At Home My Way

I'm getting into this kind of late, but I really like to post what we've eaten for the month so that I have a record for next July.  Helps to not forget the stuff that worked and the stuff that didn't. July, 2011 Suppers BBQ at niece's house - we smoked pork loins, smoked chicken, and briskit to take out to their house (they bought - we just did the smokin!) Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans (Rebecca cooked dinner for us.) Lasagna, and garlic bread Hamburger Soup , HM biscuits (Rachel made dinner) BBQ chicken & hamburgers on the grill, baked potatoes, quarters of cabbage in foil packets on the grill (from Miss Sharon at the Farmer's Market) and 5-minute a day hoecakes made in the skillet with a little butter -YUM, YUM & YUM! Tacos / Taco salads  - make your own BBQ brats (at 4th of July BBQ) - I took Sweet & Sour Pasta Salad Spaghetti (always lots of spaghetti!  Sometimes once a week LOL!) Breakfast for Supper (gravy made...

Missouri is notorious for extreme weather.  We can have REALLY, REALLY cold weather which included a history-making blizzard this past winter, to super, duper HOT weather (once I worked at school and in one of the classrooms it was 107 at 10AM).  But, with those extremes comes some nice breaks in the weather and we had a few cool days around the 4th of July.  On Thursday, my younger daughter used her personalized recipe book (which I made for her using Shutterfly) to make supper.  She made one of her (and her sister's) favorites, Hamburger Soup.  It has hamburger, garlic, oregano, bay leaves, tomato sauce (of course), pasta, and veges.  Its kind of like spaghetti meets vegetable soup!  Its their favorite and we snarfed it down last night!  I modified this recipe just a tad from a delicious soup recipe that my former boss makes.  He is an attorney and also is a FABULOUS cook. I had never had vegetable soup with ga...

Today was my older daughter's last day to work with the kids at the City Summer Camp.  She wanted to do something special for them so she decided to make these Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. There's not really a recipe.  Just use regular cones, and fill not quite full with cake batter.  She sat them in my broiler pan or any cake pan.  Just sit the pan in the oven with the cones all standing up.  Rebecca just used a cake mix but you could use your own homemade cake recipe if you don't want to use a mix.  Bake as the box says for cupcakes -  maybe 5 minutes longer.  I think we baked these 25 minutes.  Cool completely, and then frost and sprinkle! That's it! They are probably best served the day you make them.  She said the cones got a little soft from sitting overnight with cake in them and just weren't quite as crunchy as they were last night.  I bet dyeing the cupcake batter like our tye dye cupcakes would ...

Last year I was a little discouraged with my garden.  Well... not just my garden.  I was SO EXCITED about the garden and then my work day increased.  I was leaving the house 30 minutes earlier than normal and getting home an hour later than normal (my husband and I started carpooling together) and that really cut into my day.  I was just exhausted trying to keep the bare minimums done at home and the garden suffered.  Plus, we got completely taken over by squash bugs.  Our favorite garden vege of all times is yellow squash and we didn't get a single one.  Squash vine borers!  Need I say more?  I have lots of stuff crammed into my garden.  I planted two rows of greenbeans (bush) from 3 packets of seeds and only 1 packet of seeds grew so I've replanted.  I use a cattle panel to make an arbor and I have cucumbers growing on there.  They are so much easier to pick that way.  I love growing pinto beans and I have them growing...

We like to smoke meat when we are having very many people over.  This way the meat cooks itself and you aren't slaving to the hot grill while trying to visit with your company.  Leftovers freeze beautifully and you can cook up a bunch of meat, wrap each hunk in foil, put in freezer bags and have some for later.  We use our smoker even on the coldest winter days (in Missouri Brrr!).  Most always, I whip up this easy rub and it seems to really season the meat nicely.  I use this rub on turkey, chicken, pork, and even briskit.  People will think you are a pro when they taste smoked pork loin with this wonderful rub.  Often, I make this homemade honey-mustard bbq sauce.  I found these two recipes in SOUTHERN LIVING magazine.  Enough said, huh?  I always find great recipes in that magazine.  I have modified the original recipe to suit my tastes.  The original recipe had cinnamon (of all things) in the rub, and I'm just not read...

The other night our friends were coming over for a little after-work relaxation and I wanted to make something yummy to snack on.  This recipe is great to make in a pinch because it uses ingredients you most always have in your pantry and since it only uses 5 ingredients, its super fast to stir together!  When  first looked at this recipe, I could not believe it had no baking powder - leavening ingredient, but it doesn't and it works great!  These are terrific leftover.  They get more moist and dense the next day.  Definitely a good recipe to take to pot lucks!  I usually sprinkle some powdered sugar over mine once they are cool for a better presentation! Easy Butterscotch Bars or "Blondies" - 5 INGREDIENTS 1 cup melted butter (I used margarine - that's 2 sticks) 1 3/4 cups brown sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups AP flour (whole wheat works great) Stir melted butter and brown sugar together. Add eggs and vanill...

My daughter was in a wedding over the weekend.  She was a bridesmaid!  They were going to get ready at the bride's house - doing hair, makeup, etc. and my daughter wanted to take some breakfast over to the wedding party.  She had to be at the reception hall decorating until 1AM and so I got up early to give her a good start on breakfast.  (I never sleep much anyway).  She was going to make muffins (two kinds) and make a fruit tray.  She had wanted a breakfast casserole but we didn't have quite the ingredients to make the breakfast casserole and she would have had to have gone to the store after decorating (at the all-night supercenter) and then made it (we had no bread), but that morning I discovered I did have enough ingredients to make a little pie crust and a simple quiche.  I made the muffins (chocolate chip and blueberry) using the Plain Muffin recipe from http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/ , the quiche from a favorite cookbook in my cabinet....