At Home My Way

Stromboli are an American version of calzones that have the addition of some sauce inside.  They are  typically made with pizza  dough  and filled with meats, cheeses, and other ingredients.   " Hot Pockets" are overpriced little freezer foods found at your favorite grocery store.  Yes-they are easy and always sound good but I'm hungry as soon as I finish the thing!  Making them at home is a winner way to save money and a delicious way to eat!  Made at home, they are inexpensive, are made with a super easy homemade dough with fillings of your choice, and are just as easy to reheat as the store bought version!     Recipes at the top:  Chit Chat at the bottom! Here's how we make homemade Stromboli / Homemade Hot Pockets AT HOME MY WAY!   Homemade Stromboli (Hot Pockets)  (uses Freshly Milled Wheat  OR Store Bought Flour ) PRINTABLE VIEW HERE Dough: No Knead Bread Recipe found HERE  (using freshly milled w...

 *This recipe isn't hard.  I just tell every little thing.) Recipes at the Top - Chit Chat at the bottom! Pepper Jelly (Surejell) (Printable View here) 14 various peppers, some sweet/some hot (50% hot peppers is good) 1 cup apple cider vinegar ½ teaspoon butter/margarine 1 box (regular-yellow box) Surejell (I only use that brand) 5 cups sugar, measured into a separate bowl Nitrile gloves for seeding/trimming the peppers. (Makes 6 pints of jam -I always use some 4 oz jars and 8 oz; washing up extras so I have enough just in case.  Any partial jar at the end can be refrigerated for a "test taster") Instructions Wash jars, lids and rings with soapy/hot water.   (New USDA guidelines say you don’t have to sterilize jars if you are processing for 10+ minutes.)   I use the dishwasher.   Once the dishwasher cycle is complete, I then start my recipe while the jars, etc. remain in the hot dishwasher until time to fill. ...

This fantastic Surprise Zucchini Jam will be a great way to use up those ever-growing zucchinis in your garden.   It turns out fantastic and uses no pectin!  Ding-ding-ding - money saver!  (Jello is lots cheaper than pectin!)   I ate mine on some bread/toast and it was amazing!  I just couldn't imagine what it would taste like??  However, I was pleasantly surprised.  Great for biscuits, toast, even over cream cheese/served with crackers as an appetizer!  It would make a fun homemade Christmas gift, too! I am making lots more varieties of this recipe.  My husband's grandma always used apricot jello. Strawberry jello is supposed to be great! Also, I thought it would be good to use pineapple jello and include some ground jalapenos for pepper jelly.  Lots of possibilities here! Since this recipe uses no Surejel/pectin, I was very skeptical. However, after a sit overnight, it was all set up.  In the fridge, it was the perfect "...

Rebecca wanted to try a recipe for making loaded (frozen) french fries on the grill the other night.  These turned out WONDERFUL so I had to put them on my blog.  We served them with shish kabobs, which we also made on the grill.  We often bake our french fries.  We hardly ever fry anything anymore so if we have crinkle cut fries, I usually bake them on a cookie sheet.  Our temps here in mid Missouri have been approaching 90 so I really wanted to keep all of the cooking outside if possible. Cooking frozen french fries on the barbecue grill sounded a little far fetched.  I couldn't imagine it (but it was on Pinterest so it had to work LOL)!  My fear was that they wouldn't get done at all ...but when your kid gets excited about cooking something and wants to do it all HERSELF, who am I to argue?  Not me!  Not only did these loaded fries get done, they were divine smothered in cheese, bacon, and green onions.  We topped that already ...

I don't know about you, but I'm always lacking lunch inspiration!  I don't have much time in the mornings since we have to be on the road by around 7AM each morning so even if I normally would have inspiration, probably I'm not having it at 6:30 AM. I was browsing around blogs the other day looking for supper inspiration when I ran across a mom who makes her own pigs in a blanket.  We make pigs in a blanket at our house too but we use canned biscuits.  I just couldn't imagine the combination of homemade bread and hot dog.   Let me be the first to tell you that these are the best, most delicious things you could ever put in your mouth!  No more, will I wonder what to take for lunch!   These are pretty easy to make (I used my bread machine for the dough), and I simply let them cool and placed them all in a gallon bag in the freezer.  My morning lunch prep involved opening the freezer, getting one out, and sticking it in my lunch container. ...

One of my nieces had a baby about a week ago.  Babies are always so exciting to me!  This baby is the second child for my niece and her husband.  Their older son is a little over two years old.   I wanted to take them a few freezer meals so that mom could spend more time with the boys and less time in the kitchen.  I tried to make something special for each member of their family.  For the two year old, I thought some mini corndog bites might fit the bill.  This way, my niece could pull them out of the freezer, microwave them until warm, and give her son a pretty nutritious lunch or snack without having to drag something out of a box (eek LOL). I'll post more about the other freezer meals that I made for them later on this week, but for now I wanted to post about the Corndog Mini Muffins.  I have posted about corndog muffins before (here) , but recently I saw a picture on Pinterest of corndog mini muffins.  They feature one chunk of ...

For just about as long as we have been married, we have spent Christmas Eve with my husband's mom.  Sometimes she has lots of Christmas Eve guests and sometimes she has just a few.  This year she had a bumper crop.  The living room was full of laughing cousins, lots of stories, and even more good food. My mother-in-law always makes wonderful little BBQ hotdogs on Christmas Eve.  My sister-in-law and I LOVE them!  I haven't posted that recipe but they are just a jar of grape jelly plus a jar of mustard and regular hotdogs cut into fourths.  She cooks them slowly in a little crock for hours until they are thick and yummy. We are big on hot dogs apparently because the other favorite dish are regular old pigs in a blanket cut small and made with canned biscuits and hot dogs.  Those are always the first things to go. This year, my daughter, Rachel, made a Dried Beef Cheese Ball.  We love all kinds of cheese balls but this is a parti...

My husband and I are recent "empty nesters" and have been enjoying a little bit of new found freedom the last couple of weeks. We haven't ever been big restaurant eaters but we have a new affinity for Outback Steakhouse. It seems like the other restaurants have raised their prices to the point that we can now eat at Outback as cheaply as we can eat at one of our local diners. If we each have the Outback Special for around $10, and drink the ice water, its a pretty cheap date night. A few times we have splurged and bought a half order of the Cheese Fries. They are divine! And OF COURSE, I had to figure a way to make these AT HOME MY WAY! And boy oh boy did I have success! These are really good. My older daughter wants me to make them over and over in the same week. She just can't get enough of them. I bought a 20 pound bag of potatoes (well... I bought two actually) for $1.98 each so this date-night splurge was really cheap to make at home. We NEVER fry anything any mo...