Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread!

Between my husband and I, we've found a lot of yummy food ideas and blogs in the last little while. This recipe comes from Mel's Kitchen Cafe blog, which my husband found. Oh. my. YUM! And this is our first recipe we're trying from it! Can I just say how wonderful my house smells?? Even tho it snowed at our house a week and a half ago, today it's back up to 70* today and maybe just a bit too warm for the wonderful smells of autumn, but ohhh they are the best food smells and I am ready for autumn baking!

Here's the wet and dry ingredients just starting to be mixed....

first yummy slice.......! mmmmmmmmmm!

My slice was still a little warm, but according to Mel it's even better the next day and that its great for breakfast!! Looking forward to it! haha!

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Now, I have to say...

I ran into a snag. or, created one, is the thing. I've been working hard to do better and lose a little weight so when I read this recipe and saw that it called for a cup of vegetable oil I decided to substitute with 1/2 cup applesauce and 1/2 cup oil. Healthier, maybe. easy to get out of the loaf pan in one piece? nope.
I used this scraper around the edges of the pan and also tried to go under the loaf a little. Annnd when most of the loaf came out, I left it upside down, scraped the rest out and laid it back on the bread like it was supposed to be.

lesson learned.
leave the recipe alone and eat it anyway! *grin!*

"Sweet" Pork Barbacoa

Yes, this is extremely similar to THIS recipe.
The meat was done exactly the same, except with 1/4 cup, 1/2 cup brown sugar.

This time we did a black bean mixture.

And the rice was just lime rice....1/2 cup dry rice, 1 cup water, 1 tbsp lime juice, cooked til done!

But this time! We put meat, beans and rice all into the tortilla, wrapped it up burrito style, stuck it in a baking pan, smothered it with about half a can of enchilada sauce and a bunch of cheese! Then we had corn on the side. Quite tasty!

bottling salsa!

We tried a brand new recipe to bottle 19 pints of fresh salsa! ...I hope its good!!! LOL! The recipe came from HERE and our edits (you knew that was coming...) were:

• leave out the sugar,
• used 1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper, instead of a tsp 
• add 3 tbsp of chili powder
• 1 cup lemon juice and 1 cup lime juice instead of choosing one.

Also, I started out squeezing the tomatoes with my hand and removing seeds, but that was a little ridiculous and time consuming for me, so I quit. You can see below that juice and seeds come out on their own, no need to work harder, haha. My favorite tip from that recipe link is that they put their cutting board into a cookie sheet, to keep the tomato juice contained. best. idea. ever! LOL!

cooking/reducing the salsa...

and here's the finished product!! Yeay!

It is a smooth? juicy? sauce, more than a salsa because we pureed the tomatoes with a stick blender before adding anything else. That's my fault...I don't like eating a bite of onion with my chips... lol! And my husband spoils me!

Yvette's Corn

If you have fresh corn on the cob still, or a local farmers market that does, here's a cool tip from my friend Yvette that I forgot to share when it was still summer...

I baked my corn the other night. Put a few slabs of butter in some tin foil, added garlic powder to 1, fresh basil leaves to another and paprika to the other, wrapped them up and threw them in the 425 oven for 25 minutes. The basil and garlic ones were sooo good. I would have done fresh garlic if I had any.

Of COURSE I gave it a try, but put it all in one packet and just added garlic.

Very tasty and something I don't usually have- garlicked corn? 

Summer Salad!

When I got married, my MIL gave me a few recipes. One was labeled "Burt's Favorite Summer Salad". The thing is, I am allergic to half the ingredients and hey, my husband loves to cook. So I had never made this until Sunday. We decided to make it because it feeds a lot of people and a family reunion lunch is a great time to feed a lot of people, lol. And since the kids don't like it and I can't eat it, he doesn't get it very often. This time he got to keep what was left.

Ingredients: (for this batch)
1 head cabbage, diced?
2 cucumbers, cut into 6ths and sliced thinly (about 6 inches long, about 1.5 inches diameter)
2 green bell peppers diced
6 roma tomatoes, diced
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cup miracle whip (approx)
salt & pepper

First, you cut the cabbage into very small pieces, put it all in a big bowl and use about 2 tsp salt and let it rest for half an hour or so, while you cut the other ingredients. After the veggies are all cut, mix it up, add the miracle whip and a little freshly ground black pepper and mix completely. Chill and let the flavors blend- enJOY!

Yvette's Chicken Salad

I saw a recipe for a chicken salad and decided I wanted to make one. After much discussion with my friend Yvette, this is what I ended up doing. And since most of it was her ideas, she gets the credit!

First, I made the Chicken Salad....
3/4 cup red/purple grapes, sliced in half or third
2/3 cup cashews sliced to tiny bits
1 12.5 oz canned chicken, drained, rinsed and cut finer than it comes
1/2 large granny smith apple, diced
2 stalks celery, sliced tiny
2 heaping spoonfuls miracle whip (a little more than 1/3 cup)
few grinds of black pepper

Then, I shredded some iceburg lettuce to bite size pieces in a bowl and drizzled with a mixture of olive oil and lemon juice. I mixed it in a measuring cup and by using more juice than oil, I had about 1/4 cup liquid, and with enough lettuce to serve three of us, I used maybe half the liquid. I mixed the lettuce and dressing together and put it on the plate, then a scoop of the chicken salad on top of that. Served it with a slice of cornbread and there was dinner! mmmmmmm!

(sorry for the lousy picture- it was late and dark...)

6/12/18 ETA: Most of the time we eat it on toasted bread as a sandwich and it is delicious!

Healthy little snacky-lunch!

ETA: I made it again and this time I took pictures!

I recently became a facebook "fan" of Walmart's Meal Solutions. This means that once a day they post some kind of budget-stretcher kind of meal. The other day they posted a snack that I had for lunch today! If this works, you can see the picture HERE. (altho you may need to scroll back to September 14)

You'll need 2 tortillas (whole wheat would taste better...), peanut butter, honey, and either a pear or granny smith apple*. That's it!

Spread the peanut butter all over the tortilla. Chop your apple or pear like french fries...long and thin, not slices. Lay them across the tortilla, running long ways, but sort of along a side. Drizzle with honey, wrap it up and ENJOY!

The recipe said to serve it with yogurt so I had a cup of yogurt with the apple wraps and water for lunch. It was just the right amount of food and so tasty!

*I used a granny smith apple because that's what I had. The recipe calls for pears. I don't think it matters much. :)

Banana Cake

Earlier this summer our neighborhood had a potluck dinner and our neighbor Jordan brought this cake. My husband had to work that night, but I saved him a little food since that was our dinner! We both loved this cake and had to get the recipe...but should a family of four eat a whole sheet cake?? Family reunions are great places to share good food, so this was our dessert contribution:

Banana Cake:
2 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup margarine
3 eggs
3 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 cup mashed bananas (around 3-5)
3 cups flour

Combine all ingredients and pour into an un-greased* sheet pan. Bake at 375* for 20 minutes. Cool completely and frost with the following:

Cream Cheese Frosting:
       (with a note that she doubles this, so I did too!)
1/2 stick margarine
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
powdered sugar

Combine all ingredients, beat until creamy. Add enough powdered sugar to make the consistency of frosting. (I used about 3 cups) Cut cake into bars and serve!

It was a hit at the potluck, it was a hit at the reunion! YUM!

* I had a hard time believing it would come out of an un-greased sheet pan, so I went ahead and greased the pan with crisco. As the cake baked it pulled away from the sides of the pan, and you can see very, very little stuck. I'm sure it would come out of an un-greased pan, but do what you like.
** If you travel with it, frost it after you arrive!

ETA: 
- This makes a lot of batter. It's too much for my large mixing bowl and it is a bit too much even for my mixer. Also, maybe mix the butter with the sugar first because otherwise you end up with a block of butter thudding around the mixture... 

- I also added 6-7 minutes to the baking time in 2024. 

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!