At Home My Way

Do you want to make the best, easiest homemade dill pickles in the world?   I found a recipe for dill pickles that tastes JUST LIKE Claussen refrigerator pickles.  Those are the best anyway, right?  That crunch, the dill and the garlic... and oh yea , the crunch!  This recipe is super easy because you  don't have to process these pickles which means there is no canning needed.   You just fill a gallon jar (we use an old pickle jar) with fresh cucumbers and dill heads, and then pour over the cooled liquids/seasonings.   Let it sit on the counter for three days, and then refrigerate.  After that, the pickle eating begins. They are supposed to keep for one year like that in the fridge, without canning.  (We let them sit for the 3 days, then refrigerated them overnight before opening the jar for the much anticipated first taste. Did they taste like Claussen?  YOU BET YOUR PRETTY PICKLE THEY DID!  We were all SO ex...

This is the very best pasta salad EVER!  It is not made with mayo so it can stand the heat better than other dishes you might take to a BBQ or picnic.  I get the most requests for this recipe!  I posted the recipe for this dish here , but wanted to add these pictures because it is so beautiful.  Sweet & Sour Pasta Salad (a/k/a Peggy Jean-ish Pasta Salad) I mix up the dressing in a quart canning jar and heat to boiling in the microwave, but you can heat it on the stove if you like.   This recipe will be a great one to include all of those fresh garden vegetables coming in hot and heavy now... (tomatoes, red onion, cukes & bell pepper)  

I'm getting into this kind of late, but I really like to post what we've eaten for the month so that I have a record for next July.  Helps to not forget the stuff that worked and the stuff that didn't. July, 2011 Suppers BBQ at niece's house - we smoked pork loins, smoked chicken, and briskit to take out to their house (they bought - we just did the smokin!) Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans (Rebecca cooked dinner for us.) Lasagna, and garlic bread Hamburger Soup , HM biscuits (Rachel made dinner) BBQ chicken & hamburgers on the grill, baked potatoes, quarters of cabbage in foil packets on the grill (from Miss Sharon at the Farmer's Market) and 5-minute a day hoecakes made in the skillet with a little butter -YUM, YUM & YUM! Tacos / Taco salads  - make your own BBQ brats (at 4th of July BBQ) - I took Sweet & Sour Pasta Salad Spaghetti (always lots of spaghetti!  Sometimes once a week LOL!) Breakfast for Supper (gravy made...

Missouri is notorious for extreme weather.  We can have REALLY, REALLY cold weather which included a history-making blizzard this past winter, to super, duper HOT weather (once I worked at school and in one of the classrooms it was 107 at 10AM).  But, with those extremes comes some nice breaks in the weather and we had a few cool days around the 4th of July.  On Thursday, my younger daughter used her personalized recipe book (which I made for her using Shutterfly) to make supper.  She made one of her (and her sister's) favorites, Hamburger Soup.  It has hamburger, garlic, oregano, bay leaves, tomato sauce (of course), pasta, and veges.  Its kind of like spaghetti meets vegetable soup!  Its their favorite and we snarfed it down last night!  I modified this recipe just a tad from a delicious soup recipe that my former boss makes.  He is an attorney and also is a FABULOUS cook. I had never had vegetable soup with ga...

Today was my older daughter's last day to work with the kids at the City Summer Camp.  She wanted to do something special for them so she decided to make these Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. There's not really a recipe.  Just use regular cones, and fill not quite full with cake batter.  She sat them in my broiler pan or any cake pan.  Just sit the pan in the oven with the cones all standing up.  Rebecca just used a cake mix but you could use your own homemade cake recipe if you don't want to use a mix.  Bake as the box says for cupcakes -  maybe 5 minutes longer.  I think we baked these 25 minutes.  Cool completely, and then frost and sprinkle! That's it! They are probably best served the day you make them.  She said the cones got a little soft from sitting overnight with cake in them and just weren't quite as crunchy as they were last night.  I bet dyeing the cupcake batter like our tye dye cupcakes would ...