At Home My Way

I'm sure I have told you many times that my husband is a seriously picky eater.  I know you are NOT going to believe this, but this is one of his favorite meals!  I do not remember how I got him to try it.  But, we love it.  I realize there are no VEGETABLES on this plate.  This is my husband's ideal - white plate food (carbs). (My mother would croak.  She liked a colorful plate of food. LOL.)  But, I didn't have any broccoli, peppers, etc. and definitely I wasn't going to the store when I got home.  Also, we had leftover corn in the fridge from Christmas dinner so that was a re-heat. The Hawaiian Chicken is a recipe I got from my sister-in-law.  Its really yummy!  This is how I do Hawaiian Chicken AT HOME MY WAY: Hawaiian Chicken Ingredients You Need to Make This : (6-8) Boneless, Skinless Breast Chicken Tenders (or breasts)  1 to 1 1/2 cup (app) Pancake mix, flour, biscuit mix (I had some waffle mix I was ne...

One of my favorite blogs (Finding Joy in My Kitchen) is having a Countdown to 2012 - Main Dish Favorites .  I'm just catching the tail end of this countdown but I do have a few main dish favorites for 2011.  I made a terrific discovery in 2011.  I discovered that I can BAKE spaghetti sauce.  Yep!  It can be done.  It bakes in the oven like roast & potatoes.  Turns out thick and rich, and the best part?  No toiling at the stove. #1 Baked Spaghetti & Meatballs   #2 Nachos for a Crowd (recipe from Homemaking on the Homestead ) I tried a new recipe which would be a great addition to any potluck. To us, it is very similar to Nachos Bell Grande at Taco Bell. Very yummy! I use my own precooked pinto beans (frozen) but it could be made with canned refried beans or any canned bean you prefer. #3 Best Homemade Pizza Crust Ever!  Homemade Pizza Rocks! I make my pizza crust u...

I tried a new way to make Baked "Fried" Fish last night and it turned out REALLY, REALLY good! I told my husband, "I don't know why we don't have this more often, because its just delicious!" In this post , I posted how to make Baked "Fried" Fish by baking fish with fish coating (a packet of "Fish Fry") on it, which turns out really good also, AND On this post , I posted how to make Baked "Fried" Chicken . Well, last night my husband had the BRILLIANT idea to bake the fish using the same coating/method that I had used on the chicken . The results were "fabulous" (as spoken by Fabio LOL).   I'm not going to repost the entire recipe. Just use the Baked "Fried" Chicken Recipe  BUT replace the chicken with thawed tilapia filets (I get the bag of frozen filets from Aldi) .  One note: you have to be very careful when flipping the fish because fish is so flaky. I used a big flat spatula to do this....

Our younger daughter is coming home from college for Christmas tomorrow and last night I was feeling particularly guilty that I don't have anything yummy waiting for her so while I was cooking supper, I whipped up a batch of my favorite chocolate chip cookies. I'm REALLY picky about chocolate chip cookies. I love the butter flavor by using real butter BUT I prefer thick and chewy cookies and not thin crispy ones. I haven't figured out how to get thick/chewy with the real thing. I don't usually buy Crisco but for chocolate chip cookies, I just haven't found another recipe I like as well. This recipe came from the little cardboard labels in the butter flavor Crisco sticks AND they don't print this recipe anymore in the packags. I love to smash tiny M&M's on top of these cookies for a "special" look but last night I just used Aldi chocolate chips, which was actually perfect because they are a cross between minis and regulars and I loved that about...

I posted that last Sunday I made baked "fried" chicken strips and wanted to make a quick post about how I did this. It is super easy and the only downside would be the wait time (for the chicken to bake). But, definitely it beats slaving over a skillet of hot grease, right? This chicken is terrific! My husband thought it was the best "fried" chicken I had ever made. It will be crispy and the meat will be juicy! Amazing that it works so well! You could use chicken pieces (with the bone) (I remove the skin from mine) or boneless skinless breasts/tenders, whichever you prefer. Here's how I made Baked "Fried" Chicken AT HOME MY WAY: Baked "Fried" Chicken 6-8 Boneless Skinless Breast Tenders or small-ish pieces of chicken (fully thawed) 1 1/2 cup AP flour 1 teaspoon season salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1/2 teaspoon paprika (these seasonings are entirely optional, just season as you like.) 1/2 to 1 stick margarine (I only used 1/2 stick but more chicken...

(my camera has died - maybe Santa will bring me one - HINT) Last night I made a terrific supper.  We've been eating lots of leftovers and trying to eat up what's in our freezer but we wanted some real comfort food for our Sunday Supper so I kind of went "all out."  I made baked "fried" chicken strips (this is our favorite way to make fried chicken - will post this soon), mashed potatoes, homemade sweet cornbread , and veges.  I had some sweetened strawberries from my friend's garden in my freezer so I also made a little cake (the Busy Day Cake) to go with the berries. At first I was going to make garlic cheddar biscuits and sugar cookies instead of cornbread and the cake. But, after seeing that my flour supply had taken a serious hit when I made Homemade Sandwich Bread , I figured I could instead make the cornbread (it uses only 1 cup of flour) and this terrific Busy Day Cake recipe that my mom used to make for us all the time.  This ca...

Surely there is something wrong with a person who gets so EXCITED over a loaf of bread!  Ha-ha. ....  I made this loaf of sweet bread over the weekend.  It was beautiful AND delicious!  I will have to take some pics of the process, but for now here is the recipe and some written instructions for how I made Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread AT HOME MY WAY. I used my recipe for Schoolhouse rolls found here   as the "basis" for my recipe.  The only addition in the dough itself was a beaten egg.  Most of my favorite recipes are used as a basis for something and then I create a variation to make something else.  That's what I did with this bread.  Ok, here's how I did it: In a 2-cup measuring cup (warmed with hot/warm water first), mix (hint:  hot but no hurt):  1 1/3 cup very warm water 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast (1 packet) 1/4 cup white sugar Mix well. Set a timer for 10 minutes for this mixtur...

Our Thanksgiving leftovers were divine, but I craved something a little different and yet still was in the mood for comfort food last weekend.  I ran across a terrific site called " Deep South Dish ."  Every single one of her recipes looks like something I want on my dinner table!  When I copied this recipe down, I thought it would taste like BBQ round steak.  She has it named " Barbeque Round Steak ", but really, this dish tasted like round steak turned into meatloaf (if you can imagine that).  This was a wonderful solution for me because my husband has never tried meatloaf (imagine that?) and never will.  He claims he doesn't want stuff all mixed together and that he likes his meat to taste like meat.  He's a little finicky to say the least.  So, I made this recipe (a version of it anyway) and told him (because I believed it to be so) that it was like homemade BBQ sauce on round steak.  It didn't taste like BBQ to me.  But it did taste...

My husband and I got married pretty young compared to today's standards.  I was 18 and he was 20.  We had never lived away from our parents and moving "out" was a terrific experience.  We cooked all kinds of things (BBQ for breakfast???) and had a ball making up on our own "rules"  like eating in the living room ha-ha.  After 26 years of ups and downs, (more ups thankfully LOL), we are back to just the two of us... Our older daughter graduated from college, officially "moved out" and got a terrific job this summer.  Our younger daughter is a couple of hours away at college so for the most part, we're back to being "home alone".   The juicy burgers supper I made last night was one of the first things I learned to cook.  My mother IS a terrific cook but she wasn't much into sharing her kitchen with a teenager, so I learned this "method" from a co-worker, who was just a couple of years older than me but who had already mas...

This weekend we celebrated my Mom's birthday. We decided to have a shrimp boil and fish fry since we would be eating lots of comfort foods this week for Thanksgiving. It was so yummy! We used bags of large frozen uncooked shrimp that we got from Walmart (since we live in the midwest and fresh isn't an option for us), cooked in a big pot on my stove in "shrimp boil" seasonings with new potatoes and little corn cobs. We started the water with the spices and the potatoes until they boiled (this took MUCH LONGER than we thought it would). Once it started to boil, we let the potatoes boil about 10 minutes, then added the corn (we had to use frozen so I had heated them in the microwave to take the chill off since we were about the starve to death.. LOL.)  We let the corn boil for about 3 minutes, then added the shrimp, which need to boil only a minute or two until it was pink and ready to serve!  My sister-in-law even made her own cocktail sauce using ketch...

I don't know about your area, but here in Mid Missouri, there are no nuts on the trees. I don't know what the poor squirrels are going to do! We live in the midst of a bunch of hickory trees and usually our yard is loaded, and I mean LOADED with hickory nuts! We have to shovel them or else our ground will be a mass of crushed hickory nut shells (the remnants left from the squirrels). Also our area usually has lots of pecans! Missouri pecans are so wonderful! But this year, not a single nut! The trees are strangely bare of pecans. What is a person to do when she loves pecan pie more than any pie on the earth? Why, there is a solution! Use oatmeal! This recipe produces a wonderful pie which is super similar to pecan pie. And just think, substituting oatmeal makes this ALMOST a healthy dessert (oh yea... except for all that sugar and eggs). OK, its a smidgen healthier! I'll take it any day over paying big bucks for pecans! Here is how I do a mock pecan pie, an Oatmeal Pie,...

Saturday, my college daughter was home and we wanted to do a little shopping. My husband was home piddling around in the yard. My daughter had requested meatball sandwiches for supper but we really wanted to go shopping at some great thrift stores and she was on the lookout for a warm coat at Bass Pro Shop. I didn't really want to eat out, so I came up with the BEST WAY for making spaghetti sauce (this time, with meatballs) without having to stand at the stove stirring and watching the pot simmer. When we got home, we had such a delicious supper waiting for us in the oven. It occurred to me that when I cook a roast or other things in the oven, that the gravy will be "juice" when I first start baking it, but the finished product is always thick and rich but I never have to stir it or anything. So, I thought, why not BAKE my spaghetti sauce? It was perfect. I will probably always cook it this way (when its not blasting hot in summer, that is). ...

Yesterday as I was reading over some of my favorite blogs I ran across a recipe for WACKY CAKE! Now, how can you read a name like "Wacky Cake" and not be intrigued? One of the blogs I most like to read is Kim's Jabez Farm blog . I love to read the posts Kim writes about her farm and family. She lives in the Pacific Northwest (where I have never even visited), and is a homeschooling mama who has a wonderful menagerie of farm animals. I work in a law office all day, wishing I was home, and ONLY have one dog and some cats! Reading blogs is definitely a wonderful way to experience a different way of life and at times, it is a delightful reprieve from my sometimes dull existence! I had heard about Wacky Cakes. My mom tells me she used to make them all the time, but I don't remember. Chocolate cake is CHOCOLATE CAKE when your mom bakes it for you, right? A win-win, whatever kind of recipe! I believe the history is that this cake was popular during the depression when ingred...

My husband and I are recent "empty nesters" and have been enjoying a little bit of new found freedom the last couple of weeks. We haven't ever been big restaurant eaters but we have a new affinity for Outback Steakhouse. It seems like the other restaurants have raised their prices to the point that we can now eat at Outback as cheaply as we can eat at one of our local diners. If we each have the Outback Special for around $10, and drink the ice water, its a pretty cheap date night. A few times we have splurged and bought a half order of the Cheese Fries. They are divine! And OF COURSE, I had to figure a way to make these AT HOME MY WAY! And boy oh boy did I have success! These are really good. My older daughter wants me to make them over and over in the same week. She just can't get enough of them. I bought a 20 pound bag of potatoes (well... I bought two actually) for $1.98 each so this date-night splurge was really cheap to make at home. We NEVER fry anything any mo...

My man is like most men. He prefers a "meat and taters" kind of dinner and I made him a terrific meal the other night. My only problem in cooking meals like that is that we don't walk in the door until after 5:35 every weeknight. But I figured a way to make a great meal and I probably had this terrific "home cooking" type meal (known by lots of different names, "chicken fried steak", "breaded cube steak") within about 30 minutes. How did I do it? Well.. one of the best things I have discovered is that baking potatoes in the crockpot is the ONLY WAY TO GO! So easy. So, I had potatoes in the crockpot, breaded the meat and fried it in a skillet with a teensy bit of bacon grease (shhhh!), opened a can of vegetables and dinner was served. With this particular meal, I used the leftover flour and milk from breading the meat to make gravy (very frugal) and it was just A FEAST. Even though I'm not a "meat and potatoes man" (woma...

It seems we are all looking for new ideas for supper. One of my favorite blogs is called " Homemaking on the Homestead " and I found this recipe for "Nachos for a Crowd" on Crystal's blog. My pickier daughter decided this SOUNDED GOOD to her so I added it to my meal plan for this week and made it last night. IT WAS WONDERFUL! I had already cooked some pinto beans (we love those with everything from taco's to rice & cornbread) and put some in the freezer in med-size containers, so I had them ready to go. I imagine you could use canned pinto beans and even a combination of one can of pinto beans and one can of refried beans would be good, because the recipes calls for you to mash half of your cooked pinto beans as you add it to the cooked hamburger. Anything like that would work. We both LOVED this recipe! We decided it would be great to take for potlucks, to have for a dip when you have friends or family over, and also to freeze ahead for later. M...

Monday : Breakfast - Leftover HM pancakes with HM apple butter (will post soon) Lunch - PB&J & fruit Supper - Nachos for a Crowd (New recipe from Homemaking on the Homestead ), maybe HM Spanish rice To Do: Mix up dumplings before bed and freeze for dinner Tuesday. Tuesday: Breakfast - HM Apple/Oatmeal muffins using Plain Muffin recipe , (use 1/2 cup sugar, sub in 1 cup oatmeal for flour + 1 grated apple) Lunch - Leftovers from Nachos (as taco salad) Supper - Chicken & Dumplings (chicken in the crockpot, add dumplings once home) Wednesday: Breakfast - Leftover muffins Lunch - PB&J, fruit Supper - Leftovers To do: Bake bread Thursday: Breakfast - Smoothies or oatmeal Lunch - PB&J, fruit Supper - Baked potatoes in crockpot, cube steak, green beans/corn To Do: Bake chocolate chip cookies, assemble ingredients for soup Friday: Breakfast - Cinnamon toast / ch...

I have a friend whose daughter recently was diagnosed with Celiac, which requires her to eat only a gluten free diet. This means she has to avoid all things made of flour! That encompasses quite a large variety of things. In all of my blog reading, I have been noting any GF (gluten free) recipes so that I can share them with my friend. Sometimes I try the recipe out and sometimes I don't, but I knew my friend would NEVER try this recipe unless I could vouch for it being a good one LOL! I had long read of Black Bean Brownies and Pinto Bean Fudge, but really couldn't see why anyone would want to purposefully eat such a thing! That is... until I realized they were made without any flour. Ah-ha! Gluten free! I made a recipe that I found at one of my very favorite blogs ( Finding Joy in My Kitchen ). She posts delicious recipes and she sure cooks up a great variety of stuff! I got the recipe for these cookies (Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies) on her blog and my younger d...

One of our daughters is Super Picky! But, I have to compliment her and say that at age 23, she is working hard to increase the variety of foods she likes. She doesn't like that she's so picky. This is one of the recipes she found that she loves. I am a chili lover! I love all chili - no matter how bland, spicy, thick, thin, chunky, red, or brown. So it didn't matter to me which kind of chili she found that she liked, it was just nice to find a recipe that she did like because there are days that nothing satisfies like a big pot of chili! A friend had us out for our now annual Christmas gathering and she made this terrific chili. It doesn't have any fancy ingredients, but its so good! If chili can taste silky - this does! My daughter went gaga over it and gobbled down two bowls. I could not believe it! So, definitely I started making this at home. I cook hamburger and keep portions of about 1 1/2 pounds in my freezer for quick "meal starters" so dumping this i...