At Home My Way

  Do you have some stale buns or bread in your pantry?  Don't throw them away!  Turn those babies into delicious  Homemade Bread Pudding .  We love it  hot  served with vanilla ice cream or  cold  served with whipped cream. (You can sub in any fruit of your choice.  I regularly have applesauce so used that plus a soft apple that was languishing in the fruit bowl for this batch.)  Don't let these humble beginnings cause you to pass this by.  This dessert is moist and full of old timey goodness.   Here's how I make Applesauce Bread Pudding AT HOME MY WAY  : Applesauce Bread Pudding (PRINTABLE RECIPE HERE)   Ingredients:  12 slices of stale bread (cubed or torn into small pieces) (I used a full pack of stale hotdog buns for this recipe.) 2 Tablespoons margarine/butter (melted) or oil 2 cups applesauce  3 cups milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 cup sugar 4 eggs (I actually used 3 this time a...

 Recipes at the Top!  Chat-chat at the bottom! #1 Surprise Muffins (Cranberry Sauce) 2 cups all purpose flour 1/3 cup sugar 3 teaspoons baking POWDER 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup milk 1 egg 1/2 cup oil (I used vegetable oil) Leftover cranberry sauce (about 1 cup) Colored sugar/sprinkles if you have some 12 cupcake papers or spray the pan well. Instructions: PREHEAT OVEN to 350 degrees and place liners in muffin tin (12) COMBINE:  In a mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients. COMBINE SEPARATELY:  In a separate dish, add milk, oil and egg.  Blend well. COMBINE:  Wet and dry ingredients and stir well to make a thick batter. MUFFIN TIN:  Spoon one scoop (like 1 heaping Tablespoon) of batter in each cup of a 12-muffin tin.  Spread it around a little to cover the bottom of the cup. ADD CRANBERRY SAUCE:  On top of the batter in each cup, add a Tablespoon of cranberry sauce to each cup. TOP:  Top with another scoop of batter. SPRINKLE:  If you ...

In my office at work lots of people, young and old, are standing in line for the microwave!  They are often warming up those tasteless little boxed meals you find in the freezer section of the grocery store.  Eek.  There are better options out there than those things! I found a great money and time saver that gives me better food and more bang for my buck.  Also, no trash since I reuse the jars!  Another winner-winner, chicken dinner... or stir fry dinner, chili dinner, or pasta dinner... Leftovers make great frozen dinners!  Here's all you need to do it AT HOME MY WAY: Frozen Micro Meals in Jars Leftovers, such as meals with rice, pasta, chili, soups Jars with lids.  I use pint canning jars because those offer similar amounts like Lean Cuisine type dinners, but if you are a big eater, by all means use quart jars. Lids.  I keep a stash of recycled peanut butter lids which are plastic for using with freezer/fridge food.  Th...

Last night was pizza night at our house.  We were actually craving take out pizza on Tuesday (our favorite is Casey's) but - trying to be diligent about saving money, I quickly made our favorite pizza dough before leaving for work (Wednesday morning) and stuck the bowl of dough in the fridge.  I use the 5-Minute-A-Day dough which I blogged about here . Making pizza at our house involves dough, a can of plain tomato sauce spread over the dough and sprinkled with salt/pepper/garlic powder/oregano, and then topped with cheese and usually pepperoni. Tuesday we had crockpot BBQ chicken for supper so I had one lone piece of BBQ chicken in my fridge.  I have often seen BBQ chicken pizzas on menus and on Pinterest but had never really checked out what was on it.  BBQ chicken on pizza sauce never sounded very good to me.  Well... to my surprise most people don't use PIZZA SAUCE on a pizza with BBQ chicken on it.  Duh!!!  The recipes I found just involv...

Sometimes you just need a quick meal idea - to get some food on the table.  Sure, you can run to your favorite burger or pizza joint, but all of that food you have in your pantry/cabinet is already there, right?  You might as well cook it and be $10+ richer in your pocket?  That was my theory the other night, anyway... I really wanted to go out for supper.  I get home from work 6PM-ish and had managed to force myself to go for a run.  My only problem is that after a supper-time run, I am really famished by the time I get home!  I tend to gravitate to takeout food in times like these, but I took a deep breath and a long look in my refrigerator and this is the meal I came up with. It was DELICIOUS!   It immediately brought me back to the days when my dad was a long distance truck driver and my mom made us quick and easy suppers like these to stretch her budget.  A meal like this can be stretched with more or less hotdogs and more or less c...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast at my house complete with lots of family, delicious food, and the best thing we had? - Lots of baby holding!  We have several new baby blessings in my husband's family and thankfully we all got many turns at loving and snuggling the newest additions to our family. But now... Thanksgiving is over.  I still have too many freshly washed, empty casserole dishes and pie plates to return and no energy left to deliver them after I get home. The tables and chairs have been folded and put away.  I have washed and stored the table cloths and fall decor.  What else do I have left?  Lots of leftover TURKEY!! I vowed this year to use up that precious turkey so last night was meal #1 of turkey leftovers.  So far, I made broth with the bones and was able to freeze several servings of turkey for later, saving some turkey for the dumplings and enough to make turkey salad (like chicken salad) for a few lunches this week. My hus...

I typically am a sweet breakfast eater.  I usually have stuff like  blueberry muffins , chocolate chip baked oatmeal , granola as cold cereal , or donuts (LOL) but this weekend I tried something different (for me).   I've been reading about breakfast burritos in many of my favorite blogs.  There are lots of variations to pick.  Some use potatoes, some use sausage, all use eggs and sometimes cheese. One of the blogs I was reading suggested just using whatever you want in there with the eggs, including black beans and vegetables.  Another "duh" moment for me. Sounded like a great idea!   I really wanted to spend the extra long weekend getting some food prepped for our lunches and breakfasts. Breakfast burritos sounded like a great option for any meal and especially good for keeping in the freezer as my own "fast food". I was thrilled with my breakfast burritos!  I don't often eat scrambled eggs, although I don't dislike them as long as the...

I had some leftover ham from our Easter dinner in my fridge.  It made some killer ham salad!  Talk about looking forward to lunch! I haven't made a whole lot of ham salad.  My husband's aunt used to make her version of "ham" salad with bologna, and it is equally as wonderful, but since I did have some ham that was languishing in the refrigerator, I decided to give it a go.  It was easy, used only three ingredients and made just wonderful sandwiches!   Ham is such a great thing to have around the house.  We bake a big, bone-in, ham that we get in the meat department of our local grocery store.  We ask that it be "sliced and tied" so that after we bake it, the ham is pretty much ready to serve.  The butcher slices it in thick slices, leaving it in the shape of the ham, and ties it with twine.  We bake it with the twine on.  Ham is one of our favorite family dinners when the entire crew is home, cousins, aunts, the whole bunch! A...

Last night I had about 4 small servings of pork left over from our 4th of July celebration (we smoked a pork loin), about half of a casserole dish of cooked, cubed, potatoes, and also some leftover canned corn languishing in the fridge.  I also found some green onions on their last leg.  What to do with those leftovers?  Too much good food to just throw away but we were tired of leftover BBQ food!  Well, you know I love Redoing Leftovers! I decided to try a pot pie recipe that I've been wanting to try.  Laura at Heavenly Homemaker recently posted about a pot pie using a batter crust (no rolling- yoo-hoo!).  I remember thinking that I would probably make homemade pot pie more often if  I didn't have to make a pie crust (or worse,... buy one), so this was a recipe I really wanted to try. Summer doesn't sound like the time for making homemade pot pie but really it's a great way to either empty your fridge of leftovers or us...