At Home My Way

In my home state of FLORIDA, there are lots of gators!  For fun, we actually like to go out and shine headlights or spotlights on the water to see if we can see some GATOR EYES (the eyes shine in the lights!  It's way cool.)   (Yes, this is true!  And you definitely don't want to get too close, right?) But even more fun than spying gator eyes, is eating some gator eyes... except we ONLY eat the ones made out of pickles, cream cheese, and lunchmeat ham! My sister-in-law is SUPREMO at making these.  Her gator eyes far surpass mine.  But, luckily she shared the recipe with me and I gave 'er a whirl this weekend.  They were delicious!  Not as beautiful as my sister-in-law's gator eyes, but delicious! These are great for potlucks, packing for lunch, pretty much any holiday or picnic. This is how we make Gator Eyes, AT HOME MY WAY:   Gator Eyes 1 jar of large whole pickles (We prefer kosher dills from Vlasic but ...

Good Monday morning! I decided to go ahead and start the week off on the right foot with a menu plan.  This week, I am trying to plan meals using what I have on hand, and to try NOT to waste food by eating and re-serving leftovers.  I have a pretty well stocked pantry and freezer though, so I should be good to go for most of these meals. Here's my meal plan for December 10, 2012 through December 16, 2012. Meal Plan (12/10/12 through 12/16/12) Breakfasts : Banana Bread Baked Oatmeal using overripe bananas, sliced, and stashed in my freezer.  (I baked these this morning in a super sized muffin tin, no papers - just sprayed the tin with cooking spray.  This way I can freeze leftovers if I get tired of having this, for eating another day.) Chocolate Granola - I am trying a recipe this week from one of my favorite blogs - Lynn's Kitchen Adventures .  ( I'm thinking this may remind me a little of chocolate krispie cereal, so I plan on eating it...

I shared yesterday that in the last couple of weeks I've been in a cooking funk.  Well... really I guess it was a non-cooking funk ha.. since I haven't been doing much cooking. My pantry was slim pickings last week and yet I was in the mood to cook something.  I also needed something for my breakfasts and remembered this recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Quick Bread. This is a frugal, pantry cooking recipe.  It uses ingredients I normally keep in my pantry.  It does call for buttermilk which I almost NEVER buy unless I'm making ranch dressing.  But, that's no problem.  Just measure the milk and add a spoonful of lemon juice or vinegar.  Let it sit a few minutes and it works fine in this recipe.  I don't actually measure the lemon juice.   My husband also loves this recipe.  He's not much of a sweet eater but if we have a loaf of Cinnamon Sugar Quick Bread on the counter, then he will be slicing into it.  It reminds me of zucchini ...

Sorry I haven't posted in so LONG... I've been in a cooking funk lately and nothing new or wonderful has been coming out of my kitchen.  Just a little of the same old - same old.  Even frozen pizza - eeeek!!!!   This evening I had the oven on while I was baking oven fries and I decided to stick something yummy and ooey gooey in the oven while I had it all heated up.  I'm not exactly sure why I decided to heat up my oven on one of the only December evenings that I ever remember in Missouri with the temperature outside at over 75 degrees, but I did.  It was SO worth it! I made a favorite brownie recipe.  I love really good, chewy and dense brownies.  Yes the Black Bean Brownie was an option, but I wanted to make a more traditional brownie.   Several months ago I tried a recipe I found for brownies that taste just like the box kind.  You know... with the little shiny, paper thin top that almost lifts off the brownie.  Yep!  ...

  Pumpkin-Praline Baked Oatmeal       This morning was SO cool and crisp and the sun was shining brightly!  It was so hard to dig myself out of my comfy covers, that's for sure.      The cool morning sparked a craving for anything pumpkin, so I mixed this up before getting in the shower.  It was ready to come out of the oven after I was freshly showered, hair straightened and dressed for work.  How perfect was that!   I cannot convey to you how wonderful this smelled!    I love anything pumpkin! I decided to put a praline topping on my pumpkin baked oatmeal, similar to the praline topping you sometimes put on sweet potato casserole and it was scrumptious.  I know that your family is going to love this! It is also special enough for company or taking to a goody day at work.  The spicy pumpkin and sweet and crunchy pecans make for a perfect October breakfast!   ...

We haven't had many snacks in our house since both of our girls are never there.  It seems like when I have something, it lasts forever so the assortment of things to eat at my house are limited.  Sunday I wanted to make something sweet.  I had apples but was too lazy to make a crust or peel apples.  Pitiful, I know.  I also didn't want to buy any ingredients.  I remembered I had a delicious recipe for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cake in a little cookbook called  Comfort Foods - Beta Sigma Phi .  It has wonderful recipes in it!  And a book called "Comfort Foods" would be MY kind of cookbook, that's for sure. This cake is heavy - more like a zucchini cake or carrot cake.  It's also moist and lightly chocolatey.  I love it!  You all know how much I love Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal and this cake has similar flavors but with more of a dessert feel to it.  Its also something you can make with ingredients fro...

Sunday mornings usually start with something special for breakfast at our house.  It was cool and crisp Sunday morning and I managed to drag myself out of bed BEFORE my husband so I actually had the kitchen to myself ha-ha.  I started some bacon knowing that would probably bring him stumbling into the kitchen pretty quickly. I also discovered I didn't have any flour, so that meant no biscuits, pancakes, muffins...  Hmmm... we couldn't have just bacon and bread...  no way!  BUT then..... I remembered that I had made some homemade pancake mix the last time I made pancakes. Boing!  Boy, was I glad I did that!  (I had just mixed up the dry ingredients and added them to a canning jar. I wrote the additional wet ingredients I needed for the recipe on a piece of paper and stuck it with some tape on the jar.)  Hurray, we were having pancakes after all!  Making homemade pancake mix saved lots of steps....

  Our office has been super crazy these days.  Crazy busy and super understaffed.   Who says the economy isn't booming??  At least in my neck of the woods.   Since we have all been working so hard and yet staying "nice" to each other LOL, I decided to treat everyone with a couple of pans of homemade cinnamon rolls.  This picture is the little pan I made for us at home.  Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished big pans!   They're yummy and not nearly as much work as these directions appear.  I usually make the dough in the bread machine so the only "work" is rolling them out, cutting them, and putting them in the pan.   Here's how I make Homemade Cinnamon Rolls AT HOME MY WAY:   Homemade Cinnamon Rolls     (Bread Machine instructions for making the dough) 1 1/3 cup very warm water (hot but no hurt) 1 packet of yeast (or 2 teaspoons) 1/4 cup white sugar 1/4 cup oil 1 egg (sl...

Barbequed Ham "Monday, Monday..." (singing)! I would have to say that it was a crazy Monday yesterday.  I don't think it was just me though.  Maybe that full harvest moon is still affecting us all!  I knew the day was full of unexpected surprises when I dropped my phone as I got out of my car in our work parking lot first thing Monday morning.  The pieces went all underneath my car.  I thought about backing up my car to retrieve the pieces but the pieces were placed so that I was afraid I would turn and back over some of them... So, even though I was all dressed up for the office, I had to crawl UNDER my car with my whole body like a mechanic but on my stomach to get the pieces to my phone.  AND.. as I was crawling out, OF COURSE, a lady pulled into the spot behind me and witnessed all the Monday fun!  She was nice.. just said, "Its Monday already, isn't it?"  The only good thing was that I had on mostly black yeste...

Last week my niece sent me a facebook message asking if I could make her baby son a football beanie (crochet)?  "Uh.... YEA....!". I'm always looking for someone who actually WANTS some of the busywork that keeps me occupied.  I whipped this up in only about 20 minutes and its so adorable! From the picture that my niece found on Pinterest, I searched for a basic double crochet baby beanie pattern and found a terrific blog that actually had beanie patterns for different sizes.  Perfect! This is what I came up with.  Turned out cute and fit her baby's little head perfectly!  And we think he liked it.  He didn't even jerk it off his head like my babies would have done. Here's the blog I found with the instructions for the beanie.  Easy peasy! http://familybugs.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/basic-beanie-free-crochet-pattern/

Update to this picture made 5/9/17.  Also -  Love making this in my big muffin cups now!  Perfect service size and easy to eat on the run. I made another one of Lynn (from Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ) wonderful Baked Oatmeal recipes this morning.  Lynn calls hers Banana Baked Oatmeal . This is truly delicious!   She is such an inspiration!  I made mine with bananas, chopped walnuts and cinnamon and it tasted just like a piece of banana bread. (Lynn bakes hers with chocolate chips, which would be equally as delicious!)  I keep overripe, thick chunks of banana in my freezer for making smoothies and I just thawed some banana chunks in my microwave, drained off the water, and mashed them for using in this recipe.  My kitchen smelled delicious this morning and breakfast was a definite treat!  So easy and so inexpensive.  Mmmmmm!  It reminded me of my Tin Can Banana Bread .  If you want...

Lemon Glaze Cake   This past weekend my daughter and her boyfriend were in from college.  We didn't do a whole lot, but it was SURE good to see them!  I always like to feed college kids.  I think it is in college when kids most appreciate the person who cooks in their family.  They eat enough cafeteria and restaurant food or their own cooking to really be grateful for a plate homemade family favorites!   I had a smoked pork loin in the freezer so Friday night I mixed up some Homemade Tangy Barbeque sauce and made pulled pork sandwiches with cheese fries.  Definitely cannot go wrong there and since I already had the meat cooked and in the freezer, it was simple enough. I made homemade biscuits Saturday morning which we ate with the homemade peach jam that my daughter herself made from the few peaches we got from the little tree in our backyard.  There's really nothing like a pan of hot biscuits slathered in but...

  Super Simple Vanilla Ice Cream       I have been craving ice cream all week!  Really longer than that.  This week I decided to mix up a batch of vanilla ice cream.  My mother-in-law has a fabulous recipe that uses sweetened condensed milk, half & half, whole milk, and vanilla, and she uses one of those big ice cream makers which uses lots of ice and rock salt.  I happen to have one of those big ice cream makers (several actually since we have the electric version, the hand crank version, and a new one with a plastic tub).  But I also have a smaller countertop ice cream maker, which my mom got me for Christmas one year (thinking I would never use it) but I use it all the time!  It makes a perfect small batch of ice cream.   This is my ice cream maker:   I found some on Amazon here .   I also remembered seeing a recipe similar to the one my mother-in-law uses on one of my most favorite blogs, Fin...

Last night I made one of our favorite crockpot meals, Chicken -n- Biscuits .  While I had the oven cranked up, I decided to pop in one of my favorite things to have for lunch.  Corndog Muffins!  My husband thought this was a hoot.  He thought I was making cornbread muffins for supper and so when he saw hotdogs peaking out of the muffins, he just about cracked up!  (He doesn't know what he's missing!)  These little jewels are so tasty.  The combination of sweet cornbread and salty hotdogs really is yummy.  I especially love that in the morning, when I'm tired and can't dream up a thing to take with me to the office for lunch, I can grab these out of the freezer, stick them in a little container, and out the door I go.  At lunchtime, I just pop them in the microwave for a few seconds to warm them. I use my favorite homemade cornbread muffin recipe to make these Corndog Muffins.  This recipe is one that I got fro...

We've been having a terrible drought here in Missouri.  Just awful.  And yesterday we got the smallest bit of rain, but we did get some good mist and clouds (just a break in the baking heat is enough to be thankful for).  And what does a little bit of "cozy weather" do to me?  Makes me want to cook something, of course!  It wasn't cool outside but inside I was lazy, laying around watching TV, crocheting.  Just looking outside at the mist made me crave fall food.  But, in my laziness I definitely didn't want to go to the store.  I was out of eggs so baking cookies or a cake was out of the question (although I actually could have made my eggless, Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake ).  What could I make?  I always have lots of oats on hand (for making my favorite Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal ), and I had three apples in my fruit bowl starting to look a little puny, so Apple Crisp was on the menu!  I love finding ways to use what...

I have been completely astounded at the number of pins and comments on my Best Dill Pickles Ever - Just like Clausen post.  That is such a wonderful recipe, plus its easy and so impressive to share.   And it makes me especially happy that this recipe has been so well received. I love canning.  I had forgotten the wealth of filled jars in my cabinets and recipes to go with (for posting on my blog).  I'll try to do better about posting some of those canning recipes! One of my recent commenters asked for me to post my recipe for Sweet Pickle Relish.  Hey!  I can do that because I actually have a jar in my canning cabinet begging to be opened for this picture.  And hot dogs just don't taste as good without that little taste of summer.  (I'll try to get a pic posted soon of the relish itself slathered over a big ole' hot dog!) This is the very best relish recipe!  I even make it with all of those sunburned cucumbers that you f...