Ketchup!

So A Daddy tomato, mommy tomato, and baby tomato are walking down the street. The baby falls behind and the mom struts back to him hits him and says "KETCHUP" or "Catch up!" whichever. That is the theme for todays post....playing Ketchup.

A lot has happened in the last month....got tax money back which was a relief, quit smoking, finished the decluttering, Haelie turned 5 months, Colton learned to tie his shoes and Dakota's nickname is Darlin'....etc....nothing majorly exciting though. I'm anxious for spring like you wouldn't believe, but everyone around here is. The weather has been incredibly crappy. Cold and wet! It's a muddy mess outside whenever it does thaw out every few days....I started some garden plants indoors a few weeks ago in hopes to bait that nice weather in....kinda backfired. Now I have plants that really need to be outside now and its too cold....that figures, just my luck. Oh well I guess. Anywho...I'm actually kinda sorta keeping up on my housework....eek lol. There isn't really anything "post worthy" here other than to let you loyal readers know I haven't forgotten about you and I will remember to check in with you every now and then. To tide you over here's a FOOL PROOF recipe for Stuffed Jalapenos! MMMMMMM!

Stuffed Jalapenos

1# fresh Jalapenos
1-8oz pkg Cream Cheese, softened
1# Bacon (preferably not thick cut)
Sharp Knife
Cutting Board
Baking sheet
Spoons

Rinse jalapenos well!** and cut off stem and cut in half lengthwise, remove innards with spoon. Spoon enough cream cheese into each pepper half to fill. Take uncooked bacon and cut in half. Wrap stuffed pepper halves with a 1/2 slice of bacon trying to cover all the cream cheese (its not a big deal if it doesn't completely get covered). Place bacon wrapped jalapenos on baking sheet and place in 400 degree oven for 20-30 minutes until bacon is done....Watch them after about 20 mins.

Okay so this recipe isn't entirely FOOL PROOF persay, b/c it does involve a ton of grease leftover from the bacon cooking which can cause a nasty fire, but otherwise....lol I hope you enjoy these, they are great snacks that I will be making a LOT!!!!!!!

**The better you wash them the less spicy they are......just fyi

Magical Things

You're fired! Thanks for all the recipe suggestions for my abundance of specific pantry items....or not. Anywho, oh well. Today is Tuesday! It's above freezing outside!!!! Hallelujah. Comfort Food Week (last week) ended with a fantastic Chicken and Noodles dinner. It was everything I could hope for in a comfort meal. It warmed me up on the inside, tantalized my taste buds, pleased everyone, and made tons of leftovers ;). Here's how it goes:

Chicken and Noodles

1 Whole Chicken (~4 lbs)
Carrots (optional)
Onion (optional)
Celery (optional)
Water
Big pot
Flour
Milk
Frozen Egg Noodles (16oz package)
Big pot
Yummy seasonings (I use Sweet Smokey Pepper, Garlic Salt, Onion Salt, and poultry seasoning and pepper)
Gold Medal Wondra Powder

Take whole chicken and cut it up into breasts, legs, thighs, wings, etc...If you don't know how to cut up a chicken, I suggest you learn, but until then you can buy "cut up chicken" or just use various chicken pieces of your choice....or have your MIL come over and do it for you ;) I don't cut up chicken...bad experience trying to separate leg quarters...long story lol Put in big pot and add enough water to cover, dump in your seasonings***, carrots, onion, celery etc. Simmer until chicken is done. Although this takes awhile, you don't wanna rush it. There's lots of magical things going on in the pot... Once done remove pieces of chicken and de-bone, then re-add to pot. Bring to boiling again and let simmer 30 minutes. This will create ALOT of chicken broth...which is freezable in proper storage containers**. Remove some of the chicken broth, you don't need as much as you would think, as you don't want this to be soup, until desired amt of liquid remains. Add frozen noodles, cook 5 minutes. While noodles cook, take a tightly covered small dish (I use a tiny pyrex bowl with a tight fitting lid) add 1/2 cup of milk and 4 Tbl flour. Shake until smooth. Add a cup of milk to pot and add flour/milk mixture and stir. This should thicken it up some. IF its not thick enough, add Wondra right to the pot. It's a "quick mixing flour for sauce and gravy" this stuff is AMAZING. If you've ever had trouble with a white sauce thickening or runny gravy, you need this product. SOOO much better than corn starch or regular flour. Add a little, stir, let thicken, and repeat if necessary. When to desired consistency....its done!!!! We serve over top Mashed Potatoes.

**TIP: Pour chicken broth into ice cube trays, freeze, and place in freezer bags. Each cube is approx 1 oz.
***TIP: Keep trying it! Add additional seasonings as needed. I can't tell you how much of what to add, it all depends on personal preference.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. Tweek it to your needs and let me know how it goes! I'm excited to hear about your results in my recipes. Any feedback would be appreciated!!!

Survival of the fittest!

Well I survived December....*sigh of relief*. December was insanely crazy for me. 10 days in the arctic (...also known as Iowa), Christmas vacation for the kiddos, Christmas festivities, etc...It was all full of drama drama drama too...:\ BUT part of my new year/new you campaign I'm going to let go of the drama in my life, thus relieving stress! :) How fantastic does that sound?? So far so good... of course it's only day 5.... Anywho, I'm going to try to keep my faithful reader updated and include some recipes here and there, maybe even a pic of the kids once in awhile! Don't get your hopes up though...I'm not the best at remembering to post pics for some reason, hell I'm not the best at remembering I have a blog. HA!

Recipe of the Day

FRIED CHICKEN (for Dummies)

Warning: this fried chicken will cause all kinds of nasty health conditions, such as but not limited to, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, weight gain, etc...but boy is it yummy!

Needed:
Family pack of Chicken THIGHS With SKIN ON!! (if you only like white meat or don't like the skin...just give it up ;) lol)
Flour
Milk
Salt & Pepper
OIL (don't try to get fancy with expensive oils, the plain ol Veggie oil is perfect)
Skillet with lid
Some deep dishes (pie plates work great!)

First off, this is a very easy recipe, although it takes awhile. So bare with me. Before I bread the chicken, I rubbed it down with salt and I soaked it in room temp water. Flipping every so often. You can soak as long as you'd like I did mine about an hour.

To make your breading its real difficult so pay attention...flour, salt, pepper, blend in a dish!!! This sounds fool proof does it!? Almost...:) Pour some milk in another dish. Put empty skillet on stove, turn stove on med-high. Once hot to the touch add about 1/4" of oil to the hot skillet. Now its time to get dirty...hahaha, bread the chicken. Take the chicken out of the water and dip in milk, both sides and plop it into the flour stuff. Coat well. Make sure all the little places are covered with flour. Test grease temp by throwing a pinch of flour mix in the oil. If it doesn't sizzle, its not hot enough...wait. Once HOT!, put them things in the grease. If you need to turn the temp down do so, you don't want your grease to smoke, every stove is different. Fry the chicken until underside is a nice golden brown color. Flip over the chicken in the skillet very careful (as not to splatter grease or mess up the breading, fork works well). After flipping, cover skillet with lid and turn the temp down just a bit, from med-high to med, ish. This is the waiting game....check on the chicken periodically to make sure they're not getting too brown. It will take awhile for the insides to cook through, be patient. To test done-ness cut one open, or if you're an experienced chicken cooker person, watch your juices. When they're done they're done!

I ALWAYS make gravy from my grease...if you plan to do the same, I suggest transferring cooked chicken to a baking dish and placing in a 200 degree oven while making the gravy. Reasons being not only to keep it warm, but to also prevent the crispy exterior from becoming soggy.

Here's an additional tip: after breading the chicken, stick it in the freezer for just a few minutes, it helps keep the breading on it during frying...if you have time.

I serve fried chicken with:

Mashed Taters
Gravy
Fried Vegetable, such as vidalia onion, mushrooms, squash, etc. (might as well while you have your hands messy and the grease out)

....Just wondering how I'm only 23 and I sound like I'm Paula Dean....hmmm food for thought I suppose (no pun intended ;))

Anywho, give the chicken a whirl, if you have any tips/tricks/comments/concerns please, don't hesitate to say.

You can't spell "families" without "lies". Try it!

Well I survived Thankgiving at our house! So that's a plus, I figured if Thanksgiving didn't do me in, Christmas surely will do the trick. Guess we'll have to wait a couple more weeks to find out. Anywho after some severe anxiety attacks Thanksgiving dinner was (dare I say it) a success (minus a slight gravy emergency)! Actually the gravy turned out DE-lish, but I was getting worried for a little bit on it. It would! not! thicken!...wtf. Finally I called in reinforcements. My MIL. She worked some magic and voila! Yummy gravy!! Matter of fact. It was sooo good we had to make another batch to eat with the leftover taters! Anywho I though I'd share some of my fave recipes! Feel free to try them out and let me know what you think!

Moist Turkey

1 thawed turkey, junk inside removed and reserved for gravy makin'
Butter (lots o butter)
Desired Seasoning (I used McCormick Sweet Smokey Pepper)
Roasting Pan
Turkey Baster
Oven

Easy as pie. Preheat oven to 325. Stick turkey in roaster. Rub down w/ a stick of butter butter. Throw the rest of the butter stick in cavity. Sprinkle seasoning on turkey. Put roaster in oven. Check periodically I did at about 20 min intervals. Baste and follow with repeating the butter maneuver and more seasoning. Allow 15 minutes of baking per pound of turkey. Let meat rest atleast 20 mins before carving!!! Very important for juicy meat! Try it w/ a whole chicken!


Pumpkin Roll

For cake:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup pumpkin

For Frosting:
1-8oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
6 Tbl butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla

Misc. things needed:
Tea Towel
Jelly roll pan
LOTS of Powdered sugar
Waxed Paper
Plastic wrap
Quasi level oven
Rubber Spatula

Now Pumpkin rolls can be a little tricky as with any roll. First preheat oven to 375. Grease jelly roll pan and line with waxed paper (I let mine hang a little over the edges). Grease paper. Take tea towel and dampen just a teeny bit. sprinkle with powered sugar. Let towel lie flat on counter or table or other flat surface. Combine cake ingredients throughly. Spread EVENLY into pan. It will not level out on its own, use a rubber spatula. Hope you have a level oven. I thought mine was level until I tried to do this the first time and had a disaster of a cake. If the cake isn't reasonable even it won't roll, it will crack and your pretty pumpkin roll is non-existant. SO Bake the cake 13-15 minutes or until cake springs back when touched (use this trick!!) IMMEDIATELY! Turn cake onto tea towel!! Peel back the wax paper and roll towel and cake up together LONG WAYS. If you try the short way it will crack. Don't roll it too tight or it will crack! Use your best judgement. Let cake cool for 20 minutes. While cake is cooling mix up frosting ingredients. After cake is cooled for 20 minutes, unroll slowly, spread on frosting (rubber spatula really helps) and reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour. I made 6 of these for thanksgiving and they were a hit. They were kinda rich, but that's how we like 'em. Feel free to make your own adjustments and let me know what you changed and why. BTW, my recipe is Libby's recipe off the can of pumpkin puree with a little motification here and there.

Excuses, excuses...and a recipe!

Okay, well I haven't been a very good blogger as of late. As you know, I had a baby a month ago and since then my life has been crazy hectic. She's a great baby, however, everything else in my life has required a lot more of my time and attention...plus the caring for her. I've had good days and bad, all of which were blog-worthy I'm sure...yet I haven't. I started reading a new blog which is FANTASTIC. It's great and has given me several ideas for posts...so I'll leave it to the reader(s) (ha) what would you like to see posts on?!??

To close out this post I'll share a recently found recipe that was a family FAVE!!

Annie's Quasi Venison Cordon Bleu

Cube steaks (or round steaks that you've beat incredibly thin, doesn't have to be vension, use beef if you wish)
Egg
Milk
Flour
Breadcrumbs
Swiss Cheese
Toothpicks, optional
Yummy seasonings
Oil

Okay so ya take a steak place an appropriate size piece of swiss on it...fold to cover it (I had to tear my cheese in half..). Being very talented like, take the folded meat and dip in flour, flip to coat well. Be careful or you'll lose the cheese! Throw that little puppy in a egg/milk mixture (heres where the toothpicks may have been handy, hindsight is 20/20). I would have skewered the meat closed with a tooth pick rather than get my fingers all covered in gunk...but not necessary. SO! You've got the meat floured, dipped in the milk/egg, NOW dredge it seasoned breadcrumbs. I put some crushed red pepper flakes in my breadcrumbs with some other seasonings, use your IMAGINATION (in the SpongeBob voice while imagining I'm drawing a rainbow in the air...) Okay, so at this point you've coated the meat...then if you're like me, you forgot to preheat the skillet and oil...SHIT...just put the meat on a plate and stick it in the freezer for a bit while the pan heats...(helps keep the breading on while frying learned this with fried chicken hehe). Go ahead and preheat the oven to 400 while you're on a roll. Once the pan is at optimal temperature for frying thus things...don't be shy, throw 'em in. Brown 'em nice and pretty and flip 'em over until that side is nice and pretty...pull them out of the skillet and put them in a baking dish and stick them in a 400 degree oven overed in foil, to get the insides cooked through and melt the yummy cheese. This would be the prime opportunity to make GRAVY! Hurray, everyone loves gravy!
I, however, did not make gravy the first time I did this...your choice. I served with seasoned garlic mashed taters and green beans.

I was kind of skeptical about this recipe, but was desperate to find new recipes for cube steaks (being we have a shit ton of them in the freezer)...this is a family fave now and has been requested again! Let me know whatcha think!

FYI: My little sis is engaged!!!! Hurray. Her and Colby are stopping by tonight to drop off Halloween "Tandy" for the kids :) :)

Impromptu Biscuit Snacks

Biscuit Snacks! for lack of a better term lol

It all started when I didn't feel like making a meal for dinner tonight...I opened the fridge and found a can of refrigerated country style biscuits (not Grands! or Buttermilk, but Country Style). Hmm I thought, what could I do with these....when I found a bag of shredded cheese....okay I can do this. So here's what happened next:

Biscuit can opened and out popped 10 little biscuits. I flattened each biscuit as much as I could, and put a pinch of shredded Colby Jack on it and rolled it up into a dinner roll shape. I did this to all 10 little biscuits. Next, I melted some butter and dipped each roll in it, set it on a sprayed baking dish while the oven preheated to 350 degrees (optimal temp for just about anything IMO). I sprinkled some seasoning on the tops of the buttered little biscuit/roll thingamabobs. I used garlic powder, minced onion, salt, pepper and parsley...sounded good at the time.

I popped those puppies into the oven for about 13 minutes (give or take a few seconds lol) until they were goldenish in color and no longer gooey. I removed them from the oven, set them out to cool, to a non-molten lava state, on a plate, while I warmed up some leftover spaghetti sauce to dip them in.

Let me tell you, while I was cleaning up my microwave from spaghetti sauce explosion, I turned around and saw little boys chomping down on the biscuit thingys....THEY LOVED THEM!!!

I did get to sneak a pic of one before it was devoured...

So, I guess those are something we'll make again, although next time I was requested to use more cheese...almost 4 and almost 5 year olds sure are culinary experts.....


We also did some Salt Dough sculptures tonight, but it was kind of a disaster...better luck next time I guess haha!

Mud and Recipes...!?

While cleaning the house Thursday I got frustrated with little boys undoing everything I had done, so I sent them outside to eat popsicles while I vacuumed the living room. After I got done vacuuming, 5 minutes later, I walk outside to tell the boys to come in and eat dinner...This is what I found.


Apparently, they thought mud wrestling/throwing was a great idea...I informed them otherwise with butt-whoopin's, hosed them off and gave them a bath. UGH! Little boys!!

On another note, I had previously mentioned wanting to add some recipes with pics to my blog. I have fallen short on this task this week due to being sick from the heat, recovering, and getting the housework done. SO, here is my first attempt at this, so bare with me.

PORK ROAST: an old-fashioned, one pot meal, a family fave.

This is a very simple, delicious dinner, can't beat that. Typically this comfort food is served in the winter time, but it sounded good so here's how its done.

Shopping List:

Pork Roast (I used Boston Butt this time)
several baking potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
baby carrots
onion
celery
cooking spray
seasoning

First you want to sear the meat to lock in all the juiciness and flavor. To do this I spray the meat on all sides, lightly, with cooking spray. Weird, I know, but stay with me. I do this so the seasoning sticks to the meat while browning. Rub the meat down good with seasoning, don't be shy. I use seasoning that would taste good on a steak: Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Creole seasoning, and lots of salt and pepper. Spray a medium-heated skillet and add the roast. Brown on all sides quickly. You don't want the meat to actually cook in the skillet or it will turn out tough.

After the meat is browned, place the roast in a crock pot. Add desired amount of potatoes, carrots, onion, and celery. I use a lot of potatoes, they seem to go fast. Dakota made me put in a bunch of carrots just for him, so...do what you wish. I, this time, did not add any onion or celery, I'm the only one who likes it and I didn't want to mess with it. The onion and celery do provide excellent flavor to the rest of the food though, even if you don't particularly like them.

Next, add enough water to the crock pot to cover the meat. Depending on the size of the roast cooking time will vary. Thursday, I put the crock pot on High and the average sized roast was done in about 3-3.5 hours. For a slower cooked roast, place on low and should be done between 6-8 hours.

Make sure meat is fully cooked and veggies are tender, then serve. Who doesn't love a meal that easy!? Nearly fool proof I'd say. Here is a single pic of the crock pot doing its thing....


Have a better or easier Pork Roast recipe? Feel free to share, I'm always willing to try different things. On another note, if there is a recipe or type of food you'd like to see on my blog, let me know! We'll work something out.

Let me know what you think!!!!