Loaves

The other day my friend and I were chatting while waiting for our kindergartners to get out of school and she mentioned that she had some banana bread in the oven at home. Mmm....That sounded so good. As luck would have it, I happened to have 3 beautifully black bananas just begging to be made into bread. Yesterday I was still digging out of my organizing project, but today (in a freshly organized and clean kitchen I might add) I found I had plenty of time to make it. While it was baking, I picked up Twilight (again), but the heavenly aromas coming from my oven were somewhat distracting. Neither Lyndsi or I can wait till those beautiful loaves cool so we can try it!

Banana Bread

1/2 c. shortening
1 c. sugar
3 mashed bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 c. flour
1/2 c. nuts (optional)



Mix shortening and sugar together. Add bananas and eggs and mix. Add remaining ingredients. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes. Makes 2-3 loaves.

Menu for Sat. Feb 23-Mar. 3

I love having a menu plan for my meals. It takes the thinking out of dinner, and let's face it, who really can think of a good meal on an empty stomach? Unfortunately, this weeks meal is not packed with nutrition-at least in the main courses. We will be minus one at the table due to crazy work schedules, so I'm catering to the kids for a few days. Here's our meal plan for what it's worth. (By the way-feel free to share what you're having for dinner!)

Sat.-Grilled pork, veggie, and potatoes
Sun.-Hot dogs and chips
Mon.-Pizza (most likely little Caesars) and salad
Tuesday-Chicken nuggets, veggie sticks w/ ranch, and probably some fruit
Wednesday-Mac 'n cheese and ????
Thursday- Chicken salad, rolls, strawberry spinach salad, maybe some extra veggies
Friday- Salmon and ??? (any good recipes out there?)
Saturday-Tacos
Sunday-Quiche and salad

There you have it!

Fresh Tomato Salsa

I've discovered that I love taking pictures of my food to go along with the recipes, but this one was sooo good I couldn't get a picture before it was gone. Jeff and I ate almost the whole thing in one night which by the way is a bad idea unless you have a big bottle of tums around! Jeff especially loves fresh salsa and has been trying to find a really good recipe for a long time. This is probably the best I've had.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

3 c. chopped, ripe tomatoes 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 green onions with tops, sliced 1 T. olive oil
1/2 c. green bell pepper, chopped 1 tsp red wine vinegar (we used apple cider v.)
1/2 c. purple onion, chopped 1/2 tsp salt
2 T. lime juice 1/4 tsp cumin
2 T. fresh cilantro
1 T. jalapeno, chopped (I think I'd only add this if I wanted it really spicy)

Mix all ingredients. If time permits, refrigerate salsa for two or three hours before serving so individual ingredient flavors will blend. Serve it with any tortilla dishes, grilled chicken or hamburgers, or tortilla chips.

Popcorn Popping

Popcorn is like the year-round snack. You eat it while playing games, watching movies, eating at Wingers (sorry-had to throw that in), watching fire works, and just hanging with friends and family. My cousin gave me this recipe for flavored popcorn that is yummy. I made some today for Valentine treats, but am thinking by just changing the flavor of Jell-O, you can make them for any holiday/season. How fun!

Candied Popcorn

INGREDIENTS12 cups popped popcorn1 cup light corn syrup1/2 cup sugar1 pkg. (4 serving size) JELL-O Brand Gelatin, any flavor1 1/2 cups PLANTERS COCKTAIL Peanuts, coarsely chopped

DIRECTIONSPlace popcorn in large bowl.Mix syrup and sugar in saucepan; bring to boil. Remove from heat. Add gelatin; stir until dissolved. Add peanuts.Pour over popcorn; mix well. Cool about 5 minutes. Shape into 18 balls, each about 3 inches in diameter.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love to bake, but I do not make a good chocolate chip cookie (I know. How very sad.), that is, until last Sunday. (They didn't look so blue, though...) It's amazing what happens when you turn back to something that has worked in the past! I got this recipe from a friend in high school and it has not failed me yet. Jeff thinks they are a little "cakey" and we both think they could use some vanilla (I would do a tsp). However, 4 dozen cookies were gone in less then 3 days and we only shared 6 with neighbors. Here's the recipe:

2 sticks butter

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups of flour (you will need to add more, but this is a good starting point)

3/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

chocolate chips

Mix together. Drop on cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Peaches and Cream

If you've read my blog, you know I am trying to eat and be healthier this year. For one of my snacks, I am supposed to do 1 milk and 1 fruit. I came up with this little goodie that actually tasted like ice cream.

1 serving of fruit (I used canned peaches)
1 serving of milk
handful of ice

Blend it all up until smooth and enjoy!

Simple and yummy and no sugar needed!