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!  ...