Silent but still around
It’s nice to see people are still checking out the blog! Life is crazy and even though I have still been cooking and taking pictures I haven’t had much time for anything else.
In the last couple weeks I actually joined Weight Watchers, so meals are changing just a little bit! Hopefully I can catch up and start getting you guys some new, even healthy recipes along with my normal ones again.
I will pass on a great little cookbook I bought in the last week;
Food Network Magazine Great Easy Meals Cookbook
I got my copy at Wal-Mart for under $15. It has lots of 30 min meals and 10 min deserts. Yes the desserts are easy and not made from scratch, but they are those desserts you might go to when you want something yummy and fast! I already have the family marking a lot of the pages as ones we need to try! And the ingredients aren’t too crazy, a lot of the stuff I find I have on hand besides a few spices and such.
Lots of baking going on
I don’t know if it’s because of Valentines Day and I know my family loves baked goodies, or if it’s the warmer weather around here. But today I was a baking fool and I didn’t even get everything done I wanted to get done!
So you know there will be some new posts coming soon! I made my S’mores bar cookies for the kids at school, Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake for work and the family, Snickers Cheesecake cookies for my mom and dad, Elephant Ear Cheesecake and Sugar Cookie dough… yes dough, ran out of time to make the cookies! I also wanted to make some pizza dough from scratch…. guess that will have to wait till tomorrow night!
So, are you making anything special for Valentines Day? Normally we get food out and bring it home for the whole family to enjoy. This year I was going to make Lasagna and be smart and make it tonight so it would be easy tomorrow, but after I got into the baking mode I forgot about it! So not sure what we will do tomorrow night! At least I know there will be lots of left over sweets!
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!
Oh and for Andy and Mike…. I may tackle that Man Log… maybe.
School Beef Burgers
Beef Burgers, Sloppy Joes… whatever you call them there are tons of different recipes for them. Heck they even have it in a can. But these everyone seem to love. My kids are actually pretty picky eaters, and not always do they like what I make. We have a rule in the house they have to at least try it, which could be a bite or two. They were not so sure about these, even though they love burgers.
The recipe actually came from my mom’s old school back in Clinton, Iowa. My family has used it for years for different occasions. When I realized how much my kids loved them I had to get the recipe from my aunt and start making them at home. I love them and could eat a couple of them myself so I always double the recipe, but I will post the regular recipe and if you want to you can double it!
This you can either make on the stove for a quick dinner or heat it up int he crock pot for dinner or to take to a pot luck.
Beef Burgers
1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 tbsp vinegar
1-2 tbsp onion
1-2 tsp brown sugar
1 c ketchup
1-2 tsp mustard
salt and pepper to taste
Brown and drain the beef, set aside. Plug in the crock pot and set to low or put the pan on the stove and turn it on medium. Start adding all the ingredients, minus the beef. Mix until all combined and then add the beef. If you are using the crock pot leave it on low and stir occasionally. I have left mine in the crock pot for about 1-2 hours at the most, after about an hour I would turn it to warm only so it doesn’t start get overcooked. If you are cooking it on the stove stir it occasionally and once everything is combined and hot I would let it sit for 15 min or so to make sure all the flavors are blended. Remove and serve on buns with more ketchup! Hey, we are a ketchup family!
Crock Pot Ribs
One thing I love to have are country-style ribs, beef ones. They seem to have increased in price over the years so whenever they are on sale I snatch up a couple of pounds of them. Usually I make BBQ ribs as everyone seems to like them, but the other night I decided to try something different. I went out and checked a couple of places online for recipes but as usually I didn’t find exactly what I wanted. So I took bits from different recipes to try out.
So here on this post you get TWO recipes! My typical BBQ one and my new one I tried out the other day because those ribs were so lip smacking good! I don’t measure a whole lot with these, so I am going to do my best with measurements, if anything taste the mix before you put the ribs in. If it tastes good, it will be good! All the pictures are of the BBQ ribs as I didn’t even think to take pictures of the other ones, but they didn’t look a whole lot different anyway.
Oh and an easy part of these are you can cook them in the crock pot. Everything seems easier when you can throw something int he crock pot, set it to cook and forget about it for 5-8 hours!
On to the mixtures!
For both of these recipes cooking is the same, if you have a lot of time for them to cook in the crock pot set it on low and let it cook for 6-8 hours. If you need them sooner cook it on high for 1-2 hours at the most and then flip to low for rest of the time. I don’t like to cook them too much on high as I am always afraid I will dry them out.
Easy Cheeseburger Soup
I have had a couple different cheeseburger soups that others have made but have never been able to get the recipe for them. We had a lot of ground beef and I wanted to make something new so we browned up 2 pounds of it and I set out to find a cheeseburger soup recipe. None of them online appealed too much to be because I really wanted to use Cheddar Cheese soup as my base. So I read a few and picked out things I wanted to use from them and then winged it.
Needless to say it was AWESOME! It was comforting, filling and so nice and warm in the belly. Oh and I forgot about the best part, easy to make! You could cook it in a slow cooker or in a pan on the stove. I used my stock pot tonight as my slow cooker was not quite ready to be used (aka dirty)
