At Home My Way

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...

This summer has flown past me this year and I have gotten little out of my garden or the farmer's market.  Thankfully, a good friend stopped by last Sunday on her way home to St. Louis.  She brought me some ripe peaches and they made the BEST peach cobbler!  They smelled SO GOOD!  I found a recipe for Fruit Cobbler in a recipe book created as a fundraiser for our Catholic School and it has some really good recipes in it!  I wanted something yummy but wasn't feeling particularly ambitious so I found a recipe for a cobbler that had a "crumble" crust.  Its really good and the peach cobbler was so delicious I had to share some with both my parents and my husband's mom!  What a treat!  Tasted like summer on a plate!  I will definitely be using this cobbler recipe in the future for whatever kind of fruit I have on hand! This is how I made Fresh Peach Cobbler AT HOME MY WAY : Fresh Peach Cobbler 4 cups any fruit or berries (I used sli...