Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day! 

This photo is from my FIRST Mother's Day.

Grace is so tiny in this picture. 

Just 8 days old. 

Sigh.

I cannot believe that it's been a year already! 

I'm looking forward to a quiet day with my 2 favorite people (and my favorite puppy).  We may possibly run an errand or two, but for the most part, a nice quiet day....we need it!  

~~~~~~~ 

My other blog:  Under the Big Oak Tree is getting very close to it's

100th post!  

Soon, I'll be announcing a giveaway to celebrate! 

Check back this week for more details!   

Ham and Cabbage Skillet

I'm not a huge fan of the traditional boiled ham and cabbage St. Patrick's Day dinner.  I also don't like Corned Beef and Cabbage.  Honestly, I am Irish!  :) 

When I eat ham, I tend to only enjoy it if it's a spiral cut ham from either Heavenly Ham or Honey Baked Ham.  Or if it's in the form of deli meat.  Even then, I'm picky about it. 

I will, however, eat ham steak.  And I do enjoy that!  MMmmm! 

In the past, Joe and I never really did anything to "celebrate" St. Patrick's Day.  Well, besides wearing a green shirt to avoid pinching! 

Now that we have Grace, I want to celebrate all the special occasions in little ways.  You know, heart-shaped pancakes on Valentine's Day and stuff like that. 

Grace is still too young to even realize that it's a special occasion and she's just starting on table food, so this year was "practice".   We were out yesterday during dinner, so I put off making our St. Patty's Day dinner until tonight.  I really enjoyed it and think it will be a keeper.  Not only for St. Patty's Day but as another way to serve ham steak throughout the year. 

Ham and Cabbage Skillet

Ingredients:

• 3 Tbs. butter
• 3 potatoes, scrubbed and diced
• 2 cups onion, chopped
• 2 cups carrot, chopped
• 4 cups cabbage, chopped
• 1/2 cup water
• Mrs. Dash, paprika, black pepper,  to taste
• 1 lb. ham steak, diced 

Method:

• Boil potatoes in a pot until tender, drain.
• In a skillet, melt butter and cook onions and carrots until onions just begin to become translucent. 
• Add cabbage and cook for about 2 minutes.
• Stir in water.  This will help the cabbage cook and also deglaze the pan. 
• Cook until vegetables are tender.
• Season to your liking and combine well. 
• Add diced ham, heat through.  
• Mix in the drained potatoes.  You may want to add another Tbs. of butter. 
• Cook a few minutes more. 

If you happen to make the traditional boiled ham dinner.  This would be a great way to serve the leftovers.  Just drain the juices, add to a hot skillet with melted butter and saute until slightly browned.  

Twice Baked Potatoes

Usually when I cook, I find a recipe I think we will like and then switch some of the ingredients around.  Sometimes I make changes to exclude an ingredient that I don't like (i.e. mushrooms) or I make a change because I think the recipe could be improved if something was added (like peppers and onions) or I make a change simply because I don't have a specific ingredient and I don't feel like waiting until I go shopping to make the recipe. 

When I make twice baked potatoes, I follow the recipe as it is written.  Every time.  (except I leave out the green onion.) 

Twice Baked Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 8 baking potatoes*, scrubbed
• 2 sticks butter, sliced
• 1 cup bacon bits**
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/4 tsp. Lawry's Seasoned Salt
• 1 cup cheddar jack cheese, shredded
• black pepper
• additional cheddar jack for garnish

Method:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
• Bake potatoes on cookie sheet for 1 hour, 15 minutes
• Place sliced butter, bacon bits, sour cream and Lawry's Seasoned Salt in a large mixing bowl. 
• When potatoes are done baking, remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes. 
• Turn oven down to 350 degrees.
• Hold potato with a clean dish towel or pot holder and cut in half (lengthwise).
• Scrape out the potato pulp into the bowl with the other ingredients, being careful to leave a little still attached to the skin.  Also, being careful to not tear the skin. 
• Place the skins on a cookie sheet. 
• Mash the potatoes and other ingredients with a hand masher (not the electric mixer) to the texture you like.  I like them a bit lumpy. 
• Add the shredded cheese and mix together until ingredients are well blended. 
• Stuff the potatoes. 
• Top with additional cheese. 
• Bake on cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes. 

*I prefer to use the huge potatoes from Costco, but the more normal sized baking potatoes from the grocery store work great, too. 

**Don't use the hard, crunchy kind of bacon bits.  Use the soft kind by Oscar Meyer or similar.  This can usually be found in the salad dressing/crouton aisle or in the canned tuna/chicken/Spam aisle. 

This recipe can be found on The Pioneer Woman Cooks! blog along with a great, step-by-step picture tutorial! 

Check out my other blog

I know it's been a while since I posted anything new.  I do have a few new recipes to post, it's just been a challenge trying to find the time to sit down and type them out. 

In the meantime, hop on over to Under the Big Oak Tree (my other blog) to read my review of the 12" x 9.5" Le Creuset Rectangular Dish that CSN Stores sent me! 

Here's a couple of pictures of the dish in action:

Green Bean Casserole

Stuffed Peppers

The recipe for Stuffed Peppers will be posted sometime soon!

Carrot & Sweet Potato Soup

For years, I only bought baby carrots from the grocery store.  I like them better for snacking than whole carrots.  Recently, I started buying whole carrots for cooking.  I still buy baby carrots for snacks, but if I know I'm planning to make soup or stew, I'll buy the whole carrots. 

Now that I'm hooked on making my own veggie broth from scraps and peels, the whole carrots really come in handy!  For some crazy reason, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a 5lb bag of carrots! 

When I wasn't using them as quick as I thought I would, I started to get worried that they would go bad and I'd have to throw them away, so I searched for recipes for carrots.  I found a few recipes for carrot soup and decided to attempt to create my own recipe in my Crock-Pot. 

Carrot & Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. carrots, peeled & sliced into coins
• 2 sweet potatoes, peeled & cut into chunks
• 2 onions, sliced thin
• 2 cans (14.5 oz. each) chicken or vegetable broth
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp. cumin
• 1/4 tsp. ground thyme
• dash of cloves
• Sour cream (optional)

Add all ingredients to Crock-Pot, cover and cook on low until vegetables are tender. 

Blend with stick blender to desired texture.  Top with sour cream and serve. 

I served the soup along with grilled cheese sandwiches for a Lenten Friday (meatless) meal.  Both of us agreed that the soup would have been better with some meat (maybe ham) added.  Or if left as a meatless soup, it would make a delicious first course to a nice steak dinner. 

I'll be sharing this recipe with the following carnivals:

• What's Cooking Wednesday
• Crock-Pot Wednesday

Lovin' My Crock-Pot

It's been a bit slow in the kitchen this past week as far as recipes go. 

I've gotten some use out of my Crock-Pot.  Have I mentioned how much I love that thing?! 

I cooked up my first batch of dried beans!  I am so proud of myself!  Anyone that knows me, knows how much I love beans!  The fact that I am such a bean lover and only ever prepared them by using canned beans is amazing to me. 

Wanting to attempt cooking dried beans, I bought a 2 lb. bag of pinto beans from Aldi.  Two years ago.  I bought them, then felt intimidated by them.  So, I ignored them and let them just sit there in my pantry.  Doing nothing. 

Then, I found out that beans shouldn't sit for more than a year.  After that, they don't soften.  Great.  Just great. 

Since Joe does a lot of the food shopping, there's no way I can convince him to buy more dried beans if I throw this  2 year old bag of beans away.  So, I attempted to cook them anyway.  Fully prepared for failure. 

They turned out great!  After they were done cooking (in my Crock-Pot) I seasoned them a bit and let them cook a little bit longer.  I served the beans over rice with corn muffins on the side.  A perfectly filling, meatless meal for Ash Wednesday. 

We made refried beans out of the leftovers and have several containers full in the freezer for taco dinners. 

I will  post in more detail about cooking the beans and also the refried beans.  This time I really just threw stuff in and didn't measure a thing.  Next time, I need to measure and write it all down, so I know what the heck I'm talking about!  And of course, I'll have to remember to take pictures. 

I also used my Crock-Pot to cook some split chicken breast.  I cooked it and diced it to use in future meals.  With the cooking juices and bones, I made more chicken broth!  Two quarts of homemade chicken broth!  MMmmmm!  I see chicken rice soup and croquettes in my future. 

I made more vegetable broth.  Again, in the Crock-Pot.  I think I made about 10 cups of veggie broth.  That will be perfect to add to some minestrone soup I forgot was in the freezer.  I remember that I made it a bit thick and that it would need to have some broth added when served again.  Perfect.  I think this will be on the menu for this week's Lenten Friday meal. 

I did try a new recipe.  I bought a 5 lb. bag of carrots a couple of weeks ago.  I have no idea what I thought I needed 5 lbs. of carrots, but the price was low and I wanted carrots.  Impulse buy, I guess. 

Anway, I made a carrot and sweet potato soup on Friday.  I need to gather my notes, so that I can post the recipe soon.  

Now that I think about it, maybe the kitchen wasn't so slow after all! 

Tutorial: Make Your Own Veggie Broth in the Crock-Pot

I've said before that my Crock-Pot is one of my most-used appliances in my kitchen.  Only to be beat by my constantly running dishwasher! 

After making my own chicken broth (I'll post about that soon...I promise) last month, I decided to find out if vegetable broth can be made in the Crock-Pot.  Sure enough, it can!  Yay! 

Searching the Internet, I found a lot of information for making homemade vegetable broth.  Rachael wrote this post for Buffalo Frugal Living Examiner and it seemed to have the best information for me.  After reading her post and seeing how simple it was to make veggie broth, I wanted to jump right in and make it that very second.  But, it wouldn't have been a very good vegetable broth, since I didn't have any veggie scraps saved. 

I decided to share my  vegetable broth making experience with you and was even prepared with the camera close by  and took step by step photos of the entire process! 

I started by saving all of my veggie scraps while preparing recent meals.  I saved everything:  carrot ends and peels, potato peels, celery (tops, bottoms and leaves) onion peels and tops, bell pepper tops, garlic peels, broccoli stems, cabbage cores, etc. 

I stored the scraps in gallon size Ziplock Freezer Bags in my basement freezer. 

I poured the frozen** scraps into my Crock-Pot.  My oval Crock-Pot only needed one of the gallon-sized bags to fill it.  This particular bag was full of scraps from carrots, peppers, celery, cabbage and onions. 

**Remember:  if you are using cold or frozen vegetable scraps, to start off with a room temperature Crock-Pot.  If it's pre-heated, it may crack when the cold items are added.

I added COLD water to about 1/2 inch from the top.  Then I covered it and cooked on LOW for about 13 hours. 

After letting it simmer through the night, this is what it looked like in the morning.  I took the lid off and let it cool for about half an hour. 

I placed  a large bowl in my sink and then placed my colander inside of the bowl to strain the veggies from the broth. 

I used a large ladle to scoop out most of the veggies and broth and let it strain through the colander and into the bowl until there was enough removed so that I could pour it through the strainer without making much of a mess! 

After that, I just had to pour it into my large measuring cup to see just how much broth was made!  It's past the 8 cup line!  So, that's about 4 cans of broth.  Four less cans I have to buy not only means that I saved money, but four less cans to throw away recycle. 

My next step will be to pour it into Ziplock Freezer Bags when it's finished cooling.  I'll store them in 2 cup portions and freeze flat on the shelf of my kitchen freezer.  Once they are solid, they will stack nicely in my basement freezer! 

I will be sharing this blog post with the following blog carnivals this week: 

• 
  
  Frugal Friday
• 
  
  Food On Fridays