Harvest Season!

While its true * I * do not have a garden, I am the happy recipient of other people's garden surplus! A friend had given us some zucchini and due to a week full of migraines I hadn't had a chance to use it the way I like! (more to come on that later!) This meant I needed to find a new way to get my children to eat it. Those Betty Crocker emails come in handy! I found a recipe for a Zucchini Tomato Skillet Dinner HERE. Funny thing was that the same friend gave me tomatoes when I asked if I could use a can of stewed tomatoes to make the dinner! Nice that she contributed half our dinner that night!

Edits this time primarily come from not reading the instructions....LOL! I did use dehydrated onion, and then instead of waiting til the end for the chopped fresh tomato, I put that in with Step 2. Whoops. Its okay, it was still great.

Marshmallows, again!

This idea came from my friends blog HERE.
We have now done this three times and two different ways....
Her recipe is simply spread peanut butter on a ritz cracker, set it on the pan, stick a marshmallow on top and put it under the broiler for a few minutes.

That is soooo yummy!!!
But today, for our first-day-back-to-school treat I used nutella instead of peanut butter!!!
EVEN better!!!!

Butter Dip Biscuits

I am sure there is a grammatical problem with the title of this recipe, but it is a recipe of my great-grandmother's, who was born to farmers in 1887. So, it is what it is, and it is GOOD.

These are great with spaghetti, soup, whatever you need biscuits with! This round, it was a soup.

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cup sifted flour
1 Tbsp sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup butter (or margarine is okay)

Heat oven to 450*. cut butter into pats and place all over baking pan like this:

Mix dry ingredients and milk in a bowl,

and then move to counter top to knead a bit, and roll out to about 1/2 an inch thick. Cut into strips like this:

dip into butter (smother both sides of the biscuit-which is why it is melted all over the pan you're using)

and bake 14-20 minutes.
tada!

my husband likes them with jam, I just like to dip them in whatever we're eating, like the soup...

Quick Treat!

The other night my husband was looking for some kind of treat. I had just bought a bag of regular marshmallows and the coconut covered ones -since my daughter has been begging me all summer for them...! He decided to melt down some chocolate baking chips that are meant for melting into like a chocolate fountain or something. He dipped the marshmallows til the melted chocolate was gone and we had about a cookie sheet full! He let them set up in the fridge for 15 minutes and they were ready! MMMM!

When things don't quite go right...

Here's a new way of making lemonade out of life's lemons. haha!

I recently volunteered to take dinner to a family who was moving, and I was also supposed to make two treats for a baby shower the next day. I thought No Bake Cookies would be great since I only stand over a hot stove for a few minutes and don't use the oven at all. Perfect!
...only. ...the cookies were still not set after about two hours. hmm....
I had made a nice, big double batch so that my family got some, along with all the sharing...and it was like picking up oatmeal.
what. was I supposed to do with a big old mixing bowl full of chocolatey oatmeal???

I called my husband {the foodie} to see if he had any ideas and he said "sure, throw in some eggs, flour and baking powder and bake them."
...Really? you can do that??

Yup. Guess ya can!
Behold! Baked No Bake Cookies!

They taste much more like oatmeal cookies than No Bake cookies, and they are quite flat. I added the following before baking:
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup flour
and baked them about 12 minutes each pan.

Also, I only put about a tbsp of batter on the pan and some spread to be as much as 3 inches across...!

Meatloaf from meat balls!

Remember my meatballs post? I really like those meatballs. My kids both like them now too. We have eaten them at least once a month since that first post, sometimes much more often. I've made them for my parents at least three times, and we actually don't have a nice dinner together all that often! lol!

Well. it is hot here, and I am very, very busy (as so many of us are) and I didn't want to take the time to shape out a bunch of meatballs. I just wanted to eat it. I asked my husband-the-cook if the mixture could be made into a meatloaf..? (my mom didn't make meatloaf one single time until after I was married so this is not a staple I grew up with. but since I do love those meatballs, I bet I'd like the meatloaf just as well...!) He thought it absolutely could, so that is what I did!

Since we used to watch Good Eats every night (until food network got so competition-heavy), I had vague memories of AB not liking square pans because casseroles get dry corners and uncooked centers...and something about dry meatloaf being bad...so I put the meat into a foil lined loaf pan for the first 45 minutes...

and then I turned it out into a rounded baking dish,smothered it in sauce and let it bake that way for the last 15 minutes. I added the extra five minutes to make extra sure the meat in the middle was totally cooked (I like my cows goooood and dead thanks).

As far as meatloaf goes, it was perfect! But it turns out I like the sauce in all three bites of meatloaf and unless you have the end slice, its hard to get the sauce in every bite. But that's okay, it was quicker, less messy and soo tasty!

While I'm on the subject, I should mention the alterations that my-husband-the-cook made to the meat mixture. He added minced garlic, Worcestershire sauce and a drop or two of liquid smoke. He might have changed up a couple other things, but at this moment I don't know what... if I think of them I will add them, so feel free to check back!